The Fighting Man (1993)

by Seymour, Gerald

  He circled the bird warily.

  No fire, no smoke.

  Tom went closer to the hull.

  All the Huey birds made available to the DEA were dredged from the army’s supplies of obsolete ships. The machine-gun mounts, port and starboard, had been stripped off, and the rocket pods. The armour had been left. On the armour of the hull, underneath the skids, Tom saw the smudges on the high-grade steel where the machine-gun bullets had struck and been deflected. It would have been a one-chance shot. The last of the fuel was dripping down, technicolour in the rain streams. One shit chance, might have been when he had made the evasive banking manoeuvre. One goddamn shit chance. The technicolour trail led up behind the passenger hatch to the fuel tank filler . . . if he had not banked . . . it was a see-through plastic tube, and it was neatly severed.

  He climbed back inside the passenger hatch. He picked up two rifles.

  ‘Heh, don’t you think you’d do better mounting some sort of perimeter watch . . . ?’

  He threw a rifle at the Intelligence Analyst, where he sat, and the second rifle towards the Chemist, where he lay. He threw the rifles hard into the field’s mud. He watched them struggle to retrieve the weapons. He started to rout in the maintenance box that was set behind the rear passenger seats. He wanted cutters for the fuel tube, to tidy it, he wanted . . .

  He was at the hatch. They were moving drunk slow.

  ‘Heh, where’s Arturo . . . ?’

  Demanding and pushing and bullying, Gord had the weapons out from the armoury. He had the food supplies stacked, he had the medical equipment stowed. He checked his watch. He had said it would be an hour and he would take no delay on the schedule he had made. The fires burned well from the wooden sleeping buildings. He felt the flatness that was always with him after the rushing elation of combat, as it had been in the Gulf and as it had been in Ireland, always the emptiness afterwards. In the radio room, amongst the burned and broken equipment, slumped over it, had been the blackened body of a technician. It was enough for Gord. He drove himself to beat the emptiness with demanding and pushing and bullying.

  Fifteen minutes before the withdrawal time, and Groucho was showing him the list, carefully made, of the food supplies and the medical equipment.

  ‘Fine, get it loaded up . . .’ Gord hustling away.

  Ten minutes to the end of his given hour and Zeppo was coming back across the parade area and a trail of men, villagers and jungle people and guerrillas, behind him pushed the cart and a wheelbarrow. Zeppo told him, proud, that the tanks were full, and showed him in the wheelbarrow the oxygen cylinder and the spare jerry cans of fuel and the plastic holders of motor oil. Zeppo was telling him that the cylinder would compress the mixture of fuel and oil for the tubes of the flame thrower.

  ‘Great . . .’ Gord walking away.

  Five minutes before the move out and Harpo was at his side and reciting the inventory of rifles and machine guns, loose ammunition and belt ammunition, and mortars and sub-machine guns, and what it would weigh and how many men would be needed to carry the extra weight.

  ‘I want it all, down to the last bullet . . .’ Gord striding away.

  The Archaeologist sat amongst the piled heap of the backpacks and tightened the laces on new and shined army boots.

  ‘It’s not my business, sir, but may I tell you that if you continue to try to push men then, and I’ll be very sorry if it happens, all they’ll want is to see you fall flat on your pretty face. No offence.’

  Gord went by him.

  It was three minutes to the hour when Gord heard the singing. They were coming up the hill from the village. It was like a marching song. There were the children in front and at the side of the column of men. The children darted and ducked and ran and skipped ahead of and beside the column. Butterflies . . . As if it were a carnival for the children . . . And around the men were Eff and Vee and Zed who worried at the edges of the column. He counted thirty-one men. Behind the column, behind the butterflies, he saw Jorge. The young man walked with Alex Pitt, and the dog was beside her. He could not hear what she said, but her fingers jerked into Jorge’s chest as if to reinforce the ferocity of her argument. Behind the column, behind the butterflies, behind Jorge and Alex Pitt, a crowd of women trailed. There were weapons to be gathered, handed down by Harpo. There were the big cardboard cartons of food and medical supplies, allocated by Groucho. There were the metal boxes of ammunition to be loaded onto shoulders. Gord was jockeying them, chivvying them, calling for speed and his watch hands had already slipped away from the hour that he had allowed, and the temper was rising in him. She stood by the gate with the women and her eyes seemed to follow him and accuse him.

  They left the camp behind them, and they left the prisoners sitting in the parade area with the wounded. Amongst the army wounded were their own.

  They were across the first field beyond the camp perimeter when she caught him. The forward men of the march were near to the tree line. She ran, she slipped in the loose ploughed mud of the field, she pushed herself up and ran again. She caught him and the rain streaked the hair across her face.

  She shouted at him. ‘For God’s sake, do you know what you are doing?’

  ‘I know exactly what I am trying to do.’

  ‘Those men you’ve hijacked, they’re innocents . . .’

  He kept on moving for the tree line.

  ‘. . . You’re taking them to their deaths . . .’

  She had washed the smoke grime from her face.

  ‘. . . Have you thought it through, what’ll happen to the people left behind in Playa Grande . . . ?’

  Her upper lip was split and swollen.

  ‘. . . It’s not just the lives of the men you’re taking, it’s the lives of those you leave abandoned behind you . . .’

  She twisted her head as she spat the words at him because her left eye was closed in bruising and useless to her.

  ‘. . . God, you bloody men, and your bloody war games. You’re English, right? You’re a bloody mercenary, right? You’re making money out of these simple people’s misery. God, you and your kind make me sick . . .’

  There was a cigarette burn in the middle of her cheek.

  ‘. . . Everything we’re trying to achieve here, you’ve undone . . .’

  They were at the tree line. The column ahead of him was disappearing, pushing aside the dank foliage that swallowed each man and the cart and the wheelbarrow.

  ‘. . . Don’t expect thanks from me. I know I was dead, but I know bloody well that it was just luck, pure bloody luck, that you got me out. Doesn’t make right what you’re doing. And when you’ve destroyed these people you’ll have forgotten what they looked like, where they lived, what their bloody names were. You’ll get no thanks grovelled from me, not while you’re juggling people’s lives. Are you too stupid to have thought out the consequences . . . ?’

  Gord said quietly, ‘There are things I have forgotten, and that is stupid of me.’

  Her voice was raised. ‘And a bit bloody late for the hand wringing . . .’

  ‘It makes you ugly when you’re angry, Miss Pitt, so shut up, please.’

  He saw that her breath gagged. Fast movements. The machine gun down. The backpack slung off. He unfastened the top flap of the backpack. He took out the sack of dog food and the tin bowl.

  ‘Stupid of me . . .’

  He pushed lower into the backpack. He lifted out her handbag, solemnly gave it to her.

  ‘. . . Stupid of me to have forgotten them. Look after yourself, Miss Pitt.’

  He heaved the backpack up, and he shouldered the machine gun. He turned away from her. The lie was in his mind. He had told her that she was ugly when she was angry. She looked just bloody brilliant when she was angry.

  He was gone into the trees.

  He had freed the interrogator from the razor wire.

  He had picked the wire barbs from the ripped clothing where the young man had panic struggled.

  He had heard the clear
commands in English and he watched the column move out from the garrison camp.

  He had gone to the centre of the parade area to drink the sight dry.

  Arturo looked around him. He would have considered himself, and it was the way that he was ranked by his superiors, an expert in counter-insurgency warfare. He knew the enemy that the armed forces of Guatemala had fought over the last decade. The enemy was capable of blowing a bridge, toppling an electricity pylon, murdering a finca supervisor, ambushing a small patrol. The enemy had never before overrun a defended military position and destroyed it. It was because of the Englishman . . .

  After he had freed the interrogator he had crawled closer. He had seen the rat vermin in rags ransack the armoury and the food store and carry clear the boxes of medical supplies, and seen the way they ran when the Englishman barked. He had seen the older men, Ladinos, who had played at command with big voices, now slink to the Englishman’s orders. He had seen a young American, heard his voice, known from the way he carried his rifle that he was no soldier, and seen the way he stayed close to the Englishman as if proximity were safety. He had seen the boy leader bring the line of men from the village, calling his encouragement to them, and bow to the Englishman’s command call. Always it was the Englishman . . .

  He could recall, and his memory was always sharp, eight years before, in the officers’ mess bar at the High Command, he had met two officers, one from the marines and one from artillery, from Argentina, and over whisky they had told of the battle in the Malvinas when they had fought the English paratroopers. A battlefield called Goose Green, and the drink had flowed. A thousand and a half men, dug into defensive positions, and beaten by a force a quarter of the size. One had called them ‘barbarians’, the other had called them ‘ruffians’, both had called them ‘superb’.

  Colonel Arturo looked around him. Some survivors slowly dug the graves of the dead, some tried to make a tarpaulin shelter that would withstand the wind and shelter the wounded, some wandered aimlessly in shock. He was told by the NCO that it was thought an emergency radio transmission had been made between the time of the co-ordinated attack by rocket, mortar, machine gun, and the moment that the flame thrower had hit the command building. Time for him to wait, until a relief force arrived at Playa Grande, and time for him to ponder on the Englishman. It was clear in the mind of Colonel Mario Joaquín Enrique Arturo that the life of the Englishman was the pivot point of the rebellion.

  It was the death of the Englishman that was required.

  Pushing them forward, whipping them on the climb.

  Gord accepted no stragglers.

  Reaching towards the uplands that were hidden by the rain mist.

  Gord showed no pity.

  Driving the column on, urging them like stubborn cattle to take to the water tracks that sluiced their boots and shins.

  Gord cursed them when they slipped and toppled the load from the wheelbarrow.

  Scrambling for distance because he had been told that a radio message might have been sent . . .

  Harpo was beside him. ‘. . . What you understand of us, I don’t know. What is your commitment to us, I don’t know. I will tell you of myself . . . Can you imagine the life of the political exile? It is the existence of the coffee shop and the passing around of the newspapers that are weeks old and the whispering of rumours that most likely have no fact. No money. The exile is the prisoner of the regime that is host. Each year our position in their scale of importance declines. Each year we must move to worse accommodation because the money is not increased and the inflation drives us out. The room I rented, one room, there were rats in the winter when they came up to the first floor to escape the rain . . . You can get to love even rats when you are in exile and alone. Two highlights of each day as an exile. To meet in the morning at the coffee shop and pass the old newspapers and to wonder if anyone back where you came from remembers your face and your life. To sit in the evening in the wet season in a single room and talk to the rats . . . We had all softened. We all talked about going back. If he had not died, if the boy, Jorge, had not taken the challenge given him then we would have gone on, year after year, feebler and weaker, dreamed, waited for death. I am prepared to walk with you, take the crap from you, so that I do not have again to be in exile.’

  ‘What will happen to those left behind?’

  ‘They are the betrayed. When was it different? We used to be told that we were the victims of fascist oppression and that the flag of red with the sickle and the hammer flew above us for our salvation. We imagined that the great men of the Politburo met each week and considered only the ways to aid the fight of the oppressed in Guatemala. Is that ridiculous to you? In the apartment of the father of Rodolfo Jorge Ramírez there was on the wall a photograph of Leonid Brezhnev. We thought he cared about us. We were betrayed. In the Kremlin of Moscow there would not be a single man to care what happened to the people of Guatemala. It is a bad feeling, Mr Gord Brown, to know that you have been betrayed . . .’

  ‘What will happen to them . . . ?’

  ‘We should find what the hell’s moving.’ The Intelligence Analyst shivered in a back passenger seat, and covered the tree line with his carbine rifle.

  ‘Doesn’t sound like a great idea to me.’ The Chemist lounged in the left pilot seat.

  Tom said, ‘Count me out, because this is where I’m staying.’

  The light was going under the low cloud. Maybe in the morning it would be right to find what the hell was moving, maybe in the morning that would seem a great idea. Not with the light going. The radio wasn’t broken, just that it was useless where they were, on the ground, with the mountain wall of the Cuchumatanes blocking the possibility of a signal to the basement communications system at the embassy.

  ‘You saw that flame thrower, shit, that was a mean thing.’

  ‘That was serious business.’

  Tom said, ‘I don’t think it was meant to be fun and games up there . . .’

  At dusk, headlights spearing the gloom, the relief convoy reached Playa Grande. A lumbering armoured car snouted through the village and towards the garrison camp leading two lorries carrying the infantry.

  The brief and unrepeated radio message had been received at Barrillas to the west, but there was no road between Barrillas and Playa Grande. The content, garbled, of the radio communication had been passed to area headquarters south at Santa Cruz del Quiché, then relayed to army headquarters in Guatemala City. From Guatemala City the message had been sent to Cobán, east.

  There was a poor road between Cobán and Playa Grande, and worse in torrential rain, and twice the convoy had unloaded the troops while the vehicles edged past a rockslide, the wheels knife-edge close to the precipice. It had been an emergency call, confused and incomplete. The officer commanding the convoy did not know what he would find. The armoured car nosed into the deserted street. No lights, no cooking fires, no smoke piling from roof gaps.

  The headlights of the armoured car caught the figure standing in the gateway of the garrison camp. He wore mud-smeared combat fatigues with the rank of a colonel on his shoulder flaps and with the Kaibil insignia on the upper arms of the tunic. A young civilian in torn clothes sat at his feet.

  The troops of the convoy were led by the colonel through the gloom of the camp. They were shown the graves, and the wounded, and the fire-ruined buildings, and the broken swinging door of the armoury into which the rain drifted. Using the lights of the armoured car and the two lorries to guide them, the troops fanned out to search the village of Playa Grande.

  ‘What will happen to them . . . ?’

  It had been open ground, thick with rock but thin with trees, for the first hour of darkness. He had driven the march harder and further than on any day since they had landed in the Petén jungle.

  ‘Some will have fled from the village,’ Harpo told him.

  They had found the cover of trees for the night, and he had allowed a fire to be lit. The fire was slow burning but was comfort an
d he had permitted cigarettes to be smoked.

  ‘Those who won’t leave?’

  They lay like the dead around him.

  ‘It was what they learned from the Americans. It is called the “psychosis of terror”. What you have to believe, Mr Brown, they are intelligent men in the Guatemalan army. There will be some who will not have left Playa Grande, the old and the sick and the stupid, and they will be killed. They will use the “psychosis of terror” to counter the rumour of our presence. They will try to make the young men too frightened to join us, so they will butcher the old and the sick and the stupid.’

  He thought of the girl, Alexandra Clementine Pitt, whom he had walked away from, and the children who had fluttered as butterflies around the marching men, and the women who had trailed behind them.

  ‘It seemed important to me to know. Thank you.’

  At first they had seen, from the upper ground behind the church of Playa Grande, the roving headlights of the armoured car and the lorries. Later, they lost sight of the headlights because the brightness of the fires swamped them. After they could no longer see the village and the fires, they could hear the shooting. In the darkness, amongst the trees, it was not possible for them to go fast enough to lose, quickly, the sound of the shooting. There were children shouting, crying that they were lost. There were women weeping because their men had gone forward in the marching column from the garrison camp. There were the piercing whistles, each different in pitch and beat, as men tried to herd together their families. Alex carried a girl child who fought and kicked her and screamed for her mother. The rain fell on them and the sounds of gunfire were intermittent, and when the shooting and the village were behind them there was a glow of fire resting against the cloud base. They were driven through the night by their fear. And the bloody man hadn’t seemed to listen to her. The bloody man and his kind had brought the catastrophe down upon these people. The bloody man was responsible for this flotsam of people blundering and stumbling through the trees, falling on raw rock, fleeing the fire glow and the distant shooting.