Jamie Freveletti - Running from the Devil

“Your name?” Emma prodded gently.

“Vivian Callenoute. I’m the daughter of a Colombian, raised in France. I was visiting relatives in Colombia to celebrate my twenty-first birthday. They kidnapped me at an espresso bar in Bogotá. I insisted that I would only be a minute, and urged my driver to wait in the car. For the past two years I have regretted that cup of coffee.” She covered her face with her hands.

The sun shone, the trees swayed in a soft breeze, and the birds sang. Emma looked at the woman crying in front of her and wondered at the contrasting beauty and devastation that was Colombia. She reached out and touched Vivian’s arm.

“I’m Emma Caldridge. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but we need to get out of here. Now. I’m being chased by a paramilitary group. I need to find my friend and get the hell out of Colombia.”

Emma turned to the young village woman. “Can you unlock the leg irons?”

The young woman turned to Vivian, who spoke to her in rapid Spanish.

The young woman snapped an order to a young boy, about eleven. He took off running.

Vivian turned back. “She sent Oliver to get the key to the leg irons.”

“What is her name?” Emma said.

“Maria.” Vivian said.

“Where are the other women and the men?”

Vivian spoke to Maria again. Maria gave a short explanation.

“The village is small. The men are on a three-day trip to the fields to gather the coca. The women are with them. They help with the camp and collect seeds and herbs. Maria was left behind to watch the children.”

Emma turned to Maria. “Do you and the children want to come with us? Will you be in trouble when the men return and find their captive gone?”

Once again, Vivian translated. The two talked back and forth. Emma waited, but grew increasingly nervous. Finally they finished, and Vivian turned to Emma.

“She says she will be fine. She believes that the man who kidnapped me was killed yesterday by the Cartone cartel. She said she saw the watchtower at his camp burning. He terrorized the village, but if he is truly dead, then she will be free.”

“What was his name?” Emma said.

“Luis Rodrigo.”

Emma went cold. “Does he come here often?”

Vivian translated. Maria shook her head and chattered in Spanish.

“She says he comes every month, on a Friday, for one night. He checks on me, then he leaves,” Vivian said.

“What day is it?” Emma said.

“I apologize, I don’t know.”

Vivian asked Maria the question before turning back to Emma.

“I am sorry to say, today is Friday.”

41

IT WAS DAWN WHEN MIGUEL LED THE PASSENGERS DOWN THE path to the location where the extraction helicopters would land. Boris went first, Miguel second, and Kohl and the rest fanned out behind.

They didn’t see the ambush until it was too late.

One minute Boris was loping down the path, the next he was on the ground, growling.

“Down!” Miguel dropped and rolled. His quick thinking was the only thing that saved him. Bullets hammered into the ground in front of him.

Boris took off into the jungle. The soldiers scattered, throwing themselves into the foliage, some dragging passengers with them. The passengers flowed into the trees in all directions, making it impossible for the soldiers to return fire for fear of hitting one.

Twenty men appeared out of the jungle, guns drawn. Each was dressed in military fatigues, and each held a passenger in front of him, using them as human shields.

“Come out of your hiding place!” A guerrilla in filthy pants and a black shirt put a gun to the head of the passenger held by the man next to him. “If you don’t, I kill the first hostage!”

The passenger was about eighty, with white hair and watery blue eyes. His back curved in a hunch, but anger blazed from him. His clothes were stained and dirty.

“Ignore them, whoever you are! They are scum and will kill us anyway.” The man spoke in Spanish. He turned to the guerrilla and looked into the muzzle of the gun, now pointed four inches from his face. “I am Colombian! You are an abomination!”

The guerrilla started to squeeze the trigger. Miguel watched, helpless. He couldn’t risk firing and revealing his location as long as there was a chance, however small, of saving the rest of the passengers.

A gunshot rang out, somewhere to the front and right of Miguel. Blood spurted out of the guerrilla’s neck. The shot was a real feat. Whoever did it had found a three-inch space between the old man’s head and the guerrilla’s neck. The guerrilla fell in place, taking the old man down with him. The other guerrillas scrambled off the path, dragging their human shields with them.

Silence again reigned in the jungle.

“Was that you, sir?” Miguel heard Kohl whisper somewhere behind him.

“Not me. One of ours?”

“I think they’re all dead.” Kohl’s voice broke on the word dead.

“Then stay hidden. Whoever did that is one hell of a shot.”

“I’m sure am glad he’s on our side, whoever he is.”

“Don’t be too sure. Just because he’s against them doesn’t mean he’s for us.”

Miguel stared into the jungle. He couldn’t see a thing. He strained his ears to listen for the telltale rustling of leaves. He heard the wind moving through, making a continuous, soothing noise, but nothing that sounded like a footfall.

“Let’s move to the right. I want to outflank them,” Miguel said.

He pulled himself backward, one tiny inch at a time. His elbows sank in the soft earth below him. His real concern was that he would be outflanked before he could achieve a location of relative safety. The guerrillas knew this jungle as only a native could. Miguel and his men were at a huge disadvantage, and this problem was compounded by the existence of the unknown sniper. Miguel figured that the sniper was moving through the jungle as well. The question was: which way? Miguel had no desire to meet the man who could shoot like that on any other terms than his own.

Miguel kept his eyes glued on the far side of the path while he crawled. After ten feet, his view was blocked, so he moved sideways. He heard Kohl behind him. Kohl was doing a good job moving in stealth, but there was a certain amount of rustling that couldn’t be avoided.

The noise of a helicopter drowned out any sound Kohl could have made. Miguel looked up to see it hovering over the path. He got a mental picture of the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. As a child they had scared the hell out of him, and this helicopter was doing the same. He watched while a man perched in the open door and fired round after round into the forest below.

Miguel heard men screaming. The helicopter flew low. Guns mounted on the side rained fire down on the hapless soldiers and anyone else in their path.

Another helicopter joined in the fray, this one filled with guerrillas. Miguel watched as one pulled the pin on a grenade. Miguel took aim and shot him. The man died instantly, but the grenade fell out of his hand anyway, dropping to the path below and exploding. Miguel heard more screams and watched as a gun flew ten feet into the air.

Return fire erupted from a location ten feet forward of the sniper’s previous location. The sniper didn’t waste bullets by laying down sweeping fire. Instead, he shot repeatedly into the area revealed by the fire bursts.

The helicopters hovered over them. The rotor’s downwash bent the trees and forced the leaves aside, leaving the guerrillas in the open as they knelt on the passengers’ backs. The nearest guerrilla tried to rise, but before he could, the sniper shot him right in the center of his forehead. He dropped like a stone.

Damn, that man can shoot, Miguel thought. He used the opportunity afforded by the helicopters’ downwash to take out another guerrilla who’d had the bad luck to be exposed by the swaying vegetation. He heard Kohl’s gun discharge to his right and watched yet another guerrilla fall backward.