MAMista (17 page)

Lucas edged over to the window. He wanted to see what was happening. He wanted to see if Ramón was still in position. Lucas stole a quick glance out of the window and saw both dead sentries. As Inez had seen the two men just as targets, and Maestro had seen them just as fascists, so now did Lucas see them only clinically. The cracked open skull in one and the bright red arterial blood on the other meant gunshot wounds, life extinct, death instantaneous.

‘Yes, they are dead,' said Lucas solemnly.

‘We must go to them,' Charrington said.

‘Take it easy, Jack,' said Singer. He took his friend's arm.
Until now they had not been all that close, but the sight of Charrington in such great anguish made Singer concerned for him.

It was then that they heard Angel Paz firing his burst of machine-gun fire.

Singer said to Lucas, ‘You're not a local.' It seemed curiously irrelevant but Singer wanted to know exactly what was happening. Eventually he would have to write a report for his masters and ‘don't knows' would not be welcomed as a part of it.

‘I want the keys to the gas pumps, and the keys to the trucks,' Lucas said.

‘He's a European,' said Charrington. ‘Some stooge from Moscow … left behind by glasnost.'

The door burst open. It was Maestro. ‘Damn you, where are the keys?' The plan had been that Lucas would bring the keys out to him but he could not wait any longer.

Lucas kept his eyes on the four men. ‘The keys are coming,' he said.

Maestro moved upon Charrington and grabbed him by the throat, ‘Give me the keys. Give them to me.' Charrington wrenched himself away from the attack. He stood there rubbing his throat.

‘They don't understand Spanish, Maestro. Stand back and let me handle it.' Lucas made a movement with his pistol and said, ‘You've survived our little war, comrades. Don't do anything foolish just for the sake of a truck and some gasoline. Just get the keys and give them to him.'

‘Give them to him, Jack,' Singer said.

Charrington got a bunch of keys from his pocket. He stepped across the room and used one of them to open a wide cupboard near the door. Inside were rows of keys on hooks, each key tagged neatly. The keys for the pumps were marked in Spanish and English for the benefit of the drivers. The keys for the vehicles each had their registration number on the tag. It was simple.

Maestro took all the keys: every one of them. It was the way Maestro did things. He distributed them to his men. He found Angel Paz trying to break into the armoury and about to shoot the lock off the door. Maestro reminded him that there would be detonators and explosives inside. And that using a gun to open the lock might blow him to perdition. He reminded Paz about that from the far side of the compound, in a voice that echoed down the valley and utilized some choice Spanish expletives. The men laughed. It was comforting that Maestro's wrath was lately centred upon the two foreigners.

But none of the keys would fit the lock on the armoury door. Rather than waste time, Maestro let Paz break into it by driving a truck so its fender tore away the door hinges.

Then they backed the Toyota up to it and loaded it with rifles, pistols, ammunition and explosives. It was a good haul. They decided to fill the remaining space with tinned milk and frozen meat.

Lucas heard the armoury door break. So did the others. ‘They are going to the married quarters,' said Charrington.

‘I promise they will not,' Lucas said. He went to the door to see what was happening. There was no movement in the married quarters but he saw men taking cans of milk from the kitchen storeroom.

‘Orange juice,' Lucas shouted. Angel Paz looked up and smiled. Lucas saw Ramón and called, ‘Orange juice, Ramón. Vitamin C, ascorbic acid.' Ramón told them to load orange juice.

Turning back to the men in the office, Lucas said, ‘Do you have a doctor here?' No one answered. ‘Do you have a doctor here?'

‘He's down the valley at camp number four.' It was Singer, the big black man, who answered.

‘I'm leaving a casualty here.'

‘Suit yourself, buddy,' said Singer coldly.

‘It's an amputation.'

Singer shrugged.

‘I'm taking some saline and plasma with me,' Lucas said.

‘The dispensary is the last door at the end of the block,' Charrington said.

‘They will not go near your families. They are disciplined men. Stay quiet and no one will get hurt.'

‘Those Indian sentries will be pleased to hear that,' Singer said.

‘Let me go to the married quarters,' said Charrington. ‘I will talk to them. They must be scared half to death.'

Lucas was about to agree when he saw Ramón approaching. He came into the office and looked at the Americans with great curiosity. ‘Tell the
yanquis
this,' he told Lucas. ‘Tell them we are taking the vehicles and going down the valley. We'll follow the river road as far as Bañado. We'll cut the phone and we are taking the fancy radio with us. We'll disable the generator before we leave. The rest of the transport is immobilized but it can be repaired in an hour or two. I want three days before anyone follows. Before
anyone
follows; make sure that they understand that. They can tell the Federalistas any story they like.'

Lucas translated it for the Americans, although he suspected that they could understand it. They were quiet now. The initial indignant boldness had evaporated. They were concerned about the wives and the children. To Lucas Ramón said, ‘We'll take two Yankees with us.'

‘Take them with us?'

‘We must have hostages,' Ramón said.

‘Do we need them?'

‘Have you not heard of airplanes? They'll have no problem finding us, especially with the trucks kicking up the dust.' Ramón frowned, angry at himself for explaining. ‘Yes, we need them. The talkative one with the glasses and this big black one. Okay?'

‘Yes,' Lucas said. To the two chosen men he said, ‘You two will come with us.'

They argued. Charrington said his wife would worry. One of the clerks offered to substitute for him but Ramón watched and shook his head. They were still arguing even after they were outside and the trucks were ready to go. Maestro, tense and needing sleep, pushed the two Americans roughly as they climbed into the back of a Volvo truck.

 

There had been no sound nor movement from the huts where the families lived. A guerrilla brandishing a machine gun had walked up and down, and that seemed to be enough to keep them all inside. But there was no doubt that the guerrillas were being watched from behind the curtains and the slatted blinds. As the Volvo truck containing the two captives moved off, a young woman came out on to the porch of one of the huts. She waved and shouted, repeating her shrill cries over and over again.

Lucas was in the jeep with Maestro. It was stationary. They would be the last to move off and then would drive at the rear of the convoy of vehicles. Lucas got to his feet and cupped his ear, trying to distinguish the woman's words.

‘What is it?' Maestro asked.

‘A name: Jack, I think.'

‘Make her go inside and shut up.' It was typical of Maestro's imperious manner, his contempt for Lucas, and of the way he categorized Lucas as one of the enemy. Before Lucas could do anything, the American – Charrington – had pushed his way to the tailgate of the Volvo. He leaned out as far as he could. His glasses glinted in the sun as he yelled, ‘It's okay, Belle. Go on back in the house. Take care of Jimmy. It's okay. I'll be okay, Belle.'

‘Go, go, go!' Maestro told the jeep driver – an impetuous fellow they called ‘René the bullfighter' – who revved up and let in the clutch suddenly enough to burn rubber.

The young woman, Charrington's wife, did not go back. She ran along the porch, jumped down the steps and ran madly to get to the main gate before the Volvo did.

Perhaps she intended only to call goodbye. Instead of running along the road, she took a short-cut, running through the inner compound. She ran along keeping close to the wire fence behind which the trucks were lined up. That meant passing the generator. It was as she got to it that the heel on one of her shoes snapped. She stumbled and then snatched off both shoes to run barefoot. The stony path cut into her feet and she winced with pain but she did not slacken her pace. Far behind her came her small son. He thought his mother was running away from him. He couldn't keep up with her and as he tottered along he cried desperately.

Angel Paz had told everyone about his skills with explosives but, like many explosives experts, he was attracted to that study by its theatrics more than by its chemistry and physics. For this reason the explosive charge he had placed under the generator was liberal if not to say extravagant. Had the building been a flimsy one made of wood, or had the door been anything but steel, the explosion might only have bowled the woman over and given her a slight concussion. But Angel Paz wanted everyone to remember his demolition, and the generator exploded like a bomb. Fragments of ceramic, steel, glass and wire whined across the compound like a hail of bullets. Charrington's wife was hit by a hundred or more fragments and the blast carried her almost fifty yards. She landed in a heap near the outer wire, her skirt over her head and one arm severed from her trunk. She was dead of course. Even the child seemed to sense that, for when he got to her he stood at a distance, repelled as humans are in the presence of death.

A terrible moan came from Charrington but he and his voice were lost in a cloud of dust as the jeeps, the cars and trucks sped down the steep winding road. As they reached the bend the sound of the explosion came back along the valley to meet them.

Lucas watched the road ahead and thought about
everything that had happened. He felt sick but he did not suffer self-doubt, still less did he feel personal guilt. Ralph Lucas had seen enough of pain and death to have become hardened and something of a fatalist. Yet the death of the sentries and of Charrington's wife had affected him: perhaps it was a result of growing old. Certainly he found it difficult to share the adolescent political ideas of Angel Paz, and there was little to admire in the guerrillas. So far as he could see their misguided political ideas were just a rationale for violence. Given two years in office he had no doubt that they would become as corrupt and venal as the Benz government they so reviled. Most of his regrets were technical ones: he felt sure that he could have made a better job of the amputation, and he should have cautioned all concerned about the delicate state of mind that comes with the shock of serious injury. He was angry at the board which had pushed him into this absurd situation and, most of all, he wished he were clever enough to find a way out of it.

All the vehicles were driven too fast and that did not help Lucas' low spirits. The weight of the laden trucks caused them to slide in the soft dust at each hairpin. But the guerrillas were not sad. They were elated with the little victory they had scored, and the drivers enjoyed skidding on the corners while the men in the trucks began singing the old rebel songs.

As they neared the valley bottom the earth was dark and loamy. On the firmer road they made good time. The convoy stopped only three times in the following five and a half hours but there were many times when progress was so slow that men could get down from their vehicles and stretch, urinate, spit and swear before climbing back aboard. Once they came to a halt at a place where the road had split badly, once when a three-quarterton Dodge needed half a pint of oil and once when they heard the sound of a plane. It was a commercial flight and passed over some miles to the west, continuing its straight course. After that Ramón
ordered that the trucks should be adorned with leafy branches.

Even the two American prisoners were permitted to get out when the progress was slow. They were not restrained or carefully guarded after the first two hours. There is something about the jungle that makes most men prefer captivity to being free and lost in it.

The elderly Dodge gave more trouble before nightfall. It was a big strong four-by-four with a folding top and a useful winch at the front. One of the transmission shafts had gone. Despite his newly acquired vehicles, Ramón was reluctant to abandon the Dodge. When he heard that it would take most of the night to repair it, he had it towed to one of the derelict tin mines that are to be seen on that road between Rosario and the Sierra Sombra. The convoy would be kept together.

The tin mine, long abandoned, had been stripped bare: no chairs, tables or portable equipment. Corrugated iron sheets had been torn from the sides of some of the huts. But even these wrecked buildings made a shelter inside which the guerrillas could enjoy a fire. It was a luxury denied to them in this disputed region except when its light could be hidden.

The mechanics delved into the transmission of the ancient Dodge reconnaissance car. Ramón ordered that the meat stolen from the camp should be served to the men. It would not keep. Already it was thawed. Tomorrow it would be high; the next day rotten. So they roasted the cuts of beef over the open fires and the smell of it cooking made it a celebration. They relished every mouthful and when it was finished they slept deeply.

Angel Paz did not sleep. Around him men were snoring and belching contentedly. Some smoked and some just stared. The events of the last two days went round and round in his mind. He was afraid of the jungle and he felt lonely. Until now he'd always told himself that the USA was an alien environment. He'd expected to find himself at home amongst the revolutionaries in this Spanish-speaking
land. But suddenly, and inexplicably, he was feeling homesick for California.

With a tattered blanket wrapped round his shoulders he went over to where the mechanics were repairing the Dodge. Lucas was sitting in the back seat, smoking one of the powerful little cheroots the guerrillas rolled themselves. The two mechanics were working on the gearbox. One of them was kneeling on the floor at the front seat and the other, visible through the open panel, was on the ground under the car. Every now and again Lucas would lean over the back seat, to see what the mechanics were doing and offer them advice or instruction.