Killing Che

by Chuck Pfarrer

  Hoyle looked around at the bodies dragged up onto the rocks, and the rucksacks lumped in a row, both leaking water where they had been shot through. Hoyle did not see that Joaquin’s holster was empty.

  None of the men saw Tania lying at the edge of the jungle, not five yards away. She had been shot once through the back, the bullet exiting her abdomen, about an inch above her pubic bone. Her guts burned, her legs were becoming numb, and blood dripped into her pockets. In the brush, Tania lifted Joaquin’s pistol and aimed it squarely at Hoyle’s back. Her head swam with the agony of her wound and with the twin horrors of the ambush and her survival. She did not care if she lived or died, and she thumbed back the hammer and her eyes blurred with hatred. Tania leveled the weapon, and her hands shook, but still she held it evenly, and as she squeezed the trigger, there was an enormous explosion in front of her face.

  In the same instant that the pistol discharged, Captain Salinas stepped forward and kicked Tania under the chin. The bullet slammed into the rocks at Hoyle’s feet, and the ricochet screeched off into the trees. Merán and Hoyle both jerked toward the sound of the shot, their rifles aimed, before they saw the captain standing over Tania. Hoyle watched Salinas kick Tania again in the chest; as she tumbled back, he stomped the pistol from her hand. He kicked her again, and she let out a sickening moan, more in defeat than in physical pain.

  Hoyle walked over—it was only three steps—and realized gradually that the bullet she’d fired had been meant for him. Tania lay curled into a ball, her hands and abdomen covered in black-colored blood. She had her arms wrapped around her head, and she was sobbing, a low, muffled sound. Hoyle would remember to the end of his life the sight of Tania crumpled against the rocks. Her skin was pale, almost translucent; she looked like some sort of luminous child.

  It was inexplicable that Hoyle had not been killed. Tania’s shot had been point-blank.

  Salinas bent down and recovered the pistol. He let the hammer go forward under his thumb and snapped the safety on. He handed the weapon to Hoyle. “You should shoot this fucking bitch,” he said.

  Hoyle looked at the weapon in his hand and then at Tania weeping. His skin crawled. The pistol shot had been so close that he’d heard the spent cartridge jingle onto the rocks. That sound was forever seared into memory, and now, oddly, Hoyle wished that Tania had not missed.

  55

  TO THE SURPRISE of everyone, Tania clung to life. She had been carried into an abandoned farmhouse about an hour from the river and spent the night covered in Hoyle’s poncho on a pallet a few inches off the dirt floor. Hoyle and the Ranger medic did what they could for her, which was little. Tania was cleaned and her wound bandaged, but the medic was not well trained and, frankly, cared little about his patient. She needed the attentions of a surgeon, and it was obvious that without medical care, she would succumb to shock, blood loss, and eventually, sepsis. At midnight Hoyle prevailed on the medic to administer a dose of morphine. With this, Tania slept, and Hoyle took up a vigil.

  The first light came in cold gray bands above the tops of the hills, and the dawn was astonishingly cold. When the sun came at last, creeping in dreary inches over the valley, Hoyle walked outside the farmhouse and stretched. The Rangers had moved for the landing zone, taking with them the guerrillas’ dead, the corpses wrapped up in tarps and carried in triumph. Charlie appeared at midmorning, having driven to the end of the road from Vallegrande. He brought a note from Smith, congratulating Hoyle on the ambush and advising that he, Valdéz, and Famous Lawyer were now operating with a second company of Rangers in the northeasternmost quadrant of the valley. As Hoyle read, Charlie looked in to see the woman on the pallet, barely breathing and perfectly, dreadfully still.

  “What are we going to do?” Charlie asked.

  “I’m not sure we can move her.”

  Hoyle folded the note and placed it in the pocket of his field vest. The words congratulating him on the ambush made him feel somehow dissolute and malicious, more like a criminal than a victor.

  A small group of Indians passed the abandoned farm. They saw Hoyle and Charlie, so obviously people not of this place, and of course they knew that one of the wounded from the fight at the river was inside the house. Word of the ambush had spread almost the length of the valley. Hoyle watched as they passed, the men in shabby jackets and hats leading a pair of mules. No one spoke a greeting, or any other words, and as the grayness lifted from the ground, Hoyle and Charlie thought themselves a long way from the way things were supposed to go. Hoyle was at a loss, and Charlie wore a thin, indecipherable frown, the expression of a man who expects a bad thing to befall him at any moment.

  “Everyone knows she is here,” Charlie said. “What if the second guerrilla column appears? What if they try to rescue her?”

  “If we move her, she’ll die.”

  “Why do you care if she dies?”

  Charlie’s question surprised Hoyle with its candor. What did it matter if Tania died? She had broken their agreement, even if she had been only a party to it and not a principal in it. It was a flat miracle that she had survived the whirlwind of bullets. A muzzle aimed an inch to the left, a ricochet off the rocks, and she would be just another of the tarpaulin bundles being ferried back to the Ranger camp, her corpse a trophy for officers to preen around.

  “I made a deal,” Hoyle said, “to get her out.”

  “If we can’t move her, how do we get her out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Charlie had never seen Hoyle without a firm course of action, a plan, or a means to an end. He saw the lines in the corners of Hoyle’s eyes, and for the first time, he noticed Hoyle’s shoulders were stooped. Perhaps this was from the long time he had been without sleep. Charlie looked up into the hills. The sounds of birds and insects were just beginning. In the jungle around them, things warmed by the thin sun started to move and make noise.

  “I have a cousin in Vallegrande,” Charlie said, “he’s a doctor. I can bring him here.”

  “You have a lot of cousins, Charlie.”

  “You need a lot of help, Mr. Hoyle.”

  “What kind of doctor is this cousin of yours?”

  “Expensive,” Charlie said.

  Hoyle took the Rolex wristwatch off his arm and placed it in Charlie’s hand. “Get him here.”

  MOVING WEST, TRAVELING alternately by day and short, arduous movements during the night, Guevara’s column reached the village of Pujio, in a place where the departments of Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca, and Cochabamba come together. The previous day they had passed through the village of Loma Larga and had found it completely deserted. The inhabitants had scattered, afraid of both the guerrillas and army reprisal. In half a dozen places in the valley, civilians had been arrested on suspicion of selling provisions to the insurgentes; several men who’d been coopted to serve as guides had disappeared into police custody.

  It was becoming common for the guerrillas to come upon deserted houses, though fires burned and pots bubbled within. As the column moved north and west, the people who did not flee became increasingly sullen. When the guerrillas did make contact, men and women seemed as uncomprehending and uncaring as clay. Rumor of the ambush on the river had spread from village to village, but none of the peasants encountered by the column spoke of it. Very few wanted to speak to them at all.

  At dawn the column reached the town of Picacho and the highest altitude they had yet reached, almost seven thousand feet. Guevara had been in pain and had been vomiting. He slouched into the village on the back of the red mare, but as the sun got higher in the sky, the strength returned to his cramped limbs. The peasants of the village, a small place of about fifty houses, had been preparing for a wedding, and they turned out to stare at the guerrillas with a mixture of dread and fascination. It was learned quickly that the corregidor had left to warn the police that the guerrillas were nearby. As a reprisal, Guevara ordered that everything in his small grocery store be seized, though he had a lengthy receipt prepared and had I
nti sign it as “commander” of the ELN.

  Over a transistor radio came a broadcast in which Presidente Barrientos announced that Joaquin’s column had been wiped out. Guevara did not believe this. There was another bulletin, this one describing a series of supply caves uncovered by the army, and the details were so precise as to leave no doubt that the story was true. It was obvious that someone had talked. The radio chattered on about documents and photographs but, more important, about medicines, food, and ammunition. Guevara and Inti were questioned about the broadcast by the village’s schoolteacher, a thin man with eager, searching eyes. The teacher asked if news of the ambush was true, and both Inti and Guevara denied it. They thought it was impossible and reminded the teacher that the army had claimed to have wiped out the guerrillas many times over. The news of Joaquin’s annihilation was dismissed as propaganda. The teacher had watched when the news of the supply caves was discussed, and he noted with a foxy sort of glee that it seemed to depress every one of the guerrillas who heard the news.

  The way ahead to the village of La Higuera was open, and the hills and ridges looking down on Picacho were almost devoid of cover. Though it was daylight, and though they could be observed from the ridges above, Guevara ordered the column to continue moving. Miguel and Begnino exchanged glances but said nothing. Guevara had cursed when he heard of the discovery of the supply caves, and no one dared to further his wrath. Other factors also urged a quick departure; several of the comrades were sick, among them Moro, who also had to ride on a mule, and El Chino, who was nearly blind at night and was suffering from diarrhea and debilitating pain in his back. Tomorrow a decision was to be made about what to do with the invalids. It was thought best to move as far and fast as possible in daylight.

  The forward detachment made slightly better time up the sketchy road, and the column strung out in a long line. The men of the center group moved slowly along with the pack animals, the comrades bent almost double under rucksacks filled with booty from the grocery store. Guevara dismounted and walked the final leg into the village of La Higuera, leading the red mare and carrying his rifle.

  Mountains touched by cloud and blue loomed over the little town, a sad collection of a dozen or so adobe houses clustered around three dusty alleyways. Begnino, Miguel, and Inti were among the first to enter the village. They immediately sensed that something was wrong.

  The men of La Higuera had all fled, and flitting between the houses was only a small number of women and children. Guevara ordered Coco to investigate the telegraph office. A search of the desk found a telegram dated a few days earlier; in it, the subprefect of Vallegrande had asked the corregidor to forward at once news about guerrilla presence in the region. The telegram reiterated the story of the ambush at Vado del Yeso, claiming that Joaquin’s entire column had been liquidated. Guevara was shown the telegram and read it blandly.

  The mayor’s wife was located and brought forward, a small, stuttering woman in a faded yellow skirt. She trembled as she spoke and assured Inti that her husband had not answered the telegram about the guerrillas because there was a celebration in the town of Jagüey, and he had gone there to witness a baptism. A man was located in a cowshed behind the small school building. He claimed to know nothing about the movement of the army, where the mayor had gone, or even if it was actually daylight. His brown toes curled in the dirt as he spoke. Like the woman, the man was extremely nervous, but Guevara attributed his fear to propaganda spread by the army. He let the man go, despite the fact that he was obviously untrustworthy.

  As the afternoon started, the heavens seemed to open and close; the sun rode occasionally in the blue parts of the sky and then was swallowed by gray. Though the wind blew, the air did not seem clean. The town had about it the smell of sweat and pig shit. Guevara had hoped to camp somewhere in the vicinity, but the mood of the place alerted a well-tuned sense of danger.

  Guevara stood for a few moments by the doorway of the telegraph office. From inside he heard the sounds of sobs, and almost without thinking, he opened the door and stepped into the house. The office was a little dark room, with a crudely made two-level desk that held the telegraph. Twisted in helixes, old cloth-covered wires dipped from the ceiling and onto the desk. The telegraph itself was rusted, the key and sounder both made of tarnished bits of metal. It seemed a thing out of the previous century. In a corner of the office, an old woman rocked back and forth on the floor and cradled a little girl. The girl’s arms and legs were bent and twisted, and her head seemed overlarge for her tiny body. As Guevara entered the room, the woman bowed her head like a dog expecting a blow, but the little girl’s eyes held him; she did not blink or turn away. Constant pain had altered the child’s face, making it grave and wise. The old woman held the girl tightly, and as he came closer, Guevara saw that the girl could not walk on her own. He knelt in front of the woman and tried to calm her as best he could.

  “There,” he said, “please, Señora, don’t cry. There isn’t any need.”

  The woman looked at him, her eyes were oily with tears. She was the telegraph operator’s wife, and after the telegram had been found, she grew convinced that the guerrillas would return and murder her. She did not know anything but simple brutality, and her life had made good on her every dream of it.

  “Please do not kill us,” she managed to choke.

  “Señora, we will not hurt you.”

  As Guevara squatted by the desk in front of them, a bitter perception came to him: There is no need to harm these people. The world is killing them. This thought crossed his mobile face, and again the woman began to sob. Words came pouring out through great waves of tears: “My husband only writes down what comes to him on the telegraph. You must understand that. We do not want any trouble with anyone.”

  “I do not blame you for trouble,” Guevara said.

  Beyond the open door of the office, he could hear the mules clomping by on the dirt streets; it was time to move out. He shifted off his rucksack and opened the top flap, then took out a small clutch of silver Bolivianos and pressed them into the woman’s hand. It was hardly enough to feed her for even a couple of days, and some of the coins fell through her fingers and dropped silently onto the hard dirt floor.

  “Will you take this money for me? In return, I ask only that you do me a small favor.”

  The woman’s gaze was lowered; she did not look Guevara in the face, but the little dwarf girl stared at him, her eyes at once limpid and piercing.

  “All I’d like you to do is promise me that you will ask your husband not to use the telegraph until the sun is down.”

  He repeated himself, slowly and gently; the woman kept sobbing, and he could not tell how much she heard.

  “You don’t need to be afraid of us,” he said.

  “But the army—” The word seemed to be the most terrible one she knew, and it came hesitantly off her lips, like an obscenity.

  Guevara stood and pulled the telegraph wires from the wall. The porcelain insulators that held the wires came away from the ceiling in a brown dusting of stucco. He disconnected them from the rusty telegraph clacker and placed the device in the hands of the little girl.

  “Tell them I destroyed the telegraph,” he said. “You will be all right.”

  He pulled on his pack and lifted his rifle from the desk where he had placed it. At that moment the woman reached out and took Guevara’s fingers in her own; her lips touched his hand, as she would have kissed the hand of a bishop, and the child’s eyes opened and glared at him, the tiny body jerking with a wrench of pain. The woman let go of his hand and sobbed, “Gracias, gracias.”

  As Guevara ducked under the small door, he looked back into the room. The little girl was holding the disconnected telegraph and watching him with stony patience.

  Willy and Pombo were outside the door, smoking cigarettes taken that morning from the grocery store. Guevara ordered the forward detachment to continue uphill and to take the rutted track toward Jagüey. For good measure, he reinfo
rced the point, sending along an additional pair of riflemen.

  At the edge of the village, the forward detachment passed a small adobe. As they did, a teenage girl and a young child ran from the back of the house; though called on to stop, they galloped quickly downhill and disappeared among the jumbled-together houses. The girl was shrieking something as she ran, her voice high and panicky.

  Julio said, “Women love me,” and Coco laughed. Miguel walked past a horse trough in front of the house and turned around for a moment to walk backward. “Check it,” he said.

  Closest to the door, Coco lifted the rude wooden bar that served as the latch. Julio went in first, holding his weapon in both hands, calling out, saying not to be afraid. He had expected to find the remainder of the family, and his eyes fell first on a chola woman standing at the back of the small room. She was shaking her head and lifting her hands to her face. Coco came in behind Julio, and his shadow fell into the small dark room, making it darker still. Julio saw the woman, and there was a quick, sharp movement in a doorway off the main room.

  These things happened in half an instant:

  Coco saw the muzzle of a gun, a rifle lifting up out of the shadows. He could see the front sights on the end of the barrel, three splayed pieces of metal swinging up in an arc. The weapon was an M2 carbine, the exact weapon he carried, and for that reason, he perceived no danger at first. The woman screamed, and Coco was amazed when a Ranger came out of the shadows in the back of the house. The man was tall and dressed in a green fatigue uniform. Around his arms and legs, pieces of black tape held bunches of grass and straw as camouflage. These gave the soldier the look of a malevolent, busted-open scarecrow. The Ranger’s face was painted in black, green, and tan stripes, and as he lifted his rifle, it seemed to Coco that his eyes were yellow. The explosion of the weapon thudded in the small space of the adobe, and the noise was like a great series of thumps. An opaque white flash spilled out the end of the Ranger’s weapon. His first two bullets struck the wall between Coco and Julio, and the third smashed through Coco’s abdomen, square through the belt buckle. He was blown off his feet and fell through the door into the dusty alley in front of the house.