All around them the forest lay in virtual silence – there was no breeze to stir the branches, and most of the wildlife was holding its breath while the humans went by. Only the bats seemed indifferent to the guerrillas’ passage, and every now and then Emelia could hear the dry rustle of wings or see a dark shape glide across a small patch of moonlit sky. She loved times like this, when the natural world seemed to reach out and embrace her with its wonders.
Fifty metres further down the trail, Tomás was thinking about what awaited them in the small town of Tubiala, some six kilometres and ninety minutes away. He had every confidence in the Old Man’s abilities as a tactician and a strategist, but his own experience over the past five years had prepared him to expect the unexpected, which could be anything from a sprained ankle to the loss of half a unit.
The threat of sudden death was hardly inviting, but what Tomás dreaded far more was that his sister should be taken alive, and should suffer before death in the terrible way that their mother had suffered. Sometimes this fear would wake him with a dreadful start in the forest, and he would only just stop himself crying out. At such moments he would want to take Emelia back across the mountains and into Mexico, away from this land which had already brought their family such pain. But the sunrise always brought hope to set against the fear, and in any case he knew she would never agree to leave. This land was their home, to live or die for.
The unit marched on, down the long, forested slope to where the trail joined one of the many icy streams that tumbled down from the Cuchumatanes mountains. Stretches of their path were now open to the sky, but the moon had already set behind the peaks across the valley, and the darkness was deepening by the minute. For the next few hours they would be as invisible as any group of fighters could hope to be.
It was shortly after eleven when Tomás rounded a bend in the trail and saw Tubiala spread out in the valley below. There were only a handful of dim lights still burning in the small town, but the yellow glow from the illuminated military camp on the nearby rise seemed to suffuse the whole valley. He allowed the column to close up, so that each man and woman would have the chance to bring together the maps in their minds with the reality below.
After a final exchange of encouraging smiles and embraces the column moved off downhill again. The first small group to split off from the main body comprised Geraldo and Alicia, who had been entrusted with the unit’s only heavy weapon, an old but still efficient Israeli mortar which had been captured from the Army a couple of years earlier. Their task was to target the military camp, but to open fire only in the event of a general alarm being raised.
The next to leave were Carlos and Fernando, whose job was to cover the road winding west down the valley towards Champul. They were followed by Elena and Rosa, who had drawn guard duty on the road east, which joined Tubiala to the garrison town of San Juan Cotzal. That left seven compas for the Hotel Tezulutlán, two to cover each entrance and three to go in for Muñoz. Tomás had chosen José and Jorge to accompany him on the latter mission.
The seven waited just above the town for ten minutes, giving the road-watchers time to reach their positions, and then slipped between the first houses and on to the steep dirt track which led down towards the church. A dog barked away to their right, and another replied to the left, but there was no sign of life in the houses, and no movement on the streets.
They edged along the side of the small, whitewashed church, and Tomás gingerly edged an eye round its corner to check out the small square which lay at the heart of the town. It was empty, but beyond it, a few metres down the San Juan Cotzal road, he could see two figures sitting on either side of a kerosene lamp outside the front door of the hotel. They seemed to be playing a game of some sort.
So far, so good, Tomás told himself. If there were soldiers outside the hotel, then Muñoz was most probably inside. Tomás wondered whether it was arrogance or simple stupidity which had brought the major to the conclusion that he could leave the safety of the military camp with impunity. According to their informant, the man received almost daily deliveries of luxury items from his family in the capital, and had turned the upper floor of the town’s only hotel into a sort of court-in-exile. He hardly ever set foot in the military camp, preferring to summon his subordinates to the hotel for their instructions. And only the sadistic thrill of a punitive action was capable of luring him out into either the town or the countryside which surrounded it.
Hopefully, Tomás thought, Muñoz will shortly be receiving an overdue lesson in humility. A last lesson.
He turned back to the others, gave them the hand signal for ‘things as expected’, and led them silently around the perimeter of the dark square. On the far side he chose Emelia and Cristobal, the unit’s two best marksmen, for the task of watching the two sentries, and then led the other four through a space full of empty market stalls and down a narrow alley to the back of the Tezulutlán. There he paused, straining his ears for any unexpected sounds.
There was only silence. Tomás led the way in through the back door, and Jorge followed, with José bringing up the rear. The three men crept through the darkened kitchen, past two young boys asleep on the mats beneath the stove, and into the corridor which housed the reception desk. Light from the sentries’ kerosene lamp glowed in the window beside the hotel’s front door, revealing two more under-age employees curled up on the floor. As Tomás turned up the stairs he heard the two guards outside suddenly convulse with laughter at some private joke.
The carpet on the stairs was worn almost to extinction, but enough of it remained to muffle the sound of their footfalls. Tomás carefully lifted his eyes to the level of the upper floor, and found an empty corridor lit by a kerosene lamp. All he could hear was the sound of his own heart beating like a drum.
He signalled to the other two to wait, and stealthily advanced down the corridor to where the lamp was hanging from a piece of bent wire. He reached up, lifted the glass, and blew out the flame.
In the darkness he could see a faint light shining out from under one of the doors – the one which they had been told Muñoz used for a bedroom. And suddenly he could hear the sounds of sobbing coming from inside the room.
He tiptoed towards the door, gesturing to the others to follow. With his ear up against the wood he could hear a low male groaning intermingled with the sobbing. As Jorge unsheathed his machete, Tomás took his army revolver in one hand and started turning the doorknob with the other. He slowly eased the door open half an inch, and applied an eye to the room beyond.
The first thing he noticed was two wide and frightened eyes staring straight up at him. The girl was lying on the floor, half-wrapped in a blanket, but apparently naked. She made no sound, but quickly turned her head to the bed behind her, where another girl, barely into puberty, was rocking to and fro astride a naked man. She was sobbing steadily, the tears running down her half-developed breasts and on to his glistening chest, while he groaned with pleasure, eyes closed and hands tightly gripping her haunches.
As Tomás slowly pushed the door back the second girl also caught sight of him, and the motion of her body faltered, but only for a second. Two more thrusts of her small body kept Muñoz in blissful ignorance, until Tomás was over the bed and lifting her off, and then the major’s eyes opened, only to find three men standing over him and Jorge’s machete poised beside his erect penis.
The latter wilted, but before Muñoz could offer so much as a whimper José had stuffed a pair of convenient underpants into his mouth. Meanwhile Tomás was trying to talk to the two girls. The one who had been lying on the floor was trying to both dress and comfort the other girl, who was still sobbing with a quiet intensity which almost broke his heart. The elder girl explained that both of them came from a village down the valley which the Army had visited the previous week.
Tomás asked her if they wanted to go home or come into the mountains with the compas.
