The Fighting Man (1993) (13 page)

‘Yeah? Too many reckon us a meal ticket . . . Can you get us up there, Tom?’

Tom said, ‘No problem. It’s about a hundred there. I’ve got a 250-mile capacity, can always put down on the way home . . .’

The Intelligence Analyst would fly, and the Treasurer, and the major on liaison from SouthCom. Two bad nights in the apartment allocated him in the embassy compound because he had thought he’d screwed, knew he’d screwed up, at the American Club.

‘And, I’m going to ask Arturo to ride with you . . .’

There was a smile on the Country Attaché’s face, driven snow.

‘I won’t be inviting him to bring a battalion along, just himself, we get to see that way how he shapes . . .’

And the Country Attaché was clearing his desk and pleading a meeting with the Customs Attaché, dismissing them.

They were outside in the corridor.

The Country Attaché locked his door. He called after them as they filed back into the open-plan office where they worked from.

‘Oh, Tom . . . a moment if you don’t mind . . . What happened, I’ve forgotten it. Believe me, by Christ, I’ll remember it if you step off line again. Have a good day.’

Tom Schultz would drive out to the military wing of the airport, and he would spend the rest of the day and half of the evening working on the Huey bird. He would be working late. He had already made the excuses, worked himself clear of the invitation. A barbecue in the yard behind the Chemist’s home. The little women and the little kids that camp-followed the DEA men, and it had been the intention that the slightly built serious girl from the commercial section would come to be paired off with the single guy new in town. He’d met her once, been introduced, and he’d reckoned she seemed bright company . . . Perhaps the girl from the commercial section hadn’t wanted to be sidelined to a flier with the right half of his face burned off and scraped away. The invitation had just been let slip, and it was what he was familiar with. They could eat the Texas steaks and drink the Budweiser tins and chuck the softball round, and he would work at the Huey bird into the night. He would check each last rivet, fuel feed pipe, control switch, foot pedal, navigation light, filter . . . Too right . . . All of the rest of them in the open-plan office would have known he had been called back, warned.

They covered two miles that first day, and a half of that had been on the wild boar’s track.

Gord took the first sentry watch.

He sat hunched with his knees against his chest and with the rifle on his lap. They were clean gone, the rest of them, asleep. The light hadn’t slipped, and they were gone. He wondered what it was like, Guatemala City, at the Palacio Nacional. Wondering, and trying to stay awake because it was his sentry watch.

If it had been a mistake then it was too bloody late to be worrying about it.

He heard the noise of their dead sleeping and tried to swat the mosquitoes from his face.

5

Gord had organized them.

They had made the camp for the night in deep jungle, and it was only his wristwatch that could tell him that the sun would now be climbing beyond the canopy of the triple layers of the trees. At one place, ahead of them, between the trunks of the trees and through the vine trellis, he could see a single light shard cutting down where a tree had died. That was ahead of them. Where they had made the camp there was a green-washed gloom. He had been woken when the creatures of the jungle had responded to the first show of the sun, and with it had come the cacophony of noise. He had been driven from his sleep by the call of the birds and the screech of the parrots and the chatter cry of the monkeys. The mosquitoes played at his wrists and his neck and his face, coming noisily to attack him from the droning mass that was always inches beyond the reach of his flailing hand. Around him was the smell of rotting vegetation. He had taken control, natural to him, and wanted to believe that he alone had the authority and would be heard.

He had his own supplies that would last him for one month, his own tablets and pills and ointments, not for sharing. If he shared them they would last for three days . . . They had not been suggestions, they had been orders . . .

Jorge was left to pore over the map, to plot the route forward. Gord had given his lecture and had Groucho translate it on for Zeppo and Harpo, and had Vee interpret it for Eff and Zed. The lecture was on personal hygiene, and personal security.

Jorge had the map spread out over the jungle floor and manoeuvred the compass between the crossing ant columns.

He had lectured on the principal danger of mosquitoes, of malaria and dengue fever, and of the worm laid under the skin by the biting mosquitoes. The three Indians had been sent to forage around the camp, disappeared into the jungle, for wild garlic. They were bubbling, Eff and Vee and Zed, because after the exile years they could scent the country that was their own. Gord thought it was as infectious as the damn mosquitoes, their enthusiasm.

He could see the sweat running on the body of Zeppo. His shirt was stained down to the stomach bulge with the sweat damp. He breathed hard. The job of Zeppo was to clear up the camp. He was to stow the sleeping bags, load each pack, clear the ground of every piece of litter, and, last before they moved out, Zeppo had been told to scatter dead leaves, small wood twigs over the camp site. At the edge of the clearing Harpo swatted at the insect flight and leaned on the short-handled collapsible entrenching tool. The digging of the hole had already exhausted him, the big man who was flab and who tried to wipe away with his sleeve the sweat streams on the wide baldness of his scalp. The work for Harpo was to dig the hole for the litter to be buried in, and then to dig another hole, deeper, for the latrine. Their eyes met, Gord’s and Harpo’s, over the width of the clearing, Gord challenging him and Harpo caving and hating.

The task for Groucho was to make ready the meal, and to draw up a ration list, and to find water from tree pockets. Smaller and slighter than Zeppo and Harpo and grinning often so that the steel on his teeth showed, and suffering less.

If he didn’t push Zeppo and Harpo and Groucho, then they would walk over him.

They were eight.

They had nine AK-47 rifles, there were sixty rounds of 7.62mm ammunition for each rifle. They had three Makarov pistols, eighteen rounds for each pistol. They had twelve pounds of military explosive and fifteen detonators. They had two RPG-7 rocket launchers and nine warheads. They had one machine gun and 800 rounds of belt-fed ammunition . . . Bloody brilliant. The noise of the explosions of munitions detonating in the fire of Whisky Alpha mocked him. It was bloody pathetic . . . They had the TPO-50 flame thrower with each of the three canisters loaded and at pressure.

There was the scrape of a match.

Gord looked up.

Harpo had the cigarette in his mouth and his hands cupped to protect the flame.

Gord called quietly, ‘I told you, no cigarettes.’

Harpo stared back at him. The hands moved to the cigarette. A small smoke wisp.

Gord said, ‘Put it out.’

Harpo held the spade loosely and dragged hard on the cigarette. The smoke played in front of Harpo’s face.

Gord pushed himself up. He crossed the clearing. The hand of Harpo tightened on the stock of the spade. Fast, sudden, Gord had the collar of Harpo’s shirt in his right fist and he had snatched the cigarette away with his left hand. Gord stamped on the cigarette and then he shook the bulk of Harpo’s body, like he was a difficult dog.

‘I have told you that you don’t smoke cigarettes. If I tell you then you don’t . . .’ Gord didn’t stop for Groucho’s translation. ‘. . . You don’t smoke because down here the smell of tobacco will hang for a week.’

He let the collar of Harpo slump free. He swung away from him.

When the Indians returned Gord told them all to peel the garlic bulbs and to chew them. He tried to make a joke of it, that they’d all stink, but that the garlic would keep away the mosquitoes. He supervised the loading up after they had breakfasted on Groucho’s cold mess of Meals Ready to Eat, Moscow style, and after they had all squatted over the latrine pit.

Jorge leading, and the Indians carrying more weight than was fair, and Harpo loathing him and Zeppo despising him and Groucho avoiding him, they moved out of the clearing. Gord allowed them to get clear then checked the ground and the filled holes and cursed when he saw that the squashed cigarette butt was still visible in the stamped dirt. It was Groucho who disappointed him, not the fat bastard and not the bald bastard, but it had been Groucho who had come to the hotel room and pleaded, little smarm talk Groucho . . . He spent time on the site before he was satisfied.

He followed them, drawn closer to them by the slow squeal of the wheels of the flame thrower’s cart.

FROM
: Strathclyde police HQ, Glasgow.

TO
: Special Branch, Metropolitan Police, London.

REF
: A/0200/79y/4/blj.

ATTENTION
: Aliens Section.

See attached ex Fort William. Further to Gordon Benjamin BROWN – He is ICI male, 5´10, prop build, hair colour light brown (style short), tanned complexion, eye colour grey blue, only DM is 1/2 inch scar lower chin.

No interest here.

Where is Guatemala, query. Do we care, query.

Have fun.

End.

The pilot lay on the wet towel on the beach sand. The water of the rising tide played amongst his toes. He slept away the exhaustion of the flight from his home base to the jungle strip in Guatemala, and back. He slept in the warming sun because he had taken to the limit his resources of strength, exhausted them in bringing home Echo Foxtrot. He had nursed her back. He had flown wave top at reduced speed to conserve fuel. Out in the depths of the Cayman Trench were the seats of the Antonov Colt that had been wrested out by the navigator, and the lavatory unit that had been wrenched clear with a tool kit jemmy, and the overhead racks that had been taken down with a screwdriver. He had brought Echo Foxtrot home as bare shell.

He had spent the late afternoon and the early evening with the maintenance men of the ground crew and the first part of the night with the wife of the pilot of Whisky Alpha and the last of the night with the family of the lost navigator.

The pilot was alone on the beach beyond the base perimeter wire. The point on the beach was close to the SAM missile battery, always manned, always facing towards the Florida land mass beyond the horizon. The men on the missile battery had watched him come in the late afternoon, barely clearing the fence, barely reaching the tarmac of the runway. It was spoken of, all around the base, where he had been, what he had achieved.

He slept. He dreamed while the sea trickled at his ankles. In his mind was the face and the body and the grip of the Englishman who had ridden in the cockpit the last miles before the touch-down in the Petén.

He had told his base commander, ‘It was madness. They had nothing. They have gone to be killed . . .’

FROM
: Aliens Sect., SB, Met Pol, London.

TO
: Security Service, Gordon St, London.

REF
: A/1100/79y/4/bli/ark(3).

ATTENTION
: Central America Desk.

See attached ex Fort William and ex Strathclyde. Flash inquiry indicates BROWN, Gordon Benjamin, UK passport C796217, DOI 03.5.76, ex Heathrow for Madrid.

Three Guatemalan citizens travelling on Cuban documents on same flight.

Illegal to stage revolution in Guatemala, query. Know location of Guatemala, query. Affirmative, your baby, query.

End.

He had assumed it would be their attempt to dominate him from the start of a relationship.

Colonel Arturo was dominated, willingly, by no man.

He had made a show.

He wore his best field uniform, the camouflage combat tunic and trousers that he would have worn for the Army Day parade on the Campo de Marte, the uniform of the Kaibiles, with the flash on the upper arms of the tunic of the bayonet and the fire. He wore his maroon beret. His boots for jungle marching were highly polished. The webbing harness over his shoulders and around his waist was pristine. There was a holstered pistol on the webbing and a water bottle and spare ammunition magazines for the Israeli-made Uzi machine gun that was slung on a strap to his hip. He sat stiffly, erect, in the forward passenger seat of the open jeep, and he waited.

Colonel Arturo had come to the corner of the military wing of La Aurora a full twenty minutes before the flier had arrived. Take-off was scheduled for 0800, the time given him in the casual, he thought patronizing, telephone call from the Country Attaché. He had seen the flier’s surprise that he was already there and waiting, awkwardness that had merged to embarrassment. It was as he had planned it. He had nodded crisply to the flier, offered no other greeting, permitted the man to begin his pre-flight checks. He had noted the deep scar left by the plastic surgeons on the face of the flier. He made his point, he sat in the jeep with his escort of Kaibil troops around him.