Jamie Freveletti - Running from the Devil

The woman nodded, with just a hint of a smile at Emma’s attempt at Spanish.

Emma wolfed the food. The woman watched her with consternation. When Emma was done, the woman took the plate and scrubbed it clean with some sand from a wooden tub.

She returned to stand before Emma. The children came back, too, jostling one another as they gathered around the woman.

“Gracias,” Emma said. “I know food must be scarce and you shared yours with me.”

The woman nodded, but it was clear she understood only the one word Emma said in Spanish.

Emma wished there was a way she could properly thank the young woman.

“Wait. I have something I know you’ll like.” She reached into her cargo pants pocket and pulled out one of the lipstick tubes.

The woman’s gaze locked on the tube.

Emma held it before her. “Lipstick. From one of the best cosmetic companies in the world.” She swiveled the tube and the red color emerged.

The woman sucked in her breath. Her eyes widened.

“I developed the red. Do you like it?”

The woman just stared at the lipstick.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Emma said.

Emma handed it to the woman. “It’s yours. Try it. You will be one of the first women in the whole world to wear the color. I designed it to last all day, and it won’t dry out your lips.”

The woman looked at Emma in awe. She seemed almost afraid to touch the tube.

“Here.” Emma moved the tube closer to the woman. “It’s yours. Gracias por pollo.” She knew she’d murdered the sentence in Spanish, but the words did the trick. The woman reached and took the tube from her.

She ran over to a bucket that held some water. She stared into it, using the water as a mirror. She applied the lipstick and turned to Emma.

“Oooh,” the children said in unison.

Emma sucked in her breath. The color looked perfect. It complemented the woman’s coloring and made her appear more youthful, even happier somehow.

“You make my color look beautiful. Gracias.” Emma whispered the words.

The woman broke into a shy smile. “Gracias,” she said.

Emma nodded. “I must go now. I don’t want to be here when the men return.”

The woman looked somber again. She waved Emma to the door of a nearby hut. Emma had noticed the hut when she first entered the camp, mostly due to its difference from the others. It was set off from the main circle of buildings. There were no windows, and instead of a cloth covering an opening, this hut had a real wooden door, bolted into the frame, with a bar that hung across it.

As Emma walked over to the hut, she noticed that the children all had fallen silent. Their eyes were huge in their heads, and for the first time Emma felt they were looking at her in fear. Emma didn’t want to open the door. Yet she felt compelled to see what was inside. She lifted the wooden bar. The door swung outward. It creaked on rusty hinges. The noise was loud and grating in the quiet clearing.

The inside was so dark that it took Emma a minute to adjust to what she was seeing. Only tiny shafts of light glowed through the occasional crack in the boards. The floor was dirt. Larger stones ringed the sides. The center of the floor contained a deep hole, so deep that she couldn’t see into it.

Emma glanced back at the young woman. The woman wasn’t looking at her, she was staring at the hole. Emma didn’t think it was possible for the woman to look any sadder than when she had first met her, but she did. Her eyes were dark pools of despair.

Emma took two steps into the hut and stared into the hole.

It was nearly ten feet deep and three feet wide. At the very bottom was a person. It looked to be a woman. Long hair tangled around her body. Her arms were like sticks. Her bones were clearly visible under skin so thin it seemed translucent. Heavy leg irons were wrapped around her ankles. She was lying on her side with her knees drawn to her chest in a fetal position. Her eyes were closed.

“Oh God, no,” Emma said.

The prisoner opened her eyes and looked at Emma.

Emma felt her head swim. Tears came so quickly that it left her feeling light-headed. She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm.

“Can you speak English?” she said.

“I can.” The woman’s voice was reed thin and soft. She spoke English with only a slight French accent.

“How long have you been here?” Emma said.

“I think two years.”

Emma knelt at the side of the hole. “Can you walk?”

The woman nodded. “They lower a ladder every day and I walk to the jungle to go to the bathroom.”

Emma looked around. She saw the ladder lying on the far side of the hut.

“I’ll get it,” she said.

Emma shouldered the ladder, swaying with the ungainly size of it. She felt it steady. She looked up to see the young woman holding the far end. Now she looked more determined than sad.

They lowered the ladder into the hole. The woman below crawled up it with surprising agility. The leg irons clanked against the wooden slats. Emma grabbed her hand and helped her climb the last four steps. They stepped out into the sunlight.

The woman was tall, taller than Emma’s five foot eight. Her clothes hung on her frame and her face was hollowed out. Her hair was matted and her fingernails caked with dirt. She stared around her, blinking in the sunlight.

“What is your name?” Emma said.

The prisoner turned her head slowly at Emma’s question. She stared at Emma, but it appeared as though she was trying to remember her name. She took a deep breath that she exhaled on a sigh.

“The sun is beautiful,” she said.

Emma nodded.

“And the air is warm. So nice. There were times that I thought I would never be dry again.”

“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.