Renegade 21

by Lou Cameron

  “You will not be angry tonight when I do not respond to your lovemaking as a woman is supposed to?”

  He laughed and said, “I’m not going to get angry because I’m not even going to try, Florita.”

  She started to cry. He started to ask her if she was nuts. Then he thought about the way guerrilla bands were usually set up and said, “I see. You want to be head adelita, but you don’t want to get laid. Bueno. I’m not about to post any bans on a palmetto tree, Florita, but stick close to me and let the others think what they wish. Stay here for now, though. I’ve got to see about food and shelter for everyone.”

  He took off his canteen and left it with her as he rose to look around and see how the others had been doing while he was enjoying such a weird conversation. The machete-wielding peones had done pretty good, and just in time. A big fat gob of rain plopped down on the brim of Captain Gringo’s hat as he stared in approval at the thatch lean-tos and blue smoke plumes spread across the rise. He turned and called the sick girl to heel before striding over to old Nogales, who stood by his wrapped Maxim and empty lean-to, obviously hoping for approval.

  Captain Gringo did approve, and said so, as he saw his bedroll and personal gear already spread out under the thatch, with a little smudge fire close enough to the opening to refuel from the neat pile of palmetto stalks under the overhang without leaving the bedding. Nogales said the sullen cook, out of sight down the line, would soon be serving, and asked, “Has Florita agreed to serve you, Captain Gringo, or do you wish for someone else to bring your food and coffee when it’s ready?”

  Captain Gringo said, “Florita’s sick. She’ll be sheltering here with me. Tell Morales to send two rations or bring it over himself, just so we get it.”

  The old man shot a knowing look at the little peon girl as Florita joined them. Captain Gringo told her, “Duck under there. If you have to vomit, try to miss the bedding. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He walked toward the center of camp as more gobs of rain plopped down at scattered intervals. Old Nogales said, “As you see, we built your lean-to facing discreetly away. We thought you might wish privacy during your siesta, no?”

  Captain Gringo didn’t answer. Anything he could have said would have sounded stupid. He saw Gaston and Lieutenant Vallejo standing near the larger cooking fire of Sergeant Morales, rank having its privileges when the noon mess figures to be served under a thunderstorm at any minute. The tall American asked Vallejo how many carbines they had in the packs for the others. Vallejo asked why the hell El Generale would have issued weapons for mere porters. Captain Gringo growled, “Ask a stupid question and you get a stupid answer. Okay, you, me, Gaston, and Morales are the only armed men here. Morales is busy. I’ve got a sick friend to nurse. That leaves you two to stand the first watch. How do you want to work it, Gaston? Flip a coin?”

  Vallejo blanched and said, “I do not stand guard. I am an officer!”

  Before Captain Gringo could tell him what he really was, Gaston said, “Eh bien, I’d feel safer if a man was on duty. I’ll take the first two hours, Dick.”

  Captain Gringo nodded and said, “I’ll take the second. By then, if it’s still raining, anybody creeping around in the jungle will have drowned. If it’s stopped in four hours, we’ll be moving on. So it evens out.”

  He had told Nogales he wanted his rations brought to him. But now that he was here, he picked up a couple of mess kits and told Morales to dish out his coffee and grub. Morales said he wasn’t ready yet. Vallejo told him not to be an idiot. So the surly cook filled Captain Gringo’s kits and the tall American headed back to Florita and his lean-to. He made it just in time. As he got under the thatch with her, the sky popped open like a bursting rubber and rain started coming down in sheets. The fire out front tried, but hissed out like a dying bucket of snakes as the light outside went dark as evening no matter what the clock said.

  He saw that Florita was under the cotton flannel top sheet, which seemed a good idea. Then, as she reached for the mess kit and coffee cup he offered her, he saw that she wasn’t wearing her blouse anymore. He noticed her ruffled peon skirts had been wadded into a pillow at the head of the bedroll, too. So he didn’t ask if she was naked under the sheet. He just wondered why.

  He sat cross-legged near the opening, eating and drinking with her, as distant thunder rumbled and the rain pattered on the thick thatch above them. It was a little chilly as well as almost dry under the overhang. He said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, querida. But I’m getting under the covers with you. Pneumonia in the tropics feels silly as hell, so I try to avoid it.”

  He knew the best way to get a good chill in this tricky climate was to bundle up in wet duds, so he started taking his damp linen off as she sighed in resignation and said she understood.

  He wasn’t sure he did. It felt mighty comfy to slide under the flannel with a naked lady who’d already warmed the bedding with her own body heat. But when he automatically started to reach for her, he remembered her female complaint and abstained. Sort of. It was impossible to share the bedroll without their naked flesh touching here and there under the covers. He fished out a cigar and matches and lit up. It felt sort of dumb smoking on his stomach, but what else was a man with a dawning erection to do if he didn’t want to look like a tent pole next to an unwilling bed partner?

  He asked if she wanted to smoke. She said she didn’t, explaining that while she was getting over the effects of the palmetto berries, even the idea of smoking anything made her retch. He said he was sorry and put out his cigar. It was a dumb position to smoke in, anyway. She said he was muy simpatico and added, “I think the brujas may have been right about saw-palmetto fruit, after all. I am starting to feel, ah, odd.”

  “Oh? You mean sexy?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I am just so dizzy I just don’t care. Usually, when I know a man is about to stick his old thing in me, it makes me feel like I am about to vomit. But since I have been feeling like I was about to vomit all this time, with nobody sticking anything in me …”

  He laughed and said, “You sure have a romantic way with words. Try and get some sleep. We won’t be here long, and once this rain lets up I’ll be pushing you all to make up for lost time.”

  She started to cry again. He propped himself up on one elbow, frowned down at her, and asked, “Now what in the hell is the matter?”

  “You think I am ugly. I was afraid you would think I was ugly. Nobody finds me desirable as a woman. It is all so unfair!”

  He started to tell her she was nuts. But they’d already established that, and, what the hell, it wasn’t as if she were a blushing virgin. She just had something wrong with her plumbing, or maybe with her little brain. It wasn’t his problem. He had all the problems he needed.

  One of them, at the moment, seemed to be a raging erection. He muttered, “Jesus, I’m sexually confused, too. This is really nuts.”

  “Have I done something to make you angry, Señor Deek?”

  “No, I’m angry at this idiotic appendage down here with a mind of its own. If you were a frothing-at-the-mouth sex fiend it would probably go soft on me. I’ve tried talking sense to the damned thing, but does it ever listen?”

  She said, “You may abuse me with it, if you must.”

  He snorted in disgust and said, “No, thanks. My dong may be an animal, but I’m not. Go to sleep, Florita. Talking about it isn’t about to calm anybody down.”

  “Can you go to sleep, with your desires for sex aroused?”

  “No. I’m going to clean my machine gun. I’ve been meaning to, anyway, and if there’s one thing a dirty machine gun is, it ain’t sexy.”

  He sat up, hauled the wrapped Maxim in its tarp between them, and unwrapped it. Florita watched him fieldstrip it, but as she had no idea how anything more complicated than a hand tool worked, her eyes grew heavy-lidded, and by the time he’d wiped most of the steel reasonably clean and reassembled it, she lay on her side asleep with her bare back to him. He opened the
ammo pack, took out a belt of .30-30, armed the Maxim, then put it on safe and placed it atop the folded tarp at the foot of the bedroll. He looked at his pocket watch before he lay back down beside the naked girl. Gaston would be coming for him soon, and he hadn’t come at all, but what the hell, the distraction had gotten rid of his erection, until he thought about it.

  Florita’s knees were drawn up as she lay on her side with her brown rump vulnerable to perhaps a sneaky entrance if he lay on his side, sort of moved down, and … “Forget it,” he told himself. “If the dame’s too goosey to do it with her own husband, awake, she’d come up fighting for sure if she woke up with a strange dong in her!”

  He didn’t want to disturb her by smoking. He’d feel silly as hell if she woke up to catch him jerking off. So he just lay there making like a tent pole as he listened to the rain and waited for Gaston. The rain was easing up a bit. Somewhere a bird or howler monkey was making weirder than usual noises and … that was a human voice he was listening to!

  As he sat up, groping on his pants and boots, he heard the report of Gaston’s .38, well to the south. He grabbed the Maxim and rose with it, the belt trailing on the sand behind him as he ran east into the dripping brush. Other voices were shouting in confusion and someone was talking back to Gaston’s .38 with a .30-30. Captain Gringo pictured the layout of their improvised camp as he circled well around it through cover, keeping track of Gaston’s occasional .38 reports. Where the hell were Morales and Vallejo with those .45s?

  He spotted something broom-straw yellow, moving in the scrub ahead and circled wider. He knew Gaston was firing from cover at the south edge of their camp. He knew where the camp was and had the range on that one straw sombrero he’d spotted. So it was simple enough to work around to the flank of the guys giving Gaston a hard time for some reason. He snapped off the safety switch on the Maxim and eased forward, the heavy but empty jacketed machine gun braced on his hip with the muzzle trained the way he was looking. So when he spotted the guys Gaston was holding at pistol range south of their camp, all he had to do was pull the trigger. The Maxim bellowed like a cross between a woodpecker and an angry bull. Sombreros, palmetto fronds, and what looked like tossed bloody salad filled the air as he dug in his heels and traversed the Maxim back and forth across the band’s right flank.

  He couldn’t see how many there were or how many he was really hitting and not just scaring out of a year’s growth. But whoever they were, they wanted no further part of these parts and started moving back poco tiempo, which was an awful mistake on their part. Because Captain Gringo still had half the belt left when they broke cover.

  In the end, some of them must have gotten away, because when Gaston moved out to join Captain Gringo over the chopped-up bodies in the chopped-up scrub, they counted fourteen hats and thirteen Krag rifles to go with only a dozen bodies. Gaston said, “It’s about time you got here!”

  “I overslept. Who do you figure these guys used to be?”

  Gaston finished reloading, put his .38 away, and said, “Ladrónes, from their costume. Guerrillas, from those new rifles. Whoever they were, they were not well trained. I heard them shouting back and forth like schoolchildren as they advanced up the cuesta. I don’t think they knew we were here. When I called a challenge, they responded in a most rude manner. The rest you know.”

  Captain Gringo hefted the Maxim to one shoulder as he grunted, “Not quite. I circled the whole camp and the only fire I heard from our side was that little peashooter of yours Gaston. Where the hell were Vallejo and Morales while all this was going on?”

  “Merde alors, how should I know? I was aiming the other way. Fortunately, none of those idiots knew I was only shooting in the air from good cover as I moved about to sound like a small army. I knew that sooner or later my adoring child would come to his proud papa’s assistance with that more serious weapon.”

  “Don’t explain guerrilla tactics, dammit. Explain where Vallejo and … never mind, here come the assholes now.”

  The mufti-clad officer and his cook were frog-marching one of the peon porters ahead of them with drawn pistols. Some of the other men from camp were trailing at a cautious distance. Vallejo called out, “This man was trying to run away. I caught him north of camp.”

  Captain Gringo smiled pleasantly and said, “Right. You were running that way to secure our lines of communication. Morales, what’s your story?”

  The surly cook shrugged and said, “I have no story. When an old soldier hears shooting he hits the dirt and stays there until someone tells him what to do.”

  Captain Gringo nodded, turned to the frightened peon Vallejo had the drop on, and asked, “How are you called, muchacho?”

  “Por favor, Captain Gringo, I am called Ernesto, and I am very sorry I lost my head and ran.”

  “Not as sorry as you’ll be if you ever do it again. Take this machine gun and don’t go anyplace with it while we police up the area. Nogales! Front and center!”

  As the old man gingerly came forward, Lieutenant Vallejo spotted a body in the chopped-up shrubbery ahead and asked, “My God, how many of them did we get?”

  Captain Gringo let the “we” pass and replied, “Not as many as we tried to. At least a couple got away. I don’t see packs or adelitas. So these guys were a forward patrol of whatever.” He turned to Nogales and said, “I want you and these guys to gather guns, ammo, and anything else of interest you find on those bodies. But make it fast. We’re moving out in five minutes.”

  He headed back for the main camp, calling out, “All right, everybody up? Drop your cocks and grab your socks. La siesta is over for sure!”

  The swamp water came to their waists to chill their balls as the afternoon heat steamed their brains and filled their eyes with muggy mist and humming insects. Captain Gringo had already explained why he’d ordered his people due west across the swamplands instead of farther south to look for a dry crossing, but as the muck sucked at his boots, Lieutenant Vallejo pestered him once more about the route he’d chosen, saying, “This is madness, captain. We should have searched for a ford to the north if, as you suggest, those guerrillas were waiting for us to the south.”

  Captain Gringo growled, “I wasn’t suggesting it. I was saying it. The rifles and ammo we salvaged from that combat patrol are spanking new, and they had too much pocket change for a band of mere ladrónes. They were well-funded irregulars. Probably fighting for Granada. They were headed for the last known address of your general, and they opened up on Gaston when they heard a challenge from Portola’s direction.”

  He stumbled over a submerged root, fought to keep from going under with the reloaded Maxim he packed on his shoulder, and added, “Forget ’em. They can’t dog our footsteps if we don’t leave footsteps for ’em to dog. The map says there’s nothing much but blank paper the way we’re headed. Ain’t it fun to play explorer?”

  “You’re going to get us lost in the jungle, dammit!”

  “I sure hope so. If nobody knows where we are, nobody can shoot us. It’s going to take Gaston at least a couple of days to teach our porters and at least a couple of tough adelitas basic rifle drill. I don’t want to meet anyone important before our guys know which end of a Krag the bullet comes out of, do you?”

  Vallejo sniffed and said, “You know what I think of arming peones. Up until now, our only hold on them has been that we have guns and they have not. What if they turn on us?”

  “We’ll be in a hell of a mess. So will they, unless they know how to read maps and don’t think El Generale was serious about burning their village if they screwed up. I’m more worried about double-crosses from higher up than lower down, lieutenant. I know why Morales was considered expendable. Why do you suppose Portola figured he could spare you?”

  Vallejo gasped in surprise, waded on, and snapped, “Don’t be ridiculous! I was El Generale’s most valuable aide-decamp. He said he was depending on me to see that you two, ah, outside consultants carried out this most important mission properly.”<
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  Captain Gringo hacked a hanging mossy vine out of their way with the machete in his free hand before he grunted, “Yeah, that’s why he sent us out with unarmed peones and no guides. The map he issued us is a peach, too. It’s scaled way too large for cross-country work, with only the gross features of a mighty complicated terrain. How do you get to be an aide-de-camp in the Leon forces, lieutenant? Do you send in a box top with fifty words or less about how much you admire the junta in Leon, or what?”

  “My uncle happens to be a member of the ruling junta in Leon!” the junior officer answered smugly. Captain Gringo nodded and muttered, “Out of the mouths of babes. Okay, we’re toilet paper, like I figured. The question now is whether we’ve been flushed and forgotten or whether El Generale really means to burn our little guys out if we fuck up and bring ’em back alive.”

  Vallejo said he had no idea what the tall American was talking about. So Captain Gringo stopped talking. The light was getting really lousy and the water they were wading through was haunted by critters that hunted mostly in the dark. He twanged through some glandular celery-looking growth that smelled like rubber cement when the machete bit into it, and, when he stepped through the gap, he found the water shallower and loused up with even more tangled vegetation. He said, “We’re coming to a hammock. What time is it, lieutenant?”

  Vallejo consulted his pocket watch and said, “A little after five. Why?”

  ‘The ‘gators are most dangerous just after sundown, and sundown comes at six pretty regular, in this neck of the tropics. I think we’ve found as good a place to dig in for the night as we’re about to before someone loses a leg.”

  It wasn’t that easy. As always, in the jungle, the vegetation grew wildest where there was an edge to compete for. Evolution had gone nuts around the skirts of the dry land encircled by blackwater swamp. Stuff that grew best with wet roots wrestled with stuff that grew best dry but was willing to test the pool with its toes. The machete twanged through solid springy wood as well as mushy pulp, and Captain Gringo was dripping with sweat as well as swamp water by the time he hacked through to dry land, if you wanted to call it that. The ground between the tall timber growing on the hammock was covered with what looked and smelled like rotting banana peels, mossy fallen branches, and a collection of mushrooms that would have confused a botanist considerably.