The Viper Squad

by J. B. Hadley

  “Never in El Salvador,” Clarinero said.

  “Bullshit!” Sally said in English, since the Spanish language lacked a word to convey so neatly her exact meaning.

  “Those troubles we will have to leave until it’s time to face them,” Clarinero said in perfect English. He smiled at her surprised look. “My father at one time was a diplomat. I went to high school in Chevy Chase and spent two years at Princeton. I made the rowing team there and had my own Ferrari.” He gestured about him at the burnt-out camp. “This is how I repay my parents.”

  “Your family was one of Los Catorce?”

  “One of what are called ‘The Fourteen,’ yes, although there are really about fifty families in the ruling oligarchy. About two percent of the population owns more than sixty percent of the land in El Salvador. Our families are very aristocratic, proud of what we claim is our pure European blood. We regard the slightest concession to the illiterate campesinos as pure Bolshevism. You’ve seen the campesinos for yourself, Sally. They have little to lose, whatever they do; and it’s true that they are exploited by communist agitators. You Americans say, ‘Have a fair vote and a democratic government.’ But democracy depends upon the middle class, and here the middle class is small and weak. There are some things wrong that I do as a guerrilla, Sally, but I would be an even greater criminal if I sat back, grew fat on the misfortunes of others and did nothing.”

  Sally hardly knew what he was saying anymore. He spoke English …Princeton … handsome.… She gazed in his eyes and trembled when his fingers lightly brushed her arm.

  Mike Campbell flew from Mobile to Atlanta and changed planes for Washington, D.C. He hired a car, crossed the bridge from Annapolis to the Delmarva peninsula and took Route 50 down Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Knowing how they could be stopped entering El Salvador on a single word from the U.S. government, Mike had decided he could not risk any weapons training. If the FBI spotted three known mercs together with shotguns after rabbits, they raised a multistate alarm.

  He followed 13 south and turned off for Chincoteague. The road ran along the edge of the Wallops Island rocket base, picturesque and smooth as a golf course, giant dish antennas peering up into the sky next to dark woods. A few trawlers were being unloaded at the dock at the town of Chincoteague, but otherwise there was not much happening. The tourist places were still shut up this early in the year. Mike asked directions to the campground at the edge of town, and this proved to be almost empty too, except for seven one-man tents beneath pine trees in one corner. Mike had seen this campground in an otherwise boring home movie that one of his neighbors back in Arizona had made on a trip east. As he drove up, Andre was exercising the team. They all wore running shoes and green track suits with blue lettering: MURRAY HILL TRACK AND ROAD CLUB.

  Each morning, not long after dawn and a breakfast of eggs, bacon and sausages cooked over a camp stove, Andre drove them in his rented station wagon across the bridge to Assateague Island National Seashore, and they ran, jogged and walked for miles along the deserted Atlantic beach. They got back to the station wagon about midday and drove to town to a restaurant by the docks for a meal of seafood and beer. Then a couple of hours’ siesta in the tents, followed by a couple of hours’ running in the marshes, scrub and grasses on Assateague Island. Dinner in the restaurant—with a lot of beer this time to relax sore muscles—and sack out gratefully in a sleeping bag with a hole scooped in the ground beneath for the hipbone.

  Mike ordered the same routine every day, knowing that routine and boredom both created and tested a team’s discipline. Andre Verdoux called the shots, and Mike worked out as a regular member of the team—sometimes, to their amusement, cursing Andre out as a stern taskmaster.

  “You notice anything about Lance Hardwick?” Andre asked Mike one evening.

  “Hell, no. I have enough trouble looking out for myself,” Mike said. “He seems gung ho. He’s sure got more energy and enthusiasm than any of the rest of us.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Andre said. “Where’s it coming from?”

  “Sour grapes,” Mike responded with a grin. “When you and I were kids, we were just like that.”

  “Watch him,” Andre said dryly.

  Mike did. Lance was a rookie at the merc game, so it was reasonable for him to show more enthusiasm than any of the others. Besides, he was the only man on the team without real-life combat experience, so he had to prove something to himself and the others.

  Just as Andre might be trying to make a place on the team for himself by insinuating things against Lance.

  At dinner that night, Mike announced they would not be hitting their usual routine on Assateague Island the next day. Instead, they would go to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Dorchester County on the Eastern Shore. He passed around an ordinance map of the area and a compass to each man.

  “Each man sets off at twenty-minute intervals from this point, where Route 335 crosses the water,” Mike told them. “The X marked in ballpoint on the blue high—way east of the refuge is the pickup point where Andre will wait for us with the station wagon. I think it’s illegal to cross the refuge the way we are going; and if you’re caught by park rangers, you’re eliminated. It’s against the rules to ask anyone the way or get help, though I doubt you’ll meet anyone while crossing these marshes. However, you may follow another man if you can, or team up if you want—but remember that of any two men finishing together, the one who started latest is the winner. There’ll be only one winner. The rest of us will be losers.”

  This sounded like a holiday to everyone after Andre’s relentless daily grind on the beach—at least it did till they saw the Blackwater Refuge next morning from the bridge on Route 335. It was a gray, cold day and the waves slapped on the inland water as if it were the Atlantic. Tall reeds grew in icy water as far as they could see across the flat horizon, interrupted only by isolated hummocks sporting a few wind-tattered pines. No house could be seen in any direction.

  Unexpectedly, Mike took over from Andre and lined the men up by the side of the road. “Strip!” he roared at Lance Hardwick.

  “Mike, in this cold!” Lance protested. “You gotta be crazy!”

  “Strip.”

  Lance untied his running shoes and unzipped his track suit and stood in the buff by the deserted road, shivering.

  Mike picked up the track suit and searched its pockets. He found only the map, compass and a packet of raisins, which he emptied out on the road. He picked up the right shoe and found nothing. Then the left. A clear plastic packet of white powder fell out.

  “Get dressed,” Mike said. As Lance did, Mike asked him, “Coke?”

  “Right. You want some?”

  Mike waited till Lance had tied both shoelaces and stood erect. Then he hit him on the mouth, drawing blood, and again caught him with a right across, which decked him.

  Lance rolled away from his attacker and came to his feet again in one fluid movement, hands held before his body, feet apart.

  Mike lunged at him, allowing Lance to think he was making an enraged charge. Instead, Mike drew back just before contact, swiveled on one foot and delivered a chest-high kick. Lance managed to twist away from the full impact of the kick and rode with its force, being thrown to the ground again but again rolling back effortlessly into a fighting stance.

  Mike saw that Lance was good enough to spar and roll with anything that was thrown at him. Which was the sort of stuff he could learn in a gym. Close-in fighting for real was probably something he knew less about, and some—thing in which Mike excelled. Mike stepped in fast, feinted, and stepped inside the range of Lance’s kicks. Mike drove the base of his right palm beneath Lance’s nostrils, snapping his head back on his shoulders, nearly tearing the nose off his face. Mike followed with a straight left knuckles-up karate punch to his solar plexus, which drove the wind from his lungs and left him bent over, choking on the blood from his nose. A side kick in his ribs leveled him and left him retching and writhing on the roadway at
Mike’s feet.

  Mike glanced at his watch and pointed at Joe Nolan. “First man away!”

  Joe headed into the marsh without a word, and Andre fussily noted the time on a clipboard.

  Harvey went next. Cesar. Then Mike himself. Bob Murphy uncapped a flask of coffee immediately after Mike had gone and helped Lance to some. Without getting up from the roadway, Lance gratefully sipped the hot liquid. Bob fetched him a plastic basin of water and a roll of paper towels so he could wash the blood from his face and neck.

  “Andre will drive you to Cambridge and give you money to get home,” Bob said. “I got to go, kid. Take care of yourself.”

  Lance nodded, dejected.

  After Bob set out, Andre called to Lance, “Let’s go.”

  “No.”

  Andre shrugged. “So be it.”

  He drove away.

  Bob Murphy finished with the best time by far, reaching the pickup point before any of the others, even though the first man had a start of an hour and twenty minutes on him.

  First to start, Joe Nolan came in last. “If you guys had to cross Baltimore or Wilmington, I’d have won hands down. Trouble here is all this damn green stuff blocking the view, and it all looks the same.”

  Bob said, “What this place needs, Joe, is a thick coat of asphalt and maybe some birdbaths and stuff so you don’t have to leave your car to see the wildlife.”

  They had a celebration dinner that night, at which Bob claimed to be the top man in the group, much to Andre’s annoyance. Bob beat the waiter at arm wrestling, which he claimed confirmed that he was the champion specimen of manhood on this part of the Atlantic seaboard. He spoiled this by throwing up out the station-wagon window on the way back to the campground.

  Next morning it was back to the daily grind on Assateague Island. They were eating breakfast at the picnic table in the campground before setting out when they heard the zipper on what they had assumed was Lance Hardwick’s empty tent.

  Lance crawled out in his track suit, battered and bruised but ready to go. He said nothing to anyone, sat at the table and helped himself to a paper plate of eggs, sausages and bacon. From one pocket of his track suit, he produced a Fresca can flattened and folded to the size of a fifty-cent piece.

  Bob took it. “Hey, that’s mine. Remember, Andre, you were pissed off because I disturbed the ecology by throwing it away at the pickup point?” He looked at Lance. “So you did make it there, after all.”

  Lance nodded.

  “It’s sixty or seventy miles from the pickup point to here. You hitch?”

  Lance nodded again. Next he pulled out a clear plastic bag of cocaine, much larger than the one from the day before. He placed it on the table before Mike, who tore the bag in half and let its contents run into the sand.

  Mike nodded to Andre to pour Lance an enamel mug of coffee.

  Nothing more was said.

  Chapter 8

  ON Campbell’s orders, they flew from Washing—ton to Miami, bought a ticket there to Guatemala City, and another ticket in Guatemala City on a local airline to San Salvador. Mike and Cesar flew the first morning, traveling separately but on the same planes. Andre left alone in the afternoon. Next day the four remaining all traveled separately, with orders that on no account were they all to arrive on the same plane from Guatemala City to San Salvador.

  Six rooms had been reserved at the Ritz Continental, downtown on Avenida Sur, not one of the most expensive and luxurious hotels and therefore, they hoped, free of journalists and other pests on expense accounts. The rooms had been reserved for “Mr. Hillman’s party.” No one was to give a false name, but was to write illegibly whenever possible and avoid handing over his passport.

  Mike had asked Andre to come as far as San Salvador with them. He had a room reserved at the Parker House, even less pretentious than the Ritz Continental and not far away. He was to keep apart from the others as their ace in the hole if things went wrong in the city. After they left for the countryside, Andre was to remain in the city of San Salvador as their anchorman. He was not enthusiastic but took what was offered.

  Orders were for everyone to lie low for a few days, see the sights, relax—and stay out of trouble. They could hang out together in pairs if they wished; but not more than two at a time, since three or more foreigners together were more likely to attract attention.

  The big draw on their second day in San Salvador was a soccer match.

  “We’ve got to see this game,” Bob told the others. “I don’t know who El Salvador is playing—Ecuador or Paraguay or somebody, but it’s an international match, and in my book any game between any country and El Salvador has to be worth watching.”

  He waited for Nolan, Waller or Hardwick to ask why. They didn’t, being content to sit back and drink very good Salvadoran beer, cane spirit—which they called by its Spanish name espiritu de cana—and Atlacatl rum. They sat in Bob’s hotel room, figuring that Mike’s prohibition of gatherings of more than two applied to outings in public only. Between drinks they munched on gallo en chica, which was cockerel cooked in hard cider, and pupusas, small cakes made of corn, some filled with ground meat and some with cheese.

  “I think this goddam soccer game is going to be worth watching,” Bob proclaimed. “Let me tell you what happened when El Salvador played Honduras in 1969. They had the ‘soccer war.’ The players kicked the shit out of each other on the field; the fans fought each other in the stadium; the TV and radio picked up the quarrel; politicians traded insults across the border; and the generals rushed back to their barracks to bring their troops out to settle the final score. The war lasted only four days—”

  “Mike said stay out of trouble,” Lance butted in.

  Bob looked at him with disgust. “Look at who just found Jesus.”

  “Hey, I’m on probation,” Lance said. “I ain’t going to blow it over some fucking soccer brawl. I’ll put my bucks down for the Rams and the Vikings, but I couldn’t give a shit for Pele and fancy footwork.”

  Bob grunted. “So stay home and watch TV.”

  At the moment, Hill Street Blues was on the set. The guys at the precinct house rattled at each other in Spanish not even closely synchronized to their lip movements.

  Lance laughed. “Okay, I’ll come.”

  “I’m going to find me a lowdown whorehouse tonight,” Joe Nolan said, “but I got nothing against good clean fun in the afternoon.”

  “Who did you say El Salvador was playing?” Harvey asked suspiciously.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Bob said. “I think Paraguay or Ecuador.”

  “They communist countries?” Harvey asked.

  “Damn, no, Harvey. You think I’d take you to see pinko faggots play ball?” Bob asked with a straight face. “Is that what you think of me?”

  “Okay, I’ll come,” Harvey said, thus reassured.

  A huge mob swarmed outside the stadium. Long lines waited at ticket windows. Scalpers held up tickets and shouted prices. The cheap seats were in the sun, the more expensive in the shade. The scalpers with the most expensive tickets picked on Bob and Joe. Although Bob was wearing a guayabera, the appliquéd shirt-jacket that many Salvadorans wore, he was easily spotted as a foreigner by his Aussie slouch hat, khaki in color and complete with puggaree and chin strap. Joe Nolan looked like someone who had gone for a walk in the Appalachians and, through some kind of space warp, found himself inexplicably in Central America. A scalper grabbed Joe by the arm and held on, sticking tickets into his face and screaming into his ear.

  Joe pointed at the man’s fingers clutching his arm. He shook his head at the man and said “No” loudly several times. The scalper gave Joe the idea he was not going to let go of his arm till Joe bought the tickets. If this was his intention, it was the wrong way to go about persuading Joe.

  Joe picked the scalper’s little finger off his arm and bent it back, breaking the man’s grip as the other fingers were torn away to ease the pressure on the little finger. Joe forced the man’s hand
back past his shoulder and pressed him down to his knees on the ground. The ticket scalper screamed, more in terror than in pain, and his sudden high-pitched howl, like that of a stuck pig, instantly quieted the noisy mob outside the stadium. This sound was something they recognized, something powerful enough to frighten them into momentary stillness.

  Then the crowd began shouting at Joe and Bob. The ticket-seller wandered away, nursing his fingers, but a dozen men lingered, shouting things at them which they assumed were curses. One tried to knock off Bob’s slouch hat.

  “Motherfucker!” Bob yelled and booted him in the gut.

  He crumpled like a paper bag.

  Two of the downed man’s friends jumped Bob, who shook them off his broad shoulders and kicked one on the side of the head. The guy went out like a light.

  Someone stood over this man and said something, of which Bob understood the word muerto.

  “He’s not dead,” Bob bellowed, “but you assholes will be if you don’t get the fuck away from me.”

  He went at them, fists swinging.

  Joe joined in, shouting, “Kangaroo, it’s you ’n me agin this whole country!”

  Which was how it seemed at first, with two men against a crowd of thousands, although a lot of these did not know what was going on. Lance Hardwick and Harvey Waller saw the disturbance and waded through the crowd at the double, pushing men out of their way, in order to help their buddies.

  “Kick ass! Kick ass!” Harvey was yelling, smashing any face he could reach as he came. “God bless America!”

  All four traded blows with everyone around them, yelling encouragements to one another and obscenities at the roiling mob about them. A large number of Salvadorans seemed anxious to prove that four gringos could not intimidate four thousand Salvadorans. Bob and the others would doubtless have been beaten and stomped to death had not a mean-looking individual that Lance had managed to belt a few times hauled out a pistol from next to his big belly under a loose sport shirt and loosed off three shots into the air.