Hostage Zero

“Who the fuck are you to lecture me?” Boxers growled. “You’ve got no idea what I got in my heart. You’ve got no idea what I want to do and what I don’t. What I’m telling you is that professionals don’t think with their hearts. They think with their heads. I don’t know where jarheads come from, but where I come from, it’s a professional’s job to push all that shit aside and concentrate on the fucking mission. If I’m gonna die in some fuckin’ stink hole like this place, it’s gonna be because I was trying to do my job.”

“And these people?” Harvey made a wide sweeping gesture with both arms. “What about them?”

“They are not my job. Not this time, anyway.”

Harvey gave up that fight and turned to Jonathan. “Boss, don’t back down. You were right the first time. We’ve gotta do what we came to do up there at the top of the hill. That’s a sure thing. But after we do, what about all these villagers? They’re going to pay the price for our success.”

“You make like they’re innocent,” Boxers said, reengaging. “That’s bullshit. Where I sit, these villagers might not be the monsters that the others are, but their fingerprints are on this business, too. They know what’s going on up there, and they let it happen every single day.”

“They’re powerless to stop it!” Harvey yelled.

Jonathan held up a hand for his turn. “Not entirely,” he said. “Big Guy has a point. In World War Two, Eisenhower held townspeople accountable for the concentration camps. They accepted soldiers’ business in their shops, and they kept roads clear for the shipment of people to the death camps. Wasn’t it Edmund Burke who said, ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing’?”

“Exactly,” Boxers said. “Thanks for seeing my side.”

Jonathan gave him a hard look. “We’re good men, Big Guy,” he said with a wink. “We’ve gotta do something.”

CHAPTER THIRTY — S IX

After taking Evan’s picture, El Jefe assigned a new guard to escort the boy farther into the jungle, past the cluster of huts that he presumed to be the headquarters for whatever was going on.

Evan had never been so exhausted-never in his entire life. Every muscle ached, and every square inch of skin screamed from the onslaught of God only knew how many different varieties of bugs. He’d known from the History Channel and Discovery that prehistoric times still reigned in the jungles, with man-eating plants and insects, but Jesus. How did the people who lived here get anything done when three-quarters of every calorie was burned up by either slapping something or scratching the bite that an unslapped something left behind?

Only a few minutes into the hike, they emerged over the crest of a hill onto a rolling vista that might once have been beautiful. There were fewer trees here, affording a view of thick ground foliage that swept downhill from where he stood to a little valley, and then uphill again on the other side. Evan wasn’t good at judging distances, but he guessed that it had to be a half mile or more between where he stood and the opposite peak.

The field of bushes had an undulating feel to it, as if it were alive. For an instant, Evan thought it might be the wind, but the rhythm wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. When he realized the truth of it, his heart skipped a beat. The place was alive with children scattered among the bushes, working their asses off stripping leaves from the branches and stuffing them into sacks that were slung over their shoulders.

He saw only boys among the workers and only men-some of them teenagers-among the guards who watched over them. The children all wore tattered remnants of what had once been poor people’s rags, though some wore nothing at all. Evan pegged the workers’ ages at somewhere between eight and maybe fourteen years old.

Evan’s arrival startled a soldier who looked like he might have been sleeping. He jumped when one of Evan’s escorts called his name, and he fumbled with his rifle-an AK-47, Evan thought-but then stopped when he recognized them. The guard who called his name had been part of Evan’s parade ever since he’d first met up with Oscar in the field. He spoke with rapid words and an angry tone to the man who’d been sleeping, and the guilty guard looked more terrified with every word that was being fired at him.

Evan’s guard finished his diatribe by shoving the younger man in the chest hard enough to make him stumble over his own feet and fall backward into the undergrowth.

Evan didn’t understand a word of it, but he was pretty sure he got the gist. “ Estupido ” probably meant in Spanish more or less what it sounded like in English.

It wasn’t lost on him that his captors treated everyone else much more harshly than they treated him. It’s not that they were nice-far from it. It was more as if he weren’t even there-better still, as if he were a dog or a piece of furniture. Whichever, he was obviously a valuable dog or piece of furniture.