by Lou Cameron
Maldonado rubbed a hand over his sleep-numbed face to try to clear his head as he grumbled, “They hit some damned thing with that other round. Tell me about it.”
The aide said, “I fear it was our big twelve-pounder, sir. They don’t answer on the field wire. Shall I send someone to investigate?”
“Why, no, I thought I’d just consult my crystal ball. Of course I want you to send a runner. You should have done so before now, you stupid offspring of a deaf, dumb, and blind burro! You’d better send an armed patrol in case No, just send a runner. A fast one. You’re sure it was a shell, not a spiking patrol, that hit that howitzer crew?”
“Si, my colonel. From the crater, a twelve-pounder, as I said.”
The Colombian commander rubbed his face again, muttering, “Oh, shit. I was hoping we might trap that crazy Captain Gringo inside our lines. Where in the name of God do you suppose they could have gotten their unwashed hands on a twelve-pounder? Never mind. Get someone over to our own poor twelve-pounder to see if we still have it!”
The aide left. Colonel Maldonado got up and went outside to find his camp in a state of considerable confusion. He was confused too. But he shouted, “At ease, goddamn it! Vegas, front and center!”
His adjutant ran up to him and saluted. Maldonado returned the salute wearily and said, “We’re in trouble, Vegas. The rains are coming on. We’re outgunned. This isn’t going to work.”
“Are we to retreat then, my colonel?”
“Don’t talk dirty. Retreat is a word that is not in my vocabulary. On the other hand, there’s no sense in banging one’s head against a stone wall. Perhaps, after the rains, with more men and material.
A scout came running up to them, saluted, and said breathlessly, “We have just viewed the old Spanish fortress, my colonel.”
“And?”
“And there are three very big gaps blown in the landward walls. The light was not good. But the coral blocks glow pale in the moonlight and …”
Maldonado silenced him with a wave and said, “Bueno. Our big gun was right on target with its first ranging rounds after all! It’s about time we had some luck around here!”
He turned to his adjutant and said, “We attack at once. Move the howitzers into range and tell them I want a heavy screening barrage. They are to cease fire at 05:00 so our infantry can move up the slopes in the last hour of darkness. What are you waiting for? Are you deaf?”
The adjutant said, “But, sir, you were just about to order a re … ah, strategic withdrawal, no?”
“Are you mad as well as deaf? We’ve breached their walls in at least three places! We’d never be able to explain pulling back now. Not without at least one all-out effort. So let’s do it, muchacho. Butt stock and bayonet, with shirkers to be shot on the spot by their squad leaders. Oh, yes, tell the buglers to sound ‘no quarter’ when they blow the charge. I’ve had just about enough of this shit.”
*
When the barrage began a little after 04:30, Gaston did what he could to discourage it with counter battery fire, and since Gaston was a hell of an artilleryman, with his own guns well sandbagged and firing from higher ground, he did pretty well. The Colombians had more howitzers to begin with, but as the sly old Frenchman laid his own guns to answer the muzzle flashes he could see so well from the top of the hill, the Columbians began to lose gun crews and, with one lucky Hebei round, another whole ammo dump.
But war is a cruel mistress, and. it cost the fort a lot of window glass, some masonry, and one of Gaston’s gun crews before the enemy ceased fire.
El Criado Publico, his senior staff officers, and other noncombatants had of course taken cover within the thick inner walls. But some of the junior jurados were trying to be useful. So when one asked Gaston what the sudden silence meant, the little Frenchman growled, “Infantry for breakfast. Keep your head down. They’ll be shooting as they come up the slope any moment now.”
A regular guerrilla noncom joined them to report that all the machine gun crews were set. Gaston told him to keep his head down, too. Gaston was in a foul mood this morning, and the attack he was braced for was only part of it. He didn’t like the people up here very much, and his young friend, Captain Gringo, was still out there somewhere behind the enemy lines, if he was still alive. Gaston could only hope he hadn’t been killed by friendly fire as he’d lobbed four-pounders freely into the dark jungle.
A tinny bugle blew somewhere in the darkness. Gaston nodded grimly and said, “Shame on you, Maldonado. Even the Mexicans under Juarez took prisoners. But then, Juarez was a gentleman, non?”
The eastern sky was just beginning to pearl gray when the Colombian skirmish line started up the slope from the west. Gaston couldn’t depress his four-inchers to blast them. So now it was up to the machine gunners and riflemen along the walls on either side of them. Gaston waited until he could have seen the whites of their eyes, had it been lighter out, then drew his .38, chose a noncom in the lead for his target, and signaled “open fire” as he blew the Colombian back down the slope.
The others around him shot pretty good too. So the first skirmish line was shot down in a dead and dying windrow as yet another line came out of the tree line at the fort.
It was sheer slaughter. By not all one-sided. The Colombian regulars fired back with repeating rifles as they charged. So by sheer luck they had to hit somebody atop the walls from time to time, and did. A bullet spanged close to Gaston, showering him with powered red coral as, at his feet, a guerrilla writhed, gun-shot, sobbing for his mother. Gaston shot him in the head to put him out of his misery, then went back to peppering the men coming up the slope at him.
A scalding party ran for one of the painted “gaps” with a ladder. They got close enough to fall down looking surprised as hell as a machine gun swept across them. Gaston sighed and said, “So much for camouflage. I was wondering why they were behaving so strangely this morning!”
Maldonado’s men wouldn’t have gotten through in any case, most likely. But to add to their dismay, as the third suicide line left the tree line, Captain Gringo stepped out of the same trees, flanking them, and raked them with a long burst of machine gun fire while his guerrillas used their rifles to pop off the few not in his line of fire.
Up the line, Colonel Maldonado, like most commanders in the middle of a battle, only had a hazy grasp of the overall picture. But he could see, as he swept the slope with field glasses, that his plan obviously needed more work. He’d already expended more casualties than he really felt like explaining to his superiors, and so far nobody had gotten anywhere near even one of those gaps in the walls up above.
As the light got better, Maldonado adjusted the focus of his powerful field glasses, had another look at a “gap,” and roared like a bull with a broomstick up its ass.
“Oh, the treacherous murdering son of a defrocked Jesuit and a whoring nun!” he shouted to everyone in range.
An aide ran up to him, sobbing, “We are flanked, my colonel! They are chopping us up with machine gun fire from the south!”
“That’s what I just said!” yelled Maldonado, shaking a futile fist at the walls up the slope as he protested, “That was a rotten trick, even for a gringo!”
His aide looked bewildered. Maldonado was feeling the same. But he had sense enough to call out, “Sound the … withdrawal. They painted those apparent breaches as a ruse, and now, goddamn their black gringo hearts, they have us in a death trap! ¡Vamanos, companeros! This is no place for a civilized soldado this morning!”
*
So the Colombian column retreated, whether they called it that or not. Captain Gringo didn’t risk moving out into the open before his own scouts reported that the Colombians were pulling out for sure. Then he still waited. The day dawned gray and overcast, with the smell of rain on its breath. Captain Gringo waited until the Colombian troops were marching south through a light drizzle before he led his own party up to the fort for congratulations.
Everyone seemed happy as hell, sav
e for Gaston. Captain Gringo noted the expression on his old friend’s face, but didn’t comment on it until they could speak privately. That took some time. El Criado Publico was as enthusiastic as a little kid about what he called his victory, and wanted Captain Gringo to go right back out and round up the villagers hiding in the jungle. One could get the impression he was anxious to get back to running his utopia right away.
Captain Gringo talked him out of it by pointing out that the lost sheep would probably come home wagging their tails behind them once they, too, made sure the Colombians had called the game because of rain and other discomforts. He said, “Maldonado just left a lot of unburied dead. I guess that’s allowed down here. But let’s keep an eye peeled anyway. They may try to recover at least the officers, come dark.”
El Criado Publico nodded grimly and said, “Not if we get to them first. I intend to burn them all, as an example.”
Captain Gringo frowned and asked, “Example to who? That’s not the way it’s done, boss. They’ll keep the way they are, for now. Then, with your permission, I’ll see they’re buried with full military honors.”
“Permission denied! Why would we wish for to honor enemy dead, young man?”
“Oh, I dunno. Maybe because they were soldiers who died bravely, enemy or not. Let’s not argue about it. If you want to burn them, bury them, or stuff them, it’s not gonna bother them much, so I’m not gonna let it bother me. If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to take a bath and put on something dry. You want to scrub my back, Gaston?”
The Frenchman said he did, and so, there being no objections, the two soldiers of fortune left the office. As soon as they were alone, Captain Gringo said, “You did pretty good up here. What’s eating you?”
Gaston said, “I would have been long gone, had not you been out in the jungle fighting for these lunatics. Last night, right after you left, I helped Inocencia look for her pussy.”
“You hadn’t already found it? Oh, you mean the pet jaguar she’s so fond of.”
“Oui. We were unable to get to it. The girl is in her room at the moment, pouting about it. But she did show me something I want you to see. You’d never believe me if I simply told you.”
Gaston looked around, made sure there was nobody else in the corridor with them, and led Captain Gringo to a nondescript door. He opened it on utter darkness, pulled the younger man inside, and shut it before he said, “We are in some sort of ventilation shaft, built by the old Spanish engineers. In fairness to them, I think the pits of justice were originally intended as powder magazines. Watch your adorable head until your eyes get used to the light. Inocencia told me she discovered this unused passage by accident as she wandered about in her boredom. The regular passage leading to the dungeons on a lower level is guarded day and night. She hoped we would be able to get as far as the cell they have her pet locked up in. We could not. But we saw what I am about to show you. Even Inocencia was shocked, and if half the things she told me are at all true, she should not shock easily, hein?”
As Captain Gringo grew accustomed to the dark he saw faint patches of light strung out ahead. He said, “Lead on. I’d like to see what could shock a girl who sucks off cats and says she lost her baby cherry to her own father!”
Gaston said, “Keep your voice down. Those are ventilating grilles in the ceilings of the cells below. Hopefully neither the prisoners nor guards have any interest in where the stink might rise to, hein?”
“Jesus, it sure does smell bad in here. That’s not a big cat. It smells like a corpse!”
Gaston nodded and led him to the first grille. As they hunkered down they could see down into the cell below. A naked man was strapped in a solid oak chair, bolted to the floor. A rubber tube was shoved up one nostril, taped to his forehead and leading to a funnel attached to the back of the chair behind his head. Gaston whispered, “The girl explained the way they force feed him. Apparently she’d seen that before. The tube leads down to his stomach. Once a day they pour him full of banana pulp and canned milk. They can keep him alive a long time that way. But, as you see, and no doubt smell, he is forced to sit there in his own filth.”
“It sure looks like a boring way to serve a sentence. Know what he’s in for?”
“Oui; Inocencia explained he was the village photographer. When he was not photographing weddings and funerals, he liked to take dirty pictures. When Los Jurados raided his studio, they found photographs of little white girls and full-grown; well-developed African gentlemen. The usual muck one buys on any street corner in Paris or New York. You can’t see them from up here, but the cell walls are papered with filthy photographs. Some new and no-doubt inspiring to our friend below. Inocencia says she was asked to pose for some rather shocking photos by her stern but just father.”
Captain Gringo frowned and whispered, “Gaston, that’s just plain nuts! How can El Criado punish a pornographer if he takes dirty pictures of his own daughter?”
“I too found that trés confusing. Inocencia explained that her father considers himself above the law he judges others so severely by. At any rate, he got her to do it. It is not as if they are strangers. She assured me it was all quite correct. There was nobody else in the room and he remained fully dressed as he got her to bend over and, ah, open her lips.”
Captain Gringo gagged and said, “Okay. I’m shocked. By the way, did you know Los Jurados are some kind of castrated penitent order of defrocked monks?”
Gaston sighed and said, “It doesn’t surprise me. As one dirty old man to another, I was wondering how El Criado managed to keep his pants on while he was posing his trés belle daughter in such interesting positions. She says he stopped screwing her every night right after he took up with these weird younger fanatics. Do you suppose…?”
“Could be. They all sound pretty weird. When does that poor guy down there get out?”
“Never, according to Inocencia. He simply gets to sit there looking at dirty pictures until he dies, no doubt trés sick of his hobby.”
“I can see he doesn’t have a hard-on right now. But, Jesus, if they keep force feeding him, he could last indefinitely!”
“Oui. Let me show you more draconian justice, Dick.”
They moved to another vent. Below, another naked form was strapped the same way in a similar chair. But this prisoner was a woman of about fifty, with a gag in her mouth as well as a tube up her nose as she stared, wild-eyed, at nothing at all. She wasn’t attractive and, like the other prisoner, sat in a brown pile of her own inevitable body processes. She looked about eight-months’ pregnant. Gaston said she wasn’t, explaining, “Her crime was usury. She was the village money lender, and she charged more interest than one is allowed to, in utopia. So every day they come in and force more money down her throat. Some of the silver dollars donated by El Criado’s American backers, no doubt. She could shit nickels and dimes. But, as you see, she is accumulating interest indeed as the silver just remains in her stomach. I don’t see how she can last much longer, even though one’s belly can distend amazingly, a meal of silver at a time, hein?”
“Oh, Jesus, that’s just sick, Gaston!”
“Oui. But as we go on it gets sicker. Hold your nose before you look down into the next cell.”
Captain Gringo didn’t. He just breathed shallowly as they peeked down through the next vent. He was used to, the smell of death. Though there sure was a lot of it in the air right now.
The punishment below had been varied to the extent that the prisoner was spread-eagled flat on the floor, albeit with the same tube up his nose to keep him alive, and probably naked. It was hard to tell. A woman lay atop him, her bloated purple buttocks covering the prisoner’s lap. She too was held atop him in a spread-eagle position, with wrists and ankles shackled to rings set in the stone floor. The man’s eyes were open and staring up at the grille, but blind with madness, and the two soldiers of fortune were invisible to him in the darkness in any case.
Gaston said, “This one was a rapist murderer. The other
villagers reported him to El Criado Publico for judgment. As you see, our host judges harshly.”
“Kee-rist! Is that his victim they have rotting on top of him?”
“Mais non, that would hardly be just, according to our enlightened despot, Zagal. The village woman he strangled and raped was of course given a Christian burial, as an obviously innocent victim. The beauty of the punishment below, as Inocencia explained it, is that a man who enjoys rutting with dead women should be allowed to do so forever. She’s been embalmed, albeit not too skillfully, as one can sniff, and her vagina is filled with petroleum jelly, lest it dry out and spoil the pleasure, hein?”
“Good God! You mean that poor bastard’s cock is actually in that overripe corpse down there? Come on, who could keep it up under such conditions?”
Gaston said, “He has little choice. They have been sewn together with butcher’s twine. No doubt it must be soft, most of the time, but the devilish ingenuity of the punishment is that human nature being what it is, he can’t remain uninspired all the time, with his shaft inside a well-greased and trés tight pussy. It is tight, of course, thanks to more butcher’s twine. The last time I looked, he was pumping up into her hot and heavy, meanwhile crying hysterically. At the moment he would seem to be between orgasms, non?”
Captain Gringo swallowed the green taste in his mouth and muttered, “Okay. The guy’s a murderer and a rapist, but enough’s enough!”
Gaston shook his head and said, “They have assured him that when one falls apart they mean to provide him with another dead lover. He comes from a big family.”
“A big what? That’s one of his relatives they’ve sewn his dong into?”
