past all three astonished defenders as he worked his way up field. He then sent the ball straight between the goalie’s planted feet.
From the corner of his eye, Gus saw Buitre hang his keys on a nail, hitch his trousers, and step off his stoop. Was he going to break up the game? Gus wondered as he strode onto the field. But then he saw the players take their places. No, he was going to join it.
Suddenly, Gus didn’t want Lucy playing anymore.
With Carlos outnumbered by four defenders, the rebels took possession. Buitre kept the ball for himself, dribbling toward Lucy, who attacked him warily.
Wedging a foot between his, she managed to steal the ball, kicking it back to Carlos, who once more weaved through his opponents to storm the goal.
The score was Spaniards two, Colombians zero.
Carlos sent Lucy a surreptitious signal to let their opponents score. No need to make the rebels unhappy.
Once more, Buitre brought the ball up field, circumventing Carlos. Even with two men open, he kept it for himself, bearing down on Lucy, who put up a half-hearted defense as Buitre deliberately teased her, showing off his dribbling skills.
Suddenly, and without any forewarning, he slipped in the mud. Lucy watched in surprise as he landed hard on his back. His four teammates guffawed. Marshaling her own smile, Lucy nudged Gus’s respect to a whole new level by offering Buitre a hand.
Maybe you could fight fire with fire, he marveled.
But then Buitre viciously slapped her hand away.
Biting her lip, she stepped back, squared her shoulders, and raised her chin.
Gus saw red. He found himself stalking onto the field, battling down the illogical impulse to bludgeon Buitre’s ugly face.
Carlos headed him off. “Easy, easy,” he said with a firm hand on Gus’s shoulder. “It’s just a game,” he added.
It took Buitre several more minutes to roll to his feet. He sent Lucy a murderous look, as if she were the reason he had fallen. Shit, thought Gus. This was just what they didn’t need—an enemy in the rebel ranks.
Turning his back on his team, Buitre limped toward his hooch to nurse his injured pride.
Back on the field, the rebels shyly approached their opponents. By humiliating Buitre, the Spaniards had unwittingly won them over. One youth trotted off, returning minutes later with hard-boiled eggs for the winners.
Lucy accepted her egg with relish, peeling off the shell with hands that shook. As she stuffed it in her mouth in one bite, she swung a guilty look at Gus, who hadn’t been given an egg.
“Go ahead,” he told her, ignoring the rumble in his stomach. “You’re the one with a runaway metabolism.”
He spent a second memorizing the names of the young rebels: Julian, Estéban, Manuel, and David, all of whom were eager to tell their tale of woe. Two had been kidnapped by the FARC and forced into service. Manuel had been sold by his family for three bags of rice. David, who wore the insignia of a squad commander, admitted that he had dropped out of college to join the rebel cause. His father had been a white anthropologist, his mother an Arhuacan Indian.
Gus held his intelligent brown eyes a moment, reading both caution and youthful idealism in their depths. As the product of disparate social classes, he had chosen to identify with his mother’s people, the downtrodden indigenous, whom the FARC allegedly represented.
Lucy startled Gus by throwing out the million-dollar question. “Do you know where the American hostages are kept?”
The younger boys shook their heads with credible ignorance. Manuel joked that he didn’t even know where his own home was. As an illiterate campesino, that likely was the sad case. David merely shrugged and said, obliquely, “¿Quién sabe?”
Who knows?
And Gus realized Lucy was a step ahead of him. She’d already ferreted out their best informant. Question was, would the kid confide in them, or would he hold out?
Just then, Buitre burst from his shelter, disrupting the congenial conversation.
He stalked toward Manuel, who’d been the one to dole out eggs. “Why do you waste our food on these strangers?” he raged. Seizing the youth by his collar, he shook him forcefully. “Our own people are starving. We have no medicines, no way of looking after ourselves. Do you think they are here to help us? They are friends of the American spies.” He began pulling Manuel toward the dreaded shed, the keychain on his belt loop jingling.
Lucy shook off Gus’s arm as she trailed after them. “Excuse me, Deputy Buitre,”