The Lotus Eaters

'I've got a prisoner,' Cruz said into the radio. 'No, I can't just kill him . . . Look; he's a member of a recognized belligerent force . . . He's got a chain of command . . .' Cruz looked up the trail at the bodies, tsked and said, 'Well, I mean he had one . . . until quite recently, anyway . . . He's committed no war crimes of which I am aware . . . No, don't give me that bullshit . . . He was carrying his arms openly . . . and he . . . wait a minute.' Cruz released his thumb from the microphone key and asked Esteban, 'You did want to surrender, didn't you?'

The guerilla, rather, ex-guerilla, trouserless, on his knees with his hands bound, nodded his head so fast it was nearly a blur. If asked, he'd have said that his captor was twelve feet tall. In fact, Esteban would have towered over Cruz in another set of circumstances.

'Right,' Cruz said, after keying the mike. 'He's a legitimate POW under the laws of war. I can't just shoot him and I can't watch him; I've got places to go and people to kill. I want an evacuation helicopter with a jungle penetrator. NOW.'

* * *

'Blllauauaughghgh!'

Esteban had rarely even seen a helicopter before, let alone ridden in one . . . let alone ridden in one flying nap of the earth. Between looking out the side porthole and seeing trees above the helicopter, being lifted away from his seat when the thing dropped like a rock and pressed into it when it rose like a balloon, and generally having his stomach do the—

'Blllauauaughghgh!'

He had a new set of trouser, Balboan camouflage, given him by a sympathetic crew chief. That same crew chief who now held the back of Esteban's head and forced his face into the bag to catch the vomit laughed. Still, even amplified by his own misery, the sound didn't seem to the POW to be terribly malicious. Then again it was hard to hear between the sound of the engine, the steady thrump-thrump-thrump of the nearly invisible blades and the regular—

'Blllauauaughghgh!'

The crew chief shouted into Esteban's ear, 'No shame, son, no shame. A lot of people get affected like that.' Esteban wanted to say thanks but—

'Blllauauaughghgh!'

—instead he just nodded—weakly—that he'd heard. The paper of the bag ruffled his face while the aroma of his own vomit assaulted his nose.

'We'd fly a little higher and flatter but the intel types say you guys might have some shoulder fired missiles.' The crew chief shrugged. What can you do?

The guerilla thought about that. We just might, too. Rumor control said so and—

'Blllauauaughghgh!'

Oh, God, maybe that would be better.

Estado Major, Balboa City, Balboa, Terra Nova

As soon as the helicopter had set down on a square concrete pad surrounded by close-cropped grass, the crew chief had pulled a black bag over Esteban's head.

'Sorry,' the crew chief had said. 'Orders.'

Immediately thereafter the door had been whipped open and two sets of hands had roughly and expeditiously pulled the POW out of the chopper, forced him to bend over slightly, and hustled him to a waiting vehicle. That vehicle sped away. Miraculously, or so Esteban thought, his stomach had settled down the instant the helicopter had landed.

When the sedan stopped, mere minutes later, two more sets of hands—or perhaps they were the same; Esteban couldn't be sure—dragged him out and then backwards to somewhere he knew not. He was dumped, unceremoniously, into a hard chair. In all, the entire process from landing to seating had taken perhaps five minutes.

A voice said, 'Remove his mask.'

Esteban was still shaking like a leaf in a strong wind when the black bag was removed from his head. He hadn't a clue what awaited. Torture? Death?

Probably both and in that order.

Once his eyes readjusted to the light, the prisoner saw a small, slight, and weasel-faced little man standing before him with a very uncommitted expression on his face.

'I'm Legate Fernandez,' the man said, 'and I understand you surrendered to our men. I have a few questions for you.'

* * *

'I don't know, senor,' Esteban said, shaking his head. He was nervous, understandably so. 'Someone in the aduana, that's all my jefe ever said. I never went with him to deliver the goods.'

The one called 'Fernandez' sighed. 'That doesn't help much, Esteban. Work with me here. Did your jefe ever say anything about him or how he operates? A physical description maybe?'

The prisoner shrugged. 'He called him 'a gold-toothed motherfucker.' '

Fernandez shook his own head. 'Gold teeth, son, are not particularly rare around here.'

Esteban licked his lips nervously. Torture and death. Torture and death.