War From The Clouds (3 page)

We moved slowly forward and, sure enough, entered an open area where we had a clear view of the Reina Valley below; clear, that is, except for the darkness that lay on the land like a black velvet curtain. In the murky distance, I could make out silhouettes of darkened houses, of trees, of the meandering river that ran down from the arroyos and gullies and springs of Mount Toro. There were few lights in the houses. Since the Cubans had come, most of the citizens had imposed a kind of curfew on themselves, afraid to venture out, afraid even of letting the pillaging Marines know that they were alive.

I brought my gaze upward and saw a dark column rising into the sky. It was Alto Arete and, from the lookout, the mountain column looked like an enormous chimney rising from Mount Toro. I hadn't seen Alto Arete from this vantage point before. It was imposing, impressive and, worse than all, frightening and impregnable.

Elicia tugged at my sleeve (the sergeant's sleeve, actually) and brought me nearer the sharp edge of the ledge. "To the left," she said, "where you see the glow of light."

I leaned forward, aware that my toes in Luis Pequeno's big combat boots were jutting out into space, and saw the glow, then what was causing it. Tucked away in a little valley off the main valley were dozens of campfires. They stretched up the narrow hollow and around the base of the mountain, like an electric necklace around an ebony neck. It was the thousand Marines, guarding the advances to the main trail up to Alto Arete.

In that moment, I gave thanks to the intuitive reasoning that had put me on the trail of the Cuban Marine. If I hadn't followed him, I wouldn't have found the Cortez family and this girl. Without the girl, I'd never had found this safe trail up the mountain opposite Mount Toro. Without this safe trail, I would have stumbled headlong into that encampment of Marines and would have been disemboweled and fed to the pigs. Or to those rabid dogs up on top.

"Beyond that encampment," Elicia said in that same soft, tuneful voice, "is the encampment of the guerillas supporting Don Carlos. None of us dares go near either encampment, but I have watched with my horse from this point. I am certain that Antonio is down there, with the other guerillas.

"But he's so close to home," I said. "Why wouldn't he break away and come back to his family?"

I could only guess at the expression on her face. I knew she was staring at me as though I were the dumbest gringo who ever lived.

"Deserters are shot," she said. "So are their families, including cousins and those who have married into the families."

"Sweet bunch," I muttered. "Okay, let's get you to your cousin's house, then I'm coming back here to wait for daylight."

"Why would you do that? You can stay with my cousin as well."

"I can't stay anywhere, Elicia. I didn't come all the way down here to hide."

"All right," she said, touching my arm again. I was starting to like that. "I will not hide either. Let us both wait for daylight."

There was no time to explain to her that I planned to figure out the best way to infiltrate that Marine encampment, as Sgt. Luis Pequeno, or that she would only be in the way of my progress. We were hours away from her cousin's house, considering how long it had taken us to reach this point from her parent's farm. I took her arm and pulled her away from the ledge. She didn't recoil from my touch.

"We'll do it my way," I said. "And that means getting you to safety and me coming back here alone."

"Everybody bosses the Nicarxans," she said almost sullenly. Then, she sighed. In the mellow glow from the Marine's campfires, I could have sworn that I saw a smile on her face. This time, the smile said, she didn't mind being bossed by an outsider.

It took three hours to get her to her cousin's house, actually a hut on Mount Toro's northern slopes. We had crossed and recrossed the valley, and the Reina River, so many times that I lost my way and doubted that I would ever make it back to that lookout point.

As we stood on the dusty road leading to the hut where Elicia would hide, she moved close to me. Her breath smelled of orange blossoms and I wondered how she had managed that, considering the lack of toothbrushes and toothpaste in her parents' home. She rummaged in a pocket and pressed a gold chain and locket into my hand.

"Antonio gave this to me on my sixteenth birthday," she said, "Give it to him and he will know that you are our friend."

"Maybe not," I said, always the doubting Thomas. "He might think I stole it from you. Or took it by force."

"No," she said. "Before we left my parent's house, I folded a note into the locket."

I started to object, recalling her reluctance to go with me, remembering how she had recoiled from my touch on the trail. And then I knew. She had trusted me from the beginning, but her memories of what those Marines had been doing to her was so fresh in her mind that she would have recoiled from the touch of any male. The fact that she had warmed to me at all was proof enough that the memories were fading as the trust built in her.

I thought about kissing her goodbye then, but discarded the idea. There is such a thing as pushing your luck. Even as I was thinking this, she stood on tiptoe, found my face in the darkness and kissed me soundly and sweetly on the lips.

And then, like a wraith or a shadow, she was gone and I stood like an adolescent lover on the dirt road following her body with my imagination. The strains of the lovely old song, "On the Street Where You Live" raced through my mind.

It was with great reluctance that I turned to retrace my steps to the ledge above the Marine encampment.

Light was just beginning to filter down on the mountains when I made it back to the lookout point Elicia had shown me. I snuggled close to the ground and watched the encampment as dawn increased. When there was sufficient light, I took my binoculars from my knapsack, studied the layout of the Marine detachment and could find no indications of which company was bivouacked where. Sergeant Pequeno had told me that he was in the Baker Company of the second battalion. I would do everything possible to avoid that battalion: even if I could pass as the dead sergeant, I had no intentions of being shot for desertion. Luis was already several hours AWOL.

But the uniform and my use of Spanish would at least get me into the encampment without drawing undue suspicion. After that, I should have no trouble finding out precisely where the guerillas were encamped, no trouble walking there to make discreet enquiries about one Antonio Cortez.

Or so I thought.

I again hid my knapsack at the lookout, chose a sector that seemed to have the least concentration of troops, picked out trails leading in that direction, and set off to find it on foot. The sun was coming up over the eastern mountains by the time I crossed the river and neared the edge of the camp. Campfires that had warmed them at night had gone out: new ones were being built to cook the morning meal. Only the sleepy guards and the cooks were up and about. I picked out a particularly sleepy-looking guard who was slouched against a tree. The makeshift sign just in front of his post announced: HQ-Zed Compania — Headquarters of Z Company.

"Atención," the guard said as I approached. He came to attention himself, more or less.

I put on my most sheepish grin, honed up a slurred, drunken Spanish, and told the guard that I was Sgt. Luis Pequeno of B Company, returning from a marvelous night with a local talent on one of the peasant farms. I said I was trying to get to my home company before reveille and would appreciate it if he didn't make a fuss and get me in difficulty with my lieutenant.

He grinned back his understanding and passed me on without missing a yawn. I was in.

I found B Company's headquarters' sign two hundred yards farther up the valley, adroitly circumvented it by crossing a high slope, and came into the purview of J Company up near the entrance to the main trail to the mountain, to Alto Arete. I loitered in the area for some time, taking in the terrain and the probable intelligence and alertness of the guards at the gate there, then was circling back to the area of Z Company where I hoped to forage for food. The smell of cooking up and down the narrow hollow was wrinkling my stomach and making me drool. It occurred to me that I hadn't eaten since noon yesterday. I had been busy during the dinner hour keeping watch over my quarry, Sergeant Pequeno, whom I had followed from that canteen in the capital to the home of Jorge and Melina Cortez — and to Elicia.

I stepped brazenly up to the three wiry cooks who were working at a primitive table, chopping up chicken and vegetables and tossing them helter skelter into a huge black pot over a blazing fire. With a few well-chosen lies, some sly winks and comments about the drawing power of the local lasses, I managed to cadge food. The first lie concerned my alleged special mission from Colonel Vasco. The cooks were mightily impressed with my status, so I ate well, crouched against a tree where I kept a wary eye out for scorpions. I should have been keeping a wary eye on the cooks; one of them disappeared while I dined on the stew and I never even noticed that he was gone.

"Atención!" It was a sharp command, sharply given. I locked up into the face of a man who had obviously done brutal things in his approximately forty five years of existence on earth. He was tall and broad, with an immense shock of black hair that was giving over grudgingly to gray. His broad chest was bedecked with enough medals to give an ordinary man fatigue just from carrying them around.
"Su nombre y jefe, por favor."

I stood and, even though I'm a tall man well over six feet, I found myself looking up at the rough, scarred, pockmarked face of the officer. From his insignia, I guessed him to be Colonel Ramon Vasco. And he had demanded my name and the name of my commander.

"Sergeant Luis Pequeno," I responded swiftly, standing at attention. "My commander, Captain Rodrigues, has sent me from the guerilla encampment to warn that an American may have infiltrated his encampment."

The colonel studied me for a moment, trying to satisfy himself if I were an imposter, or merely stupid. I had tried to convey the idea of stupidity, had obviously succeeded. The thinnest part of my story concerned Captain Rodriguez. I knew no such man and was only guessing that, in a detachment of a thousand Cuban Marines, there had to be a captain named Rodrigues.

"What is Rodrigues doing with the guerillas?" the colonel asked. "He belongs with Q Company, right down the mountain there."

"He was sent with a few of us to investigate some unrest among the conscripted peasants," I said quickly, counting on the story about Antonio to be a common one.

"I have no memory of authorizing such a change in the captain's assignment." The colonel was still studying me, still convinced that he was witnessing stupidity, but perhaps also seeking a rat in disguise.

"I believe it was your adjutant who authorized the change," I said. I wasn't even sure the colonel had an adjutant.

"All right," he said finally. "Tell Captain Rodrigues that his message has been delivered. We know there's an American on the island, but he was last seen in the capital. There's no possibility of him showing up here — and certainly he will never find the guerilla encampment. Get back to your post now."

I moved away, swiftly, wanting to put a lot of distance between me and the strong, surly and obviously vicious colonel.

"Atenci6n, Pequeno!" the colonel snarled.

I was torn between standing at attention and running like a castrated wildcat.

"Not that way, stupido," Colonel Vasco said, laughing at my now obvious stupidity. "That way lies the lower minefield. Go back the way you came, over there."

Thank God, he was pointing off to his right, or I would have taken off in another wrong direction. Thanks to the colonel, though, I was finally on the way to the Guerillas. It could very easily have gone sour, though, gone all wrong. Sometimes, a little stupidity can work miracles.

But the misdirection wasn't what was making me sweat so much as I walked away over the small rise. I was sweating because I had just come through that section which the colonel had said was the lower minefield. The main miracle was that I hadn't stepped in the wrong place and been blown to bits.

Even so, the way to the guerilla encampment wasn't as simple as the colonel had made out. Within two hundred yards up a narrow trail leading from the main hollow, I was hopelessly lost. The trail ended and I stood gazing at walls of jungle. Vines riddled the high trees, creating a network of obstacles. Underbrush added spice to the sealed wall of green.

I was about to turn back, to seek another trail through, when a section of jungle shook, rattled and then moved aside. A grizzled man in peasant clothes and a Russian rifle slung over his bony shoulder, stepped into the opening and grinned at me.

"Are you lost, sergeant?" he asked in Spanish.

"No," I said, thinking fast. "I've been serving as courier most of the night and was on the trail when today's password was given out. I was afraid I'd be shot if I called out to you."

I knew enough about military operations to know about passwords and the daily changing of them. And I knew that this was a checkpoint where a password would be required.

"How do you know of this place?" the guerilla demanded, eyeing me with even greater suspicion, unslinging his XZ-47. "Only the leaders and a few select guards know of this place."

Obviously, I couldn't tell him that I'd merely stumbled onto it. Well, I had fooled Colonel Vasco with the story about a special assignment from Captain Rodrigues. I would move up in the chain of command.

"I was told of it by Colonel Vasco himself," I said, looking brazenly into the peasant face and keeping a sharp eye also on his hands that clutched the Russian rifle.

"And why did he not give you the password?"

"As I told you," I said, pretending exasperation, "I have been two days on the trail. I was not able to receive today's password."