The Ambushers (2 page)

It was an official rebuke, emphasized by his use of my code name. He was reminding me that this wasn’t the bureau of bleeding hearts. That was over in the State Department somewhere.

“No, sir,” I said.

“The fact is, this Santos gentleman with the boastful nickname seems to have grown himself a beard like Castro and acquired the same kind of friends. The
Fidelista
movement seems to be quite contagious. Your contact will be a colonel in the Federal army named Jiminez. He’ll arrange to get you in and out.”

“Cheerfully?” I asked.

“Well,” said Mac dryly, “they were apparently hoping for a couple of divisions of Marines. They may be a trifle disappointed. Furthermore, we have already made one attempt that failed. This will complicate your mission in several ways...”

I thought of these complications now, lying with my eyes closed at the side of the jungle clearing. It was going to be a pleasant assignment, I reflected, with my target alerted and my allies disappointed and disillusioned, having already seen the job loused up once by an
Americano
miracle worker sent to take the place of the troops they’d requested. You could hardly blame Colonel Jiminez for being, let’s say, a trifle reserved in his greeting.

It was getting towards morning, and the camp was starting to come awake after some hours of quiet, but I saw no reason to jump up and start functioning. There was nothing for me to do, and somebody might think I was too jittery to sleep. I lay there breathing evenly with my arm through the sling of the rifle case, until a man came to wake me and tell me that there was food by the fire and the colonel wished to inform me that we would march in ten minutes.

South of the Rio Grande—and we were a long way south—ten minutes usually means half an hour, but apparently our diminutive C.O. wasn’t one of the standard
mañana
boys. In ten minutes we were on the trail, if you could call it that, with daylight showing gray through the tangled jungle. In fifteen minutes I was sweating copiously, although the heat of the day was still to come. The little man set a fast pace. I was in fair condition, but it wasn’t my kind of country, and the pathfinders out ahead were picking holes for people their own size. Long-legged gringos six feet four could damn well look out for themselves.

I stuck behind Jiminez, near the head of the column. He never looked back. His faded shirt remained dry across the shoulders. Behind me came the men who weren’t swinging machetes out front, and the two women. I heard good-natured grumbling in Spanish and deciphered some of it. It was all very well for their
coronelcito
to amuse himself by running the legs off the tall
Americano,
they were saying, but he should take some thought to his own people, who had marched hard yesterday and the day before. It was not a joke worth killing oneself for.

If their little colonel heard them, you couldn’t tell it from his stride. He kept us as close to a lope as conditions permitted, with only an occasional pause for breath and food, and brought us to the outskirts of the village about five in the afternoon, after circling wide to make the final approach from inland.

At last I was told that our destination was just over the ridge when we finally came to a halt in a wooded ravine. We’d climbed all day, and this was a different, higher, and dryer kind of forest from the jungle in which we’d started, but it still wasn’t likely to be mistaken for the arid New Mexico country I’d hunted as a boy. The ravine was apparently a prearranged rendezvous. A man was awaiting us among the trees, a barefoot peasant type in dirty white pajamas and a big hat. Jiminez spoke to him briefly in Spanish that was so different from my border lingo that I couldn’t really follow it. I gathered only that the man came from the village, and that the situation there was favorable in some respects, unfavorable in others.

The man slipped away. Jiminez got the two women and three of the men off to one side and gave them instructions I couldn’t hear. The older of the women carried a machine pistol in a negligent manner. The younger packed a rifle as if she knew what it was for. In pants, both looked as tough as their male companions or tougher. I wondered where all the gentle, shy, beautiful little Latin heroines were hiding, the ones who share the hero’s bed, or bedroll, in every jungle epic ever written or filmed. Then I wondered what the hell I’d do with one if I had her. I wasn’t exactly in the mood. I sat down on a log and rubbed my right thigh, from which a bullet had been extracted some months before.

“You have trouble with the leg, Señor Helm?” Jiminez asked, coming up to seat himself beside me.

“No trouble,” I said. I couldn’t have him thinking he had a cripple on his hands, on top of everything else, so I lied a little. “An old injury. It just stiffens up sometimes.”

The mixed quintet, male and female, was moving off up the ravine. The older woman seemed to be in command. I assumed they’d been assigned to deal with one of the complications Mac had told me about. Jiminez caught the direction of my look and confirmed my thought.

“They will do what they can when the shooting starts,” he said. “I do not have very great hopes for their success, however. There are at least two hundred men in the village, I have just been told. A few of those are paid by us, of course, but they cannot help openly or their usefulness is at an end.”

“We’re supposed to give it a try,” I said. “But it’s a secondary objective and they’re your people. How hard you want them to try, under the circumstances, is for you to say. Is our primary objective at home?”

“Yes. I am told that he is expecting visitors by road before nightfall. We can hope that they will arrive before the light fails, and that he will come out of his hut to greet them. The entrance faces this way, as you will see when you get up there.” He inclined his head towards the top of the ridge.

“Sure.” I slid the pack off my back and got out the ten-power binoculars I’d brought along. “Will you assist me, Colonel, or can you assign me a man who speaks some English?”

“I will assist you personally.”

It was good in some ways, bad in others. “It is understood,” I said carefully, “that if I make requests or give instructions, I mean no disrespect for your rank.”

He gave me his thin smile. He was a good-looking little man; he must have been a pretty boy. I didn’t let that influence my judgment. Some of the meanest, switchblade-packing
pachucos
I’d known back home were real handsome kids.

He said, “It is understood.”

“Then I want you to take these glasses,” I said. “I want you to be watching through them when I fire. If I miss, you must tell me where it goes so I can correct the next shot properly.”

“There will not be time for many shots,” Jiminez said.

His expression didn’t change, but it was clear nevertheless that he didn’t like my talking about misses. One American agent had already missed.

I said, “If there’s time for one, there’s generally time for two. If I miss, look for the dust where it hits and give me the distance I’m off. In meters or fractions of a meter if you like. Give me the direction by the clock. Twelve o’clock, three o’clock, six o’clock, nine o’clock, or points between. You understand?”

“Si.
I have shot at the targets, señor, if without much success. I understand. Just a moment.”

He rose and spoke softly to a man standing by, who seemed to be a non-commissioned officer of some kind. The NCO went over to a group of others and spoke to them, pointing to the ridge. They all started scrambling upward, fanning out. Jiminez returned and sat down again.

“We will let them get into position and dig in,” he said. “They will remain to cover us as we withdraw, as long as they can hold, outnumbered. Then they will retreat inland, while we hide overnight in a place that has been selected. If things go well, they will draw the pursuit after them and confuse it in the darkness, leaving us to make for the coast undisturbed tomorrow. It is a good plan, I think. Of course it will not work.”

I glanced at him quickly. “Why not?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “No battle plan has worked in every detail since the dawn of history, señor. Why should this one?” He glanced at his watch. “We should take our positions within ten minutes. We must be ready when the visitors arrive.”

“Sure.”

I reached for the plastic case and pulled the long zipper and broke the seal inside. I suppose it was a solemn moment, kind of like finally consummating the marriage after a long courtship. Well, the real consummation was still to come, but I’d spent a long time preparing this equipment and bringing it here; just taking it out should have been celebrated with a little ceremony, say a toast or a prayer. However, it was no time to be drinking, and I’ve kind of got out of the habit of praying. I just reached in first and found a little bag containing what looked like white gravel and tossed it to Jiminez.

“There’s your silica gel, Colonel,” I said.

Then I took the big rifle out of the case. It was a heavy match barrel on the long Mauser action, shooting a hand-loaded version of the .300 Holland and Holland Magnum cartridge that I’d cooked up myself. I slipped off the rubber bands and removed the corrugated cardboard that gave additional protection to the scope, a twenty-power Herrlitz. We’d used European components for the same reason that I’d dyed my hair and called myself Hernandez. American interference is kind of unpopular down there and tends to bring unpopularity on the party that requests it. If we were killed or caught, there wasn’t supposed to be too much Yankee debris left lying around.

The stock was a plain, straight-grained hunk of walnut without much sex appeal, but it was fitted to the barrel and action with artistry. A regular G.I. leather sling completed the outfit.

It was quiet in the ravine as I got ready, except for an occasional murmur of conversation among the five men who remained with us, and an occasional rustle or scuffle from above, where the men who were to protect our retreat and lead off the pursuit were getting set for phase one of their suicide assignment. I was glad I wasn’t the one who’d had to give those orders; on the other hand, I couldn’t help remembering that I was the one who had to make all risks and losses worthwhile. If I fluffed my part, as my predecessor had done, a lot of men might die here for nothing. Well, that wasn’t anything it would help to think about.

I saw the colonel pick up the case I’d dropped and slip the bag of silica gel back inside, closing the zipper. He looked at the gun I held.

“It is an impressive firearm,” he said.

“Let us hope the man we came to impress finds it so,” I said.

He glanced at me sharply and started to speak, but checked himself and was silent, watching while I rigged the rifle sling for shooting, and dug one box of cartridges out of the pack. They were big, fat shells. They looked as if an ordinary service round had had a clandestine affair with some anti-aircraft ammo. I could only get four of them into the gun: three in the magazine and one in the chamber. I stuck the box in my pocket and closed up the pack.

“Well, Colonel?” I said. “Let’s look the situation over.”

He hesitated. “You do not seem very confident, Señor Helm. You have some reservations?”

“What do you want me to do, claim the turkey before the target’s been scored? You want some shooting done, it says here. Or your president does. Let’s go.”

He did not move at once. I could see what he was thinking. He had no faith in me, and he was thinking that he was still not fully committed. He could still pull out, or try. He might get away; he might even make it back to the coast undetected, with his task group intact. As for the inefficient
Americano,
he would of course have to die so that he could not tell what had happened—in a brush with El Fuerte’s men, the report would state regretfully. It would be a very fine report, full of heroism and courage, the kind you send in to excuse a failure. With the American dead, who could contradict it except General Jorge Santos, who wouldn’t be asked?

All this went through his mind; then he shrugged and reached for my pack. “You want this brought, I suppose. I will carry it. Follow me.”

With the big rifle heavy in my hand, I followed him up through the brush. Below us, in response to a signal he gave as he passed, the five men in the ravine were picking up their weapons and drifting up into cover after us. I guess they constituted our mobile reserve, or something. The little man trotted up the slope at a slant, and I made my long-legged way after him, until he flattened out near the top and waved me down. We crawled the rest of the way.

A man lay behind the rock up there with a carbine. It was the NCO. He had several extra clips arranged in front of him. We crawled into a bush to his left and looked out.

It was worse than I’d expected. There was a road down the cleared valley below. I guess they grew some kind of corn there, but I never got close enough to be sure. The road was the usual two wagon ruts. Well down along it was the village. The huts weren’t much, mainly roofs thatched with some kind of leaves, supported by walls that looked insubstantial and drafty, but the housing standards of rural Costa Verde weren’t my concern, and in that climate I guess you generally don’t need much more than a roof, anyway.

The place was full of men. They had several fires going. There were women among them. There were a great many weapons in evidence. That wasn’t my concern, either. At least it wasn’t supposed to be. The military aspects of the situation were the colonel’s worry. What did concern me was the fact that the nearest hut was at least a quarter of a mile away. I spoke softly without looking at the little man lying beside me.

“Which one?”

“It is the third hut along the road, on the left. The third from this end. Of course, when he emerges, he may come this way.”

“And he may go the other, too,” I said. “It depends where the damn visitors decide to stop. I was told the range would be approximately three hundred and fifty meters. Three hundred and eighty yards.” He did not speak. Still looking down the valley at the distant huts, I collected some saliva in my mouth and expelled it on the ground in front of me. “To use a phrase from your language, Colonel, I spit on your lousy three hundred and fifty meters, sir. Give me that pack.”