by J. B. Hadley
“Okay, Harvey, blast away.”
Both men used their FN-FAL Paratroop battle rifles to pick off individuals as they advanced. They hit five men and brought the forward advance to a halt. If left to themselves, none of the Nicaraguan soldiers would have risked showing himself again—but as always, there were an officer and sergeants present to make sure that things were not left to the men themselves to decide.
Andre and Harvey heard the officer shout and curse in Spanish. Finally one soldier obeyed him and jumped up and zigzagged forward toward the cover of a rock. Harvey nailed him with a single bullet and left him kicking in the dust. The officer cursed and shouted some more. Then all at once seven or eight men ran forward. Harvey got one of them. Then another seven or eight ran forward. Then more. And their advance was underway again, faster than before, in spite of the losses they were taking.
Both mercs whirled to meet what they thought was a surprise onslaught on their right flank; then they heard Lance shouting to them. All three had come back!
“They’ve cut us off that way,” Joe informed Andre, squatting down and getting off a beautiful shot that sent a Nicaraguan to join his forefathers, clutching his head.
There was no time for talk. They had to beat back this attack before they could try anything else. Sally blasted away with Lance’s Uzi and whooped like a cheerleader at a college game when she brought down two soldiers in her first wild swing with the submachine gun. Of course, she swung it around too far and almost shot Andre as well, which caused him to appeal directly to God in French.
Their added firepower bogged down their attackers again, who had now taken heavy casualties.
“They’re going to get tricky on us now, Andre,” Harvey warned. “They’ll try us on the sides or circle round the back.”
“Or call in air support,” Joe suggest ominously, which made Andre glance involuntarily over their heads.
“Pu11 back,” the Frenchman said, “but slowly. First you three. Harvey and I will follow.”
Campbell and Murphy had almost come up against the Nicaraguan regulars sealing off the border, but managed to retreat without being seen. They were making their way parallel to the border when they heard shooting not far away. They guessed who was involved.
“Well, at least we’ve found them,” Mike said. “I was afraid we two might get across safely and leave them behind—and it doesn’t do for the leader to get home and leave some of his men behind him.”
“You don’t have to worry about that now,” Bob said sarcastically. “We’re all neck-deep in shit together.”
The serene way in which Campbell reacted to major threats was one of the few things about him which needled Bob.
They came upon the others as they retreated before the Nicaraguans. Neither side had yet seen the two of them. Bob untied a small sack from Mike’s backpack and handed it to him. Mike hurriedly untied the neck and showed its contents to Bob. The sack was filled with tiny grenades. These were the specialties Cuthbert Colquitt had promised Mike—the smallest hand grenades in the world.
Each of the olive drab metal globes, with painted letters “NWM” for its Dutch manufacturer and “V40-HE” for its model and high explosives designation, was only 1¾ inches in diameter, with a half-inch fixture on top to hold the safety pin, safety lever and striker. The V40 weighed only three and a half ounces, about half the weight of the next lightest fragmentation grenade, which meant they did not have to be lobbed like heavy grenades but could be thrown like stones.
“Cover me!” Mike yelled to Bob.
Mike’s left arm throbbed with pain from the flesh wound he had taken, but that was no bother to a right-handed pitcher. He pulled the pin, and the lever released after he had chucked the grenade as hard as he could. The steel case of the V40 fragmented explosively four seconds later among the Nicaraguan regulars. The composition B explosive blew the four or five hundred steel fragments in all directions. The flying pieces were lethal within a range of five yards of the explosion, and inflicted terrible injuries on those within a twenty-five yard radius.
Mike found he could hurl the little grenades about twice as far as he could a normal grenade, and he kept a steady hail of the miniature steel globes of death descending on the Nicaraguans. Bob covered him with his Belgian FN-FAL, and then Andre and Harvey also as soon as they copped on to what was happening.
The Nicaraguan officer shouted, cursed, appealed to the patriotism of his men … but since most of the soldiers had already been cut by the tiny, hot razor fragments, this time it was going to take more than words to make them move any farther forward. Each time a V40 landed and exploded among them, one or more would roar, stagger to his feet and lurch about, holding on to some part of his body.
Instead of pulling back his men and regrouping them, their officer tried to redirect their attack on the sources of the grenades. This left them open to cross fire from Andre and Harvey, whose accurate FN—FALs began to take a heavy toll.
Mike flung one V40 that flushed four Nicaraguans at once; and each, badly hit, performed individual variations on a grotesque dance of death, fingers plucking frantically at the burning steel hornets tormenting their flesh.
After that, no one did any more shouting, and the surviving Nicaraguan regulars ran for their lives.
Chapter 17
THEY kept heading south. Behind them, choppers ranged back and forth searching for them. But none came this far into the interior, assuming reasonably enough that the team would still be in the border area.
The sun rose higher and higher until it was almost directly above them and beating down on them with the glare and heat of a furnace. Mike called a halt in a stand of trees by a dried-up stream bed.
“I’ll take the fast hour’s watch,” he said. “The rest of you sleep. I figure we must be nine or ten miles in from the border by now, assuming we were less than a mile from it when we met the Nicaraguans. Get some shut-eye.”
He didn’t have to tell them again. Mike propped himself in a sitting position at the base of a tree, his FN across his knees. He was in the shade, and the mosquitoes and other insects were no worse here than anywhere else, which meant they were pretty plentiful. Best way Mike knew how to ignore insect bites was to worry about bullets puncturing your skin. Bullets made a man think more kindly of mosquitoes.…
He mopped the sweat from his face and looked about the rough highland country. So long as they could hide out here away from populated areas and away from the border, they would be fairly safe. But their C rations were running low. If they had adequate rations, one option would be to hold out for a week where they were and wait for the excitement at the border to die down before attempting another crossing. He had to think of something bold, something the Nicaraguans would not expect. Maybe he’d be able to think better after he’d had a little sleep.
They took turns at watch, and in the cooler later afternoon, they woke up one by one. Helicopters were still ranging back and forth a few miles to the no.
Mike was refreshed. “I have a trivia question for you,” he told the others. “Which American state is Nicaragua slightly larger than?”
They looked at him oddly and said nothing.
“Wisconsin,” Mike answered his own question. “So it’s not as if we’ll be crossing Texas. Know why those choppers are north of us and not over our heads? Because it’s inconceivable to the Nicaraguans that we would have come this far in from the border. It would be totally beyond their belief if we cut through their country from north to south and crossed the southern border instead of the one we are new now.”
This was met by another silence. Apparently not only Nicaraguans would find the idea incredible.
“They’ve sealed the northern border against us in this area,” Mike went on. “We could cut across the mountains to the east and try for a crossing over there, but we don’t have food for a wilderness trip; we don’t have equipment or clothing for high mountains; the ‘bad guy’ contras don’t seem too sympathetic towar
d us; and it’s what the Nicaraguans will expect us to do. It’s only a couple of hundred miles to the southern border with Costa Rica.” Mike looked around once more. He saw no more enthusiasm this time than the last, and he was done explaining. “All right, we move out.” He led the way.
No one still said anything. They had been so near and yet so far. Freedom was still only ten miles or so one way, and they were headed in the other. What did Mike want? To be congratulated?
As dusk came on, Mike ordered them to camp for the night. He sent Bob and Joe out to bag whatever they could for the cook pot which of course they did not possess. Andre and he went to forage for edible herbs—anything to save their C rations, which Mike had forbidden them to open. Bob shot a young deer, and they roasted pieces of it over an open fire. A hot meal was worth the risk of the fire being spotted, everyone agreed. The meat was tough as vinyl, but no one complained and they ate it along with strange-looking green leaves, which Mike swore were edible, and with obscene-looking funguses which Andre claimed were a delicacy.
Everyone felt better after a bellyful of warm food. They kept the fire going till they were ready to sleep, and then decided they would keep it going all night for warmth. They had gotten over their disappointment at not getting into Honduras, and Mike knew that after a night’s rest and more hot venison in the morning, he would have a fighting squad on his hands again.
Lance made a pass at Sally and got put down.
The railroad wasn’t on any of Mike’s maps. The way the weeds grew up around the single pair of rails, it looked disused at first glance—but the tops of the rails were scratched and shining from the recent passage of wheels. It wasn’t the kind of place where they would wait in hope of a passing train, but since the rails ran south, they followed them as the easiest path. There would be a greatly increased chance of running into Nicaraguans along the railroad line, but anything was better than breaking through scrub and thorny undergrowth, uphill and down.
The rails twisted in curves sharper than any of them had thought trains could maneuver. They had walked alongside the rails for more than two hours when they thought they heard something. They were constantly watchful as they walked, but this sound was not coming from the scrubland on either side or from the air—the humming they all plainly heard was originating from the steel rails beside them. A train was coming!
An old steam locomotive appeared, heading south at an unhurried walking pace. It pulled four battered passenger cars that had no glass in their windows. Mike nodded, and the six mercs and Sally ran alongside the last car and boarded it. The car was half-filled with campesinos, many of whom had huge cloth bundles or baskets of vegetables. Chickens squawked in wicker and wire cages, and some hung upside down by their bound feet from hooks beneath the baggage racks, flapping their wings occasionally and stretching their necks to peer about. A pig grunted some—where down the car.
When the mercs sat in two facing bench seats, their rifles, submachine guns and backpacks awkwardly jutting out and getting in the way, the campesinos already there hurriedly vacated their seats and went elsewhere down the car with their bundles. Those in the facing seats on the opposite side of the central aisle followed suit. Mike put a finger to his lips. No one was to say anything.
They waited for some more reactions, weapons ready if needed, but immediately the torpor of the rail journey returned to the car and they soon found themselves idly looking through the paneless windows at the rough hill country crawling by as the train negotiated sharp curves, the steel wheels at times squealing on the steel rails. A portable radio blared melancholy airs sung by men with guitars.
Lance overheard someone talking about them, using the words “ruso” and “sovietico.” While the wheels were squealing, he told the others, “They think we’re Russians or from one of the Iron Curtain countries.”
“Good,” Mike said. “Then they’ll leave us alone. Don’t let them hear you talk English.”
He sorted among Salvadoran and Honduran bills from his backpack till he found Nicaraguan currency. He passed out money to each of them and returned to his maps, which did not recognize the existence of this railroad.
“I think this train has to pass through Matagalpa,” Mike said under cover of the noise. “At least, it’s a destination to tell the ticket collector. From Matagalpa we can continue down the eastern edge of Lake Nicaragua to the Costa Rican border. The lake is about a hundred miles long, so we’ll be halfway there when we reach its northern tip.”
Everyone nodded as if they had faith in what he said. The music stopped on the portable radio, and a newscast mentioned a volcanic eruption and people being evacated from the area, right after which the train made a turn and a huge cloud of coal smoke came in the car’s windows, which made everybody laugh. The newscast mentioned the efforts of the gallant revolutionary militias against the contras in the pay of the United States, and warned citizens of the dangers of certain capitalist “elements” that lurked within the state. This did not seem to be a reference to Sally Poynings or the mercs.
“Maybe they think we made it across the border,” Joe said.
“The western press would have let them know that by now,” Mike said. “No, I bet they’re still searching for us all along the border area. Once they got the border sealed, then they could do aerial reconnaissance and ground sweeps. I bet that right now they’re combing every square inch up there.”
No ticket collector came by. They saw that other people jumped aboard the slow-moving train and that others got off—some riding for only a half mile or so, and some even jumping on for a few words of greeting and leaving again after a hundred yards. There seemed to be no’ stations or towns of any kind in sight of the railroad, yet there were plenty of people about now that they had descended from the higher hills and traveled farther south. Many of the dwellings they saw had ancient stone walls with fresh thatch or corrugated steel roofs. Children climbed aboard the cars to sell food, beer, fruit, nuts and even toys and souvenirs. The team bought large quantities of all kinds of food with the money Mike had given them, not caring if they were being cheated. But even these children, anxious to sell them things, would not smile at them. Being a Russian here was obviously not winning any popularity contest with the common people.
Two armed militiamen occasionally walked the length of the train. They were dressed in khaki, and their only weapons were two old heavy bolt-action rifles. The first time they appeared, Mike only barely managed to prevent Harvey from mowing them down with his Uzi. The two militiamen saluted the mercs, who saluted them back. Mike smiled, but they did not return his smile. After that, the two Nicaraguans studiously ignored them.
As things settled, Lance’s mind turned to other concerns. He had expected Sally to be a giggling, chatty airhead; and instead he found her to be even more beautiful than he had expected, but silent, withdrawn and sad. He noticed how upset she became when she heard about Cesar’s death, blaming herself for it, even though Mike explained to her that Cesar had got himself killed chasing Cubans instead of rescuing her. Lance understood that her recent experiences had shaken her up a little bit, but that was nothing a handsome stud like him couldn’t put right. She got pissed off at him when he tried to explain this to her, and went to sit next to Mike. She changed the dressing on Mike’s arm and made eyes at Mike in a way Lance was sure she intended just to make him jealous.
Joe, Harvey and Bob sat quiet and watchful, not missing a thing, their eyes roving to and fro, their hands resting very casually on their weapons. This was enemy territory. No one was going to take them by surprise.
Sally and Mike chatted and laughed while Lance fumed. Andre sat back and enjoyed it, as he always did when an older man beat out a younger one for the affections of a lady.
The mercs spent a tense half hour in the station at Matagalpa and were relieved when the train pulled out of the large market town. A ticket collector appeared and asked Mike if they wanted to go all the way to Managua. He said yes, and bought seven
tickets, although the Nicaraguan capital was the last place on earth he wanted to be.
The radio still kept them informed. As yet, there was no mention of Sally or the team, but they did learn that the volcano was becoming increasingly active and that the entire area around it had been evacuated because of the danger of showers of hot cinders. A man in the seat back of Mike was telling someone they would be able to see the volcano from the train in a couple of hours.
Mike found the volcano on his map, and he and Andre estimated the area cleared of people and circled it with a ballpoint pen.
It was mid-afternoon. when they finally saw the volcano. A long ridge of high volcanic cones, some with their tips missing, stretched off into the distance. The top half of one cone was hidden by a huge cloud of black smoke that drifted miles eastward into a widening tail. Mike waited till the train was at its closest approach to the mountain, by which point interest among the other passengers had long since waned. Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes were common happenings in Nicaragua. So too, apparently, were armed Russians on a train. The people may not like any of them, but they had to live with them.
Mike jerked his thumb out the window. Time to go.
* * *
El Salvador looked like the Garden of Eden in comparison with this part of Nicaragua. It was less populated here than in El Salvador, but the poverty was much greater. The hillside villages were picturesque in spite of their harsh primitiveness, or perhaps because of it; their ancient thick—walled churches half-tumbled by earthquake shocks, open sewers on cobblestone streets, revolutionary slogans painted on sagging walls. “No passaran!” was scrawled everywhere—meaning “They shall not come through!” and referring to the U.S. Marines, who apparently were expected any minute.
They were seriously challenged only once, by a small, spectacled man in a blue shirt who was with an armed civil defense committee patrolling a village they were circumnavigating. The man shouted something at them. When they did not reply, he repeated it.
