Killing Che

by Chuck Pfarrer

  “Do me a favor,” Hoyle said to Valdéz.

  “Sure.”

  “Go back to the rear of the column, get some pickets out on the flanks, and tell the first sergeant to get ready to move the column forward.”

  “All right.”

  “Better get back there before they all fall asleep.”

  Valdéz scrambled back up the steep part of the trail and disappeared into the tree line. Hoyle stood and watched the bank across the river and the ridges in the places the woods thinned out. Now and again a muffled order came drifting from the trail behind him, the rattle of a piece of equipment or a shouted curse, but mostly, there was just the white noise of the river and the tittering, almost crackling calls of birds in the forest.

  Smith came back over from the boulders, and the Bolivian radioman came with him. Hoyle noticed that the radio operator wore round wire-rimmed glasses almost exactly like Smith’s.

  “How long has Santavanes been gone?” Hoyle asked.

  “I’m not worried about him,” Smith said. “The sergeants seem okay. The Legionnaire especially.”

  “You sure he’s Legion?”

  “His French was good,” Smith said.

  Hoyle stared at the river and shook his head. Five years in the French Foreign Legion would have granted the sergeant a clean passport and French citizenship. If you’d served in the Legion, why the hell would you come back here?

  Hoyle continued to watch the riverbank above the small rapids, and then he saw Santavanes appear from the brush on the opposite shore. Santavanes was dressed in a plain olive uniform, the same one worn by the Bolivian cabos. Holding his rifle over his head, he waded the river right in front of Hoyle and Smith, then walked, dripping, up the boulders toward them. So much for the search for a crossing place.

  “There’s a cornfield around the bend,” Santavanes said. Smith wiped his glasses as Santavanes stamped the water out of his boots.

  “The farmer says he’s a corporal in the home guard. He says he’s seen the guerrillas.”

  “When?” Smith asked.

  “He wants money,” Santavanes said.

  THE RIVER CROSSING went without major incident. The Bolivian troops were herded back together and marched, for they were incapable of patrolling, down a sketchy set of paths toward the cornfield and the small mudbrick house of the farmer. As they drew closer, Smith dispatched Valdéz to the right and Santavanes to the left, sending with them ten Bolivian soldiers each. This was intended as a blocking force. Hoyle and Smith led the remaining troops directly toward the house, the Bolivian lieutenant insisting that he be allowed to let his men fix bayonets, form a line, and walk dramatically through the cornfield.

  As they approached the farmhouse, a little girl peeked at them from behind the pigsty. She was not afraid, and Hoyle walked over to her and knelt down. “Hola, princesa,” he said.

  The princess was not amused. Hoyle slung his rifle behind his back and waved his fingers in front of the little girl’s face. He then did the simple magic trick of making two centavos appear behind her ear. He handed the little girl the coins, and she laughed delightedly. Hoyle noticed a rectangular patch of surgical gauze taped to her forearm.

  “What happened here?” he asked.

  “The men with beards,” she said, “they gave me medicine.”

  “Medicine?” Hoyle asked. “Can I see?”

  The little girl allowed him to lift the gauze, and he saw a smooth incision—definitely the mark of a scalpel—and a crusted-over punctum.

  The little girl turned and showed off a perfectly circular scab on her shoulder. “Angels kissed me,” she said.

  “What’s that?” Smith asked.

  “She’s been vaccinated for smallpox,” Hoyle said.

  They were both silent, the evidence of the little girl’s inoculation and the surgical scar on her forearm were as unlikely as Truth and Justice.

  The chickens scattered across the dirt front yard, and Honradez Rulon stepped out of the house. Hoyle stood as the farmer walked toward them.

  “I understand that you have seen the insurrectos,” Smith said.

  “I told the other man I would like to be paid.”

  “We’re willing to pay you,” Smith said. “It depends on what you know.” Smith pulled open the Velcro on his flak jacket and removed a soft wad of Bolivian currency. Honradez’s eyes fell on it. Hoyle shooed away the little girl as Smith counted out a hundred Bolivianos in slightly wet cash.

  “The guerrillas gave your children medicine,” Hoyle said. “Why are you willing to inform on them?”

  “My family is hungry, Señor,” the farmer said, “and the Communists hate Jesus and the Blessed Virgin.”

  “When did you see them?” Smith asked.

  “Three days ago.”

  “How many men?” Hoyle asked.

  “Eighty-three,” Honradez said. “I counted them as they passed the house.”

  Smith spoke for a while with the farmer, listening to the story repeatedly and nurturing what rapport he could with so avaricious a creature. The soldiers not deployed to the blocking forces had started a fire and cooked lunch. Hoyle rejoined them under a tree by the woodpile.

  “Trail’s old, but it looks like the guerrillas did a couple of circles around the house,” Hoyle said.

  “What’s the count?” Smith asked. He looked over at Honradez, who was sitting next to the Bolivian officer.

  Hoyle said, “Forty, maybe less. They doubled back past the house, so Greenjeans was seeing double.”

  Smith considered the map for a moment and said, “We have a couple hours of daylight. I want to keep pushing west—maybe we can cross their trail on the other side of Vado del Yeso.”

  Santavanes and Valdéz remained quiet out of respect for Smith, but none of them thought that taking the Bolivians any deeper was a good idea. Hoyle looked out at the soldiers sitting resentfully around the farmhouse. Since they’d crossed the river, the Bolivian troops had become increasingly grim, and it was certain that an order to continue west would not be welcomed.

  “I’m not sure they’ll go,” Hoyle said.

  “They’ll do what we tell them,” Smith answered.

  Somewhere a thrush clattered out a long, worrying call.

  Hoyle spoke quietly. “Look, if you order that lieutenant any deeper, you’re going to put him in a box. If he refuses you, his authority goes to zero. If he says yes and his men won’t go, we have a mutiny.”

  Smith’s combat experience was considerable, but his experience with balky troops was nil. He was in no mood to mollycoddle the Bolivians. He looked at Valdéz. “Do you think they’ll fight?”

  “A few. I think the rest will run.”

  “Let me take a couple of volunteers and recon toward the river,” Hoyle said. “If it’s clear, I’ll signal for you to come forward.”

  “I’ll give you one hour, Hoyle, and then I’m ordering the company west.”

  ABOVE VADO DEL YESO, the Masacuri River was a little more than a hundred meters wide. A pair of sandbars cut across it diagonally, and there was a sallow-colored stretch of sand, almost a beach, on the east bank just before the river turned. Below the farmhouse, the river ran in fast waters and occasionally even in rapids, but around the ford, it was tame, the tea-colored water between the sandbars moving slowly.

  Hoyle was not surprised when the Legion sergeant again volunteered to scout. His name was Gustavo Merán, and he was by far the best soldier in the company. They spoke briefly as they set out from the cornfield, and Hoyle learned that he had indeed served with the French, seeing combat in Algeria and service in Chad before he returned home to Bolivia. Merán organized the men for movement, a dozen obligados he had selected from the first platoon, and when they reentered the forest, Merán walked point two places in front of Hoyle. Smith’s radio operator, the one with the round glasses, had also been volunteered and now slouched along next to Hoyle like a kid being sent to the principal’s office.

  Above the crossin
g place, the river turned sharply west, and Merán halted the patrol. Together, Hoyle and the sergeant went ahead to scout the bend and check the sandbars. They had gone only a few dozen yards before Hoyle noticed a broken tree limb along the bank. It was snapped off neatly.

  Hoyle knelt next to the cracked branch and found a boot print in a shallow eddy. Merán nodded silently as Hoyle put his hand to the surface of the pool and waved water over the track. Two inches below the surface, the boot print vanished in a small reddish-brown cloud of mud. The track was probably less than five minutes old. Without a word, Merán signaled behind him for the men to take cover.

  Hoyle strained to hear above the sounds of the river. It seemed that the calling of the birds had died away; there were only the clicks and hum of insects and the smooth rush of water across the rocks. Hoyle moved forward, his rifle held chest-high, and he slipped the strap from around his neck and let it hang down. He quietly sank to a crouch. The wind stirred through the tops of the trees, and sunlight dappled his arms. There were low sounds intermingled with the ticks and chirps, a distant grunting, maybe the hooting of a monkey, and then it came distinctly: the sound of men. There was laughter and then a clacking noise, metal against rock. Merán heard it all and cut his eyes to Hoyle.

  Hoyle kept his rifle vertical and pressed his body against a tree. Merán started to come forward, but Hoyle signaled him to stop with a slight shake of the head. Through a shimmer of leaves, Hoyle could just see the apex of the bend. Not quite a hundred meters away, a dozen men were clustered on a sandbar, washing in the river. Their weapons and packs were heaped together in a pile on the near side of the stream. Guerrillas. Nearly all the men had beards, and their hair was long. Hoyle looked again down the riverbank and scanned the tree limbs overhead. Incredibly, the bathers seemed not to have posted a sentry.

  Hoyle was aware of the slow, hard beating of his heart. There was the question of how to open the engagement. If he had reliable troops—shit, if he had taken Valdéz and Santavanes—he only would have to pull the trigger, and they would have moved to support him. Merán could be counted on to do the same, but that made only two rifles against ten. Of the Bolivian squad behind, Hoyle thought nothing. It was his experience that reluctant troops would flatten at the sound of unexpected gunfire—they would hide, and then they would scatter. Hoyle was turning these factors over in his mind when a twig snapped behind him.

  Then several things happened very quickly.

  Hoyle turned at the noise of the branch, as did Merán. They were both experienced soldiers and swung their weapons along with their heads, Hoyle’s thumb rocking down the safety on the M16 and smoothly, automatically, swinging the butt stock into the hollow of his shoulder. He saw them, two dark-haired, bearded men in faded green fatigues. Both carried a pole on their shoulders, and hung on it between them was a wild javelina, freshly killed. Both the bearded men had their rifles slung uselessly over their shoulders and were astonished to have stumbled on the Bolivian soldiers.

  Half a second passed, a span of time unfolded by adrenaline into a month, a season, an instant that would be seared into the mind of every man who survived. For a frozen moment, the two groups of men blinked at each other.

  Then one of the Bolivian soldiers shouted and fumbled for his rifle. The closer of the two guerrillas shoved the pole off his shoulder, smoothly drew his pistol, and shot the soldier in the face. As the trooper tumbled back, Hoyle and Merán opened fire. Hoyle’s first bullet struck the pole just behind the pig’s feet and snapped it in an explosion of bark. His second shot struck the pistol from the guerrilla’s hand, and as time spun out, Hoyle had an instant to reflect that he’d aimed for the man’s head and missed. Both of the guerrillas dropped their burden and ran as quickly as they could away from the river. Hoyle fired two shots after them and Merán a dozen, but the forest swallowed the guerrillas as quickly as they had appeared, and in the blink of an eye, they were gone.

  Not one of the Bolivian soldiers had yet raised a weapon. Time continued to expand, and Hoyle was aware that the crashing noise of his rifle had deafened him; what he heard were muffled noises, like sounds made underwater.

  There was a pause, and several seconds filled with shouting. Hoyle spun around and saw that the men on the sandbar were scrambling for their weapons. One of the guerrillas, a tall, broad-shouldered man, had already aimed and fired. Two bullets snapped past Hoyle and smashed into a tree behind him. Then there was much firing from the sandbar, all of the guerrillas shooting steadily, and Hoyle instinctively slid down low against the tree trunk and returned fire. Bullets ripped past him and banged about the branches. Cut away by tracers, twigs and leaves rained down from the canopy, turning over and over as they fluttered to the forest floor. Behind Hoyle, Merán continued to shoot, the close and sharp report of his rifle like a slap on the back of Hoyle’s neck.

  Hoyle’s mind raced with clear, rapid thought. Rates of fire, avenues of retreat, places of cover. The firefight seemed to be unfolding like a film run too slowly. Hoyle was aware of the oddly muted sounds, the steady hammering of single shots and the trembling bursts of automatic fire, but they were sorted by his mind into a distant place. Beside him, Merán continued to fight, a fearless man, but the Bolivian conscripts had flattened down onto the riverbank, and as Hoyle reloaded, two soldiers stood and ran. Both were cut down. One fell into the water, and the other let out a holler and crumpled onto a shallow pool, then crawled quickly back up into the trees, his voice broken and squeaking, “Ai, ai, ai, ai.”

  Hoyle calculated that there were fewer than a dozen guerrilla fighters on the sandbar, and the two who had run away were now someplace behind him. That meant more than twenty enemy were unaccounted for, and Hoyle was certain they would rush to the sound of gunfire. When the entire guerrilla band joined, Hoyle knew that he and Merán would be hopelessly outnumbered. Already they were being outfought.

  The guerrillas on the sandbar spread out, and soon a converging fire came through the trees. This barrage missed Hoyle and Merán only because the bend in the river made the guerrillas misjudge the range and concentrate their fire slightly short. Behind Hoyle, Bolivian soldiers threw down their weapons and equipment and ran as fast as they could downriver, away from the fight. More leaves were falling around them, a blizzard of green cut through with the deadly light of tracers bouncing among the tree trunks, red and green, slow and fast, a perplexing and fatal sight. The guerrillas’ fire turned at the moving bodies, and in the seconds it took Hoyle to reload his weapon, he saw three more Bolivian soldiers tumble, shot in the back as they tried to escape.

  Hoyle turned to Merán, three feet away and firing steadily. Hoyle signaled to him, pointing back the way they’d come, and Merán nodded. The sergeant did not fall back, though he understood they would soon retreat. He kept up a slow, steady fire.

  Something brushed Hoyle’s calf and he looked down. At his feet was the radio operator. He had thrown away his rifle and was curled into a ball against the roots of the tree. How long he had been there, Hoyle could not know. He bent forward and lifted the young soldier by his pack straps. The radio operator’s glasses had fogged thickly, and his cheeks were slick with tears. Hoyle noticed that the radio had been shot through twice, once through the casing and once through the control panel. The radio was as useless as the man who carried it.

  “Are you hit?” Hoyle asked.

  The radio operator blinked behind the steamy lenses. He was too terrified to speak.

  There was an outcry from the sandbar, and the guerrillas were joined by another group, maybe fifteen or twenty men. It was remarkable and improbable, but the fire diminished. Hoyle rolled a glance around the tree trunk. On the sandbar, the second group of guerrillas had begun firing upslope and into the woods behind them. They had mistaken the Bolivians’ naked flight as a flanking maneuver. Thinking they might be surrounded, the guerrillas now sprayed the trees upriver and away from Hoyle and Merán. Hoyle knew this mistake would soon be corrected; if there was to be
any chance of escape, they had to move immediately.

  GUEVARA HEARD TWO sharp reports, gunshots close together. The sounds came from the riverbed below him and somewhere to the east. As a second weapon spat out a dozen quick shots, he realized there had been contact with the enemy, and he threw off his pack and tumbled downhill toward the water. The vegetation was heavy, and for several long moments, as he clawed his way downslope, Guevara could see neither the river nor his own men. He could only guess that they were being shot at from somewhere near where the river turned, but his was an ear tuned to battle, and his hunch would prove correct. As he scrambled through the brush, he heard Joaquin bellowing orders. The men sent to draw water ran quickly for their weapons, and almost at once the firing became general. Guevara could not yet see who was shooting at the sandbar, but he again heard the high, piercing crack of weapons downstream, and the tick tick tick of bullets flying through the tree branches around him.

  Guevara toppled down the riverbank and out onto the sandbar. He ran crouching to the place Joaquin was directing fire and dropped into cover beside him. The noise of the guerrillas’ weapons, almost twenty all together, was an ear-shattering roar. Half the men were shooting downriver, and the others were firing into a patch of hardwood up behind them. Guevara realized quickly that the noise of rifles was mostly that of outgoing fire, and he banged Joaquin on the shoulder. He signaled for the men to cease fire, shaking his head and pulling his finger across his throat. Gradually, the order was passed by hand gestures and by the shouted command pare fuego. The guerrillas’ weapons sputtered and fell silent. As the echoes rolled off against the hillside, Guevara was able to hear the sound of short bursts from downriver. There was no gunfire behind them. Guevara realized, and Joaquin did, too, that only a single weapon was firing at the sandbar.

  “Fuck,” Joaquin yelled, “I thought they were in back of us.”