The Fighting Man (1993) (51 page)

They were among the old smoothed rocks that were lichen-covered and moss-coated. It was the absence of the birdsong that had alerted him. The big trees clung, thin-rooted, to the ground amongst the rocks. They were climbing, and the helicopter drone had dropped behind them. He was alerted because the happiness of the bright-feathered birds was gone from the forest. He had made the signals for care, caution, back down the march. No song from the birds, only the creak of the cart wheels and the whine of the wheelbarrow.

. . . One man always had to fire first, the law of the ambush . . .

Gord knew the sound. It was the sound from the man who fired first. The metalled click, the sudden movement ahead, the metalled scrape. The firing, the breech jam, the clearing of the breech. The man who fired first would be the man who had the best moment and the best aim and the best opportunity, and he had jammed. A second won, two seconds gained, three seconds achieved. Using three seconds, dropping behind the cart, and hoping, praying, crying that the men behind him would use three seconds . . .

The jam and the clearing of the breech of a lieutenant’s Uzi machine pistol, close-quarters and point-blank weapon, was signal enough.

The shooting broke around Gord.

The hammer of the gunfire. The crack of the incoming. The howl of ricochets off the old smoothed rocks.

By three seconds, surprise had been lost.

Going through the routine that he had learned, and the bullets’ flight above him and beside him. The firing ahead of him, and the firing of the machine guns from behind him. Heaving the firing lever. Flat on his stomach, reaching up, grabbing at the rusted arms of the cart and twisting them and jerking them so that the aim of the nozzle jets swayed across the rocks, among the rough of the tree trunks. Black oil squirting haphazard in front of him. Gord wrenched the ignition trigger. The fire flew.

The fire snaked. The fire leaped among the rocks and lingered on them, then burst forward. The fire splashed against the wide trunks of the trees, ignored them, then thrust forward.

Rich fire and black smoke cavorting ahead of him.

A wall of smoke and fire ahead of him.

A terror of hell in front of him, an inferno of smoke and fire, and all the time there was the hammer of the machine guns and the rifles on automatic behind him.

Ahead of him they had no target.

They had the fire and the smoke around them, and the fire caught them and the smoke choked them. Choking on the smoke, screaming, caught by the fire, a soldier ran towards them. The gunfire found him. Gord had his arm up, and he waved them forward from behind him. It was his training. If an ambush was broken then an ambush should be charged. The fire, and the terror of the fire, had kicked the hole in the ambush line. Precious seconds won and gained and achieved by the fire. He was bent behind the cart and he punched with the power of his legs to drive the brute forward, and he swerved the cart’s arm, manoeuvred the brute so that the oil and the flame, the smoke and the fire, played over new rocks and new tree trunks.

Gord led the charge.

He turned once, fast. They were stumbling and careering after him. He saw Jorge . . . The Street Boy had the wheelbarrow . . . He saw Zeppo and Harpo and Groucho . . . Eff and Vee and Zed . . . Alex with the dog . . . It was stuck. The left wheel was blocked by a fire-scorched rock and a twisted tree root. He killed the firing lever and the flame died and the oil dribbled short. He had the cart clear.

He ran through the smoke, and through the burned undergrowth and he heard the stampede flight coming after him.

Gord shouted, ‘Move it. They’ll be behind . . . follow us. We’ve scattered them, they’ll regroup, follow us . . . Hurry, hurry . . .’

Gord ran, driving the cart forward, until his lungs sobbed for rest.

He could not run. His hip would not allow him to run. The Canadian had the machine gun hooked under his arm and took the weight on his bent elbow, and he levered himself forward on the stick. He went through the settling smoke. He saw the soldier’s face and it was the body of the soldier that was burned, and it was a young face. He had seen before the faces, in death, of young men that were unmarked except in terror. The ground around him was a carpet of guttering fire and it seemed that it was the cones from the high fir trees of the forest that burned the longest. He saw a soldier who seemed stuck with adhesive to a tree trunk, as if he had cannoned into the trunk and then the fire had caught them together and held them. He could no longer hear them ahead of him. He could not run and they were too far ahead of him. He was beyond the fire and the smoke was behind him. He knew what he would do. He lurched forward, went further, followed the thin wheel marks of the cart and the wide tread of the wheelbarrow, because he was not yet satisfied that he had found the place he looked for. He did not hear so well now, and it was worse after the gunfire, but he had heard clear enough what Gord had shouted . . . The enemy was scattered, would regroup, would follow . . . He could not run, and what Gord had said had seemed damn plain enough.

There was a place where two rocks were close together, big rocks, more than his own height, good granite rocks.

He went through the gap between the rocks and he sank down on his knees. It was a heaven to take the weight from his hip. He chucked the stick behind him, and he extended the bipod legs from underneath the barrel of the machine gun. The rocks gave him good cover and he had taken a position that gave him a fine view down the descent of the hillside and back towards the smoke and the small fires. He hooked the belts and bullets, ball and tracer, off his body and loaded the weapon. It would have been better if he had had the Street Boy with him to feed the belt, but he thought that he could manage alone.

He waited for the troops that had scattered to regroup and then to follow.

The Canadian thought of the Legion Club. He wondered what they would hear, Dave and Bill and Duggie and Hamish. He would have liked to have sat in the bar, been served lager beer by the steward, one last time. One last time he would have liked to have sat under the reproduction paintings of the Lancaster bomber and the Hurricane fighter. One last time he would have liked to have looked into the cabinets that held the old campaign medals and the faded ribbons. One last time he would have liked to have played cribbage with Dave and Bill and Duggie and Hamish.

He saw the first of the soldiers coming up the slope. He squinted down the barrel, over the V sight and the needle sight . . . Gord needed the time . . . He would have liked to have told Dave and Bill and Duggie and Hamish about the Englishman with the flame thrower, and about the young woman with the dog, and about . . . There were three of them now, coming slow. The butt of the machine gun was hard against his shoulder and his finger was tight on the trigger, as it had been when the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa had closed the Falaise Gap, 21st August in 1944. Of course, they would get round behind him, but not goddamn yet.

The Canadian fired.

It would be good if Miriam gave his medals to the secretary of the Legion Club so that they went into the cabinets on the wall, so that Dave and Bill and Duggie and Hamish could see them. There was the red streak of the tracer, one bullet in four.

They were still running. They were still gasping. They kept the pace.

Away behind was the clatter of the heavy machine gun.

The firing was faint, distant. The firing was short bursts, as the instructors taught on the range. Disciplined short bursts, not panic firing.

They were together. Gord looked at them, into their faces. He had run with the cart. He had not stopped, he had not checked. He had run for his life. He rounded on them.

‘Didn’t you watch for him?’

Jorge said, ‘We were all fighting, Gord, it was not just you that was fighting.’

‘Didn’t you help him?’

Alex said, ‘It is the pain of all of us, Gord, we are all responsible.’

He took the handles of the cart and heaved it forward, away from the diminishing sound of the short bursts of the heavy machine gun.

She came in through the front door of her flat, and she hung her anorak on the hook behind the door. She walked to the answerphone. She put it to Play.

She went into the kitchen. She hated to cook for herself. She was taking margarine from the fridge and a sliced loaf and a square of cheese.

‘. . . Hello, my good friend, I’ll be quite bereft when I lose your microchip conversation . . . It’s confused down there. There’s been an action, there are casualties, there’s a follow-up sweep . . . My fellow’s done rather well to have extracted that much . . . It may be all over, but then it might not . . . Can’t tell you what I don’t know . . . Don’t you dare quote me, but I’m rather rooting for your man . . .’

There was a tomato in the fridge, shrunken like an old face. A cheese and tomato and diet margarine sandwich would be Cathy Parker’s tea and dinner. She was cutting the tomato.

‘. . . Fuck, a machine . . . Aren’t you there? I was with Gord yesterday. A bad corner of Guatemala . . . It’s his message . . . It’s desperate for him. He needs wings. The Cubans brought him in, they have to bring him out. You’re to fix it. Date is 27. Time is 0500 local. Place is 1509 stroke 9052. Christ, I don’t know how you do that, get him out. Repeat, 27 hyphen 5 hyphen 1509 stroke 9052 . . .’

She heard the distorted thunder and then the call was cut.

She wrote it, 27-5-1509/9052.

She left the tomato and the cheese and the packet of margarine and the sliced loaf on the kitchen table. She left her front door wide open. She ran for the stairs.

They brought three stretchers from the forest to the cleared place where the helicopters had landed.

Behind the stretcher parties two soldiers dragged a body.

It had come over the radio that a gringo had been killed in the action.

He could just see the legs of the body that was pulled heavy through the long grass from the trees, and the big boots.

There was the fit. It slotted. The beacon signal was way ahead of where they had landed, six miles and might have been more. It made sense to Tom from what he had heard of the briefing by Kramer. Two hours of time had been won. Brown, Gordon Benjamin, would have been looking to win time. He knew they had used the fire and there had been the panic shouts on the radio, but then the fire had gone. It made sense that the flame thrower had been suppressed. But the guy had had a machine gun, and he had had grenades. Brown, Gordon Benjamin, would have stayed back. It had been all over their radio as they had circled. Alpha section joining what was left of Bravo section, then Delta section, then Charlie section. Then 1 platoon linking to 3 platoon and hooked up with the sections of 2 platoon. A shit of a firefight, running two hours, down below the tree canopy, played over the radio to them. One machine gun, and as many grenades as one man could have carried, and first a platoon tied down, and then three platoons held up. And all the time Arturo had been screaming for them to get him flanked, blow the bastard away. He wondered if he would recognize him. From the briefing, it fitted.

There was the boyish smile on Arturo’s face and Tom tried to stay cold.

The briefing said that Gord would not have quit.

Tom followed Arturo towards the soldiers who dragged the body.

The briefing said that Gordon Benjamin Brown would have hung around.

They came to the body. The soldiers dropped the ankles of the body and stood back as if they feared their commander. Tom saw Arturo rock. He saw the smile wiped. He came to Arturo’s shoulder and he looked down into the long grass, down through the blue and the gold of the wild flowers. A big man and an
old
man. A man who had lived his life. The body had been hit by many rounds of automatic fire, and it was scarred by the erratic pattern of grenade fragments. There was bright-green grass in the snow colour of the body’s hair. He had never before seen living the man who was now the body, not when he had been pulled from the desert and into the Land Rover, not when he had shaken the hand and been helped into the casevac bird. The right hand of the body was locked in a closed claw fist and Arturo bent and prised it open and the folded cloth badge fell out from the grip, and Tom saw the badge that might have been worn on a veteran’s blazer.

Tom stayed cold.

Just the once Arturo had rocked. He didn’t swear and he didn’t curse and he didn’t stamp.

Arturo said quietly, ‘Let’s go flying again . . .’

Can’t we do it?’

‘Most certainly we cannot.’

‘We have people in Belize, could put a helicopter in.’

‘And start a war, no . . .’

Cathy Parker blazed, ‘They’ve bugger all else to do . . .’

He had been about to go home. There was a nice little beat on the Wylye waiting for Percy Martins when he drove down to Wiltshire in the morning, and he needed the evening to prepare his flies and wax his lines. He had been into his coat when the front desk had rung upstairs, and he had said he would be there directly. She might have run all the way from Battersea, and across the bridge. He took her arm and manoeuvred her out through the swing door. They stood on the pavement.