The Viper Squad

by J. B. Hadley

  “I’ll go back for the others,” Mike said.

  He had them drag the four bodies away from the path into the trees and slung a hand-held radio transmitter after them.

  Mike said to Joe, “They’ll be alerted by the lack of radio response if they didn’t hear your burst of fire. Keep up a fast pace from here on. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Mike lost no time in moving them out. If they were going to lose the element of surprise, perhaps speed would make up for it.

  If any of them had ever doubted the value of what they had done every day on Assateague Island, running endless mile after mile up and down the beach, they found out its benefit now. The going was all uphill, and the higher they climbed, the steeper it became. The path tacked from side to side up the mountain like a sailboat against the wind.

  Joe Nolan spun about, wildly gestured for them to take cover and dived into some thick prickly bushes. Moments later, a platoon of twelve men came down the trail in single file, spaced apart, rifles at the ready. The mercs, hardly breathing where they lay hidden only a few yards away on both sides of the trail, listened to each of the guerrillas pass: his footfalls on the litter of the forest floor, the way each of them brushed against the branch of a bush, one man’s belch, another’s sniffle. Each one of the mercs had wondered for a panic-stricken instant if he had forgotten to conceal some part of himself or his equipment, leaving a foreign object visible in the bushes upon which a guerrilla’s eye might chance to fall. But there was nothing for the guerrillas to see, and they continued downhill along the trail.

  Mike waited a couple of minutes before he stood and hissed to the others, “They’ve gone back to see what happened to the rearguard. We gotta move forward fast now and hit the main group while we can. Remember, from this point on we got to watch our ass with that platoon behind us.”

  Joe hit the trail even faster than before. The others wound along behind him, confident in Mike Campbell’s leadership—all except Mike, who wished he knew what the hell to expect and had some contingency plans, or even a plan, he could rely on. Sometimes a soldier had to jump in with both feet, and at such times it was better to act than worry.

  After a steep climb, they came to the top of the wooded hill. The trail bore to the right, following the highest ground, which had only a thin cover of trees. Huge slabs of rock jutted from the soft cover of vegetation. Joe motioned that he was going ahead alone to reconnoiter.

  He came back in a few minutes. “They’ve left another four guards on the trail to cover their rear. These ones are a lot more alert than the first four.”

  “They’ve probably heard that the others are missing,” Mike said. “But they’ll think it’s just a foul-up unless that platoon finds the bodies. Any sign of the main group of guerrillas?”

  “I didn’t hear anything. But they can’t be far ahead of us.”

  Mike slung his M16 on his back and drew his machete. He pointed its blade at Nolan, Murphy and Waller. They drew theirs.

  “No shooting” was all he said.

  They watched the four guerrillas from the cover of bushes.

  Mike whispered, “We could never get closer than this without them spotting us. I’m going to draw them to us. Ready?” He looked them over quickly, then shouted to the four guerrillas, “Companeros! Aqui!”

  The rebels looked startled and stood undecided.

  “Aqui!” Mike shouted again, invisible in the bushes.

  They came running, assault rifles at the ready.

  Mike popped up right next to one, using his motion to deliver a short, sharp chop with the machete. The steel blade buried itself in the guerrilla’s skull with a whack—the same sound it had made on the unripe coconuts Mike had practiced on. He had to put one foot on the lifeless man’s shoulder in order to yank the blade out of the splintered bone.

  To his right, he saw Joe Nolan deliver a series of chops to his struggling, groaning victim on the ground. The man clutched at the blade of the machete with his bare hands till their flesh was cut to ribbons from the bones. Joe dug at him with the long blade till he lay still.

  Harvey stood over his dead rebel, who was sliced open across the chest, and the merc smiled like a family butcher over a showpiece of prime ribs.

  Bob Murphy missed with his first swing at his guerrilla. The man saw the blade descending on him and pulled back. The terrorist took another backward step as Bob’s brawn followed through on his swing. The rebel directed the barrel of his M16 at Bob’s gut and went to squeeze the trigger.

  Before his brain managed to send the message to his trigger finger, Harvey gave him a sideways cut to the upper arm that severed the nerve.

  The guerrilla stood there shocked, as in a still from a movie, while Harvey moved next to him, jaws working frantically on a wad of gum. Harvey held his machete in a two-handed grip, with the blade balanced on his left shoulder, and he took a mighty swipe that made the blade scream through the air.

  He cut the guerrilla’s head clean from his shoulders.

  Harvey looked after the head as it flew through the air and disappeared into some bushes. He grinned his sick grin and said to the others, “If this was Fenway Park, that would have been a home run.”

  Lance, Cesar and Andre tried not to blanch as they saw their four comrades return smeared in blood and carrying dripping machetes.

  Elated now, with a manic smile Harvey smeared blood with his hand onto Lance’s clean fatigues and yelled at him, “Come on in! It’s warm! It only seems cold when you’re standing out there!”

  Lance gagged.

  “Enough!” Mike barked and faced Harvey down.

  “Crazy fucker,” Bob Murphy muttered at Harvey in Lance’s defense.

  Harvey retorted, “That’s not what you were saying a few minutes ago when I saved your bacon.”

  Bob nodded. “That’s true, Harvey. But calm down now.”

  “You be calm, Murphy,” Harvey sneered. “I’ll save your ass while you look cool.”

  Mike let them talk themselves out and mutter curses for a while, then he led all of them deliberately slow past the four hacked-up corpses and beyond. That brought everyone back to reality, especially the fact that they were in unknown territory again, that they were no longer king of the hill and could easily end looking just like the four recently deceased on the trail behind them.

  “The main group of rebels. has got to be near,” Mike said. “As soon as we see them, take cover in a line at right angles to this path. I want ten feet at least between each man.”

  He nodded to Joe Nolan to take the lead again. Mike followed in number two position after telling Andre to cover their rear.

  At one bend in the path that was easy to recognize, Andre hung back to lay a trip wire. He attached the wire to a rectangular polystyrene Claymore antipersonnel mine which he had placed out of sight next to the path. Then he removed the safety pin and covered the mine with forest litter. When Andre caught up with the others, he passed the word along about the location of the trip wire. That was the trouble with a mine—it could cause as much damage to the side that carelessly laid it as to the enemy. It was impersonal about whom it killed.

  The main body of guerrillas were eating C rations in a forest clearing when Mike and the team came upon them. The mercs were immediately spotted by lookouts and had to dive to the ground to avoid being raked by automatic fire. The bullets ripped through the leaves of the under—growth and smacked off tree trunks. The twenty-five or thirty men dropped their spoons and cans and grabbed their Ml6s, AK-47s, M2s and Mini-14s.

  Campbell slipped the safety on his M79 grenade launcher, sighted quickly and shot a grenade cartridge into the main body of guerrillas.

  The explosion tore limbs and flesh from those nearest it, hit others with fragments, knocked down more with the force of its blast and frightened the wits out of the rest—long enough for the merc team to shower them with automatic fire from their M16s. The rebels dropped like flies. Then Mike followed through with a second cartri
dge shell. But by this time the surviving guerrillas had spread out, and the grenade only took out some on the left flank.

  The hostile force had broken up into pockets of resistance behind good cover and were returning fire now with threatening accuracy.

  “Take cover!” Mike yelled at Hardwick and Waller, who were standing out front, feet apart, blazing away as though they were at the O.K. Corral.

  They obeyed, fortunately for themselves, because a withering hail of fire was now directed at them by the surviving guerrillas, who had gotten over their initial shock. The rebels were contained in four pockets, and they were coordinating their attacks. They still outnumbered the mercs by more than two to one—and the question now was, Who had got whom pinned down?

  Mike had an answer to that question. His M79. Using the graduated leaf rear sight, he sent in grenade after grenade until he flushed each pocket of guerrillas from cover. When they realized they were being systematically wiped out, the guerrillas tried a desperate charge. The survivors now barely outnumbered the mercs, and they came at them with the ferocity of cornered rats.

  Mike kicked off with his M16, and his bullets curled one of the guerrillas in on himself like a worm wriggling on a hook.

  Another of his bullets entered a rebel’s chest, the entry wound only a pinpoint of blood on the man’s combat fatigues. But when he slowly turned around as he fell, Mike saw that the exit wound in his back was big enough to stick his fist in.

  They kept coming at the mercs, so crazed with last-ditch tenor they couldn’t shoot straight and hardly knew what they were doing.

  The mercs blew them apart with close-up automatic fire. The last two still on their feet got hit with so many bullets from so many M16s, their bodies swayed and leaked from the multiple punctures caused by the high-velocity 5.56 mm projectiles.

  Mike checked on the carnage to make sure all had been hit. He had learned the hard way that he could never assume a man was finished fighting just because he was lying down. But all these men were dead.

  The mercs took this time to check their weapons and magazine supply.

  Mike walked over to them and pointed. “We have some friends back along the trail 1’d like you to meet. Andre will lead the way.”

  The leader of the guerrilla platoon couldn’t be positive that this was the place he had seen the four-man rearguard placed, until one of his men found blood drops on some leaves. The blood was fresh, still liquid on the rebel’s fingers. The leader was about to radio back when they heard the shooting.

  “They must have used a different trail to bypass us,” he shouted to his men. “Let’s take them from the rear! On the double!”

  The shooting uphill from them continued, along with grenade explosions, as they ran along the path to their friends’ aid. They had been farther off than they first thought, and the shooting stopped before they even got close. They had no idea who had gotten the upper hand, but they were coming anyhow. They did not slow their pace, rushing uphill along the winding path, fast as they could go with heavy boots, rifles and backpacks.

  As they ran, they almost trod on the hacked-up corpses of the second rearguard. Although these men had all seen combat before, this sight—involving comrades they had seen alive such a short time ago—was enough to quench their revolutionary fervor. But their leader urged them forward, promising that vengeance would be theirs; and in a moment they were charging along the trail after him to slaughter their enemies.

  The rebel leader’s leg caught in the trip wire so hard he fell over it, and the Claymore blew before he hit the ground. Its C4 explosive projected seven hundred steel balls in a 60-degree array in the direction they were coming from. Lethal to about forty-five yards, the steel balls missed some members of the platoon who were sheltered by the bodies of others.

  Those nearest were chopped to pulp and died instantly. Those farther back were less fortunate and began to die noisily and painfully from their mortal wounds. Two were injured only in the legs; one was hit in the left arm; and two were completely untouched and stood there with their mouths hanging open in horrified amazement.

  The mercs took them clean away with a burst of M16 automatic fire at gut level. Harvey ran in gleefully with his Colt pistol to finish off any still moving.

  Chapter 12

  THERE was no doubt about who was giving orders now to Major Rafael Chavarria’s hunter battalion. It was Mad Mike Campbell. He and his team had arrived back in camp the previous evening just as the cooks were about to serve food. The major and the other officers had already left to dine at the town’s single restaurant. Mike kicked over pots of stew and vegetables, overturned trestle tables and benches, knocked a sergeant out cold who tried to stand up to him, waved his M16 in the faces of three companies of soldiers and told them they had some work to do before they ate. He loaded them into the trucks, stopped outside the restaurant in town and, regardless of rank, packed the protesting officers into the trucks with the men. They were unloaded at the base of the wooded slope and ordered to climb the path to collect the weapons, ammunition, boots and other equipment from the rebels the mercs had killed. Neither Mike nor any of his team said one boastful word. They let the results speak for themselves.

  On the way back to camp, the trucks dropped off the officers at the restaurant, while Mike and his team returned to the camp to eat with the men. Although the soldiers had grumbled and cursed until they had seen the dead guerrillas, by the time they got back to the camp with the captured weapons, their morale was high and they had a new leader. Campbell was giving orders now.

  Later that night, one of the battalion’s radio operators came to Mike’s tent to tell him he had just heard rebel field radios on the air. One nearby transmitter had just sent details about the Americans present, had described the guerrilla defeat and had said the Americans had come to capture a blond woman they believed Clarinero was holding.

  “Damn,” Mike grumbled, “I wonder how they got hold of that.”

  “They have spies and infiltrators everywhere, sir,” the radio operator said.

  Mike crawled back into his tent to get a few hours’ sleep beneath a mildewed blanket on stony soil.

  In the predawn darkness, Campbell and the major pored over a map by the light of a propane lamp. The major had gotten over his rage at Mike’s actions when he had received, the previous night, a personal congratulatory radio message from the general that credited him with the head count of dead rebels. This was one tide the major was willing to float with. This morning he remembered that the general had once described Campbell as a “godsend,” and he now saw the wisdom of that description. So far as the major was now concerned, Mike had only to say the word; and if the major could deliver, Mike would get it.

  “The C-130s should be taking off about now,” the major said.

  “How many did you get?”

  “Two.”

  That would be fine. These American-piloted planes were effective in spotting insurgent positions. The major and his officers all agreed that Clarinero and the rest of his forces would not be far away. Although the comandante was known to split up his men, and often attacked several places simultaneously, the various groups never strayed very far from one another.

  On two previous occasions, government troops had cut off and liquidated an arm of Clarinero’s forces. Both times, Clarinero’s main force had counterattacked from nearby and wreaked bloody vengeance on the recently victorious government soldiers.

  Mike had demanded that the major call in reconnaissance planes. They would be hearing from them in the next hour if they came as promised.

  “If they come,” the major repeated from time to time for Mike’s benefit.

  “If they don’t, you’re going to have to radio the general to find out why they didn’t,” Mike warned him finally.

  The major looked more upset about this possibility than he had ever done about fighting guerrillas.

  Mike laughed and poked the major in the ribs. “Don’t worry. Soon as we
get the girl and finish Clarinero, we’ll take off home and leave you in peace.”

  “God willing,” the major said with a watery smile.

  The soldiers had breakfasted and were ready to move out on the trucks; the sun was burning the mist from the tops of the evergreens in the foothills; and there was still no word from the planes.

  “So maybe we gave you some bad advice at times,” Paulo Esteban conceded to Comandante Clarinero.

  “Putting our revolutionary funds into Mexican pesos instead of the hated Yanqui dollars certainly turned out to be bad advice, Paulo,” Clarinero said. “The devaluation of the Mexican peso did our movement more harm than all the Salvadoran government hunter battalions put together. I think you Cubans should pass on to us some more of all that money the Russians give you.”

  “I tell you they don’t give us much money,” Paulo said exasperatedly. “Who the hell wants rubles? What can you buy with rubles? They give us credit. Credit for what? Russian goods, of course.”

  “Which are no damn good.”

  “Which are no damn good,” Paulo agreed. “But that’s beside the point. Look, you need five million Yanqui dollars to keep going, right? You have five million sitting outside in the sun not a hundred yards away.”

  “She’s got blond hair and a big mouth,” Manuel put in.

  “You’re talking about ransom?” Clarinero asked, clearly annoyed.

  “Of course,” Paulo answered.

  “She comes to us as a sympathetic observer,” Clarinero said, “and you want me to behave like a common criminal toward her?”

  “It’s all justified because it forwards our aims, helps the revolution,” Esteban said smoothly.

  “I’m not one of—your communist-party goons, Esteban. Leave her out of this. If I have to, I’ll raid some of the big banks in the provincial capitals.”

  “And lose a lot of men,” Manuel pointed out.

  “All to save that peach-fuzz blonde for yourself?” Pablo insinuated. “Seems to me you’re putting your own creature comforts ahead of the military aims we hold in common regardless of our political views, Clarinero.”