His driver spoke into the radio, communicating with the other drivers in the convoy of three Chevrolet Silverados. The electronics technician in the last truck reported a steady signal from the location device on the enemy's vehicle. Though the spotter plane had returned for refueling, the pilot's last report confirmed the position of the enemy.
Seated around him, his soldiers appeared to be businessmen touring California. They did not fear any encounter with the local authorities.
He and his soldiers carried the correct immigration stamps in their passports. They carried receipts proving they had rented the truck. Garbed in white suits and ties purchased from expensive shops in Miami and Beverly Hills, they only appeared to be tourists. Up until the moment they took their weapons from the packing cases stacked in the back of the Silverado, he and his soldiers would maintain their act as a group of prosperous Hispanics lavishing dollars on a visit to California.
Though his friends in the United States government had provided both material and moral support, Captain Madrano had no confidence in the North American people. Democrats, liberals, technocrats, Christians, Jews, whatever the word: all were Communist sympathizers.
Did not most North Americans belong to unions? Did they not applaud the Marxist movie actors in Hollywood? Did they not abandon General Somoza to the Sandinistas? Did not their corporations solicit business with the Russians and Red Chinese? Did they not contribute to the International Red Cross?
Though a responsible administration now ruled in Washington, the Communists controlled the news media. Inundated with lies, the North American people already in sympathy with the international communist conspiracy opposed their leaders' efforts to battle the agents of the conspiracy.
If a North American policeman became too inquisitive, Captain Madrano's soldiers had orders to neutralize the threat immediately.
If a North American witnessed their attack on the Communists, his soldiers would eliminate the witness.
Although he did not have the express approval of the American president or the State Department officials who had processed his entry into the United States, Captain Madrano knew they would not disapprove. Had the administration prosecuted the killers of North Americans in El Salvador?
After three years, the "investigation" into the murder of three nuns and a church worker continued. After two and one-half years, the "investigation" into the murders of two American lawyers continued. After a year, the "investigation" into the murder of an American tourist continued.
With the cooperation of the United States government, attorneys and private investigators and family members visited El Salvador to demand justice. With the cooperation of the United States government, the Salvadoran "investigations" into the rapes and tortures and murders continued. The "investigations" would continue forever
Without convictions.
In fact, when Captain Madrano visited the Miami home of Colonel Quesada, the commander of Los Guerreros Blancos, the colonel introduced him to two officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Two years before, Colonel Quesada had walked into the dining room of a San Salvador hotel and pointed out two North American labor lawyers actually Communist agitators sitting at a table with a Salvadoran Communist traitor. The colonel's soldiers then executed all the Communists.
After unrelenting agitation on the part of the Communist media and the Communist sympathizers in the American Congress, Captain Madrano had had to issue warrants for the arrest of Colonel Quesada and his officers. The colonel then took sanctuary in Miami, under the protection of friends in the Administration.
As an officer in the Salvadoran Army and ORDEN, Captain Madrano had fought the enemy in all its forms. He had become aware of the insidious nature of subversion at the party celebrating his sixteenth birthday. He and several friends from his military academy had taken one of his family's maids into a back room and had amused themselves for an hour. The teenage maid died during the rape. Concealed by darkness, he and his friends had dragged the body to a car and dumped it outside the city.
The next day, the maid's father attempted to break through the gates of the family estate. Madrano knew he had been betrayed. Despite the privilege of working for one of the best Spanish families in San Salvador, despite the family's generosity, one of the servants had betrayed the boys to the old Indian.
He had often heard his father rave about the impertinence of the Indians and ladinos campesinoswho labored on the family's coffee plantations. On his birthday, because a worthless girl died during a game, the family's trusted domestic servants had betrayed him. Fortunately his father always posted soldiers at the gate or the Indian might have injured the young Madrano. The senior Madrano laughed at the incident. "Finally you are a man!"
Wealth guaranteed Alejandro Madrano a commission in the army of El Salvador. After graduating from a private academy, he entered the officers' school for training in command and protocol. However, he received his actual training in the mountain provinces, serving with army battalions fighting Communist bandits.
Why bother searching the mountains for the bandits when the campesinoswho fed the Communists camped near the roads? His superior officers showed the young lieutenant how to simultaneously deny the bandits information and support: kill the campesinos. Kill anyone who saw the bandits and did not report what they saw to the authorities. Kill anyone who might have seen the bandits and not reported. Kill anyone in the area where the bandits operated.
As his commanders told him: Communism spreads like a disease; kill the carriers, and the disease dies.
Later, Lieutenant Madrano volunteered to fight with ORDEN. Thus he learned how to fight Communism in the fetid breeding grounds of the slums.
When the Communists and their sympathizers the union agitators, the schoolteachers, the health workers met to discuss their radical plans for taking power and wealth from the government, informers noted every name and memorized the faces.
In the night, with a few trustworthy men, Lieutenant Madrano cruised the avenues in one of the high-powered Dodges donated by the United States. They took the Communists from their homes and made examples of them.
Somehow, the death squads never succeeded in eradicating the contagion, even as vultures feasted at garbage dumps stinking with rotting human flesh, and roadside ditches buzzed with iridescent green carrion flies, and unrecognizable masses of bloated gray flesh floated in the shallows of Lago de Ilopango.
The voices of the scum continued in their demands for democracy, opportunity and justice. So the escuadrones de muerteorganized into larger units. As army companies sealed off the barrios, the lieutenant and his compatriots used troop trucks to seize entire families.
In the barracks, the squad members' sexual amusements with the youths often proved to be the most effective interrogation technique. The screams of a youngster receiving first the lust of his soldiers, then the penetration of their knives would win names of co-conspirators from the parents when pliers and welding torches failed. Then the families joined the anonymous dead in the pits.
For his distinguished record in breaking a conspiracy among a union of truck drivers, teachers and nurses to create a meeting hall disguised as a children's health-care center, Lieutenant Madrano received his promotion to captain. His new duties included the administration of the land-reform program of the junta.
In the jeans and T-shirt of a student radical, he visited the new cooperatives dictated into existence by the much-publicized land-reform acts. With smiles and smooth words, he persuaded the farmers to elect leaders. He posed with the leaders while North American and European journalists photographed the scenes for their newspapers, magazines and television programs.