The Fighting Man (1993) (55 page)

‘. . . think like him. What would he do?’

He hated the man that he thought of each morning when he woke.

Victory company and Defence company were held back from the river. 1 platoon and 3 platoon waited by the river. Alpha section of 2 platoon went upstream on the east bank of the river, and Bravo section went upstream on the west bank. Charlie section moved downstream on the west bank, and Delta section were downstream on the east bank. The men of each section crawled on their elbows and on their knees.

They moved as the order had been given to them from their officer in the helicopter. Their heads were inches from the ground. They were to lift each loose leaf. Their eyes squinted in concentration. They were to test each fallen branch. For twenty yards each side of the river, upstream and downstream, east bank and west bank, they searched.

There was a stone. Beside the small stone, under where the leaves had been scattered, was the mark of half of the heel of a shoe. The tooth grin broke on the muddied face of the soldier. He shouted. The corporal came to him. The corporal shouted for the sergeant of Delta section. The sergeant of Delta section shouted for the officer of 2 platoon. The officer ran across the width of the river.

Arturo listening and first the smile and then the smile draining.

‘It is the one mark. It is half of a shoe’s heel. There are Indians with them, the vermin would wear shoes. But it is one mark. They can find nothing else . . .’

The sun was behind them. Tom stayed cold. The sun was dipping towards the Volcán de Fuego and the Volcán de Agua. He hated the man, cold hate each day that he woke, who carried the chit for the debt.

‘Don’t you have dogs? Can’t you put dogs in? With dogs you can follow them through the night.’

‘Was it convenient for you to come?’ Percy Martins asked.

She shrugged. ‘I’m here.’

‘I’m not a popular man in this building.’ He paused. ‘You see, I’m out of my time. Well, it’s not the occasion for me to be trawling for sympathy. What I’m trying to say, and it is remarkably rare for me, I am bothered about your man . . .’

He led her away from the front desk, away from the men who brought him the foul machine coffee, past the gum-chewing and leather-jacketed security fellows. They walked onto the bridge and the crowds of hurrying office workers and shop assistants flowed against them.

‘. . . I couldn’t abide to speak to that silly damn machine again. You want to know, my dear, what the news is. The news is both good and bad. No point gilding anything, too late for that, and you deserve to have it straight . . .’

She laughed, cold. She tensed. ‘Let’s get the good news out of the way.’

He tucked his gloved hand into the crook of her elbow, as if she was his niece. It was not important to her. She could smell the sharp marmalade on his breath and there were toast crumbs meshed in the brush of his moustache.

‘Your message went through. Remarkable, but they haven’t changed their cryptology for three years, doesn’t give us any trouble. It went through verbatim . . . Can’t say what they’ll do with it at their end, Havana, but it was fine leaving us, right . . . ?’

He tried to make a little joke of it, and she thought he wouldn’t have known a bad joke if it had bitten him. She could feel the clutch of his fingers on her arm. The pity of it was that she needed the old fart . . . It was ostentation, in her opinion, the way he smacked the tip of the furled umbrella on the paving. She took the big breath.

‘And the bad news . . . ?’

He gabbed. ‘They were ambushed. They were only a small group, when we last heard. They were ambushed by troops of the Kaibil battalion. They burned their way through. He has a flame thrower, it’s a hideous weapon, and he scorched a path through the ambush . . . I’ve a very good man reporting to me, excellent contacts . . . He tells me there is a father and mother of an inquest in the High Command as to how your man was able to break the ambush. But that’s not really the point, is it?’

She looked into the drawn face of Percy Martins, into the eyes that were furtive. The wind off the river snatched at his hair. ‘What is the point?’

‘They’ve had contact, the Kaibil battalion, and after contact there will be close pursuit. It will be close pursuit right to the landing strip. It will leave them vulnerable. Do I make myself plain, Miss Parker?’

She felt the shudder in her body. She took his hand from her arm, broke the grip. She strode away from him.

‘Stay close to your telephone tomorrow, there’s a dear girl . . .’ His voice trailed behind her, died.

She walked the pavements, and once she slammed into the rubbish bin bolted to a lamppost . . . close pursuit.

She crossed the streets, and twice there was the bellow of a taxi’s horn and the stretched scream of brakes . . . vulnerable.

She showed her ID to the Front Security.

She took the lift up.

She remembered him. Shy, not easy with her. Slow loving, not confident with her. She would never be so damn bloody stupid again. She remembered him in Ireland. The young Five girl who was winning the reputation and handling a player, and becoming an item with the regiment man who usually seemed to work the duty for her field protection. Her Gord, hooked to her little finger. Tour served, gone home, back to paper-pushing before Mr Hobbes decided she was ready to be chucked over the water again. Gord, on the short leave, ringing and being invited to the Battersea flat. Not the way it had been in Ireland, because there was no danger in a bloody Battersea flat, no hazard, no need to shelter behind him when the secret fear caught her. Never be so damn bloody stupid again . . . Threw him out. Not returned the calls, recognized the handwriting on the envelopes and sent them back . . . Gone back to Ireland, the second tour and extended, put him out of her mind because that was the creed of Five . . . There were other
career
women at Five, hell’s good careers and kicking the door down into the men’s club and doing the job a hell of a sight better . . . and no man and no love and no babies . . .

She sat silent at her desk and the flow of the open-plan office moved around her, unnoticed.

He could see the village that was away at the far side of the landing strip.

They sat in the bush scrub where they could see the oil lamps and the big fire that burned in the heart of the village that was on the far side of the landing strip.

The Street Boy stood shy for a moment in front of Gord, and watched as Gord replaced the field dressing on the wound. He had the rifle that he wanted and two magazines, loaded, for it, and he had four hand grenades.

He said that he was going to look for apples, anything to eat, and none of them seemed to hear him.

The Street Boy left them.

20

They heard the throb beat of the marimba music, the honey-sweet rhythm of the muffled drum tips on the metal tubes.

They sat in the darkness and they listened and they watched.

They saw the dancing figures that were highlighted against the big fire burning at the heart of the village.

They sat in the darkness on the far side of the landing strip and the night dew cold cut at them and the hunger in their stomachs bit at them. When the wind gathered and came from the west across the landing strip they could hear the marimba music better, but Gord cursed the wind because it carried the smells of the pig that had been cooked over the fire for eating. They had not eaten, none of them, since the stampede run through the ambush, since they had discarded everything that might have slowed them. The dog, too, growled for food.

Zed said it was the Dance of the Bull. Vee said to Gord that the bull was sacred and prized for its strength and nobility, and Zed chuckled and said that the bull was valued for the wealth carried low under its back haunches. The figure of the prancing bull was against the fire and a great head had been made for it of cloth and painted wood and it leaped and charged and then backed away from the children. Gord watched the children. The children were decked for the fiesta, bright shirts and coloured skirts, and their cries of happiness came to him on the wind. In the shit corner of the shit country, the children scattered before the rush of the bull, shrieking in the fun of it, then rushed back as the bull retreated. He saw the floating movement around the bull of the taunting butterflies . . . If the plane came,
if
, and if they flew out, and if it were known to the military what strip they had used, then the village would feel the counterstrike. The homes of the children would be burned, the mothers of the children would be scattered, the fathers of the children would be shot . . . Gord watched the dancing of the butterflies around the bull, in front of the fire, and he heard the cheering of the mothers and the fathers as the children ran again from the charge of the bull, and the beat of the music grew.

Gord sat alone. He leaned his back against the cart and felt the harsh arms of the frame against his spine. He had loaded the tubes, slow but he had achieved it, and the fuel carried in the wheelbarrow was now exhausted, and he would have no further use for the air pressure cylinder. He sat alone but they talked to him in English so that he was a part of them. She was wonderful, Alex, and she was hunched among the low scrub bushes before the cleared area that led across to the goat-grazed landing strip, and she cradled the head of Eff, and Gord thought her as resolute as barbed wire. There were the soft and whispered voices of Jorge and Harpo and Zeppo. He was sorry that the Street Boy had gone . . . The dance was finished. The marimba music was lost. The children’s voices faded. The bull was gone. The big fire in the heart of the village died.

Only the soft and whispered voices for company.

Later, he would make the fire heaps along the landing strip, when the village slept, when the butterflies rested, to guide the plane in, if it came.

Jorge talking fast. ‘. . . Go to Europe. Italy would be best. My sister is there, her husband would welcome me, her children would want to know me. I could stay with her until I was started. What I would like is to get the job of an auto salesman. Italy is best because then I could get the job of selling the Ferrari. It is fourteen years since I have seen my sister. I would sell the 512 TR model of the Ferrari. Think of the commission . . . It sells at 200,000 US dollars. If you sell it then you get to drive it. It has, do you know, 311 kilometres per hour top speed, zero to ninety-nine kilometres per hour in 4.8 seconds, that is just incredible . . . I think I will go to Italy and I think that I will sell the Ferrari . . .’

And what suit he would wear in Palacio Nacional, forgotten. And whether it would be the American Ambassador first, forgotten. And Gord’s future . . . ?

Harpo said, ‘. . . Myself, Canada. The old guy, he said Canada was good. He said they have a big programme for refugees, and they give them good money. The cold is the hell there, but they live with it, I can live with it. On the west of Canada you can go out in a boat and you can catch the big Pacific salmon, wonderful fish. It is not bad when they pay you money so that each day you can go fishing in the Pacific for salmon. I think I would like Canada . . .’

And the charge with the machine gun on the gate of the camp at Playa Grande, forgotten. And Gord’s future . . . ?

Zeppo said, ‘. . . I think I would try to get to Miami, but the bastard is getting there. I don’t know whether I could manage the crossing, the open boat, bad currents. Perhaps they will let me go from Havana. I would like to have a coffee stall in Miami. Just like we were in Havana, there are so many refugees in exile in Miami, and they have to have a place to drink coffee and read the old newspapers. Make strong coffee, and take the money . . .’

And Gord’s future . . . ?

And Alex’s future . . . ?

The soft and whispered voices of the Ferrari salesman and the salmon fisherman and the bar owner played close to him. The village was silent and the lights had gone. A small crescent of the moon hung above the length of the landing strip. He stared down at his watch. Another hour to be killed before he could be certain that the village was settled, before he should go and make the fire heaps that would guide the plane, if it came.

And Gord’s future . . . ?

The pilot walked down the line of them and he shook the hand of each of the base officers.

It was three minutes to midnight, three minutes to the time for the take-off.

The area of the apron in front of the hangar was bright from the high floodlights. He wore a woollen cap tight down over his scalp and a thick fleece-lined flying jacket over his one-piece fatigues and insulated long pants over his buttocks and thighs, and heavy boots that were proof against the cold in the goddamn Antonov. He could smile, dry, because every officer with the rank of major and above had stayed at the base through the evening and into the night, and then made a line so that he could shake their hands . . . Like none of the goddamn bastards ever expected to see him again. The base commander was last in the line. The pilot saluted, sloppy, and he shook the hand of the base commander, loose, and then he gave him his handkerchief and the loose change coins in his pocket and his air force ID and his gate entry card, and he gave him his wallet which had banknotes and the photograph of his wife . . . It was what he thought of a piss awful order.