The Fighting Man (1993)

by Seymour, Gerald

  A guerrilla, one of those from near to the start, had raised his machine gun to the canopy, aimed at the hidden tormentor, blasted, showered himself in cones and needles.

  A man from Playa Grande, who had fought well at the approach to the gate of the garrison’s barracks at Santa Cruz del Quiché, had torn off the uniform he had worn proudly and was bent in his underpants hunting in a plastic bag for his own clothes.

  A man from Nebaj who was respected, whom others followed, took what food he could carry from an abandoned sack, and shrugged at Gord, and seemed to wish him well, and slipped from the path and away between the trees.

  Always the helicopter was with them. So tired. Gord carried two machine guns now, and the belt ammunition for both of them and he had the weight of his pack and the straps cut in his back. The pace of the march was hurried by the settling fear. The Archaeologist pushed the cart, and the Street Boy was alongside him with the wheelbarrow, and the Canadian limped behind and his face was screwed up in pain that he would not admit to. Jorge was waiting for him where a small stream had to be forded. Water to their waists, and a man slipped and threw down the ammunition box that he carried, lost it in the water, and crossed and left it.

  Wide-eyed Jorge panting. ‘We turn, yes? We have gone back enough . . .’

  There was the rattle of the pitch of the helicopter’s engine as the bird above them banked.

  ‘Turn where, Jorge?’

  Zeppo was there, arms folded. Harpo leaned against a tree and picked the grime from his nails. Groucho sat with his head between his knees.

  ‘We turn, we find a new way. We go for Guatemala City.’

  The march splashed out of the water, passed them.

  ‘Have you asked them? Have you asked how many will follow you?’

  Jorge had Gord held close.

  ‘What do we do?’

  His fists hung onto the wrapped belts of machine-gun ammunition and the cloth of the tunic top. Breathing hard. Pure sympathy, clean water sympathy welled in Gord.

  ‘I don’t tell you what to do.’

  ‘It is walking again in our own blood. Going back is losing hope . . . I had memorized my speech. I could tell you what I would have said when I stood on the steps of the Palacio Nacional, and I could tell you what I would have said to the Ambassador of the United States. Do you know about arrogance, Gord? Do you know how it can destroy you? We should turn, Gord, stand and fight them . . .’

  ‘I will take you home,’ Gord said.

  She had spent the night and most of the morning in a closed van that was parked where the spyholes could observe the row of lock-up garages behind the block. A wasted night and a wasted morning because the Irishman had not shown. The man with her in the van with the telescope and the camera loathed her because, in the company of a woman, he was too shy, boring slob, to use the bucket in the corner of the back of the van. When the van had been left back at the transport pool, when the man had run for the Underground and his journey home, she found a telephone box and dialled into her answerphone.

  ‘Damn thing again . . . I’m sorry but the news is not that good . . . Open line and all that . . . They were poised for the last dash, but that’s history. They were blocked and they’ve turned. If it was to work then it always had to be the dash. It’s retreat time. More when I have it . . .’

  Cathy Parker watched the litter blowing in the gutter of a London street.

  The Priest had around him all those who had come from Nebaj. He had the men and the women and the children, and the guitar was on his back. The weapons of the men were neatly stacked, wigwams of rifles formed around the ammunition boxes and the mortar bombs. The Priest smiled, droll. It was not necessary for him to explain . . . Gord understood. The helicopter was still with them, tormenting in its presence, hovering, searching for carrion. He wondered if they would be rocketed or strafed or hit by the exploding napalm bombs. He shook the Priest’s hand and the grip was granite hard. The people from Nebaj and the Priest moved away from the march, into the gathering darkness, away from the setting sun that threw the light shards down between the trees.

  They made a different path, they went west.

  Only when the darkness came, only when the march blundered in the forest in the night, did they lose the helicopter.

  Gord walked with Alex, and he held her hand as he walked, and in his mind there was a prayer for the Priest.

  The headlights of the big station wagon found them. Kramer went past the lorries and the armoured personnel carriers, and past the men who were sleeping at the roadside, and past the fires of the cooking stoves, and past the men who were cleaning their weapons in readiness for going forward. He detoured off the road to get by the silent helicopters. His lights found Arturo. The colonel was beside the communications vehicle and shouting into a radio. He thought he saw the flier in the shadow on the far side of the vehicle. A hell of a journey in darkness, and no escort, and each roadblock had been a cat fight of wills. Four and a half hours it had taken him, but no way that Kramer would permit the dossier biography out of his own sweet care. It was a big favour, a hell of a big favour . . . but Colonel Mario Arturo, i/c the Kaibil battalion, was a coming man, and coming goddamn faster if it was true what he had heard, that the shit column had been turned. And a big favour would be called in, some time. This year, next year, some year, Colonel Mario Arturo would be called to account by the Agency . . . Kramer bustled forward. No waiting for Arturo to come off the radio. It was Agency business, and Agency business was priority.

  ‘Colonel, I think we have what you want. Pulled the strings damned hard, but we’ve got it . . .’

  Arturo was off the radio. Kramer opened the briefcase that was fastened by a slender chain to his wrist. He produced the sheets of paper in a cellophane sleeve.

  ‘. . . His name is Brown. He’s the one on the flame thrower. Just a crazy guy. British. He was Special Forces down in the Gulf and would have had a medal for rescuing one of our pilots from a downed helicopter, but he freaked. He went native with some resistance group, and when he came out he insulted, bad heavy talk, one of our senior officers. Crazy obstinate. Wouldn’t apologize, so Gordon Benjamin Brown went to the wall. Colonel, it’s all here to help you go get him . . .’

  The flier had come round the front of the communications vehicle.

  Kramer passed the dossier to Arturo. Too right, he’d rein him in some good wet day. Too right, he’d have Mario Arturo pocketed.

  The flier said, ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch it . . . What was his name?’

  ‘Brown. Crazy bastard. Gordon Benjamin Brown.’

  17

  ‘Brown. Crazy bastard. Gordon Benjamin Brown.’

  A downed pilot, a trigger and an explosion. An insult to a senior American officer. A going to the wall.

  Three triggers, three explosions.

  ‘I’m sorry, don’t think me dumb. I’m sorry, Mario, for interrupting,’ Tom said. He was close to Kramer, and it was an interruption and the frown cut the colonel’s forehead, and he was gestured to be quiet. He pressed, ‘Could you, please, say that name again . . . ?’

  ‘Brown, Gordon Benjamin Brown . . .’ Kramer laughed. ‘You can read yourself into him, plot him and know him, colonel . . .’

  There had never been a surname used. The given name had been abbreviated. Special Forces and, of course, they didn’t wear their names on the combat gear. The one he had thought to be the senior NCO had used the name of ‘Gord’. No exchange of names after the pick-up from beside the downed Apache bird, not time because the Iraqis were closing and the big machine gun mounted on the rollbar of the Land Rover had been hammering to suppress their advance. No exchange of pleasantries, just the pick-up and the body of the crew man abandoned still strapped in his cockpit seat. The officer, ‘Gord’, had been at the wheel of the Land Rover, and beetling it out, and one of their own guys had been hit, and it had just been a hell of a noise of gunfire. He had lain amongst the legs and the spare gear and the sandbags in the open b
ack of the Land Rover and they’d had their hands full with their own casualty. Not a time for pleasantries and chat and introductions. They’d given him the jab and he’d been gone. They’d called him ‘Gord’ and that was the first trigger.

  ‘. . . What we gather from the Brits is that he will stay with the core guys. He’s not the man who’ll run out on them to keep his own skin safe on his back. Me, if I were him, I’d be ditching those deadbeats and legging for the frontier on my own . . .’

  Whatever it was, probably morphine, had pretty much knocked him down. And after he’d come back to the living he was the passenger and couldn’t help, and the one they called ‘Gord’ was busy with the driving and had taken them into loose sand, gone through all the power gears on the low ratios, gone where the Iraqis in their lorries couldn’t follow. What had brought him right back to the living had been the thunder in the darkness of the helicopter coming in for the casevac lift. They were more concerned, these guys, with their own man, but there had been fast handshakes before the collapsible canvas stretcher had been heaved into the hatch. Fast handshakes before the winch man on his own bird had pulled him in. He’d heard it from an orderly in the field hospital, and it was all round the Dhahran base, that a Brit Special Forces guy had bad-mouthed a ranking brigadier general and dug himself a hole in shit. It was the second trigger.

  ‘. . . He’ll be with them, that’s the Brits’ indication, and if he’s with them he’ll be at their pace. They’ll get no help, not with the word going round every village, every community, that they are bad news, failed bad news. Their chance of making it to the Mexican border is zilch zero, not now that the weather’s flipped . . .’

  A general had visited him. There had been few enough casualties, few enough for each man and woman in the field hospital to get a visit from rank. How was he coming along? Good . . . Was he happy with the way he was looked after? Great . . . Did he need anything? No . . . Had he had the telephone to ring home? No one to ring . . . No, wait, sir, just one thing, he would like to thank, personally, the Special Forces officer who had saved him, brave guy. Forget it, soldier . . . Candies from home, that was OK. Letters written in child scrawl from classes in west Virginia and Arkansas, that was okay. No chance to thank, personally, the officer who had saved him. Forget it, soldier . . . And the orderly had told him afterwards, what he’d heard round the base, that the Brit Special Forces guy was on open arrest waiting on court goddamn martial and failing big to make the necessary apology. It was the third trigger.

  ‘. . . Hope that’s useful material for you, colonel . . .’

  He should have written, and he was mending. He didn’t have the name, and he was shipped back for convalescence. He didn’t have the name and he didn’t have an address, and he was mending back at the base at Fort Rucker, Alabama. He had never written and tried to find an address, never made the thanks that were deserved.

  ‘. . . Heh, Tom, you were down in the Gulf ? You didn’t get to hear of this crazy mother?’

  It was behind him, writing letters, finding addresses, making thanks.

  ‘There were half a million down there. No, I didn’t get to meet them all . . .’

  It was easy to lie, as it had been easy not to write and search and thank.

  Tom Schultz said he was going for sleep, going to sack in. There was a sleeping bag stowed in the Huey bird, and he’d have the whole of the hatch area to stretch himself. He’d try, but he doubted that he’d sleep . . .

  He wanted to be back in Garden City, outside of Ames.

  He wanted to be home on the campus at the University of Minnesota.

  He wanted to be gone because he could no longer control the fear. The fear was new to the Archaeologist, a creeping and growing paralysis. The fear came because the heart was gone from them. Garden City, outside of Ames, was the shrinking dream. Garden City was white walls and the regimented lines of the apple orchards, and the big grain silo, and the best farmland on God’s earth and it was safety, it was beyond his reach and growing further distant. The march was meandering, going west and going east and cutting back, and wading in the more casual eddies of the rivers to lose the track beaten by their feet. He thought the march was going nowhere, not going back to Garden City, outside of Ames. And the campus at Minnesota was drifting further, another dream, losing clarity. The campus was a service apartment, and a good woman that he nearly loved, and the company of colleagues that he enjoyed. The campus was home and it, too, was safety.

  Now they were not going forward . . .

  It was the sense of helplessness that fuelled the fear. The helicopter was with them. They had walked through the night, and they had rested up for only three hours while the dawn was coming, while the bright-plumed birds chorused the coming sun beat, and they had moved off again into deeper forest under the high canopy of big trees, and the helicopter had come and found them and circled them. The helicopter was the flame in the fear, fanned the fear and gutted it. The helicopter was the destruction of his courage and the cause of the fear. They could not fight back, and that was the helplessness. Going forward he had felt invincible, protected from incoming fire, going back and harried by the unseen helicopter above the tree canopy he was collapsing to the fear. It would be not in their time, and not in their place. It would be the ambush. It would be the curtain of bullets. It would be death as it had been for the Academic.

  He did not think he could go on.

  The Archaeologist did not know how he would find the strength to tell Gord. He dragged the cart, and the Street Boy was beside him with the wheelbarrow. Going nowhere, going away from the Garden City outside of Ames and the campus at Minnesota, going with the helicopter, going to death . . .

  The strength of the march flaked.

  The weapons were thrown down. The uniforms taken from the camps and bases and barracks were stripped off. There were some who went to Jorge before they left the march and kissed him or stood in respect in front of him or hugged him. There were some who came first to Gord. There were some who clasped Alex’s hand and cried. There were some who left the march without a gesture of friendship, scuttling from the track. It was the helicopter that broke them . . . always the helicopter was with them. The women had gone with the children. No more fresh laughter in the march, no more the shouting of small shrill voices. No more the colour of the women’s clothes and the dancing movement of butterflies in the dark shade of big trees.

  The march struggled on towards the high ridges of the Cuchumatanes.

  ‘I saw it once,’ Arturo said into the face microphone. ‘I saw it once at the docks in Puerto Barrios. I think my father had gone there for something to do with his work, and it was the holiday from school. Perhaps I was difficult with my mother, perhaps it was necessary for me to be occupied. I went with my father to Puerto Barrios. I had the time to go down to the docks to see the ships unloaded and the cranes operating. The rats were coming down the ropes of a small tramp ship. It was one of the ships that took sugar up to the Gulf of Mexico and brought back grain. The ship had come in from Galveston in Texas with the grain and it had been unloaded. Perhaps there was nothing to keep the rats, perhaps they did not like to sail back to Galveston and eat sugar all the way. The rats were coming down the ropes that tied the ship to the docks. What you always hear is that rats will leave a ship that is doomed. I used to wonder for a long time, after I had seen the rats, whether that ship ever made it back to Galveston. I mean, it is necessary to give rats a degree of intelligence. You think it possible that rats could know if a ship is going to sink? Maybe, maybe not, maybe rats just don’t like sugar . . .’

  They veered in the headwind that buffeted the flight of the Huey. He looked down. There was a long tree line and then the wide earth-brown scar where the logging had cleared the forest. He looked down onto the slow-moving column of people below him, and if he looked ahead and away past the American’s helmet, he could see another column. Earlier, when they were first above the earth scar of cleared ground, he had see
n two more columns.

  ‘. . . It is what you said. It is about domination. We have frayed the nerves of them. We have broken their heart. It is because you are with them that they have disintegrated. Just rats, and trying now to find a place of safety in the warehouses of the docks. Even rats, simple-minded rats, uneducated rats, have the instinct to survive . . .’

  All through the flight, from the time they had first locked again onto the beacon signal, the disintegration of the march had been clear to see below them. He had binoculars, German-made, 6 × 30, and he could see the faces of the men and women under him, and the children. He saw not a single weapon, and not a man in uniform. He watched the debris columns edging away from contact with the grape seed of the rebellion.

  ‘. . . I think tomorrow will be right. You Americans, do you give us any sensitivity? Any intelligence? We are only Guatemalans . . . I could have hit them yesterday, the full force of the Kaibiles against them. The rat in the corner fights hard, but the rat that has an escape will run. I would have taken casualties if I had hit them yesterday and I would have made “martyrs” of the vermin. I can collect the escaped rats at any time I wish, with poison, with gas, with terrier dogs, with an old shotgun. I can wait a week or a month or a year to hunt out the escaped rats. That is sensitivity, yes? That is intelligence, yes . . . ?’