The rebels started shooting back whenever somebody tried to enter the clearing. From time to time they'd hit one of the soldiers who was dumb enough to expose himself to fire by crawling across the open grass. They were still pouring heavy fire on us but it wasn't doing much damage. There wasn't anything I could do. I just huddled up in a ball with my arms over my head, trying to make myself very small and very inconspicuous.
The situation was a stalemate for the moment. The clearing was a free-fire zone that no one could enter. We couldn't move out and the government troops around us couldn't move in. The rebels with me had enough ammo to last them for a while. The men on both sides kept firing at each other without any real effect. There was automatic and semi-automatic fire, but nothing heavier than that. The heaviest piece sounded like a Browning Automatic Rifle from the government side. The army's rounds kept ricocheting off the boulders around us, making a big racket but doing no damage. From time to time, the government troops would loose some heavy bursts and then lapse into desultory fire.
There was no change for the next twenty minutes. Then some heavy firing started coming from the south. The incoming fire from that direction stopped. It looked like the soldiers to the south of us were taking fire from their rear.
A shout went up from the men with me. It appeared that a relief column of rebels from lower down on the mountain had caught the government soldiers from behind and had them pinned down in enfilading fire. The men around me poured all their gunfire down the hill against the soldiers' position. The government troops were taking a heavy pounding from both sides.
Minute by minute, the battle changed. There was now a big hole in the army's line and the rebels had turned the army's flank and were rolling it up. It wouldn't be long before the men in the pit would be able to break out. The government soldiers were retreating along their line in an orderly manner, covering each other. But they were retreating.
The leader of the men with me, the one who'd stopped the other guy from decorating the fire pit with my guts, started yelling at the men to get ready to make a run for it. He asked for a volunteer to stay behind and put down covering fire so the others could get out. Never mind that he was asking the poor sucker to commit suicide. A small sacrifice in the grand revolutionary scheme of things.
One guy did actually volunteer. You had to be impressed. It reminded me of those other small dark tenacious and fearless soldiers who fought the greatest army in the world to a standstill with their wooden punji stakes half a world away.
"We will take this dog with us to protect us from their fire," the leader said. There was no dog with us, so I guess they were referring to me. The men grabbed up their ammo and weapons and crouched behind the boulders, ready to make a run for it.
"Now!" the leader shouted. He stuck his rifle into my left side and said, "You go first. I will be right behind you."
Ordinarily I would've attempted to discuss the subject with him in a measured and thoughtful manner, but this didn't seem to be the most auspicious moment. Everybody was hot with blood lust and the line, "Come let us reason together," didn't have the right ring to it.
Reluctantly, I got into a low crouch and slid between two rocks and exited the relative safety of the fire pit. Actually, more than anything else in the world right now, I just wanted to stay in that hole that had become home.
"Run, dog," the leader said.
I did.
I crouched as low as I could and ran as fast as I could in the direction of the rebel soldiers toward the south. The rounds hit the grass all around me. I didn't turn around to see if the men were following me. My eyes were fixed straight ahead at the safety of the tree line. I couldn't hear a damn thing because the firing was so loud.
Then I heard rotors. Instinctively, I turned to look. Rising up from below the tree line were two Huey gunships in formation, like two giant dragonflies. The wash from the blades blew the grass and everything else in the clearing. The gunships opened fire with TOW wire-guided missiles on the hole in the government line that the rebels were trying to fill. It was unmitigated slaughter. The rebels fell like grass under a lawnmower. There was no contest. Their small arms fire was too ineffectual to do any damage.
I hit the ground and just tried to become part of it. There was no place to hide. I wanted to pull the ground up over me. The rebels with me did the same. We couldn't run and we couldn't stay.
The gunships made another pass over the clearing, firing as they went. To the south, the rebels had fallen back into the cover of the jungle. The government troops started filtering back to close the hole in the line that the rebels had briefly held. The contest was over.
We stayed where we were. The firing had lessened. There was some occasional small arms fire but it wasn't the hot battle it had been minutes earlier. The choppers took a stationary hovering position over the clearing.
It was a moment suspended in time. Nothing moved. If not for the noise of the choppers and the wash of the rotors, it would have been as peaceful as an oil painting of a summertime afternoon.
Then the choppers gradually lowered themselves until they were positioned a few feet off the ground. Government troops jumped out in groups of twos and threes. We didn't move. Our faces nuzzled the dirt like we loved it and wanted to become part of it.
Then a lone figure hopped out of the nearest Huey. He started walking toward us. The swaggering gait was familiar. So were the sunglasses. It was Colonel Mayorga. He came toward us like a bantam cock of the walk, grinning from ear to ear over his victory.
When he got about ten paces from us, he pulled out a forty-five and put a slug into the back of the head of the first rebel on the ground in front of him. The other men jumped up and started running like hell. I did the same.
Mayorga got off two more shots that hit two men in the back. They both went down.
There were two guerillas left. One of them was the leader. The soldiers closed around us in a ring, their rifles leveled at us.
"Drop your weapons," a soldier yelled.
The rebels did. They raised their hands.
"Do not kill them," Mayorga said, with his lisp. "We need information."
"Si, senor," the commanding officer said. The soldiers edged in on the guerillas. They grabbed the rebels' hands and pulled them behind their backs and tied their thumbs together with bailing wire.
Mayorga swaggered up to me. He clapped his hand on my shoulder. "Muchas gracias, Senor Rogan," he said. "I have the honor to extend the deepest appreciation of the government and the armed forces of El Salvador for your invaluable assistance." He let out a big guffaw. "You're one hell of a jarhead. Fuckin' A. You nailed that cocksucker for us, while we've been trying to track him down for years. Let me shake that hand of yours."
He extended his hand to me.
I hauled back and nailed him with a right cross to the jaw that sent him flying through the air and left him sprawled on his ass. He was a lot shorter than me, so maybe it wasn't strictly fair, but Jack Kennedy always said that life was unfair, and he wasn't the first man to say it. Maybe the ancient Greeks were.
Mayorga got up, rubbing his jaw. He wasn't grinning any more. "Hey, man. Why the hell you do that?"
"Take one guess why, you bastard," I said.
CHAPTER XXIV
"Do you have access to a computer?" I asked Marta.
She made an unpleasant face. "I do not believe in computers. Computers are black magic. They are the creation of the devil."
"Interesting concept," I said. "Do you know whose computer I can use?"
She looked around her living room and thought for a minute. "If you wish, you can use Antonio's. I have seen several in the offices."
"I'll call him."
"Do not bother. I am going to his house for lunch. You can come with me."
It wasn't a bad offer, as offers go. But I was hoping for a better one. Back into the honeypot, for example. I leaned over and kissed her. Her reaction was distinctly lukewarm.
"You'
re not randy?"
She shook her head. "No, I'm not feeling randy at the moment."
"Any particular reason?"
She looked right through me. "I heard what you did to El Ciego. That was not very noble of you."
I shrugged. How does one respond to a remark like that? I always thought I was noble, but I guess some people could see it differently. "Let's go to Antonio's," I said.
It took two minutes for the chauffeur to drive us over to Antonio's house. We could have walked it in less than five minutes, but physical exertion was not a way of life for the upper classes in the tropics. Antonio’s house was almost as opulent as his father's, but it was built in a more traditional Spanish style. It was a huge house for a single man to live in alone. And evidently, he lived alone. At least his sister and her mother shared their house when they were in El Salvador.
Antonio met us at the door. He had a small grin on his face. It was the first time I'd seen him smile. Every other time he was either bawling or on the verge of bawling.
"Congratulations, Senor Rogan," he said. He shook my hand with a limp grip that felt like a moist flounder. "All the world is talking about how you tracked down El Ciego. You are the hero of the country."
"Hero to the free-marketeers," I said.
His grin broadened. "Nevertheless, you are welcome in my house. Please enter."
We went in. It was cooler inside the house. The midday sun was getting past the point where it made any sense to be outdoors. The furnishings were meager and non-descript, almost threadbare. Less expensive than you'd expect, given size of the trust fund this lucky sperm must have.
We sat in the living room and drank iced Margaritas, served by little ladies in starched white dresses. It wasn’t half bad. You could get used to a life like this.
"What news do you have of our father?" Antonio asked.
I told them what had happened, at least as much as I thought they should know. Then I explained why I needed access to a computer, but I didn't tell them where or how I came by the disk.
"I believe he was taken by a gang of demobilized military officers," I ended up saying. I didn't mention the rumor that their father was dead.
Antonio's eyes brightened. "Do you have any idea where they are holding him?"
I shook my head.
Marta was not very talkative. Antonio did most of the talking for the two of them. He seemed overjoyed because of what had happened in the jungle, although I couldn't see what the hell that had to do with him.
"This is a wonderful victory for our class," Antonio said, raising his Margarita. "We must drink a toast to it."
His comments finally pushed Marta past the tick-off point. Her skin reddened more than its usual freckle-faced ruddiness. "You are a fool," she said to Antonio in Spanish. "When you talk about our class, please do not include me. I do not wish to be part of your class."
Antonio flashed her a nasty smirk. "It's very simple then. You can give up your comfortable existence and your inheritance and go to live among the peasants. Let us see how well you do without your Gucci and your Hermes."
"That is easy to say. You never had to work for your money. Everything was given to you. Expensive cars. Big houses. Without Papa you would not be Managing Director. You would be Assistant Janitor."
Antonio bit his lip. The guy was about to lose his composure. His baby sister sure had the knack for bringing him close to tears. His sallow complexion took on the look of parchment stretched taut.
"Where can I use a computer?" I broke in.
Antonio let out a long sigh. "Let us eat lunch first," he said. "Then you can come to the office with me and I will see that you have a private place to work."
The lunch was health food. Tofu, avocados, plantains, papaya and mangos. No creature that had eyes. And flan for desert, that shapeless, tasteless, quivering mass. You had to feel so damn robust after eating a meal like that. It gave me a terrific craving for a rare steak. During the meal the conversation ranged from problems with the servants to the onerous duties on the importation of luxury cars to the most exclusive locations to vacation in Europe.
Then it was siesta time. Marta said she was going home to nap. Antonio offered me a guest bedroom.
I shook my head. "I never got into the habit," I said.
"Very well," Antonio said. "Then you can watch CNN, if you like. I take a short nap, only a half-hour. Then we can go to the office."
"Fine with me," I said.
He took me to a sparsely-furnished room and sat me down in front of a large-screen TV. The maid brought a tray of cold beers and set them down next to me, together with a bowl of chips. There was a remote on the sofa. I turned on CNN and watched some inconsequential soft feature about pollution in Antarctica. It wasn't long before I nodded off.
So much for never getting into the habit.
***
Antonio had a corner office in a decrepit building adjoining a warehouse in the old center of San Salvador. From his window, you could see the loading dock and the parking lot filled with delivery trucks. There was a putrid smell of industrial waste that permeated the entire area.
He led me down a dimly-lit corridor past a warren of tiny rooms to a windowless office with a table and chair. On the table was an old AST 286 with a small black and white monitor.
"If there is anything you require, please let me know," he said.
"What about a computer from the twentieth century?"
He gave me a sheepish look and spread his hands. "Unfortunately, this is all we have available at the moment. I hope it will suit your needs."
"It's probably OK," I said. "I think there's just text."
Antonio left the room. I slipped in McInerny's disk, switched to the A drive, and watched it come up on the screen.
The disk contained a rough draft of a long article or a short book, interspersed with McInerny's comments and footnotes. The man was a professional. He'd really done his homework. You had to be impressed by the effort that had gone into it.
Not only did it come complete with names and cross-connections, like an organizational chart, it even had extensive historical background to show how this group had come into existence.
It took more than an hour to read through the text.
There was a section on the group's connections with current members of the military. One of the familiar names, together with his military record, was our buddy Colonel Mayorga. And, according to McInerny, the leaders of this sterling group were two men I'd already had the pleasure of meeting. One of them had just gone to see his maker while I looked on. That was the guy who was shot in the Lincoln Town car in New York, one Colonel Navarette who, since he was recently deceased, would find it difficult to hold any kind of leadership position. The other boss was Colonel Aviles, who owned the Lincoln Town car that Navarette was killed in and who lived in that penthouse in the Galleria on East Fifty-seventh Street and who was in love with Ronald Reagan.
But the part that interested me most was a program that used El Salvador as a transshipment point to smuggle cocaine from Colombia to the States in barrels of Balsamo de Peru. The report said that since President Noriega's untimely downfall, Panama had lost its value as a transshipment point because the DEA had come down hard on the Panamanians and they couldn't go to the bathroom without written permission, let alone open a bank account. As far as the cash generated from this project was concerned, McInerny wrote that it was laundered through a one-office bank in Miami named Metrobank that was located in a strip mall in the suburbs.
The plan involved wrapping the coke in watertight packages attached to the inside of the barrels of Balsamo and duping the local Swiss laboratory that certified the integrity of the seal on the drums. I recalled that Hoag had told the story about the three men who had monopolized the export of Balsamo de Peru. One of the men was Roderick. The other man was Strassberg's dead brother, El Ciego's father. Who was the third man?
Did this scheme have anything to do with Roderick's kidnapping? D
id he find out about the coke smuggling and threaten to blow the whistle? Was that crime just a little too far over the edge for Roderick? Or did he revert to type and have a fight with his partners?
I leaned back in the chair and put my feet up on the table. The last page on the screen told about how he'd come across an American detective who claimed to be trying to find a wealthy man named James Roderick who had just been kidnapped, but that he didn't believe this lowlife. The private investigator, a guy by the name of Edward Rogan, seemed to be hiding something, but he wasn't sure what. McInerny put in his notes that he was going to tail this Rogan and find out what the hell he was up to.
It's a strange feeling to be reading a dead man's comments about you. It's like sitting on the crapper in a stall while your officemates discuss your shortcomings without knowing you're there. It isn't an occurrence that takes place very often.
But then something must have happened to make McInerny change his mind. The final paragraph said that he thought maybe Rogan was a straight shooter after all and that he was going to take Rogan to try to locate Roderick's chauffeur in Santa Tecla.
Vindication, at last. Even if it had to come from beyond the great divide.
CHAPTER XXV
I was in my room washing up for dinner when the phone rang.
It was Mrs. Roderick calling from New York.
"Mister Rogan, Mister Rogan," she screamed. She said something I couldn't make out. She was breathless, almost hysterical. It was unlike her.
"Calm down, Mrs. Roderick. I can't understand you."
I could hear her take a deep breath on the other end.
"Mister Rogan, please. I have just received another ransom letter in my post office box." She was trying hard to keep her voice even. "I am very afraid."
"Do you have a fax?" I asked her.
"What?"
"A facsimile machine."
I could hear her take another breath. "Oh, yes. I have one."
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