“Most Americans only know the northern border from the movies, little burnt desert towns with banditos.” Marder looked at Skelly, who was smoking his first reefer of the day, and had an intense and disturbing déjà vu of the type that had become increasingly frequent: standing with Skelly on a mountain ridge, looking out at a cloud-strewn forest, in the morning, as he could now, feeling damp, too, on his face, and the scent of the vegetation. The weird feeling passed over him like a vagrant breeze and was gone.
The smell was different. He felt Skelly looking at him. “Anything wrong, buddy?” he asked.
“No,” said Marder, “just remembering the last time we were up in the mountains. We’ve had a pretty urban relationship over the years, haven’t we?”
“Yeah, I guess we lost our taste for camping out. I’m going to go run. Don’t get into trouble.”
Skelly took off down the foggy road and was lost to sight before the sound of his footsteps had quite faded.
* * *
It was on their first RON mission to plant voodoos; they were going to Remain Over Night, as the army peculiarly called camping out. It was Marder and Skelly and another SOG guy, named—he couldn’t recall the man’s name, only what they called him—Popeye, and two of the Vietnamese LLDBs, and a dozen or so Yards. Marder and the SOGs were wearing the garbagemen’s uniforms, and the Viets were in civilian black pajama outfits, and the Hmong were wearing their traditional garments. Each of the Hmong would be hauling a woven straw pannier of rice on his back; the idea was that they would walk down the trail as if they were a gang of Hmong impressed as porters, and the LLDBs were the guards, and the three Americans were, what—making a movie? Tourists?
At the mission briefing, they’d learned that the SOG people did this all the time, that there were Russian experts, engineers, and so on working on the trail, and besides it was dim and jungly and they would walk on by like they owned the place and in general no one ever stopped them. The lieutenant’s opinion was that no NVA would believe they had the balls to just stroll along the sacred Ho Chi Minh Trail like that, especially not that far north. Marder hoped he was right. He personally thought it was nuts, but at the same time he was excited, he was glad to be there with Skelly instead of calling down fire on the place from the safety of Naked Fanny. The plan was to try to sensorize the whole road complex where it was narrowed down by having to go through the Mu Gia Pass. It was near impossible to place sensors accurately by air drop in this area, because of the terrain and the concentration of antiaircraft fire, which was of course the whole reason behind Iron Tuna.
They’d been flown in by a couple of CH-2s the previous evening and been led upland from the drop zone by Skelly, whose theory was that the Viets were lowland people and that soldiers in general would avoid climbing while on patrol, so the safest place to RON was up high on a ridge. In fact, they passed a peaceful night. At dawn Skelly had taken Marder up even higher, to an actual outcrop of rock, where they stood and looked out over the unbroken green rug of the Laotian forests. Skelly said they were looking directly at the Ho Chi Minh Trail, invisible under its canopy. “Why we had this little problem,” he added.
The two ARVN Special Forces had been picked by Skelly as being the best of the lot. One was a dour whippet named Dong—called Ding Dong, naturally, by his American friends—and the other was a man who smiled unusually often and was unusually large for a Vietnamese, who was known as Charlie. The running joke (an example of the kind of constant, irritating military joshing that passed for relationships in the war) was that he was so good at impersonating a Vietcong that he probably really was VC. Skelly would joke that “Charlie is going to stab us all in our sleep” and Charlie would grin and say, “No, no, I not VC, I hate VC, VC number ten!”
The LLDBs carried Kalashnikovs, and the SOG guys carried small Swedish K submachine guns. Marder had his sidearm and, stuck in his rucksack, a cut-down M79 grenade launcher. Besides that, he carried no other warlike devices but only several dozen of the incredibly heavy voodoos and an entrenching tool.
* * *
Marder went back into the camper and poured another cup of coffee. What was that guy’s name, Popeye? He couldn’t bring up his face either. And maybe it wasn’t Popeye at all.
* * *
He had an image of walking along a road, in dappled shade, and watching the motion of the man’s huge rucksack and the weapon he had slung over one shoulder, not a Swedish K at all but a cut-down Russian RPD light machine gun, a captured weapon that looked like a giant tommy gun. He could recall the gun perfectly but not the man’s name or face. What did that say about him?
He did remember the trail, though. They’d come down on it from the heights above, and he remembered being surprised to see it was not what Americans thought of when they heard “trail” at all but a finished road, well shaped and gravelled and almost twenty feet wide. They walked south along it, and every couple of hundred yards, Marder would slip into the bush and bury a voodoo. They had short aerials that stuck up above the earth and they were flexible like pipe cleaners; you were supposed to bend them artistically so they’d resemble roots or creepers.
After an hour or so they heard traffic, and a convoy of trucks passed them without incident, dozens of trucks, the men inside them looking incuriously out at the line of montagnards and their supposed keepers. Later they’d come on a scene of devastation, the jungle blackened and trees blasted and the carcasses of trucks with big holes in them from the cannon on some gunship. There were NVA troops here and workers salvaging truck parts. As they walked on by this busy scene, an NVA officer called out and Ding Dong answered him without stopping. Marder felt as if he were in a dream, something like reading a report to your third-grade class in your underwear; he was strolling down the Ho Chi Minh Trail! He felt Skelly come up next to him and say something in a loud voice, in a language he didn’t know, perhaps Russian? Marder replied, “Arise you prisoners of starvation, arise you wretched of the earth,” the only Russian he knew. It appeared to work. The NVA officer went back to supervising and Skelly said, after they were out of earshot, “Where the hell did you learn that Russian?”
Marder said, “My mom had a record of the Red Army Chorus. She was always playing it in the house and I picked up some of the words. It’s the Internationale.”
Skelly laughed out loud. “Yeah,I got that. That’s what this war needs, Marder, a little more irony. Amazing!” And again he said, “I might just have to keep you alive.”
They were not bothered for the remainder of the day, passing without challenge through the bustle of what seemed to be a stretch of busy highway in a small town—but studded with antiaircraft cannon—and finishing their assigned portion of burying sensors. After that they turned sharply into the bush and climbed and did another RON, then descended the next declivity, at the bottom of which was an even better road, one scarcely inferior to the Mexican federal route he was looking at now.
That wasn’t the time they got into the firefight. That came later.
* * *
The clouds thickened and turned to drizzle, so Marder went back into the truck cab, drinking his coffee and wishing he still smoked cigarettes. He could start again now; that was a gift from Mr. Thing he hadn’t considered. The traffic here was light, a lot lighter than it was on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. A white SUV with government markings and a light rack on the roof zoomed by and then a few minutes later returned and passed, more slowly this time, and then returned again and stopped on the other side of the road. Its doors opened and four uniformed men got out, holding assault rifles. One of them approached Marder’s truck and asked to see his papers.
Marder handed over his license and passport and registration. The man studied these for a while and passed them back, saying, “I must inspect your vehicle.”
“Be my guest, señor,” said Marder.
The policeman climbed into the camper body and studied the interior, while Marder studied him. He had sergeant’s stripes and a smooth fleshy face, well shaved except f
or a brush mustache. An arrogant face, used to having orders obeyed, but his eyes were nervous, darting here and there.
He flipped open an overhead compartment and peered in.
“What is your business in Mexico?” he demanded.
“I’ve bought a house in Playa Diamante and some land. I was thinking about opening a small business. I intend to emigrate here.”
“You’ve been to Mexico often?”
“No, just once, a long time ago. My wife was Mexican, though, and I learned my Spanish from her.”
The sergeant opened another compartment. “What is in that case?”
“Money,” said Marder. “Around a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash.”
The man stared at him. “Open it!”
“Open it yourself. It’s not locked.”
The sergeant looked at the hundreds, all crisp and green in their paper bindings.
Marder added, “We have weapons as well. A rifle and several pistols, and there may be others I don’t know about. I have a companion who likes to travel armed.”
“Where is he?”
“Oh, out and about. He’s probably armed at this minute. Let me check.”
Marder opened the other overhead locker and pulled down Skelly’s gun case.
“Yes, he’s a carrying his Sig P226, which as I’m sure you know is a very expensive and accurate weapon. And I see he’s carried his suppressor today. He likes to practice shooting without attracting attention.”
The sergeant said, “I think you will have to come with me. To be questioned at the police station in Durango.”
“And why is that, sir? I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“You have cash and weapons. I have reason to believe you’re another gringo narcotics trafficker coming here to buy drugs.” In a practiced motion, he unslung his carbine and pointed it at Marder. “Down on your knees and put your hands behind your head!”
Marder didn’t move. “You know, that makes no sense. This is not Tijuana or Juárez. As I said, I’m an American businessman with deep family ties to Mexico. You’re thinking of all that money and how much of it you can take for yourself and how much you may have to share with your men and with your superiors. And you may also be thinking that if I should meet with a fatal accident, you could simply keep all of it. But you’ve forgotten my companion out there.”
The policeman raised his weapon so it was pointing at Marder’s chest.
“There is no companion,” he said. “I told you to get on your knees. Do it now!”
Marder sat down on the long cushion that ran along one side of the camper body.
“You know, Sergeant, this is either the luckiest day of your life or the last. My companion is certainly real, and I have to inform you that he is one of the deadliest men in the world, an experienced soldier who has been trained to kill efficiently and silently. He is very fond of me for some reason, and if you shoot me, he will certainly dispatch your men with his silenced pistol and then he will come after you, and I’m afraid he will not make your death pleasant. You have as much chance against him as a high school football player would have against Ronaldo. On the other hand—tell me, do you have a daughter? I do. A daughter and a son. Have you been so blessed?”
The gun barrel wavered a trifle. “Yes, I have a daughter. And two sons.”
“I congratulate you, sir,” said Marder brightly. “And as you are a young man, I doubt that your daughter has yet had her quinceañera. Mine has, and let me assure you that they don’t come cheaply, not if a man wants to do honor to his daughter and to his family, as I’m sure you do. As a token of our good relationship, therefore, I would like to contribute to your charming daughter’s quinceañera—let us say, oh, five hundred dollars. Feel free to take that amount from the case. And I’m sure you won’t abuse my generosity.”
Marder smiled genuinely at the policeman and he saw that the policeman saw it, that the man at gunpoint was not in the least afraid, and it confused him, as it was entirely outside his ordinary experience—for he had held guns on many men—and more like a dream. This more than anything would convince him that the gringo was telling the truth and that five hundred dollars was a very fine mordida and without the complications that would ensue if he brought the man and his treasure into Durango. And if he did steal it all, how could he hide a hundred and fifty thousand dollars? He took a pack of hundreds from the case, stripped five bills out, and left, without looking at Marder or saying another word.
Twenty minutes later, Skelly climbed into the camper.
“What did the cops want?”
“The usual. They thought we were narco traffickers.”
“Taking the scenic route. What did you give them?”
“I gave the sergeant five.”
“That’s high, chief. Now he’s sure you’re a dope lord.”
“Well, he had a daughter,” said Marder, and he observed that Skelly picked up what he meant. This was one of the charming things about Skelly: after so many years, there were things that didn’t need to be tediously explained.
When they were driving again, Marder asked, “What was the name of that guy in your outfit—they called him Popeye. Big guy with a shaved head; he always carried that Russian RPD.”
From the driver’s seat, Skelly gave him a long look, then turned his face back to the road. “It wasn’t Popeye; it was Pogo. His name was Rydell, Walter E., master sergeant. Why are you asking about all that Vietnam shit now?”
“I told you. I’ve been thinking about our time there and I realized I can’t remember stuff. I can recall some things, but I can’t get the faces and I can’t bring up the names.”
“That’s because you weren’t really there, Marder. You were a fucking tourist the whole time.”
After that, one of the dismal silences that often followed when Marder brought up the war—one reason he hadn’t done it often during the ensuing years. He knew Skelly talked about it with ex–Special Forces; he’d been in bars with Skelly and had heard the stories. He had even heard stories he knew were fabrications. But for some reason Skelly never wanted to talk about it with him. A less charming facet of his relationship with Skelly but one he could live with, for there was no one else who could confirm the memories of that time as they floated to the surface of his mind.
Now they were descending the winding, precipitous road from the peaks of the sierra, Skelly taking the curves somewhat faster than was safe, but there was little traffic and, despite several close calls, they survived to reach Mazatlán on the Pacific coast. The last time Marder had come this way, he’d been carrying everything he owned strapped to the back of his motorcycle, and the country had seemed as poor as he was himself and free with the freedom of poverty. The roads were rough but the people were gentle, or so he recalled, but that journey was colored by the wonder that had revealed itself at the end of it, when he had found Chole.
Now there was an American-style turnpike with toll booths and service plazas that took you from Mazatlán to Guadalajara, saving time over the old road that led through the fantastic volcano country around the great dead cone of Ceboruco. Marder did not want to save time, however; he felt that saving time was not what one came for in Mexico, the land of mañana. And so he left the Carretera Federal de Cuota at Tepic and went south on Route 200 to the sea and in easy stages past the tourist beaches and high-rise hotels of Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo, through the smaller beach towns and resorts of Michoacán, with the glistening sea on the right, below the green loom of the Sierra de Coalcomán.
* * *
“So what do you think?” asked Marder. They were sitting at a tin table outside the cantina El Cangrejo Rojo, facing the palm-lined central plaza of Playa Diamante. Hector was the proprietor and already a pal. Hector could get the señores anything they desired in the way of dope and girls and, Marder suspected, would be happy to split the bribes with the cops in the event of their arrest. But a nice guy, a fat, pleasant, crooked man, eager to please.
; In the center of the plaza was the typical kiosk, and this faced a tiny park from whose entrance Lázaro Cárdenas, Friend of the People, gestured toward the future in bird-spattered bronze. A mild breeze whickered in the palms and in the fringes of the umbrella overhead, smelling of the sea and, more faintly, of some of its deceased inhabitants. A gray monster of a cat sunned itself in the cantina window under the neon depiction of a red crab.
Skelly held to the light the shot glass from which he had just drunk a slug of tequila and seemed to be examining the oily residue.
“What do I think? It’s a beach town. It could be in Thailand or Malaysia or East Africa. It could be America if there were more fatties walking around. It’s got the usual favela stuck on the hillside for the servants to live in.”
“Yeah, they call it El Cielo. Ironic.”
“Indeed. Besides that it seems unusually clean and well policed, although probably not by the police. You’re intending to settle here? This is your dream of paradise?”
“It is.”
“Because it’s Chole’s hometown?”
“Partially. As a matter of fact, we passed where she used to live. That yellow adobe two-story place with the white awnings? When I first came here, they ran it like a traditional Mexican inn, meals with the family and so on. It was named after their hacienda, from the old days, Las Palmas Floridas.”
“You could’ve stayed there. You have to admit, it’s a little strange buying a house sight unseen in a place you haven’t been for over thirty years.”
“Unlike you, Skelly, I sometimes commit irrational acts. I was tired of the way I was living and I have enough put away, so why not spend my golden years in the sun?”
Skelly put on the kind of false smile that appears when one has not believed what was said but does not think it worth calling the lie. “Well, good for you. A couple of things, though. You picked a place that’s about as much under military occupation as Kandahar, and also whoever’s being occupied doesn’t like it.”
“You think?”
“Yes. One clue was that a number of the walls have those little holes in them, lots and lots of little holes. Another thing is, we passed the police station on our tour just now, and it’s got scorching fanning out from the window frames, and it’s probably not because a guy forgot to stub out his butt. I’m thinking gasoline bombs. Maybe Sarasota or Scottsdale would’ve been a better choice.”
The Return: A Novel Page 10
