by Lou Cameron
Before she could answer, all hell broke loose in the valley below. The Mosquito archers opened up with their dynamite-tipped arrows, as per instructions, to clear the area of innocent workmen at the same time they rattled more serious enemies. The single sticks going off at random all across the site didn’t do anyone they landed near any good, but in truth most just resulted in considerable dust and noise, lots of noise, echoing between the opposing slopes as men dropped picks and shovels and ran in all directions like screaming ants.
The timing had been carefully planned in advance, of course. So, before the first dynamite arrow went off down below, Gaston and his crew had overrun the hillside gun emplacement and pitched the bodies over the sandbagged rim. Gaston was already cranking the traverse and elevation wheels of the little mountain gun as he cursed Ignacio and the other bemused Mosquitoes in a mixture of Spanish, French, and, thanks to Ruth Palmer’s reading, uncouth Arabic he’d almost forgotten. He cursed them partly to keep in practice but mostly for moving so slowly as they passed the ammunition. From here, farther down the slopes of El Escudo, Gaston had a better view of the lower slopes of Pocopoco across the way. He aimed for the place he’d have installed a howitzer over there, if anyone had asked him to, and pulled the lanyard.
Ignacio and the other Indians howled in agony and covered their ears, too late, as the small but big-bored gun went off. Gaston’s first shell was still in flight, lobbed high as it would have to be aimed at that range, when he turned and yelled, “Where in the hell is my ammunition, you one-balled camel-fucking bedouins?”
He grabbed a shell from the nearest man, shoved it into the breech, and waited until his first round exploded just in front of his chosen target.
Said chosen target fired a four-incher of its own about then! Gaston yelled, “Hit the dirt!” but remained on his own feet as he adjusted the elevation and fired again.
His second round was on target. Rag dolls, or what looked like rag dolls, flew skyward as the other mountain gun bounced end-over-end down the slopes of Pocopoco. Gaston laughed like a mean little kid and said, ‘Wow, my adorable pupils, Papa Gaston will show you how one shoots the liver and lights out of that no-longer-protected housing complex across the valley. But first, dear children, please fetch your dear papa his ammunition. Move, you butter-fingered boy-hugging corpse-molesting shit lickers descended from a double-donged ghoul and an ugly but otherwise undistinguished whore!”
As Gaston began to shell the far slope, Captain Gringo broke cover down below, wading out of the brush at the base of El Escudo with the Maxim braced on his hip and the ammo belt trailing behind him like the tail of an enraged dragon.
He fired the machine gun in staccato bursts, saving his ammo for important targets as he made for the nearest steam shovel. A guard who’d flattened in the red dust when a dynamite-tipped arrow landed near him was getting up, levering his Winchester wildly. The next time he hit the dirt with his shot-off face, it looked even more crimson. Another armed white man pegged a rifle shot at Captain Gringo over the crest of a sand pile. There was a panic-stricken peon in the way, but tough shit. Captain Gringo blew them both away in one savage burst as he kept moving crablike toward the big black machine. The air around him was hazy with red dust and nitro fumes. So nobody at any distance noticed him in particular in the general confusion. The nearby guards who did were at a distinct disadvantage, as long as his machine-gun ammo lasted. A dynamite-tipped arrow went off close enough to stagger the tall American. Ears ringing, he growled, “Not me! You silly sons of bitches!” and hosed the opening in the side of the big steam shovel with the tag end of his first belt before he charged in, tossed the empty Maxim aboard, and hauled himself up into the metal cab.
He’d just determined that any crewmen ever aboard had abandoned ship out the far side, and was on his side, rearming the Maxim with one of the belts he’d wrapped around his chest ahead of time, when some overenthusiastic Mosquito bounced another explosive arrow against the fortunately thick metal roof of the cab. The whole steam rig rang like a monstrous bell, and Captain Gringo bounced off the steel deck, grunting with pain as he found out what it felt like to be the softer-than-usual clapper of said bell!
He rose and seated himself behind the control levers with the loaded machine gun across his lap. He could see out the openings in front and to either side. Behind him rose the oil-fired steam boiler and, hopefully, reasonably bulletproof rear walls of mild steel. The steam gauge said he had a full head of steam. He tried not to think about what would happen if a hard-nosed round punctured the boiler while he sat this close to it.
He’d been at the controls of locomotives, steam tractors, and so forth in his time. So getting the big rig into forward motion was no problem. Neither Captain Gringo nor the designers of the Victorian excavator had ever seen Caterpillar tracks, of course. The steam shovel moved and was steered like a steam roller or farm tractor in reverse. Two huge cleated wheels rose as high as the turntable of the cab on either side up front. They were powered but didn’t turn on the chassis. A smaller pair of wheels trailing behind steered the rig like the rudder of a ship.
As he climbed the steep grade out of the main excavation, he experimented with other levers and found that in addition to steering the chassis straight, he could swivel the cab from side to side. The long steel beams of the shovel arm moved in unison with the cab. He’d worry about the way one controlled the inverted-elbow and steel-jawed scoop out ahead of them when he needed to. The fucking rig was threatening to fall over backward as the big front wheels clawed up the steep red clay bank. Then he was over the lip and dragging the chassis over amid considerable dust and scraping. Captain Gringo said, “That’s more like it!” as he steered due north toward the coffer dam. Something flew in one side opening and out the other, humming like an angry hornet.
Captain Gringo cursed, threw the levers, and held the machine-gun across his lap to fire as the cab spun merry-go-round on its turntable while the main chassis plodded on to the north. He spotted the two men pumping rifle fire at him from kneeling positions in the dust and let them have a burst as the side opening traversed them. Then he reversed the spin and gave them another burst for luck as he again lined up the cab with the coffer dam ahead.
Someone he hadn’t spotted in the dust clouds spanged a round off the blank steel wall behind him. He let it go. He saw, out the right opening, that Gaston was doing a real job on the slopes over that way. A building of some kind exploded skyward in a cloud of shattered lumber and shredded tin roofing. Two tumbling little dots, a pink one and a pale blue one, were about the right size for human figures. But who the hell would be wearing such wild colors?
As the coffer dam’s wall of driven piles loomed closer, he saw some white-clad figures above him, firing down his way from the flat crest. He grunted the machine gun around to brace it over the sill of the front opening, and as he opened up with one hand manning the Maxim and the other on the lever that swung the cab from side to side, the results were spectacular. He laughed and said, “Hey, this is neat! If a guy could go into combat with a rig like this, maybe a little less clumsy, infantry and even cavalry would be in a hell of a mess!”
He couldn’t see the top of the coffer dam from this angle. But if any of the guards he’d put down were still alive, they didn’t seem to want to show their heads anymore, so what the hell.
He started playing with the controls of the shovel arm. The movements were jerky and harder to control than one might think, just watching a steam shovel at work. But, okay, this gadget moved the whole arm up and down while this one bent the inverted elbow. When you had the scoop full, the handle up there that looked like a streetcar conductor’s bell probably opened the jaws of the scoop and let the shit fall. Hell with it. Wouldn’t need it.
The wet timber wall of the coffer dam was impressive as hell, this close to the base. He could see spurts of water making it through here and there the loose fill behind the timber piles. He stopped the rig, squinted thoughtfully, an
d said, “Yeah, that’s the water level on the far side, and we’re way under it, steam shovel!”
He steered west, moving along the base of the coffer dam in red mud that would have spun the drive wheels had they not been cleated like a farm tractor’s. As they protested the ever steepening grade, he told them, “We want to bust this mother where the water level’s below the rim of this cab’s wheels. They built her like a horseshoe. So if we bust one leg of the arch, the water swirling in sideways and downgrade ought to do some excavating for us as well, see?”
He spied a stream of water shooting out from between two piles ahead with the force of a garden hose. As he steered even with it, the water washed into the cab across his boots. He said, ‘This must be the place,” and braked the chassis to a halt. Then he swung the cab and boom around to crash the big steel bucket against the soggy timbers of the dam.
Nothing happened to the coffer dam. It made Captain Gringo’s ears ring like hell. He grimaced and said, “Okay, let’s drop the bucket in the mud at the base and see if we can pull some teeth!”
That didn’t work either. He lowered the bucket as far as it would go, then lifted, pressing against the piling. The teeth of the bucket tore long slivers from the damp timber. But he wasn’t about to stay here long enough to whittle away the coffer dam.
He experimented with the controls, figured out how to hit the mud with the bucket at the right angle, and scooped a wagonload of red muck from the base of the piling. The resultant hole filled with brick-red water by the time he’d figured out how to dump the load and gone back for more. He muttered sarcastically, “Whee, this is more fun than playing in a sand pile,” as he got the hang of it and started digging a serious hole.
Then a woodpecker started tapping on the metal all around him, hard. He dropped to his knees behind the controls, sighting along the barrel of his own Maxim for the source of the other machine-gun fire. A blue haze hung above the coffer dam on the far curve of the horseshoe. He shrugged and said, “That’s long range for automatic fire, friend. But, okay, if you want to play.”
He fired his Maxim back in short bursts, more to keep the other machine gunner pinned down than with any hope of hitting the son of a bitch. The prick was firing down and across from a break in the ragged top ends of the coffer-dam piling. The guy was good. Captain Gringo saw, after he’d lobbed a few bursts into the cordite haze across the way that his worthy opponent was ducking between his own bursts. Captain Gringo would have liked to do the same. But he couldn’t excavate dry river bottom, man his own Maxim, and watch out for flanking rifle fire all at the same time with his head below the steel sill of the cab!
He moved the boom to his right, so the big bucket and its heavy steel arm was between him and the enemy machine gunner. It meant starting a new hole and prevented him from returning the bastard’s fire, but as bullets bounced off the bucket instead of his forehead, he decided it could have been worse. He kept one eye on the rim of the dam above as he chewed up red mud at its base. He saw he’d accidentally done a good deed by digging a little farther from the base when the hole started to fill fast with what looked like boiling tomato soup. At the same time he spotted dots moving along the rim above and said, “Oh, you wanna get closer? Be my guest, motherfucker!”
There was a natural loophole formed by two piles having been driven deeper than the others. He knew the gun crew moving to flank him would spot it too. So he shifted the Maxim, sighted on the skylight filling the gap, and, the moment someone filled it with his head, fired a long hot burst.
As is often the case in combat, Captain Gringo couldn’t say for sure whether he’d blown someone’s brains out or just made them duck. Nobody was firing at him with anything from any direction now, so he assumed he’d at least made the other old pro reconsider his options.
As he scooped up another wagonload of river bottom, Captain Gringo began to reconsider his own options. The water-filled excavation was overflowing and running down slope toward the old main channel of the dammed Dorado. More red water gushed skyward from the center of the pool as if a water main had burst somewhere down there. More water, this stuff whiter, was streaming from the timber piles to his left. He nodded and said, “Right, she’s undermined and ready to let go, so what the fuck is a nice boy like me doing in a river bottom like this?”
He scooped up the Maxim and jumped from the cab with it cradled in his arms. He hit the red mud and it came up and over the tops of his mosquito boots. He growled, “Oh, no, not that shit again!” and started floundering up slope, the mud trying to suck his boots off with every step. He was maybe fifty feet toward higher ground when he saw his shadow outlined by bright orange across the red mud. Then the shock wave hit him and threw him face down in the mud on top of the Maxim!
The earth still trembled like jelly and the whole valley reverberated echoes of the tremendous blast when Captain Gringo pulled his muddy face out of the red goo, cursing and spitting red slime. He looked back over his shoulder, saw the huge mushroom cloud of red dust and blue smoke, and grinned. Naturally any construction site included an explosives dump, and Gaston, bless him, had hit it!
Then he saw what was happening closer, just beyond the steam shovel, and struggled to his feet. It wasn’t easy. He was plastered with what felt like pounds of mud, and it kept sucking at his boots. But he had to get moving pronto, so he did. He left the Maxim wherever it was in the mud. He’d used up almost all the ammunition in any case, and if he hadn’t, he still needed high ground more than he needed anything else.
He almost made it. He was actually clear of the mud and was running fast up the drier slope of the Dorado’s flood plain when the Dorado burst through the coffer dam and went crazy for a while.
The lake backed up behind the coffer dam tried to get through the first modest gap all at once. As Captain Gringo had foreseen, the raging waters tore across the valley at a forty-five-degree angle, washing far up the slopes of Pocopoco to swish the debris of the smashed-up construction camp back into the old channel in a rainbow arc of swirling, roaring, and oddly screaming chaos. Some of the screams were no doubt human.
Then the whole undermined coffer dam gave way and things got even wilder. Captain Gringo had made it well above the former banks of the Dorado, but the river didn’t pay attention to former banks or even the laws of gravity. A four-foot wall of foaming water caught up with the tall American and knocked him flat. Then, as the surge ebbed, it tried to suck him back down the slope into the swirling confusion of timber-studded whirlpools and cross-currents. He grabbed something solid and hung on as the water poured the other way over him for a million years. Then he could breathe again and saw he’d been clinging to a well-rooted scrub cedar that would never be the same again until it grew lots of new branches. He said, “Thanks, bush,” and got to his feet to run uphill some more before the river sloshed back across the valley.
He rolled over a basalt outcropping, tore through more scrub, and stopped on a rise to get his bearings. He was up on the slopes of El Escudo. He spotted cordite smoke to the south and headed that way, calling out to Gaston and his gun crew, if that was them making all that noise.
As it turned out, Gaston was alone in the sandbagged emplacement. He pulled the lanyard, turned as the four-incher lobbed another shell across the valley, and, spotting Captain Gringo, said, “Ah, there you are. Pass me some ammo, will you? My stupid Indians seem to have run away for some reason.”
Captain Gringo asked, “What in the hell are you shelling? Is there anything left?”
Gaston turned to peer over the sandbags, shrugged, and said, “Eh bien. Perhaps they’ve had enough for now. I still see little white dots moving up the slopes of Pocopoco though.”
“Big deal. There were some survivors. Hopefully most of the innocent workers made it before the dam went. That was the idea of the dynamite arrows. You say Ignacio and the others ran away?”
“Oui; I fear he did not have the vocation for soldiering he boasted of. I think it was that explosi
ves dump going off that unsettled them. I don’t remember seeing anyone around me here when I picked myself off the bottom of this adorable dusty pit. Do we really have to go looking for them?”
“No, they know the way home, and, thanks to you and me, they’ll still have a home to go to for a while. How far do you figure we are from the border?”
“We could make it just as the border patrols are taking la siesta, if we hurried, Dick.”
“Okay, what are we waiting for? Let’s hurry!”
The bank had just closed for the weekend when the two soldiers of fortune made it back to San Jose, Costa Rica, a few days later. Gaston of course would have bitched all weekend about not being able to cash the rubber-wrapped check he’d carried all this way, if Captain Gringo hadn’t shut him up. The tall American said, “Give me the damn thing and I may be able to work something out with a lady I know at the cable office. It won’t kill us if I can’t. Thanks to our getting back here the hard way, we still have the pocket money we left Grey town with.”
Gaston said, “True. But the only trouble with Costa Rica is that there is no market for our skills in such a quiet country. We’re going to have to make ourselves more presentable before we can check into even a modest hotel and—”
“Give me the damn check,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “Barber shop is down this way. We’ll get shaves and a haircut, get rid of these rags, and still have enough to live on for a month.”
“Perhaps, but not well, my Spartan youth. I was looking forward to at least two, ah, skilled masseuses willing to join me in the steam bath I must have to restore my poor old joints, after all those primitive nights on the trail, hein?”
