The Badlands Brigade (A Captain Gringo Adventure Book 12)

by Lou Cameron

  Major Gomez wasn’t stupid; he was just a soldier acting under orders. So he said, “I agree, senores, that the strategy of the enemy makes no sense at all to me, either. But what are we to do? We have orders to intercept him on the lower Motagua. The problem as I see it at the moment is to get to the thrice-accursed Motagua, no?”

  Captain Gringo blew a thoughtful smoke ring out across the open saw grass before he observed, “If we dug in here and just waited until the silly sons-of-bitches floundered into us...” And the Texan added, “Hot damn! My 75s would make hash of them out there in the open, too!”

  Young Bardo nodded and said, “I agree with these professionals, Major Gomez. I could put some rifle pickets out in the saw grass on those hammocks and between sweeping machinegun fire and plunging artillery fire, no army on earth would ever be able to cross that marsh!”

  Gomez nodded, but said, “I agree this would be a good place to stop them, once they had crossed our border. But our orders are not to let them cross our border. The Rio Motagua is a good fifteen kilometers north of here. We must push on to meet them there, as ordered. It will not be easy. But the marsh is shallow, we have plenty of machetes to cut the saw grass and the wheels of our weapons and supply carts can get across the mud on bundles of reed, so …”

  “So, shit!” the Texas cannoneer cut in, adding, “It’ll take us the better part of a day to negotiate this infernal sawgrass, Major, and meanwhile, what do you reckon the enemy will be doing?” Waiting for us on the Rio Motagua with his thumb stuck up his ass?”

  Gomez looked blank. So Captain Gringo explained in a gentler tone, “What Lieutenant Travis means is that your scouts spotted somebody massing on the Motagua some time back, Major. I’ll be damned if I can see why they’d want to cross there, but if that’s their plan, they could have done so by now. There’s no natural law that says an invading army has to stay put on any border until the defenders get there to oppose them. They could be waiting to ambush us, anywhere on the far side of this open marsh. God knows if they have one spy in Honduras they must know we’re coming by now.”

  Young Bardo had the makings of a soldier. He nodded and said, “With your permission, Major, I shall take some rifle scouts across or around to cover the crossing of the main column, no?”

  The Texan, Travis, said, “I got me a better notion. Why don’t we all try and circle this infernal marsh? The map shows it petering out to even worse salt marsh to seaward, but we’d be safer moving around the inland jungles if you ask me.”

  Major Gomez permitted himself a frosty smile as he said, “Nobody is asking you, Lieutenant Travis. I’m in command for the general, in his absence, and I say it’s too far out of our way. Bardo here shall move across with his riflemen. The rest of us will simply, how you say, bull our way directly for the front.”

  So that was what they did. Or rather, what the enlisted men did as the officers made camp on the high ground south-east of the huge sawgrass marsh. The column had stubbed it’s toe on the impassible stretch late in the afternoon. So by nightfall the sweating peons had barely made a dent in the sawgrass.

  Even Gomez was too smart to risk torchlight once the sun went down. Aside from being spotted by distant enemy scouts, the sawgrass was highly inflammable a few feet above the muck around its roots. So after cutting a path three yards wide and a couple of hundred yards long, and laying faggots of bound sawgrass across the stickier stretches of mud, the Iron Brigade called it a day and made bivouac under the trees to sup and screw with their adelitas.

  Not having an adelita of his own and not having seen any woman in the little army worth fighting over, even if that had been his style, Captain Gringo turned in, alone, in a hammock strung between a pair of gumbo limbo trees with a smudge fire under him to keep the mosquitos down to a reasonable roar. He wasn’t sleepy. But he hadn’t brought along any reading material and didn’t have a lamp to read by in any case. So he was in a conversational mood when Gaston and Travis came over to talk to him. Gaston said, “One of Bardo’s scouts just came in very muddy and dramatically sliced by sawgrass. He says the riflemen are camped on the far side and that they have encountered nothing of interest. Apparently the country to the north-west is as fatiguing as that about us.”

  Captain Gringo took out a smoke and lit up as he asked, “So?”

  “I don’t like it,” Travis began. “The enemy ought to have his own durned scouts out, and Bardo’s in artillery range of the Rio Motagua on the fur side of that open stretch.”

  “Maybe they don’t have artillery?”

  Travis spat and said, “Hell, Yankee, ever’ body has artillery iffen he’s invading enough to matter! Course, the more I study on it, the more dumb it gets, even fur a banana pickin’ outfit like you run into down here. I suspicion we’ll find there’s either nobody up ahead at all or, like you said, it’s a feint. What do you reckon them Guatemalan rascals are feinting fur, Yankee?”

  Captain Gringo shrugged. “If it was meant to draw us to these coastal swamps while they mount a sensible invasion somewhere else, it sure seems to be working,” he conceded. But since General Morales is somewhere else right now, he might be on to them. This Iron Brigade of his he’s made so much noise about might not be his main show.”

  Gaston snorted in disgust and opined, “Merde alors, it’s not a brigade of iron or even pot metal. Aside from the heavy weapons and we few professionals, we have marched into battle with a gaggle of helpless geese!”

  Captain Gringo nodded and agreed, “Yeah, and I’ve been trying to figure that part out. Two can play at border feints. Let’s say the Guatemalans have a mess of expendable peons massed near the coast to draw our attention while a real army moves through the high country to do it right. Let’s say the general knows this and that he’s waiting for them with Honduran regulars to give them a good dusting. What the fuck are we doing here with real weapons?”

  “I follow your drift, Pard,” the Texan said, nodding. “Your Maxims and my 75s are serious and expensive hardware to risk sending in with a mess of untrained rabble. The general might not give two hoots and a holler about his men or even us furriners. But he’d be a fool to risk losing all these guns. Something spooky as hell is going on, hereabouts, and the more I study on her, the spookier it gits.”

  Gaston lit his own smoke, shook out the light, and said, “Storage.” When the other two looked blankly at him the little Frenchman elaborated, “It is simple, to me. You are correct in assuming no general would wish to lose expensive weapons. Ergo Morales is not risking them. He has left them in our care while we carry them on, how you say, the wild goose chase?”

  Travis frowned and asked, “You mean there ain’t no Guatemalans up ahead?” And Gaston replied, “Exactly. The absurd massing of enemy troops on the Rio Motagua is indeed a ruse, engineered by Morales and his friends to no doubt confuse his own Honduran government. Wait. Before you tell me that makes even less sense, consider what Morales has accomplished by sending us all out into the wilderness with his useless troops and valuable heavy weapons. Bardo certainly, and Gomez probably, are loyal to the central government. But where are they, tonight? And where are the heavy weapons loyalists would need should they choose to resist a military coup d’etat, hein?”

  The Texan whistled softly and Captain Gringo said, “Yeah, it works. With the country braced for an emergency, a man on a white horse like Morales could take charge as a savior pretty good while the main Honduran forces and loyal officers were tied up defending the borders against an imaginary enemy. I see what Gaston means about storage, too. Between us we’ve got a lot of heavy weaponry out here in the jungles where it can’t do the central government a bit of good. Once he needs it, Morales can just call us in from the woods with his guns and … okay, what are we going to do about it, guys?”

  Travis grimaced and said, “They’d shoot us as deserters if we just went back to Puerto Cortes. None of these Hondurans on either side would believe us if we told on old Morales, you know.”

  C
aptain Gringo nodded. Gaston laughed and said, “Merde, who says we have to go back? We are closer to Guatemala at the moment than we are to Puerto Cortes. What is to stop well-armed soldiers of fortune from simply doing a little border jumping on their own, hein?”

  Captain Gringo started to mention the army that was supposed to be massed along the Rio Motagua, but since they’d agreed there was probably no such thing, he nodded and said, “Okay. I for one haven’t a price on my head in Guatemala, and they may be interested in our tale on top of that. But let’s see if we can do it the easy way for a change. We’re still a hell of a ways from Guatemala and Gomez is likely to send Bardo and his riflemen after us if we take off early.”

  Travis spat and said, “Hell, me and old Leroy Boggs from Big D can whip this whole Iron Brigade any day of the week should they be dumb enough to start with Texas boys!”

  Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Why fight when you don’t have to, Travis? Gomez is busting a gut trying to get us to the border, the easy way. I suggest we just go along with the joke until we find ourselves along the Rio Motagua, facing nobody in particular.”

  Gaston laughed boyishly and added, “Oui, we shall be as puzzled as the others at the lack of activity. But naturally we professionals shall volunteer to patrol along the far banks of the Motagua until, alas, we turn up missing in action, non? Me and old Leroy Boggs from Big D will go along with that peon and we’ll just lay low like the Tar Baby ’til the time is ripe.”

  Travis nodded and said, “I’ll tell old Leroy Boggs your plan and we’ll all jest lay low like the tar baby ‘til the time is ripe. You two will let them soldiers of fortune in your heavy weapons outfit in on her, right?”

  Captain Gringo said not to worry about Donovan and O’Toole and Travis went back to his own part of the sprawling camp. Gaston waited until they were alone before he said, “The Irishmen present the problem, non?”

  Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Yeah. You noticed back at our blown up hotel, right?”

  Gaston shrugged and said, “One could see from the position of the door knobs and the angle the grenades were lobbed that the bomber would seem to have been left handed. But Lefty O’Toole is not the only left handed man in Honduras, hein?”

  “No. But he’s an ex-grenadier with a motive, if you want to call thick headed jealousy and a dislike for my kind a motive. You can see the spot I’m in, Gaston. I know those two don’t like me all that much, but on the other hand I can’t say for sure it was them that tried to kill us back at the hotel. Whether we like one another or not, we’re professionals and comrades-in-arms. I’d hate to leave a couple of unpleasant but innocent guys behind to catch hell and maybe a firing squad when the rest of us light out.”

  “Merde,” Gaston said, “there you are getting sentimental again. Whether they tried to bomb us or not, they are big boys who know how to take care of themselves, hein? O’Toole is on record as your enemy. Donovan has ever been the two-faced type and a friend of O’Toole. We can’t afford to trust them, Dick.”

  “You’re probably right. I’ll sleep on it. At the rate we’re getting there, we won’t have to decide one way or the other for a while. I doubt if we’ll make it across that open marsh tomorrow, so we’ll get to sleep on it at least twice and we still won’t be near enough the border to make our play, so what the hell. Throw some leaves under me before you leave, will you, Gaston? My smudge is thinning and something just bit me right through my pants,”

  Gaston laughed and made a remark about some bugs down here being big enough to fuck, as well as suck, as he tossed some green leaves on the smudge before leaving, presumably to find a bug to fuck. Captain Gringo still wasn’t sleepy and his cigar tasted like the smudge fire smelled. He’d been smoking too much on the hot trail and by now his tobacco was starting to taste of sweat and mold. He kept smoking the soggy claro anyway. He had nothing better to do. He was bedded in the middle of a big bivouac with people all around him in the dark. He felt lonely as hell. Maybe that was why.

  Somewhere a woman was singing a sad Spanish song in a musky mezzo voce as she or perhaps her lover strummed softly on a guitar. Closer, albeit invisible in the smoky darkness, a girl with a younger voice was giggling as she pleaded with someone named Alberto to stop whatever he was doing. It sounded like she liked it, despite her protests to the contrary.

  The tall American, curled in the hammock, wondered where the hell poor little Golondrina was tonight, and although he was more worried about her safety than his own creature comforts, thinking about Golondrina would have given any man who’d ever seen her naked a raging erection.

  Hence Captain Gringo was erect, as well as surprised as hell when he heard Golondrina’s familiar voice calling out his name in the dark!

  She repeated, “Deek, where are you, querido?” and he swung erect in his hammock as he called back, “Over here. Where the hell did you come from, Golondrina?”

  And then she was in his arms, sobbing with joy as she returned his kiss of greeting by exploring his body with her hands like she was looking for concealed weapons. As she found his throbbing cock and hung on to it, she said, “Oh, I have walked all day for catch up with the column! Those nice Anglos over by your machineguns told me where you were and—”

  “Never mind how you got here,” he cut in, “where the hell have you been all this time?”

  She said, “Aboard a big iron boat and then a little white one, Querido. It was most confusing. I went for to shop for clothing as you told me and these Americano sailors seized and took me out to their gunboat for to ask all sorts of questions about you. But they did not rape me as I thought they were going to. They did not even hit me, even when I said I was your true adelita and would tell them nothing.”

  He nodded and said, “Yeah, that explains the shore patrol trying to grab me outside the French girl’s place. But the gunboat left before we did, Kitten. Where the hell did they drop you off?”

  “Who is this French girl, Deek? Have you been wicked with other women while I was being questioned by your enemies?”

  “Not with the French girl. She was just a pal. Okay, some over enthused U.S. Navy guys were trying to take me home to their uncle, but, like I said, that was a while back. You say you wound up on another boat?”

  “Si, it was very pretty. A yacht, I think they called it. A nice man called Greystoke told the Americanos they would get in much trouble with both their governments and Honduras if they did not let me go. He offered to put me ashore discreetly, as he called it. This discreet business is most complicated. For a time I thought he was going to be wicked with me. He and his friends just smiled when I said I wished for to go back to your hotel, and they gave me drinks with something very strong mixed in. When I awoke in a bed I thought perhaps I had been abused, but I do not think they trifled with me while I was unconscious, Deek. For one thing, a woman can tell when she has been used that way, and for another I am hot as anything for you. Can’t we talk about it after we make love? I am gushing with desire after following you all day for to spend the night in your arms again!”

  She was trying to get them both in the hammock as she spoke. But he knew there were limitations to love in a hammock, even if the hammock was strong enough. So he led her around to the far side of a sturdy tree trunk and leaned her against the smooth bark as he lifted her skirts, asking, “What did Greystoke want to know about me, Golondrina?”

  She unbuttoned his fly and hauled his erection out as she answered in a husky voice, “What you were doing here in Honduras, Querido. I told them I did not know what you were doing here, but that I would kill myself if they didn’t let me come back to you. So after a while they put me ashore and here I am and, oh yes, that is where I have been wanting for to feel it all day long!”

  It felt good to him, as he started to fornicate in a standing position against the tree. It drove Golondrina wild and as she ground her pelvis against his, she babbled happily about the first time they’d made love standing up like this. He reme
mbered, and he still liked it, but one detached part of his mind was working on the odd behavior of British Intelligence.

  Greystoke, he knew, was ruthless albeit not a brute just for brutality’s sake. If he’d let Golondrina go, it had simply been because he’d been bright enough to see there was nothing to be gained by harming the little innocent mestiza, who, when you got right down to it, really didn’t know a thing except that she liked sex with her soldado.

  Greystoke had probably found out more about his sexual habits than Captain Gringo had been prepared to inform him of, but, yeah, it had made sense for the sardonic English spy master to just turn her loose. Knowing Greystoke, they were probably tailing Golondrina, but so what? Everyone back in Puerto Cortes had seen him march out with the Iron Brigade. Their destination was no secret, either. Things were looking up. Now that he had his adelita back and didn’t have to worry about leaving her behind, it would be a simple matter, once they got near the Rio Motagua. They would find no enemy army there. They could simply cross the ford and make tracks into the Guatemalan jungle to let these crazy Hondurans work things out themselves. It didn’t matter what Morales was up to. The other side played rough and wouldn’t believe anything he and the other soldiers of fortune told them anyway. Hell, he didn’t know who the good guys or the bad guys were in this mess. So it didn’t matter to him which side won. Morales was using them and the other side had shot at him with a machinegun just as the ball was getting interesting. So fuck ’em all until he found someplace the politics made a little sense to an outsider.

  Golondrina was panting with passion as she held her skirts higher to rub her bare belly against him while he unbuckled his belt to expose more of his own flesh than the shaft and balls he was using in her. She gasped, “Oh, I am almost there!” and he knew he was, too, when the night was ripped open by a thunderous roar of exploding black powder!