Cocking the weapon as I ran, I darted across the bullet-gouged floor toward the front of the room. As I approached, a hand grenade came wobbling through the air, hit the floor and bounced, then rolled behind Bravo’s feet.
“Bravo!” I shouted. “Behind you, a grenade!”
He turned, then grabbed it and threw in one motion, heaving it over the balcony. It exploded below a second later, the scream of an Anglo voice marking the spot.
“Who are these infidels to oppose Mario Bravo?” he raged. “Bring them on, bring them all!” He was spitting now, shaking a raised fist over his head.
Reaching Helen, I bent down, checking her for injuries. I pulled her chin up and pushed back a few random strands of hair from her pallid face. Streaks of blood ran in small trails down her forehead and arms, but she was still in one piece.
“Let’s go, baby.” I held out my hand to her, but she wouldn’t take it. She just sat there staring at me, vacant eyes fixing on nothing.
“Why, Joe, why?” she said in a child’s voice. “Why did you have to keep looking for me? I would have come back to you.”
She turned her head weakly across the broken room, to the battle outside. Tears began coursing down her cheeks, cutting black trails down her soot-stained face.
As I reached for her arm, a commando in black burst through a shattered glass wall. He hit the floor rolling and came up shooting, plastering the other twin against the railing.
I spun and fired, cutting him down with a burst from the tommy gun. He staggered crookedly, then skittered full on into an ugly standing sculpture, man and modern art collapsing together in a broken heap on the floor.
I advanced toward the shattered front façade, spraying bursts as I hiked forward, pinning down several commandos who were trying to reach the house.
Bravo was on the balcony now, still blazing away with his machine gun. I veered toward him until we were just a few yards apart. Our eyes met for just a second as I tossed him a mag. He might have been smiling.
The airborne whine began anew as the pilot brought the P-38 around for another pass. He had another rocket under the other wing, and I had the awful feeling that one was for me.
The only hope now was to head for the back of the house and flee through the open gate in back.
“Mario,” I yelled above the din, “it’s all over. Run for it!”
He didn’t seem to hear me. If he did, he didn’t respond.
I ran back over to Helen, picked her up, and slung her over my shoulder. She didn’t resist. Then I ducked down and began to run, zigzagging across the jagged splinters and holes in the floor.
I got about fifteen feet before a white-hot comet tore through my right leg. I lurched, lost my balance, and tumbled down, clutching at the bullet wound in my thigh. We both hit the floor as the scream of the aircraft bore down on us a second time.
I sat up, staring numbly at the blood spreading beneath my fingers.
“Oh God,” Helen gasped, looking from me to the dark shape ripping through the sky.
Then she was grabbing me by my belt loops, dragging me to my feet and pushing me forward, shouting, “Behind the fireplace, we have to take cover! Come on, baby, you can make it!”
As I careened forward I saw Bravo, still cursing and firing, as the best weapons platform the Army Air Corps ever had shrieked down and opened up with all guns.
Streams of machine-gun fire laced across the ground toward him, columns of dirt geysering upward in symmetrical wakes. Then the cannon cut loose and a torrent of steel slammed into the house, sawing through stone and timber, shredding the remains of the façade.
The balcony gave way with a wrenching groan, dropping off the front of the house amid an eruption of rock and splinters and flying glass. Mario Bravo rode out like Caesar on his chariot, descending below into the inferno of flame and dust.
Chaos reigned high as Death closed in. Staccato jags of automatic weapons tore through the din of explosions and dying men, sheets of smoke billowing through the devastated house.
I heard the whoosh of a rocket launch, then felt Helen’s hand on my back, shoving me toward the massive stone hearth. I reached back for her as I fell stumbling to the floor. The last thing I saw was her face.
There was a deafening explosion, and then everything flared blistering white, a searing wave of heat and hellfire devouring the room as the House of Bravo came down around us.
95
The world was black.
The air, the light, the room—all black.
There was no sound, no life.
Nothing.
Everything was shrouded in dense, dark waves of smoke, the air reeking with the acrid smell of high explosives, a bitter, chemical taste stinging my tongue.
My fingers before my face were fuzzy and thick—like warped tubing flexing in a blackened ether.
I half rolled onto my side, saw blue above the roiling clouds of pitch. A heavy shadow lay above me, broad and slanted. I wiped my eyes. The dark form took shape—a support beam, broken and wedged against the mantel above, protecting me from the ceiling that had collapsed around me.
Helen. She dragged me here.
I sat up, trying to locate her, my hands grasping handfuls of emptiness. In desperation, I spun around, peering into the swirling soot and smoke.
The house was a ruin. The roof had split in the center, cleaving down inward from the supporting rock walls, burying the staircase and punching through the floor to the lower level in several places.
Flames danced along the walls, scurrying up exposed posts and across fractured beams, smoke boiling out of a dozen different smoldering cauldrons from all corners of what had been the living room. If that wasn’t hell, it was a close second.
I called Helen’s name several times, but the discordant hum echoing in my ears was all I could hear.
I grabbed the beam above me, hauling myself up. Stabbing pain coursed through my leg, reminding me that I’d been shot. Gripping the bloody spot on my dungarees, I gave my wound a quick check: it felt like muscle only, no bone. Then I braced myself against the heavy plank and put weight on the leg. I could walk.
“Helen, where are you?” I shouted, panic churning up inside me.
Shapes moved in the distance, converging on the house in several spots.
I retreated several steps toward the back of the living room, the remains of the roof creaking ominously above. A burning chunk broke free near me, dropping through the darkened space like a falling star.
One of the commandos spotted me from outside and opened fire. Bullets whistled by, ricocheting off the stone behind me. A second shooter joined in. My options were closing down fast. I ducked down, hiding in the smoke and wreckage, looking for a way out.
A few feet away, a sagging section of floor drooped down at a forty-five-degree angle, leading into the abyss below. It went from ruin to exit in an eye blink.
Sweeping the room one final time for Helen as I went, I hopped over the jagged wood stalagmites at the fracture point then dropped onto the chipped marble surface amid a hail of machine-gun fire, sliding downward into the inferno’s depths below.
There was a hard reception waiting for me at the bottom. I bounced once, banged into a wall, and dropped flat on the marble. Shaking it off, I clawed my way upright along the stones, looking everywhere for Helen in the gloom.
Burning debris and shattered, unrecognizable pieces of stone and timber littered the floor. The whole place was aflame now, above and below.
Even through my concussion deafness I heard a loud snap upstairs, followed by a horrendous moan as the roof remains began to cave in.
Searching frantically for an escape, I spotted a large elk skin displayed on the nearest wall. I ripped it from its hooks and balled it in my fists, then took three hobbling, running steps toward the cracked glass walls at the back of the house.
Just before I hit, I brought my forearms up, then launched myself into the transparent façade. The wall disintegrated on impact
, a sheet of green glass spraying out as I burst through onto the cement patio beyond.
I hit the ground hard but kept rolling, spinning myself clear as the remains of the center section came cascading down in a crescendo of fire and rubble.
The cantilevered sleeping wing went next, a one-man teeter-totter without the rest of the house to balance it. It tilted down sharply and collapsed upon itself, sliding off its supports like a ship going down the ways, piling up on the rocks below with a terrible crash.
I scrambled away and stumbled again to the ground. Then I turned and looked back. Two-thirds of the house was a blazing ruin, the rest a junk pile on the slope. Billowing smoke still obscured the air and the deserted back grounds. The only play left was getting out—and fast.
I got up, took several uneven steps toward the gate, and then stopped flat.
She might be alive, trapped inside.
The odds were impossible—I knew that. But I turned around to face the hacienda anyway, ignoring what my instincts were shouting inside me, that last image of Helen’s face etched in my mind. Beyond any reason, I drew my pistol and started limping back toward the house.
A heavy hand clamped down on my arm and spun me around.
“Joe, what the fuck are you doing?”
It was Vito, his eyes black daggers glistening in the firelight.
“I’ve got to go back.”
He put his hands on my collar and jerked me forward, his face taut and severe. “She’s dead! No one else got out. Forget her, forget it all. We ’ave to go—now!”
We stared into each other’s eyes a long second, his words eating through me. But I knew he was right.
I exhaled hard, nodded once. “Okay,” I said, lowering my head, “okay.”
He readied the Springfield, flicked his head toward the gate, and set off. I looked back one last time at the House of Bravo, its shattered timbers glowing orange against the cobalt sky.
“So much for your first editions, Mario.”
96
We hit the gate unseen. What the smoke didn’t hide, the shadows did. Vito went out first and I followed him, crushing up against the cliff wall as I hobbled on.
I hadn’t made it twenty feet before I saw a man lying in the rocks a few feet away. I skidded to a stop and took aim.
Before I could shoot, I realized that he was lying on his back, arms twisted above his head like a discarded marionette. He was as dead as McKinley, dark liquid staining the dirt around him.
Vito saw me looking at him and held up the thirty-ought-six, flashing me a quick half smile. Then he gestured ahead with the rifle and we pressed on, picking our way through the loose stones in the pathway.
We reached the horses in a couple of minutes. Vito helped me climb onto mine then jumped into his own saddle.
“Hold it a second,” I said.
I reached under my jacket and tore a long strip from my T-shirt. I wrapped it around my leg tightly and pulled it into a knot just above the exit wound in the front.
“Let’s ride,” he said. “We’ll be clear in a few minutes—they didn’t see us. I can clean that out later, wrap it right. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
We rode away along the edge of the canyon. We were just rounding the last outcropping before the trail cut back out of sight when I saw something. I whistled and signaled for a stop.
Far down on the road below, a transport plane came rolling into view and slowed to a dusty halt, its propellers spinning at idle speed. I didn’t recognize the make, but it was about the size of a C-47 and might have been Russian.
The plan made perfect sense, though. The seldom-used road was a passable battlefield runway. The commando squad could be the hell out of Baja and across the Sea of Cortés in twenty minutes, landing anywhere along the desolate Arizona border for a quick extraction. These guys were pros all the way.
What happened next really surprised me, though, even on a day like that. As we watched, the P-38 swooped in and buzzed over the transport. Then the pilot made a smooth turn, then another, rolling out in the opposite direction with the landing gear down—a standard military overhead pattern. He was making a landing.
Vito saw it in my eyes. He knew what I was thinking. “Let’s leave this place. There’s only death ’ere.”
“Sorry, Vito,” I said. “I’m going to have to catch up with you down the trail, my friend. There’s someone down there I’ve really gotta meet.”
97
The terrain we were on ran downward toward the valley floor, fanning out along a sloping curve in striated folds. The lowest fold appeared deep enough to hide a man, running within fifty yards of the road before tapering off at the bottom of the fan.
I handed the reins to Vito and dismounted. “I’m going in,” I said. “You clear on out of here. There’s nothing more you can do.”
“What about your ’orse? There’s nowhere to tie it.”
I looked up into his eyes. “Take them both.”
He face tightened in grim resignation. He knew he couldn’t talk me out of it.
“Good luck, paesan,” I said. “See you in Montese.”
We looked at each other for a moment. His hand came out, fingers extended. “You’re a good man, Joe Buonomo.”
I shook his paw, flashed him a tight smile. “Damn few of us left.”
He smiled back, spoke low. “Arrivederci.”
Then he turned the gray horse, gave it a little kick, and rode off, the chestnut mare trailing alongside.
I set off down the carved channel. It was rocky, but I moved along pretty well for a guy with a bullet hole in his leg. The ravine was still deeply shaded, but the high ground was plenty bright. I guessed I might have ten more minutes of cover.
Well off to my right, a dozen or so commandos trotted down the hill. They were too widely spaced for a guy with a pistol to do much damage, but I had another plan anyway.
The P-38 driver rolled in low over the transport and banged her in on the road, the swirling props spinning up trailing columns of dust that obscured the air near the ground.
I made my move. Staying low, I juked down the cleft at double time as a mist of fine sand drifted over me. When it cleared, I held myself close to the brown earth, pressed low and flat. The pilot made a crisp turn downroad and headed back toward the transport. A minute later, he taxied past me, spinning another wave of flying camouflage into the air. I pushed forward underneath it.
The pilot brought the plane within fifty feet of the transport, made another tight turn that put the two aircraft tail to tail, and then cut the motors. The top canopy flipped open a moment later, then the side window came rolling down as the pilot cranked the handle. He climbed out of the cockpit and stood on the wing, stretching his back, like a guy who’d had a tough day at the office. Then he pulled an old-style leather helmet and goggles off, rubbing his close-cut blond hair several times.
It was the same guy I’d seen barking orders back at the hangar, and now he was already gesturing angrily to his men to get on the other aircraft. The mission hadn’t improved his disposition any.
He appeared to be about my age, and it dawned on me then that he was almost certainly a vet. We might have even served together.
My God, is that what we turned our young men into in that war? Men like him—and me?
The towhead climbed down the small foot ladder at the back end of the wing and ran over to the returning soldiers coming down the hill. It was handshakes and backslapping all the way around. Several of them were reenacting their exploits with their hands. Those guys had battery acid in their veins.
Far above them, the house burned furiously in the early morning light.
Two men straggled in carrying a comrade with a chest wound. He was in bad shape, bleeding heavily. They laid him on the ground to tend to him.
Towhead looked over at him, conferred with a lieutenant type. That man raised a hand, held up four fingers. They both looked down at the wounded man. Then Towhead turned back to the other m
an, his face entirely devoid of expression. He shook his head and held up five fingers.
They spoke some more, then the other men climbed into the plane, leaving the injured man alone on the ground. Towhead walked toward the open cockpit window, twirling two fingers in the air several times. He got a thumbs-up from the other pilot.
My leg was tightening up in the trench. I massaged it vigorously several times then squatted down to stretch the muscle out. While I was crouched down I pulled my weapon, released the safety, and pulled it close to my chest. I could feel my heart pounding against my arm. I took several deep breaths as I waited.
The transport’s right engine fired up, then settled into idle. That was good. Now I had cover noise.
I glanced back at the blond devil in charge of those conquistadors. He was standing over the wounded man, looking down at him with a face as stony and gray as that Aztec sculpture in the park.
Without a word, he pulled his pistol and discharged two shots into his comrade, the wounded man’s clenched fists flying up, then dropping limply at his sides.
Towhead walked off toward the transport without looking back, without showing any emotion at all. He was a freezer case, that guy, as cold and as distant as a dead star.
My plan had been to put five in him as soon as he got close and let the chips fall where they might after that, but he crossed me up when he climbed into the transport. He exchanged a few words in the hatchway with another man in a flightsuit, then handed him a small bundle. The second man then jumped down from the plane and jogged off as Towhead yanked the door shut behind him. Oily smoke shot out of the left engine a second later as it turned over.
A moment later the transport flapped its flight controls as it rolled down the road, gathering speed for takeoff, legions of dust taking flight behind it. As the dirt settled, I crept up on the other pilot who was making his way toward the P-38, his head down as he rifled through a stack of green bills. As I approached, I realized he was Mexican Air Force, an errand boy sent to help cover the tracks.
One for Our Baby Page 28
