by Lou Cameron
Captain Gringo nodded, but said, “Not if I can help it. We’ll put out counter-patrols north and south of the hill and make the pricks work at finding out where their first rounds ranged.”
Gaston took out a pad and began making notations as he shook his head and said, “It won’t work, Dick. They don’t have to fall in a shell hole to learn they are firing over the fort. They simply have to make sure no shells landed on their side of the ant pile, or the fort itself. Alas, there will be a full moon tonight, too. So the adorable walls of chalk will be visible at some distance.”
“Hmm, that gives me an idea. What are you writing?”
Another shell whistled over them to splash loudly but harmlessly into the lagoon. Gaston said, “Merci. With three impact points to work with, an old hand like myself is in business, hein? Regard how they are drawing the segment of a grand circle for me. As I suspected from the intervals, they have one big gun, and, for openers, they are firing at the same elevation each time.”
Captain Gringo nodded in understanding and said, “So they’re firing from the center of said big circle on the map. Let’s get to the map and pinpoint the sons of bitches!”
Gaston said, “I do not have to look at the map. Knowing the curve of the arc, I can tell you from here they are out of range, even for my trés formidable long-ranger. Alas, when one has a rifled tube, one does not have to move in close.”
“I said I understood. How far off are they?”
“About five miles behind their front lines. The trés fatigue Maldonado has his infantry dug in just out of my range, too. I do wish black sails would appear out there on the horizon, Dick. Staying here much longer could be hazardous to one’s health. Maldonado has us outgeneraled as well as outnumbered. The game is about over, and there is no way we can win. He has all the high cards even if we still have the high ground. Why don’t we make a run for the border before he closes his noose even tighter, hein?”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “We’re not licked yet. Come on, I want you to pinpoint that gun position on the map for me.”
They went down to the office, and as Gaston plotted the big enemy gun on the map, Captain Gringo explained the situation and what he proposed to do about it to El Criado Publico and his top jurados. The old man didn’t argue when Jurado Numero Uno insisted on going along on the combat patrol. But he asked, “For why do you wish for to spill hot tar down the walls facing the jungle, Captain Gringo?”
The American said, “Black paint will do if you’ve got it. But I’m sure there’s plenty of tar in a fishing village. The walls are white coral masonry. By moonlight, and at a safe distance, big black blotches ought to look like artillery strikes. If their scouts report they were on target with their first ranging fire, they won’t change the elevation when they open up with solid drum fife and waste it on the far side of the hill.”
“I see! But what about my poor villagers?”
“They can rebuild, when and if they ever come back. You may not have noticed it, but most of them have left already, and I don’t think the ones who didn’t will stay there much longer.”
El Criado Publico gasped and said, “They are deserting their country in time of war? Never! I won’t hear of it!” Captain Gringo didn’t argue. He knew the old man spent more time with his nose in a book than in the real world. Now that most of the simple peones were safe, probably behind Maldonado’s lines and kissing his Colombian ass a lot, there wasn’t much anyone could do about it. The hardcore rebels here in the fort had their own asses to worry about.
Gaston looked up and saying, “Viola. The gun position is here and, as I said, well behind a rather solid line of foxholes, Dick. Our scouts say Maldonado’s flanks reach a très fatigue distance north and south. It would take you over twelve hours to pussy your foot around either end, spike the gun or more, and get back safely. Alas, the sun would be up again before you got back, if you left at sundown.”
Captain Gringo nodded grimly and said, “I can see that. We could hit and run in less than six, if we simply punched through the infantry lines, going and coming.”
Jurado Numero Uno gulped and asked, “Won’t that be, ah, rather risky, Captain Gringo?”
The tall American said, “War is a risky business no matter how you do it, muchacho. You can stay here if you like. I’m taking thirty men and a machine gun. Straight in and straight back. I don’t like to fuck around.”
*
It wasn’t quite that simple. For one thing, the sun refused to go down before at least 6:00 p.m., Panama time. So even after he’d picked and briefed his combat patrol Captain Gringo had some time to kill.
The redhead was nursing her Jim’s illness, case of nerves, or whatever the hell was wrong with him. So Captain Gringo gave Gaston a hand as the Frenchman worked on the landward defenses. They both agreed that the Colombian reaction, should the gun-spiking mission succeed, could be an all-out temper tantrum up the slopes from any of three directions.
Gaston left the now-deserted fishing village covered with a four-pounder, just in case, but moved most of the shells and extra machine guns into position to protect the fort from north, west, and south. He ordered his men to sandbag each heavy-weapon’s position. The riflemen atop the walls would just have to take their chances. It was more important that they’d be free to shift them a lot as the expected counter-attack took a definite shape.
A work detail came back up from the village with buckets of antifouling paint they’d found in the local chandler’s abandoned shop. It was park bench green rather than black, but easier to work with than tar, and it would look just as black by moonlight. The two soldiers of fortune picked spots along the walls to look shell-pocked, but told the camouflage crew just to put the buckets down there for now, of course.
The sun was still hanging around up there when Gaston ran out of things to do. The two soldiers of fortune toured the walls together, looking for possible mistakes or improvements. They couldn’t find any. Most of the rebel army would be dug in here with Gaston and the others, whether Captain Gringo and his gang made it back or not. The Frenchman opined that the defenses were a lot stronger than they’d been the time he and a handful of shot-up Legionnaires held off the Mexican army of Juarez at Camerone for a few days. On the other hand, the Colombian army was hardly the Mexican army of a generation ago. Maldonado’s men were armed with repeating rifles and backed with modem heavy weaponry.
The slopes all around were bare, and thanks to the modest fanning of the local villagers there was open flat ground as well for almost half a mile to the nearest tree line. Gaston had considered sending out work crews to move the tree line back a bit. But, as Captain Gringo agreed, they wouldn’t be able to push the jungle back enough to matter, and the machete crews would b vulnerable to snipers on the other side.
They ate early with the enlisted men and at last the sun made up its mind to squat among the trees to the west. So Captain Gringo called his men together on the parade and gave them a last pep talk as he waited for it to get really dark. He didn’t see Jurado Numero Uno among their nervously smiling faces. He didn’t care. But just as it began to look like he was going to get all the credit again, the younger Jurado Numero Ocho puppy-dogged up to him and said he was coming along instead. Numero Uno had to stay and read maps or something with El Criado Publico.
That didn’t surprise Captain Gringo. He didn’t really want to go himself. He said, “Okay, I’ve already told these guys the plan, twice. So just stick with me and I’ll fill you in as we go. Ah, do you really want to carry that dress saber on a combat patrol?”
The jurado said he did. So Captain Gringo didn’t argue. It was now too dark for anyone to tell at a distance whether the gate was open. So he told a couple of proven scouts to take the point, and off they went, with no bands playing and not even one of the two girls they were leaving behind waving them off.
They moved down the slope double-time and then, as planned, spread out and took cover in a corn milpa to see if
anybody wanted to argue about it. Captain Gringo had removed the water jacket from one Maxim and was packing it himself. He’d distributed extra machine gun belts among the men he’d ordered to stick close in case he needed them.
Numero Ocho was sticking even closer. So as they hunkered amid the corn stalks, Captain Gringo gave him a thumbnail briefing, and then, since they couldn’t do anything important before his scouts secured their advance to the tree line, he asked the junior officer, “All bullshit aside, do you have any military training at all?”
Numero Ocho said, “Not as much as yourself, perhaps, but we are a militant order.”
Captain Gringo frowned and asked, “Militant order of what? Are you saying the professor recruited you jurados from a fucking monastery?”
Numero Ocho shook his head and replied, “Hardly. We’re a celibate as well as a penitent order. The Spanish authorities robbed us of our abbey long ago. Los Jurados have been, how you say, underground since the days of the Inquisition.”
“How come? Weren’t even monks good enough Catholics for His Most Catholic Majesty?”
“We are the true defenders of the faith!” Numero Uno protested, with a wild gleam in his eye as he added, “The Pope at the time was of course corrupt. But no matter. We excommunicated those soft fools in Rome long ago.”
Captain Gringo smiled crookedly and asked, “Can you do that? I thought your Pope was supposed to be in charge? Seems to me a Catholic order that fired the Pope would automatically be, well, Protestant.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! How could we be Protestant? We are, I assure you, more Catholic than any thrice-accursed Italian Pope!”
Captain Gringo didn’t want to argue Religion, even with a guy who wasn’t an obvious fanatic. But Numero Ocho was wound up and insisted on explaining, “Los Jurados are a bunch of the Spanish Knights of the Temple. You have heard of the Knights Templar?”
“I’m afraid the Crusades were a little before my time. I thought the Templars were suppressed by the Church back around 14:00 for, ah, certain irregular views.”
“They lied. We were neither devil worshippers nor homosexuals. It was all a plot, by the king of France and a corrupt Pope, for to loot our treasuries.”
“Yeah, I read about that. They looted you guys pretty good. How did The Templars get so rich back in the Middle Ages after taking all those vows of poverty? Is there much money in poverty?”
“Be careful, señor. You are beginning to annoy me.” Captain Gringo didn’t want to annoy a guy packing a saber. So he dropped it. A few minutes later one of his scouts came in, hunkered down with a wolfish grin, and said, “We just picked off one of their advance pickets, Captain Gringo. He told us the password is ‘gato negro’ and the countersign is ‘perro bianco’.”
“Bueno. Where’s the prisoner?”
“Prisoner, Captain Gringo?”
“Never mind. Silly question. Let’s move it out.”
They did. They made it to the tree line without incident, and when a couple of Colombians sharing a fox hole between two palms cautiously called out, “Gato negro?” a pair of Captain Gringo’s guerrillas simply answered, “Si, perro bianco,” and were able to get at them with their silent machetes before they could give the alarm.
So the next few hours were just hard work. It was black at the pit under the forest canopy, and once inside the enemy lines it was a bitch to keep thirty-odd guys going in the right direction, or even to find the right direction. Captain Gringo had a luminous compass dial and it was easy enough to spot the glows of scattered campfires as they worked in deeper. But to avoid them they had to go around, then figure out another heading on the gun position they were trying to reach. Captain Gringo of course had a penciled map copied from the bigger one at headquarters.
But there were no landmarks in a jungle where one dark tree looked much the same as any other. So he had to navigate by dead reckoning and his watch. When the watch said they’d been floundering around in the dark far too long, he called a halt and called in his scouts. He said, “We’ve overshot. I don’t know where the fuck we are, but the gun position we’re looking for can’t be this far from the fort. We’re going to have to spread out and move east again, very very carefully. I want each man to stay just in visual contact with the guy on either side, and remember we’ll be walking, slow, not running. Anyone who spots anything freezes in place and passes the word along the line. With a whisper, not a coyote yell. Any questions? Bueno. Spread out and let’s get this show on the road. We haven’t got all night and the sun comes up at six a.m. The son of a bitch!”
They moved cautiously abreast back toward the fort. They moved a hell of a distance and Captain Gringo was beginning to wonder if this had been such a hot idea when the man to his right hissed, “Estrada says he sees a light over to the south, Captain Gringo!”
The tall American told the jurado on his left to pass it on and stay put. Then he moved down the line, packing his Maxim, until he too saw a dim orange glow through the trees.
The scout, Estrada, asked if he should move in on it. Captain Gringo said, “No. I’ll take the point. I think this must be it, one way or the other. We’ve chewed up most of the night. So it had better be!”
It was. As Captain Gringo moved in, now holding the machine gun on one hip, training the muzzle ahead of him, he eased between two trees just outside the campfire glow and saw a sight for sore eyes.
The long-range twelve-pounder was set up in the middle of a modest clearing, its tube pointed skyward at a forty-five-degree angle. There was a fifteen-man crew of cannoneers and support personnel camped around it in various stages of carelessness. They hadn’t even posted pickets this far behind their own lines. They’d built night fires on either side of the big gun and were either bedded down for the night in sleeping bags or sitting up telling dirty stories. They’d pitched no tents. So that big canvas-covered mound across the clearing could only be one thing. He ducked back around the biggest tree bole and hissed to Pablo. When the guerrilla squad leader joined him, he said, “Their ammo is all piled in one place. Far side. Got your dynamite capped?”
“Si, Captain Gringo. Just point me at their ammo dump and I shall light the fuse.”
“I wish you wouldn’t, just yet. That comes afterwards.”
He started to call in the other leaders. Then he shrugged, figured they’d know what to do, and checked the action of his machine gun before he simply swung back around the tree and moved in, firing from the hip.
The gun crew never had a chance. Most of them died in their sleeping bags before they ever knew what hit them. Those few who leaped to their feet as Captain Gringo traversed the clearing with automatic fire didn’t stay there long. He fed them a full belt of hot lead, and then, as his Maxim fell silent to leave everyone still alive with ringing ears, a guerrilla ran up to him with a fresh belt. He put it in, but he didn’t need it right now. Nobody on the other side heard ringing or anything else in their ears now.
With the long belt trailing in the dust behind him, Captain Gringo moved across the clearing, stepping over corpses, until he got to the big gun. He leaned the smaller machine gun on the bigger one’s trail and opened the breech. Then he took the dynamite charge from his hip pocket and placed it where it would do the most damage to the mechanism. There was a twelve-pounder round in the chamber as well. Pretty sloppy. But it would do even more damage when the dynamite detonated. The gun was of course aimed at the distant fort or rather at the fishing village. So he gave the traverse crank a couple of turns to make sure the only future damage would be one-sided. Then he called out, “Pablo? You all set?” And when the guerrilla charging the ammo dump called back he was, the tall American shouted, “Okay. ¡Vámonos muchachos! We’re lighting the fuses!”
Then he did so, picked up his machine gun, and chased his men into the woods on the far side of the clearing. He ran a football touchdown into the trees before he shouted, “Far ’nough, everybody hit the dirt!” and suited actions to his words by flopping to t
he damp forest duff with the Maxim.
Nothing happened for a few seconds. It wasn’t supposed to, if he and Pablo had timed things right. Then the charge he’d placed to spike the big gun went off. Loud. He could tell by the whistle from the sky above that the detonation had lobbed the shell as well as gutted the big gun.
It wasn’t over. But Jurado Numero Ocho got to his feet to shout congratulations. Captain Gringo yelled, “Down, dammit!” And then the ammo dump exploded with a horrendous roar!
The earth heaved like quivering jelly under Captain Gringo’s prone form. His ears were jabbed with red-hot ice picks, and somewhere in the jungle a tree fell down with a long scream of protest. Then it got very quiet.
Captain Gringo left the machine gun on the ground as he got to his feet. He saw by the dim light from the distant campfires that others were doing the same. One man leaned against a tree and vomited. But he was in better shape than Jurado Numero Ocho.
Captain Gringo moved closer for a better look. He was sorry he had when he rolled over the blue-clad militant monk. Numero Ocho wasn’t a pretty boy anymore. He’d traded in his face for a plate of strawberry jam.
The scout, Estrada, came over to ask if he was dead. Captain Gringo never answered stupid questions if he could help it. He asked Estrada if anyone else had been dumb enough to stand up too soon. When the scout said everyone else was present and accounted for, Captain Gringo said, “Bueno. We’d better get the hell out of here.”
He started to rise. Then he unbuckled the dead man’s belt and pulled Numero Ocho’s pants down. Behind him, Estrada whistled and said, “My God, his balls were blown off too? But how? I see no blood down there.”
Captain Gringo said, “It was done to him a while back. Okay. Let’s move it out.”
*
A few miles away, Colonel Maldonado was mad enough to cut someone’s balls off, too.
First he’d been awakened from a pleasant enough dream by the distant thunder of the exploding ammo dump. Then, just as he’d gotten his boots on, an aide came into his command tent to report that some son of a bitch had lobbed a twelve-pound shell into a howitzer position down the line and blown its crew to bloody hash. The four-pounder would probably be all right, once they got it back on its wheels, and by sheer good fortune the enemy shell had missed the howitzer’s ammo pile.
