“I am Jairo,” the old man said. He grinned. “Amigo.”
Bolan gestured to the others, who were watching with an almost eerily uniform silence. “Help me with them,” he said simply.
“Of course,” Jairo said. “Do not worry about them, amigo. They were strong. They will be all right.”
“Does anyone need medical attention?”
“I will make sure they get it,” Jairo said. “Our village is not far.”
“Village? Where?” Bolan asked.
He pointed. “Over the border.”
“You’re from Guatemala?”
“Sí. The soldiers raided our village and took us prisoner two days ago. It has been a very long two days.” Jairo worked his way among the others with Bolan, freeing the captured villagers from their chains. From what Bolan could see, the victims had indeed been cruelly tortured.
“You were fed? Given water?” he asked.
“Sí.” Jairo nodded.
That was interesting. Bolan completed his survey of the villagers. Many had bad wounds on their backs, and a couple, including Jairo, sported cigar and cigarette burns, but the damage was largely superficial. There had been no intent to kill these people.
“Jairo, did your captors say anything? Did they explain why they took you, or what they wanted from you?”
“No,” Jairo replied, shaking his head. “Nothing. Only that we would do well to tell others, if we lived, just what General Orieza will do to us if his men are resisted.”
So that was it, Bolan mused. Orieza and his people were pursuing an explicit strategy. It wasn’t atrocities for the sake of atrocities; Orieza’s shock troopers were softening up the resistance, both within Honduras and across the border, by instilling fear in the populations of both nations. Combined with the military raids, it was a very good strategy, from Orieza’s perspective. It would enable him to continue rolling over the Guatemalans and probably guarantee at least some cooperation, if not simply a lack of interference from the frightened locals.
“Did he say he might release some or all of you?” Bolan asked.
“No,” Jairo shook his head again. “But I think he would have. His heart, it did not seem to be in it. El Alto had a cruel look to him. He was not so soft as to let us live unless he meant to.”
“Who? ‘The Tall One’?”
“Sí,” Jairo said. “It was El Alto who did the whipping, and the talking. Always him. Never the other soldiers. I think he liked it. He looked, in his eyes, as if he enjoyed it.” Jairo shook his head yet again and spit on the ground in disgust. “He left not long before you found us. Had he wished, he could have cut our throats.”
A tall, cruel-looking man. It was very likely that El Alto, this torturer, was the same Honduran soldier Bolan had seen fleeing the camp. He made a mental note of that. If luck and the mercurial gods of combat were with him, he would encounter The Tall One again.
“Come on,” Bolan said to the old man. “Let’s get your people gathered together, treat their wounds and move them out. Can any of you handle a weapon?”
There were a few murmurs of assent. Jairo grinned. “We are not so helpless. We can see ourselves safely home. We will take what we need from the soldiers,” he said. “The ones who are outside.” He nodded to the door. “The ones you killed.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you, too, have a look in your eyes, amigo.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Sí.” Jairo nodded solemnly. “Su mirada es muerte. Your look is one of death.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The blue-tagged shock-troop guards outside General Orieza’s office snapped to attention as Roderigo del Valle stalked down the corridor. Dawn had broken, yellow and inviting, the sun’s rays streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the corridor. This had no effect on Del Valle, who carried with him a darkness that no light could penetrate. At least, this was how he preferred to be seen. Better to be feared than loved when one of the two must be lacking, as the old saying went….
He swept past the guards as if he barely saw them, and in truth, he didn’t. It had been a very long, very frustrating night, and he hadn’t yet even begun to catalog the damage dealt to their operation on the Guatemalan border. He snarled in reply as one of the guards greeted him respectfully and managed to get the door open before Del Valle rammed it, for the tall, hatchet-faced man didn’t break his stride as he made his way into the anteroom of General Orieza’s private lair.
Orieza’s secretary glanced up, her face as pretty but as stupid as ever. She pursed her lips and greeted him quietly. Her eyes were full of fear, and that pleased him, for she was only too aware of what he could do to her if he chose. Orieza wouldn’t object, at least not too loudly, if Del Valle decided to use the woman and throw her away. Another just like her, even prettier, would be sitting in her chair come the next dawn.
It wasn’t that Del Valle didn’t have his own needs, where women were concerned. He had them on occasion, and when he did, the union was brief and brutal. He had little use for a woman clinging to his arm and making demands of his time; what man would put up with such impositions, truly? And he had no respect for the empty-headed trollops who invariably did serve his purposes. How any man chose to saddle himself with a woman’s constant whining and complaining, he didn’t know. Orieza himself had been married, not so very long ago, and the woman had grated on Del Valle’s nerves. She was forever bitching to Orieza about whatever whims came to her head, demanding his time and diminishing his focus. It had been a relief when Orieza had finally confided to his chief adviser that the general found his wife somewhat of a nuisance. Del Valle had jumped at the chance to arrange an “accident” for the miserable harpy. And Orieza, while he suspected that Mrs. Orieza’s car didn’t perhaps roll over of its own accord that fateful morning, hadn’t asked many questions. The old man was content to spend his time with the slatterns Del Valle’s lieutenants dug up for him. He tired of them quickly, and more than once Del Valle had made use of these castoffs before leaving their broken bodies on the floor for his men to clean up…. But such were the privileges of power.
He paused to survey himself in the full-length mirror that dominated one wall of the opulently appointed anteroom, while the woman fidgeted nervously. He ignored her. His angular, lined face looked back at him as he tried to smooth the creases in his uniform. He wore the same fatigues as did his shock troops, with no insignia of rank whatever. This was an affectation, but a deliberate one. No strutting peacock to dress himself in worthless ribbons and medals, or gold braids and colorful cloth, Del Valle preferred instead to let what he could do speak for itself. His shock troops were loyal to him, and him first, for he had proved time and again that he would deal violently with any challenge to his authority. When the time came, even General Orieza would learn that the blue epaulets on the shoulders of those armed guards surrounding him bespoke devotion to Roderigo del Valle, and not to their “general,” but by then… Well, by then, it would be too late for poor Ramon.
Del Valle frowned at the widow’s peak of stubble prominent on his forehead;
