by Dick Stivers
The lieutenant stepped up behind Lyons and whispered a translation. “He said the guerrilla will pray for a bullet before he dies.”
Blancanales slowly leaned to the bloody boy and helped him to his feet. He turned the boy around. While all the soldiers watched, Blancanales tore a tourniquet off a dead guerrilla and tied the boy’s hands behind him. Then he shoved the boy toward the jeeps.
“Watch my back, Ironman,” Blancanales whispered as he passed. “Those punks are crazy.”
Keeping his eyes on the soldiers, Lyons backed up, the muzzle of the Atchisson threatening the group with death by high-velocity steel. The loud-mouthed soldier who had killed the two wounded men spat at Lyons, but the other soldiers grabbed him and restrained him.
Another soldier stepped toward Lyons. Lyons swiveled the autoshotgun to point at the teenager’s chest. The soldier put up both hands, palms open. Then he reached up and took off his OD green beret. He held it out to Lyons.
“Muchas gracias por su ayuda, guerrero.”
Taking his left hand off the foregrip of the Atchisson, Lyons motioned the young soldier forward. The soldier gave him the beret. Lyons flipped it onto his head. He set it at a rakish angle, like a movie-star hero, as he continued backing away.
Behind him, he heard the engines of the jeeps start. Lyons gave the group of soldiers a left-handed salute. But he did not turn his back.
“Come get me,” he called out.
A jeep bumped backward to him. Not taking his eyes from the Salvadorans, Lyons stepped into the jeep. He put his knee in the seat and braced the Atchisson on the backrest.
As Able Team left the kill zone behind, the Salvadoran soldiers waved. The jeeps followed the road over the rise and around a bend. Only then did Lyons click up his Atchisson’s safety. His hand-radio buzzed. Lyons set down his weapon and searched through his pockets.
“Wiz-a-rado a-qui,” Gadgets jived through the electronic encoding circuits of the NSA equipment. Any counterinsurgent operatives monitoring radio communications would intercept only bursts of static as the encrypting circuits of Able Team’s hand-radios instantaneously coded and decoded every transmission. “Que pasa? Gonna do any more favors for people?”
“Favors for who?” Lyons watched the forested hillsides above the road as he spoke into his hand-radio. “That Commie? Fighting is one thing, but torturing and murdering fifteen-year-olds is something else.”
“Hey, man,” Gadgets’s voice responded with a laugh. “Ricardo and me are already buddies. I meant those Salvos back there — first we save them, then they want to off us.”
“I didn’t do anything for them,” Lyons answered. “We needed these jeeps. Ricardo’s the kid’s name?”
“Yeah,” replied Gadgets’s voice. “And he is fifteen. Jesus, I been here three hours and the Pol said it straight last night. ‘Salvador is the asshole of the world.’ I want to go home, where teenagers smoke grass and screw their teenybop girlfriends. This scene down here is heavy.”
“Do your job, Wizard,” muttered Lyons. “Sooner you do it, sooner we go back.”
“I’m doing my job. Have you checked out the radios in these jeeps? Ask the lieutenant to look at the frequencies.”
Lyons looked over to the lieutenant. He had heard everything Gadgets Schwarz said over the hand-radio. He clenched his jaw with anger. He pointed to the dial of the jeep’s radio console.
“That radio. That number is the frequency of the Boinas Verdes. That is the frequency of the army’s helicopters. That radio. I do not know about the other radio. I have never seen it before.”
After Lyons relayed the information, Gadgets asked, “What other radio?”
“There’s another set here. Looks like a civilian unit.
No brand name, no model names or numbers. Only numbers on the dials. A black radio, with a dial and a microphone. Nothing else.”
“Stand by to stop,” Gadgets told Lyons. “I want to check out that black box. Maybe we could monitor Commie frequencies. The Pol will pull when he sees good cover.”
Unable to contain his anger, Lieutenant Lizco spoke suddenly. “To slander my country is easy. We have many troubles. The hatred and the violence of four hundred years make the politics of my country insane. But hear me, norteamericano. Your country makes it worse. One president talks of human rights and the next president talks of making war to make peace. But it is all only noise for the television…”
“Don’t talk that shit to me…” Lyons’s talents did not include courtesy or diplomatic explanations of United States foreign policy. ‘This place is a hellhole of Nazis and psychos. You going to blame the massacre in 1932 on the United States? Did the U.S. bring in the death squads? Can’t tell me that…”
The lieutenant cut him off. “I can tell you this. In October 1979, the army took the government away from the generals and the families. My brother and father worked with the Junta, they told me all this. The army created the land reforms. The army sent the corrupt generals and colonels into exile. The army disbanded Orden. The army fought the Communists.
“There were only two thousand or three thousand guerrillas in the mountains,” he continued, “not all of them Communists. The Junta hoped the reforms and the justice and human rights would win the war. We hoped the United States would lend us the money to make the reforms. We hoped for weapons to fight the Communists.
“Nothing came from the great democracy in the north. No money, no rifles, no helicopters, nothing. Only politicians and journalists.
“The dreamers and idealists in the Junta promised change. But they had no money for the people, no weapons for the army.
“The idealists could not stop the counterrevolution. They could not stop the death squads. The national guard, the national police, the Orden — they murdered thousands. The families destroyed the Junta.
“To please the new administration in the north, the families formed the Second Junta, the Gang of Death. The gang also promised reforms, but what they gave the people was murder. The gang ruled by the bullet and the machete.
“When the gang stopped the reforms, then it was that your new president sent help. Hundreds of millions of dollars, rifles, helicopters, Special Forces to train our soldiers to find the idealists and campesinos and teachers hiding in the mountains. Now there are ten thousand guerrillas. Now the guerrillas have the mountains and the roads and the villages…”
“Shut up!” Lyons shouted the lieutenant down. “None of that’s my problem. That’s your problem. You don’t like what your government does, why are you in the army?”
“Someone must fight the Communists,” the lieutenant seethed. “And after I defeat them, I will fight the others. And soon enough there will be a new American president. Every time you change presidents, it is as if the United States is another country. There may be hope for El Salvador.”
Ahead of them, Blancanales swerved off the dirt road. The lieutenant followed the first jeep. Overhanging trees shadowed a fold in the hillsides. No helicopter or patrol could spot the group.
Blancanales left the front jeep. He walked back to the lieutenant. As he spoke quietly with the Salvadoran, he gave Lyons a glance and a shake of his head. Blancanales and the Salvadoran army officer, their weapons in their hands, went to stand sentry at the turnoff. Gadgets explained to Lyons, “We heard it all, man. I turn on that minimike, and what do I hear? The Ironman alienating our liaison.”
“I couldn’t let him talk that shit without talking back.”
“Why not? Can a word make you bleed? Let him unload his lip on you. Let him talk his Yanqui Go Home routine. You want to debate the history of presidential foreign policy? Or do you want to get Quesada? You don’t even read the newspapers, how can you talk about anything?”
“It’s what yew said that started him off.”
“Forget it. Let the Pol do the talking.” Gadgets glanced to Blancanales, who talked earnestly with the young Salvadoran officer ten meters away. “He’s got the talent for it. Why don’t y
ou watch the teenager? He’s been praying nonstop. I got to check out this funky radio here.”
Gadgets spread out tools and electronics on the seats of the jeep. Lyons went to the other jeep. The boy lay in the back, tied hand and foot, his head pillowed on OD green cans of belted 7.62mm NATO.
“Hey, Ricardo. How you doing?”
The boy looked up with tears and blood streaming down his face. “Senor comandante, por favor. Tengo quinze anos. No soy un comunista. No soy un comunista…”
Lyons glanced at the clotted blood matting the boy’s hair. He went to the cases of gear and searched through the equipment for the first-aid kit. With alcohol and a wad of tissue, Lyons cleaned the clots away from the cut on the boy’s head. The care indicated to the teenager that the hard-eyed North American did not intend to execute him.
“Gracias, senor. Gracias…”
“Be quiet, kid. Everything’ll be okay. If you’ll quit the People’s Army of Murder, I’ll take you to L.A. We got a half million Salvadorans up there already.”
“Okay, senor. Okay, okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, okay. Solamente quinze, anos, no soy un soldado…”
Lyons called out to Blancanales. “Hey, Pol. What did this kid tell you?”
Jogging over to Lyons, Blancanales answered in a low voice. “No time to question him yet. You going to bandage his head? Good. Excellent interrogation technique, gaining the confidence and gratitude of a prisoner. I wouldn’t have expected it of you.”
“Because I’m just an animal, right?” Lyons shot back, angry at his partner. “I don’t let junior hotshots badmouth my country and my president, so I’m an animal. I guess I’ll just go clean my weapon. Get ready to annihilate another group of Latin American intellectuals and social reformers. Onward Yanqui soldiers…”
A voice blared out. Lyons and Blancanales whipped around to see Gadgets switching on a tape recorder. He set the recorder in front of the unmarked, nonmilitary radio.
Joining his partners, he said, “That voice sounds official. Like he’s a commander. Maybe you could fake an answer to throw the Commies off us.”
“Perhaps…” Blancanales moved quickly to the jeep. He listened to the transmission.
“It’s ComBloc equipment?” Lyons asked.
Gadgets shook his head. “This is good equipment. The black box comes with encoding and screech transmission circuits. It’s as good as what we got from the National Security Agency. Even has a digital code switch. If you don’t know the code, you can’t turn it on.”
“How’dj’oudoit?”
“Bypassed the ten-key with my pulse generator. The electronics put infinite combinations into the circuit until it clicked.”
Lieutenant Lizco left his sentry position at the road. He returned to the jeep and listened carefully to the voice, concentrating on the voice itself and its speech patterns. He slowly looked up to the North Americans, his face slack with disbelief.
“That,” he said, “is Quesada…”
8
In the army cuartelof San Francisco Gotera, North American and European journalists crowded around the commander of Las Boinas Verdes, Colonel Alfredo Perez, as he spoke in English of the U.S.-sponsored pacification program. He posed against a ceiba tree, his camouflage fatigues starched and creased, his jump wings flashing on his chest, an Uzi machine pistol slung casually over his right shoulder. His deep, resonant voice boomed in the garrison courtyard.
At one time, the cobblestoned courtyard — brilliant with bougainvillea and hibiscus, shaded by the ceiba — echoed with typing and ringing telephones as the town officials of Gotera administered the prosperous farming region. Secretaries hurried from office to office in the two-story stucco-and-tile buildings framing the courtyard. The national police maintained an office on the ground floor where officers slept through their careers.
A guerrilla bomb had destroyed the national-police office. The soldiers now quartered in the civic buildings had placed a Browning Model 1919A6 .30-caliber machine gun pointing out through a window bricked-in to a horizontal slit. The weapon’s field of fire included the town square, the Cine Morazan, the church, and a cafe advertising Coca-Cola and Cervezas Pilsner. Where the now-deceased policemen had slept with their chairs tilted against the walls, soldiers slept against sandbags. On the second-floor balconies where secretaries had minced from office to office in their tight skirts, their heels clicking on the tiles, soldiers played cards behind rows of sandbags, oblivious to the American-accented English of their commander.
“The political details and legal technicalities don’t concern me. My duty is the protection of the administrators and the campesinos. If the guerrillas kill the government workers or the farmers who work the land, they kill the reforms.
“Though the war requires more supplies of material from the United States, the reforms are the best weapon we have to defeat the Communists.
“While the Marxists promise a new social order, the government of El Salvador creates a new order.
“The guerrillas make promises while they burn fields and cut roads and destroy bridges. We issue land titles and loan money for seed and fertilizer.
“We’ll win. It may take a year or two to drive all the Communists back to Nicaragua and Cuba and Russia, but we’ll win because the people of El Salvador are with us.”
Two of the colonel’s aides applauded his speech. The journalists glanced at their watches, bored. Expecting the newsmen to snap photos, the colonel turned his profile to the group. But no shutters clicked. The colonel dropped his pose and leaned against the ceiba tree.
“Questions?” he asked the journalists.
A gray-haired reporter in a guayaberashirt and plaid Bermuda shorts held up a hand. He held a cassette recorder to tape the colonel’s answer.
“Colonel Perez, this morning I saw two bodies just outside town here. Two middle-aged men. Looked poor, had callused hands like farmers…”
“Yes, it is terrible. The terrorists always take the good men, the men who work for a living. If the farmers refuse the propaganda of the Communist terrorists, they’re shot like dogs. Next question.”
“Colonel Perez, allow me to finish, please. One had this piece of paper wadded in his mouth.” The gray-haired reporter held up a sheet of thin, yellowish paper with printed and typed text. “This land title granted the man ownership of seventeen acres of undeveloped land just north of here. I checked it on the map and it’s property claimed by the Quesadas. What…”
“What is your question?” one of the aides demanded. His right hand gripped the flap of his .45 automatic’s holster.
“Please state your question, sir,” the colonel requested.
“What would the Communists have to gain by protecting the Quesadas’ property?”
The colonel laughed. “I don’t know. I haven’t studied Marx. Maybe you should ask the Communists.”
“Have you questioned the Quesadas about the murders?”
“What murders? Next question.”
Another reporter spoke. “Has the tempo of the fighting decreased since the negotiations began?”
“What negotiations? How can a democracy bargain with terrorists? There are no negotiations that I know of… perhaps the leftists and Communist sympathizers have initiated a sham…”
A soldier ran through the dust and the shadows to hand his commander a slip of paper. The colonel glanced at the message. He turned to the journalists.
“Thank you for your attention and concern, gentlemen. I must end the press conference now. Buenas tardes.”
One of the newsmen’s drivers rushed through the gates of the cuartel. He whispered to the journalists.
“Ambush on road. To the north. I hear army radio. We go?”
“Fighting going on?” a photographer asked.
“All over. No danger. Many dead. Soldiers going in trucks.”
“Who won?” a writer asked in English, then repeated in Spanish when the Salvadoran driver did not
immediately answer. “Quien son los ganadores?”
The Salvadoran laughed, spoke in English as before. “Mister, who knows? We go see? Yes? We wait for soldiers to go, we follow.”
The group moved for the press vans, all of the journalists and photographers speaking to one another. The gray-haired journalist who had questioned the colonel on the murdered campesinos, Alex Johnson of the San Francisco Globe, glanced around the pueblosquare.
In front of the Cine Morazan, he saw a young man speak with the soldiers quartered in the abandoned theater. The young man looked at the group of journalists leaving the cuartel, gave the soldiers a salute and crossed the unpaved square to the vans.
The journalists knew the young man as Jose Lopez, a United States citizen born in Puerto Rico and working with American journalists in Latin America. He spoke excellent English and idiomatic Spanish. Twenty-two years old, a mulatto with wavy close-cut hair, his skin a cafe au lait that matched the color of most Salvadorans, Jose had already proved himself invaluable to the North Americans and Europeans. Local people stared at the foreign journalists. Jose went unnoticed. Salvadorans turned their backs to the questions of the foreigners. Jose gossiped and joked with campesinos and soldiers and village women.
The young man went to Alex Johnson. As the other reporters crowded into the vans, Jose whispered a report to the San Francisco journalist.
“This commander’s a complete fuck-up. He’s lost a hundred men in the past three months. Not prisoners and wounded. Dead. They’re up against the Popular Liberation Forces. The PLF don’t take prisoners. The commander only goes through the motions. He resupplies the garrison in Perquin by truck. Which means the guerrillas hit them at their convenience. Maybe once a week there’s an ambush like the one the Commies just did. The soldiers are scared shitless.”
“What about the two dead farmers?”
“They bury people every morning. Those two today. Three yesterday. One the day before. Every day.”
“Who’s doing it?”
“Isn’t those guys. They don’t leave town day or night.”