He was told when he should report back, the next day, at what time in the evening.
‘If you fail then there would be nowhere you could hide . . .’
‘I want the command of the Kaibil battalion.’
Off the high ground, back amongst the tall forest trees of ceiba and pine, coming through paths that were bright with the tamborilla blossom beaten down by the rain from the trees. They skirted a village, they bypassed cleared ground. The breath was back in Gord’s lungs. The wilderness of the mountain was behind him. They were across the Sacapulas to Uspantán road, and there was the growing roar ahead. He had not counted, there had been no formality because the drive of the march’s speed had again been raised, but he had reckoned there to be a hundred men waiting at the roadside for them. There had been villagers with axes and with forks for turning the hay crop and with sledgehammers, there had been Civil Patrollers with their veteran bolt-action rifles, there had been tattered guerrillas who seemed to blink in the light of open ground, and a policeman in a soaked uniform, and more women and more children, and all running to catch the end of the straggled column. Gord could hold the speed of the march, just . . . Short of the Sacapulas to Uspantán road he had broken from the column, gone to the shelter of the bushes and opened the buckle of his belt and peeled his combat trousers down. He had squatted. The first time in two days, and the food that had been forced on him had blown through his gut. Not much of the paper left, and he did not have strength to dig the latrine hole that he had preached for in the Petén. He had dragged his trousers back up and looked down and seen the white parasite worms . . . He could hold the speed of the march now, just, because the Street Boy carried the weight of the machine gun.
The roar was in his ears.
It might have been the sickness, and it might have been the tiredness, or the effect of the parasite worms in his stomach, or the altitude.
He walked forward, towards the roar ahead, and his feet tramped as an automaton’s. The thought of his father, and what his father had said once, drunk, about making footsteps on life’s path. Heh, old man – heh, TeeJay – bloody great footsteps here. It squirmed in him, the opportunities missed between a son and a drunk. The old man, TeeJay, gone, dead, and the epitaph was a slurred reminder that a son should make footprints. Heh, TeeJay, if you’re watching, pray God you’re watching, these are hellish big footprints. All lost, the opportunities. TeeJay Brown had cut the passing-out parade at Sandhurst because a crown court case had run an extra day. TeeJay Brown had cut the short leave when he had called home after being accepted into the regiment because a detective from the Porn Squad was retiring and throwing a thrash. TeeJay Brown had cut the Sunday lunch when he’d travelled down to the suburbs after his first Irish tour because Features had demanded a rewrite. He wondered if there were any left of the old scribblers, who still told jokes about TeeJay Brown, recognized the footprints. He thought of his father, in what he thought was a sort of delirium, and in his mind were red-eyed detectives in church and scribblers who were snivelling. Too much missed . . .
They came to the Rio Negro.
The tree line of big pines reached to the rim of the gorge.
Fifty, sixty feet below them, the swelled river crashed and spumed and burst over the boulders.
There was a bridge seven miles, on the map, upstream and a bridge could be held by a dozen men, and would be held. There was a bridge, on the map, nine miles downstream . . . The high pines lowered above him and the cloud caught at the top branches, and below him the spray hung over the crashing power of the river. He sank to the ground. He did not know the answer.
Jorge looked for him.
It was the reflex.
Always he looked for Gord. Gord, with the solution. Gord, with the idea.
Hunched down. His little group around him. On the ground and his eyes closed and his head bowed.
For Jorge to decide . . .
It was after he had eaten his breakfast, two eggs scrambled and orange juice and good coffee, that the Canadian found what had been done to the tyres of the Shogun four-wheel drive. It was a good jeep, the best that he had been able to hire on his three visits to Guatemala. He didn’t rage and he didn’t swear and he didn’t weep, because it was his third visit to Guatemala and he had learned, hard, that anger and cursing and crying won him nothing. The four tyres had been slashed, and the spare. They had not been punctured so that they could be repaired, they were in ribbons as if wide-blade knives had been used on them, and there was no place in Chichicastenango where a man could buy five new tyres for a Shogun four-wheel drive. It would have been the kid’s birthday . . . it would have been the end of the road . . . it would have been the day they dug in the cemetery. They should all have been waiting beside the jeep for him to finish his breakfast, the men who were to dig, and the coroner from Santa Cruz del Quiché, and the attorney from Guatemala City. It was his third journey to the country, it was the trip on which he had at last believed he had identified the grave of the kid. So the kid was stupid, so the kid had messed a potential career, so the kid had bummed in Central America, but the kid was his grandson. The kid was his grandson, and a fool and a messer and a bum had the right to something better than death in a police station and burial in a clandestine grave. There had been no-one waiting beside the Shogun four-wheel drive when he had come from eating his breakfast in the small dining area of the Posada Santa Marta, but the plainclothes men of the Treasury Police were across the road, lounging in the rain, watching him. It was the goddamn fear . . . He knew about the fear in goddamn Guatemala . . . The men that he had hired to dig, and for whom he had bought corn liquor the night before, would have seen the slashed tyres and gone home. The coroner that he had worked a month with for the paperwork of exhumation, and bribed well, would have seen the tyres and driven away down the rain-soaked road to Santa Cruz del Quiché. The lawyer he had now known with meetings and correspondence for three years, and who had had in the last week a live bullet round in his post box, would have turned his car for a return to the capital. No chance from the hotel of an international call, difficult enough with shouting to raise Guatemala City, no chance of getting Kingston, Ontario. And a poor call it would have made, better that his wife was left in her ignorance . . . There was a room in the bungalow that was behind the Irish pub in Kingston, set back from the marina frontage, and the room was as it had been when the kid had gone. The room had the fluffy bears and the aircraft model kits and the hockey photographs and the school textbooks, and his wife would probably have been in there that morning and said the prayer that she always said when she sat on the kid’s bed . . . No, he hadn’t known where Guatemala was when he had first gone down to the travel agent to book a ticket, three years back. Yes, he knew about Guatemala now. His son, the kid’s father, his son said that the living had to live. Not his son’s business because his son was divorced, and an engineer on a bulk carrier, and had long before failed to make a home for the kid, passed the role of parent to the grandparents of the kid. His son said that the kid was dead and that throwing money after finding a grave was waste. He was in his seventy-first year, and he had a mortgage now on the bungalow, first time in eleven years, and the mortgage had paid for a private detective and the lawyers and the correspondence and three trips down to Guatemala. The mortgage money had tracked the journey of the kid, his grandson, through the Mexican border post and into Guatemala at the La Mesilla frontier check. The mortgage money had found the Indian woman who remembered the kid in San Rafael Petzal, smoking, and found the storekeeper who remembered the kid at San Cristóbal Totonicapán, drunk, and found the priest who remembered the kid with the beggars outside the church at Nahualá, destitute. And big money, what the bastard would have earned in a year, for the policeman who remembered the kid running from the soldiers at Chichicastenango, stoned and drunk and destitute. There was a police station at Chichicastenango, where the kid would have been killed. The killings were plenty that year, and there was a cemetery, grass-cover
ed, unmarked, on the road out to Santa Cruz del Quiché, where the kid would have been buried. He would have driven that morning out to the cemetery, with the gravediggers and the coroner and the attorney, if the tyres of the Shogun four-wheel drive had not been slashed . . . It was the girl who washed the glasses in the bar, pretty little Indian girl and no shoes on her feet, out of sight of the plainclothes policemen across the street, who told him of the rumour, of the spirit who had brought the fire.
‘Where are they?’ The fist of the general, driven by his anger, smacked the desk.
‘We do not have a precise position.’
‘What is precise? Is “precise” that you do not know?’
He had been at school with the G-2 officer. He played bridge with the officer. His wife rode with the wife of the officer.
‘It is the weather . . .’
‘So you do not know where is a rabble crowd of illiterates, vagabonds, peasants . . . ?’
The G-2 officer flushed. ‘You have to understand the circumstances. There are difficulties of transport, there are problems of communication. It is impossible to have reliable people where you need them. There are reports, only reports, of an incident near to the Sacapulas to Uspantán road, reports of the killing of some Civil Patrollers – there were tracks. Maybe them, maybe fewer men . . . around the whole Ixil triangle area . . . it is alive with peasants on the move . . . if it is them then they will find the Rio Negro across their path. There are bridges and they are defended. The river is in spate.’
‘What do you tell me?’
‘If they wish to come south, towards Santa Cruz del Quiché, and we are full battalion strength there, then they must force a bridge, they must identify their position.’
The general eyed the G-2 officer. He could goad men, drive them. His staff officers, hovering behind him, clung at his words. He had goaded men forward, driven them, in the days of the bad casualties of Victory ’82. ‘They cannot cross the Rio Negro other than by bridge where they will be identified, you promise me?’
The silence. The staff officers in the room considered the price of a promise. It was said, not proven, that once the general had, himself, shot dead with his pistol a platoon commander accused of abandoning a road junction to the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres, shot him first in the testicles then in the head.
The silence, then the deep-drawn breath of the G-2 officer. ‘They cannot cross other than by bridge, and the bridges are guarded . . .’
Axes and machetes had cut down the great pines.
Two ant swarms of men, swinging the axes, hacking with the machetes, had brought low the two great pine trunks that had a century before taken root at the rim of the gorge above the rambling torrent river.
Each man, swinging his axe and hacking with his machete until the spark had gone from his strength, had reeled away, and another had taken up the attack.
A whining commune of prayer as the resin bled the life from the great pines, a cry for forgiveness as each blow had struck home. It had been Jorge’s decision. She could see the way he had sauntered among the men, new confidence, urging them and whispering encouragement to frantic effort.
The great pines had groaned, cracked, cried. They had fallen, slow at first, then rushing, down together across the width of the gorge, scattering the men from the path of their collapse. A tangle of men had run then to the pine trunks and slashed at the front branches as they had advanced above the roar of the water course.
The bridge was made.
The charge started.
A man fell. His scream was lost in the spume spray. Another man fell and went spreadeagled down to the white water, but the swarm rushed and clung and slipped and made good their grip.
She would go at the end when the women and the children crossed. Alex Pitt watched as the man mass wriggled on the bridge of the great pines, cutting from sight the branches and the foliage, a maggot motion going forward. Another man fell, spiralled down to the washed rocks, and the gap that he left was closed.
She saw that Gord now stood alone because the men who were always around him had gone across with the cart and the wheelbarrow. The swarm slackened.
He was going forward. Slow and tired drunk strides towards the rim. She could have shouted and she would not have been heard. Because so many had crossed the flow was sparser. She could have shouted the warning that he was to wait, that he could go across with the women and the children. She looked to the far side. The Academic was there, and the Archaeologist, good men and she liked to talk with them. The Fireman stood with the Street Boy in front of him, resting his hand as a father would on the mischief boy’s shoulder. The Civil Patroller was with them, the one whose friends had been shot down and who showed no hurt. She could have shouted the warning that would not have been heard. The fat man, the Ladino, agile despite the weight on him, the bully man, was halfway across. Gord going next, rocking on the branches and foliage, swaying as if he were a scarecrow in the wind. The bald man, the Ladino, bright head held high, shoulders back and confident and sure, stepped onto the bridge.
The fat man going tortoise slow and the bald man going crab quick.
Halfway across.
Gord was sandwiched between the fat Ladino and the bald Ladino.
She knew the hatred. The Archaeologist had told her of the spat fights in the core of the group around the young leader.
Gord looking up, and seeing the fat man. The hesitancy seemed to cloud Gord. Caught in the wind, lashed by the rain, a leg slipping into the pine frond mass that was treacherous. She wondered how deep was the hatred. She heard nothing over the thunder fall of the river, but she could see the mouth movement of the fat man who turned towards Gord and blocked his way. She had seen three men fall. He seemed to sneer and taunt. His foot had slipped and she saw that Gord used a big effort to drag his foot back up and he pulled at a branch and the branch broke clear in his hand. He dropped. He was astride the bridge mass. He would be looking down, down onto the tumble pace of the river, down onto the smoothed rocks, down onto the driven current.
There was the cry of a name.
The name cry grew to match the thunder noise of the river.
She heard the cry. ‘Gaspar . . . Gaspar . . . Gaspar . . .’
A thousand voices, more, willing him to cross.
‘Gaspar . . . Gaspar . . . Gaspar . . .’
The fat man was over, walking away onto the rim and not looking back.
Gord crawled forward.
‘Gaspar . . . Gaspar . . . Gaspar . . .’
The name cry carried him over, and died, and she was left with only the thunder noise of the river.
The bald man was across.
She hitched the child higher on her shoulder. She went towards the bridge. Ahead of her, over the gorge, the column was already on the move. New pace and new urgency, the march headed away into the cloud mist of the great pines.
She knew it, she had cared.
‘He is married to the daughter of my cousin.’
The general said, ‘I want Arturo to have command of the Kaibil battalion.’
‘It is an insult to the son-in-law of my cousin,’ the minister said.
‘I tell you two things . . . G-2 promises me that the Ramírez rabble is now blocked behind the Rio Negro, they must find a bridge and force it, they must search for that bridge, when they attack it we have located them . . . When they are located, I need the Kaibil battalion to be waiting for them . . . Arturo has the stomach for the work . . .’
‘How long do I have, to weigh the insult to the son-in-law of my cousin?’
The general saw that the civilian minister wavered. ‘You have until tomorrow because you have the time that the Rio Negro has brought us . . . Understand me, I am not interested in the sensibilities of the son-in-law of your cousin. If you do not appreciate, minister, the consequences of failure to use that time bought us, then you should go to La Aurora and try to buy a ticket for a flight out . . . I must have Arturo.’
‘. . . It was disgusting what was done to him. If you’re trying to put it right, like you say, then it’s a bit bloody late. Okay, okay, I know where you want to pick it up. It was a big risk getting to the Yankee birdman and we took a casualty, had to fly them both out on a casevac in the evening. We got the hell out after that because the ’Raqs were alerted. We had another rendezvous with a bird that topped us with fuel and ammo and more grub, and brought us in a new radio because ours was blinking. It was a pretty lonely old world when the resupply bird left us . . . Our job was to report back rather than do demolition. We weren’t supposed to be identified, just to stooge around in the area where the north thrust was going to come in and report back on ground defences, artillery positions, tank movements. Wasn’t the death-or-glory stuff . . . You won’t want a bloody encyclopaedia of the war. The thrust came in. The ’Raqs didn’t stand and contest it. They were running and shitting, shitting and running. We were ahead of the push, and we got down to Karbala. Place was in uproar. I don’t know whether you know about Karbala, ma’am, but it’s big in the Shia religion. The ’Raq army was in full retreat, fast as they could bloody go. All the radios, BBC, Voice of America, Saudi radio, they were all telling the Shia guys that it was time to get off their arses and do the business. Uncle Saddam was a goner, that’s what the radios were telling them in Karbala . . . Then there was the ceasefire. The big politicals and the big generals, they let Uncle Saddam off the hook. Mr Brown, he was real mad, shouting and cursing and bollocking, because we got the message quick enough that the ’Raq armour was still intact, and was coming back into Karbala. They were good people there, Mr Brown became a sort of hero in that town, suppose it was because we were the only liberation troops they saw. We knew what they had to expect. They’d shown us the security police cells. You ever seen meat hooks set in the ceiling, ma’am? You ever seen an execution shed, ma’am? You ever seen a torture room? They’d kind of burned their boats because they’d strung up any of Uncle Saddam’s filth they could get their hands on. It was going to be bad for them, when the tanks came back in . . . Sold down the river. They thought, from what the radio said, that the Yankees were coming, or the Brits, or the French, coming all the way to Karbala . . . Mr Brown did what he could for them. About three days he had to train an army. They only had rifles. They hadn’t anti-tank, they hadn’t recoilless, they hadn’t mines. Mr Brown tried to show them how to block the streets, how to make Molotovs, where the armour was unprotected. They believed in him. He worked twenty hours a day for three days, and all through those fucking tanks were getting closer . . . I’m not saying that if we’d stayed, five of us, that it would have made a twopence damn of difference. What was such a bastard was that they trusted us, and they believed all those fucking lies from the radio. We had tanks, guns just a few miles up the road and Mr Brown was on the radio the last night before the ’Raq armour hit Karbala. He started sort of level, pretty cool, didn’t last. He was bloody yelling by the end . . . We were ordered out. What they actually told him, it would be the equivalent of desertion if we didn’t come out. It was a direct order, and you can’t buck a direct order. I suppose the bastards thought he’d gone native. At the forward barricades, all through that last night, we could hear the ’Raq armour warming up. We knew they’d come at dawn. He didn’t talk a lot that night, but he was round all the barricades and he was trying to give them some heart . . . We knew what was going to happen to them . . . He said we should leave the Land Rover behind. We kept our rifles, that was all, we left them our machine guns, all the belts for them, all the grenades. We smashed up the radio and we walked out on them. What hurt, they all said they understood, some fucking chance. We walked out of Karbala about an hour before the first attack came into the other side of the town . . . He was very bitter, he took it personal like it was his fault . . .’
The Fighting Man (1993) Page 26
