SIXTY-SEVEN: (Eddie) “Camp Buena Vista”
Eddie picked the camp at Buena Vista because the Americans had to come through here. There was only one other option for them, and that was an interstate littered with roadblocks and monitored heavily by drones. Only the military would be able to make it along that pass. They’d be coming here. He was sure of it.
The town did have a beautiful view… if you liked mountains, snow, rivers, and tons of small animals. Eddie missed Africa. He didn’t care for this continent. He hated the snow, hated the cold, and hated all the annoying deer, birds and rodents. How so many of them had survived was beyond him. He couldn’t eat a sandwich without being attacked by a jay or set any food down beyond the reach of a dozen chipmunks. Those sneaky little bastards were everywhere, and had ferocious appetites.
It had been almost six months since his demotion—six months since his reassignment to this hole. He wasn’t a fan. His base commander here was a stupid drunk fool, on his best days, but it was hard for Eddie to hate him. He was almost a nice guy—though definitely not worthy of his post. The military had to have been desperate, or this base commander was related to someone important. Eddie and Lazzo had feared a backlash when they arrived, that certain information would be shared with the commander, but that had never seemed to be the case. If he knew about what Eddie was accused of, he never let on. In fact, he didn’t pay any attention to them. In order to get the commander’s attention, Eddie would have had to be a bottle of whiskey.
Given Eddie’s size and intimidating glare, most people left him alone. But Sergeant Agos at the base was a real pain in his side. The loud but diminutive man was constantly bossing him around to do the smallest, simplest tasks. He seemed to enjoy his power a little too much, and the absence of leadership from the base commander gave the sergeant a void he intended to fill. Sergeant Agos was only five foot one, from Mexico, and clearly not a fan of those with darker skin than his. Eddie and Lazzo were two of three Africans at the hundred-man base. The sergeant, other than bossing Eddie around, had never crossed the racial line with him. But Lazzo had been directly subjected to many racist comments and noises from the sergeant. Lazzo, a generally peaceful man, was ready for blood. But in this army, as in any, you had to fall in line for your superiors, regardless of their lack of class or character. So Eddie and Lazzo sucked it up and dealt with it.
The months went by, and the treatment only worsened. It was almost as if the sergeant was realizing they couldn’t respond to his taunts. He started to push the line further and further, and he often pushed it so far he began to alienate some of the other Mexican soldiers. There was a growing sentiment within the camp something needed to be done. The pompous bigot needed to be put in his place, and Eddie could feel the troops looking to him. The problem was, they didn’t know he was on thin ice. They had no idea why he put up with Agos’s behavior, and he couldn’t afford to explain the dicey position he was in.
One afternoon in late April, Eddie had been sent to get water from the river next to the Liars’ Lodge where their camp was set up. Before he even reached the river, it occurred to him every time he’d been sent to do something, the sergeant had come to yell at him when he hadn’t done it quickly. Here, down by the river, there was no one around. So Eddie took his time. Sergeant Agos was so obsessed with demeaning the troops, especially the Africans, he wouldn’t let anyone yell at the Africans but him. Sure enough, about twenty minutes later Eddie heard the sergeant yelling at him as he came cruising down the hill.
Eddie didn’t respond. He didn’t turn around. The sergeant came up behind him and hit him with his nightstick. In a flash, Eddie spun on him and lifted him off the ground. He only intended to scare the man, but as he spun full circle to hold him over the river Eddie lost his grip. The sergeant fell from Eddie’s grasp and, upended, smashed his head against a rock. Eddie looked around, but he saw no one else nearby. He looked down at the sergeant halfway in the water and elected to push him all the way in. The river engulfed him and dragged a dead Sergeant Agos downstream.
As Eddie reentered the camp, it didn’t matter that no one had been there to see what had happened. When the sergeant didn’t come back with Eddie, the entire camp knew the man was dead. The base commander was already passed out drunk for the night. He wouldn’t know Agos was gone until the next day, and even then he probably wouldn’t care.
But this wasn’t what Eddie had planned. He didn’t want this target on his back. He was trying to lay low and wait. This wasn’t going to help. Eddie didn’t bother to explain to anyone other than Lazzo that it had been an accident. No one else would care. He had to hope the sergeant didn’t have any friends.
It turned out he did. Turned out the base commander hadn’t attained his post by knowing someone—he was just that incompetent. The one with connections was the dead sergeant, who was a cousin of the Mexican commander in Denver. Of course. And although the Mexican commander hated the man, it didn’t make him anything less than family. When it was reported to him a week later that the sergeant was missing from the Buena Vista camp, the Mexican commander became invested in the situation himself. His personal chief of security, Roman Roja, was a general in the Mexican army, and the commander assigned him to Buena Vista. The drunken base commander was sent packing to another remote location.
General Roja arrived with four of his own men, all officers, and two German shepherds. A new chain of command was rapidly established at the camp. The general was also a big man, although a couple inches shorter than Eddie. Word spread quickly through the camp that the general had been in charge of interrogation for Mexico’s Military Intelligence Division for a decade. He was one bad hombre. His four men were the Mexican equivalent of the Texas Rangers. If they felt they had any reason to shoot you, they would, and no questions would be asked. They lived by their own rules. In a way, Sergeant Agos had been multiplied by four. This was much, much worse.
The day after the five of them arrived, Eddie was called into General Roja’s office. Eddie stood at attention as the general looked him over. “I don’t like you,” were his first words to Eddie. “I know what you did.”
Eddie said nothing, unsure of which of his many supposed offenses the man was addressing. The general continued. “Because of you and your sloppiness, American president is dead.” Ah, that one. “You leave a mess and others have to clean it for you. You don’t deserve to live.”
He seemed to be waiting for an apology of some sort, but when Eddie didn’t give it to him he continued. “The men say you were with Agos when he was last seen.” That didn’t take long. He was standing directly in front of Eddie now, looking him in the eyes.
“I saw him. Yes,” Eddie finally replied.