The Viper Squad (28 page)

They were all beyond help. Mike could do nothing for them without getting into major commitments. He did not feel good about
killing these people—after all, they were farmers defending their home soil. It was not their fault
that their government interfered in the affairs of other countries. However, it was their misfortune.

Mike turned to walk away and catch up with the team. He felt a sharp pain in his upper left arm and heard a shot. He looked
and saw his sleeve ripped and the cloth absorbing blood. He spun about, and another bullet whined past his right ear. Almost
at his feet, one of the dying militiamen, with a huge blotch of bright scarlet blood on his shirtfront, lay on his back and
aimed a .32 revolver at him with a wavering hand.

Mike jumped away, and another bullet missed him. The Nicaraguan followed Mike with his eyes, still lying on his back, unable
to sit up. Mike ran around behind his head, making it necessary for the nearly immobilized militiaman to lean back his head
and see him upside down. Even so, the Nicaraguan brought the revolver alongside his face to try for another shot.

A flat red rock about a foot across lay near Mike’s feet. His left arm hurt like hell, but he stooped and picked up the rock
with both hands, raised it above his head and slammed it down into the face and searching eyes of the militiaman.

Sally had been pleased at first to be given a wood hut all to herself, until she found out why. Most of the wood buildings
in the compound were dormitories, one for women and the others for men. The small huts were occupied by guerrilla officers
and by Cuban trainers. Other than sleeping, everything else was done outdoors. Or almost everything else…

Paulo Esteban stood in the open door of her hut, looking in at her. As usual, Manuel tagged along behind him like a faithful
dog. Esteban had seen her coming from the women’s showers. There was no lock on her door, not even a bolt, to keep him out.
There was no one to whom she could complain. She was not a Salvadoran guerrilla. She was not under the protection of any of
the guerrilla officers here—
none of them had known Clarinero personally (she still did not believe what Radio Venceremos said about Clarinero’s being
dead, even though it was the rebels’ own radio station). All that anyone knew in this Salvadoran guerrilla training camp,
somewhere in Nicaragua, was that she had come with Paulo and Manuel. Therefore she was “their woman.” Some things hadn’t changed
much with the glorious revolution. Esteban’s woman. Somewhere in Nicaragua. Oh yes, she was finding the real truth for which
Bennett and she had searched. And she was glad there was no video camera to record it.

Esteban enjoyed tormenting her. Here was a gringa who understood his taunts in Spanish. So few did.

“What did the little rich girl learn today about the real world?” he asked from the doorway as Manuel snickered behind him.

Sally sat on the edge of her folding camp bed, brushing her long blond hair. She said, “Get out of here!”

He and Manuel came in and closed the door after them.

“I asked you a question,” Paulo said in a menacing voice.

“Then I’ll give you an answer!” Sally shouted, waving her hairbrush at him. “The little rich girl, as you call her, learned
that the real world is back in Boston, not down here where one set of fools brainwash another set of fools to do someone else’s
bidding!”

Paulo walked across and shook her by the shoulders. “You’re going to have to change what you say if you ever want to see Boston
again. Before we let you go home, we will already have released a whole series of videotapes of you praising what we are doing
in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and your father will be compelled to show them on his television stations. The sooner you agree
to begin making these tapes, the sooner you’ll see Boston again.”

“You’ll have to brainwash me first!”

“There’s no brainwashing here, Sally,” he said, his
voice turning gentle. “All we ask is that you see the truth as it really is.”

Paulo stroked her breasts. She brushed his hand away. He immediately replaced it, stroking her more aggressively than before.

She tried to stand, but he pressed her down into a sitting position again on the camp bed.

“No!”

His hands crept inside her shirt.

“Paulo, I said no!”

He peeled the shirt from her shoulders. She was not wearing a bra. He stroked her breasts and fondled her nipples, and in
spite of herself she felt them grow erect.

“I’ll scream,” she threatened.

“If you do, I’ll have to gag you, Sally. Remember last time, how you nearly choked.”

She protested only weakly as he pulled first her fatigues and then her panties off her legs.

“But not him.” She pointed at Manuel.

She was bargaining now.

“Manuel is a revolutionary, Sally. He deserves everyone’s gratitude. And he’s my friend.”

He pulled her to her feet and made her stand there naked, facing him.

Manuel came behind her, unzipping his pants.

Paulo caught her by the shoulders and forced her to bend over.

“No, no, not like that!” she whimpered as Manuel forced himself into her from behind.

Esteban unzipped himself and pushed her upright again. He entered her brutally. The two men pounded into her, and she sobbed
and pleaded with them to stop hurting her, her voice half-stifled as she was pressed between their bodies.

T
HE
worst heat of the day had passed by the time Mike Campbell and the team got to the area where they believed the Salvadoran
training camp to be. Except there was no sign of it in the forested valley where it was supposed to be.

“This map is not in high detail,” Mike said, pointing to the chart the Cuban had marked for him and comparing it to a more
highly detailed military chart. “It could be this next valley over.”

“Or the Cuban could have been lying,” Lance commented.

Mike smiled. “I’ve noticed you think people lie under pressure, Lance, even when they’re bargaining for their lives. But I
tell you that when you have someone with his back to the wall and he suddenly sounds as if he’s started to tell the truth,
you can usually rely on it. I’ve been fooled by some good liars in my time, but never by a guy sweating out what he thinks
may be his last hour on earth. A lot of men choose the path of virtue when they see that truth can buy their freedom and another
lie can hang them. They take no more chances. Let’s look at that next valley before we mouth off our worries.”

They moved out, and Bob Murphy said to Lance, “Mike had to put you down that time. He’s telling you something he’s learned
himself. See how he didn’t get all wound up when things weren’t where they’re supposed to be. That’s what makes him a top
man to lead a mission. He doesn’t expect things to work out easy. He even gets suspicious when things work out like they’re
supposed to. Even now, if that camp isn’t in the next valley, I bet he has two or three more plans swimming around in his
head.”

The Aussie was giving Mike more credit than he deserved. Mike had slapped Lance down—as he would any man who made negative,
defeatist comments as a matter of habit during a mission without backing them up with constructive alternatives. Mike had
no other plans if they could not locate this camp, and he didn’t need a rookie like Lance to remind him they were invading
Nicaragua on the word of a Cuban communist.

The training camp was in the next valley, halfway up the side of the far slope. The sun had begun to set and the light wasn’t
great; but through his binoculars Mike made out more than a hundred figures moving about inside the compound, and sentries
on the perimeter, but no wire or guardhouses.

He handed the binoculars to Lance. “Keep watching. See if they come and go any old way or if they avoid certain areas that
might be mine fields.”

Mike’s left arm throbbed painfully. Andre had cleaned and dressed the wound, which was an angry red furrow channeled out of
his flesh by the militiaman’s bullet. The wound did not interfere with his arm movements; and so long as it did not become
badly infected, it would heal into just another memento on his body of battles past and almost forgotten.

They ate C rations, and were ready to move down into the valley at dusk. Mike figured it would take them about an hour to
walk to the camp’s location, so he left just about that much dying light to make the trip. He wanted to
arrive at the camp in darkness. From all they could learn, the compound seemed nothing more than a collection of wood huts
in a forest clearing. There were no fortifications, no attempt had been made to conceal the camp from the air, and people
down there seemed to wander in and out at will. But there were guards. Presumably there would be an arsenal. And it had more
than a hundred occupants, men and women. The mercs could learn nothing more from this distance and in the fading daylight.

Mike briefed them on his general plan: “We go down unseen, spot the girl in the camp, take her with minimum fuss, march through
the night toward the Honduran border and cross at dawn. Okay?”

None of them were so simpleminded as to believe things would actually happen this way. But not even Lance said anything. After
all, Mike had told him earlier that the training camp would be in the next valley, and it was. Even he could not argue with
success.

They became lost for a while on the way down the valley and up its other side, and finally got their direction right by the
numerous oil lamps being lit in the camp itself. The looming shapes of the trees against the lighter sky made it reasonably
easy for them to find their way through the woods in the gathering darkness. Occasionally a thorn bush made itself known to
one of the team, and the rest were warned off by the whispered curses of its discoverer as he freed his legs from it.

“They don’t seem to have a generator,” Mike said. “Each of these oil lamps illuminates only a very small area, which will
be good for us. We should be able to see Sally easily enough if she walks close to any of the lamps. One bad thing may be
that with only lamps for illumination, they probably turn in very early—so we don’t have much time to find her tonight. No
more talk from now on. No cigarettes or lights. And try to walk more quietly—they don’t have nocturnal forest elephants in
Central America.”

They did the best they could, but in the darkness it was
impossible to move silently through undergrowth and over dead branches.

A voice called out to them in Spanish: “Who’s there?” Mike nudged Cesar, the only native Spanish speaker, to reply.

“We’re the new training unit,” Cesar called back in a broad Cuban accent. “Our truck broke down and we got lost trying to
take a shortcut.”

This explanation was greeted by laughter, then the reply, “And
you’ve
come to train
us!”

As footsteps approached, they all ducked down and hoped they wouldn’t be seen. Cesar walked toward the man and they shook
hands.

“Where are the others?” the Salvadoran sentry asked.

“Roberto,” Cesar called, and Bob Murphy lumbered up to the Salvadoran.

When the sentry put out his hand, Bob grabbed it, pulled him forward off balance, and chopped him twice with the side of his
right hand. The others heard a bone snap and a sigh of expelled air. They left the crumpled sentry on the forest floor behind
them.

“You can’t expect all of them to be that dumb,” Mike whispered warningly.

By now it was pitch-dark. The camp, with scores of lighted oil lamps swinging to and fro in the slight breeze in the otherwise
dark valley, looked a little like a large ship on a night sea. They made their way slowly and as quietly as they could, climbing
to the slope directly above the camp.

When Joe Nolan walked nose-first into a gun muzzle, he knew it was a Kalashnikov by the full hood over the front sight. From
about ten paces to the right, a flashlight flickered on his face for an instant. Then all was dark again. The muzzle of the
assault rifle was now pressed in earnest just below his right eye. Joe Nolan was no Cuban, Salvadoran or Nicaraguan—that much
anyone could tell, even in a momentary flashlight beam.

Joe couldn’t speak Spanish, but even if he did, he could not for the life of him think of something plausible to say.

It was Cesar Ordonez who spoke, from the darkness behind Joe. “Very good, compañeros. I had sworn we would be able to infiltrate
among you without being noticed—from what I saw of the camp awhile back. It looked like a very loosely run place. You surprised
me, I admit that. I am one of your new Cuban instructors. This norteamericano speaks no Spanish. He is an explosives expert
and is one of us.”

The gun barrel did not budge from Nolan’s cheekbone.

“Being cautious, eh?” Cesar went on in Spanish in his strongest Cuban accent. “You have a right to be. We cannot be too vigilant
for the revolution, no? Well, I have my papers here and other documents.” Cesar fluttered them in the dark.

Campbell smiled grimly at Cesar’s ploy to get the second man with the flashlight to reveal his exact where-abouts and to take
his hand off his trigger to operate the flashlight.

It worked.

The flashlight beam sprang out at the papers in Cesar’s left hand, and the muzzle of the Kalashnikov was with—drawn a few
inches.

That was all Joe Nolan needed. He knocked aside the rifle barrel with his right hand, which gripped a U.S. Marine Corps combat
knife. Nolan could see the man’s face by flashlight, and he drove the knuckles of his left fist into the man’s mouth and hung
onto his lower jaw, with his fingers between his teeth, to keep him quiet. On Nolan’s first thrust with the combat knife,
the Salvadoran dropped the Kalashnikov unfired. He tried to fend off Nolan with his arms and fists, but, in a frenzy, the
merc stabbed at everything that came his way, severing two of the man’s fingers before finishing him off with blind thrusts
to the body.

Nolan’s left hand was bitten across the knuckles from
the man’s upper teeth, and on the palm from the lower teeth. But at least the guy died without making a sound, and that was
what counted now.