The Lucky Ones

Despite ongoing insurgence throughout the country, Palameda remained a popular haunt of the rich and famous. Heavily armed soldiers in the role of civilian police kept up a level of visibility in the city that made the boulevards seem safe to foreigners. This tactic by the regime held a hidden benefit for the rebels. Posing as poor natives got them safely through the countryside. Once in Palameda, however, they would go directly to a safe house and switch into the roles of wealthy Latina aristocrats.

Sporting Armanis, Claibornes, Gaps and Guccis, they would cruise Palameda in Jaguar and Merc convertibles, ferrying their purchases back to their safe house. The appearance of wealth and political clout carried them through roadblocks and checkpoints without a sideways glance from guards, although in keeping with their true colours, the rebels always kept an Uzi or Barretta close at hand.

At just sixteen, Christina was the youngest of Julio’s revolutionaries. One night a group of drunken soldiers entered the small village where she lived, and began raping all the women, young girls and older women alike. Her father tried to intervene, but received a rifle butt to the head putting him into a coma from which he never awoke. Her mother broke free in a desperate attempt to attend to her stricken husband, but was gunned down as she darted across the room to him. Then Christina was tied to a table and two soldiers held her legs wide apart while a third brutally stole her virginity.

Before that night, Christina’s mother had gradually been passing her daughter the skills of a midwife. Two days after the soldiers’ drunken spree, Christina’s cousin Edmundo came to the village to attend the funerals of his fallen aunt and uncle. Realising his cousin had been left alone in the world, he asked her if she would like to join the secret band of rebels to which he belonged. Christina jumped at the chance, swearing to avenge her parents’ deaths. When she met Julio a few days later, however, the rebel leader had other ideas for her. Julio’s band of freedom fighters needed a medic, so Christina was turned over to a sympathetic rural doctor for a few months, to have her midwifery skills upgraded into those of a paramedic.

In battle Julio told her to stay close to Edmundo, and the rest of the time he placed the young girl in the care af Maria, who was five years older and had already been fighting the Cortalian regular army for two years.

Christina had only one job to do in Palameda that day. A chemist on the beach front kept a special stock for his rebel clients, and even paid for the goods himself by adding secret levies to purchases made by the tourists who visited him daily from posh resorts along the playa. Christina was to visit the chemist and get medical supplies. The men dropped Christina and Maria at the pharmacy and drove off on other errands.

The ladies entered the shop carrying sports bags, and went directly to the chemist’s private office in the rear of the building. Christina handed the man her shopping list, then to the phramacist’s delight, she and Maria stripped and changed into tiny string bikini bottoms. Leaving one of their sports bags for him to fill with medicines, bandages and other supplies they stuffed the rest of their belongings into the second bag and headed out onto the beach.

Playa Palameda was a two mile stretch of white sand, palm trees, cabana bars and bronze skin. The girls’ rich tans and unabashed nudity allowed them to blend in perfectly with other women on the beach. Finding a patch of vacant sand they stretched out in the tropical sun. About ten minutes later a man arrived and sat down immediately behind them, not uttering a word of introduction. Christina looked up at him and almost choked. Her hand instinctively reached for the sports bag where her pistol was tucked.

“Please don’t be frightened,” he said, “I mean you no harm.”

“Who are you?” Maria demanded.

He smiled. “You don’t remember me, but our mutual friend here does, don’t you?”

Christina trembled and stared suspiciously at the man. “What do you want?” she asked nervously.

“I don’t want anything, except to thank you. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you walk onto this beach and spread yourselves out like carefree Yankee tourists. I thought you people all lived out in the rain forests, but suddenly here you are. The doctors tell me you did an excellent job on the wound. If it wasn’t for you I would have bled to death.”

Maria glanced at the man’s leg stretched out in the sand. She hadn’t noticed it before, but his upper thigh was wrapped in a flesh coloured bandage. Of course, she thought studying his face, it’s the officer Christina treated after the raid on the convoy. Out of uniform he is actually attractive.

“We’re soldiers not barbarians,” Christina explained. “We don’t leave people to die unnecessarily, not even our enemies.”

“I’m not your enemy. I don’t agree with your methods, but no true Cortalian could disagree with your politics.”

“Strange words coming from a man who wears an army uniform,” remarked Maria. “Usually such men are stealing our homes; destroying our lives.”

“We have fought each other and survived to learn from the experience. We are the lucky ones,” he replied. Then he grabbed his mahogany walking stick and used it to help himself struggle to his feet. Standing over them he glanced for a few moments at their bare breasts.

“You are both very beautiful. It would be sacrilege to defile such beauty, so you have nothing to fear from me, but not everyone would share my view on this, so please be careful. Palameda is not a safe place, I’m sorry to say.” Then staring warmly into Christina’s eyes: “And again I thank you, even if you do consider mercy nothing more than a duty.”

The officer turned away. The women rolled onto their sides and watched him hobble into the sea of sun worshippers.

“Do you believe him?”

“No,” said Maria without hesitation.

“You think he’ll report us to his commanders?” asked Christina with fear in her voice.

“Oh no, he’ll keep quiet,” Maria said, as they watched him limp off and blend into the crowd, “but I don’t believe he’s a lucky one.”

END