by Lou Cameron
Captain Gringo said, “If they are, they’re pissed at Ignacio, not us. Can’t you see the game he’s playing? He’s sweating like a pig too. He’s waiting for me to holler uncle.”
“Eh bien, don’t you like your uncle, Dick?”
“Hang in there. He can’t last much longer.”
“Merde alors, neither can I!”
But Gaston always bitched before he was really hurting, and so he was still moving when Ignacio wavered before a fallen log across his invisible trail, started to step over it, then turned and sat on it instead with an indulgent smile, calling out, “We shall stop here for to piss and rest the weaklings.”
As Captain Gringo and Gaston moved closer, the Indian grinned up at them and asked, “Are you tired, señores?”
Captain Gringo deliberately remained standing long enough to fish out a smoke and light up as he shrugged and said, “I suppose we ought to let the men packing supplies rest now and then.”
“I agree. Give me a smoke, hombre.”
Captain Gringo stared down thoughtfully as Ignacio tried to hold his bold smile. The tall American said very quietly, “Would you like to rephrase that request, soldado?”
Ignacio’s eyes dropped first as he murmured, “I was only joking, Captain Gringo. Can’t you take a little joke?”
“No. I treat my followers with respect. I expect them to treat me with respect. So don’t call me hombre and I won’t call you dead. Do we understand each other, soldado?”
“I thought I was at least a sergeant, Captain Gringo.”
“Act like a sergeant instead of a fresh recruit and I’ll call you a sergeant. Where were you planning on stopping to cook supper?”
“There is an outcropping of old lava ahead, my captain. We should be there by sunset. There are lava tubes where a man can build a fire without it being seen for miles, eh?”
“That makes sense. Are we within line of sight from those lookouts on Mount Pocopoco yet?”
“Si, although of course they can’t see us under the forest canopy. We are west and thus across the artificial lake from the volcano. I assume you wish for to approach the site by way of El Escudo?”
They were still playing one-upmanship. But Captain Gringo didn’t bite. He knew from his tattered map that a lower shield-shaped hill rose west of the dam site, facing Pocopoco across the channel. The map didn’t call it El Escudo or anything else. But how many shield domes could there be in the area? He nodded and said, “Bueno. You must have read my mind. Shall we be moving on, or are you still tired?”
The Indians cooked more than the beans and rice they’d brought along when they stopped for grub in the lava-tube shelter they reached after, not before, sunset. To give him his due, Ignacio led them to the broken-up old lava flow in total dripping darkness, and obviously nobody atop Pocopoco was about to spot a distant cook fire in a cave of glassy black rock.
Captain Gringo rested his back against the rock with his mess kit in his lap as he watched the nearest Mosquitoes torture frogs. The little tree frogs they’d gathered along the way all afternoon were red as ladybugs and covered with the same black dots. For some reason, the Indians had shoved sharpened twigs up the tree-frogs’ asses and seemed to be toasting them like marshmallows, alive, over the fire.
Neither soldier of fortune commented. The way a guy learned about native customs was to keep his mouth shut and his eyes open. The Indians didn’t seem to be getting any sadistic pleasure out of mistreating the pathetic squirming amphibians, so Captain Gringo assumed they had some reason. The odd colored frogs didn’t look at all appetizing as they shone red and wet with sweat over the flickering embers.
The Indian nearest Captain Gringo took some reed arrows from his long snakeskin quiver, and, as the American watched with sudden interest, began to rub the tortured red frog over the darning-needle head of his arrows. Captain Gringo nodded in understanding. He’d noticed that the arrowheads weren’t barbed and he’d heard about the poisonous frogs of the rain forest. The cruel display had destroyed his appetite. He lit a smoke to settle his stomach and asked the Indian youth how quickly his poisoned arrows would kill.
The Mosquito smiled modestly and said, “Fresh, like this, within seconds, Captain Gringo. The dry poison we already had on our arrows takes perhaps a minute or so. The padres say it is wicked to treat our fellow creatures so, but if one does not make a frog think he is dying, he does not sweat his best poison, eh?”
“That one’s sure sweating. How far off can you hit a man-sized target, every time?”
“To be sure? As far as from here to that mahogany tree down the slope, if one is as good a marksman as myself. I have hit targets much farther off, of course. But if we are discussing men with —”
“We are. Let’s see, that tree outside the cave is maybe twenty yards and, yeah, a barefoot boy with cheeks of tan ought to be able to get that close to a white hired gun.” He turned to Gaston, on his far side, and asked, “Are you listening, Gaston?”
“With considerable disgust. I am not too concerned with taking out roving pickets or even outposts. That part would be soup of the duck even for myself and my little knife. But no arrow, poisoned or otherwise, is going to worry anyone inside a wall! The other night as I was enjoying the company of that engineer’s wife—a man my age must rest between times, after all—she told me something of the layout of the construction site. One gathers she found it trés uncouth. But she did say they’ve cleared the jungle away at least a mile in every direction. The engineers and their workmen dwell in prefabricated frame buildings floated up the San Juan. They are of course on the slopes above the dry channel they’ve coffer dammed. They are also, of course, well sandbagged and, at night, illuminated by floodlighting. She said that aside from the usual small arms one associates with such activities in primitive surroundings, they have machine guns and, if I understood her, at least a battery of four-inch howitzers. Little Ruth was more interested in my artillery than any she remembered seeing before she and her husband scampered off. So she could be wrong. They could be three-inchers, or, merde, six-inchers!”
Captain Gringo frowned and said, “Now you tell me. Okay, we knew they were expecting trouble. Did she say if they had their heavy weapons dug in east or west of the dry riverbed?”
“She was much more interested in Arabesque sexual customs. As a matter of fact, she showed me a trick with her derriere that was new to me, and I was once stationed in North Africa.”
“Tell me about it later. This is serious, Gaston.”
He took out the map and spread it on the gritty black sand between them as the Indians went on toasting frogs. He pointed to the pencil lines he’d made after talking to the engineer, Palmer, and said, “Okay, here are the two hills, El Escudo on our side, Pocopoco, the volcano, on the other. The Englishman said, and these Indians agree, that the coffer dam of driven piling and earth fill runs so, like a horseshoe, north of this saddle between the peaks. The lake backed up so far would wipe out everything below it, all the way to the San Juan at least, but the flash flood we could manage with the lake only partly filled wouldn’t kill too many innocents farther downstream. See how the contour lines show the valley spreading out like a trumpet mouth downstream?”
“Who cares? We don’t have enough dynamite to take that coffer dam out, dammit! The structure is at least fifty feet thick, and made of soggy timber and loose fill. Even if we could plant charges against it, with the guards on top able to discomfort us with well-aimed spit—”
“Knock it off,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “I know how much H.E. we’ve packed this far. That prick, Portola, never issued us enough to blow up anything as serious as that big coffer dam. But we do have a few dozen sticks of dynamite and our guys have arrows. What would happen if you tied a stick of dynamite to an arrow?”
“You’d doubtless wind up with a faceless Indian or more. Assuming such a droll projectile worked, then what?”
“A stick of sixty-percent Nobel going off against almost any
one or anything out to do some damage and unsettle nerves in the neighborhood. Let that go for now. Got to pick our targets before we aim at them with anything. Did Ruth Palmer even let you in on which side of the dam site the big shots are using as headquarters?”
“Mais non. She was more interested in letting me in other places. I can see by your scribbles you paid more attention to the husband than I did to the wife, conversationally, at any rate. But she seemed so eager to try every chapter of The Perfumed Garden and …”
Captain Gringo shut him up, put the map away, and called across the fire to Ignacio, “I have two questions, viejo mio. How deep is that water standing above the coffer dam?”
“About twice as deep as you are tall, Captain Gringo. The lake is much broader than it is deep. But the coffer dam will back up a bigger lake at least thirty meters deep by the end of this rainy season. What was your second question, Captain Gringo?”
“What the fuck are we sitting here for? We’ve eaten supper and tortured all the frogs we caught. Let’s move it out. I want to get there before dawn.”
Ignacio rose stiffly but said, “I am not certain this is possible, Captain Gringo. We still have a long march ahead of us.”
“Let’s not argue whether it’s possible or not, Sergeant. We have to do it. So let’s just do it!”
They did it. Just. A couple of men had dropped out in the jungle behind them and none of the survivors would feel like dancing in the near future, but as the rain clouds began to lighten to the east, Captain Gringo hauled himself up the last few yards atop El Escudo for a look-see.
The first thing he noticed was a white man sprawled nearby, face down in a rock crevice with a reed arrow in his back. Captain Gringo nodded approvingly at the young Mosquito who’d scouted ahead and now sat on his haunches, longbow across his lap with another arrow knocked in place. The Indian murmured, “There is another one, down the far slope. It took longer for the poison to stop his heart. But he did not make any noise and he did not get far.”
“Bueno, muchacho. Are you sure these were the only lookouts posted here?”
The Indian looked hurt and said, “If there had been any more, I would have killed them. I moved up here for to scout, as you told me. I was alone here for a moment. Then I heard them coming from down below. I think they must only watch from up here when it is light enough for to see, no?”
“If you’re right, that’s even better. They’d just been posted. So nobody ought to come to relieve them for at least an hour or so. Move back and get my comrade, the Frenchman, por favor.”
As soon as he was alone, Captain Gringo stood up. The guy face down a few yards away was wearing the same nondescript tropic linens and hat. From any distance, nobody was likely to notice he’d maybe grown a few inches.
The tall American stared soberly out and down across the dam site. The map hadn’t shown how really big and complicated it was. The rainy dawn was outlining the more imposing mass of the volcano across the way. Smoke rose in thin wisps from the higher peak over there. Either the other lookouts were brewing coffee or Pocopoco was making faces again. It didn’t seem to be causing any concern down below.
The floodlights Ruth Palmer had mentioned were winking out as the daylight improved. The result was an even more chaotic view of the big muddy construction site. To the north, the big timber and earth-fill coffer dam loomed higher and more solid than he’d hoped. He saw white-clad figures moving out along its curved crest. On the silvery sheet of artificial lake behind it to the north, a little white steam launch was putting out to patrol already. Had the sons of bitches been tipped off?
Gaston joined him as he was concentrating on the closer site below. The Frenchman remained silent, for a change, as they both stared soberly down at what looked, at first, like antlike confusion. Then Captain Gringo saw patterns emerge. The main housing for both bosses and workers, dammit, clung to the far slope, well up the flanks of Pocopoco. They’d been more worried about rising water than erupting volcanoes, which made sense, when you thought about it. Consolidated Construction, Ltd., was banking on the whole landscape more or less behaving as it had been, recently until they could gut and git. In truth, the nervous Palmer had probably overreacted to the day-to-day tremors of volcanic country. As the light improved he saw there were bushes and even small trees growing both on Pocopoco and this lower shield formation that wasn’t supposed to erupt at all.
Thoughtfully, he kicked a loose chunk of old frozen lava and asked Gaston, “Wouldn’t you say this hill was a baby brother of the one across the way?”
“Merde alors, who cares? I am not interested in geology. Look at all those men down there!”
Captain Gringo followed his gaze. Despite the still-falling rain, the site had indeed come to life now. Most of the activity seemed concentrated in and around what looked like a broad curved roadway running across the dry riverbed between the solid rock walls on either side. He saw that they had the red earth down to bedrock in a lot of places. Lines of workers in peon costume seemed to be trimming the edges of the arched excavation for the main dam. The really heavy digging was being handled by a couple of massive steam shovels. As he watched, the nearest big black excavation machine picked up a monstrous black rock in its reptilian steel jaws and deposited it downstream out of the way. Captain Gringo said, “They sure have a lot of money invested down there. Shame about the workmen, though. I don’t like the idea of killing a mess of innocent peones.”
Gaston snorted in disgust and growled, “Listen to the child, God. He speaks of sparing lives when anyone can see the only lives in peril at this moment are our own!”
He pointed down the hill they were on and added, “Regard what I just spotted between those scrub cedars, my eternal optimist. If that is not an artillery position, what in the devil is it, hein?”
Captain Gringo studied the position below and said, “When you’re right you’re right. That’s a four-inch mountain gun, sure as shit. They’re set up to lob goody-goody-bang-bang at anyone coming up or down the valley. There’s probably another one at the same elevation on the slopes across the way. The Palmers said they have machine guns as well, and that blonde in Greytown said they were hiring all the gun thugs up and down the Mosquito Coast. But what the hell, they don’t know we just took out this lookout position. If they notice us at all up here, they’ll think we’re the regular guards, right?”
Gaston said, “This regular guard is getting regularly wetter and more nervous by the moment. It’s almost broad daylight. What are we waiting for?”
Captain Gringo turned, nodded in approval as he saw that the Indians on the back slope were keeping down out of sight as ordered, and told Gaston, “Yeah, we’d better get the show on the road.”
He walked back to consult with Ignacio and the others as Gaston tagged along, bitching, “What show? What road? The bastards have cleared all the cover for miles up and down the valley. We are even farther than I thought from the San Juan and the border. But if we duck back into the trees and head south, before anyone comes to relieve those dead lookouts—”
“Gaston, shut up. Ignacio, have you explained to your boys how those arrows fitted with dynamite heads are supposed to work?”
“Si, Captain Gringo. But I don’t know myself.”
“I’ve done all the complicated work. The sticks lashed to the arrows are capped and fused. Each archer moves in smoking a cigar. When he picks his target, he lights the fuse and lets his arrow fly, muy pronto. There won’t be time to choose another target once the fuse is lit. I cut them short on purpose.”
He told a bright-looking Indian to flatten on the rocks topside and make sure they weren’t disturbed for a few minutes. Then he took out the tattered map, hunkered down, and called his chosen leaders closer for a council of war as he spread the map out on the rocks.
He gave each squad leader simple instructions they’d be able to remember and told them to get their people out and run like hell the minute things stopped working as planned.
He told Ignacio to pick four good men and stay with Gaston. The Indians didn’t argue, but Gaston sighed and asked, “Just where in the devil am I supposed to lead this trés formidable force, my Napoleonic wonder?”
“You’re an old artilleryman. Don’t you want to capture that four-incher and see what fun you can have with it? There’s only a four-man crew down the slope and they won’t be expecting the lookouts posted above them to jump them, so give me time to get into position, and, hell, play it by ear.”
“Eh bien, I look forward to training my new gun crew on the job with at least one other four-incher across the way firing counter battery! May I ask where you intend to be while all this trés dramatique shit of the bull is going on?”
“Oh, sure. I’m taking the Maxim and a few belts down the slope with me to attack closer in.”
On the far side of the big construction site, Wellington Chumford, Esq., stood on the veranda of his hillside quarters, master of all he surveyed as he lit a perfecto. He was a big pudgy man with a florid baby face. Few noticed the cold ruthlessness of his pale blue eyes until it was most unfortunately too late. He was dressed this morning in pale blue silk pajamas. He didn’t have to don his official engineer’s boots and whipcord riding pants unless he had to go down there to chew out some fuck-up. As he watched his workmen toiling in the mud and rain, he saw no reason to get wet himself. Everything was going according to plan. They were right on schedule. The board of directors had cabled that the local political opposition was dying down, thanks to the usual bribery and diversionary tactics of the company’s field agents.
One such field agent, the well-stacked blonde Captain Gringo had met in Greytown a while back, came out to join him in her own open kimono of strawberry pink. She said, “Dear, I just felt the house shake under our beddy-bye again. Are you sure about that volcano looming above us?”
Chumford laughed and said, “It’s not due to go off for another ten years or more. What you felt was blasting. I tried to tell that idiot, Palmer, that the jolts he was so upset about were excavation blastings and not his perishing volcanic tremors. But you know how some people feel about every little bump in earthquake country.” He slipped his free arm around her silk-clad waist and added, “Speaking of little bumps, shall we enjoy a quickie before breakfast, my dear?”
