Juan de Santiago was the mode of man who insisted that his world rotate smoothly on a well-oiled axis, that his organization operate as a properly maintained machine. He knew how the tiniest overlooked detail could derail an operation. The smallest unobserved defect in a propeller could crack a bearing and seize up a perfectly good engine. A minor flaw in an otherwise perfect plan could doom the efforts of hundreds.
And Juan de Santiago was not a man who would tolerate imperfection.
Now, on this beautiful morning here in his beloved mountains, he could only watch helplessly as the awful result of some unknown minor flaw in an otherwise faultless plan played out below him.
“Bastard Americans!” he spat, his hot, angry words barely audible over the strident buzzing of the giant black insects that danced above the mountain field below him. “And that son of a dog, El Presidente Guitteriz!”
The smaller man standing beside him took a short, strategic step backward, out of his leader’s reach. He could feel the heat of the man’s fury, and he knew only too well how that rage could sometimes manifest itself.
Roaring flames raced through Juan de Santiago's best coca fields. The crop, mere weeks from harvest, was now little more than a fog of thick, black smoke, being shoved up the mountain slopes and into the jungle by a gentle tropical breeze. That breeze would usually bring him the fragrance of the wild orchids that grew among the trees below the field.
Not today. There was only the foul odor of the imperialists’ destruction.
The fragrance was only one reason de Santiago loved to occasionally make the long, treacherous hike over the mountains from his base camp. This was his boyhood home and it rejuvenated him to come here.
He would also trek to this high clearing just before the harvest. He could see for himself the bounty God had sent him to help him free his people. He could proudly watch some of those people as they worked below. Then, he would go down and join the peons, walk among them, honor them with his presence, embrace each of them, thank them for their sacrifice and loyalty.
He now watched instead as a half dozen Black Hawk helicopters reloaded the Colombian troops and their American advisors. Their morning's work was completed. There was no mistaking where the choppers came from. The U. S. flag unashamedly marked each of them, just as it did the four Apache ‘copters that still buzzed overhead, guarding the men below, scouting about in the surrounding jungle for any rebel troops that might still be lurking there.
Most of de Santiago’s men had fled at the first thumping of the approaching helicopters. Their loyalty to the Marxist cause and to their leader gave way to self-preservation as they took to the thick underbrush. Now, their leader could do no more than angrily kick dirt with his perfectly polished boots and spout a continuous litany of deep-throated oaths. His swarthy face grew even darker with rage as a tic contorted his right cheek and eye.
That was not merely a cash crop going up in smoke down there. The fields represented the financing he needed to continue the revolution, a war that he was convinced would eventually return this beautiful land to him, to his people.
The Americans and their “war on drugs” had taken on a ferocious new intensity in the last year. Suddenly, it seemed El Presidente had unlimited resources. And, with the help of the yanqui military and their fancy machines, he seemed to finally have the strength to break both of de Santiago’s backbones, his revolution and the coca fields that financed it.
He had received the reports from Cartagena, had heard the breathless reports from the mouths of those who had seen it for themselves. How the Americans filled every wharf with their heavily laden ships, unloading more troops, more weapons and more supplies every day. In only a few months, their advisors had transformed El Presidente's ragtag troops into an effective fighting force, putting the rebels on the run as they torched the coca fields. Even more disheartening was the word of the surveillance satellites overhead that were now trained on de Santiago’s precious jungle mountains, never blinking, never missing anything.
De Santiago would build a processing factory, even in the most remote jungle clearing, and the government troops would be there before the first shipment of silvery powder was prepared. Try to move a truckload of ammunition and the government troops and their American advisors would meet them at the rendezvous as if they had been sent an invitation. Or sow a field in some remote mountain valley and carefully nurture it, only to see the fine coca devoured by flames when it was so tantalizingly close to harvest.
His people in Bogota whispered of some new organization he had never heard of. Something called the Joint Drug Interdiction Agency, a seamless coalition of the imperialists who had finally come together to fight those who would use the coca to win the righteous war of the people. Beyond the name, there was little else known about this alliance. If it wasn't so very painfully obvious that the Americans and their allies were doing something radically different, de Santiago would have dismissed this JDIA as simply a myth. If one could not see it, feel it, smell it, it likely did not exist.
This morning, Juan de Santiago could see the choppers, feel the heat of the flames they had set loose, smell the stench of the smoldering revolution this new threat seemed hell-sent to destroy. This JDIA must be stopped! But how? They had no idea where its headquarters might be, its communications facilities, or its leadership. It was hard to kill a snake if its head could not be severed.
De Santiago had been certain this series of fields, high in the Colombian Andes and down a narrow mountain valley, was safely hidden. No roads approached here, only this steep path over the mountains that he and his bodyguard and a small cadre of his men had just hiked. Even the damned satellites should not have been able to find these fields. They were almost always shrouded in clouds.
De Santiago's experts had also told him that the ridge was too high for a helicopter to cross. The only way one could approach these high fields, they had maintained, was to wind their way up the narrow valley. That’s why the lookouts were deployed down that way. That’s why the thin but strong cables had been stretched across to snare them like a spider’s web should they venture up to the high fields. But the helicopters had unquestionably flown over the ridge three hours ago, dead certain of their target. They had come in fast, over the high ridge to the northeast, as surely as the sun had topped the mountains that morning.
De Santiago’s proudest venture had been caught completely off guard. That was certainly not the mark of a flawless operation.
The surprise and the overwhelming firepower had been too much for the rebel peons who had been working in the fields. Most of them took to the jungle. The few who stayed to fight quickly gave their lives to the cause. The firefight was short and intense. The Apaches scurried back and forth across the valley, their 20mm chain guns beating out a staccato tattoo aimed at anything that moved.
El Presidente's troops fast-roped out of the Black Hawks into the fields below, showing more professionalism than de Santiago had ever seen from them before. Once on the ground, the government soldiers fanned out smartly and efficiently to establish protected landing zones for the choppers that were still hovering overhead. By the time the first Black Hawk flared out to land, the fight was over. They set to torching the crop, shouting to each other and laughing like truant schoolboys up to some kind of mischief.
Juan de Santiago and Guzman, his trusted bodyguard, had been approaching the nearest mountainside that overlooked the field, a half-dozen troops close behind. As they followed the narrow trail to this serene, beautiful overlook, to observe the crop, to watch the peons work, to maybe smell the perfume of the orchids, they actually heard the attack as it began. They had known immediately what the hellish racket was. There was no mistaking the yakking of those guns, the rhythmic flutter of the ‘copter blades, the anguished screams of the brave peons. And in awful frustration, he and the others had run to the overlook and watched most of the three-hour operation from the cover of jungle.
De Santiago knew he was the most hunted man in all of Colombia. If those bastards down there on the valley floor only knew he was there, on the side of this mountain watching them the whole time, they would be in hot pursuit. They certainly would not be laughing, boasting to each other of their victory as they climbed back into their helicopters and prepared to leave behind all the damage they had done to the people’s struggle.
Spurred by their sniggering, de Santiago’s anger reached a new pitch. He stomped the ground again and Guzman could clearly hear him grinding his teeth. He clenched his jaw even tighter as he spoke, forcing the words out one at a time as if he was biting them off and spitting them out.
“I will show these damned dogs that I do not scamper away and hide in fright like a rabbit!”
He abruptly spun on a heel and, in one quick motion, snatched the Starburst missile launcher from Guzman's back before the bodyguard even realized what was happening. He locked the optical sight on a Black Hawk down below that was just lifting off and pulled the launch trigger. Flame shot out the back of the launch tube, scorching the dense vegetation on the slope directly behind him while the troops standing nearby scattered to get out of the way.
The British-made anti-aircraft missile burst out the front of the tube and flew arrow straight toward the hovering chopper. Despite his rage, de Santiago knew exactly what he was doing. He calmly kept the site locked onto the chopper as it rose and banked, ready to climb and head back over the ridge. As long as he kept the reticule locked on, the launcher would send tracking data down the thin copper filament that still connected him to the missile itself.
“Madre de dios!” Guzman shouted in surprise.
His leader's sudden crazy move had caught the seasoned warrior totally by surprise. Guzman…everyone knew him only by the one name…tended to always fight and defend using logic, and de Santiago’s totally emotional and completely illogical response to what he had been watching had been unexpected. Now, Guzman was forced to react instinctively, impulsively, as well.
He turned to see the scorched vegetation on the uphill slope smoldering, already sending up thin tendrils of smoke. He ripped off his campaign hat and began to beat out the flames before the Apache pilots with their infrared sights could spot the smoke and retaliate.
At mach 1.5, only two seconds elapsed from launch of the Starburst to impact. The hapless Black Hawk in the Starburst’s sights exploded with a deep whoomph, raining flaming wreckage down onto the still-smoking coca field.
“Justice!” de Santiago whooped. “Let los diablos imperialistas burn in their own hellfire!”
The two-second flight of the missile was more than enough, though, for the Apaches. They were already facing that way and quickly vectored in on the launch site. One of the choppers came roaring straight toward them now, the chin turret, with its death-spitting twin chain guns, snapping back and forth like a cobra searching for its prey.
Guzman didn’t hesitate. He grabbed de Santiago by the collar of his starched khaki shirt and leaped off the trail, over the bluff and down the steep mountainside.
"Got to move!" he bellowed as they dropped into open space.
Projectiles zipped past them and over their heads as the two men fell a good twenty feet straight down, then began rolling and tumbling. The thickness of the vegetation was the only thing that kept them from falling much farther and much harder. When they finally stopped rolling, they found themselves in a thick tangle of vines as chewed-up leaves and tree limbs peppered down on them.
From above where they landed, de Santiago could clearly hear the final screams of his slower reacting troops, even over the continuous buzz saw of the chain gun and the guttural rumble of the helicopter that was now directly overhead.
It was finished as quickly as it began. The patch of mountain where the rebel leader had been standing a moment before was now gnawed down to bare rock. What remained of four of his best men lay in bloody pieces amid the litter of the attack. Two others were cowering in the brush, checking their wounds. Down in the valley, the remains of the Black Hawk continued to burn fiercely while one of its brothers hovered above, checking for signs of life. Apparently seeing none, it swooped up and followed the rest of the helicopters that were already disappearing over the ridge.
De Santiago grunted curses under his breath as he shoved Guzman off the top of him. He fought through the ferns and vines and climbed out of the small ravine where they had landed. He quickly took stock of himself. Nothing broken. Cuts and contusions but nothing that would not stop bleeding on its own. A knot on his forehead from a tree trunk he had bounced off on the way down.
"You okay, El Jefe?" Guzman asked as he emerged from the wall of green. The bodyguard limped slightly but seemed all right otherwise. He looked at his leader, tilted his head, and ventured an unsolicited opinion. "That was a very foolish thing to do, you know."
De Santiago’s rage flared once again as he turned on his bodyguard.
"What would you have me to do? Would you have me run like a coward? Is that what you want? Look what those damned Americans have done.They will pay far more than one helicopter! I will make them pay!"
De Santiago stalked off, angrily slapping aside the vegetation, looking for the trail that led up from the field and over the mountain. Guzman shook his head. Sometimes it was difficult for him and the other rebel troops to keep pace with their leader. Years of fighting in these cloud jungles had toughened the man, given him the ability to endure pain and weariness without even appearing to be aware of it. He never noticed that even his best fighters and his rock-hard bodyguard often struggled to stay up with him.
Now Guzman tried to ignore his twisted ankle and hurried after de Santiago before he was too far gone. They took time to bury the dead fighters in rough, shallow graves, to bandage the wounds of the other two who had managed to dodge most of the wrath of the Apache’s guns. They began to make their way back up the trail.
The progress was slow, the two injured fighters lagging far behind. They climbed back up the mountain, beyond the tree line, scrambling over rocks and scree until finally they came again to the pass over the mountain ridge.
De Santiago paused there for only a moment. He deliberately glanced over his shoulder, to the west, and a strange calm seemed to come over him. He knew that from up here, if it weren't for the clouds, they could see the ocean over two hundred miles away. Then a realization struck him that was so obvious that he was disgusted with himself for not having seen it before. As much as he loved his mountains, the leader knew at that instant that the key to all that he must accomplish rested out there, with the sea.
He walked on, deep in thought.
They finally stopped for a short rest in the saddle of the pass. The two troops finally caught up, falling in their tracks, exhausted from the brisk climb and gasping for breath in the thin air. As they checked their crude bandages, Guzman loosened the laces on his boot so the swollen ankle would have more room.
Juan de Santiago never sat. He paced back and forth, an odd look on his mud-smeared face, muttering crazily all the while. The other men tried not to look at him. They had never seen their leader in such a state.
Mountains on either side of this narrow pass soared to over eighteen thousand feet. The wind whistled through the cut and it was bitter cold at this altitude, driving snow and bits of sleet at them. Before them, the rough trail clung to the side of a near vertical rock face. It would take very sure steps and nerves of steel to descend without falling a thousand feet to sure death.
De Santiago turned and set off down the trail even faster than before, as if he had heard a call the others had missed. Guzman groaned and followed after him, still favoring the ankle. The other two men looked at each other, then stood and obediently straggled along behind as best they could.
Headquarters was another twenty miles away. Worse, sunset would come, even at this altitude, in less than an hour. Trying to traverse this trail in the dark would be suicide. Still, de Santiago charged on, seemingly unaware of the danger or of the misery of his men.
Guzman finally yelled at his leader’s quickly disappearing back.
"Wait! Slow down. We can't keep up. It's not safe." His words echoed off the cliff faces.
The rebel leader seemed not to hear him. Still, Guzman struggled mightily to keep pace. The others had apparently given up. They lagged several hundred yards farther back up the trail, shuffling slowly down the narrow path. Guzman could no longer hear their ragged breathing or the scuffling of their feet on the scrabble rock of the path.
De Santiago finally stopped and turned, the frustration clear in his voice.
"Keep up the best you can. Tell the other children behind you to camp at the pass tonight and hike in tomorrow. Join them if you must."
He turned and continued his determined pell-mell downhill dash. Still, Guzman trudged on. It was his duty, after all, to stay with his commander, to protect him. And that was difficult to do if he was almost out of sight on a narrow sliver of mountain trail.
Then they were crossing the face of the mountain, clinging to a path that was barely a foot wide. Below them, the mountain dropped away, nearly vertical for a thousand or more feet. Above them, it was straight up to a summit that was completely lost in the cloudy mist.
It was almost totally dark when the pair finally crossed a shoulder of the mountain and the path thankfully became a little wider, the drop below them not nearly so plumb. Still, the loose rock and talus made the footing treacherous.
Guzman yelled ahead again.
"El Jefe, what is so important that we stay out here like this? Even if we don't fall to our deaths, we can't make the camp until morning anyway."
Guzman could hardly make out the dark figure of the most dangerous man in Colombia when he abruptly stopped on the trail and turned back to answer him. He later swore that he could see the sparks flashing in the leader’s eyes as he spoke. His words were soft, determined, but the wind carried them as surely as it did the fine icy vapor.
"Guzman, my friend, we must get back as soon as we can in order to continue what has already begun. There is much to do and many pieces to put in place. This will be a night you will tell your grandchildren about. This is the night the final victory begins."