The Viper Squad (15 page)

“Thank you for talking to me. I hope it won’t get you in trouble. All I need to know is how to get to San Salvador from here.”

The woman shook her head. “Impossible. The guerrillas hold this area. They and the army are fighting everywhere. If the soldiers
catch you, maybe they shoot you, maybe not. It does not matter who you are—they are loco and no one will ever know. The guerrillas
are different—they will give you a trial and then shoot you for certain. As a spy. They think everyone is a spy. I won’t ask
you how you came here—but that is your only way out of here.”

The other women mostly kept their eyes on their work, glancing at her quickly but listening to every word. Sally felt they
were sympathetic to her but lacked the young woman’s nerve. Women everywhere are so easily intimidated, Sally thought angrily.

“What if I go east, over the mountains into Honduras?” Sally aked.

The woman pointed to the high mountains. “These are baby mountains in El Salvador. In Honduras they have big mountains. Cordilleras.
And you would have to cross the river Lempa at the border. A foreign woman by herself
would be stopped. No. You must go back the way you came in here.”

“I understand.”

Without letting the other women see what she was doing, Sally removed one of the hundred-dollar bills from the wad she had
kept hidden from the guerrillas. The woman’s eyes grew round in wonder at the sight of such a valuable banknote. Sally crumpled
it quickly and dropped it on the earth.

She winked at the woman and said, “Gracias, senorita.” She turned and waved to the other woman. “Hasta luego, senoras.”

A chorus of farewells followed her as she walked away.

As Sally climbed back up the mountains toward the burnt-out camp, she felt strangely elated. This was some—thing she would
not have been capable of doing only weeks previously—admitting to herself that something could not be achieved the way she
wanted and backtracking in order to wait for another opportunity. No sulks. No rages. Only a calm determination to see this
through. Sally decided that she was becoming a mature woman.

She slept in the forest that night, terrified of the sounds that night creatures made, expecting at any moment to feel the
fangs of a jaguar in her flesh or of a vampire bat on her neck. Apart from a few mice, nothing came near her. Back at the
destroyed camp the next day, her determination weakened and she lapsed into a depression. After she swam and washed her hair
and combat fatigues with real soap in the stream, she felt better.

When Clarinero returned and fussed over the languishing maiden, she enjoyed every minute of it. She had almost forgotten the
pleasures of male attention.

“I am sorry about the death of your friend Gabriela,” Clarinero told her.

“She was my guard as well as protector,” Sally said. “I liked her, but I didn’t cry any tears for her. In fact, I was kind
of surprised at myself for not being more upset. I’ve
even totally recovered from Bennett’s murder, and I know I wouldn’t have yet if we’d been home in Boston and he had been
killed in a car accident on the Massachusetts Turnpike. I would have been distraught for a year. Here I seem to harden myself
and move on.”

“One has to, in order to survive,” Clarinero said sympathetically.

“Do you think freedom is worth all this death and violence?”

“We’ve always had murder and injustice here—they didn’t arrive with the guerrillas. We believe that our fight for freedom
will bring a just and peaceful society. After we win.”

“Are you a communist?” Sally asked.

He shook his head vehemently. “Certainly not. The guerrillas are every shade of the political spectrum—we even have some in
the far right. I know your American media always refer to us as left—wing terrorists, but that is not true.”

“Not everyone who fought on Castro’s side was a communist, and a lot of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua weren’t either, yet guess
who ended up in control.”

Clarinero held up a hand. “That will not happen in El Salvador.”

“Famous last words.” Sally laughed. “That’s part of their plan—let the moderates recruit the fighters and bear the brunt of
the fighting, then the cadres move in and get rid of the moderate leaders after they’ve won. That’s what they did in Moscow.
The Bolsheviks didn’t overthrow the czar like they’d have everyone believe. The moderates did. Then the Bolsheviks and Mr.
Lenin sneaked in and took over, along with Comrade Stalin.”

“Never in El Salvador,” Clarinero said.

“Bullshit!” Sally said in English, since the Spanish language lacked a word to convey so neatly her exact meaning.

“Those troubles we will have to leave until it’s time to
face them,” Clarinero said in perfect English. He smiled at her surprised look. “My father at one time was a diplomat. I
went to high school in Chevy Chase and spent two years at Princeton. I made the rowing team there and had my own Ferrari.”
He gestured about him at the burnt-out camp. “This is how I repay my parents.”

“Your family was one of Los Catorce?”

“One of what are called ‘The Fourteen,’ yes, although there are really about fifty families in the ruling oligarchy. About
two percent of the population owns more than sixty percent of the land in El Salvador. Our families are very aristocratic,
proud of what we claim is our pure European blood. We regard the slightest concession to the illiterate campesinos as pure
Bolshevism. You’ve seen the campesinos for yourself, Sally. They have little to lose, whatever they do; and it’s true that
they are exploited by communist agitators. You Americans say, ‘Have a fair vote and a democratic government.’ But democracy
depends upon the middle class, and here the middle class is small and weak. There are some things wrong that I do as a guerrilla,
Sally, but I would be an even greater criminal if I sat back, grew fat on the misfortunes of others and did nothing.”

Sally hardly knew what he was saying anymore. He spoke English …Princeton … handsome.… She gazed in his eyes and trembled
when his fingers lightly brushed her arm.

Mike Campbell flew from Mobile to Atlanta and changed planes for Washington, D.C. He hired a car, crossed the bridge from
Annapolis to the Delmarva peninsula and took Route 50 down Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Knowing how they could be stopped entering
El Salvador on a single word from the U.S. government, Mike had decided he could not risk any weapons training. If the FBI
spotted three known mercs together with shotguns after rabbits, they raised a multistate alarm.

He followed 13 south and turned off for Chincoteague. The road ran along the edge of the Wallops Island rocket
base, picturesque and smooth as a golf course, giant dish antennas peering up into the sky next to dark woods. A few trawlers
were being unloaded at the dock at the town of Chincoteague, but otherwise there was not much happening. The tourist places
were still shut up this early in the year. Mike asked directions to the campground at the edge of town, and this proved to
be almost empty too, except for seven one-man tents beneath pine trees in one corner. Mike had seen this campground in an
otherwise boring home movie that one of his neighbors back in Arizona had made on a trip east. As he drove up, Andre was exercising
the team. They all wore running shoes and green track suits with blue lettering:
MURRAY HILL TRACK AND ROAD CLUB
.

Each morning, not long after dawn and a breakfast of eggs, bacon and sausages cooked over a camp stove, Andre drove them in
his rented station wagon across the bridge to Assateague Island National Seashore, and they ran, jogged and walked for miles
along the deserted Atlantic beach. They got back to the station wagon about midday and drove to town to a restaurant by the
docks for a meal of seafood and beer. Then a couple of hours’ siesta in the tents, followed by a couple of hours’ running
in the marshes, scrub and grasses on Assateague Island. Dinner in the restaurant—with a lot of beer this time to relax sore
muscles—and sack out gratefully in a sleeping bag with a hole scooped in the ground beneath for the hipbone.

Mike ordered the same routine every day, knowing that routine and boredom both created and tested a team’s discipline. Andre
Verdoux called the shots, and Mike worked out as a regular member of the team—sometimes, to their amusement, cursing Andre
out as a stern taskmaster.

“You notice anything about Lance Hardwick?” Andre asked Mike one evening.

“Hell, no. I have enough trouble looking out for myself,” Mike said. “He seems gung ho. He’s sure got more energy and enthusiasm
than any of the rest of us.”

“That’s what I mean,” Andre said. “Where’s it coming from?”

“Sour grapes,” Mike responded with a grin. “When you and I were kids, we were just like that.”

“Watch him,” Andre said dryly.

Mike did. Lance was a rookie at the merc game, so it was reasonable for him to show more enthusiasm than any of the others.
Besides, he was the only man on the team without real-life combat experience, so he had to prove something to himself and
the others.

Just as Andre might be trying to make a place on the team for himself by insinuating things against Lance.

At dinner that night, Mike announced they would not be hitting their usual routine on Assateague Island the next day. Instead,
they would go to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Dorchester County on the Eastern Shore. He passed around an ordinance
map of the area and a compass to each man.

“Each man sets off at twenty-minute intervals from this point, where Route 335 crosses the water,” Mike told them. “The X
marked in ballpoint on the blue high—way east of the refuge is the pickup point where Andre will wait for us with the station
wagon. I think it’s illegal to cross the refuge the way we are going; and if you’re caught by park rangers, you’re eliminated.
It’s against the rules to ask anyone the way or get help, though I doubt you’ll meet anyone while crossing these marshes.
However, you may follow another man if you can, or team up if you want—but remember that of any two men finishing together,
the one who started latest is the winner. There’ll be only one winner. The rest of us will be losers.”

This sounded like a holiday to everyone after Andre’s relentless daily grind on the beach—at least it did till they saw the
Blackwater Refuge next morning from the bridge on Route 335. It was a gray, cold day and the waves slapped on the inland water
as if it were the Atlantic. Tall reeds grew in icy water as far as they could see across the
flat horizon, interrupted only by isolated hummocks sporting a few wind-tattered pines. No house could be seen in any direction.

Unexpectedly, Mike took over from Andre and lined the men up by the side of the road. “Strip!” he roared at Lance Hardwick.

“Mike, in this cold!” Lance protested. “You gotta be crazy!”

“Strip.”

Lance untied his running shoes and unzipped his track suit and stood in the buff by the deserted road, shivering.

Mike picked up the track suit and searched its pockets. He found only the map, compass and a packet of raisins, which he emptied
out on the road. He picked up the right shoe and found nothing. Then the left. A clear plastic packet of white powder fell
out.

“Get dressed,” Mike said. As Lance did, Mike asked him, “Coke?”

“Right. You want some?”

Mike waited till Lance had tied both shoelaces and stood erect. Then he hit him on the mouth, drawing blood, and again caught
him with a right across, which decked him.

Lance rolled away from his attacker and came to his feet again in one fluid movement, hands held before his body, feet apart.

Mike lunged at him, allowing Lance to think he was making an enraged charge. Instead, Mike drew back just before contact,
swiveled on one foot and delivered a chest-high kick. Lance managed to twist away from the full impact of the kick and rode
with its force, being thrown to the ground again but again rolling back effortlessly into a fighting stance.

Mike saw that Lance was good enough to spar and roll with anything that was thrown at him. Which was the sort of stuff he
could learn in a gym. Close-in fighting for real was probably something he knew less about, and some—thing in which Mike excelled.
Mike stepped in fast,
feinted, and stepped inside the range of Lance’s kicks. Mike drove the base of his right palm beneath Lance’s nostrils, snapping
his head back on his shoulders, nearly tearing the nose off his face. Mike followed with a straight left knuckles-up karate
punch to his solar plexus, which drove the wind from his lungs and left him bent over, choking on the blood from his nose.
A side kick in his ribs leveled him and left him retching and writhing on the roadway at Mike’s feet.

Mike glanced at his watch and pointed at Joe Nolan. “First man away!”

Joe headed into the marsh without a word, and Andre fussily noted the time on a clipboard.

Harvey went next. Cesar. Then Mike himself. Bob Murphy uncapped a flask of coffee immediately after Mike had gone and helped
Lance to some. Without getting up from the roadway, Lance gratefully sipped the hot liquid. Bob fetched him a plastic basin
of water and a roll of paper towels so he could wash the blood from his face and neck.

“Andre will drive you to Cambridge and give you money to get home,” Bob said. “I got to go, kid. Take care of yourself.”

Lance nodded, dejected.

After Bob set out, Andre called to Lance, “Let’s go.”

“No.”

Andre shrugged. “So be it.”

He drove away.

Bob Murphy finished with the best time by far, reaching the pickup point before any of the others, even though the first man
had a start of an hour and twenty minutes on him.

First to start, Joe Nolan came in last. “If you guys had to cross Baltimore or Wilmington, I’d have won hands down. Trouble
here is all this damn green stuff blocking the view, and it all looks the same.”

Bob said, “What this place needs, Joe, is a thick coat of asphalt and maybe some birdbaths and stuff so you don’t have to
leave your car to see the wildlife.”