Cody's Army

by Jim Case

  The other three would be over in the nuns’ living quarters; the noncoms and officer probably already stirring, beginning another day.

  Movement from the building over there caught his attention before Cody could reach the rear wall of the classroom structure, to put the classroom building between himself and those living quarters.

  He froze in a kneeling position at the base of the wall, M-16 swiveled in the direction of the front door of that building across the courtyard.

  The front door had opened and a government soldier emerged onto the porch. He did not look in Cody’s direction, and if he had, probably would not have discerned the blackfaced penetration specialist poised there, ready to open fire if need be.

  Cody held his fire.

  The trooper stood on the front porch and urinated into the dirt, then yawned, stretched, farted, turned and disappeared back into that building.

  Another light went on over there.

  A glance at the eastern sky showed the first pink traces of the coming dawn.

  This mission courtyard would be humming with activity within a matter of minutes.

  Cody cursed again the delays that had beset his small group on their way here. The rough country roads had tortured their van as Lopez had steered at a crawl past the scorched hulks of trucks ambushed by contras. A pin had sheared in the clutch linkage, which one of Lopez’s men had replaced with a nail. Cody would have much preferred to stage this rescue in the dead of the night, when all but the sentries would be sound asleep and there would have been a good chance of making it inside, silently taking out the sentries and making it out of there with the Sisters, without any of the officers or noncoms finding out about it until morning. But the time element was something he had no control over.

  He quit his position, hurrying to the back door of the classroom building. He paused with his back to the wall of the building and reached down to try the door handle.

  It turned under his careful twist.

  He used the barrel of his M-16 to nudge the wooden panel open a couple of inches, enough for him to get something of a look inside the one-room school building.

  A kerosene lamp cast the room in a warm, golden glow.

  He did not see the nuns, but he did see one soldier—no more than a kid, like most of those serving on both sides in this nation’s civil strife—seated behind a desk at the front of the classroom, in front of a blackboard.

  The soldier had tilted his chair back against the wall and had nodded off, his AK-47 straddled across his lap.

  Cody figured it one of three ways.

  Either the Sisters had taken advantage of their guard nodding off and had already taken flight. Or they passively remained captive somewhere inside the room, out of Cody’s line of vision; this was possible, since there was much of the room he could not see from behind the two-inch space he had prodded the door open. Or the nuns were here and staying put because of a second sentry that Cody also could not see.

  He stepped back so he was facing the door, gripped his shoulder-strapped M-16 with his right fist, and again unlimbered the combat knife. He delivered one mighty kick that slammed the flimsy piece of wood off its hinges, awakening the kid behind the desk long enough for him to push himself forward away from the wall, righting his chair, springing up like a jack-in-the-box, starting to track his AK at the figure in the doorway.

  Cody flung the combat knife with his right hand and went into a forward diving roll into that room in the same motion even as the big blade whistled across the length of the room to bury itself in the young soldier’s heart, driving him backward against the blackboard, a look of shock and pain frozen into a death rictus across his boyish features. Then his body pitched forward like a falling piece of timber behind the desk.

  Cody came out of his roll in a kneeling crouch, whipping his M-16 in a wide circle to take in the sight of the four nuns where they sat along the floor against the wall to his left—and the soldier who had been sitting half-awake across from them, against a connecting wall, who now tried to leap to his feet. He went right back down under the force of Cody, who launched himself upon this sentry, bearing the guy down to the wooden floor beneath him, bringing the wire garrote from his belt in a two-handed wrapping around of the soldier’s throat. Cody placed a knee on the man’s chest and began to strangle him to death.

  The soldier realized what was happening and hammered frantic survival blows that rained ineffectually upon Cody’s unflinching chest and face.

  The nuns became aware of what was happening, too, even if this rude awakening and the shock of sudden death before their eyes left them time to grasp nothing else.

  Cody heard whimpers of dismay and a plea to stop from that direction, but he did not stop, knowing he had no other choice, given the odds against them getting out of here alive if his presence was detected. But he made it fast as he could; one savage jerk broke the soldier’s neck with a dry snap, and the struggle ended.

  He let the dead body rest and rewound the garrote, replacing it on his belt, turning from what he had done. He retrieved his knife, then glanced out the window to see that the small sounds which had seemed so loud in here, two men dying, had not been loud enough to be heard by those across the way. Then he turned for the first time to face the nuns, four women in their twenties.

  Two of the Sisters could not take their eyes from the corpse of the strangled man.

  The body made flatulent sounds as gas escaped. The dead man’s face, twisted toward the ceiling, was purple in the glow of the kerosene lamp. His tongue protruded like an obscene, rotting sausage.

  Cody ignored the look in the eyes of the one Sister who stared at him. He rushed over to the back door, motioning for the four to follow.

  “Get a move on, Sisters. We don’t have a hell of a lot of time.”

  The one who had been staring at him asked, with a nod to the two dead men, “Was…that absolutely necessary?”

  “Sister Mary Francine?” he asked her, recalling the name Gorman had given him of the nun who led this pack and worked most closely with the antirevolutionary forces.

  She nodded. “Yes, I’m Sister Mary Francine, but—”

  “No buts or we’re all dead. I came here for you.”

  This time she nodded briskly, a new look in her eyes.

  “You’re right.” She turned to the other three, who were now paying somewhat more attention to this man who had brought death into their midst. “Come, we must leave here,” she instructed them. “We have no choice, if we are to continue our work.”

  The other three nodded, following their leader. The four of them filed past Cody, out of the door and into the darkness, all of them avoiding glancing his way, as if they ultimately understood the necessity of what he had done but could not look with thanks into the eyes of the one who had cold-bloodedly murdered two youngsters.

  Cody knew how they felt.

  He started out after them when the front door of the classroom building opened inward at the opposite end of the spacious room.

  The government soldier who had been working the field stove across the compound filled that doorway and started to speak something to the two men he expected to find in here. When he saw their corpses, which took all of about three seconds, he also spotted Cody and the nuns heading through the opposite doorway.

  The soldier blurted something loudly even as he grabbed for his holstered sidearm.

  Cody had no choice. He pulled off a three-round burst from the M-16, the assault rifle bucking in his grip, ejecting smoking spent shell casings, stabbing hot smoke and fire across the length of the room, the pounding reports, almost deafening, reverberating in the confines of the small building.

  The soldier went into a spasming death-jig backward out through the doorway and into the courtyard, his ruptured back belching out blood and destroyed flesh as he took all three heavy projectiles across the upper chest.

  Cody spun from that sight to join the nuns out back of the building, where they huddle
d in a group, watching him with staring eyes wide with apprehension and horror. He moved around them.

  “This way,” he urged.

  They followed with alacrity.

  He reached the corner of the classroom structure and peered around the corner at the living-quarters building across the courtyard.

  Shouts and a sense of movement rippled through the half-light from over there.

  The ridges and undulating terrain of the surrounding mountains were etched in stark relief against the warming horizon to the east, a dreamy half-light illuminating the mission in these final moments before dawn.

  It was seventy feet or so to the front gate, by Cody’s estimation. They would have to try for it. He hoped Lopez had the good sense to have his men cranking up those vehicles out there for a fast getaway now that this had blown to shit, but he could not hear any engine sounds outside the mission walls.

  The tightening intensified in his gut; he expected something was about to go real wrong.

  He blocked that thought, hurling himself away from his cover before anyone could show himself from the building across the way. He motioned for Sister Mary Francine and the other young missionaries to rush along after him, which they did.

  He turned to them.

  “There are people waiting outside the gate,” he urged. “Hurry!”

  Sister Mary Francine eyed him with new concern.

  “What about you?”

  He liked her for that. She was a fighter.

  Two soldiers appeared on the run from the building across the way, gripping assault rifles, galloping toward the classroom building, not yet spotting Cody and the nuns because of the angle and the dawning half-light.

  “I’m right behind you,” Cody grunted to the nuns. “Just a couple of things to take care of. Now go!”

  The head Sister followed his instructions, indicating for the other three to rush along with her toward the archway.

  They had made it halfway there when their movement caught the attention of the two soldiers who had almost reached the front of the classroom building and the dead soldier sprawled there.

  Cody had hoped to hold off on the fireworks until the Sisters had made it clear of the courtyard, then possibly withdraw himself without detection.

  That changed when one of the soldiers yelled to the other and they both swung their weapons around toward the nuns, who did make it to and through the arched entrance to the mission courtyard.

  The soldier to Cody’s left triggered off a burst from his AK-47 that sent a line of ricocheting projectiles whining off the wall right beside the archway and just after the nuns had passed through it.

  The soldier to Cody’s right aimed at Cody.

  Cody triggered a wide figure-eight burst intended to take out both of these goons of the state, but the one on the right saw it coming and leaped sideways.

  The soldier who had been firing on the nuns started to readjust his line of fire toward Cody but a half-dozen of Cody’s projectiles slammed the guy and sent him quivering into a backfall, haloed in a crimson spray.

  The other soldier got Cody in his sights and fired, but Cody saw it coming with an eyeblink of time to pitch himself to the ground. The hail of bullets slashed the air where he had been standing an instant earlier.

  He supported his aim with both of his elbows to the ground and pulled off a burst that melded with the clatter of the AK.

  The soldier was lifted backward off his feet, as if pushed by some giant invisible hand under the impact of the slugs that pierced and stitched his chest. The guy was a corpse before he hit the ground, but his dead finger remained curled around his rifle’s trigger for the few seconds it took him to topple, spraying bullets into the sky.

  Cody rolled onto his side, spotting the movement of two figures appearing in the front door of the living-quarters building.

  The Sandinista officers who saw Cody and what he had done leaped back inside, hurried along by the noisy burst Cody flung after them, and a moment later both officers knocked out the glass of windows flanking either side of the door to commence firing at where Cody had been. But by that time Cody had scuttled away from the center of the small courtyard and gained the side of the building from which the two Nicaraguan officers were hosing down the courtyard with steady streams of automatic fire, fire that crackled like surreal strobelights in the lifting gloom.

  He slinked around the corner of the building and started edging along its face even as the rifle muzzles spat death from the two busted-out windows, the army officers unable to see Cody. He kept himself against the wall and eased in inch by inch toward the window nearest him, reaching across his chest to pluck one of his grenades off his webbing.

  He wondered where the hell Lopez and his bunch were, now that he could use some backup.

  Just as he got to within two feet of the nearest window, the twin streams of auto-fire from inside the building ceased. The officers must have decided to reload, or were trying to get a bearing on what they were firing at, or both.

  He kept his right index finger curled around the M-16’s trigger. He lifted the grenade with his left hand and clamped his teeth about the grenade’s pin, biting the damn thing free, drawing his arm back for a backhanded pitch through the window.

  At that moment, a woman screamed from outside the wall of the mission.

  The the sound was swallowed up by the angry chatter of several yammering automatic weapons.

  Cody lobbed the grenade in through the shattered window and pulled back.

  A thunderclap detonated inside the building, throwing the remaining glass from the window along with chunks of wood and one of the Sandinista officers who had pitched out partway through the nearest window, the back of his head a bubbly murk like warm strawberry jelly.

  The door burst open again and the other officer reeled out in a cloud of billowing smoke from inside, stunned, injured, trying to get his bearings.

  Cody heard the machine-gun fire from outside the mission taper off to nothing. He fed this goon a head shot that burst the guy’s skull into a million bloody bits like an exploding melon; then he whirled and rushed for the archway, slapping a fresh magazine into the M-16.

  He hoofed to a stop just short of the archway, pausing to ease one eye and the snout of his rifle around the corner for a look-see, not knowing what to expect, thinking that possibly some additional Sandinista troops had closed in on the contras and—

  It wasn’t that.

  It was a scene from Hell.

  It had been less than twenty seconds since the gunfire from outside the walls had ceased. Gunsmoke hung heavy in the air like a cloud.

  The first soft rays of the new day revealed Enrique Lopez and his four contras standing to one side of one of the Soviet Jeep-like vehicles, the men all in the process of plunking fresh clips into their rifles, and none of the men were looking away from the gut-wrenching sight of what they had obviously just done.

  The four nuns must have been instructed to hurriedly board one of the vehicles

  Then Lopez had ordered his men to open fire at point-blank range.

  Three of the women had been tossed into wretched positions of sudden, violent death upon the floor of the open vehicle, which was pockmarked with dozens of bullet indentations and the blood of the dead women who had been literally chopped into stringy, gory pieces by the close-in barrage of automatic fire.

  Sister Mary Francine had been tossed bodily out of the far side of the Jeep by the impact of the bullets, her corpse a gruesome ruin that palpitated like the others in the throes of postdeath tremors.

  The horrible, overly sweet stink of violent death wafted through the air like a tangible thing.

  Cody had trouble believing his eyes, but he gave none of that away.

  He had long ago lost count of the dead bodies he had seen; of the horrors he had witnessed, and perpetrated. It kept him up nights if he thought too much about it, but he did not lose his head in its presence.

  He crossed over to where t
he contras had fallen in loosely behind Lopez, who regarded Cody as if nothing in the world was wrong. Lopez tossed a glance over Cody’s shoulder, through the archway.

  “All I have been told about the great John Cody in action is true, it would seem, Senor. There were…no survivors?”

  Cody answered with one last, long look at the destroyed, ghastly remains of what, less than a minute ago, had been four living, breathing, vital human beings, then he looked back at Lopez.

  “No survivors.”

  The contra discerned something in his eyes.

  “You did know what was to happen, did you not, Senor”? I thought Gorman—”

  “Let’s get back to Gorman,” said Cody.

  Lopez nodded to that with a grin that was half nerves, half relief.

  “In any event, Senor, you helped us much, the way you handled those Sandinista swine. It is for the good of our cause, after all.”

  “Let’s get back to Gorman.”

  Cody turned from the sight and trudged off, back across the clearing, toward the tree line, the way they had come.

  He did not look back.

  * * *

  It was daylight when he and the five contras reached the waiting van.

  A sluggish morning mist hugged the surrounding mountains except for the mile-high volcano, San Cristobal, which puffed a white semaphore into the hot, white sky in the distance.

  Gorman and Snider had been sitting on the front bumper of the van, watching the spot where Cody emerged at the front of the column, the contras trudging along behind him.

  A circle of smoked cigarette butts around the front of the van told Cody that the Company men had not had an easy wait.

  They stood as he and the contras approached them.

  Gorman was a broad-shouldered, mean-faced guy.

  Snider was as average as they come in appearance, and seemed extremely nervous.

  Gorman eyed Cody across a distance of some twenty feet.

  Cody had halted at that spot as the contras continued their approach to the van.

  Gorman studied Cody just standing there, not advancing with the others.

  “I, uh, guess I owe you an explanation, John,” was all the bastard said.