by Len Deighton
Lucas climbed out of the jeep. He showed no hurry. She admired that; the inglés was cool. He went to a door, pushed his way inside and was lost to her vision. She swung the gun to look at the main gate again. The two men were standing together. She held the sniperscope on the white-shirted man. He was quartered by the cross-hairs, enlarged and radiant in the glittering optics of the scope. He rested his hand on the gate as he watched Lucas and the car. He swung the gate and looked towards the hinges of it. Perhaps it was making a squeak; she was too far away to hear. She knew only that he must not be permitted to close the gate. It was fitted with a self-activating lock. Once closed, a key was needed to open it again. If he closed the gate now, they would have Ramón trapped there. She looked again at the machine guns. A battle under such conditions would be costly. They must not close the gate.
Experimentally she took first pressure on the trigger. The white-shirted man swung the gate again and this time he moved it until it was in the halfway position. She gripped the gun very tight against her shoulder. It had been fitted with a soft rubber-faced butt. She knew the gun would leave a bruise on her upper arm. Shooting always did. But at the training camp the edge of the bruise noticed under her short-sleeved shirt could bring nothing worse than a scolding about holding the gun tighter. Here such a bruise was all the evidence the Federalistas needed to execute man, woman or child without trial. Neither would the death be mercifully quick. They had horrifying variations on cutting a living human into small pieces. For women they had devised methods far worse … she closed her mind to all of it.
Second pressure: the gate was still moving. There had been jokes about her ability to squeeze the trigger with her strong typist’s fingers. In her hearing the remarks had been just risqué jokes, but she had sensed deeply felt antagonism too. Men could bear the thought of being shot by a man but being shot by a woman was seen to be a shameful end. The tension of her body was unbearable. The strain of keeping one eye closed – something she’d always found absurdly difficult – contrived to make her deaf to the shot. She felt the powerful punch it gave her, just as she had that first day when the instructor had walked down the line of trainees, kicking the gun barrels to demonstrate what the recoil would feel like.
Through the scope she saw the man’s head disappear into a bright pink cloud. Head shot; certain death. The second man at the gate had gone back into the guard hut. She swung herself round to aim at the sentry in his rooftop tower. It was easier for her to wriggle her hips, and move her body round, than to lift the heavy rifle to a new aiming position. She slowed the traverse as the tower flashed through the scope. She swung back again, fidgeting her elbow to drop a fraction. She couldn’t risk another head shot. A chest shot was more certain, allowing a greater margin of error.
She squeezed the trigger. She heard the shot this time, and heard the truck – with its load of men – as it sped towards the open gate. Still looking through the scope, she saw the sentry stagger against the gun which traversed. Then he drooped back over the rail, like a gymnast, before see-sawing gently and then tumbling right over it. He hit the roof like a rag doll, slid down it, arms and legs flailing, then dropped twenty feet to the ground and remained still.
She laid the rifle down and found herself mumbling a prayer without knowing who it was for. She came up on to her knees to see better. She should have remained flat and out of sight until the camp was occupied, those were the orders. But unless trouble came from the married quarters, that cluster of new huts behind the laboratory, there would be no more shooting.
Two sentries were dead. She could see them both: full-length in the dust. An irregular puddle of blood was forming under the twisted body of the man who’d fallen from the tower. It was scarlet and shiny and flies were buzzing around it already. She remembered her first bullfight. The horse had died in just such a mess and she had wept.
Lucas heard the shots and then the blast on the whistle but he did not turn his head. He should have guessed that the sentries were to die. It was an obvious opening to any plan that involved stealing trucks from a compound overlooked by a well-sited machine gun. They had, in effect, lost their lives when Ramón decided to come here. Or perhaps when they were assigned to that shift of guard duty. Sentries, like reconnaissance troops, were the first to die. It was part of the job. Then Lucas heard the truck and the excited yells of the men riding on it. He guessed they would be brandishing their rifles as extras did in those old Hollywood films about Pancho Villa.
Inez Cassidy knew that sudden weariness that tension brings. She wanted to put her head down, shut her eyes and sleep. But she stretched her arms and felt the ache in her shoulder muscles where the bruise would appear. Her rifle toppled forward over the rock upon which she had rested it, and stuck there, muzzle in the earth. She didn’t rescue it. Afterwards some said that Inez Cassidy dropped her rifle after shooting the two men, and the ballad of course says the girl ‘… threw down her gun, its bolt warm with tears’.
Maestro, for instance, insists that she threw the gun down. He was only a few paces away, seated at the wheel of a jeep with a whistle in his mouth. He noted the way the sentry in the tower was knocked backwards by the shot. Maestro had seen many men shot, and by now he could judge the point of impact from the way the body fell. This man toppled backwards with his feet and hands stretched towards Inez, as though imploring her not to shoot again. Maestro decided that the bullet had struck him at the waist, a few inches above the centre of gravity. Fatal. Maestro blew the whistle very loudly and then accelerated the jeep so that its wheels whipped up dirt and dust before it sped off down the hill.
Angel Paz was in the truck. He did not look back to see Inez firing. Maestro had permitted him to be up-front beside Novillo, who was the driver. Angel Paz was standing in the crude hole that had been cut in the roof of the cab, manning Novillo’s ancient Hotchkiss machine gun on its crude homemade mount. It was Angel’s task to kill the sentries if Inez missed. Consequently there was nothing for him to do except to leap out at the gate and open it and drag the body aside. He noticed that the blood, in tiny drops, was covered in brown dust. Ramón later reprimanded the driver and Angel for not running over the body. Such niceties could cost them the revolution, he said.
When Paz got back in the cab he was excited. He loosed off a few rounds into the air. The shots went over the married quarters and faces came to the windows there. Ramón cursed the boy’s stupidity.
The four men in the office facing Lucas heard the truck coming and the shouts of the men. They looked out of the window and when they turned back to him he had a gun raised. ‘Please,’ said Lucas. ‘You have families here. We want only trucks and gasoline.’ But Lucas wondered whether he was telling the truth. Ramón had lied to him about killing the sentries.
‘Holy cow!’ said Charrington. He gave no sign of having heard Lucas or even of knowing he was there. Charrington took his glasses out of the drawer, put them on and went to the window for another look. ‘Holy cow!’
Jerry Singer was looking at Lucas. ‘You’ve killed the goddamned sentries,’ he said angrily. Lucas was surprised by the black man’s beautiful bass voice.
‘I know,’ said Lucas, although up to this moment he had only guessed what the shots were.
‘They are just local kids,’ said Charrington, turning back from the window. The extended fingers of his hands were flexing and opening as if he no longer had control over them. ‘Only there to stop thieves … they would have raised their hands at the first challenge.’
Lucas edged over to the window. He wanted to see what was happening. He wanted to see if Ramón was still in position. Lucas stole a quick glance out of the window and saw both dead sentries. As Inez had seen the two men just as targets, and Maestro had seen them just as fascists, so now did Lucas see them only clinically. The cracked open skull in one and the bright red arterial blood on the other meant gunshot wounds, life extinct, death instantaneous.
‘Yes, they are dead,’ said Lucas solemnly.<
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‘We must go to them,’ Charrington said.
‘Take it easy, Jack,’ said Singer. He took his friend’s arm. Until now they had not been all that close, but the sight of Charrington in such great anguish made Singer concerned for him.
It was then that they heard Angel Paz firing his burst of machine-gun fire.
Singer said to Lucas, ‘You’re not a local.’ It seemed curiously irrelevant but Singer wanted to know exactly what was happening. Eventually he would have to write a report for his masters and ‘don’t knows’ would not be welcomed as a part of it.
‘I want the keys to the gas pumps, and the keys to the trucks,’ Lucas said.
‘He’s a European,’ said Charrington. ‘Some stooge from Moscow … left behind by glasnost.’
The door burst open. It was Maestro. ‘Damn you, where are the keys?’ The plan had been that Lucas would bring the keys out to him but he could not wait any longer.
Lucas kept his eyes on the four men. ‘The keys are coming,’ he said.
Maestro moved upon Charrington and grabbed him by the throat, ‘Give me the keys. Give them to me.’ Charrington wrenched himself away from the attack. He stood there rubbing his throat.
‘They don’t understand Spanish, Maestro. Stand back and let me handle it.’ Lucas made a movement with his pistol and said, ‘You’ve survived our little war, comrades. Don’t do anything foolish just for the sake of a truck and some gasoline. Just get the keys and give them to him.’
‘Give them to him, Jack,’ Singer said.
Charrington got a bunch of keys from his pocket. He stepped across the room and used one of them to open a wide cupboard near the door. Inside were rows of keys on hooks, each key tagged neatly. The keys for the pumps were marked in Spanish and English for the benefit of the drivers. The keys for the vehicles each had their registration number on the tag. It was simple.
Maestro took all the keys: every one of them. It was the way Maestro did things. He distributed them to his men. He found Angel Paz trying to break into the armoury and about to shoot the lock off the door. Maestro reminded him that there would be detonators and explosives inside. And that using a gun to open the lock might blow him to perdition. He reminded Paz about that from the far side of the compound, in a voice that echoed down the valley and utilized some choice Spanish expletives. The men laughed. It was comforting that Maestro’s wrath was lately centred upon the two foreigners.
But none of the keys would fit the lock on the armoury door. Rather than waste time, Maestro let Paz break into it by driving a truck so its fender tore away the door hinges.
Then they backed the Toyota up to it and loaded it with rifles, pistols, ammunition and explosives. It was a good haul. They decided to fill the remaining space with tinned milk and frozen meat.
Lucas heard the armoury door break. So did the others. ‘They are going to the married quarters,’ said Charrington.
‘I promise they will not,’ Lucas said. He went to the door to see what was happening. There was no movement in the married quarters but he saw men taking cans of milk from the kitchen storeroom.
‘Orange juice,’ Lucas shouted. Angel Paz looked up and smiled. Lucas saw Ramón and called, ‘Orange juice, Ramón. Vitamin C, ascorbic acid.’ Ramón told them to load orange juice.
Turning back to the men in the office, Lucas said, ‘Do you have a doctor here?’ No one answered. ‘Do you have a doctor here?’
‘He’s down the valley at camp number four.’ It was Singer, the big black man, who answered.
‘I’m leaving a casualty here.’
‘Suit yourself, buddy,’ said Singer coldly.
‘It’s an amputation.’
Singer shrugged.
‘I’m taking some saline and plasma with me,’ Lucas said.
‘The dispensary is the last door at the end of the block,’ Charrington said.
‘They will not go near your families. They are disciplined men. Stay quiet and no one will get hurt.’
‘Those Indian sentries will be pleased to hear that,’ Singer said.
‘Let me go to the married quarters,’ said Charrington. ‘I will talk to them. They must be scared half to death.’
Lucas was about to agree when he saw Ramón approaching. He came into the office and looked at the Americans with great curiosity. ‘Tell the yanquis this,’ he told Lucas. ‘Tell them we are taking the vehicles and going down the valley. We’ll follow the river road as far as Bañado. We’ll cut the phone and we are taking the fancy radio with us. We’ll disable the generator before we leave. The rest of the transport is immobilized but it can be repaired in an hour or two. I want three days before anyone follows. Before anyone follows; make sure that they understand that. They can tell the Federalistas any story they like.’
Lucas translated it for the Americans, although he suspected that they could understand it. They were quiet now. The initial indignant boldness had evaporated. They were concerned about the wives and the children. To Lucas Ramón said, ‘We’ll take two Yankees with us.’
‘Take them with us?’
‘We must have hostages,’ Ramón said.
‘Do we need them?’
‘Have you not heard of airplanes? They’ll have no problem finding us, especially with the trucks kicking up the dust.’ Ramón frowned, angry at himself for explaining. ‘Yes, we need them. The talkative one with the glasses and this big black one. Okay?’
‘Yes,’ Lucas said. To the two chosen men he said, ‘You two will come with us.’
They argued. Charrington said his wife would worry. One of the clerks offered to substitute for him but Ramón watched and shook his head. They were still arguing even after they were outside and the trucks were ready to go. Maestro, tense and needing sleep, pushed the two Americans roughly as they climbed into the back of a Volvo truck.
There had been no sound nor movement from the huts where the families lived. A guerrilla brandishing a machine gun had walked up and down, and that seemed to be enough to keep them all inside. But there was no doubt that the guerrillas were being watched from behind the curtains and the slatted blinds. As the Volvo truck containing the two captives moved off, a young woman came out on to the porch of one of the huts. She waved and shouted, repeating her shrill cries over and over again.
Lucas was in the jeep with Maestro. It was stationary. They would be the last to move off and then would drive at the rear of the convoy of vehicles. Lucas got to his feet and cupped his ear, trying to distinguish the woman’s words.
‘What is it?’ Maestro asked.
‘A name: Jack, I think.’
‘Make her go inside and shut up.’ It was typical of Maestro’s imperious manner, his contempt for Lucas, and of the way he categorized Lucas as one of the enemy. Before Lucas could do anything, the American – Charrington – had pushed his way to the tailgate of the Volvo. He leaned out as far as he could. His glasses glinted in the sun as he yelled, ‘It’s okay, Belle. Go on back in the house. Take care of Jimmy. It’s okay. I’ll be okay, Belle.’
‘Go, go, go!’ Maestro told the jeep driver – an impetuous fellow they called ‘René the bullfighter’ – who revved up and let in the clutch suddenly enough to burn rubber.
The young woman, Charrington’s wife, did not go back. She ran along the porch, jumped down the steps and ran madly to get to the main gate before the Volvo did.
Perhaps she intended only to call goodbye. Instead of running along the road, she took a short-cut, running through the inner compound. She ran along keeping close to the wire fence behind which the trucks were lined up. That meant passing the generator. It was as she got to it that the heel on one of her shoes snapped. She stumbled and then snatched off both shoes to run barefoot. The stony path cut into her feet and she winced with pain but she did not slacken her pace. Far behind her came her small son. He thought his mother was running away from him. He couldn’t keep up with her and as he tottered along he cried desperately.
Angel Paz had t
old everyone about his skills with explosives but, like many explosives experts, he was attracted to that study by its theatrics more than by its chemistry and physics. For this reason the explosive charge he had placed under the generator was liberal if not to say extravagant. Had the building been a flimsy one made of wood, or had the door been anything but steel, the explosion might only have bowled the woman over and given her a slight concussion. But Angel Paz wanted everyone to remember his demolition, and the generator exploded like a bomb. Fragments of ceramic, steel, glass and wire whined across the compound like a hail of bullets. Charrington’s wife was hit by a hundred or more fragments and the blast carried her almost fifty yards. She landed in a heap near the outer wire, her skirt over her head and one arm severed from her trunk. She was dead of course. Even the child seemed to sense that, for when he got to her he stood at a distance, repelled as humans are in the presence of death.
A terrible moan came from Charrington but he and his voice were lost in a cloud of dust as the jeeps, the cars and trucks sped down the steep winding road. As they reached the bend the sound of the explosion came back along the valley to meet them.
Lucas watched the road ahead and thought about everything that had happened. He felt sick but he did not suffer self-doubt, still less did he feel personal guilt. Ralph Lucas had seen enough of pain and death to have become hardened and something of a fatalist. Yet the death of the sentries and of Charrington’s wife had affected him: perhaps it was a result of growing old. Certainly he found it difficult to share the adolescent political ideas of Angel Paz, and there was little to admire in the guerrillas. So far as he could see their misguided political ideas were just a rationale for violence. Given two years in office he had no doubt that they would become as corrupt and venal as the Benz government they so reviled. Most of his regrets were technical ones: he felt sure that he could have made a better job of the amputation, and he should have cautioned all concerned about the delicate state of mind that comes with the shock of serious injury. He was angry at the board which had pushed him into this absurd situation and, most of all, he wished he were clever enough to find a way out of it.
