Apart from the marsh, luck had been above average. His own advance seemed to be undetected except by a couple of llaneros who had been run down and captured. Chaves’s force, advancing close under the foothills of the Cordillera, was preserving wireless silence, and the fact that the silence was still unbroken indicated that he, too, had not been discovered. He ought now to be within fifteen or twenty kilometers of the Avellanistas. If he was, his attack would go in soon after dawn.
The morning flight of duck had settled when the noise of battle came downwind. They were not disturbed by the staccato chatter, at that distance not unlike their own conversational clackings, but took off in alarm at the cough of guns. As the squadrons of pink and white, black and emerald, wheeled overhead, Miro too was uneasy. Rosalindo had nothing with him as heavy as the battery which was in action, and might be getting more than he had bargained for. On the other hand, if the enemy had thought it worth while to haul artillery into such remoteness, something had been trapped that was worth having.
He tuned in to the battle. Rosalindo’s voice was short, excited and triumphant. It sounded as if the guns — eight of them, Miro gathered — had been overrun in the first rush. They were certainly silent now. Then came a blast of Rosalindo’s choicest blasphemy, partly directed at the Almighty and partly at a company commander who had halted the troop carriers and deployed before, in Rosalindo’s opinion, he need have done. The chance of encirclement had gone but, knowing his colonel, Miro reckoned that the company was probably in the right. In any case it had been plain when they planned the operation that complete encirclement was most unlikely. The enemy’s left flank was protected by a considerable river over which, somewhere, he must have a bridge.
Rosalindo then gave a situation report, ostensibly for his own column, but intended for Miro to pick up. Transport, horse and motor, was escaping to the west covered by two determined pockets of defense.
Mortar fire could now be faintly heard, which suggested that the first rush was over and that Rosalindo had been compelled to mount a more formal assault — and, for any money, against infantry of Sixth Division. This time, at least, they would have to die where they stood or surrender, though it was too much to hope that Valdés was with them. Then the enemy came into sight across the marsh and close to its edge.
First there was a ragged stream of little figures on horseback, either fugitives or cavalry falling back to form a bridgehead at the river crossing. Not worth it yet. Then came an irregular bunch of motor transport — there must have been more petrol in Los Venados than anyone suspected — followed by horsed wagons. On this target the guns came down. After the first burst of fire, what had been patternless spread out into the shape of a rising sun as every vehicle which could still move fled away from the burning center across the plain. The guns fired independently, picking and chasing individual targets. It was the end. Not more than one in six of the vehicles carried charmed lives away to the horizon. To the northeast there was silence. Rosalindo reported that the last of the defenders had surrendered as soon as they understood that their sacrifice was useless.
Miro drove up along the edge of the marsh, crossed it and joined the victorious column. Wherever he went he was received with cheers, for most of Rosalindo’s force had not seen him since they crossed the Jaquiri. They had taken more punishment than he liked in this campaign, where casualties were normally very light and had to be kept so; but Rosalindo in attack always intoxicated his command with speed and savagery.
This time it was worthwhile. What they had captured was a long airstrip of packed earth and its camp. Huts, transport and a dump of precious petrol were burning. A Dakota which had flown in too early was lying slewed round with a smashed wing. But the strip had been nearing completion and was probably good enough already to receive a long-distance transport.
“We can’t garrison this, Rosalindo,” Miro said. “Too far. But I suppose our amateur pilots can keep it under observation.”
“It won’t do the enemy much good, Chief. Prisoners tell me they have used all Twentieth Cavalry’s pontoons on the bridge, which is twelve kilometers downstream. Demolish that and patrol the river from time to time to stop them building another. Then anything they land here will have to be shifted by packhorses.”
Along the river, being inefficiently herded by jeeps, were over a thousand head of cattle. From Avellana’s point of view that might be his worst loss. They could not be driven to Advance HQ and on to Hermosillo at the pace of the column, but to leave them for collection by the llanero horsemen was unthinkable. Miro shrank from giving the order to machine-gun the lot.
His pity for the free and sturdy beasts, now grazing peacefully after their terror, clouded him with depression, compelled him to see himself as the center of a picture of appalling cruelty and waste. Waste? Of food only? There were the dead, the enemy bunched where the attack had hit them and in their final defensive positions, his own scattered over the plain in ones and twos. Waste? No, it was not waste. It was what happened when men were possessed by two passionate beliefs which were incompatible, and it would go on so long as men were still capable of love.
He looked at Salvador, fine-drawn and careless, standing a little behind Rosalindo Chaves.
“San Vicente is very short of beef,” Salvador said. “Every rise of ten pesos a kilo is a vote for Avellana.”
Miro knew very well that this virile boy with his astonishing gift of feminine intuition, had correctly translated his own set face and was fighting for his peace of mind.
“Salvador, there is a limit to mercy in war.”
“Mercy never occurred to me, my General. No, I was thinking of myself! When I go into politics after the war it won’t gain me a single vote to have shown mercy. But when I flourish your certificate that I was the man who took ten pesos off the kilo of beef — there I am elected and all ready to take a commission on Colonel Chaves’s pay before I graciously hand it over to him.”
“Where you will finish, my revered Captain, is in a deep grave with your latest whore in your arms!”
“It seems hard on her, my most esteemed Colonel, but at least she would be assured of the permanency of my affection.”
Colonel Chaves pulled at his mandarin mustache and could almost be heard thinking. Miro expected a retort, but instead came out the surprising remark:
“I could find some herdsmen among the prisoners, and there is no shortage of horses. A truck and two scout cars for escort, which can be spared, and sometime the herd would reach Hermosillo.”
“Well, if you think it’s worth trying, Rosalindo . . .” said Miro gratefully.
“Worth trying? Of course it is! The escort may have to shoot one or two of the prisoners when they try to gallop off. But if they prefer to die that way, it is their business.”
Miro continued his tour of the captured base, sent out a party to bring in the wounded from the escaping transport shattered by his guns, and began to arrange with Rosalindo the pooling of supplies.
“There is just one other little matter, Chief, to be reported,” Rosalindo said. “Air Force personnel.”
“What about them?”
“They took too long trying to get their precious petrol away.”
“And surrendered?”
“It was very doubtful what they meant. They had pistols in their hands. So we let them have it.”
“The fools! Anybody we know?”
“Ledesma and five of his staff.”
“Where are their bodies?”
“The petrol went up at the same time, Chief. It is very regrettable for men of such distinction.”
“They were dead when it went up?”
“But of course, Chief! Quite dead. I was there and saw it myself.”
So that was the reason why Rosalindo, clean out of character, had been politic in the matter of the cattle. There was nothing to be done. It was very likely that Ledesma, always on his dignity, had given half an excuse by drawing his pistol while his staff were surrende
ring. As for the unfortunate and inconvenient witnesses — well, again there was nothing to be done.
“Report them as lost gallantly trying to save the petrol, Rosalindo, and attach formal statements from any officers and men whom you can trust.”
“The whole force will sign anything you like, Chief. They have not forgotten Cumana.”
“Colonel Chaves, that is a most improper remark. In future if your command should have the good fortune to capture Avellana, Valdés or any of their commanders, they will be delivered to me alive and unhurt. And you will keep in mind that if a court-martial tries you for murder, the members of it will, as you say, sign anything I like. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Chief.”
The colonel saluted. He was a man who sweated easily and profusely. The perspiration was dripping off his forehead on to his mustache, and from the points on to his hairless, Indian chest. It occurred to Miro that never before had he reprimanded Rosalindo with anything more than a genial, fatherly curse, accepted with a shamefaced grin and eyes that were warm with friendship.
He put an arm round the colonel’s shoulders.
“Rosalindo, there is no other man in all Guayanas whom I could have trusted to be in position on time and to attack with whatever he had left. Let us go down to the bridge and see to the demolition. Salvador, go back to Signals and bring us anything that has come in.”
Out on the plain between marsh and river, Miro found detachments of his own force who had managed to work out a route for light vehicles across the drying reedbeds and were collecting prisoners and wounded. Little but cavalry had got away over the pontoon bridge. Most of the trucks and wagons which had escaped the unexpected blast of gunfire seemed to have been driven in panic straight for the river, where the men abandoned their vehicles and tried to swim. One party which had not had the help of horses was waist-deep on a sandbar weeping for fear of piraña, of which there were none, and of electric eel which had in fact caused a few casualties.
Soon after midday Salvador drove out by the new track, bringing a sheaf of signals. He had lost his usual air of bearing modestly the joint triumphs of himself and his commander.
“The Avellanistas have been in Hermosillo.”
“For how long?” Miro asked incredulously.
“Four hours, my General.”
“As long as that? What the devil has Mario been up to?”
The story was easily to be pieced together from the successive reports. Hermosillo was protected by the Rio Ica from any attack in force. The ferry which carried over the cattle from the llanos was immobilized, and the only other crossing was Fifth Division’s military bridge, thirty kilometers downstream, connecting Advance Headquarters with the San Vicente road. But there was nothing to prevent a small, self-sufficient party swimming the river in the unpatrolled emptiness of its upper course and riding night after night to reach the railway.
That was what had happened. A bold and — on the face of it — quite hopeless raid had gone in well south of the railway station in the dark, apparently with the objective of blowing a culvert. The raiders, numbering about sixty well-mounted men with spare horses, had been interrupted by a patrolling Sherman which called up Troop and then was silent. Troop, arriving with speed but too casual confidence, found the Sherman burnt out and instantly lost three tanks to bazookas.
The raiders then attacked the station, found it too strongly held, galloped halfway round the little town and captured the mounted police station. Colonel Nicuesa refused to risk his precious armor and sent in a company of infantry to turn them out. After heavy fighting, that had been done.
“Bazookas — as likely as not they came in that Dakota,” Miro said. “Avellana could have got some from professional liberals in Colombia or Venezuela. But what amateurs, Rosalindo! Instead of waiting for a serious action like this, they lose all the advantages of surprise by wasting them on a raid.”
“All wiped out?” Colonel Chaves asked.
“Far from it! They abandoned the police station in good time and got clear away in full daylight by the old trick of firing the grass. A very effective smokescreen. I didn’t realize it had got so dry. We had better have it burned around all strongpoints.”
“But for Christ’s sake! Is Mario going to withdraw the armor every time he has a couple of screws shot off?”
“Well, he has never met bazookas before, Rosalindo,” Miro replied, unwilling to expose his Colonel Nicuesa, though he would gladly have murdered him.
“Are they serious?”
“Not in the least. A simple change of tactics when compelled to use armor at night. There’s not enough cover for bazookas to bother us by day.”
“It’s going to worry them in San Vicente.”
“You think Vidal will see Valdés under the bed?”
“Well, they say he doesn’t sleep with Concha any more since she beats him. A fine woman, all the same.”
“I am certain she has never beaten him.”
“As you say, Chief. But what makes me furious is that here we have taught the Avellanistas the best lesson since Cruzada, and San Vicente has only our word for it. Meanwhile all the tarts in Hermosillo will be writing letters to say they heard a bang. I only hope Valdés’s men destroyed the telegraph and telephone.”
“I think a list of dead and prisoners may help to show it wasn’t just a propaganda victory,” said Miro grimly. “Get it off at once, Rosalindo — not forgetting Ledesma.”
CHAPTER XVII
[February 2–3]
“WAS IT THE BAZOOKAS, Concha?” Felicia asked.
“That was the excuse. Foreign arms, and — if one of our planes can escape from internment, others can.”
“I cannot see what possible good Don Gregorio can do in New York.”
“He believes in paper, Feli.”
“It has never looked like it. Fifth Division didn’t stay on paper, nor the rebuilding of San Vicente.”
“That is because he could work at leisure. But in a crisis he turns to paper. If Gregorio can get a resolution from the United Nations expressing their regret at our behavior he will think he has achieved something. Perhaps he is right. He will make plenty of friends in the lobbies.”
“But why now?” Felicia exclaimed passionately. “It is here he needs friends.”
“His imagination runs on lances, Feli. Hermosillo is too close.”
“But San Vicente is perfectly safe! So is Hermosillo. Miro gave him his word.”
“I know. And I believe Miro. But he ought not to be in the llanos. He ought to be here at the Ministry of Defense, Feli.”
“He can’t. It would mean handing over the command in the field to Chaves or Nicuesa.”
“Couldn’t they do it? What do you think of them?”
It was no use telling Concha that in her opinion one was a brute and the other a coward. And anyway, was that really her opinion or a passing, exasperated thought? All Miro had ever said was that his admired Rosalindo was a born bandit and that Mario sometimes behaved more like an able garage proprietor than a soldier.
“No, they couldn’t do it,” she replied. “The Division was still training. Miro had no reason yet to think of a substitute for himself. If he was grooming anybody, it was probably poor Calixto Irigoyen.”
“Without Miro I am very much alone.”
“Of course.”
“What should I do if you and I didn’t understand each other!”
“In some ways, Concha, he is very innocent.”
“So many of Gregorio’s appointments — when they are in office they make the habit of coming to me.”
“I know.”
“To talk things over. I have never given an order, Feli.”
“An order is so brutal! How do men do it day after day?”
She was conscious that her voice had risen. It was so hard to be without a husband who took away all her guilt. And in that thought too was guilt. What business had she to be dependent on him, to draw strength from him when she oug
ht to be giving it?
Concha slightly raised a calming hand from her lap. Feli did not miss the regretful, humorously indulgent flicker at one corner of the full mouth with which the Presidenta was accustomed to dismiss an embarrassing subject.
“You knew?” she exclaimed.
“I heard you. Nobody else did. They were all running down the corridor. My dear, I’d have screamed the order myself if I had known how to. More coffee?”
“Please, Concha.”
The Presidenta’s private drawing room was in what had been the northern fort, possessing its own entrance from the courtyard and its own terrace, on which still stood two culverins with the monogram of the Emperor Charles V. It was more like the room of a man — some man of fine taste who couldn’t be bothered to show much of it and was content with beauty of wood, with blocks of color in cushions and curtains, and Spanish tapestries on the cool, naked stone walls. Under the circumstances Feli was aware of a medievalism which she had never noticed before. Concha was the châtelaine holding the castle while her lord was away — at the United Nations, for God’s sake!
“Miro has always said that he could win quickly if he were allowed an Air Force,” Feli suggested boldly.
I am you in San Vicente, she had once told him. And so, then, she had been. Very well, she would be Miro in San Vicente again, serving as best she could like any other officer of his without waiting for an order.
“Sharpen your thorns, my Rosa Fonsagrada. That one was blunt enough for the university. Gregorio would never refuse the North Americans anything. He has agreed and signed, but he will not make the arrangements. The tradition of mañana. Since they expect it, why not play it? Fair words from His Excellency, and then — nothing!”
“If it has gone so far, you could do the rest.”
“Miro is so correct, Feli. Signatures, authorities. By God, I would send him all Gregorio’s rubber stamps in a brown paper parcel if I thought he would use them!”
“Could you give him anything in writing from the Ministry of Defense?”
Thing to Love Page 29
