The Fighting Man (1993)

by Seymour, Gerald

  He dropped the colonel’s hand.

  There was silence around him. Every table quiet. Waiters frozen.

  The Country Attaché whipped, ‘Something I want to show you, Schultz.’

  He was led from the room. The Country Attaché’s foot smacked the swing door open. Into the corridor. Back against the wall. The Country Attaché’s finger jabbing into his shirt, beating on the stain of the Stilton cheese, his voice never raised.

  ‘Don’t ever give me shit like that again, Schultz. Don’t come in here and play smartass with the locals. We live here and we work here, and we can’t live and work without their help. Got me? We are dead without them . . . I don’t want Amnesty shit, and I don’t want Americas Watch shit. Our job in Guatemala, never forget it, is to block what we can of cocaine heading for home. End of story . . . Human rights? Not my concern, not yours. What they do to each other is their business. What they’re telling me in headquarters, sorry they didn’t find the time to tell you, is that crack cocaine’s price on the streets at home is going through the floor, supply outstrips demand, we’re flooded with the fucking stuff. The paper I listened to yesterday morning said that the quality of American life, life itself, is being destroyed at all the strata of our society . . . That’s my priority. The man you played games with is a colonel from the Kaibiles, that’s the best they have in counter-insurgency. That’s the sort of guy that can get things done. Understand me right, I don’t give a fuck for the politics of this place, I don’t give a fuck for bodies at the side of the road . . . I care about how much, what quantity of, cocaine I can intercept on its way home. We want this government because, after a fashion, piss awful fashion, we can work with it, and getting up these people’s noses is not my way forward. If you don’t like it then you can take the plane back, like tomorrow. Do you hear me, Schultz?’

  ‘I apologize.’

  ‘I don’t know whether it’s because you had your face chopped about, but I don’t take guys with attitude problems. I take team men. You understand me? For your apology, thank you.’

  He was smarting as they went back into the room. He sat again at the table. The colonel was listening intently to the Intelligence Analyst, and his eyes never met Tom’s. They all knew around the table that the new guy in town had had his ass kicked, and hard. He had opened his fat fucking mouth and killed a birthday party.

  His fingernail scratched at his face scar. God bless America.

  ‘This is just crazy, you know that, crazy . . .’

  Gord waited for Groucho to translate. Gord said, side of his mouth, ‘I don’t want his opinion. I want the list.’

  The Cuban had his pen at the paper. The first page of the newly prepared list. He slashed. The PK 7.62mm general purpose machine gun with bipod mount stayed. The PKMB 7.62mm tripod-mounted general purpose machine gun was erased. The M-1937 82mm mortars stayed, not the M-1943 120mm mortars.

  ‘What you get is what I don’t want. Crazy . . .’

  ‘Tell him’, Gord said, ‘it is necessary for me to have what is on the list.’

  He heard the snigger behind him from Zeppo. Harpo sat alongside the table with his arms folded across his chest. They would not intervene, no help from either of the bastards. Gord thought it was only because, yesterday, Groucho had seen him with the black plastic bag that he had won some action.

  The old version AK-47s stayed, the number was halved. The replacement AKMs were inked out.

  They had wasted all the morning in the hotel while Groucho had paced and waited for the authorization to be telephoned through. Harpo had slept. Zeppo had crunched boiled sweets. When the authorization had come they had driven in the big Pontiac out of the city, on slow roads, past worked crop fields. They had crossed two vintage steel bridges, and seen vultures circling high. They had been an hour driving before they had reached the army camp. Half an hour’s wait in the guard room, forty minutes’ wait in an office. Gord had said to Groucho, Zeppo and Harpo that this was the biggest foul-up he had known, and he had known some. And where the hell was super marvellous bloody Rodolfo Jorge Ramírez? And that if this was their concept of urgency then they’d be better, much better, staying at home and scratching.

  The Cuban officer seemed not to give a damn for them.

  Explosives, ticked. Detonators, ticked. The RPG-7 40mm rocket launcher, some. The RPG-75 73mm rocket launcher, none.

  Communications radios, no. Field dressings, yes. Basic surgical equipment, query. Tablets, pills, sprays, ointments, no . . .

  ‘You get no radios because I don’t have any that work. You get field dressings because I have half a warehouse of them. I don’t know if I have the surgical instruments. Medicines, they don’t send us them any more, our old lost friends . . . You are lucky that you have never had the delight of Russian friends . . . This, no.’

  The Cuban’s finger lay on the writing that spelled out TPO-50, the bottom of the list faithfully copied out by Groucho.

  ‘I have to have it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I want it.’

  ‘You don’t have it . . .’

  The sticking point. He would have the flame thrower or he would quit. It was the flame thrower, alone, red oil fire going forward, that deflected him from the certainty of his mistake.

  ‘Why not?’

  The Cuban spoke first. Groucho translated. ‘You are a soldier, I am told you have been in your regular army. You are a man I would like to respect. Myself, I have been in combat. I was two times in Angola. The army of South Africa is hard. I fought on the Cuvelai river, and at the Benguela airport. I know what it is like to fight beside shit . . . What I do not know, someone like yourself, professional, why do you wish to help these shit people?’

  Gord saw the anger flush at Zeppo’s jowl. He said quietly, ‘I want the flame thrower.’

  The Cuban shrugged. He put his pen again through the writing that spelled out TPO-50. ‘I tell you, frankly, I have two. My instructions are to provide you with surplus and with what is obsolete. That mark of the flame thrower is neither surplus nor obsolete. You do not have it . . .’

  Gord cut him. ‘Then I quit.’

  ‘Of supreme indifference to me. And supreme indifference to me if you go into Guatemala with these shit people, where you will not last a week, where you will be killed, and for nothing.’

  Gord scraped back his chair, stood. ‘Thank you for your time.’

  ‘It is best that you quit. Go home, go where you belong. Perhaps I give you a favour.’

  It was a back-hand drop shot that took the set and the match.

  There was thin applause around the court.

  The girl bounded forward, skipped the net, and shook her opponent’s hand.

  He had been reared to be formal, it was the way of their society. He did not kiss his fiancée’s cheek, only shook her hand with grace. She always won when he competed with her at tennis. The young man ushered his fiancée through the wire gate of the court, led her to her father’s table. The young man, who used the codename of Benedicto, pulled back a chair at the table for his fiancée to sit on. He thought she was a spoiled little cow.

  His fiancée called casually across her shoulder for a drink to be brought her. Her father was a big man, not athletic, groomed grey hair swept back on his head, and rich. It was because of the wealth of the family that the junior officer was prepared to contemplate marriage to the daughter that he thought was a stupid and ignorant bitch . . .

  The drink was brought by a waiter, not acknowledged. His fiancée, the little cow, the ignorant bitch, was busy with her mother, the new dresses that had come from Europe to the boutiques on 6a Avenida.

  For the junior officer it would be a good marriage, financial security. The family owned thousands of hectares of cleared ground in the Northern Transverse Strip of the Petén region. The war was dying, the enemy forces were scattered, there was little work left for an interrogator. When he was married, when he came out of the army, he would have no need to work again. It woul
d be a good match, even if she was spoiled, ignorant, and had not yet lost the child fat on her hips.

  He talked with his fiancée’s father about the price of beef in the United States and what the McDonald’s chain was paying now per kilo. A full hour he listened to the drip whine of complaint at the fall of the beef price in the United States, until, God-given relief, the family swept away from the Guatemala Club in their Mercedes limousine that was headed and tailed by the privately hired armed guards . . . small mercy, he had been spared talk of the cost of the guards, the danger of kidnapping . . . He waved at the retreating convoy, as if the light fled his life, until the dust obscured it.

  He drove back to his desk at G-2. His desk was clear.

  The war had withered.

  It had been a mistake. Mistakes, in Gord’s creed, were time wasted.

  He had taken a taxi to the city centre. He had used the plastic to buy the ticket. More shame that the first flight out, that evening, was the bloody Aeroflot to the west of Ireland. He had taken a taxi back to the hotel. He had enough money left over, because he had changed his few sterling notes with the kids out behind the kitchens at the back of the hotel, for one more taxi to the airline office, and for the bus to the airport. Not enough money left for a drink on the flight . . . tough, because it was Aeroflot . . . It had been a mistake.

  He was quitting because he was not wanted, because Rodolfo bloody Jorge bloody Ramírez had not done him the courtesy of showing.

  He was turning his back on a mistake, right thing to do.

  He had turned his back before. He had walked out on the Shia people of Karbala when the tanks had come south from Baghdad, wrong thing to do. Still the pain in him from walking out on the Shia people, behind the barricades, armed with rifles, waiting to face tanks. Still the pain, for the Shia people, as keen as it had been when he had faced the American brigadier general on the airstrip at Dhahran.

  But no pain now, because it had been a mistake.

  The ticket was on the bed.

  He heard the shouting from down the corridor, from the stairwell.

  Beside his feet was the black plastic bag which he had repaired with adhesive tape begged from the Aeroflot staff, filled again.

  He heard the slow squealing from the corridor, unoiled metal on metal.

  The sound stopped outside his door. Gord had stiffened. He sat upright. It was his instinct to feel immediately his vulnerability. He had no weapon. There was a light knock on the door. He had only light trainer shoes on his feet, he would break his toes if he kicked hard in them. The light knock was repeated. His right hand was rigid, extended; he could kill with a blow from the heel of his fist. He went silently to the door. One movement, the unlocking and opening of the door.

  They swept in.

  There was the bubble of their laughter.

  There was the shriek of their fun.

  Gord’s hand dropped.

  They poured into the room. Eff and Vee and Zed, each of them carrying the identical tubes. The tubes were three, four feet long. They were painted dull green with the nozzles forward. There was a young man behind them and he wheeled the cart into the hotel bedroom.

  The young man said, ‘It’s what you wanted . . . ? It’s what you asked for . . . ? You wanted the TPO-50. You required the flame thrower.’

  Gord gazed into the youth of the face.

  The young man said, ‘I tell you, Mr Brown, it was not meant for taking up the stairs . . .’

  Dark hair sleeked and combed to a parting, hazel eyes, close-shaven over a flawless skin that could have been a girl’s, white teeth showing in the grin.

  ‘. . . I am Jorge, Mr Brown. I am Rodolfo Jorge Ramírez. I apologize to you for my rudeness in not having before made the time to see you. Please accept my apology.’

  The opened ticket was on the bed, the filled plastic bag on the floor.

  Not his way, Gord stumbled. ‘. . . It doesn’t matter . . .’

  ‘I heard, Mr Brown, that you had been to the offices of Aeroflot . . . in my opinion, from what I have been told, I would prefer to go in, one engine lost, cratered dirt strip, contested landing, to Guatemala – rather than fly Aeroflot across the Atlantic – just what I have been told . . .’

  He had his composure again. Gord said, cold, ‘I accept your apology. I also accept that I made a mistake. There’s not really much more to talk about.’

  Gord saw their fun drained. Eff and Vee and Zed held the tubes loosely.

  ‘May I talk, Mr Brown?’

  ‘You can do what you like.’

  ‘Can we not be comfortable, Mr Brown?’

  ‘I have one hour until I need to go to the Aeroflot office.’

  The young man squatted on the floor. Gord sat on the bed. Eff and Vee and Zed cradled the tubes and stood in line against the wall.

  ‘I learned my English at the school. You will excuse me if it is not adequate . . . My country, Mr Brown, is a military camp. The regime in Guatemala survives by terror. To speak for freedom, the rights that are second nature to you, is to invite the attention of the Death Squads. To fight for freedom is to invite the retaliation of the army. In my country, Mr Brown, freedom belongs only to the generals, and the politicians to whom they have given power . . .’

  Gord listened. Rodolfo Jorge Ramírez talked the detail of the armed forces of Guatemala. The structure, the deployment, the firepower. He glanced at his watch. Time running.

  ‘. . . My country is divided in many ways, Mr Brown. It is divided by privilege and opportunity so that a ruling oligarchy, a tiny minority, controls the vast majority of the wealth. There is division in health care, division in education, division in human rights – and there is the division of racism. The subjugation of an ethnic majority is at the heart of my country’s nightmare. The ethnic majority of Guatemala are the Mayan Indian people. If the majority were to receive their share of the wealth of Guatemala then the privilege of the minority would be threatened. Do I speak like a communist, Mr Brown, or do I speak of a fairness that is natural to you? The Indian people and their culture have suffered a consistent programme of genocide, of torture, of abuse, of displacement . . .’

  Gord had heard it before. He had heard it in the souk and the mosque and the coffee houses of Karbala, before he had walked out, before the tanks had attacked.

  ‘. . . My father and mother were what is called Ladino, they are of Latin descent, but they chose to make their lives amongst the Indians of the Ixil triangle. My father was trusted, did not cheat them. My mother was loved, nursed them. The war came, my father was a leader. He was a humble man, he would have claimed no genius, but he understood the common sense of war. He led a rebellion. For two years that rebellion was too strong for the military. After two years the military came with air strikes and helicopters and the Kaibil battalion . . .’

  Gord had imagined it before. The armoured columns overrunning the barricades of the Shia men and women that he had walked out on. There was a darkness in the room.

  ‘. . . On the second evening, after my mother had been killed, after the ammunition was exhausted, after he had been squeezed back to our store and our home, the last strongpoint, the military broadcast on loudspeakers that all the men who surrendered would be safe, except for my father. It was his decision. The decision lay with him for the rest of his life. He took me, I was thirteen years old, and he took his oldest and most trusted friends. In the darkness it was possible for a few to slip clear. All the time that we ran I could hear his weeping. When we were a few miles away, on higher ground than the village, we saw the fire of the church of Acul. All the men that surrendered were burned alive, Mr Brown. We lived . . .’

  Gord knew what had happened in Karbala. He had heard it afterwards. He knew of the executions by shooting and by hanging. He knew of the terror that had been brought to the city by the security teams that had followed the tanks.

  ‘. . . I promised my father that I would return. I made the promise to him when he was close to death. I want to
go back to Guatemala, Mr Brown, and I want to drive out the bastards who could herd men into a church and set fire to it. I want to go back, Mr Brown, and root out the bastards who serve the army by day and the Death Squads by night. I want to go back, Mr Brown, to restore the dignity of an Indian society that had a civilization five hundred years before the birth of Christ. I believe that in my country there is a people that will follow me . . .’

  Gord looked at his watch, saw the lines of the luminous hands. The Aeroflot would be boarding.

  ‘. . . I want you at my side, Mr Brown. I hope that I have my father’s common sense, but I have no military training. I want your skill and your experience and your knowledge. The people will follow us, the regime will disintegrate, it is corrupt and rotten and it will fall. I don’t know what you have in your home country, Mr Brown, what you have that is more important . . . It might still be possible, just, for you to catch your flight . . .’

  The young man had taken him, and he could recognize it. He was the moth brought to the bulb, the nail slapped against the magnet’s face. Something about the voice and something about the humility and something about the optimism. The Aeroflot was lost. It was not his way to clasp a man’s hand, nor to hug his shoulders, but his commitment was made to Jorge who had captivated him.

  Gord said, quiet, ‘You did well to get the flame thrower.’

  The chuckle from the floor in the gloom of the room. ‘The flame thrower, that was nothing, it was the two aircraft that were difficult.’

  Something that his father had said, something about making footprints.

  Under arc lights the crates that held the weapons and the boxes of ammunition, and the frame of the TPO-50’s cart with the fuel tubes were loaded onto the two aircraft.

  There were ten of them who would fly.

  4

  They flew in radio silence, without navigation lights, and hugged the sea surface. No bogus flight plan had been transmitted to the air-traffic controllers of Tegucigalpa or Managua or San José or Guatemala City.