The Fighting Man (1993) (47 page)

Tom heaved back on the stick.

‘It’s the second oldest one . . . back to the ’Cong and the NVA . . . hope you didn’t swallow it . . . You attract a helicopter force in, and when they set down they’re amongst sharp poles and that’s what the infantry have to jump onto, and it plays hell with the undercarriage of the birds. If you’d put your ugly bastards in there,
if
, you’d have taken casualties and you might have lost a lift, and then you’re cautious, and then you don’t try it the next time. It’s like I said, it’s about domination.’

He climbed again to the cruising altitude.

Tom chuckled.

The signal took him away to the west. The direction of the march had changed. It was a game to him, and the game made Tom Schultz comfortable.

‘You have my full and warm congratulations, Mario.’

He basked. He stood by his jeep. There was a loudspeaker attachment that linked to the radio hook-up. He was surrounded by officers and NCOs. They were on the road that ran from Zaculeu to the Los Encuentros Junction, eleven miles due south from Santa Cruz del Quiché. Ahead of him, clear in the afternoon light, the blued mountain range stretched above the forest, and further and paler were the Cuchumatanes.

‘They are in retreat, most definite.’

The voice of the general commanding G-4 (Logistics) boomed across the road. ‘You go for the kill, Mario.’

‘I take the analogy of a grape that falls from a vine. The grape falls to the ground. The flesh of the fruit rots. What is left is the seed. It is the seed that I seek. I will stamp with the full force of the Kaibil battalion on the seed, split it, break it, destroy it. The seed will never produce further fruit when the Kaibil battalion has stamped on it. Oh yes, I go for the kill . . .’

He broke the radio link. Two helicopters were in descent onto the road. The helicopter of the American was refuelled and the engine was on power. More troops spilled from the helicopters that landed. He tossed off the headset. The American was in the air. He looked into the smirking faces of his officers and his NCOs.

‘They will run and there is nowhere for them to hide. They will manoeuvre and there is nowhere for them to go. They are the chicken in spasm without the head. No, I will not engage them while they still have the capacity to fight, I will not sacrifice any of you for a gesture. But, and I promise it to you, you will have no cause for impatience. It will be the Kaibiles that destroy them, the baby whore Ramírez and the Englishman with the fire, you have my promise . . .’

The helicopter of the American was a diminishing speck framed against the mountain majesty. Unseen, they were there, and tracked.

It was the drone of a sweet honey bee. They had gone west as he had instructed and the helicopter had been with them, high and hidden by the mat of the tree branches. They had gone north and he had dared to hope. They had gone north in a window of silence. The helicopter was with them again. Sometimes it was behind them, and sometimes it circled them, and sometimes there was the deeper throb of the engines as it hovered ahead of them. They went east now. Only the one bird, an albatross flying with them. The aircraft had not come and bombed behind them, as he had promised they would. A wing of helicopters had not come to land among the stakes and disgorge troops into the trap, as he had promised they would. The drone of the bird, unseen, the bee cut at the nerve of the men.

A guerrilla, one of those from near to the start, had raised his machine gun to the canopy, aimed at the hidden tormentor, blasted, showered himself in cones and needles.

A man from Playa Grande, who had fought well at the approach to the gate of the garrison’s barracks at Santa Cruz del Quiché, had torn off the uniform he had worn proudly and was bent in his underpants hunting in a plastic bag for his own clothes.

A man from Nebaj who was respected, whom others followed, took what food he could carry from an abandoned sack, and shrugged at Gord, and seemed to wish him well, and slipped from the path and away between the trees.

Always the helicopter was with them. So tired. Gord carried two machine guns now, and the belt ammunition for both of them and he had the weight of his pack and the straps cut in his back. The pace of the march was hurried by the settling fear. The Archaeologist pushed the cart, and the Street Boy was alongside him with the wheelbarrow, and the Canadian limped behind and his face was screwed up in pain that he would not admit to. Jorge was waiting for him where a small stream had to be forded. Water to their waists, and a man slipped and threw down the ammunition box that he carried, lost it in the water, and crossed and left it.

Wide-eyed Jorge panting. ‘We turn, yes? We have gone back enough . . .’

There was the rattle of the pitch of the helicopter’s engine as the bird above them banked.

‘Turn where, Jorge?’

Zeppo was there, arms folded. Harpo leaned against a tree and picked the grime from his nails. Groucho sat with his head between his knees.

‘We turn, we find a new way. We go for Guatemala City.’

The march splashed out of the water, passed them.

‘Have you asked them? Have you asked how many will follow you?’

Jorge had Gord held close.

‘What do we do?’

His fists hung onto the wrapped belts of machine-gun ammunition and the cloth of the tunic top. Breathing hard. Pure sympathy, clean water sympathy welled in Gord.

‘I don’t tell you what to do.’

‘It is walking again in our own blood. Going back is losing hope . . . I had memorized my speech. I could tell you what I would have said when I stood on the steps of the Palacio Nacional, and I could tell you what I would have said to the Ambassador of the United States. Do you know about arrogance, Gord? Do you know how it can destroy you? We should turn, Gord, stand and fight them . . .’

‘I will take you home,’ Gord said.

She had spent the night and most of the morning in a closed van that was parked where the spyholes could observe the row of lock-up garages behind the block. A wasted night and a wasted morning because the Irishman had not shown. The man with her in the van with the telescope and the camera loathed her because, in the company of a woman, he was too shy, boring slob, to use the bucket in the corner of the back of the van. When the van had been left back at the transport pool, when the man had run for the Underground and his journey home, she found a telephone box and dialled into her answerphone.

‘Damn thing again . . . I’m sorry but the news is not that good . . . Open line and all that . . . They were poised for the last dash, but that’s history. They were blocked and they’ve turned. If it was to work then it always had to be the dash. It’s retreat time. More when I have it . . .’

Cathy Parker watched the litter blowing in the gutter of a London street.

The Priest had around him all those who had come from Nebaj. He had the men and the women and the children, and the guitar was on his back. The weapons of the men were neatly stacked, wigwams of rifles formed around the ammunition boxes and the mortar bombs. The Priest smiled, droll. It was not necessary for him to explain . . . Gord understood. The helicopter was still with them, tormenting in its presence, hovering, searching for carrion. He wondered if they would be rocketed or strafed or hit by the exploding napalm bombs. He shook the Priest’s hand and the grip was granite hard. The people from Nebaj and the Priest moved away from the march, into the gathering darkness, away from the setting sun that threw the light shards down between the trees.

They made a different path, they went west.

Only when the darkness came, only when the march blundered in the forest in the night, did they lose the helicopter.

Gord walked with Alex, and he held her hand as he walked, and in his mind there was a prayer for the Priest.

The headlights of the big station wagon found them. Kramer went past the lorries and the armoured personnel carriers, and past the men who were sleeping at the roadside, and past the fires of the cooking stoves, and past the men who were cleaning their weapons in readiness for going forward. He detoured off the road to get by the silent helicopters. His lights found Arturo. The colonel was beside the communications vehicle and shouting into a radio. He thought he saw the flier in the shadow on the far side of the vehicle. A hell of a journey in darkness, and no escort, and each roadblock had been a cat fight of wills. Four and a half hours it had taken him, but no way that Kramer would permit the dossier biography out of his own sweet care. It was a big favour, a hell of a big favour . . . but Colonel Mario Arturo, i/c the Kaibil battalion, was a coming man, and coming goddamn faster if it was true what he had heard, that the shit column had been turned. And a big favour would be called in, some time. This year, next year, some year, Colonel Mario Arturo would be called to account by the Agency . . . Kramer bustled forward. No waiting for Arturo to come off the radio. It was Agency business, and Agency business was priority.

‘Colonel, I think we have what you want. Pulled the strings damned hard, but we’ve got it . . .’

Arturo was off the radio. Kramer opened the briefcase that was fastened by a slender chain to his wrist. He produced the sheets of paper in a cellophane sleeve.

‘. . . His name is Brown. He’s the one on the flame thrower. Just a crazy guy. British. He was Special Forces down in the Gulf and would have had a medal for rescuing one of our pilots from a downed helicopter, but he freaked. He went native with some resistance group, and when he came out he insulted, bad heavy talk, one of our senior officers. Crazy obstinate. Wouldn’t apologize, so Gordon Benjamin Brown went to the wall. Colonel, it’s all here to help you go get him . . .’

The flier had come round the front of the communications vehicle.

Kramer passed the dossier to Arturo. Too right, he’d rein him in some good wet day. Too right, he’d have Mario Arturo pocketed.

The flier said, ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch it . . . What was his name?’

‘Brown. Crazy bastard. Gordon Benjamin Brown.’

17

‘Brown. Crazy bastard. Gordon Benjamin Brown.’

A downed pilot, a trigger and an explosion. An insult to a senior American officer. A going to the wall.

Three triggers, three explosions.

‘I’m sorry, don’t think me dumb. I’m sorry, Mario, for interrupting,’ Tom said. He was close to Kramer, and it was an interruption and the frown cut the colonel’s forehead, and he was gestured to be quiet. He pressed, ‘Could you, please, say that name again . . . ?’

‘Brown, Gordon Benjamin Brown . . .’ Kramer laughed. ‘You can read yourself into him, plot him and know him, colonel . . .’

There had never been a surname used. The given name had been abbreviated. Special Forces and, of course, they didn’t wear their names on the combat gear. The one he had thought to be the senior NCO had used the name of ‘Gord’. No exchange of names after the pick-up from beside the downed Apache bird, not time because the Iraqis were closing and the big machine gun mounted on the rollbar of the Land Rover had been hammering to suppress their advance. No exchange of
pleasantries
, just the pick-up and the body of the crew man abandoned still strapped in his cockpit seat. The officer, ‘Gord’, had been at the wheel of the Land Rover, and beetling it out, and one of their own guys had been hit, and it had just been a hell of a noise of gunfire. He had lain amongst the legs and the spare gear and the sandbags in the open back of the Land Rover and they’d had their hands full with their own casualty. Not a time for pleasantries and chat and introductions. They’d given him the jab and he’d been gone. They’d called him ‘Gord’ and that was the first trigger.

‘. . . What we gather from the Brits is that he will stay with the core guys. He’s not the man who’ll run out on them to keep his own skin safe on his back. Me, if I were him, I’d be ditching those deadbeats and legging for the frontier on my own . . .’

Whatever it was, probably morphine, had pretty much knocked him down. And after he’d come back to the living he was the passenger and couldn’t help, and the one they called ‘Gord’ was busy with the driving and had taken them into loose sand, gone through all the power gears on the low ratios, gone where the Iraqis in their lorries couldn’t follow. What had brought him right back to the living had been the thunder in the darkness of the helicopter coming in for the casevac lift. They were more concerned, these guys, with their own man, but there had been fast handshakes before the collapsible canvas stretcher had been heaved into the hatch. Fast handshakes before the winch man on his own bird had pulled him in. He’d heard it from an orderly in the field hospital, and it was all round the Dhahran base, that a Brit Special Forces guy had bad-mouthed a ranking brigadier general and dug himself a hole in shit. It was the second trigger.

‘. . . He’ll be with them, that’s the Brits’ indication, and if he’s with them he’ll be at their pace. They’ll get no help, not with the word going round every village, every community, that they are bad news,
failed
bad news. Their chance of making it to the Mexican border is zilch zero, not now that the weather’s flipped . . .’

A general had visited him. There had been few enough casualties, few enough for each man and woman in the field hospital to get a visit from rank. How was he coming along? Good . . . Was he happy with the way he was looked after? Great . . . Did he need anything? No . . . Had he had the telephone to ring home? No one to ring . . . No, wait, sir, just one thing, he would like to thank, personally, the Special Forces officer who had saved him, brave guy. Forget it, soldier . . . Candies from home, that was OK. Letters written in child scrawl from classes in west Virginia and Arkansas, that was okay. No chance to thank, personally, the officer who had saved him. Forget it, soldier . . . And the orderly had told him afterwards, what he’d heard round the base, that the Brit Special Forces guy was on open arrest waiting on court goddamn martial and failing big to make the necessary apology. It was the third trigger.