The Fighting Man (1993) (18 page)

There was the rush of breath in the throat of Jorge beside Gord.

The flap of the tent with the communications radio broke loose, was thrown back.

The corporal stepped into the light and was zipping his fly and coughing on his cigarette.

The start of the charge. Gord had the weight of the machine gun tight on his shoulder. The beginning. He edged the barrel right to left and it covered the corporal and the communications radio. He squeezed on the trigger, waited for the explosion in his ears. Squeezed tighter . . .

A toucan thrashed in the upper foliage for panic flight.

A monkey family screamed and jumped in unison to make distance.

Only the butterflies near to him showed no concern.

The sounds of the firing cascaded at the Archaeologist’s ears. He was drawn forward. He should have turned, run, like the toucan, and the monkey family. All night he had been on his stomach, sport for the mosquitoes, and at the first light he had started to move again in the direction where he thought the road cut the jungle. He would have known where the road lay if he had not blundered away from the pyramid site in the dusk. It was a compulsion that carried him forward, to the tree line at the edge of the cleared strip alongside the width of the road.

He saw the bodies. Bullet ricochets puffed dust from the road stones and sang, and one of the bodies jerked then collapsed.

Across the road from the Archaeologist was a cliff face of reddish-brown rock. There was a sharp shout. The shout was in the English language. ‘Stop firing.’ There was another burst on automatic, longer. He saw the bodies of the soldiers and he saw that two more soldiers stood, bolt upright, in the road with their hands raised. ‘I said to stop firing.’ A man stood on the top of the rock. He was dressed in filthy and torn camouflage trousers and a tunic of green-brown pattern that did not match the trousers. There was a strip of khaki cloth knotted as a bandanna around his forehead. The man carried a machine gun at his hip level, like it was a toy thing. If he had not heard his shout then the Archaeologist would have thought the man to be American, but he had heard the accent that he knew to be English. Another man, younger and Latin, armed with a rifle, had come to the Englishman’s shoulder and seemed to cuff it as if that were a gesture of congratulation.

There were others moving onto the road, one was old and fat and bald and grinning, and one was old and short and hesitant, and there was an Indian running towards the two soldiers with their hands raised.

The Archaeologist looked, in staggered disbelief.

Gord was at the side of the road.

It was for Jorge to lead.

He watched the young man. He had checked the tents, empty. There was no threat now on the road. Jorge had his fingers in his mouth and whistled, a shriek, into the jungle. There were the bodies of the corporal with the cigarette crushed in his fingers, and of the informer, and of four of the soldiers. He saw Groucho cover the conscripts who had surrendered with his rifle held dramatically at his shoulder, and he saw Zeppo swagger towards the prisoners and kick the legs from under the nearest of the two so that he fell onto the road. Jorge moved briskly, what Gord would have wanted of him, and hurried to collect the soldiers’ weapons and Vee was with him and sweeping up the weight of the light machine gun and the mortar tube and then stowing the mortar shells into the webbing of his belt and then swathing his body in the ammunition belts from the machine gun. The light was growing, and the heat. The road to the north shimmered and the road to the south bent away at an angle. Gord strained for the sound of an approaching vehicle. It was the time of the charge . . . Jorge went to the prisoners. They were both now flat on their faces. Gord was far enough away from the prisoners to be detached from the pleading in their faces, but he saw it. He knew what had to be done and he felt a coldness. Jorge came to Gord. Jorge said that they could not cope with prisoners, but the prisoners were only village boys, that they could not be trusted but they were little more than children, that they could not be abandoned . . . Gord knew what had to be done . . . Harpo shot the first prisoner, and Groucho shot the other. It had been Jorge’s decision and it was the right decision and Gord hoped that Jorge took no pleasure from it.

It was Jorge’s whistle that had brought forward those who had not fought. Zeppo led them across the cleared strip and onto the road, and Eff pushed and Zed pulled the cart, and the recruits were burdened down by all of the packs that had been left behind, and they had the weapons and the food and the transistor radio from the roadblock. They left the bodies to the fly swarms and to the ants. They pushed into the jungle beyond the rock mass.

Not a hundred yards gone and already Gord, back-marker, was cursing for more speed ahead.

Four hours after the road through the Petén, going north to Sayaxché, had been made a killing ground, the relief lorry from the garrison base at Chinajá reached the place. The fresh soldiers, as young as their conscript colleagues who lay in the light rain that was now falling, pattering on their uniforms, raked the jungle at the edge of the cleared strip with frightened gunfire. They loaded the bodies and the shredded tents and the smashed radio set over the tail of their lorry. They drove away at speed, their fear chasing them, north to Sayaxché.

He was not satisfied with the pace of the march. He could not blame Jorge because Jorge did not have the fitness for leading at forced pace, and he did not have the training. Gord lectured them at the fifth rest halt.

He would lead.

He would cut the rest time from fifteen to ten minutes in each hour.

‘They will be confused because they will have thought this a safe area, but they are trained military and it will take them only a few hours, certainly by tomorrow, to get men into the area. They may try to throw a cordon round this sector, difficult but they will try, and they will set the cordon at a distance beyond what they estimate is our possible progress. We have to be beyond that cordon. We have to have moved faster, gone further, than they will think possible. Any man who slows the pace endangers not only himself but all of us. It was what you chose when you wanted to attack the block. We don’t go back now and we don’t lie up. It is too late for going back . . .’

Vee whispered the translation to the new recruits. They were scrawny men but they could cope with the pace he wanted and they held the weapons that had been given them as if they were gold plate, and one of them had Zeppo’s backpack slung on its big straps so that it rose low on his haunches. He thought Harpo was going to speak . . .

‘No debate. You can argue when you are in Guatemala City. We will march an extra hour tonight, until it is too late to see ahead. There will be no talking on the march. Movement and distance are critical. Load up . . .’

He felt a desperate tiredness in his legs and an ache in his lungs and the flies played round them and there was no time now to send any of the Indians out to search for garlic roots. He stood sharply upright. He had to set the example. He had not wanted to take it away from Jorge because Jorge was the leader, and Jorge looked up at him and nodded his agreement.

A snap of breaking wood behind him.

His hand went fast down to the ground to where the rifle was, beside the machine gun. They were on an animal trail, perhaps a pig’s track. He used signs. The flat of his hand held out, no movement. The finger across the lips, no word.

It was a weed of a man.

There was no height on him, no weight to him.

The moment he would have seen the rifles aimed at him . . .

‘Don’t . . . no, help me . . . don’t shoot me,’ he blurted.

It was English, American-spoken. Gord said, ‘In the name of God, what . . . ?’

‘Followed you . . . tried to kill me . . . would have. I saw what you did. I saw it at the roadblock . . . Where are you going?’

‘Who needs to know?’

‘They stole the stelae . . . I saw you kill the soldiers. I want your help . . . Where are you going?’

Gord grinned. ‘I’m told we’re going to the Palacio Nacional, Guatemala City. It’s what I’m told.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m told it’s for a revolution.’

‘Count me . . .’

‘Stop babbling . . .’ The grin was gone from Gord. Playtime was over-extended. ‘If you are smart, lose yourself. You saw nothing, you heard nothing, you know nothing. Go and hitch yourself a ride, get yourself to Guatemala City, buy a ticket out. Forget, Mr Stranger, what you saw and heard.’

‘Please . . .’

Gord said, cold, ‘Go home and write a letter to your local paper, and tell the readers that Guatemala is an unhappy place. Leave it at that.’

‘For what they did, I want revenge.’

Gord said, ‘I am losing time, I have one thing to tell you . . .’

The man blazed back at him, ‘
Revenge
.’

‘I am trying to say it so that an imbecile will comprehend. Death warrant, got me? Bad news, got me? High probability of pain and tears, got me? So, do me the favour of turning round and getting lost soonest.’

The panted answer, defiant. ‘I want to help you to kill them.’

He stood his ground. He had not backed off. It was Gord who buckled.

‘Can you shoot?’

It was ridiculous. He saw the torn clothes of the man. It was grotesque. The man had no strength, and the glasses on his face were cracked in the right lens and the left arm was twisted so that the frame hung askew down his nose. It was pathetic. His sneaker shoes were shredded. There was blood dried on his face, smeared.

‘I am an archaeologist from the University of Minnesota. I have never fired a gun in my life . . .’

‘If you screw us I will break your back, that is not probability but certainty.’

Gord led.

There would be three minutes’ less rest time at the next halt.

‘You are a shit woman, you know that?’

‘There is no requirement, captain, for abuse,’ Alex said quietly.

‘You are a shit woman who comes here to interfere.’

‘I am accompanying the lady. The interference is the obstruction shown to her.’

‘You are a shit obstinate woman. You have no business in Playa Grande, no business in Guatemala.’

She was dogged. ‘The lady seeks the information that your government says should be freely available. The lady seeks the information . . .’

‘You are a shit woman, because you have an education and you come here amongst these simple people and you confuse them. You bring trouble here.’

‘She seeks the information, captain, as to the location of her husband’s grave . . .’

The captain carried in his two hands, held it across his thighs, a short and polished stave of ceiba wood. He held it tight and flexed his fingers round it and the whites of his knuckles showed. He had called her obstinate. The captain was correct in his judgement of Alex Pitt.

‘You should be off the base area within five minutes, out of Playa Grande within thirty minutes. Shit woman, understand me, Playa Grande could be a dangerous place . . .’

‘There is no need to add crude threats to insults, captain. I am merely seeking your co-operation in locating the grave of this woman’s husband. It is a justifiable request . . .’

‘Hear me, five minutes.’

She stood her ground. The captain glowered at her. There were armed men behind him. The widow tugged at her wrist. The widow wanted to be gone. The husband of the woman had been disappeared for four years. She had heard the story: men had come after dark to the house of wood and tin sheets and taken her husband and driven away with him, disappeared him. He would have been killed a day later, or a week later, or a month later. She was familiar with the case history: the man had had the courage to protest that land he farmed had been appropriated for the spread of a cattle
finca
, had complained to the owner of the
finca
. She felt the bone fingers stabbing in her flesh. She thought there was no more that she could do. She turned. Their loathing of her speared into her back. She tried to walk straight, as if they should not have the satisfaction of intimidating her. She stepped down from the verandah of the command centre of the military base at Playa Grande. She walked across the parade ground, past the soldiers, and past the armoured cars with their machine guns loaded, and past the sentry’s sandbagged wall. She should never show fear. She held the widow’s hand and felt the fright tremble of the small fist. She walked past the coiled barbed wire of the perimeter fence. The dog in the Land Rover roared for her, bounced at the back window. The widow broke Alex’s grip and scurried, elfin small, to other women who waited outside the camp gate. They were close to each other, the bright-dressed women, talking and gesturing. She tried to stay composed. Her safety was bluff. If she thought all the time of her safety then she might as well take the next flight out to Miami, turn her back on Guatemala and this widow, and the other widows. She poured water from a plastic bottle into the dog’s bowl and let it drink and fondled its neck. The widow came back to her.

‘It was not the right day to come . . .’