War Baby (19 page)

Finding no humans to slaughter, the soldiers had instead slaughtered all the dogs. Dozens of them lay in the sun, stiff and bloated and covered with the black iridescent flies. One of them had been nailed to a picture of Archbishop Romero, in the attitude of crucifixion, and flung in the dust.

A group of women and children stood in the compound outside the hospital surrounded by a ring of soldiers. The children were crying, hiding their faces in their mothers’ laps. An officer was standing on the hospital veranda, studying his prisoners. When the soldiers marched Ryan into the village he grinned, hugely delighted with this new prize. His brass belt and tunic buttons were spit-polished, and he wore a silk cravat and an olive-green forage cap. A major, Ryan guessed, by the pips on his shoulder. He had black, Spanish eyes.

He stood in front of Ryan and looked him up and down. ‘American?’

‘English,’ Ryan said.

The major surveyed his wounds with detached interest. One of the soldiers threw his camera and backpack on the ground. ‘Who are you?’

‘My name’s Sean Ryan. I’m a photo-journalist. I’m on assignment for the BBC.’ People who had never heard of Newsweek or Dan Rather or even Time magazine had heard of the BBC. Ryan had borrowed the credentials of this august organization on more than one occasion when he needed to save his hide.

The major did not appear to be as impressed as he had hoped. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I have been doing a story on the
compas
.’

‘The terrorists.’

‘Yeah, the terrorists. I got caught up in the firefight last night.’ There was a quick exchange in Spanish between the major and one of the soldiers.

‘You were fighting with the terrorists?’

‘No, I was taking photographs of them.’

The major did not appear convinced but seemed unsure how to proceed. He was no doubt weighing his choices; one of which, Ryan supposed, was to stand him against the hospital wall and shoot him.

‘Your papers?’ the major asked.

‘In my jacket.’

The major nodded to one of the soldiers, who patted him down and found his passport and COPREFOR press accreditation. The major glanced at them, then slipped them into the breast pocket of his tunic. ‘How long have you been with the terrorists?’

‘Three weeks.’

‘Three weeks? Alone?’

Ryan decided to keep quiet about Webb: no point in alerting them to another potential source of trouble. Keep that ace in the hole. ‘Alone.’

‘It is illegal to consort with communists. You have placed yourself outside government protection.’

‘I was doing a story on their activities, that’s all. To expose them to the world for the scum they are.’

The major nodded and turned away. Ryan knew that for the moment his fate had been deferred. The major had more pressing matters to attend to; the women and children his men had captured that morning. He rapped an order to his sergeant, who relayed his instructions to the soldiers. Immediately his squad barged among the women, tearing the screaming children from their mothers’ arms. The women shrieked in terror; the soldiers used their rifle butts to fend them off. It took several long minutes before the prisoners had been corralled into two groups.

Ryan felt sick to his stomach. He knew what was coming.

The women were herded against the hospital wall. The major nodded to his sergeant, and the soldiers rammed fresh ammunition clips into their M-16’S.

‘Wait,’ Ryan said.

The major turned around, a smile on his face.

‘You can’t do this.’

‘These people are terrorists. Scum, you called them.’

‘They’re just women.’

‘The women will breed more terrorists. We are destroying the problem at its source.’

‘They’re innocent.’

The major’s face creased into a frown of thoughtful concentration, as if they were debating philosophy in some book- lined study. ‘No one is innocent,
inglès
. Only God can take away our sins and make us … innocent.’

‘You kill their mothers in front of them, they’ll hate you till they day they die.’

‘Yes. Yes, you are right.’ He rapped another order to the sergeant.

The soldiers broke the cordon and ushered the children back to their relieved and sobbing mothers, who bent to hug them.

Another clash of metal as the soldiers raised their rifles to their shoulders.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I was going to spare the children, but you have persuaded me otherwise.’

‘No,’ Ryan said.

The M-16s were set to automatic fire. It took just a few seconds for the dozen soldiers assigned to the duty to empty their clips, and in that time the huddle of women and children became just a sprawl of bloodied and twitching limbs in the red dirt.

Silence.

The major turned away, satisfied. ‘Thank you for your advice,
inglès
. You are right. Unless we are thorough, we will just make another generation of terrorists and murderers.’

Ryan heard the enfeebled cries of a child, still alive among the bodies. He knew as well as the major that bullets did not always kill straight away. Dying took time, unless the executioner was precise.

The major took an automatic pistol from his belt and walked among the bodies dispensing this precision. He reloaded the clip twice before he was finished.

* * *

A company medic stripped off Ryan’s shirt and examined him. After he had dressed the wounds he spoke rapidly in Spanish to the major and left.

‘He says you are lucky. They are relatively minor wounds. One bullet removed a little muscle from your shoulder, the other went through the bicep and grazed the humerus.’

‘Yeah, I feel lucky,’ Ryan said.

There was a sonorous buzzing of flies from outside the window as the insects descended on the freshly slaughtered bodies. Ryan guessed they would be left unburied, yet one further humiliation.

‘What are we going to do with you?’

‘You could drive me back to the Camino Real, and order me some breakfast and a hot bath’

The major laughed easily. ‘Yes, we could do that,’ he said. He sat down on a stool beside the bed and crossed his legs, looking for his own reflection in his polished boots. Too much dust on them for his liking. He rubbed fretfully at the leather. ‘Did you enjoy this morning’s show?’

‘Did you?’

The major laughed again. He got up and left, leaving two unsmiling guards with M-3 machine guns guarding the door.

Ryan curled up on the cot. He felt numb. He tried not to think about the massacre he had just witnessed, but every time he closed his eyes he replayed it in his head. It was like he had told Mickey; he had seen enough killing for a hundred lifetimes. It was time to get out. He hoped that he would be on his own terms, but he supposed that was out of his hands now.

Later that afternoon he heard a helicopter land in the compound and a little while later heavy boots stamped up the veranda steps. He sat up. The major entered, followed by another man wearing camouflage fatigues, jungle boots and a forage cap. He was chewing gum. There was no insignia on his uniform but Ryan thought he recognized him from long ago, in a Strikers’ camp on the Cambodia border.

It was the lieutenant from Que Trang.

He was older now, and his hair was iron grey and his skin was tanned the color of old tobacco. ‘My, my, my. What have we here? I know you, don’t I?’

Ryan recognized the Texan drawl from the radio.

‘I think we’ve met. But the name escapes me.’

‘Name’s Buford. Don’t go botherin’ yourself about things like rank and such. You can just call me sir.’

‘Thanks, Buford.’

A thin smile. He had a slit of a mouth like a shark’s, no lips. Buford stood beside Ryan’s cot, his hands on his hips, shaking his head.

‘You know this man?’ the major asked.

‘Sure do. For one thing his old man was a real live movie star. Where do I know you from, boy? Was it in the Nam?’

‘Que Trang.’

Buford shook his head. ‘Damned if I remember it, but if you say so.’ He sat on the chair beside Ryan’s bed. ‘Well, I knows if you go diddly-boppin’ through the jungle you gonna get some crap on your boots, but I didn’t expect to find real deep crap like you.’ He looked at the bloody dressings on Ryan’s shoulder. ‘My, my, you got holes in you, boy. You really got yourself in the middle of some shit this time.’

‘You missed a great show this afternoon, Buford. The major here blew away two dozen women and children.’ The sun was hot outside and the bodies were already starting to stink. For God’s sake, how could they stand it? Couldn’t they at least get the soldiers to bury them?

‘You saw that, did you?’

‘Must make you feel proud to be American.’

‘There’s always collateral damage when you’re fighting a war, boy. Besides, the women are just as bad as the men. You should remember that about old Charlie Cong. Women as bad as the men, the kids as bad as the women. Today you got some snot-nose suckin’ on his mama’s teat, tomorrow he’s throwing a grenade in your hooch. No need to crack sentimental, boy.’

‘Still fighting the same old war, right, Buford?’

‘No, son. We’re winning this sucker.’

‘Don’t expect me to stand on the sideline and cheer.’

‘You sound like one of them damn communist sympathizers to me. Press is full of them. Your daddy would be turning in his grave like a goddamn top. Your daddy was a hero, boy.’

‘My old man drank two bottles of vodka a day and screwed blondes who wanted to be Jean Harlow. The closest he ever got to a war was on an MGM back lot.’

‘I don’t pay no never-mind to that. He stood for somethin’. He made people believe in what was right. Maybe he wasn’t a soldier, but at least he wasn’t a traitor, like you, son. He stood for the free world. He stood for democracy.’

‘You couldn’t even begin to understand what democracy is, you asshole.’

‘All I know is if we don’t fight the communists right here in El Salvador, we’ll have to fight them in Charleston.’

‘Maybe we could beat them in Charleston.’

Buford got up and bend over the cot, got right in his face. ‘Tell me something, boy. If you’re so fucking smart how come you’re sitting here, all fucked up?’ He jabbed a forefinger into Ryan’s shoulder. Ryan cried out in pain, and jerked away. He felt the bandages getting wet again as the wound reopened.

It took him a moment to get his breath back. ‘Are you going to murder me, Buford?’

Buford grimaced. ‘I’m a soldier. I don’t murder nobody. Murder, you see, is a matter of geography. I shot a shitload of people in Vietnam. That was my duty. I do that in Mobile, Alabama,
then
it’s murder. You catch my drift here?’

‘You’re a piece of shit.’

He did not see the next blow coming. There was a flash of white light in front of his eyes as Buford hit him round the side of the head, knocking him off the cot and sprawling onto the floor.

He raised himself on his knees. There was fresh blood on the dirt floor. Buford was standing over him. ‘Now why did you make me do that?’

The room was spinning. Ryan thought he was going to vomit.

‘Like I was saying,’ Buford continued, his tone once again conversational, ‘we do have a problem here. Well, check that. You are the one with the problem. Me, I just got a choice, whether I take you back with us to San Salvador or I don’t. What do you think about that, Major?’

The major’s eyes glittered. Ryan knew what he thought.

Buford took out a pearl-handled .38 from a holster on his hip. He flicked back the hammer with his thumb.

‘I’m not up here on my own,’ he said.

‘You trying to deal with me, boy?’

‘You know we never work on our own. There was another journo travelling with me. If I don’t get back, he’s going to tell the whole fucking story to the Washington Post.’

Buford was quiet a moment. ‘Shit happens, Ryan. Like Romero. Like the nuns. It’s a war zone.’ He crouched down, grabbed Ryan’s hair and held the revolver against his head. ‘Bang,’ he whispered.

Ryan was thinking about Mickey. Maybe I missed out on something there, he thought. Thirty-seven years on this earth and I never really had a normal life. I wonder what it would be like if I didn’t die here? It was the first time in his life he was afraid to die. He closed his eyes and prayed: just give me one more chance. Maybe I want to die in bed after all.

‘You disappoint me, Ryan,’ Buford said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Thought you’d do a little blubberin’ before you went. Yes, sir, I picked you for a blubberer.’

‘I picked you for a first-class asshole the first time I saw you, Buford. Guess I’m just a better judge of character.’

Buford pulled his head right back. Ryan felt the pulse in his neck against the metal barrel of the gun. His shoulder hurt so fucking much ...

‘Off to commie heaven, boy. You ready?’ Christ, fifteen years spent in war zones. What did he have to show for it at the end? What a waste. Well, too late now. Perhaps just as well, after what had happened to Odile, he probably didn’t deserve any better.

‘No one’s ever going to find the body, boy. They’ll figure you just got mixed in a firefight someplace, just plain bad luck. Better than have you go back home telling all the nice people some shit-heel story about us massacring babies and all.’

‘Just do it, Buford.’

Out of the corner of his eye Ryan saw the major staring at him, like a man looking at a woman he wanted. Blood lust; he probably had a hard-on.

‘Nighty-night .. .’

The hammer hit the chamber with a dull click. Buford laughed. ‘Boy, if you ain’t covered with cold grease like a new rifle,’ he said.

Ryan blinked, but couldn’t speak.

‘I know it’s a bitch but I can’t just go and do this without checking with headquarters, son. Army red tape, it drives you crazy, don’t it? Maybe somebody somewhere will figure this was a mistake, and they’ll go looking for someone to blame, and I’m not going to spend the rest of my life counting bird shit on Guam on account of you. So I’m going to get on the radio right now and get someone else to take the fall. Personally I figure you just ain’t worth a ladle of dog shit, but there you are.’

He stood up.

‘You pissed your pants, boy.’

Ryan said nothing. The world had stopped.

‘Now don’t get too excited. I’ll be back in the morning, I dare say.’

* * *

They tied his good arm to the cot, and left him alone in the dark. The bats shrieked in the rafters, the mosquitoes ate him alive. Tiny flies drank from the mucus in his nose and at the corners of his eyes. His shoulder pulsed with pain.

And the dead outside were really starting to stink.

He could see the stars wheeling over the Guazapa volcano through the only window. They were so close; tomorrow he would be catapulted out there with them, either to oblivion or to something else, perhaps some reckoning he would rather not think about.

He had despised those foxhole prayers he had heard so many times.
If you get me through this.
But now here he was, making up his own entreaties:
If you just get me through this I’ll do something worthwhile with the rest of my time. I’ll really make it count for something.

Finally he slept, exhaustion taking him under, swallowed by a vortex of violent dreams until he jerked awake in the middle of the night to find the vampire bats clustered at his injured shoulder, the rest of his body covered with hard lumps from mosquito bites. He shook them off with a scream of disgust and sat upright, wide-eyed and sweating.

Just get back in here and shoot me, Buford. Let’s leave off dying and get this thing done.