The Fighting Man (1993) (45 page)

‘Hi, I’d like to introduce myself. I’m Schultz. I’m the resident DEA flier here, I’m from DEA’s Airwing. It’s the sort of shit that I attract but my government has volunteered me. For the duration of this emergency I am under Mario’s command. Now, no crap, I am just another flier. I’m not super shit hot, I am another flier who managed to get himself knocked out of the air over Iraq. You got me? A guy is not super shit hot if he allows himself to get hit in an Apache by a shoulder-fired SAM-7. See this lot, see my face, that was when the ’Pache bird took the fire. I know about combat, but I’m not some Rambo nut who goes where the flak is for the hell of it. I aim to survive this tasking, I reckon to go back to flying my old bird for DEA . . . Now, have you guys taken in the new met. report? The met. report tells me that it’s bad times ahead for those bastards out there. I’ve been up there twice today, it’s not great flying but it’s not crazy. I’d like to talk it through with you. I need some help, guys . . .’

A coffee beaker was drained, then flipped towards the waste bin. A magazine was closed then chucked towards the table on which he sat. A cigarette was ground out in a filled ashtray. The pilots gathered around Tom and he waved Arturo forward and the map was unfolded. His finger was over the close-set contour lines that designated a gorge that was west of San Martín Jilotepeque and east of Comalapa.

‘I’d like to get some of Mario’s ugly fuckers in there before tonight, and I’d appreciate some help . . .’

Because he had twice heard the helicopter and because the rain had stopped and not started again, Gord had gone to the head of the column.

He reckoned the gorge to be a little under two miles in length.

The pit of the gorge was a rushing rainwater torrent. There was a path above the torrent on the left side of the rock wall. The path was not more than a full stride in width, but better than many they had used. The path was slippery as glass from the rain and the damp held in the low clinging cloud. He knew from the map that at the far end of the gorge they would find the open plateau that would run for them right to the outer sprawl that was Guatemala City. One more argument in the dusk of the day. Zeppo and Harpo had wanted to stop at the start of the gorge, before entering the cut of the sheer rock walls. Jorge irresolute. Groucho not contributing. Gord wanting to clear the gorge before they made camp. Always, each day, each night, there was the short spat argument, wasted energy, raw nerves. Just bloody
unnecessary
. He had won. He had dragged Jorge with him. At the start of the gorge, where it narrowed, they had found a small fire’s debris, made between stones, no other sign of human presence. They pressed on. The light was failing. It had been his decision, Gord’s, but the delay of the argument and the shouting between him and Harpo, and the sneer of Zeppo, bloody guaranteed that the tail of the march would be struggling along the path long after the light had gone. The women would be in the darkness on the path, and the children . . . He would be gone, too bloody right he would be out, first bloody plane leaving Guatemala City, not hanging around to see what bloody suit Jorge wore, not waiting to see which bloody ambassador was first up the steps of the Palacio Nacional,
gone
. Gone with Miss Alex Pitt . . . They were near to the far end of the gorge because the cloud was thinning and the wind was up and hacking the cloud from the rock walls. There were flowers in the rocks, pretty purple . . .

There was an avalanche of gunfire ahead.

The crack of the gunfire was held inside the narrow rock walls of the gorge.

He froze. He strained to see into the gloom of the dusk, into the depth of the mist. Tracer rounds, red fireflies blurred in the mist.

Shapes in the grey mass ahead, and the firing following them.

Gord pushed Jorge down, made him lie flat, and he hissed for Zeppo and Harpo and Groucho to drop. Not room on the track for them to get back and behind the cart. He was readied. His hands, taut, held the lever and the button of the flame thrower, and another figure down. The shapes merged again. A man dragged and a man carried. The firing died.

He recognized them.

His hands eased from the lever and the button of the flame thrower.

Zed carried Eff and dragged Vee.

They were in the gorge, they were trapped between a sheer rock wall and the tumbled power of the river below. He felt the despair.

Zed reached him, and there was blood on his chest. A small bubbled voice. ‘It is blocked. It is the Kaibiles.’

She listened to the voice that probably always shouted into a telephone.

‘I said I’d call you. A good meeting and I appreciate your help. Can’t abide talking into these things. Your Master Hobbes had the good grace to ring and scrape, some inadequate excuse about his children fiddling with his alarm clock. Quite surprised me to know he was capable of procreation . . . Oh, yes, the latest. Brown, Gordon Benjamin, last location puts him two to three days’ march from Guatemala City. I’ll keep this wretched machine of yours posted on what’s new . . .’

Three times she had rung through from Curzon Street to link into her answerphone at the flat. Three times she had listened to the message.

Cathy Parker went for her lunch.

He had been forward on his own.

He preferred to be alone. The leopard’s crawl, then the resting, then the listening, then the probing. They were good troops, almost silent. He had been to within a dozen yards of their forward deployment.

Gord came back.

Gord said to Jorge, ‘It is the Kaibil battalion and we are blocked. They have machine guns and mortars. They hold the exit. They know exactly where we are . . .’

‘We should fight through them.’

‘I am not sure, Jorge, that is possible.’

‘We should burn through them.’

‘I am not sure that is possible.’

‘Then what . . . ?’

‘For fuck’s sake, young man, I do not have to make every decision.’

He felt like the man who stole flowers from an old lady’s garden, the man who pilfered sweets from a child, the man who kicked a maimed opponent. He took the blame, took it personally, but he could not hack, spit, cough out the humility that might have, just, softened for Jorge the realization of failure. He did not care to think of the turmoil that would chew in the guts of the young man.

He edged on the path, in the darkness, past Jorge. God, and he only wanted to eat, and he only wanted to sleep. The bloody race was bloody lost . . .

Lost.

The Fireman loomed in front of him. The Fireman reached forward and took Gord’s hands, and hugged him.

‘I have to look after my family, Mr Gord. Because you are blocked it is my family that has need of me. I am ashamed, but I think you will understand the need of my family. If we cannot go forward then we are beaten. If we are beaten then it will be bad for our families. Forgive me, Mr Gord . . .’

A wraith figure, moving back down the path, gone in the darkness above the plunging water roar.

16

There was nowhere better.

They were on the path and the rock wall was above them and the water torrent was below them. Gord sat and Jorge crouched, and Zeppo and Harpo and Groucho stood above them. Zed hovered uncertain and close to them. There was nowhere else where it could be done. They were trapped on the path. They could not go forward to the end of the gorge, and they could not go back because the width of the path was stifled by the crush of men and equipment. In the darkness, ahead of them, were the lead elements of the Kaibil battalion. In the darkness, behind them, were two thousand men and half a thousand women . . . Gord sat and listened. He had not taken Jorge forward. He did not believe that Jorge had the skill to move at night close to the lead troops. He had told him of the trip wires that were laid, to flares and to grenades, at the exit to the gorge, and the arcs of fire of the machine guns. Gord had said that they must make the decision, their decision, and he sat and he listened.

Zeppo said, ‘If we cannot go forward then we must go back. If we cannot go forward then the only way for us is to retreat. Jorge, there is no other position that is tenable.’

A distant voice, quiet. ‘To retreat is to be beaten.’

Harpo said, ‘If we cannot fight them here, if we cannot break through, then we must retreat to find a better place to fight them. We cannot just stand here, we must turn.’

‘If we turn we are beaten.’

Groucho said, ‘It was good and it was brave, Jorge, and it
failed
. They have the power and the strength now, we cannot beat the Kaibiles. It is over, Jorge, and it is lost.’

Not his argument, not Gord’s. The thoughts in his mind were jagged and away from the words around him. Where was Alex, where was she on the path between the rock wall and the water crash? Where was Eff who had the head wound, and where was Vee who had the cap of his knee shot off ?

Zeppo said, ‘You have to be sensible, Jorge.’

Harpo said, ‘You have to recognize the inevitable, Jorge.’

He stayed silent and the jagged thoughts raced. And old TeeJay had talked about making footprints . . . Some bloody footprints in some bloody destruction . . . And there was a baby facing the first night of its life . . . Some bloody life . . . Trying to run from the gin trap clutch of the responsibility, trying to shed the lead weight of being accountable . . . Some bloody clutch, some bloody weight.

Zeppo said, ‘Turn back, Jorge.’

Groucho said, ‘Accept it, Jorge.’

Perhaps possible for ten men to have forced through. Each time that he had argued before, on what mattered, he had kicked the issue his way. Hopeless for a hundred men to have tried to force the exit to the gorge. He held his silence. No chance that a thousand men could have prised open the shut trap. He loathed to hear what they said, because it was truth.

Harpo said, ‘You should not feel shame, Jorge.’

Groucho said, ‘While there is still the opportunity, Jorge, turn . . .’

The explosion of Jorge’s agony. The great hurt cry. The man crying against the darts and the nails and the pricks of thorn.

‘Where . . . ?’

Gord had no comfort to give him.

‘. . . Where . . . ?’

Gord cringed. He felt the same because he did not have the strength to hold the young man, did not have the strength to share.

‘. . . Where?’

Zeppo said, ‘Anywhere is better than here.’

Harpo said, ‘Back home where we came from, back to Havana.’

Groucho said, ‘Where we can talk to them of mercy.’

Gord stood. He spoke briskly. ‘There is business to be done. We should move in one hour. We have to be gone from here, back in the trees before dawn. Don’t ask me if I like it because the answer is too bloody obvious. They have to be told. They have to know why we are turning . . .’

It was good that none of them should see his face. It was the moment the cloud broke. The curtain of the cloud was broken open and the moonlight came down onto them. It was past midnight, it was into the seventh day of Gord’s week. If a day had not been lost they might now have been on the high ground and looking down onto the lights of Guatemala City . . . hindsight was shit. He felt the wetness on his face. In the moonlight he could see the bowed shape of Jorge. He did not know of anything more that should be said.

The signal was decoded at Langley, Virginia, by the big computers. From the jumbled mess of digits came the clear printed name of
brown
,
gordon benjamin
. The night duty officer, Central American Desk, read fast through the backgrounder supplied with the name. He encoded the signal again, the Agency’s own way, for onpassing to field station, Guatemala City. He was aware that the arrival of the signal from London had been anticipated and cursed for its tardiness. He rang the grade 3 staffer, Central American Desk, woke him in his Georgetown apartment and woke his wife because he could hear her down the line snarling, and woke his brats because he could hear them down the line bawling.

‘We’ve gotten the name of this Brit in Guatemala. We’ve got his biography. He’s just some creep with a grievance. Didn’t take Desert Storm well. Just some arrogant shit carrying a mega chip . . . I thought you’d want to know.’

They were clear of the gorge. The tail of the column edged into the tree line.

The Priest did the work that the Fireman had done, pushed the cart. Gord was ahead of him, walked in silence beside the young woman. His creed, if God’s work were easy then most would be busy at it. He understood the enormity of the decision to turn. His own feeling, selfish, he might just have preferred to run against the block, pushing the cart, or shooting over the open sights of a Kalashnikov. Too selfish to countenance. His religion was a church of suffering. He had often enough told his flock, the Quiché Indians of the Cuchumatanes, that there was nobility in suffering. He had often enough
not
told his flock that there was precious damn little dignity in suffering. Suffering was pain . . . He had been seventeen years old, a good student in the Zona 4 high school, when he had heard on the American radio of the meeting of the bishops at Medellín in troubled Colombia. From their deliberations had come his calling. The work was to be the
comunidades eclesiásticas de base
, the church in the country, the Bible in the village, worship with the under-privileged. It was what the boldest priests of the day called the theology of liberation. The Book of Genesis taught through the Creation the dignity of man, and the boldest priests equated the political torture of man as an abuse of such God-given dignity. To stand up, to speak out, was to invite suffering and pain. Enough suffering and enough pain for his bishop, once, to have closed the parish, complained to his archbishop that pastoral work was too dangerous to be continued . . . The parish in the Cuchumatanes had reopened. The priests had returned, and the killing had continued. The word of rumour was the word of fear, and rumour told him of the killings and the torture in his parish, and the fate of ‘disappeared’ men. He knew of the Death Squads and of the
capucha
, and of the clandestine cemeteries, and he thought of them each time that he rode his bicycle at night on the dirt roads of his parish.