It was obvious now that there were no Bolivian soldiers anywhere on the hill. Still, a steady stream of bullets plinked at them from the river bend, punctuated by short bursts of automatic fire aimed low and walked into the shallows.
Guevara peered over the top of the fallen log behind which they’d taken cover. He did this for only a second, since the bullets fired at them were very accurately aimed. A hundred meters away, Guevara could see the riverbank and the corpses of half a dozen Bolivian soldiers scattered about. He could see no movement, nor could he detect the place from which the gunfire came. A second after he ducked back, a bullet smashed into the log a few feet away from his face, tearing out a chunk of termite-infested wood and slinging it off nearly straight up into the tree canopy above him.
“How many?” Guevara said to Joaquin.
“Two squads…I don’t know. Half of them ran away downriver.”
“Army or militia?” Guevara asked.
“Green uniforms,” Joaquin answered. “Army.”
Rolando spoke. “I thought they were trying to flank us.”
“There’s only one rifle there now,” Guevara said. On cue, five shots passed close overhead, a testament to the marksmanship of this lone rifleman.
“Just one? Where are the others?” Joaquin asked.
“Have we driven them off?” Rolando’s face was bright, and his eyes shone. Adrenaline and the intoxication of combat had enraptured him.
“They’re falling back,” Guevara said. One brave or foolish soul was covering the retreat. It was likely that the Bolivians had run away, but Guevara could not be certain that the enemy had not feigned retreat in order to draw the guerrillas into the open and strike them with enfiladed fire. That was what Guevara would have done.
“Have Marcos take the forward detachment and advance on this side of the river,” Guevara said, and as these words left his mouth, Rolando did an impetuous and fatal thing. He jumped up from behind the log, placed his weapon on his hip, and ran forward, spraying bullets at the bend in the river. Guevara reached up and tried to stop him, and his hand caught Rolando’s belt, but he jerked forward. Unbidden, two or three of the others stood and broke cover like Rolando, shooting and moving toward the bend in the river and yelling as they scrambled forward.
They were charging without orders, five or six of them, Bolivians and Cubans together; the veterans knew better, and they knew the comandante better. It was not yet time to break cover, and definitely not time to crash through the jungle toward a hidden shooter. Guevara and Joaquin remained behind the fallen log; both knew that to stand and join the stampede would be folly and maybe death. All that could be done was to fire in support of Rolando’s improvisation, attempt to lay down a suppressive fire as the charge went forward, and this Guevara did, firing and yelling himself hoarse, shouting for Rolando and the others to find cover and break off the attack.
HOYLE SHOVED THE radio operator toward Sergeant Merán. Hoyle changed magazines, put the bolt forward on his weapon, and said, “Get him out of here.”
Merán’s eyes fell on the radio; he saw that the casing was shot through, and he knew that it meant help would not be soon coming.
“Find Smith and bring him here. Tell him we found the main body—forty guerrillas.”
“Come with us,” Merán shouted, but in that instant the firing from the sandbar slowed and then stopped.
Hoyle pulled the useless radio from the Bolivian soldier’s back and dropped it into the leaf clutter. “They’re regrouping,” he said. “Run.”
Merán pulled the young man forward by his shirtfront. “Come on, you dumb bastard,” he said. And they ran.
Hoyle peered around the tree again, and for a few more seconds, there was no firing. He could hear Merán and the radio operator crashing through the brush behind him. There was no shouting from the sandbar, no noise at all, birds and insects shocked into silence by the ferocious noise of the firefight, and Hoyle strained his ringing ears for any sound at all. Then it came, one voice, and then another, a sound like haaaaaaa, through the bush, and there was the racket of several weapons shooting intermittently.
Hoyle lifted the rifle to his cheek and sighted across it. Through the trees, he saw half a dozen guerrillas in a staggered row running toward him. Hoyle’s mind was almost a perfect blank as he aimed and fired at the closest guerrilla. The M16 bucked twice, the barrel hardly moving, and Hoyle watched the man tumble forward. It happened slowly enough that Hoyle could see that both his shots had struck the guerrilla in the right thigh, maybe six inches above the knee. The M16 fired a small bullet, barely larger than .22-caliber, but the round was designed to cause maximum damage to a human body, and as these bullets found their mark the guerrilla wheeled about and Hoyle could hear two distinct thumps, the sound of the steel-jacketed slugs ripping flesh and breaking bone. Not over a dozen yards in front of Hoyle, the man went down, and the other guerrillas charging with him soon flattened behind cover.
Hoyle ran quickly to another tree. From the sandbar, he heard an order being repeated again and again, relayed man to man and he was surprised, embarrassed even, that in this moment his Spanish failed him. Hoyle’s brain buzzed, and his throat was dry as dirt. As he crouched, panting, against a tree trunk, it astounded him that he had no idea what the guerrillas were saying to one another.
GUEVARA WATCHED AS the men ran forward, he cursed and called for them to take cover, and then he saw Rolando stagger and lurch forward. Before Rolando’s body struck the ground, his pants were soaked through with blood. In an instant gore pumped through the perforations, spraying like water from a hose, and Guevara was certain an artery had been severed. Without thought or plan, Guevara leaped over the log and ran toward the wounded man.
Sprawled in an open place beneath a large hardwood, Rolando lay on his back. His rifle was at this side, and both his hands were pressed down hard on the wound. As Guevara knelt over him, Rolando smiled. Guevara recognized the expression—he had seen it before—it was the most absurd and inexplicable thing in the world: a young comrade, curiously and frankly delighted to have been wounded. But as Guevara laid hold of Rolando, blood gushed between his fists, the wound spraying blood two feet into the air, ejecting it in spurts timed to the rhythm of Rolando’s fast-beating heart. The bleeding would not stop, and in a few moments Rolando’s expression became one of shock. Until this he’d felt no pain, not even a twinge from his obviously broken leg, but as the blood spewed into the air, his eyes became wide with fear. He gripped his pants leg and squeezed his fingers into the mangled flesh, but still the blood came, jetting over him, ruby in the air and black and sticky as it pumped against the bark of the tree.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Rolando said.
The satisfaction at being wounded evaporated into mortal dread. Guevara ripped off his belt and quickly made a tourniquet. Guevara hitched on the belt, and Rolando screamed in agony, the artery and pulverized muscles shoved against raw, broken bone. Guevara began to drag the wounded man back toward cover.
NOW THEY WERE all moving, coming at him, and for the first time since the contact opened, Hoyle felt that he was in danger. Merán was gone, away through the jungle behind him, and Hoyle was conclusively aware that he was alone and facing a superior and well-led enemy.
Hoyle again took aim. A hundred yards away, two dozen guerrillas were visible; they were being marshaled into a line and were coming on, shooting. Close to his right, he saw one man lift a wounded guerrilla under the armpits and drag him backward. Hoyle positioned the chest of the rescuer under his front sight and narrowed his eye. His index finger drew slack out of the trigger, but Hoyle did not fire.
To shoot would be simple murder.
Across the space of the clearing, Guevara’s eyes found Hoyle; rather, Guevara ascertained a man with a black rifle, an enemy taking aim. There was an incalculable instant, one half a millisecond of connection, one veteran recognizing another, and insensibly and without reflection or mercy, Hoyle moved the muzzle of his rifle
up and to the left. In the swirling calculus of combat, Hoyle recognized that the wounded man and his savior were not an immediate threat, the advancing men were, and his thumb pressed the safety switch from fire all the way back to auto. He aimed waist-high at the advancing guerrillas and fired half the magazine in short, sharp bursts. He had spared Guevara and Rolando, but to the others, he intended maximum harm. He aimed and fired again; bullets crashed through the trees, and Hoyle felt a brief twinge of satisfaction when he heard a human yelp from somewhere in the brush.
It was time to disappear. Hoyle pulled a smoke grenade from his flak jacket, yanked the pin, and tossed it upwind. Hissing, the grenade bounced onto the riverbank; purple smoke gushed between him and the guerrillas. Screened by the cloud, Hoyle turned and ran.
He could hear the weapons of the guerrillas firing steadily, and again everything seemed to slow. The small patches of sunlight that made it through the forest seemed impossibly bright, and the noise of the river seemed like a roar in his ears. Hoyle felt as though he were trying to run through concrete: He willed himself onward, but his legs would not do his bidding. His heart pounded in his throat, and he could feel the concussion of the weapons being fired at him—sharp, tearing explosions that rattled his guts. Hoyle jumped over the bodies of the Bolivian soldiers in the shallows next to the riverbank, and when the first bullet hit the sand in front of him, he knew that he would soon be shot down.
His senses started to flee him; the light on the forest floor dimmed, the sounds of the river froze in his ears, and he thought, calmly, that he had not expected to die this morning.
It was a mistake to cross the river, he thought. All of this was a colossal fuckup.
Two bullets struck Hoyle nearly simultaneously, the first cutting away the heel of his right boot, abruptly and violently spinning him through the air and sweeping his feet from under him. Something passed his ear with the sound of a bullwhip. As he fell, a bullet struck him in the front of his flak jacket, punching the breath from his lungs in a short, excruciating grunt, and Hoyle was knocked senseless. Oblivion closed over him like the lid of a box.
WHEN THE LAST man fell onto the riverbank, Joaquin ordered a cease-fire. The veterans quickly reloaded, anticipating Joaquin’s next command, and Moro turned back to the place Guevara had dragged Rolando. He knelt as Guevara struggled to further tighten the tourniquet. Moro knew, as Guevara did, that the femoral artery had been severed. Guevara called for stretcher bearers, and Rolando was wrapped into a poncho and carried back up the trail.
“I’m sorry, Comandante,” Rolando said. “Shit, I’m sorry.”
“Go with him,” Guevara said to Moro.
“The surgical kits are all the way back with the horse,” Moro said.
“Go quickly. Do what you can,” Guevara said. Moro hustled off after the stretcher, following the black trail of blood. Guevara moved toward the bend in the river. Joaquin had already taken charge, deploying squads on the flanks and ordering Urbano and Alejandro to gather weapons and search the bodies. These actions were carried out with sufficient haste, as all knew more soldiers would be drawn to the sound of the fight.
Guevara scanned the riverbank; half a dozen Bolivian army dead, and seven more corpses would be found in the brush, making for a total of thirteen killed.
“Willy and Chapaco were hunting,” Joaquin said. “They stumbled into a patrol. Willy was shot through the hand.”
“Who else is wounded?”
Joaquin shook his head; there had been no other casualties. Thirteen Bolivian soldiers were dead, and an unknown number were scattered and hiding in the forest.
Guevara walked through the small clearing where Rolando had fallen, then toward the stretch of beach where the river turned. Fingers of violet-colored smoke still floated through the trees. He found the casing of the smoke grenade, burned out and smoldering in a wet spot on the trail.
On the sand by the river, Guevara came upon the pieces of Hoyle’s rifle, black plastic and aluminum, and then the weapon itself, a remarkably skeletal and fragile-looking thing. Guevara lifted it from the sand. Even half-smashed, the rifle’s distinctive front sight and carrying handle were obvious. Joaquin looked at it and recognized the weapon at once. The M16 rifle was emblematic, an icon of the United States.
“That weapon,” Joaquin said. “It’s North American.”
Sprawled a dozen yards from Joaquin, Hoyle heard these words spoken plainly. They came to him through a dark veil of hurt.
His eyes flickered open, but he saw nothing—sand pressed against his face, and he could feel the grit between his teeth. A gash had opened on his forehead. He felt numb in his legs. At first he thought this a symptom of paralysis, and it took him a good several seconds to realize that he was lying across one of the shallow sandbars, immersed up to his waist in water.
Hoyle remained perfectly still and could hear the voices of the other guerrillas counting bodies and calling to one another from down the riverbank. Hoyle was not sure that he could move; there was an overpowering pain in his chest, and as he heard the crunching of stones, he realized someone was approaching. He had no chance of escape, so he closed his eyes, hoping to play dead.
Guevara tossed away the broken rifle and looked over at the place where Hoyle lay. Guevara could not see the man’s face but recognized that his clothing was different from that of the Bolivian cabos, and over his flak jacket he wore a pistol in a shoulder holster. It was the pistol that first attracted Guevara’s attention, pistols being a universal mark of military status. Guevara clicked his lips, and Joaquin looked over. Joaquin, too, saw the pistol and knew at once what it meant.
As Guevara walked closer, he recognized this person as the same man who’d spared his life as he struggled to drag Rolando to cover.
Joaquin aimed his rifle at the back of Hoyle’s skull. He said quietly, “I think this one is a gringo.”
Hoyle held his breath, waiting for a bullet. And then the forest exploded.
From both sides of the river, rifles fired and machine guns prattled. The air was filled with bullets; a perfect and dreadfully executed cross fire swept the ground and the sandbars. Guevara knew at once that the Bolivian army had returned and that they had been flanked. Guevara’s forward column was still gathering weapons; he realized his troops were spread thin and the enemy was concentrated. The only choice was to disengage and run.
Guevara yelled to the others, “Fall back! Fall back!”
A hundred bullets came through the trees at them, then hundreds more. Guevara fired and Joaquin did as well, and the comrades scrambled back up and into the brush, away from the river and the deadly triangle of fire.
Hoyle pressed himself into the sand, daring not to even flinch as the torrent of lead swarmed above him. He could hear yelling and then cheering as Bolivian soldiers started to splash across the river.
It was a testimony to Guevara’s leadership and the pathetic shooting of the Bolivian army that all of his men would escape the counterattack. The guerrillas quickly disappeared into the brush, breaking contact, leaving the Bolivian troopers to spray bullets at specters glimmering across the forest floor.
Smith and Merán waded up onto the sandbar. Hoyle felt a hand close over the shoulder of his flak vest and roll him over. It was Smith, and the expression on his face was stern.
Smith was shocked to see that Hoyle was covered with blood.
Hoyle had survived, which both amazed and pained him. He had expected to be shot or captured; he had not even conceived that the Bolivians would return, and now that he was delivered from harm, he felt oddly miserable. He’d led the two squads into contact, and they had been mauled. It did not matter that Hoyle had covered Merán’s retreat, nor did it matter that the Bolivians who’d fallen had fled without firing a shot. It mattered only that others had been killed and he had lived. As fear released its grip, what descended on Hoyle was something like shame.
He tried to speak, but his mouth was full of sand. Blood from the wound to his s
calp covered half his face. Santavanes stood over Hoyle, looking down coldly.
“Is he alive?” Santavanes asked. The tone of his voice was so blasé as to be laughable.
Hoyle finally managed to sputter, “Are you?”
Smith ran his fingers through Hoyle’s hair, looking for a punctured skull. He didn’t find a hole.
“Help me up.”
“Stay put,” Smith said. Smith pulled open Hoyle’s flak jacket, the Velcro making a ripping sound. Hoyle stifled a groan. The pain in his chest was excruciating; ribs were broken, and each breath was a stabbing agony.
Smith scanned Hoyle’s shirt: Incredibly, he was not punctured. A single bullet, smashed and mangled, dropped from a vertical gash inside Hoyle’s body armor. The slug fell to the sand. It looked like a flat, ugly mollusk.
“Damn.”
Hoyle’s fingers touched the front of his chest. There was already a nasty black-and-red blister rising on the skin below his sternum.
“Jesus,” Santavanes said. “You are one lucky son of a bitch.”
16
AN HOUR PAST midnight, Guevara sat, watching the ash on the end of his cigar, deliberately trying to make his mind a blank. A single thought kept working its way into his head, and he tried repeatedly to defeat it. One man is nothing. He weighed this idea, dismissing it but not rejecting it, and it came to him again and again, a chorus, a dirge. When his cigar was done, he tossed the chewed end into the fire and stood. He walked over to the place where they had laid Rolando and knelt down. Rolando’s eyes were closed, and a poncho was pulled up around his shoulders. He appeared to be merely sleeping, but his face was pale, and made paler by the weak sputter of the fire, now only embers. It had taken Rolando only twenty minutes to die: twenty minutes from the time the bullets smashed his leg, and in truth, he was dead the instant he stood and ran forward because there was no remedy within seven hundred miles that could have saved him. As the column withdrew, he’d been carried uphill toward the place the pack animals had been picketed. Moro had worked desperately to staunch the bleeding, but he was a physician, not a surgeon, and by the time the femoral artery had been dredged up from the shattered leg and clamped off, most of the life within the young man had drained away and slopped off the rubber poncho.
Killing Che Page 14