Vilar led the way to his home away from home, as he’d called it. Pajaro walked beside him and they conversed in Spanish. Sheila followed next. Once in a while, she understood a cognate or a word or phrase for which there wasn’t a Spanish equivalent. She and Nicholas sometimes hiked up at Lake
Arrowhead. The altitude didn’t give her much of a problem. They must have been a lot higher because she soon became short of breath. She was determined to hide the problem because she didn’t want to admit to Pajaro that she had a weakness. Half a dozen armed men came along behind her. The knife Pajaro had showed her how to use was in an outside utility pocked of her faigues.
Beyond the landing strip, the rain forest had only been partially cleared. Long, narrow huts were squeezed in between the trees. They had metal, corrugated roofs covered with a thick layer of greens, which Sheila supposed prevented the slightest flash of reflected sunlight from shooting up through the canopy and giving their location away. Thick posts supported the roofs, but there weren’t any walls. Large, black barrels stood next to vats and tables. One table bore several scales and stacks of plastic bags that looked as if they’d hold about a kilo of cocaine.
Sheila thought of Carl back in the mail room of Beckman Pharmaceuticals shipping cocaine with impunity. She wondered if there was some way she could blow the whistle on him without putting herself in danger. Then she was struck with the realization that Pajaro probably would load his plane with drugs for the flight back to Orange County . She hadn’t thought of that possibility. She had been so focused on getting into Colombia that she hadn’t thought beyond that. And she was the one who always laughed at the “world’s dumbest criminal” segments on TV shows. If she was in the plane and Pajaro was caught smuggling cocaine, no one would believe that she was innocent.
With horror, she realized that she could no longer think of herself as innocent. It seemed obvious that the money she’d given Pajaro up front had funded this trip. Sadly, she had to acknowledge to herself that she would be partially responsible for whatever evil emanated from the use of the return trip shipment of cocaine. At least she took responsibility for her part. Pajaro seemed to think anything that happened after the exchange of drugs for money had nothing to do with him. Compared to Pajaro, she tried to convince herself, she was only a little bit bad. Then she laughed at herself for being such a fool. Being a little bit bad was as impossible as being a little bit pregnant. She either was or she wasn’t. She didn’t need to pee on a plastic stick to know the answer.
This would have been compulsary reading in my high school "Moral Dilemma" module and would have sparked some lively debate!
Posted by: Cynthia | August 24, 2006 at 05:56 AM