by J P S Brown
After supper Jack Brennan poured on the blarney about the beauty of the Sierra Madre and especially La Golondrina hacienda with its quiet, hospitable aura of peace. He could not wait to see don Nesib’s horses. The Lupinos marveled at his every move and sound, as his fans had marveled at his performances for fifty years. Kane marveled too. The man sure knew how to do his job with style.
Kane and Joe were assigned a room together. Vogel and Jack were given another room. The hacienda’s windows had no curtains. A lot of ranches did not use curtains, the excuse being that nothing but an owl or a coyote would ever look in a window. Kane knew the Lupinos did not put curtains on the windows because they wanted to see what went on in the rooms. Lupinos did not think it was wrong for them to spy on their guests, but had shot Adan Martinillo for spying on them, so they were dangerously serious about surveillance.
Joe set a gym bag with his personal belongings on the floor between their beds. Kane had carried it to La Golondrina on his saddle horn so that Joe would not be bothered with it. Mindful of the open windows, Joe began to unload the contents at his feet. He took out his toothbrush and toothpaste, a bar of soap, and a comb and laid them on the bed. He laid other small, technologically advanced contraptions on the floor between Kane’s feet.
When Kane looked down to see what he was doing, Joe pointed to the contraptions and then turned up his empty palms, as if to ask, I "What can I do with my spy tools?"
Kane knew they were bugs that Joe intended to distribute around the hacienda so Kane could eavesdrop on the Lupinos during the raid. Out loud, Kane said, "These people will clean every single corner of this room as soon as we leave it. Can you imagine? They’ll brush and scrub it clean for our next night of rest. Even when the room has been empty for months, the maids come in every single day to see if a cobweb has accumulated in a corner, or if an ant or a bug has found its way in here. Let’s take all our wrappers and any bugs we might discover out with us when we go. I’ve seen Fatima catch flies and other bugs in the house and turn them loose outside the minute I left the room. We ought to do that with any bugs we find and save her the trouble." He laughed.
Joe put his contraptions back in the handbag. They might be three hundred miles from nowhere, but Kane wanted him to know that they would not have as much privacy as they would in the rest room of a gas station.
The next day Nesib introduced the Brennans to Abdullah and his Arabian horses. Kane and Vogel were not given a private moment with Abdullah. All the talk was about movies, and Jack made himself the leader of the project right away and Fatima translated.
Kane saw that the establishment of a beachhead at La Golondrina had been accomplished. Nesib agreed to allow Jack to film the daily schedule of his horses, so a time for the start of the filming needed to be established. Kane said that he and Vogel would not be able to bring Jack back for another month because of other business. Jack quickly said that he would not be free for another month, either. Kane, Jack, and Vogel looked at a calendar together and without a word or a glance to each other placed their forefingers on the date of the darkest night of the month as the day to begin filming. All three nodded that they could be at La Golondrina on that date. Rafa would furnish the crew, cameras, light, and sound, and serve as assistant director and producer. Jack would be brought back in time to begin filming on August third. With that, the partners also established that the date of the raid on La Culebra would be in the dark of the moon.
SIXTEEN
Dolly Ann had stayed late with Cody Joe in the hospital after Kane and Vogel left for the 7X and had begun to read Will James’s Smokey the Cowhorse to him. He did not read enough to suit her. She thought that he would find the fun of reading if she made him more aware of good stories. All he wanted to do was play sports. Now, as she read him James’s great story, he only yawned and looked way off at infinity like an old Longhorn steer that wanted out of the corral. Ali Lupino bustled into the room in fresh, starched white coat and khaki slacks, his swarthy face clean-shaven and every hair on his head in place. At first he busied himself at the foot of the bed with Cody Joe’s chart and did not say anything. Cody Joe and Dolly Ann fell silent and Dolly Ann found herself studying Ali’s hands. They were slender and fragile, the fingers long and delicate, the nails flawlessly manicured. The thumbs were long and thin and more like fingers. Dolly Ann thought, the son of a gun ever had to do a day's work in a corral with those hands, he'd cripple himself for a year. A layer of dirt and the heat of a day’s sun would shrivel them up like primes.
After Ali satisfied himself with the information on the chart, he looked down his nose at Dolly Ann. "Well, well, what have we here?" he announced. "Who are you, young lady? Where has my favorite patient been hiding you?"
"Who’re you?" Dolly Ann asked.
"This is Ali Lupino, Sister." Cody Joe said.
Dolly Ann turned away, closed the book, and placed it on the bed table.
"You know, I heard that you were a little beauty and now I see you really are," Ali cooed. "I knew that someday we’d meet, but I always wondered when. I was afraid your brother would be transferred out of my care before it happened."
Dolly Ann turned and looked him in the eye. "Imagine that," she said. "I never thought of you at all. In fact, I would have liked it if every one of you Lupinos had been wiped off the face of the earth before I ever heard the name." She turned away and did not look at him again.
"You’re not serious, are you, girl? Can you be so stupid that you blame me for the pranks my brother played on you? I’m not anything like Rafa."
"Oh, and your brother Güero isn’t like you either, I suppose. He’s your bastard brother too, isn’t he?"
"Güero’s just another prankster. That’s all. A clown. I’ve been told that he is solely to blame for any harm that might have been done, but as I understand it, you came away totally unharmed. Haven’t you heard? All the problems have been solved between your family and mine. My mother and grandfather intend to make everything right with you in every way possible."
"Pranksters, are they?" Cody Joe said. He sat up and eased his legs out of bed. "You call stripping two girls naked and ordering a man to rape them and cut their throats in front of a room full of people only a prank?"
"I don’t know what kind of joke my brother or Güero tried to pull, but I know that no real harm was done, or intended. Even so, I’ve served as your physician and friend since your grandfather brought you to this hospital. As your doctor, I’m here to see to all your injuries."
"Let me tell you something, Lupino," Cody Joe said quietly. "You have no business of any kind here in this room. You’re not my doctor and you’re not our friend. I’ve put up with you while I’ve been under this hospital’s care, because my grandfather has, but stay away from me and my sister when he’s not with us, because we don’t like you. You might think your kinfolk made peace with my grandfather, but none of you can ever make peace with us."
"But I’m not here to make peace with you, boy. I have no quarrel with you and never have. I’m your physician"
"No, you’re not. I’m a United States Marine and you’re my enemy, and so is all the rest of your bastard family."
"Let’s please start over, here. Remember me? I’ve been at your side since the Montenegros carried you into the Sanatorio Lourdes in Rio Alamos. To be friends is in the best interests of our families. At least, the three of us here in this room can make a new start, because we’ve never had a quarrel. Look, let me take you both to dinner. I’m sure I can get Cody released to my care for the evening."
"Go look in the mirror," Dolly Ann growled. "You have the same look in your eye as your bastard brothers did when they tied me and Luci Martinillo naked to a bedpost, and you let off the same stink. You might talk nice and wear cologne, but the look in your eye is black as a hellhole and you stink like a dead carcass. Get out and take your Lupino stench with you."
"If I’m discharged as Cody’s physician, I’ll need it in writing"
"You
wormy joke," Cody Joe said. "Get out of here."
Ali finally got it and showed that he did. "I won’t be dismissed by you, you pitiful dog," he said quietly. "Keep this in mind, then. I am your enemy, and I’ll always be nearby. Watch for me, because I might hire someone to step out of your bedroom closet with a butcher knife for your throat. You want to be rid of me, you fool? I want everything my brothers want and more. You can’t just declare your enmity and make me go away. The same way I might have healed you, I shall make you sick. Before I’m through with you, I’ll cause the flesh to rot off your bones. And for a starter, I’ll do this." He drew a scalpel from a sheath in his breast pocket, grabbed a handful of Dolly Ann’s ponytail, and cut it off. Before either of the youngsters could move, he fled the room. Cody Joe shut the door and began to put on his street clothes.
"What do you think you’re doing, Brother?" Dolly Ann asked. Calmly she went to the basin mirror and showed herself the back of her hair.
"You don’t plan to stay here tonight, do you?" Cody Joe said.
"No. You got any scissors? I need to trim a little more of my hair off the back. I’ve been thinking I'd cut off my ponytail, but kept postponing it. Maybe we ought to run Little Farfel down and thank him."
"I’ll run him down when I can, but first let’s get out of here. I can't stay in this hospital one more minute. I'd like to have at least one night out before I check in at Fort Huachuca. Little Farfel, as you call him, had a good idea when he asked us out to eat. Let’s go have a steak, then I’ll take you home so nobody’ll get you."
The youngsters got into Cody Joe’s pickup and drove to the Santa Rita Hotel. Its restaurant was a favorite place for the Kanes to eat and meet with business associates and friends. Cody Joe’s pockets were full of the money the partners had given him for riding Gato in the race. He and Dolly Ann sat down at a corner table that was already set up with a clean tablecloth and napkins, a pitcher of ice water, crystal glasses, and silver place settings. They ordered T-bone steaks.
The hour was late and the youngsters were the only customers in the place. Even their waiter had gone away when Ali walked up to the table. This time his arrogant look exactly resembled Rafa’s. His black, unblinking eyes fixed on them. Cody Joe had only seen the man dart and dash about on doctor’s errands in the hospital, his eyes focused on his business. At work, his eyes never showed care or compassion for people, only that he was intent on the quick dispatch of his chores. Now they showed that he cared a lot. They showed his hate for the Kanes. They had turned so black and hard they glittered and their pupils had disappeared.
"I followed you out of the hospital, then followed your shabby little truck here," Ali said. "When you leave here, I’ll follow you to the place where you hope to sleep. When you sleep, I’ll send someone to get you. You won’t know when. It will be a surprise."
Cody Joe tried to shove his chair away from the table, but the infected leg failed him and he almost upset the chair.
Ali’s mouth grinned and he dropped a hand on Cody Joe’s shoulder to hold him down. "Steady Kane," he said. "It won’t do you any good to get excited every time you see me. I won’t harm you. It’s your sister I want. How do you think she will look with only one ear? Jim Kane likes to earmark people, does he? Soon he will be able to identify the pick of the Kane litter by the Lupino earmark."
He reached to lift Dolly Ann’s chin with a forefinger and she let him, then doused his face with a full glass of ice water. He stumbled backward as though he had been clubbed and his mouth opened wide so he could take the big breath that the ice water had shocked away. Dolly Ann’s aim had been so good that not much of the water missed his face. He reached for a folded napkin on the table and Cody Joe grabbed his wrist, jerked him toward himself, pounded the outside of the elbow of the outstretched arm with the heel of his hand, and heard the joint pop. The overextension of everything that held the elbow together shocked Ali’s mouth as wide open as the ice water had done.
Cody Joe pulled down on the arm and brought Ali’s face close to his. Ali struggled to lift his chest off the table.
"I don’t have my knife, so I can’t earmark you, Lupino," Cody Joe said. "I wouldn’t want your blood to mess up our nice tablecloth, anyway. I don’t think I’m strong enough to break your bones right now, but I can be hell on your joints." He grabbed the thumb of the hand he held and twisted it until it snapped. When the fingers on the hand splayed out and stiffened with the pain, Cody Joe pounded the heel of his hand on their ends and jammed all the knuckles. He stood and jerked up on the shoulder socket to stand Ali off the table.
"You want to follow us around?" he asked. "Follow this." He jerked Ali toward him and stomped his boot heel down on the outside of his knee, pulled him so he had to stand on it again, then stomped it again to make sure the joint came undone. When Ali howled and raised his free hand in supplication, or agony, or surprise, Cody Joe pounded the ends of his fingers and jammed them too, then bent them back until they broke, grabbed that wrist, jerked the arm straight, and disjointed the other elbow. The pain sent Ali into shock and he slumped to the floor, stiffened under the table, and mewed. Cody Joe stomped him heavily on both his slender little ankles.
Alarmed by what she had seen her marine brother do, Dolly Ann tried to pull him toward the door. He still had a good hold on one of Ali’s wrists, so he twisted that thumb until it popped, then dropped the arm and went with her.
Outside, Dolly Ann looked Cody Joe in the eye, shook her head, and said, "Us Kanes. I wonder when our plight will be over."
Cody Joe examined the calm look on his sister’s face. "I know how you feel, Sister," he said. "I guess war’s always just hell until it’s over, so we’ll just have to be ready."
Billy Buck and Martinillo returned to El Trigo from their reconnaissance of La Culebra Canyon a day after Kane, Vogel, and the Brennans returned from La Golondrina. The next morning Che Che and his wife made them breakfast, then cleared away the table so they could sit with coffee and plan the assault. Each phase of the raid and every bit of conversation, even the trivial, was first laid out in Spanish, then Kane translated it into English word for word for the Americans.
Vogel and Jack would train with the raiders that month, but they needed to be at work on the film at La Golondrina at the time of the raid on August third. They would not risk communication with the raiders while they were at La Golondrina.
The reconnaissance gave the partners the information they needed on the sentries at La Culebra, the armament and explosives required for the raid, and the number of people who would go on it. They planned to destroy a hundred hectares of ripe opium poppies, the bunkhouse where thirty Arabs and Los Lobos thugs slept, a plant where opium was cooked, and a warehouse big as a hay barn stored with fuel and armament. By the time of the raid, it would probably also be stocked with part of the harvest of opium gum.
Each raider would carry a Russian AK-47 rifle. The partners calculated the weight of the explosives and armament that would be taken on the raid and decided they needed three pack mules and five saddle horses and mules. Kane, Martinillo, Che Che, Billy Buck, and Joe Brennan were to go on the raid. The march on the target from the Cerro Prieto staging area would take seven hours. The flight back to staging would take four hours or less. The assault phase was all uphill to the target. The flight back to staging was so straight downhill it would practically be an airborne operation.
The men were given their assignments that morning. Che Che would lead the file as scout, because he knew the trails as well by night as Lupino’s sentries knew them by day. Kane would follow him and lead a pack mule. Joe would follow Kane and lead a pack mule, and Billy would follow Joe with the third pack mule. Martinillo would guard their back trail as the last man in the file. Che Che and Martinillo were to carry halogen lanterns for emergency use on that darkest of nights. As the unit began to climb the first mountain of the high Sierra, the men would unsling their rifles and carry them at the ready. At the ravine, the team would dismount
on the cliff edge 15o yards above the target buildings, tie the animals head to tail without changing their order in the string, and unload the weapons.
Martinillo and Joe would man RPG-7 antitank weapons, the Russian equivalent of the American Bazooka, and fire phosphorous rockets. The bunkhouse was to be their first target. Three rockets were to be launched into each building. Che Che would help load the rockets, attend to the needs of the shooters, and light the canyon with a halogen lantern. The rockets would pierce the adobe walls of the buildings and explode inside. The first rocket would probably light up the whole canyon. After that, the raiders hoped that the burning buildings would provide all the light they needed.
During his first reconnaissance of the ravine, Martinillo had seen that kerosene, avgas, and explosive armament were among the most volatile supplies stored inside the warehouse. He knew that kerosene was stored there because he recognized the black barricas, twenty-liter barrels that were used to transport it by mule and by airplane to mercantile stores in the Sierra. The avgas was in blue barricas. Billy warned the partners to expect a lot of shrapnel, flying debris, and flame when the fuel barrels, rockets, grenades, and ammunition went off in the warehouse. He also knew from his experience in Afghanistan that the five-pound clods of opium gum would make a beautiful, multicolored, gushing flame.
Billy Buck would fire American M-79 incendiary rifle grenades into the poppy field from the rim of the ravine. From experience he knew that an opium crop was as flammable as lighter fluid. The poppy bulb was fat with sap, or resin, that gushed with a torchlike flame when ignited. He asked the partners to each say a rosary for a breeze to come along and spread the flames. He loved the lightweight M-79 launcher that resembled a sawed-off shotgun with a large bore. The grenades only made a poof sound when they left the muzzle, and they armed themselves to explode on contact after they were thirty-five feet away
