by Lou Cameron
He sniffed cordite as he shook his ringing head and said, “Nobody comes that good! It sounded like a couple of bombs. Close! I’d better check.”
“What is all this checking shit of the bull, Deek? You keep leaping on and off me like I was a hot stove. You are not a policeman.”
“Maybe not. But the building could be on fire. Let me go, damn it. It sounded like they blew up something right next door!”
They had. Both ways. As he stepped out in the hall in bare feet and pants, gun in hand, he saw the hall was reeking with cordite and both the doors to his and Gaston’s room had been blown off the hinges. The overhead lights went on as two of Morales’ men came up the stairs, guns drawn. One of them recognized Captain Gringo and asked what had happened.
Captain Gringo moved to his door and looked in as he flipped the switch. He found the bulb had been shattered but he could see enough from the light over his shoulder to make him gag. Poor ugly Lulu and the bed she’d been lying in had been blown to shit. The whore’s body lay shattered, covered with blood and feathers. Captain Gringo said, “Somebody better call the law.” The man nearest him said, “We are the law. It looks like they lobbed a grenade in on her. But why?”
“They thought it was someone else. Let me check Lieutenant Verrier’s room.”
Gaston’s quarters had been treated the same way, with less ghastly results, since his blasted bed had been unoccupied when the grenade went off on it. He stepped out and told the security goons, “It was a double play. I suppose it would be dumb to ask how they got past you guys huh?”
“Look, Captain, it’s very dark out and there are all sorts of people checked into this hotel. We didn’t notice any strangers, but these things happen, no?”
“These things happen, yes! Okay, muchachos, I’ll tell the general you were on your posts when the fireworks display started. You’ve got things under control here. So excuse me while I take some evasive action.”
Returning to Esperanza’s room, he kept his clothes on as he sat on the bed beside her. “They were after me and my sidekick,” he started. “They might think they got us or they might come back for another try. I don’t see how they could have me connected with you, since neither of us knew we were pals until just a few minutes ago. But it might not be safe for you here and I know it’s not safe for me! Any suggestions on some other place we could hole up?”
She sat up on one elbow, frowning thoughtfully, and said. “The boat of arms I’m waiting for won’t be here for a few days. I suppose we could check into another hotel. Together of course, now that we have discovered our common interests.”
He shook his head and said, “I’ve got a better idea. You check out alone. Better yet, don’t say anything at the desk downstairs. There’s a hotel across the park near the cathedral. Walk across and take a room while I watch from up here. Anyone following you would have started from here, see?”
“I told you I run guns for a living. But how are you to know which room I am in?”
“Take a front room and leave the light on with the shades down and let me guess. At this hour it won’t be hard. I’ll put on my civvies and do some circling to make sure I’m not being followed. Then I’ll go over and check into another room.”
“Ah, but then you will spend the night with me in mine, no?”
“That was the plan. I suppose I couldn’t blame you if you just wanted out. You may have noticed I bring trouble.”
“I like to get in trouble with guys like you,” she laughed. So he went back to his room to haul his civilian clothes from the closet as some other guys helped the two goons he knew wrap the busted-up whore in a canvas body bag. One of them asked where he was going and he said something noncommittal about reporting to “The Barracks” as he went back to Esperanza’s to change. She was already half-dressed in vulgar, but expensive, black lace over maroon silk. So in less than an hour they’d made the switch. Nobody seemed interested in her as she simply walked out the front door and across the grass. Captain Gringo took a little hike through side streets and back allies until he thought he seemed clear, too, so the rest went like clockwork. He slipped down the hall from his room into to Esperanza’s, who was already undressed and in bed. So he braced a chair under the doorknob, switched off the light, and joined her.
They didn’t get much sleep, partly because he was nervous about going to sleep with people chasing him around town with bombs, but mostly because the earthy Esperanza wouldn’t have let him sleep much in any case.
By sunrise he figured he’d managed maybe forty winks. He had no idea how many times he’d come in the big buxom Esperanza. He’d lost track long before morning and wasn’t sure if a couple of the ways she’d made him come should count.
~*~
Captain Gringo had noticed in the past that almost everything but a hastily acquired bed partner tended to look better in the morning, and even Esperanza looked pretty good as they had breakfast, and each other, in bed before splitting up to run their different errands. Esperanza had to get her baggage over to her new hotel and see about getting her guns past the British blockade, while Captain Gringo was sure that by now General Morales must have some orders to give his collection of knockaround guys. So they agreed to rendezvous at siesta time if they could and if they couldn’t, agreed it had been swell.
He went back to the first hotel to find Gaston sitting in the lobby reading the morning papers. Captain Gringo sat down beside him and asked what was up. “Not me,” Gaston laughed. “Merde alors, I think France was beaten by Prussia again last night. German girls fuck with as much élan as German men fight. But one supposes that leaving Brunhilda unsatisfied makes up in a small way for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. What have you been up to? I returned to find our rooms in disarray and the security thugs said a girl had been killed by a bomb. I hope it was not Golondrina?”
“No, it was your poor ugly pal, Lulu,” Captain Gringo corrected. “Neither one of us will ever forgive you for sending her to my room. I think Golondrina’s been kidnapped.”
He informed Gaston of his misadventures and when he got to Esperanza, Gaston said he’d heard of her and that she was okay from their point of view. She was a notorious arms dealer who’d inherited a family business from her Spanish-Gypsy father who’d been shot by Bolivia. She had a rep for being honorable, albeit dangerous to cross. Gaston added, “She is said to be one tough lady who can handle most men in a bare knuckles brawl.”
Captain Gringo chuckled fondly, “I noticed she was kind of strong. But we seem to be on friendlier terms. Don’t you think the British are being a little high handed, even for them, in blockading the Honduran coast without a declaration of war?”
Gaston shrugged and answered, “I was just reading about that. Honduras has complained to Whitehall, but the British say they are not blockading anyone. They claim to be protecting the Mosquito Coast from pirates under an old obscure treaty. Apparently ordinary trade is not being interfered with. One can move all the bananas one wishes but the Royal Navy reserves the right to stop and search vessels suspected of skullduggery.”
“Meaning Morales may be telling the truth after all about the Brits being on Guatemala’s side?”
“Well, they are obviously not anxious for Honduras to re-arm, hein? The papers say Guatemalan troops have massed on the border, not far from here. Of course, since this is a Honduran newspaper, one must take that with the grain of salt. But it’s beginning to look as if it could work either way. General Morales could be playing his own funny games or he could be a sincere patriot, as he keeps telling everyone he is. Since we stand to get shot at in either case, the point seems academic, hein? When are we to make a break for it, Dick?”
Captain Gringo frowned and replied, “I’m not sure. For one thing we have to figure out where we can go without leaping from the frying pan into the fire. For another, we’ve got to find out what happened to Golondrina.”
“Ah? I didn’t know you were so fond of her, my old and trés romantic.”
“Merde alors, you grabbed her, did you not? The girl is attractive. She may have met a pimp and could be on the high seas right now, willingly or not.”
“Or the same guys who tried to blow us out of bed last night could have done it. It’s pretty obvious they don’t like us, and it was just as obvious she was with me.”
He frowned thoughtfully as he took out a cigar and lit it before he added, “There’s something I’ve been trying to remember about that bombing. Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve forgotten something and can’t remember what it was?”
“Many times. I always wonder when I have been a guest in someone’s house whether I flushed the toilet before leaving or not”
“Yeah, everybody has. That’s the kind of feeling I have about last night. I remember making a mental note about something when I stood in. my doorway looking in at the mess they made of Lulu, but then I was distracted by all the confusion and a big buxom brunette and it just came back to me that I’d noticed something. Only now I can’t remember what the fuck it was! I think I’ll go up and have another look at that room.”
But as he rose, Lieutenant Bardo came in to ask, “Why are you not in uniform, Captain? The General wishes for to see you both at once. I was sent to take you to him at the presidio.”
Captain Gringo said he was on his way and, leaving the two of them in the lobby to wait, he took the stairs two at a time, fishing out the key he’d remembered to hang on to, as he hadn’t checked his luggage out to hole up safely for the night across the way with Esperanza.
He found they’d hung the door back on its hinges and repaired the damages to some extent by putting in a new bed and floor rug. His stuff in the closet hadn’t been trifled with.
So he only needed a few minutes to haul out his uniform and get into it. There were smudges of dust on the khaki, but most of it brushed off the practical tough cloth easily, and besides, everybody looked a little rumpled in the tropics.
He let himself out, locked the door, and was going down the stairwell when he recalled he’d meant to remember something about the layout of that damn room. He started to return, decided there wasn’t time, and shoved the thought on the back of the stove for now. It would probably come to him later, like a name on the tip of one’s tongue.
Bardo had his infantry escort outside but since the Presidio de Puerto Cortes wasn’t far, they legged it. The Presidio was a crumbling old fortress left over from Spanish colonial days and rained on a lot since. As they entered the baroque gateway and crossed the parade, Captain Gringo noticed a line of French 75 field guns at the far end. Near the headquarters building a couple of smaller machineguns were mounted on light wheeled carriages, like the old Gatling guns. He made a mental note that while the general was buying modern weapons he was thinking a generation behind the times.
Bardo led them into a big map room where a meeting was already in progress. The general was seated up front while an aide stood by a situation map on the wall with a long wooden pointer. As the three newcomers found seats, Captain Gringo recognized Lefty O’Toole and some other vaguely familiar faces in the crowd. You didn’t need a formal introduction to see that many of them were obvious Anglo Saxons, despite their uniforms. O’Toole and some of the others wore sergeant’s stripes instead of officer’s kit. That accounted for Lefty not being invited to the ball last night. He recognized a couple of men in officer’s kit as having been at the German Legation the night before. O’Toole had been made a gunnery master sergeant, but if he knew Lefty, Lefty wasn’t happy about it. O’Toole had once been a major in the Mexican army, to hear him tell it. But those recruiters Morles had out scouting for hired guns seemed to be good judges of character. Captain Gringo wouldn’t have given Lefty a squad leader’s job in any army he was running. The big Irishman was a hell of a brawler, but more of a thug than a soldier.
The aide was pointing his stick at some squares of red crayon on the map and anyone could see they were located along the northern border of Honduras, just inside the Guatemalan frontier, about a day’s march from here. The aide said, “This is the Twelfth Guatemalan Dragoon Brigade, the most formidable force the enemy has and, as you see, they are poised to strike. The best place to stop them would be here at the ford of the Rio Motagua nearest the coast.”
Captain Gringo saw no such thing, so he held up his hand. The aide looked uncertainly at him but General Morales nodded as he looked back over his shoulder and said, “I would like to hear the Captain’s views, Major. This is why we hired experienced officers for this emergency.”
The aide nodded and Captain Gringo asked, “Are we talking about mounted dragoons pushing south along the coast line, Major?”
“Of course. Didn’t I just say what our scouts have reported?”
“I know what you said, sir, but it won’t work. Nobody can push horses through the mangroves along the Mosquito Coast. It’s almost impossible for infantry to negotiate. Besides, what in the hell would their objective be?”
“Objective? Why, to invade our country, of course!”
“That’s dumb. If I was invading Honduras from Guatemala, I’d start by taking the high ground like everyone else always has. Both Guatemala City and your capitol of Tegucigalpa sit back from the coast on the dry highlands. Why the hell should they detour through the coastal swamplands?”
The man by the map looked even more confused. General Morales spoke up: “I can answer that. The enemy has two objectives, Captain. He wants to cut us off from the sea before he swings inland to attack our main population centers after assuring we cannot get further war munitions from our overseas suppliers. He also wishes to, how you say, sucker us into a fight within range of the British navy guns offshore. As you must know, a cruiser can fire a good thirty miles inland, no?”
“Yessir. But there are American gunboats out there, too, and I can’t see the Brits flaunting the Monroe Doctrine quite that openly.”
Morales shook his head and said, “There was only one gunboat, the USS Ramapo, and it put out to sea this morning, bound for Costa Rica. We have formally protested the British fleet just off our shore and no doubt Washington will have something to say about it in a week or so, but we may not have a country in a week or so at the rate things are going. Do you have any other questions, Captain?”
“Yessir. I still can’t see dragoons in a mangrove swamp.”
“One hopes you will see them over the sights of your machineguns. The Twelfth Dragoons, are horse infantry, Captain. There is no law saying they can’t leave their horses behind earlier than usual and simply walk through the difficult terrain, as you and your company will have to if we are to bar the crossing of the Motagua. As the major was explaining, there is only one stretch shallow enough for them to ford, and that is where I intend to stop them.”
“Then we have the guns we need, General? It was my impression we were still waiting for our ordinance.”
Morales made a wry face and said, “We are. This special unit is not even up to cadre strength, and the guns you must have seen outside are all we have. But the damn Guatemalans seem intent on hitting us before we are ready for them. So we’ll just have to do our best with what we have.”
Captain Gringo was tempted to say they didn’t have enough to stop a determined band of bandits, but he figured the general must have noticed, so he leaned back silently to listen to the rest of the pitch.
It was lousy. A Brigade was half a division and as far as he could see they didn’t have the makings of a battalion around here. The idiot with the stick started pointing out the positions marked in blue that he expected them to take up on the south side of the Rio Motagua. He said the field guns would form two batteries a couple of kilometers back to give them some artillery support. It sounded swell until one
remembered the 75s were small in bore as well as numbers, and that they’d be firing near their maximum effective range at a whole fucking brigade they couldn’t see; while the so-called heavy weapons companies, and what one hoped was a demi-battalion of regular infantry from Bardo’s outfit, tried to pin the enemy down at the ford. The only way it could possibly work would be if the hot shot Guatemalan Twelfth Dragoons were a bunch of sissies and the British fleet offshore stayed the hell out of it. You don’t have to be a West Point graduate to see that given those odds and a little spunk, the Twelfth Dragoons were already as good as across the Motagua!
But those clowns who’d hired him and Gaston seemed serious, so he made mental notes about his own part in the brawl in case he couldn’t get out of it between now and then. As the meeting broke up, and they filed outside, Lefty O’Toole and another hulk wearing sergeant’s stripes fell in beside Captain Gringo and Gaston. Lefty said, “It seems I’m to be your first sergeant, Sor, and this would be Bull Donovan who served with me up in Mexico. It was me who said he was to double-up as supply and ordinance NCO if that’s all right with you. I’ll be after showing yez both to our outfit if yez like, for I’ve been whipping them into shape whilst we was waiting for yez grand officers.”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “I was wondering where you other guys were, Lefty. Glad to meet you, Donovan. I’m sorry they didn’t give you guys commissions, but what the hell, Gaston and me haven’t been paid yet, even though they’ve treated us to uniforms and quarters up to now.”
Lefty laughed, “Faith, what do ranks mean in a dago army? I don’t mind serving under yez, Captain.”
Bull Donovan said, “I do. I’ve heard of your rep, Captain Gringo, and sure you’re supposed to be the bee’s knees for soldiering, but would Walker be an English name?”
“Don’t get your bowels in an uproar, Donovan,” Captain Gringo laughed. “My folks were rebels, too, back in ’76. Walkers were shooting at the English long before you Micks.”
