HOUSE OF JAGUAR

by Mike Bond

  64

  THIS TIME they did not take her to the interrogation block but to a long low basement room with full-body human targets on a sandbag wall. Two of them held her wrists; a third took out his pistol but she would not flinch nor close her eyes, and the shot crushed her hearing and her stomach caved in monstrous pain, awful agony each instant worse as she writhed in circles on the floor begging them to kill her. “Kill you?” one mocked. “You’re going free!”

  BACK IN HIS CELL he stared through the gritty rusted bars. The other prisoners watched him suspiciously now that he had returned from the dead. La vida es sueño, Consuela had said, and death a dream also, for we’re dead and dream ourselves alive, hold these bars in our hands and think they are real.

  If I could only tell you now, my love, all I’ve learned, how much I’ve learned from you, how I’ve always loved you from the first moment, the moment I was born, from long before. If I could only tell you, it was my mistake, my wanting you, my coming back for you, my thinking I could free you, that’s what cost your life. That it’s all been wrong since I didn’t kill him, the Special Forces captain in the Huey over the Mekong. Because I’ve always tried to keep a foot in both worlds I’ve never stood in either.

  So long I’ve wanted you, before I knew you; when I was a child I wanted you, have always loved you. I tried to bend the world to my hunger but the world never bends.

  Darling, it’s charade, acting with our minds sin saber por qué. Beneath the charade the heart beats, the body sings, air feels new in our lungs, we touch each other, die.

  THE SOLDIERS came raging as if they would kill him now, banging rifles on the bars and whacking him with the butts, pushing him and three others down the corridor and up the greasy stairwell to the killing ground. Green GMC trucks stood in two lines; they shoved him up into the back of one, other prisoners crying out as he fell among them. “Qué pasa?” he screamed.

  “They’re going to shoot us,” a woman said.

  A soldier shut the back. The truck lurched forward, bouncing and grinding, the roar of the other trucks following. Through a space between the canvas and steel he could see a parade ground, then fortifications, then a long road and jungle.

  “Who are you?” someone said.

  “Just a gringo, got mixed up in this.”

  “Sad. Now they’re going to shoot you too.”

  The grinding gears and diesel smell were the same as his trip on trucks down through Mexico, these injured people he didn’t know were just like the injured anywhere, Nam or Guatemala. Death was coming just like any other death.

  Still the trucks did not stop. “This is the Sierra de Chamá,” a man said.

  “We’re going to Chisec,” the woman said. “That’s where they’ll shoot us.”

  Chisec came and went, huddled hovels in ragged jungle under the downpouring rain. A few minutes later the truck slowed again, the others closing up behind. It swung left, the others following. “Xuctzul!” someone called.

  There was a smell of wood smoke and river and the rattle of a bridge as the truck crossed over it; they followed the side of a canyon, the stream roaring below, down and across another bridge then up through the hills on a muddy track, the truck lurching and groaning, then down the other side. The trucks halted, canvas sides slapping.

  “It’s the Usumacinta,” an old man said. “They’ll throw our bodies in the river.”

  One by one they climbed over the back. The rain had cleared; drops still pattered from the trees. The soldiers tied them in a line and walked them down the slippery trail through wet branches and grass, the roar of the river rising to meet them.

  When they reached the river the soldiers untied them. One of the prisoners from another truck came running, calling, “Is anyone here a nurse, a doctor?”

  “I’m a medic,” Murphy started to say, then stopped. Everything you’ve done’s gone wrong, he told himself. Don’t start again.

  “You?” the man said to him. “Come then, we have someone dying.”

  “Let him go in peace. We’re all dying in a minute anyway.”

  “She’s in pain. Come then, it won’t hurt her to see you.”

  “Let’s go!” a soldier cried. “Down to the river!”

  Murphy followed the other prisoner to a huddle of people and a body on a bloody poncho, and saw that it was she.

  65

  SHE SAW dugouts drawn up along the shore. The men carried her down to the water and rowed her across, then lay her by a fire whose smoke settled on the afternoon air between the palo pinos and pimentijos, a fire of palo sano bright as youth, moss on the mottled gray bark flaring with flame, the russet grain of the palo sano like a burning heart, blood to ash. And she saw that change is not evil but only change, and death the end, but no matter, for even nothing ends, and no Heaven exceeds one loving touch, one graceful act, one moment in which another’s loved, the gift of love is more momentous than time.

  They were so gentle, moving round her. I can write a book now for you all, she thought, on the mystery of death, the symptoms of its censure in the body and the brain, but why do we always speak of symptoms and never of the heart? We’re so wrong, dear Lord, not to be satisfied with love.

  Wood owls called, a blue-crowned motmot tolled the ending day. Smoke sank on the damp air, far away a chopper passed, those men of wood whittled by the Creators, pale-fleshed men who used the Earth but did not revere the Creators, so the Heart of Heaven drowned them in a rain of tar and soot.

  How true the legends. I go back now. To the early days. My father’s knee in its striped wool suit. Bony: when I sit on it his kneecap shifts. He pushes his glasses up his nose, his smell of pipe. Back to the jungle our mother, the scent of leaves and soil and slumber.

  He was there. She held his hand and felt his warmth, could clamp her fist in it when the pain was so bad it made her scream. He was beside her speaking in his rough soft voice like that of a man who has drunk or cried too much, his body warm beside her, not like this fire that glows but does not heat. You, my Utzíl of Panimache who crossed far hostile lands for his beloved, saved then lost her and dived from a cliff to drown in Atitlán. But you will live, you and the child Jesús whom you saved, and a million like him, live to form the new Guatemala. Utzíl my love, my Guatemala, my beloved quetzal singing from the sacred amate.

  “Where,” she said, “where are the soldiers?”

  “Across the river. I was in the last truck. This is Mexico.”

  Another compañero bent over her, a boy with long dark hair and sad eyes. “The soldiers,” she said again.

  “They’re gone,” he said.

  “They’re never gone!” she pleaded. “Give me a gun?”

  He smiled to hide his anguish, the lack of guns. “I’ll give you my knife, compañera.” He took a combat knife from a sheath around his neck and slipped it into her pocket.

  “We’re safe now,” Murphy said. “Just hold on.”

  “Truly?”

  “Lupe and Pablo, the others. They traded us for Arena.”

  “How many?”

  “Sixty-three, plus you and me.”

  She closed her eyes. “We won...”

  “Arena was injured, but he’ll live.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Perhaps he’ll change. It’s suffering that teaches us to love.”

  Fire shadows danced in the companionable chatter of wind in the leaves and ferns, of water trickling down trunks and lianas. They lifted the four corners of her poncho and carried her up the slippery slope toward the trail to Saint Elena and the road the Americans had built to keep out the guerrillas, where the car was waiting that would take her to the clinic at Caribal.

  The trail came up from the river canyon and there was a broad steep meadow with a white car above it and they carried her up it toward the setting sun, the wind-bent grass red, the far line of trees and sky of blood, his torn shoulders aching with her weight but no pain could stop him now, and over t
he river’s rumble came another that was four choppers fast over the ridge and down on the meadow. With Dona in his arms he ran for the line of blood-red trees but saw he would not make it, ran back toward the river but the soldiers were there too, Dona crying, “Drop me! Run!”

  The tall black man jumped from the lead chopper, ducked low under the blades. “Put them in mine!”

  “This is Mexico!” Murphy screamed. “You can’t!”

  “Pronto!” he yelled at the soldiers. “Get them in the chopper.”

  They beat Murphy down and lashed his arms and ankles and threw him in beside her, the cargo deck slippery with her blood, the ancient steel rattling as the Huey took off, nose dipping, tilting back toward Guatemala. “I’ll always love you,” she said, her face drained of all but the red sunset through the open cargo door. “I’m going now, it’s a hemorrhage. Take this.” She slipped him the knife as he tried to lie beside her but the soldiers forced them apart, and he watched her die quickly, her face relaxed, her lips opened, her chest no longer moving beneath the bloody shirt as the wind toyed with a lock of her hair.

  The scar-faced pilot seemed familiar, as if from Nam, as if time were compressed, and everything that had happened there would happen over and over forever, its images serving as lessons to a mystery he would never decode. The last sun sank beyond the mountains of the Río Ixcan, the jungle fading to umber greens, the sinuous headwaters of the Río de la Pasión silver and carmine in the south.

  The ancient Huey wailed on an evening downdraft, the rotor shaft grinding at its bearings. He watched the gap between the Jesus nut and the shaft, wondered could he shove the knife into it, break it loose. The tall black man was talking with the other officer, the one who had been Carmen the Embassy translator. Turned away from them Murphy cut the bounds round his wrists, pulled his legs beneath him and freed his ankles. Keeping the knife and his unbound wrists hidden, he looked up at them. “I know you,” he said.

  The black man grinned down at him. “Search me, and know my heart? Try me, and know my thoughts?”

  “I mean him.” Murphy nodded at the other.

  “Carmen?” the black man said. “That was just our little joke.”

  “His name’s Angelo.”

  “What makes you think that?” Carmen said.

  “I heard it from an American, a guy named Gallagher. Just before you cut his throat.”

  The black man looked at Angelo, at Murphy. “When was that?”

  “The night he wasted my plane, killed my friends. When this all started. Didn’t it, Angel?”

  The black man took out his gun. Angelo shook his head. “You’re not going to believe this shithead?”

  The black man raised the gun, nodded at the cargo door. “Go.”

  “I won’t let you do this!”

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” the black man said. “But I want you over there.” Watching Lyman, Vodega edged toward the door.

  He’s the one, Lyman thought. All along. He killed Gallagher and blamed it on Murphy because the Guats don’t want to pay their share. Because he likes to kill. We’ve all been used, all of us who fight, by people who move us back and forth, to kill and to be killed. Nancy was right: I’m everybody’s dupe. Especially my own. I could let Murphy go, make amends. But not Angel.

  Holding the safety strap, Angelo approached the open wind-sucking hole of the door but when Lyman fired he fell into the corner screaming. As the black man went to kick him out the door, Murphy rose up behind him and drove Dona’s knife into the perfect place between the shoulder blade and spine, straight into the heart; he fell gasping and Murphy grabbed his gun and saw the scar-faced pilot was climbing back from the cabin; he shot him in the face, then the copilot at the controls.

  He stood in the cargo door and the jungle was very soft and far below: you could jump but you would never hit. You would float, far away, not thinking, no longer feeling. Epiphany, all pain gathered into one.

  Epifanía. The Huey began to drift then drop. The black man slid out the door. Murphy stepped over Dona, dragged the pilot free of the crew aisle and climbed into his seat, tipped the cyclic forward and swung the Huey around in a long easy descent back to Mexico.

  THE END

  The opening pages of

  The Last Savanna

  by Mike Bond

  Published by Mandevilla Press

  “A manhunt through crocodile-infested jungle, sun-scorched savanna, and impenetrable mountains as a former SAS man tries to save the life of the woman he loves but cannot have.” (Evening Telegraph)... “A gripping thriller from a highly distinctive writer.” (Liverpool Daily Post)... “Exciting, action-packed... A nightmarish vision of Africa.” (Manchester Evening News)

  With Africa’s last elephants dying under the guns of Somali poachers, ex-SAS officer Ian MacAdam leads a commando squad against them, to hunt what for him is the only decent prey – man. Pursuing the poachers through jungled mountains and searing deserts he battles thirst, solitude, terror and lethal animals, only to find they have kidnapped a young archaeologist, Rebecca Hecht, whom he once loved and bitterly lost.

  She escapes the kidnappers, is caught and escapes again to risk perishing in the desert. MacAdam embarks on a desperate trek to save not only Rebecca but his own soul in an Africa torn apart by wars, overpopulation and the slaughter of its last wildlife.

  Based on the author’s own experiences pursuing elephant poachers in the wilds of East Africa, The Last Savanna is an intense personal memoir of humanity’s ancient heartland, its people and animals, the lonely beauty of its perilous deserts, jungles, and savannas, and the deep, abiding power of love.

  1

  THE ELAND DESCENDED four steps down the grassy hillside and halted. He glanced all the way round the rolling golden hills, then closer, inspecting the long grass rippling in the wind, behind him, on both sides, and down to the sinuous green traverse of acacia, doum palms and strangler trees where the stream ran. The wind from the east over his shoulder carried the tang of drying murram grass and the scents of bitter pungent shrubs, of dusty, discarded feathers and glaucous lizard skins, of red earth and brown earth, of old scat and stones heating in the afternoon sun. He switched at flies with his tail, twitched his ears, descended five more steps, and stopped again.

  Thirst had dried his lips and eyes, tightened his throat and hardened his skin. Already the rain was drying out of the grass and soil pockets; here only the stream remained, purling between volcanic stones, rimmed by trees and tall sharp weeds. He circled a thorn bush and moved closer several steps, his spiral gray horns glinting as he looked up and down the valley from north to west, then south, then up the slope behind him.

  The shoulder-high thorn bushes grew thicker near the stream. The downslope breeze twirled their strong, dusty scents among their gnarled trunks; the sour smell of siafu, warrior ants, prickled his nose. He waited for the comforting twitter of sunbirds in the streamside acacias, the muffled snuffling of warthogs, or the swish of vervet monkeys in the branches, but there were none.

  Licking his dry nose with a black tongue he raised his head and sniffed the wind, batting at flies with his ears, dropped his jaw and panted. There was truly no bad smell, no danger smell, but the wind was coming down the valley behind him and to get upwind he’d have to cross the stream and there was no way but through the commiphora scrub, which was where the greatest danger lay. He glanced back over his shoulder, gauging the climb necessary to regain the ridge and travel into the wind till he could descend the slope at a curve in the stream and keep the wind in his face. The sun glinting on the bleached grass, bright stones and red earth hurt his eyes; he sniffed once more, inhaled deeply, expanding the drum of thin flesh over his ribs, and shoved into the thorn scrub.

  A widowbird exploded into flight from a branch on the far side of the stream and the eland jumped back, trembling. The sound of the stream pealing and chuckling coolly over its rocks made his throat ache. The heat seemed to buzz li
ke cicadas, dimming his eyes. Shaking flies from his muzzle, he trotted through the scrub and bent his head to suck the water flashing and bubbling over the black stones.

  The old lioness switched her tail, rose from her crouch and surveyed the eland’s back over the top of the thorn scrub. She had lain motionless watching his approach and now her body ached to move; the eland’s rutty smell made her stomach clench and legs quiver. She ducked her head below the scrub and padded silently to the stream, picked her way across its rocks without wetting her paws and, slower now, slipped a step at a time through the bush and crouched behind a fallen doum palm part way up the slope behind the eland, only her ears visible above it.

  Far overhead a bearded vulture wavered in its flight, tipping on one wing, and turned in a wide circle. The eland raised his head, swallowing, and glanced round. Water dripping from his lips spattered into the stream. He shivered the flies from his back, bent to drink and raised his head, water rumbling in his belly. He turned and scanned the slope behind and above him; this was where he’d descended and now the wind was in his face and there was still no danger smell. His legs felt stronger; he licked his lower lip that already seemed less rough from the water filling his body. He trotted back through the thorn scrub past the fallen doum palm, bolting at the sudden yellow flash of terror that impaled him on its fierce claws, the lioness’ wide jaws crushing his neck as he screamed crashing through the bush. With one paw the lioness slapped him to the ground but he lurched up and she smashed him down again, her fangs ripping his throat, choking off the air as his hooves slashed wildly, and the horror of it he knew now and understood, dust clouding his eye, the other torn by thorns; the flailing of his feet slackened as the sky went red, the lioness’ hard body embracing him, the world and all he had ever known sliding into darkness.