The Fighting Man (1993)

by Seymour, Gerald

  He’d get the squat bastard there.

  And not a squeak out of the squat bastard, not anything, and they’d been chucked by the winds and there had been driven rain through the window hatches and the closed side doors.

  He put the bird down.

  He hadn’t flown such bad weather since he had come out of the army. In three years of DEA they hadn’t let him close to a government-owned helicopter, and he’d had to buy his own flying time at the club outside St Louis. The guy who owned the club would have needed bypass surgery if Tom Schultz had taken up the bird in this shape of weather.

  The strip was sited halfway between what the map called the Ixcán region and the village of Playa Grande.

  He put down.

  It was a crap landing for a right seat qualified pilot, army talk for a quality flier, pranging the skids.

  He looked across, left seat, and the Chemist had crossed himself and not been ashamed. He looked back, and the Intelligence Analyst reached forward to hug him. He saw into the squat bastard’s face and there was a small grin, no fear. They were all combat-geared. They ran from the Huey bird towards the low wooden complex of buildings. The rain drenched them. He reckoned Arturo was older than any of them, and faster than any of them. He was behind Arturo, and his legs ached from the pressure of the kicking pedals and his fists on the Colt carbine seemed bruised from holding the weight of the flying stick. It was as if Arturo knew where to go, which door to belt down . . . Too goddamn easy for the squat bastard.

  Arturo led them inside. They hugged the walls ready to fire. They checked each building.

  There was the laboratory building, and the tanks. There was the store house that held the chemicals. There was the living building with beds and a kitchen. There was the communications building.

  The escape had been frantic. Beds unmade, blankets rumpled. Food on the table. He had made one pass only before landing, suicide to come in without checking an LZ. It stank of set-up . . . Tom thought that Colonel Arturo made marionettes of them, but it was too good to sneer at . . . The squat bastard was sat in a chair, the Uzi on his lap, and watching them as they itemized what they had found. In the laboratory tanks were forty-nine kilos of coca paste. In the store were the supplies of sulphuric acid and aqueous potassium permanganate and ammonium hydroxide, along with the jars of ether and hydrochloric acid. In the communications room was an HF radio, warm. In the living area were two rifles and a grenade launcher and a pearl-handled pistol.

  ‘Good, yes?’

  The Intelligence Analyst was writing his inventory. ‘It’s useful.’

  ‘It is what we can achieve when we work together.’

  Tom said, ‘I tell you, guys, I don’t want to be hanging about here.’

  The rain hammered on the roof of the building, streamed the dirt off the windows.

  Colonel Arturo called to him. ‘You should not be impatient, Mr Schultz. Is it every day you intercept forty-nine kilos of coca paste on its way to your fine country . . . ?’

  They were on the start line.

  They were synchronized to go at noon.

  It had been as second nature to Gord to make the dispositions, organize them. Request was forgotten. Require was the present.

  They were in the line of fields beyond the furthest shack houses of the village of Playa Grande. He was crouched down. He watched the speeding second hand of his wristwatch. Zeppo was away to the right with the guerrillas and the mortars. Harpo was to the left with the jungle people and the machine gun. Groucho was between Gord and Harpo and with the villagers and the rocket launcher. Jorge was between Gord and Zeppo and with Eff and Zed.

  All through the morning he had gone through the plan with each group, and last he had spoken to Eff and Zed and smacked his fist into the palm of his hand for emphasis and told them their responsibility was the safety of Rodolfo Jorge Ramírez.

  Always the excitement, always the fear, waiting for the second hand of a watch to hit the moment . . . and always the style of a fighting man to hide the excitement and the fear . . .

  One minute to noon. They were 200 yards from the gate of the garrison camp. A long morning it had been, watching the camp from dawn, going over the plan until it could be recited by them all, checking the weapons, memorizing what Zeppo had told him, remembering the route used on the reconnaissance. A shit long morning because all of them had wanted to go at first light, and he had insisted that noon was the time of maximum relaxation in any garrison camp.

  Watching the second hand, controlling the excitement and the fear.

  On his feet, and grabbing the cart handle, and running.

  Gord led the scramble out of the rain ditch, dragging the cart after him, and onto the track and through the scattering chickens and past the screaming pigs. The Archaeologist was sprinting to catch him and whistling pain when his shredded sneaker caught a stone flint. Vee was beside him and snatching at the cart’s handlebar. The warmth of the rain ran on Gord’s face and on his arms and his hands slipped on the cart’s handle and if Vee had not steadied him then he would have pitched over. Slithering for the foot grip on the smoothed mud of the track between the shack homes and seeing the gape of the faces in the doorways and the children running from ahead of them to hide. The cart leaped, bumped, careered in front of them, and the wheels screeched. Halfway, and the swerve to the right track through more mazes of wood slat walls and tin roofs and the smell of cooking and women screaming and drunk men lurching away from them. All the time there was the rattle clatter of the wheels smacking against stones. He heard the first mortar bomb explode. Turning, the short spasm second, to grip the arm of the Archaeologist who was fading, ripping him forward. The second mortar blasted in his ears. There was the chatter burst of the machine gun, then the impact crack of the rocket launcher’s grenade. Swinging left and slipping and stamping a foothold. The gate was in front of them.

  They were running for the gate.

  He thought he heard, at his shoulder, the Archaeologist cry for God.

  He saw to his right that Zeppo would be hard behind him to the gate.

  The bar of the gate was up. A sentry had fallen on his sandbags, chest down onto his machine gun, and the sentry in the poncho cloak who would have controlled traffic at the gate was writhing in the roadway. Gord ran onto the parade area. In front of him was the principal concrete building with the raised steps. He could see bullets spatter the walls of the building. It was what Zeppo had told him.

  Through the night, through the dawn, through the morning, Zeppo talking to him and showing him. He wrenched the cart to a halt. On the ground behind the cart. Taking short seconds to familiarize again with the ignition trigger and the firing lever. He aimed at the door of the building, he pulled the cart so that the clusters of nozzles on the tubes faced the door of the building. His fist dragged the firing lever back. A dribble at first, a choking spurt, then a cascade of black smelling oil leaping in front of him and across the parade ground space and onto the steps of the building, and through the door.

  He saw the surprise and confusion of the officer, framed in the doorway, scrabbling for the pistol in his belt holster, as the oil film caught him, covered his legs and then his torso and then his face part hidden by the wraparound sunglasses.

  Cold, as it was just an exercise, as if he was on a firing range, Gord squeezed on the ignition trigger.

  Fire following the oil.

  An orange-and-red fire scrambling towards the doorway of the building. It seemed to move slowly but that was a deception. The officer was caught. The fire took him. The fire brushed the officer aside as if it had a weight that clipped him, and the fire cascaded into the heart of the building. He felt the dragging pull on his shoulder and ignored it. He marvelled at the power of the fire he had thrown at the building. What he heard, first, was the screaming. It was the screaming from the building that broke the wall of silence around him. Vee was punching him, pointing frantically to the single-storey wooden building to the left. Gord saw the m
en spilling from the building, some armed, some defenceless, running in panic.

  Catching them, holding them, drenching them, and then the fire running after the oil film.

  The terror screaming, the agony crying.

  It was Gord Brown’s work. His work was the fire climbing into smoke above the roof of the main building, and the fire flicking the windows and doorway of the accommodation block, and the fire draping rolling and heaving men. His work . . .

  She heard the mortars explode, muffled, and the rocket’s grenades. He had gone. She heard the chatter crack of the machine gun. Alex Pitt heard the noise of the battle and lay on her stomach in the darkness and the wet of the cell.

  She lay rigid in her pain. To move was to feel the hurt of what he had done to her in the blackness of the cell. Always the soft sweet voice, and the kicking and the punching.

  She had told him nothing. It would have been her victory if he had shown impatience, but only the cloying drip of the voice to tell her that he had time and would be back, and that the later pain would be worse. She had not given him the names.

  She could not see it, but the smoke was seeping into the cell, spreading and climbing, piercing the space under the door, gathering in her mouth and nose and throat.

  He had told the flier, Schultz, that at Playa Grande the tanks could be topped with aviation fuel.

  The flier had said that, with the weather, they should have filled tanks for the flight back. The flier had said that it was a shit day to be short of fuel.

  Behind them, at the strip, were the spilled precursor chemicals for the process between paste and powder, and the broken radio communications system. In the helicopter, sealed in bags so that the fumes were contained, between the legs of the Chemist, were forty-nine kilos of coca paste. Tied together and knotted to the seat supports below the Intelligence Analyst were the weapons they had found. Colonel Arturo had taken the left front seat. He thought the grudged appreciation had won him the right to wear the flying helmet with the built-in earphones and the attached microphone.

  They were low above the tree tops.

  It was the smoke that Arturo saw first. Dark and piling, it rose from the ground and flattened in collision against the cloud ceiling.

  He had never been stationed at Playa Grande, but he had been there for a night, using it as a jump point, during the campaign of Determination ’88. Playa Grande, from what he remembered, was a command building, two dormitory sleeping huts for the conscripts, a separate block for the regular army officers and NCOs, a dug-out armoury, and fuel storage beside the helicopter LZ. Forty conscripts, five NCOs and two officers, from what he remembered of the garrison.

  ‘Take her in.’

  ‘What do you reckon . . . ?’

  ‘How the fuck should I know?’

  ‘What do you want . . . ?’

  ‘Get us close.’

  ‘My ship, my responsibility . . .’

  He had hold of the flier’s arm. They bucked in the air. He gripped the flier’s arm and pointed ahead, an order.

  ‘Close on the camp.’

  They came in fast. He thought the flier was combat-experienced. A sharp approach, and then a sudden banking twist that threw him sideways and his weight was held by the shoulder harness. The garrison camp was laid out a hundred feet below him. He saw it all. The flame thrower belched ahead of him and caught one of the two conscripts’ living huts, a great caterpillar of rushing fire. He had the Uzi machine pistol on the webbing belt held across his lap and the helicopter travelled too fast, and his balance was destroyed, and he could not have opened the window flap to shoot down. He saw into the face, for a moment, of the man lying behind the flame thrower’s cart. He saw the machine gunner and the tracer arc that ended against the walls of the NCOs’ and officers’ block where he had slept the one night before the jump-off in Determination ’88. The fire flashes of shooting. Blackened men lying on the open space of the parade area and their bodies convulsed. Tracer rising at them, hunting them. Calm in his ear . . .

  ‘Receiving fire. We are receiving fire.’

  The calm of a combat flier. They were over the edge of the perimeter wire. Ahead of them, Arturo saw the man. The man was caught in the wire, and struggling. The man flailed his arms at the helicopter. It might have been a sledgehammer that smacked the lower fuselage of the helicopter. The bird jolted . . .

  ‘Taking hits. We are taking hits.’

  Seeing the face of the man caught in the coiled razor wire. Recognizing the face and not placing it. Seeing the villa in the suburb of Guatemala City . . . a gardener hosing the flowers, and a guard reading a paper, and a tiled floor swept . . . seeing the face, pleading, of the interrogator from the basement of the villa.

  ‘Put her down . . .’

  ‘No fucking way.’

  ‘Pick him up.’ Shouted into the microphone, yelled at the helmet of the flier.

  The calm of the voice in his ear. ‘Forget it, colonel.’

  They were gone beyond the perimeter wire. The struggling man in the wire was lost from the side window vision. He strained to see behind him. When he turned, the flier was pointing to the cockpit dials.

  The flier’s finger rapped the fuel dial, and the needle was plunging.

  The firing had stopped.

  Gord stood in the centre of the parade area.

  He was numbed, and he held his hands tight on the handle arm of the cart and tried to control the shake of his arms.

  To his left, sat on the ground with their hands over their heads, were the prisoners. In front of him, framed against the licking fire of the command building, some charred and some grotesque from shrapnel and bullet wounds, were the bodies. To his right, some lying and some sitting and some standing, were the wounded and a soldier with a red cross on a white arm band moved amongst them. And standing and staring was an indulgence. So tired . . .

  ‘Jorge, I need the armoury broken open. I need to know every weapon that is available to us. I need to know the ammunition for each weapon.’

  He had dismissed him like a boy, and Gord bit on his tongue, but it was done. He saw the anger flare in Jorge but, like a boy, he went as he was ordered.

  Zeppo walked to him. Zeppo asked him if he wanted to be shown how to refuel the cart’s tanks.

  ‘Do it yourself,’ snapped Gord.

  Harpo came to him. Harpo grinned and there were cordite stains on the height of his forehead and he carried the machine gun loosely on his shoulder, and Harpo said that he had hit the helicopter, definite.

  ‘At that height you couldn’t have missed it,’ whipped Gord.

  The Archaeologist reached him, red-eyed. A villager was dead. A guerrilla had been hit in the knee cap. A man from the jungle camp was wounded in the pelvis, bad.

  ‘What did you expect?’ cracked Gord.

  The rain sluiced on his face. The rain ran on his cheeks and his nose and his lips . . . The only chance was to make the charge . . . The door of the armoury broke under the weight of the sledgehammer blows. It was as if he alone understood what was their only chance.

  ‘Jorge, leave that, leave it . . . Get into the village. Do your talking bit. We want men . . . Jorge, we move in an hour.’

  He saw Groucho. Groucho skirted the fire of the command building, came from its rear. Funny little bastard. Groucho punched the air, like he’d scored the goal that mattered, like he was a kid. Funny little bastard . . . She was behind him. Zed had a hold of her and supported her. Her face was smoke dark. Groucho led her closer to Gord. She had a split lip, and a closed eye. He felt the weakness in his knees and his weight was taken by the handle of the cart. They were all watching him. They knew what had been his priority. He saw the blonde gold of her hair against the mist. The rain beat down. It was the one chance . . .

  ‘Jorge, we must have men from the village. One hour and we are gone. I want the weapons brought from the armoury. I want any food we can find. I want any radio set. I want medical supplies, bandages. One hour and we move. Ge
t the prisoners back up where we were, get them to carry down our packs. Get . . .’

  He saw the wounds on her face.

  He asked it of Vee. Would Vee, please, be so kind, a favour to him, run like shit back through the village, back across the fields, back to the tree line, back to the dog. Would Vee bring the dog to Miss Alex Pitt, please.

  ‘One hour, and we move . . .’

  9

  The impact, shaking up his spine and wrenching his shoulders against the restraining harness, left him shambling and awkward as he tramped round the bird. Tom passed the Intelligence Analyst who sat with the rain puddles already round his haunches and who seemed to whimper little cries. The Chemist was lying full length, mud-covered, as if the ground was heaven’s bosom. Would have been worse for them because they would only have heard the alarms singing, and the drop before the rotors steadied them would have put their guts into their throats and they wouldn’t have seen the field that he aimed for.

  He had feathered the bird onto a cut maize field. Part luck and part skill, he had put down at the higher end of the field that was a small oasis in trees. The lower end would have been wetter, and he had come down hard, and without engine power, and if he had been at the lower end of the field then his skids would have sunk.

  If he had had the time, and he hadn’t, then he might just have been proud of the landing.

  They might have cleared the garrison camp by a mile. Tom didn’t reckon it was more than that.

  It was the first evaluation that was critical, because the first evaluation was about fire. All the way down, the macro-seconds of memory, he had tried to shut the fire fear from his mind. The memory was of a gunship Apache bird, the shudder hit of a shoulder-launched missile, control going and the stick not responding, the fire spreading from the tanks behind the cockpit seat, and the ground rushing to meet him. It was the memory. The fire spreading after landing impact and the heat growing on the harness buckle, and dragging through the window because the door was jammed, and the jagged Plexiglas slashing the side of his face as he had thrown himself clear. It was the memory of the consuming shame of being shot down behind the lines of the enemy, and it was the memory of the blood coming from the wound that ran from his right ear to the line of his jaw . . .