Tyranny in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “But how did they know about the gold in Sergeant Garza’s pocket?” he asked himself, wondering whom the money had belonged to before the attack.

  It was unlikely that Felipe Garza had come by the gold by honest means. Gold was as scarce in Central America as teeth in a fighting rooster. Since the global war, everyone was dirt-poor, and a man only had what he was strong enough to keep by force.

  Porfirio sighted the walls around the hacienda in the distance. He had to be careful of a search by the deadly Englishman, Jim Strunk. Strunk was perhaps the most ruthless man on Perro Loco’s staff, if you did not count Paco Valdez.

  Valdez was truly crazy, even more so than the comandante himself.

  Private Porfirio Negra saw an unusually tall palm tree to the left of the road. He decided this was where he should hide his money until he gave his report to the comandante.

  He slowed the Yamaha and steered off the trail.

  Jim Strunk heard the high-pitched sound of a motorcycle and when he did, he was certain that something was wrong.

  He left the hacienda by a wrought-iron gate in the back wall after nodding to a pair of armed guards.

  “I’ll be back,” he said softly. “Don’t let anyone in unless you know them.”

  He crept into the jungle, drawing his 9mm pistol, making sure of the loads in the clip before he jacked a round into the firing chamber.

  The motorcycle engine was quiet now.

  Porfirio dug furiously with his hands at the base of the palm tree. A parrot whistled from a nearby branch and somewhere deeper in the rain forest, a spider monkey called to its mate, a chattering noise.

  He thought about the money he’d taken from Sergeant Garza’s pocket. Felipe Garza was a confidant of Paco Valdez, and Valdez was seldom wrong when he placed trust in his officers and the men who served them.

  “But no one has any gold,” he said under his breath as the hole he dug went deeper, near a thick root of the coconut palm above him. “Where did it come from?”

  Porfirio heard a click.

  “What? Who is there?”

  No one answered him.

  “I know I did not imagine it . . .”

  Even the parrot was silent now. Porfirio’s eyes swept the rain-forest shadows around him. He sensed a presence, yet no one was there.

  “I am imagining it,” he told himself, returning to his slow digging, damp earth buried beneath his fingernails, clinging to the palms of his hands.

  “Nice hole you’ve got there,” a voice said, a voice thick with a British accent.

  Porfirio froze. His rusting Colt .45 automatic was in a holster tied to his belt.

  He searched the forest for the source of the voice. “Who is there?” he asked.

  “What do you intend to put in the hole?” the same voice asked.

  His mind raced. “Nothing. I am digging for fishing worms, señor. Who are you?”

  “You know who I am.”

  “No. I am Private Porfirio Negra, a soldier in the service of Comandante Perro Loco.”

  “Why are you digging that hole?”

  “Worms. Worms, so I can go fishing at the river after I give my report to the comandante.”

  “What do you have to report?”

  “An ambush in the mountains near Guatemala. I was assigned to Sergeant Garza’s command. We captured five trucks full of ammunition and fuel for airplanes. Someone attacked us in the jungle near the border. Everyone was killed, including Sergeant Garza and Corporal Beto.”

  “Who led the attack?” the Englishman asked, and now Porfirio was certain who he was. Jim Strunk, the executioner for Perro Loco, was asking the questions.

  “I do not know. They had black paint on their faces and we could not see them clearly. There were two of them, a man and a woman.”

  Strunk’s face showed his disbelief. “You mean only two soldiers were able to take out an entire convoy?”

  “Sí,” Porfirio said, nodding his head rapidly up and down.

  Strunk shook his head. “Then your Sergeant Garza must have been criminally negligent. It is a good thing he died in the attack, or Perro Loco would skin him alive for his carelessness.”

  Strunk stared at the ground at Porfirio’s feet. “What are you putting in the hole?” he asked again, this time with more emphasis.

  “I was only digging for worms, señor.”

  “A strange place to dig for fish bait. Stand up and put your hands over your head.”

  “But why?” Porfirio asked, fear making his heart hammer in his chest. “I need to give my report to the comandante at the hacienda.”

  “You weren’t in too big a hurry to stop to dig for worms,” the man said. “It seems odd, if you have an important message for your commander.”

  “My wife . . . my family is hungry,” Porfirio said, coming to his feet. “We need fish. The river is not far away.”

  “Too damn far for you to be digging here. Keep those hands high while I search you.”

  Porfirio knew the henchman would find his gold and then he would be killed. It was better to take the only chance he had of coming out of this encounter alive.

  As the Englishman leaned close to pat his pockets, Porfirio grabbed desperately at the hand holding the pistol, twisting with all of his might and spinning to throw the man over his hip.

  Strunk dropped the pistol, his face grimacing with pain as he hit the ground and rolled quickly to his feet.

  Porfirio dropped to his knees, frantically searching for the gun, which had disappeared in the tall pampas grass.

  He looked up when he heard the snick of a knife being drawn from a scabbard.

  Strunk was grinning now, his teeth flashing in the sunlight as he walked slowly toward Porfirio.

  Porfirio got to his feet, his hands out from his side. He’d never liked knife fights, even as a teenager. He pulled his knife from his own scabbard on his belt and crouched, knowing his life depended on being quicker and better at this than the Englishman.

  They circled each other in the dappled shadows of the jungle, both keeping their eyes on the chest of the other man in the traditional knife-fighting technique.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Strunk said, “but it’s not gonna be quick. I think I’ll gut you like a hog and watch you bleed to death slowly.”

  Porfirio grinned, though fear almost made his heart stop its ceaseless hammering. “Don’t be too sure, gringo,” he muttered. “I was raised fighting with the knives. What does an Englishman know of such things?”

  “Oh, you might be surprised, you cocky bastard,” Strunk answered as he continued to circle the native. “My instructor in the SAS could cut off your ears and give you a shave at the same time before you could shit.”

  When Porfirio opened his mouth to answer, Strunk made his move, feinting with his knife hand toward the soldier’s groin.

  As Porfirio lowered his knife in defense, Strunk whirled in a spinning side-kick, his combat boot taking Porfirio in the side of his face, smashing his jaw and spinning him in a full circle to land on his hands and knees in the grass.

  Quick as a jungle cat, Strunk pounced onto his back, his right boot stamping down on Porfirio’s knife hand, crushing the knuckles and breaking three of his fingers.

  “Aiyee!” Porfirio screamed, letting go of the knife and rolling to the side in a desperate attempt to dislodge the much larger and stronger man.

  Strunk wrapped his left arm around Porfirio’s neck and rolled with him until the soldier was on top and Strunk on the bottom.

  With a calm, deliberate motion, Strunk reversed his hold on the K-Bar in his hand and stabbed it into Porfirio’s abdomen, just above the pubic bone.

  With a grunt, Strunk jerked upward, slicing Porfirio’s stomach open from pubis to rib cage. As his victim screamed again, Strunk kicked him off and jumped to his feet, standing over the wounded man and grinning again.

  “I told you it would not be quick,” he said in a low voice, his eyes sparkling as he watched the native slow
ly bleed out. “I love the smell of blood in the morning,” Strunk whispered, copying a line from one of his favorite movies.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Coop drove their stolen jeep down narrow jungle trails while Jersey held their M-16’s pointing forward, ready for trouble. They’d laid the jeep’s windshield down flat so they would have a ready-made rifle rest should the need arise.

  When they came to a fork in the trail and Coop took a right turn, Jersey glanced in his direction. “Do you have any idea where you’re going?” she asked.

  “Of course not, dear,” he replied cheerfully.

  “Don’t call me dear!” she snapped, forcing her eyes back onto the road.

  “Why not?” he asked. “You’re acting like a typical wife with your backseat driving and questions about my ability to get us where we want to go.”

  “If I were your wife, I’d’ve already committed suicide, Coop.”

  “If you were my wife, you wouldn’t have to commit suicide, ’cause I’d’ve already killed you.”

  “In your dreams.”

  “No, in your dreams, dear,” he rejoined. Then both laughed, enjoying the game they played on a constant basis.

  They rounded a sharp turn in the jungle trail and Coop slammed on the brakes to keep from hitting an oncoming vehicle. As his jeep slewed sideways on the trail, it came to rest radiator-to-radiator with another similar jeep.

  The four soldiers in the other vehicle stared wide-eyed at Coop and Jersey, still dressed in their jungle cammies. Jersey acted first, thumbing off the safety on her M-16 and spraying the soldiers with a quick burst on full automatic.

  The twenty rounds in the M-16’s magazine tore into the troops, making them jump and wiggle in a grotesque dance of death as the molten lead shredded their bodies. They barely had time to scream before it was over, the small clearing filling with smoke and the acrid smell of cordite as the echoes of the M-16’s explosions still echoed through the afternoon gloom of the jungle.

  Coop grabbed his M-16 from the seat next to Jersey and pushed her from the jeep, just as the front of their hood exploded under the impact of hundreds of 9mm bullets fired from the four vehicles behind the one they’d shot up.

  “Hit the bush!” Coop screamed to Jersey as he followed her into the surrounding jungle in a running crouch, bullets pocking the dirt at his feet and riddling leaves over his head.

  He and Jersey both hit the dirt at the same time, diving behind a fallen tree just as its bark was shredded by a fusillade of slugs.

  Coop grabbed a fragmentation grenade off the harness on his chest, pulled the ring with his teeth, and lobbed the grenade over the tree in a sidearm throw.

  Jersey raised her eyebrows at him. “Your teeth?”

  He shrugged, his face flaming red. “I saw John Wayne do it in Sands of Iwo Jima.”

  Jersey’s whispered “Jesus . . .” was drowned out by the explosion of the grenade and the subsequent screams of dying and wounded men pierced by the several hundred shards of razor-sharp iron it threw out.

  Jersey quickly raised her head up, aimed the M-16 at the sounds the men were making, and triggered off another burst on full auto.

  As soon as her clip was empty, Coop popped his head up over the log and did the same thing, laying down covering fire as she jumped to her feet and took off at a dead run farther into the jungle.

  Coop scrambled after her when his clip emptied, hearing screams and shouts in Spanish behind him as he followed Jersey deep into the thick overgrowth around them, looking for a hole to crawl into.

  When she stopped abruptly, he almost ran into her back before he could slide to a halt.

  “What the hell’s the matter?” he whispered hoarsely, until he saw she was standing on the mossy bank of a river.

  “Uh-oh,” he muttered.

  “You said it,” she replied as she looked up and down the bank, searching frantically for a place to cross.

  There was no place where the swirling waters of the river looked calm enough for them to wade across without being drowned, or eaten by whatever critters swam in the murky water.

  Coop shook his head and stepped away from the bank to squat behind the bole of a large banyan tree. “Looks like this is it, Jers,” he said in a low voice. “Those soldiers’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  Jersey’s shoulders slumped as she turned. “Damn, never a bridge when you need one,” she said in a light voice.

  “Listen,” Coop said, “there’s not time for both of us to cross, but I can keep ’em off you long enough for you to make it.”

  “Bullshit, Coop,” she replied, squatting next to him and aiming around the other side of the tree. “There’s no way I’m gonna take off and let you play hero.”

  “I can’t believe you’re so selfish,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to go out like John Wayne in The Alamo.”

  She grinned back at him. “How about we both go out like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?” she said, jerking back the loading lever on her M-16.

  He shrugged. “Okay, as long as I can be Sundance.”

  She laughed. “Are you saying you always pictured me as a Butch?”

  He smirked. “You said it, Jers, not me.”

  Vague shapes could be seen moving silently through the underbrush toward them fifty yards away.

  Jersey put her M-16 to her shoulder and aimed, squeezing off a single shot. She was rewarded with the sound of a guttural scream from her target as he disappeared from sight. “Good shot, Butch,” Coop whispered, firing rapidly three times from the other side of the tree.

  He ducked back just as his shots were answered with hundreds of rounds fired into their tree. “Great idea, Sundance,” Jersey said sarcastically. “All you managed to do was draw their fire.”

  “That’s my plan, Bitch . . . uh, I mean Butch. Draw their fire and make them use up all their bullets. Then we walk out of here and capture ’em.”

  “That’s really smart, Coop, except I’m down to my last clip. How about you?”

  Coop checked his pockets. “Half this one and one more. That’s about thirty rounds, plus the eight in my .45.”

  She got serious. “Save the last two rounds, podna. Trust me, we don’t want to be captured by these bastards!”

  He too became serious. “Got ya, Jers.”

  He handed her one of his last two grenades, then turned and jerked the ring out and threw his as far as he could. He heard a frightened shout as the soldiers saw the grenade sailing toward them; then his ears rang with the loudness of the explosion as it blew bits and pieces of two men skyward.

  Jersey slapped him on the shoulder. “Two down, about twenty to go,” she said.

  Coop pushed her down and fired his M-16 from the hip over her shoulder as a soldier rushed at them from the side, screaming cuss words in Spanish.

  He choked on his words as Coop’s burst of slugs tore his throat out and ripped his chest open, sending his body spinning into the river.

  “Looks like the crocs are gonna have Mexican food for lunch,” Coop drawled.

  The bark on the tree they were behind erupted under an onslaught of bullets from several AK-47’s as several men charged through the jungle, firing from the hip and yelling in Spanish.

  Both Coop and Jersey leaned around the tree and opened fire, spraying 9mm slugs into the men. Their bodies stopped and were thrown backward as if they’d been kicked by a mule, their arms flung wide, their shouts drowning in gurgles and screams as their lives were torn from them.

  Jersey glanced at Coop as her M-16 clicked on an empty firing chamber. Her eyes glittered as she slowly drew her K-Bar from its scabbard, and her lips drew back from her teeth in a savage grin. Coop shivered, knowing now what cowboys had faced when confronted by Jersey’s Apache ancestors.

  He jerked his clip out—two slugs left. Switching his firing pin to single-fire, he pulled his Colt .45 out and handed it to Jersey. “Here ya go, Butch. You got seven in the mag and one in the chamber. Use ’em wisely.”

>   He peered around the free, and could see ten to fifteen men slowly advancing on their position through the jungle, spread out so they’d make tough targets. He figured they had about ten minutes to live.

  Suddenly a redheaded giant appeared in the brush behind the advancing soldiers, holding a funny-looking rifle in his arms.

  “Goddamn,” Coop muttered, “it’s Eric the Red.”

  Jersey looked around the tree in time to see the red-haired man grin as he pulled the trigger. A rapid succession of booming explosions came from what they now could see was a shotgun. It bucked and jumped as it fired faster than any shotgun they’d ever heard of, sending 00-buckshot loads spreading through the soldiers, cutting them down like a scythe, shredding them and sending bodies and body parts flying through the air.

  In seconds it was all over, and the giant walked toward them through clouds of cordite and gun smoke as if out of a fog of death.

  “Jersey, Coop,” he yelled. “We’ve come for you.”

  Coop and Jersey stepped out from behind the tree, shaking their heads. “Jesus,” Coop whispered, glancing around at the bodies scattered like cordwood on the jungle floor.

  The giant grinned. “No, actually, it’s Reno. Harley Reno, at your service,” he said, giving a small bow as Ben Raines and the rest of his team came running into the clearing.

  More gunshots could be heard in the distance as Hammer Hammerick took out the sentries left behind to guard the soldiers’ jeeps.

  Coop grabbed Reno’s hand. “Thanks, podna, you saved our bacon back there.”

  Reno shrugged. “That’s what they pay me for.”

  “Can I see that cannon you were using?” Coop asked, reaching for the SPAS assault shotgun. “The sumbitch sounded like a machine gun.”

  “You two okay?” Ben asked as Corrie, Beth, and Anna ran to Jersey and embraced her.

  “What? No hugs for me?” Coop said, looking up from examining the shotgun, a hurt expression on his face.

  Jersey looked at the Mini-Uzis and Beretta pistols the women were carrying and raised her eyebrows. “Hey, nice ordnance,” she said. “New toys?”

  “Yeah,” Anna replied, glancing at Harley Reno as he talked with Hammer Hammerick. “Harley got ’em for us.”