Once the journalists left, ORDEN executed the peasant leaders.
However, as the Communists stepped up the guerrilla war in the provinces, Captain Madrano refused any more assignments outside of San Salvador. He had no interest in the dirt and danger of combat. Let the draftees and North American soldiers fight in the remote fields and mountains. The captain continued his night war against subversion, drinking and dancing in the discos of the capital, then cruising the slums to find teenage Communist girls to interrogate.
Now he had the honor of carrying the war to the North American Communists. His duty in the United States offered him new opportunities. Today, as ordered, he would kill the journalist and his bodyguards. When would he receive orders to interrogate student radicals?
He thought of the blond coeds of USC and UCLA. As he shopped for gifts to send his mother in Spain, he had eyed the beautiful young girls strolling the campus in their shorts and tight jeans and miniskirts. Obviously whores. The posters announcing rallies against the United States intervention in El Salvador excited him. He hoped his commanders in alliance with the American FBI would assign him to the eradication of Communist subversives from the universities. He knew the pleasures of torturing and degrading Salvadoran girls. What pleasures would the American blondes give him?
Already he had launched a campaign that was highly unusual by any standards of international assassination. He had devised and executed a series of hits against targets the American public despised. Thus his mystery kill squads had earned a measure of tacit popular support, the better to let them continue their real work against refugees in the barrios and intellectuals in the universities.
With the help of smuggled-in troops from El Ejercito de los Guerreros Blancosand Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista, and some of the more determined hit men from El Falangeand La Guardia and with funds supplied by the American rich, transferred from the Treasury to Swiss bank accounts Madrano had engineered the executions of rapists, murderers, other criminal targets who wandered into the fire zone from the revolving door of America's "bleeding heart" justice system.
Throughout the United States the executions had continued unchecked. In recent days the assassinations had included two TV news personalities who had spoken out against the earlier killings, plus a black nationalist and two other black agitators who were known to be independently investigating the presence, according to witnesses, of "Panthers" and "Muslims" in the mystery death squads.
Reaction in the United States had ranged from horror at the wave of killings, to relief that the killings did in fact dispose of more career criminals than obvious innocents; this because the high-profile murders leached all the public's attention away from the vastly more extensive killings of unknown and uncared-about targets in the slums.
Madrano relished the uniqueness of the enterprise, ran over the details again in his mind.
His death squads had appeared to be intent on blowing away known psychos and troublemakers. They had carved a deliberate and bloody path through the hopeless bureaucratic garbage that clogged the U.S. courts. The American people appreciated such a task, though they might not want to admit it. And so a crisis of sorts was brewing in this so-called democracy, this festering Communist "free world"; law and order had been hijacked to work against the state. America was about to be turned against itself cop against cop leader against leader The laws and the law courts were being turned on their collective asses, just so that the killings could continue. Ha!
A change in speed jarred him from his fantasies. His driver left the freeway. The three-truck convoy passed fields and orchards. After a few miles, the flat landscape became hills covered with winding rows of fruit trees. Pines grew on the higher slopes. Finally his driver turned to him.
"Captain. The Communists are ahead. The plane reports their vehicle parked on a side road in the hills. We approach the road. What are your orders?"
"Load weapons. The pilot gave you precise directions?"
"Yes. He circled the area to confirm every detail. He saw them attempting to repair..."
"Then we speed to the Communists. We take them by surprise."
"Yes, Captain!" The driver relayed the instructions to the other two trucks.
Minutes later, the driver pointed to a dirt lane intersecting the highway. The road cut through orchards, then twisted into the foothills. Captain Madrano, an Uzi submachine gun in his hands, told the driver: "The other trucks go first. Tell them to speed."
Following the driver's directions, two Silverados accelerated through the orchards, dust clouding behind them. Captain Madrano's driver followed a moment later. Hurtling through the swirling dust at fifty miles per hour, the trucks wove along the road.
Steep hills rose on both sides. Cattle trails cut the dry weeds. Here and there, green brush dotted the hillsides. A voice squawked from the walkie-talkie.
"Captain. We see the truck."
"Park and then surround it! Soon we execute the Communists!"
Captain Madrano saw the two leading trucks swerve, one to the right, the other to the left. They both came to a halt, and then his men rushed from the trucks.
Their enemy had parked in a fold of the hillsides. Earth movers had leveled an area. To one side, ramps constructed of heavy timbers provided for the loading of produce trucks. Around the scraped area, trucks had flattened the weeds. Tire-rutted mud had hardened under the sun. Beyond, the hillsides rose at a forty-five-degree angle. Captain Madrano knew he had the journalist and his Communist guards trapped. There could be no escape.
As his driver stopped the Silverado, Captain Madrano waited for the first shots. His men climbed from the truck and joined the other Salvadorans circling the motor home. The captain stayed to the rear, his Uzi in one hand, the walkie-talkie in the other.
His men closed the circle. A soldier called out, "Putos comunistas. Venimos con muerte!"
Then came the first shot. The soldier who promised death dropped dead.
A storm of death engulfed them all.
20
From the safety of concealment on the hillside overlooking the motor home, Floyd Jefferson watched as the three "specialists from Washington" prepared for the death squad. Though he did not know their real names, he already thought of the three men as friends. No, more than friends brothers.
He knew their assignment: Protect the young American reporter who may be the only surviving witness to an international Fascist conspiracy of murder and mutilation.
Protect Floyd Jefferson!
After they had left the highway, they found this isolated canyon. While the plane circled overhead, they went through the pretense of repairing the motor home. Finally, after the plane disappeared to the north, they took their positions. The "specialists" refused to allow Jefferson to participate. To force him to remain safe, they had tried to take away his sawed-off shotgun. He refused and argued until they allowed him to keep it. From the hillside, he watched their hurried preparations.
The man he had heard the others call "Pol," who had identified himself to Jefferson over the phone as Rosario, moved through the low weeds. He paused from time to time in the thickest tangles of brush, then moved on to the loading ramp of heavy timbers.
The "Wizard" assembled a device and placed it on the hillside. Jefferson had never been in the army. He had no idea what the "Wizard" had devised.
"Ironman," the rude blond bastard, buckled on the heavy black body armor that Jefferson had worn during the freeway pursuit. Weapons and ammunition overlay the armor. With his "machine-gun" shotgun and two pistols, the man looked terrifying. A pair of sunglasses and a crazy grin made him look like Mr. Death himself.