The Laughing Falcon (18 page)

They had sighted humans only once, shortly after leaving the original campsite: a man leading a horse down the trail, his wife and two children astride it. They had flattened themselves in a cornfield, where they remained unobserved in the morning twilight. Then they had retraced their steps to the Savegre River, struggling up its bank for three hours before Coyote took them into the forest, slashing a narrow trail.

Only at night when the moon was hidden did the rebels of Cinco de Mayo remove their kerchiefs. Maggie and Glo were not restrained while in their tents; no one expected them to stray off and risk the terrors of night in the jungle. In any event, one guerrilla was always on guard outside, the men taking four-hour shifts.

Maggie continued to share a tent with seventeen-year-old Quetzal, who liked to practise her English. When they were alone in the tent, even with a candle burning, Quetzal went without her kerchief, aware that Maggie had already seen her face. Though she offered confidences – often intimate – she professed not to know where they were going, and seemed more interested in talking about film stars and pop musicians than in changing the world. She had found love, that frangible, elusive concept, and had eyes only for the young man who had been with her at the supply base, Perezoso, meaning sloth. During rest stops he and Quetzal held hands and often kissed: they seemed immature, mundanely performing the stock roles of revolutionaries in love.

Since Tayra was Gloria-May’s tentmate, Zorro enjoyed a nightly respite from his partner’s scalding tongue. Maggie had been impressed to learn from Quetzal they had been married for twenty years. They were both Nicaraguans; he was from Managua, she was Afro-Caribbean, from the east coast, a descendant of the slaves brought there two centuries
ago. They had met in the war – both Sandinistas, Maggie assumed, though Quetzal wasn’t sure. Tayra was the troupe’s hardest worker, running the field kitchen, cleaning and packing up afterwards.

Although no longer tethered to Buho – in reward for her good behaviour — Maggie remained close to the scrawny young man, the gentlest of the crew, often speaking solicitously to her in his formal, precise English. He occasionally lectured her, using phrases like “doomed bourgeois society” and “educating the masses by deed,” proclaiming sombrely that “political conflicts are not settled by talk, as the liberals believe, but by struggle.” He was, as she had guessed, a student, studying for a degree in economics at Cuba’s national university. He played mournful tunes on his guitar in the evenings. His boots were ill-fitting and he walked in discomfort.

Wiry, stooped Coyote was the best of Halcón’s soldiers, the sole revolutionary here with jungle skills, expert at slicing through the ferns and spiny shrubs and thick lianas. But life had dealt him a bad hand. According to Quetzal, he had been a squatter, turned embittered when the rural guard threw him and his family on the road with their pots and pans and soiled mattresses. His wife and children had gone off with another man. Afterwards, he had tried homesteading — until his shack was gutted by fire.

Though Halcón smoked a cigarette at every pause, he had better wind than his comrades. He never addressed his two captives, and had few words even for his mates. Maggie was intrigued by this laconic man, with his dark, darting eyes and military haircut. What secrets were hidden behind that blue kerchief? If Quetzal knew any of his history she didn’t share it. As for the mysterious Benito Madrigal, he was currently in a mental hospital: a radical politician who had once run for president. Quetzal, formerly his housemaid, claimed he was a visionary, a great orator, a man much misunderstood.

Halcón was matched in stamina only by his two captives, the complaisant Margaret Schneider and the snarling Gloria-May Walker — too proud to beg Halcón for a cigarette, she had quit smoking: good for the lungs, bad for an already nasty disposition. Glo had refused to carry a backpack, and between bouts of vituperation marched sullenly behind Tayra like a dog, a rope around her waist.

Glo had a particular distaste for Zorro, who leered at her whenever his wife was not watching. When Tayra caught him doing so, she severely dressed him down. Zorro endured Tayra’s complaints and insults silently, though with an edge of irritation. It worried Maggie that Halcón had entrusted him with their entire arsenal; the two submachine guns and five pistols were bundled in his pack.

Late on the third day of their forced march, they entered a cloud forest: giant trees so weighted with moss and ferns and epiphytes that many had collapsed. At times, the going became treacherous, as they scrambled over deadfalls, among branches where Coyote prodded for snakes, through an understory thick with large-leaf herbs and prickly shrubs that lacerated their legs through the fabric of their pants.

Finally, the path became easier, a serviceable animal track. Here, the terrain was relatively gentle, the forest floor carpeted with dead leaves, but they were moving slowly, Coyote warily stirring the leaves with his machete. He had an almost instinctive sense of where snakes might hide, but the several they encountered had simply slithered away.

Everyone froze at the sound of a helicopter, a distant chuffing that soon receded. They often heard search aircraft passing directly over them, unseen above the treetops. Maggie felt sure that somewhere to the south, a ground party was advancing. Expert followers would soon locate one of the trails they had made: machete cuts, boot prints in mud. In the meantime, until rescued or otherwise released, she would think
positively: this was a unique adventure, inspiration for a gripping novel.

Coyote, his machete whispering through the undergrowth, was now leading them single file up a twenty-degree incline, followed by Halcón, then Maggie, and the tandem of Tayra and Glo, the five others straggling behind, fat Gordo at the rear, panting hard.

The column abruptly halted, closing like an accordion.
“Matabuey,”
Coyote said in a hoarse voice. He was shaking, stepping slowly back, then he started running down the hill, the others scampering after him, a chain reaction. Glo, tugged by Tayra’s rope, fell, and Maggie paused to help her to her feet.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“A bushmaster,
matabuey
,” Buho said in a trembling whisper. “This means bull killer.” He translated Coyote’s rapid-fire Spanish: “He says it is very fast, and will pursue.” Coyote had his machete at the ready. Zorro had retrieved an automatic pistol from his heavy pack.

Maggie had encountered rattlers on the prairies, but had not heard of snakes seeking human prey. Her curiosity overcame her qualms and she retraced her steps, climbing onto a high cradle formed by a twisting liana. From this perch, she spotted the diamond-backed snake, at least three metres long and only ten metres away. It yawned, showing a chilling set of fangs. Maggie would have bolted had she not seen a bulky protrusion in the area of its stomach.

“Qué pasa?”
someone called.

“It’s not moving. I think it just ate.” As she spoke, the snake did begin to move, turning in a long, lazy spiral and winding slowly into the forest. She felt awed by its grace and savage beauty. “We’re okay,” she called. “It’s going.”

They seemed uncertain at first, but Halcón prodded them forward. Maggie could not tell if, behind their kerchiefs, they appeared sheepish as they silently rejoined her. Glo was scornful: “The brave soldiers of the Fifth of May.
No hablo cojones.”
Her Spanish might have been flawed, but the message was reasonably clear.

As they recommenced their slow upward journey, rays of the lowering sun pierced the foliage above. Maggie was the first to see the quetzal — with its streaming green tail feathers, scarlet and snowy white beneath. The entire column stopped and watched as it snapped a lizard from a branch, then sailed into the mist.

Under more comfortable circumstances, Maggie might have been enraptured by this expedition: a diversion from her mundane world of hawking farm machinery or extolling the sizzling steaks at Spiro’s Eighth Street Grill. Coyote had shown them tracks of a jaguar and a tapir. Tanagers and trogons regularly darted past them, birds of such brilliant plumage that at each sighting Maggie felt a momentary lifting of gloom.

Maggie heard groans from the group ahead, who had reached a wide rocky ledge. She grasped a tree root, swung herself up beside them, and found herself looking down the rim of a forested ravine; distantly from below came the sound of rushing water, the upper reaches of the Savegre.

Halcón checked his compass, then drew a cigarette from his pack of Derbys. While he conferred with his team, Maggie sat beside Glo and whispered, “I don’t think we are where we’re supposed to be.”

“You can fucking definitely say that again. These yo-yos couldn’t follow the south end of a northbound mule.” She called, “Hey, you, Buho.”

The young man came over. “Can I be of help, señora?”

“I feel grubbier than a rat in a swamp — let’s carry on down to where there’s some water.”

“I am sorry, Halcón says we should camp here.”

“Look, you go over there and tell that son of a bitch to admit he’s got y’all completely lost. He’s leading you nowhere, Buho, so maybe it’s time for the rank and file to rise.”

“Do not underestimate our captain, señora.”

“Tell him my husband is going to have his love appendages hanging off a barbed-wire fence.” She said this loudly, intended for Halcón, who glanced her way. She shouted at him: “Fetch me some goddamn water so I can wash up. It’s no way to treat a lady, you lump of mule shit!”

Until now, Halcón had taken her abuse with an almost unsettling composure – but he finally reacted. He strode toward them and addressed Glo in clear English. “Be a lady, then I will treat you that way. This is not the Royal Plaza Hotel.” A deep voice but flat, without tone or emphasis. “But as you see, the sun, soon it will set. The river is half an hour. Here we will camp.”

Halcón turned to his comrades and issued quiet orders. Backpacks were shucked, tents removed. From this high vantage point, Maggie could see the hazy blue of the Pacific Ocean, the sun flattening on it like a bright orange egg. She watched solemnly until it was a pinprick of light; before dying it shot out an intense green spark that made her blink in surprise. It seemed a cryptic message, perhaps of hope.

The three men erecting the tents suddenly began a wild dance, lifting their legs, slapping at their ankles.

“Hormigas rojas!”

Fire ants — Maggie could see tiny forms swarming the men as they raced into the trees.

Zorro performed a feat of bravery, running to the tents, picking them up, hurrying to safety. Tayra bent and brushed the ants from his ankles: a rare moment of caring interaction between them.

Glo called: “Where did you learn to pick a campsite, Halcón, the Boy Scouts?” He did not respond.

The site abandoned, they began filing down the ravine along a switchback animal path, a descent marked by much tripping and sliding and grasping at roots and branches. Darkness was settling upon them as they reached the edge of a fast-rushing
creek, a
quebrada
, in Maggie’s growing Spanish lexicon.

Overlooking the stream was a rock bluff. Maggie’s eyes widened at the sight of an extraordinary object resting on it, a ten-ton granite cannonball, a spherical stone at least two metres in diameter and so symmetrical it had to be the work of man not nature. All but Coyote, who was leery of it, gathered around its perimeter, staring with awe, stroking it.

“This is a sign,” said Buho.

“Of what?” Maggie asked.

He frowned. “I am not sure.” But he explained the sphere was likely sculpted by the peoples of pre-Columbian times; many had been found in Costa Rica, though their purpose had never been determined.

A breeze whispered through the trees. Coyote backed away several metres from the sphere, muttering anxiously.

“He says he can hear their voices, they are warning us of danger.” Buho shrugged. “We must forgive Coyote; he comes from a tradition of false beliefs, of superstition.”

Gordo seemed less concerned, insisting that his fellows boost him onto the stone, where he rose to his full five feet and four inches and raised a fist. “
Viva Benito Madrigal
,” he said. Of all the guerrillas, he seemed their hero’s staunchest fan.

The bluff was a natural campsite, hidden under vine-entangled trees, and Halcón, dismissing Coyote’s objections, ordered the tents be raised near the sphere. Maggie, as usual, took charge of the task, gathering stones to weigh down the tents. She listened for the warning voices of ancient aboriginal spirits but heard only the haunting call of a bird: poo-oor me, it seemed to say.

The stoves were lit for the
gallo pinto
. The plain daily fare — rice and beans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner – was putting Maggie’s taste buds to sleep. She had passed up chances to vary the diet: Coyote occasionally caught crawfish and river shrimp and even trout, using berries to lure them to the point of his
machete. On their second day, he had snared a turkey-sized bird, a curassow, but she had picked the bits of meat away from her
arroz con curassow
.

The stars were out by the time the camp was set up. Maggie found Glo by her tent; her bindings had been released and she was pulling off her boots, which parted from her feet with a sucking sound. She turned them upside down to dry and shouted at Gordo, who was standing guard, “Get me some hot water!”

“Glo, I think you might be better turning on the charm.”

“I’d throw up.”

“Try it, Glo. You might not have to spend all day at the end of a rope.”

Maggie found her way in the darkness to the glow of the stoves. She joined Quetzal, picked up a wooden spoon, and began stirring the beans. The young woman, who had already removed her kerchief, smiled at her.

She called Maggie
valiente
because she had not fled from the snake. Maggie shrugged off the compliment: Quetzal, too, was brave, to have joined this revolutionary commando. Quetzal said she had been inspired to do so by the words and deeds of her former
patrón
, Benito Madrigal.