Renegade 33

by Lou Cameron

  ‘Leon, of course. All the good people fight for Leon. The damned Grenada forces got the upper hand some way a few days ago, and we must move through Costa Rican territory for to get around them and that unfair artillery they got someplace. We have done nothing bad to you Costa Ricans. We just need some space for to fight our own revolution, eh?’

  ‘Come closer. Don’t shit me if you want to live. Have you brushed with any of our Costa Rican military this side of the border?’

  ‘Pero no. You are the first serious person we have come across since we crossed the San Juan.’

  ‘Then where did those guys over there get those cow ponies?’

  ‘Oh, the rancheros we took them from were not serious people. I thought we were discussing military matters.’

  ‘We are. Pay careful attention. I now have a pistol as well as this clumsier weapon covering you. You will slowly drift around to the back of this clump and lay your head on the grass. Are you listening to this, Rosita?’

  ‘Sí, I got my own gun on him now, Dick.’

  ‘Bueno. You heard what the lady said, muchacho. Move it.’

  The scout started to. Then one of the mounted men in the distance called out to him. Captain Gringo stiffened. The scout wanted to live a while longer. So he waved, pointed at his crotch, and moved on around the clump as if to take a modest piss. The rider who’d hailed him looked away. The scout murmured, ‘Buen’dia, señorita,’ and lay down next to Rosita, who took his carbine and tossed it over her shoulder like Henry VIII getting rid of a mutton bone.

  Captain Gringo turned his attention back to the column of Leon’s own guerrillas. They were within rifle range of the arroyo now. But Gaston was holding his fire for the same reason Captain Gringo was holding his from their flank. They weren’t good targets from either angle yet.

  Then one of the riders from his higher vantage point spotted movement, or perhaps it was just the way the trail ahead dropped over an otherwise invisible edge. He called out, and the guerrillas fanned out to either side of the trail to form a long, ragged skirmish line, facing the arroyo as a row of widely spaced targets but presenting themselves to Captain Gringo’s Maxim muzzle like a row of domino tiles. He knew Gaston still didn’t know who the hell they were. He knew he’d never have them lined up so nicely once the shooting began. So he began the shooting, and sure enough, they started going down like domino tiles as he emptied the first belt into them from their left flank.

  He snapped, ‘Rosita! Make sure that guy stays put and hand me another belt!’

  She said, ‘Okeedokee,’ which she’d learned from him in bed and found amusing. As he groped behind him she slipped the end of the fresh belt in his questing hand. He injected it and opened up again, this time in shorter bursts, as he had to choose more scattered targets. Gaston and the others had opened fire from the arroyo as well, and the enemy was in bad shape, caught in the L of automatic and repeater fire. They were in such bad shape, in fact, that Captain Gringo ceased fire before he’d spent the second belt. There was no point wasting ammo on those already down, and by now the only thing on its feet out there was a wounded horse running in circles under an empty saddle.

  He heard Gaston call a cursing cease-fire, and as the wiry little Frenchman rose from the arroyo waving his own skirmish line forward, Captain Gringo turned to see how Rosita and his prisoner were making out. Rosita was making out swell. The prisoner beside her was face down in the grass with a big red stain spread across the back of his shirt. Captain Gringo frowned and asked, ‘Did you have to do that?’ Rosita replied, ‘You said for to keep him quiet, no?’

  He shrugged. She took his suggestions seriously in bed too. So what the hell? Leaving the Maxim to cool where it was for now, he rose to join Gaston and the others out amid the carnage. As one of their own men finished off a wounded enemy, Gaston shouted, ‘Merde alors, save at least one for questioning! We still do not know who they might have been, damn your mother’s eyes!’ Then he spotted Captain Gringo and added, ‘Who might they have been, Dick?’

  Captain Gringo told him. Gaston brightened and said, ‘Eh bien. If they have run across no Costa Rican forces up to now, that could mean we won’t meet any between here and the border, non?’

  ‘It could, but let’s not bet the family farm on it. They stole those horses this side of the San Juan. Rosita knifed my prisoner before he could tell me what else they might have done. The purloined livestock alone could have upset people enough to call the law. Let’s gather up the loot and git.’

  ‘Oui, at the pace we have been marching the border can’t be too far now, hein?’

  Captain Gringo shook his head and said, ‘We can’t move father north along this highland route. God knows how many pissed-off Costa Ricans must be pissing all along it to the north right now! We’ll have to swing east and drop over into the jungle slopes some more.’

  Gaston started to argue. But he was an older soldier than Captain Gringo. So he sighed and said, ‘Merde alors, just as my socks were dry at last. Our horses will not move as well as we, once we are back among the murmuring palms, you know.’

  ‘Sure I know horses make lousy time in machete country. That’s the point. Would you really like to meet up with cavalry in open savannah, for Pete’s sake?’

  ‘Mais non. Now that I have seen how these quite ordinary followers of ours shoot, I am afraid to meet Pete!’

  The machete work only lasted a few miles down the slope, of course. Once they’d hacked their way through the rampant growth where the trade winds suddenly bounced and dumped a constant sprinkle, they were once more in true rain forest, where the tree canopy high above caught the short, almost daily showers of the so-called dry season. In the more accurately named wet season, the black leaf mold between the wide-spaced buttress-rooted jungle giants would be a slippery slime where it wasn’t under running water. But at this time of the year the forest floor was firm enough for easy walking in most places. Captain Gringo swung his column north again before it reached the really flat lowlands closer to the coast. He didn’t want to ford any jungle creeks deep enough for a Costa Rican gunboat to move up, either. So after a time everyone’s left leg was more tired than the right, since it got to walk on the uphill side. The mules were okay. Mules usually were. But the horses they’d paid such a heavy price for were becoming a pain in the ass as they slipped on the slopes and refused to eat the lush but mysterious leaves their handlers macheted for them.

  Worse yet, they left distinct hoofprints with their steel-shod hooves. The unshod mules and mostly barefoot guerrillas left some impression on the moist, black-matted leaf mold. But the spongy surface tended to bounce back and, of course, more leaves kept falling to rot on top. But the prima donna ponies cut through to the brick-red laterite under the thin black surface, and the effect was startling. There was no mistaking a lucky red horseshoe against wet blackboard-black for the paw print of anything one expected to find scampering through a jungle. Gaston suggested abandoning the horses, pointing out that since all of them couldn’t ride, the brutes were only really useful to anyone trailing them.

  Captain Gringo nodded but said, ‘Not yet. Any curious cavalry coming upon the scene of that big shoot-out is sure to follow our sign over the edge, and it wouldn’t take your average Apache long to spot the trail we cut with our machetes. But it’s getting dark, and nobody with the brains of a gnat is about to follow us farther until they can see what they’re doing. I didn’t police up my brass after the firefight. I wanted any nosy military to guess that we had at least one automatic weapon.’

  ‘Ah, oui, even I would hesitate to follow a man with a machine gun up a dark alley, and I am a hero by nature. Mais even as the sun goes down, it promises to rise again someday. Those triple-titted horses are still leaving a line of the bee to our adorable derrieres, and cavalry can ride through these trees as well as we can move the mounts we have less use for, hein?’

  ‘Yeah, but if we turn them loose in this jungle, they’ll either die of neglect or, wor
se yet, follow us like dogs. How can they know we don’t have oats we’ve been holding out on them?’

  ‘In other words, we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. We can’t help leaving a clear trail right now. So we’ll leave it until dark and make camp.’

  ‘Avec très discreet fires, of course?’

  ‘Of course. Though I doubt anyone could be close enough behind to matter. We’ll fort up and rest all our legs, including the horses’. In the morning we’ll move the horses straight up slope from the campsite. We’ll turn them loose on the savannah. Where would you go if you were a hungry horse?’

  Gaston brightened and said, ‘I would kiss you if I was that kind of a boy! You are a genius, like me! Anyone trailing us will come upon the cold ashes of an abandoned camp, spy hoofprints sans great effort, and assume we, too, are as disgusted as they with this murky forest and have ridden back up to the savannah to see if there could be a clearness of coast. Trailing hoofprints across drier grass is less easy. If they see any sign at all, it will be headed back to that rancho and ... wait, why would Nicaraguan guerrillas be headed south, Dick?’

  ‘Shit, how are they supposed to know this outfit came from Nicaragua? Are we about to leave ’em a note pinned to a tree? If they figure out who those guys we shot up were, they’ll add up any reports they’ve had on this bunch and come up with the wrong answer, I hope. With luck they’ll assume we’re home-grown bandits, and Costa Rican bandits can ride in any direction they want to, right?’

  ‘Oui, so much for that angle. How do we move the rest of us out of camp without leaving other tracks?’

  ‘Very, very carefully. Don’t forget that the other side will spot red hoofmarks easily, and let’s count on some wishful thinking as well. I remember a time when we were trailing Apache up Arizona way. We had two choices. One led into nasty rimrock where a trooper could break his neck even if there were no Indians around. The other possible trail led across open, easy-riding playas. Guess which trail we followed.’

  Gaston chuckled and said, ‘Knowing you, I assume you chose the hard way. Knowing most scouts, yours would have preferred the easy one. I get your obtuse point. Mais what if the officer trailing us is smart too?’

  ‘Shit, we don’t even know we’re being trailed, Gaston.’

  ‘True, but one prepares for grim futures by assuming the worst. The most unpleasing prospect I can think of at the moment involves crack cavalry, well led, sniffing at our untidy trail this moment as we discuss it.’

  ‘Look on the bright side. We’ve still got the machine gun.’

  Gaston went on bitching anyhow. It was getting mighty boring by the time Captain Gringo checked his pocket watch, saw they had less than an hour of daylight left, and called a halt by a clear jungle spring. He moved everyone to the far side to make them harder to get at and ordered no fires before dark, lest someone spot smoke from the ridges to the west. That gave his workers time to throw together well-thatched huts. Thunder was rumbling off to the east, and they didn’t have to be told that the night could be wet indeed for the dry season.

  As usual in the tropics, the sun went down with a thud around six, plunging the already gloomy surroundings into total darkness until the adelitas could get some night fires going. Captain Gringo posted guards all around, well out, warning them that if they could see the campfires from where they stood picket, they were too fucking close. Then, having done all he could, he sat on a log near his own fire to clean and oil the Maxim while his adelitas served supper or, rather, while Rosita did most of the work and Teresa bitched. He was getting tired of the spoiled girl’s constant remarks about having her own servants to do this back home. So he growled, ‘Go get the coffee from Tobasca, at least. You told me how devoted your servants were to you. Ask Tobasca not to drug our coffee, and we’ll say no more about it.’

  Teresa said, ‘I do not wish to drink coffee before turning in. It keeps me awake, Dick.’

  He snorted, ‘That’ll be the day. Move your ass, sweet stuff. We want coffee even if you don’t.’

  Rosita smiled at him thoughtfully and said, ‘Sí, I, for one, intend to be awake some time.’

  Teresa made a most un-Castilian remark and went to get the pot as Rosita spooned out the com and beans. The red peppers Tobasca flavored her simple camp fare with helped a bit. It still would have been uninteresting mush if they hadn’t worked up good appetites with their legs all day. Taking advantage of the moment of privacy, Rosita leaned closer to ask Captain Gringo, ‘Would you like to join me for a midnight bath in that spring, querido? We could go sixty-nine in the shallows, no?’

  He laughed and said, ‘No. That’s where Tobasca’s getting all her water, and I want everyone to refill their canteens with fresh water in the morning.’

  ‘Would it hurt if they assumed there were fish in the spring?’

  ‘Glugh. It’s probably too cold, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I feel sure I could warm it up for you.’

  He told her to hold the thought as Teresa returned with their coffee. Naturally she wanted some, after all, now that she’d had to carry it for the peon girl and/or brute.

  To keep the party polite Captain Gringo changed the subject to his plans for the less dirty morning ahead of them. He told them what he intended to do about the pretty useless horses. Rosita said he was ever so clever. Teresa said, ‘Bueno. Let me go along, and when you turn the horses loose, I can ride one home to my rancho, no?’

  He said, ‘No. Weren’t you paying any attention earlier today? The country between here and your home spread to the south is crawling with refugee bands from the north, and by now, Costa Rican Cav is out to do something grim about it!’

  ‘Sí, but I am no bandita. The cavalry would not abuse me. My grandfather would never allow it.’

  ‘What about bandits?’

  ‘I am a good rider. I am sure I could avoid them.’

  ‘Alone? Sure you could. You were doing a swell job of escaping when we met you tied to that post in El Jefe’s camp.’

  ‘Then you and Gaston must ride with me. Haven’t you done enough for these Nicaraguans, Dick?’

  Rosita frowned and asked, ‘Hey, pig, you wanna fight?’ Captain Gringo shushed her with a friendly feel and told Teresa, ‘Not until I see them back to Nicaragua. It shouldn’t take us more than a few more days. Meanwhile, even if you could make it back to your rancho alone, you could wind up dead or worse. Make that dead. There’s nothing worse.’

  ‘But, Dick, the newspaper said they caught the ringleader of the kidnappers, no?’

  ‘No. They caught a jerk-off trying to pick up the ransom, period. Your foreman might have been the ringleader. He might not have. We mean to deliver you to your grandfather in Limón, not turn you loose among people we’re not too sure about. So eat your beans. We have a rough day ahead of us.’

  Rosita nudged him from the other side and slyly asked what his plans for the night might be. He patted her ass and told her just to start without him if he came home a little late, explaining that he had to make sure the camp was secure before he could even think about sleeping. She laughed and said, ‘Oh? You planned on sleeping too?’ Then she rose to carry their dirty tin dishes back to Tobasca.

  Teresa murmured, ‘Slut. What could you possibly see in her, Dick?’

  He shrugged and said, ‘She came in sort of handy during that firefight. Watch your mouth around her, by the way. She really knows how to use a knife, and I’d feel dumb as hell explaining that to your grandfather.’

  She asked, ‘For why do you have to say anything to my grandfather once we get back to Limón? Are you expecting a reward, Dick?’

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind. More importantly, I got into this dumb mess in order to clear my name. I told you the kidnappers involved me without my asking to join the party. Lucky for you I did, whether you like it or not.’

  She looked away to murmur, ‘Ah, when we get back to Limón, do you have to te
ll my grandfather everything about … us, Dick?’

  He laughed incredulously and asked, ‘Is that what’s making you so anxious to return on your own, sweet stuff? Do you take me for a total idiot?’

  ‘Well, you have taken advantage of me, and my grandfather is sure to ask if I was raped, you know.’

  ‘I don’t remember raping anybody. Do you?’

  ‘Not exactly, but we have been very wicked, more than once. You even took advantage of me during my period, you brute!’

  ‘I remember how hard you fought me off. By the way, how are you feeling tonight?’

  ‘I am no longer in that condition, if that is what you have on your evil mind. But if you ever tell my grandfather—’

  He cut in to say, ‘Go to your shelter and think pure thoughts. I’ll be along directly.’

  ‘You wish for to ravage me again?’

  ‘We’ll discuss who’s taking advantage of whom later. Get going before Rosita gets back. Come on, doll, move your ass.’

  She did, telling him how awful he was. So when Rosita returned, she found him working on the machine gun action again, smoking an innocent cigar. The mestiza sat beside him, hugging her bare knees as she asked where “that Spanish bitch” might be. He shrugged and said, ‘Turned in early, I guess. She said something about not feeling so hot.’

  Rosita laughed and said, ‘Hidalgo girls enjoy long periods. If they worked hard, like us, they would get over them sooner. But speaking of pussy, querido, how long do you intend to fuck with that cold steel?’

  He said, ‘Until I make sure it’s not going to turn to soft rust. You’ve no idea how annoying it can be to have a Maxim jam on you just as the other side charges.’

  She giggled and said, ‘I got something that needs jamming too. I may have to take you up on starting by myself, if you do not come to me soon for to make me come. I have been mad with passion since we shot all those men today. Do you know why? I do not know why battle excites a woman between the legs, but it does. Do men get erections, killing other men?’