The man kneeling down by the pit was suddenly left alone by the militiamen. Then another guy came over, placed a pistol to the back of the kneeling man’s head, and fired one shot. The man pitched forward into the hole, helped along by a kick from the gunman, and then another man was dragged over. By now I saw both victims wore uniforms, and that they were from among the prisoners who had been brought in the day before. I stepped back and stood up, not minding the stench at all now. Gary was looking at me, his face gray, his legs trembling. From outside we both heard the sharp report of another gunshot.
‘Welcome to America,’ Gary said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Breakfast was a quick opening of the door and a bag tossed into the bus. Gary and I went forward and I grabbed the bag, took out our meal for the morning: two plastic bottles of water and two plain doughnuts. We ate in silence, sitting across from each other on mattresses. When we were finished Gary said, ‘You married?’
‘Nope.’
‘Neither am I,’ he said wistfully. ‘Was going out with a local woman, very nice. Worked in the admin office of the school district. Carol Ramirez. Oh, I miss her.’
‘What happened?’
He shrugged, though it seemed as though his shoulders were weighed down with cement. ‘She’s dead.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry. The militia?’
‘No,’ Gary said. ‘Carol was in a convoy, being evacuated up north. She spoke Spanish and had volunteered to be an interpreter for this large group that had made its way up here from Spanish Harlem, if you can believe it. I wanted her to stay but no, she wanted to help out. The Canadian Red Cross had chartered some buses, and they were heading up north to Ontario. She… well, the convoy got mixed up with a militia unit. It was night. The militia unit was leaving them alone. They were all just heading north along the highway. It was night… Oh, I said that, right? Sorry. Um, there they were and they were spotted by the intervention force. So they were bombed. A couple of aircraft—British, maybe, or even Dutch or Canadian, who knows?—did their job very well. The lead vehicle and the last one in the column were destroyed, blocking the passage of other vehicles, and then they just bombed and strafed everything else. You see, some of the militia units, they stole buses to move their forces at night, and with a couple of armored vehicles in the convoy… mistakes were made, right? In war or intervention to save lives or peacekeeping, mistakes always get made…’
I could not look at Gary, I could not look at that weary face. I just murmured ‘sorry’ again, and cleaned up the remains of our little breakfast. Then I went to the rear of the bus to use the chemical toilet. The stench was back, even worse than before, and I wished that I could open a window or do something, anything, to get some fresh air into this little prison. I risked another look out the rear window, saw that the group of men had dispersed, though one man was still at the pit, shoveling in dirt and white powder from large paper sacks. Quicklime, to aid in the decomposition of the dead. But why bury the bodies here, so close to their base camp? Why?
Because it made sense, that was why. To keep on hiding the evidence, the evidence that something horrible was happening here.
As I came back into the main body of the bus, I saw that the front door had opened and two militiamen were standing there, pistols in their hands, looking at me and at Gary. We both stood there, silent, both of us wondering, I’m sure, who was being summoned. But at least we didn’t have long to wait.
The lead militiaman looked straight at me. He needed a shave. He motioned with the pistol. ‘UN man, your turn.’
Same trailer, same room, same interrogator and two militiamen behind me. The bearded man who called himself Colonel Saunders. He was sipping from a mug of coffee, and he looked up at me as I sat down.
‘Coffee?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Freshly made.’
‘That’s fine. I don’t want any.’
Saunders said, ‘You could be a bit more gracious, Samuel.’
‘Tell you what: you set me free, you let me get back to a UN unit, and I’ll send you a thank-you note.’
The colonel grinned, not a very pleasing sight. ‘That might be a problem. There seem to be fewer and fewer of you UN folks in-country with every passing day.’
I was going to say something sharp back to him, about what I had seen earlier that morning—the killing of the prisoners—but I stopped myself just in time. I wasn’t supposed to have been looking out of the school bus. I wasn’t supposed to have seen anything going on. Not a thing. But still…
‘I heard some gunshots this morning, toward the rear of the school bus,’ I asked. ‘Target practice?’
One of the two guards behind me chuckled and I felt nauseous, that the thought of killing bound men on their knees would cause such humor. Saunders raised his coffee mug. ‘Target practice. Yeah, I guess you could say that.’
He put the mug down, picked up a pen and a legal pad. ‘This is going to be your second interrogation, Samuel. And your last. Do you understand? I want to hear some better answers from you today, or it’s not going to end well for you. Do I make myself clear?’
I clasped my hands, not wanting Saunders to see them shake. ‘Yes, you make yourself clear.’
‘Good. Let’s begin.’
And he did, right from the beginning. Name, age, address, occupation. How long had I been in the United States? What were my political views?
I hesitated on that one. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.’
‘I said, what’s your politics? How did you vote? Liberal or Conservative?’
‘Moderate, I guess.’
Saunders glared. ‘Not a good answer.’
‘Well, that’s what we have up in Canada. Mostly moderate parties.’
‘And which one have you supported?’
I looked at him and lied. ‘The Conservative Party, of course.’
There was a pause, and then he wrote something down on the pad. I tried to keep my expression as neutral as possible. The party I usually vote for is the Liberal Party, but I didn’t want to use that loaded adjective—liberal—with these armed men. And since they were typical Americans, I’m sure they didn’t know one Canadian political party from another. Hell, for all I knew, they probably thought Bloc Quebecois was run from Paris.
‘Let’s talk about your training,’ Saunders said.
‘All right.’
‘What kind of weapons training did you receive?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.’
He glared at me again. ‘Weapons training. Did you receive qualifications for handling pistols, semi-auto rifles, explosives?’
I laughed. ‘Of course not!’
He raised an eyebrow, and I gasped as someone slapped the back of my head. Saunders said, ‘The question wasn’t a joke, Samuel. So here we go again. What kind of weapons training did you receive?’
The back of my head was still stinging, but I kept my hands still, not wanting to give my captors back there any satisfaction. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘No joking. I received no weapons training.’
‘None?’
‘None,’ I said.
‘You’re telling me you don’t know how to use a firearm, of any kind?’ Saunders asked.
‘No, I didn’t say that,’ I said.
‘Hmm,’ he said, a hint of triumph in his tone. ‘Tell me what you’re qualified with, then.’
I felt the impulse to laugh again, but this time I kept it under control. ‘I’ve fired a .22 caliber bolt-action rifle a few times, back when I was a youngster. I’m not sure of the make or model. I also fired a bolt-action .308 once or twice, when I was twelve. My father wanted me to learn how to hunt deer with him. The lesson didn’t take. I’ve also fired a pistol a few times, as part of a story I was working on in Toronto.’