Blessed are the Merciful Read online

  “How did you get to where you are today?”

  “I was born to do this.”

  I raised an eyebrow. She kept walking, but still talked.

  “There was a sign the morning of my birth. It was how I got my name. Eva. My other name, the one my father wanted for me, you could say, my legal name, is not even worth bothering with. They’ve called me Eva since I could smile.”

  So, it was her real name. Sort of.

  “What was the sign?” I cast a look her way out of the corner of my eye.

  “Eva or Evita, means to live,” She paused on the path, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. “I was born here in Guatemala in a small house in the jungle. And I was born dead. Blue. They tried to get me to breathe but then put me off to the side to save my mother who was bleeding to death. When they stopped the bleeding, they turned back to me. When my mother learned I was dead, she wept and wailed and tore out her hair. The woman who birthed me wrapped me in a blanket and set me aside, but my mother insisted that she hold me.

  “It was when she was holding me that she noticed something. I moved. She pulled the blanket back and my eyes were open staring at her.”

  Eva stopped and stared into the distance.

  “Where are your parents now?” I asked.

  Without looking my way, she started walking again at a furious pace.

  “El Loro.”

  For a second I was confused, but then I caught up to her and saw the hate gleaming in her eyes.

  “He killed them.” I said it as a statement.

  She looked down at the jungle floor, scuffling her boot in the dirt. It was the most vulnerable I’d seen her. But then her gaze shot back up.

  “I had a plan. My men were in place to kill El Loro in the prison. It was supposed to happen on the day he escaped. A guard, a lowlife, traitorous guard, tipped him off to our plan and helped him escape.”

  “Was the guard one of your men?”

  She spit on the ground as an answer. Then exhaled loudly. “The pendejo is rotting in hell right now.”

  “Good.” I said, eliciting a smile from her, and breaking the dark mood that had settled on us.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “We’re getting close.”

  I was plodding along the dirt path, dreaming of a shower and large glass of cold water when Eva’s arm shot out and stopped me.

  Then there was a sharp whistle.

  Someone was coming.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Eva yanked my arm, pulling me into the bushes and threw me down, flat on my face, my cheek digging into the dirt. I was afraid to move or breathe. Eve’s eyes met mine. Her lips formed an “O” as if to shush me, but no sound came out.

  We were prone on the jungle floor, shielded from the path by a large rock and bush.

  The insects, who had been startled by our sudden tromp into their territory started up tentatively again, chirping and scratching and making screeching noises.

  Eva scooted away from me about four feet, taking cover behind a fallen tree.

  All the jungle sounds stopped simultaneously. Someone was there. On the path. I shot a terrified glance toward Eva. Her eyes widened. And then narrowed.

  The footsteps grew closer, the brush rustling as the person left the path. Coming closer to me.

  As quietly as I could, I pulled my legs under me until I was crouched behind the rock, holding the gun in front of me, my legs wobbling from the strain, ready to pivot right or left if someone came around the side of my hiding place.

  The rock was too tall to scale so the person would have to come on the right or left. I shot a wild-eyed glance at Eva. She nodded calmly.

  Holding the gun with both hands, I waited.

  Further away on the path I heard a low murmur. Someone else was there. Then, close by, I heard a grunting sound. But I couldn’t tell which direction it came from.

  Before I could react, the muzzle of a gun was less than a foot away pointing above where I crouched. Raising my gun, I saw the man’s startled face. He’d expected me to be standing. I had the advantage. My finger was on the trigger. All I had to do was squeeze. It was aimed at his chest that was less than a foot away. Squeeze. The. Trigger.

  But my finger was frozen on the trigger. The moment was drawn out for what seemed like an eternity. In seemingly slow motion, I saw the barrel of his gun dip until the only thing I could focus on was the black hole of the muzzle.

  At that moment, a deafening blast of gunfire was accompanied by the man’s head exploding against the rock. He slumped to the ground, sightless as a volley of gunfire continued.

  Swiveling my head, I saw that Eva had shot the man and was still firing as she ran past me. Stepping away from the dead man and toward the path, I managed to squeeze the trigger, aiming at a green-clad figure beating a hasty retreat.

  Suddenly, Eva was at my side, tugging on my elbow. Her face was in front of me and she was speaking. I could see her mouth form words but there was no sound. My hearing was gone. Whatever she wanted to tell me was urgent because she yanked my arm. Then my hearing came back all at once.

  “Run!”

  Not far away, I heard more gunfire. A popping sound in a long stream.

  She took off and I followed, pounding through the bushes behind her, branches and vines scraping at my face. She was fast, but my new running habit the past year, paid off. I was right behind her, the branches she broke through snapping back to hit me in the face.

  Finally, we reached a river. Eva waded through it and I followed. On the other side, she stayed on the banks and ran to a big outcropping of rocks where the river dropped in a small waterfall.

  We crouched behind the biggest rock. She sat with her back against the wall, breathing heavily and staring into the distance. Then she closed her eyes. I was afraid to speak.

  Finally, she opened her eyes, took a big sip of her water jug and handed it to me. I did the same and handed it back. We’d been there for a few minutes and there was no sign we’d been followed. The buzz of the jungle had started up again.

  “Thanks,” I said to her.

  She nodded. Her face was pale and she was shaking and breathing hard.

  What I wanted to say was that I was sorry I choked and that she had saved my life. Instead, I said, “What the hell just happened?”

  “It was an ambush.” She spit on the ground.

  I frowned.

  She stood and angrily kicked the rock.

  “They knew. They knew we were coming.”

  “How could that be?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Swiping at tears streaming down her face, she spit again and then said, “Goddamn it. Goddamn it Goddamn it.”

  Her brothers.

  “What about—?”

  “I don’t know.” She gritted the words out.

  “Should we go back and check?” My voice was tentative.

  “Only if you are ready to die today.”

  She stood and grabbed her pack, slinging it over one shoulder and stepping off into the brush.

  I hesitated, looking back the way we had come. If it were my brothers back there, I couldn’t imagine just leaving them. What if they were hurt, and I could save them? But they weren’t my brothers. They were resistance fighters who had grown up in a world of violence beyond anything I’d ever seen in my sheltered San Francisco life.

  I stood and followed. Because I wasn’t ready to die.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  We stopped at a clearing high up on a hill.

  Eva handed me the water bottle. I tilted back my head to chug some and realized there was only a few drops left.

  “I’m sorry. I finished it by accident.”

  “I know,” she said.

  She crouched and then pointed. “See? There. That is where he is.”

  In the distance, I could see a small outcropping of rocks in a clearing. The ruins.

  “And there,” she pointed to a spot to our left. “That is
where we were when we were ambushed.”

  We’d been so close.

  I nodded.

  Then she turned to me. “Here is where we were supposed to meet if things went badly.”

  “Here?” I looked around.

  “Yes.” She stood and went behind a nearby tree. With the sound of a breaking branch, a black backpack attached to a rope, fell to the ground. She dug around inside and took out more water, some canned food and thin blankets.

  We sat in a small clearing and drank water and ate beans from cans, with our backs leaning against a large rock

  The sun was growing low in the sky.

  “What now?”

  “We wait.”

  I nodded, wondering if Donovan had returned back to the safe house and if he was worried about me.

  I was a little worried about me.

  “It’s too dangerous to start a fire,” she said as the sun grew low on the horizon.

  Grabbing the backpack, Eva unearthed two small silver blankets like those runners are given after a race. She handed one to me.

  “We will sleep sitting up.” Then she handed me a mosquito net. “Put this over your entire body. Tuck it in underneath you.”

  I did as she said.

  “Now, we sleep.” She leaned her head back against the rock and within seconds was snoring.

  I closed my eyes, thinking that there was no way in hell I was going to fall asleep sitting up against a rock in the middle of the jungle where El Loro’s men were hunting us.

  But somehow, I slipped into the blackness.

  I woke in the dark and realized that the insects had grown quiet. My body tensed with fear. Even in my sleep, I knew this was bad. I reached for my gun, gripping it tightly.

  Eva put her finger to my lips. Her eyes were bright, reflecting the light of the moon, the only part of her I could see in the dark.

  I held my breath, waiting. I held my gun in front of me. This time I wouldn’t choke.

  That’s when the trilling sound of a bird echoed in the darkness.

  We were shoulder-to-shoulder so I could feel her body slump with relief and she answered with a joyful warble of a whistle.

  She stood and raced toward the trees. Within seconds, she’d been joined by another dark figure. But only one.

  “Emmanuel?” she asked in a choked voice.

  There was no answer. The only sound was her weeping.

  After a few minutes, Eva and her brother walked a few feet away into the thick brush of the jungle, speaking in a low voice. I tried to listen in, but it was only a low murmuring and eventually I fell back asleep.

  Eva shook my shoulder, waking me. It was still dark.

  “We have to leave. Now.”

  Her brother stood off to one side, cleaning his gun.

  “What?”

  Paco was spying at the ruins this morning, she said.

  “El Loro has left for Punta Gorda. He leaves within the hour on a flight to Miami, if he hasn’t already left.”

  I sat up. “We can tell people to stop the plane.”

  She shook her head. “It’s too late. We have to follow him.”

  “We have a pilot an hour from here who can fly us. He will be ready.”

  I thought about Donovan’s DEA plane on the secret landing strip, but I also knew it would take too much time to go back to the safe house and then get to the airstrip.

  I was in Eva’s hands for better or worse. I couldn’t let El Loro escape so easily. I could explain later.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Eva was up front in the small plane talking to the pilot. She wore her mask again.

  My stomach was in my throat. We were the only passengers aboard the small plane. Her brother had stayed behind. And there was only one pilot, which made me doubly nervous.

  We’d been flying low, just above the surface of the ocean. I couldn’t help but imagine the plane plunging into the blue below.

  Eva came back and sat down, not strapping in.

  “We are almost there,” she said.

  “When did El Loro land?”

  “A half hour ago.”

  “Then he’s in the wind.”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “We have people at the airport watching for him. To follow.”

  “Your fighters?”

  “The movement, my movement, is very large. We have resources that might surprise you.” She reached for a backpack from an overhead bin and withdrew a thick wad of cash. “Like this.”

  The radio in the cockpit crackled and the pilot spoke in English, but I couldn’t understand what he said.

  Eva sat back down and this time strapped in. “We will be on the ground soon.”

  We landed at a small section of the airport with big commercial hangers. I could see the main part of the airport in the distance. Eva met a man on the tarmac who handed her some car keys and a cell phone. They spoke in rapid-fire Spanish. I could only make out a few words. El Loro. Airplane. Some road. Guns. The driver handed her a gun. A big shiny thing.

  The scope of the movement was just now becoming apparent to me.

  Eva grabbed my elbow. “Let’s go.” She ran over to a black Jeep that was waiting. I hopped in the passenger seat. The Jeep skidded out of the fenced airport lot and onto a main road.

  As soon as we left the airport, she whipped off her mask and threw it into the back seat.

  The windows were down and a hot humid, breeze whipped my hair around my face until I drew it back in a ponytail.

  “You act like you know Miami,” I said.

  She grunted.

  I pressed her.

  “Have you been here?”

  “I went to school in Washington, D.C. We came here for the summers.”

  “You grew up here? I thought your parents were resistance fighters?”

  “I never said that.”

  “But you said you were born in a shack deep in the jungle?”

  “Later, my parents moved to America. They were summoned to your country to work on the resistance from here.”

  At that moment, I felt incredibly ignorant. Entire underground worlds existed that I knew nothing about.

  Acting exasperated with me, she shook her head.

  “There are people in your country who want me to succeed in taking out El Loro.”

  “Huh. I bet.”

  “I have been groomed my entire life for this.”

  “For what?”

  She flung out her hand. “All of this.”

  “To assassinate El Loro?”

  “Maybe.” She shrugged. “But more than that. Things that I cannot talk to you about. I may be the resistance leader in Guatemala, but I also must do certain things for others in order for our movement to succeed. I do certain things, I have money and resources we need for our own goals.”

  “What are your goals, Eva?” I said. “I guess I’m not sure I understand.”

  “My goal is to restore my country to its former glory. My goal is an educated populace and to make Guatemala a world power. We were once great. We can be again.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t know much about your country’s history.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course you don’t. Nobody does. Did you know they just discovered evidence that an advanced civilization–equal to ancient Greece and China—existed in Central America?”

  I shook my head.

  “Radar technology has shown that buried in the jungles of the Peten region, there are remains of more than 60,000 buildings,” she said. “The Mayans had cities of 10 to 15 million. We had elevated highways. We had farms. We had irrigation systems. We had an agricultural support system that fed the masses–1,200 years ago. We had all of it. I want to restore that greatness at the same time we preserve our natural beauty and resources. I was born to do this.”

  She suddenly grew quiet, seemingly exhausted by her passionate outburst.

  We left the airport and headed north. After about twenty minutes, Eva pulled over in a suburban neighborhood with l
arge tract houses. A few kids played outside on the lawn, and one woman walked by with a baby stroller without glancing our way.

  After a few minutes, a silver Honda Civic drove up besides us.

  Eva rolled down her window. The driver of the Civic, a man in his twenties with olive skin, flashed a smile.

  “Jefe.” Boss.

  “Manuel.” She was cool as a cucumber.

  “We tried. We followed him to the I-95 and then they lost him. His driver was Mario Andretti, man. Like Danica Patrick, maybe even. Poof. Gone.” He splayed his fingers in the air.

  “Okay.” Eva said. “Put the word out on the street. He won’t get far.”

  The car pulled away. Eva started the engine and made a U-turn.

  “How come everybody can see your face here?”

  “We are in America, now,”

  It didn’t answer my question.

  “So, here they can know you.”

  “Here they do know me,” she said, tossing her long hair. “Besides. The time for secrecy has ended. Now, I want to be known. Soon all will know me. The pieces are in place.”

  She stared straight ahead, dismissing me. Something about her words made me wary. Then her phone rang. I tried to listen, but couldn’t hear the voice on the other end.

  “Si. Si. Aqui. Okay.” She clicked off.

  “He could be on his way to New Orleans by now,” I said. This was increasingly feeling like a wild goose chase.

  “No.” Eva shook her head. “That call? My men said he is still in the Miami area.”

  “Let me out.” I reached for the door handle. “Now.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Then give me your phone. I’m calling my husband.” I wasn’t sure I could, but now that I was back in the States I could call him. Suddenly, I wanted Donovan to be with me more than anything. He was somewhere in the jungles of Guatemala and probably pissed off and worried about me. I hoped he’d understand. I couldn’t let El Loro escape. Our lives would be ruined.

  We would either end up dead or live in constant fear of El Loro’s violence against our family.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do that. This phone line must be kept open at all times for the movement.”