Killing Che

by Chuck Pfarrer

  “When we return to base, we will be joined by new comrades, men who are untested and who will not have the benefits of this march and the trials on which we have embarked. When these new members join us, it is vital that they feel the positive influence of the group. Some of you men are examples. Most of you are not.”

  Even the insects in the jungle seemed to have fallen quiet.

  “If any of you, Bolivian or Cuban, feels weak or discouraged, don’t resort to deceit and laziness. If you want out, if you’ve had enough, speak to me, and we’ll discharge you peacefully from the group.

  “Does anyone wish to say anything?”

  Silence.

  “Then this meeting is closed. Vanguard detachment, resume the trail; center and rear guard, prepare to move. We will travel in a forced march, night and day if necessary, until we reach the river. That is all.”

  IT WAS SWEAT, toil, and misery, ten hours’ worth, and exactly what Guevara felt the command required. An hour before sundown, a runner came back through the column to report that the vanguard had come to a muddy brown river, not as big as the Masacuri but larger than the Ñancahuazú. Guevara had Joaquin double up the formation, and when all the comrades had assembled on the riverbank, scouting parties were sent upstream and up the bluffs facing the river. The day’s march had been exhausting, at least twelve kilometers long, and for much of the way the forward detachment had to chop a trail.

  But the river would prove a far harsher disciplinarian than Che Guevara.

  The column was directed north, up the Rosita, and within a kilometer, the banks again closed in. The river was running high, and rough brown water shoved through a number of steep gorges. Benjamin, a Bolivian assigned to the forward detachment, lost the ascending trail and staggered out onto one of the narrow fingers of rock above the river. It was possible to traverse a ledge and make it to higher ground, and two men before him safely passed up onto a gentler patch of riverbank. Benjamin had chopped trail with his machete most of the day and was reeling with exhaustion. Lumbering under the weight of his pack and rifle, he stepped out onto the outcrop, lost his footing, and plunged into the river.

  He did not know how to swim.

  Benjamin splashed into the water and then managed to get his face above the rushing stream. His rifle was ripped from his hands, but his pack straps held fast. For a few moments, he was floated along, and then the air in his pack burbled out the top and the contents filled with water. The current through the gorge ran him downstream and into a deep, churning pool.

  Guevara tossed away his rifle and kicked off his boots. He dove into the river, and the water shocked him, it was so cold. He swam toward Benjamin, but as he did so, the young man shouted and went under. Guevara dove after him, but the current dragged him past the crook in the river. Guevara ran up the bank again and dove into the whirlpool, as did Begnino, but in ten minutes there was no sign of the boy, not even a scrap of his clothing or a single piece of gear from his pack. He had been swallowed by the river without a trace.

  The column stood on the banks and on the rock ledges, transfixed. Guevara kept staring at the river, expecting Benjamin to wade out of it, expecting him to surface and say everything was all right. Minutes passed, then a quarter of an hour. The river had taken the young man and would not give him back.

  Guevara stood dripping on the ledge, and Joaquin handed him back his rifle. Guevara panted and wiped the water off his face and again looked at the gushing ribbon of brown and the yellowish rapids. How could it be? How could the river have so quickly eaten a man?

  “How many of you can swim?” Joaquin asked loudly.

  Only about a dozen hands went up. Thirteen men out of nearly forty.

  “Fuck me to death,” Joaquin muttered. What else could go wrong with this outfit?

  There was nothing else to do, nothing but continue to march. Guevara pulled on his boots.

  “Forward detachment,” Joaquin said, “move out.”

  “Keep back from the banks,” Guevara called after them. “I don’t want to lose another rifle.”

  This day had been abysmal. Nearly twelve hours without break on the trail, and the one moment that might have been savored was marred forever by a ridiculous and senseless death.

  This day was a stick, a shitty stick, but now Guevara held out a carrot. After the evening’s halt, he ordered the rear detachment to begin preparing a feast, rice and beans for all, condensed milk for their tea, and the meat of a urinia that Begnino managed to kill with a hatchet. These small luxuries were the last of the reserve rations; hereafter, the column would be dependent on the hunters for their food. Hearts of palm had proved plentiful, and now that they were heading south, it might be possible to purchase corn or livestock from one of the small farms strung out along the river.

  The smell of food cooking elevated morale, and even the men gathering firewood went about their heavy labors with smiles and a few jokes. By full dark, rations were served out, and there was enough for all to eat twice. Food was saved for the scouts, who returned by midnight to say they had traveled almost three hours downriver and had not found Benjamin’s corpse. This was a disappointment, but given the state of the river, not a surprise, and as the scouts ate and the men hung their hammocks, Guevara announced that in the morning, the column would turn south for base. There was no cheering—the death on the river had stilled them all—but the quiet satisfaction of the men was evident. They had reached the river and completed a task that most men would have abandoned. This, too, was what Guevara wanted. He spent no words praising them; the food in their bellies and a night’s rest were commendation enough.

  Long after the others had fallen asleep, Guevara swung in his hammock and wrote these words by flashlight:

  Everything is proceeding more or less satisfactorily. With one fatal exception. Benjamin was physically weak but was determined to make himself into a combatant. He was not up to this test. His physical strength did not match his will.

  Although there’s been no word from main camp, or news from the outside concerning Sandoval and D’Esperey, they are due to arrive to complete the group. They should be in La Paz by now and will be guided to the main camp in a few days. I do not know what arrangements have been made to transport them from La Paz. Tania will handle it. The Bolivian Party’s stance continues to be treacherous. Luckily, I expected nothing of them.

  The days of short rations have imparted a slackening of enthusiasm. There have been problems in the forward detachment. Joaquin and Pombo have consistently performed well. Among the other Cubans, Marcos is a constant headache. I am a bit concerned that discipline may also have slackened back at main camp. Just a hunch. The others, generally, are doing well.

  The next stage will be one of combat and decision.

  31

  THE CABIN OF the helicopter smelled of nylon and kerosene; it was too new to have taken on the more familiar smells of a combat aircraft, namely blood and piss and gun grease. Hoyle sat in the door gunner’s seat, letting the wind flutter his trousers and balloon out his jacket. He watched the dusty towns and dirt roads flash below until the countryside became more hilly as they continued south and then southwest from Vallegrande.

  Sprawled about the cabin were Charlie, Smith, and Santavanes; none seemed much interested in the countryside passing below. Santavanes read a book by Mikhail Sholokhov, and Smith sat with his rifle between his knees, staring without pause at the clouds drifting slightly below them. Seated behind the pilots was Major Holland, who held a map in his fist. Hoyle noticed that as they flew, the officer kept his thumb on the spot over which they were traveling, advancing it slowly as new landmarks came into view. This was a precaution Hoyle had also employed with third-world pilots. But on this glorious blue morning, Hoyle kept his map in his pocket and trusted the Bolivians to deliver them and the brand-new UH-1 Huey safely to their destination.

  The day was astonishingly clear, and as the helicopter gained altitude, the ground seemed like a sheet of crumpled p
aper, hills and mountains depicted by penciled shades and the tracks of rivers all marked like squiggly lines. As the Ñancahuazú River came into sight, Hoyle plugged in a set of headphones and listened to the Bolivian radio frequencies. The pilot announced his approach to the command element of the Fourth Battalion—the same luckless outfit that had been ambushed on the Camiri Highway. There was a considerable amount of radio traffic; beyond the Latin propensity for explanation, the air crackled with orders and counterorders, movements toward and away from the objective, and oddly, a continually repeated request for a pneumatic jackhammer.

  Holland put his map in the front pocket of his jacket as the helicopter descended and turned north into a broad, shallow valley. The countryside was well watered and looked as though it would support cattle, but there were none. A single-track dirt road threaded along the valley floor, running north and south, and the pilot followed this at three hundred feet, heading toward an oxbow in the river where the Fourth Division had established a command post. Just north of the landing zone, the river cut across the valley floor from one side of the mountains to the foot of another range. There, tucked into a bend, was a small adobe ranch house with a corrugated zinc roof.

  The helicopter landed in a brown, swirling cloud and a dozen Bolivian soldiers slouched away as Hoyle and Smith dropped from one set of doors and Santavanes and Holland the other. The helicopter remained on the landing zone, its engines whining and the huge blades turning almost slowly enough to see.

  Valdéz trotted up from the farmhouse. “We hit paydirt.” He jerked his thumb back at the house; it was surrounded by soldiers digging holes.

  “What’s going on?” Smith asked.

  “Two days ago the local constabulary got a line on this house,” Valdéz said. “They thought it might have been a cocaine lab. When they came to search, they found guns.”

  Valdéz led the men toward the house. There were no fewer than a company of Bolivian soldiers swarming around. Stacks of weapons were leaned against the house, as were about a dozen suitcases. All had been unearthed from pits scattered around the property.

  “The chief of police came down last night, probably to get a payoff. Nobody was home, and he got pissed. He called the army.”

  “It don’t pay to piss off the sheriff,” Holland said. He spat a wad of tobacco.

  A hundred yards from the house, two Bolivian soldiers were tying up a pair of prisoners, a man of about forty and a sixteen-year-old boy. Both looked as though they’d been beaten savagely.

  “Who are they?” Hoyle asked.

  “Terrorists,” the corporal said. “We found them walking on the trail to Yaquí.”

  In the first place, there was no trail to Yaquí, it was a goat path; in the second place, Yaquí was twenty miles away, a long day and night’s walk. The men in the dirt looked frightened and bewildered.

  “Déjeme ver sus manos,” Smith said to them.

  Wrists tied together, the prisoners held out their palms. Their hands were calloused and their fingernails broken and dirty.

  “They were armed,” the corporal puffed. He held up an old Mauser rifle. Its leaf sight was broken, and the leather sling had been replaced by a piece of rope.

  “These guys aren’t guerrillas,” Hoyle said. “They’re farmers.”

  Charlie spoke to the two men in Guaraní. “They said they were hunting,” he translated. “They crossed the field about three miles to the south when the military arrested them. They want to go home.”

  Hoyle believed Charlie, and he’d seen enough guerrillas in his life to suspect that the man and the boy were just what they said. Hunters.

  A captain strode up then, his boots polished immaculately. “What is going on here?” he demanded.

  “These men are not combatants,” Hoyle said.

  “Who are you?” the captain asked. He looked at Santavanes and at Smith, and he began to get an idea.

  “Somos consejeros militares,” Smith said. “Del ministerio de la defensa.” Smith’s Spanish was perfect, and his light hair seemed to make the young officer nervous.

  “These people are being taken to Lagunillas for interrogation,” he said.

  “We don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “Those are my orders.” The captain gestured, and a truck backed up. Soldiers tossed the boy bodily into the cargo bed.

  “Let the boy go, at least,” Hoyle said.

  “They will be interrogated first,” the captain snapped, and walked back toward the house.

  Smith said to Charlie, “Go with them.”

  “All right.”

  “Charlie,” Hoyle said, “when you get to town, make sure an officer signs for the prisoners.”

  Charlie said something in Guaraní to the man, who seemed relieved. Charlie pulled himself into the truck with the prisoners, a guard climbed up after them, and they drove away.

  Valdéz returned from inside the house. He dumped the contents of a canvas bag at Smith’s feet. “This came from under the fireplace.”

  In the sack were three M3A1 machine pistols wrapped in ocher-colored waxed paper. With the guns there were thirty-round magazines and cleaning kits. Santavanes picked up one of the weapons and examined it. “These are American,” he said. “The serial numbers have been ground off.”

  “How did these guys get a cache of American guns?”

  “They look like Company guns,” Santavanes said. Communist insurgents didn’t normally go to the trouble to conceal the provenance of their weapons. But the CIA did. Nor were they the only American weapons found—there were a dozen M1 carbines and as many Garand rifles; hand grenades; mortar rounds; and small-arms ammunition, all of it stamped U.S.

  “What else did they bury?”

  “Food, radios, ammunition, shit, you name it. They’re still digging stuff up.”

  Smith looked at one of the machine pistols. It was daubed in cosmoline—packing grease. The weapons were not just unfired, they were new.

  “Major Holland, do you have night-vision equipment?”

  “We’ve got starlight scopes.”

  “Mr. Valdéz has a radio. Get on it, and get a team of your people in here. If anyone’s moving around this river at night, I want to know about it.”

  “My guys?”

  “Parachute them in here if you have to. I want night-vision-capable observation points inserted on the ridges east and west. I want them in by tomorrow night and kept in place until I tell you otherwise.”

  Holland nodded and walked off. Hoyle looked up at the ridgeline across the river. He was certain the enemy’s main encampment was near.

  “This is just a road head,” Hoyle said. “If there’s a base camp, it’s going to be up there in the sticks.” He scanned the mountains around the valley and pointed at the roughest stretch of terrain he could see. “It’s going to be overlooking the river and the house, or they’ll have observation posts. Probably there to the east.”

  “I’m aware of that.” Smith walked purposefully for the house, and Hoyle followed.

  “Look, I don’t want to sound like Mr. Safety here, but are you sure you want to put Green Berets in? If they get contact, you’re going to have U.S. troops in a shooting war.”

  “It was a war long before we got here, Mr. Hoyle.”

  THE ROAD TO Lagunillas gave sunstroke and chilblains in turn. The truck bounced about on a long mountain road that brought both sunlight and remarkably cool air. Swept over by wind and diesel exhaust, Charlie shivered with his back against the cab, and the soldier guarding the prisoners slept on one of the benches with his rifle wrapped in his arms and the stock tucked between his knees. It seemed hard to believe that a human being could sleep in such a position, in a truck that banged and rumbled about so, but the soldier was out for most of the long drive, sun and shade, heat and miserably foggy cold.

  The prisoners had been untied and warned that if they tried to run, they would be shot. This was deterrent enough, and they sat close together for warmth and reassurance.
The boy was quiet, but the man was eager to talk. Charlie learned that his name was Estlano and his son’s name was Rodolfo. They were from the countryside outside of Yaquí and raised pigs and corn. Estlano made a point of saying that he had not seen the guerrillas, but it was known through the valley that they were about. He asked what he and Rodolfo might be charged with and was concerned that the army not confiscate his rifle because without it, he could not hunt. They spoke mostly in Guaraní, occasionally in Spanish, but Charlie could do little more than try to reassure them. If they knew nothing, he said, they would probably be let go.

  “Are you an officer, Excellency?”

  “I am an interpreter,” Charlie said. “Please don’t call me Excellency.”

  “I hope you will tell them that we are innocent.”

  “I’m sure they will just ask you questions, and then you will be free to go.”

  “Do you have a family?” Estlano asked.

  “No,” Charlie said.

  “Then I am sorry for you.”

  The sky lowered and became uniformly gray. There was a change in the feel of the wind; it grew hard, and the air took on a worrying, almost prickly smell. As it grew much colder, it seemed almost certain that it would rain, and when the truck passed over a hilltop, they drove through a dark, dewy cloud and the sun was lost. On the other side, as the truck shifted gears and lurched through a long downgrade, the sun returned and the clouds cracked open in small brilliant patches of sunlight, and the greens around them became almost painfully sharp. That was when a jeep carrying two officers passed them and waved the driver to pull over to the side of the road.

  The truck stopped at a place where a stream came steeply down a hillside and was directed into a wide culvert under the road. The driver turned off the engine, and there was the strong rushing sound of water over rocks. Charlie nudged the guard awake.

  “¿Estamos allí todavía?” The guard yawned.

  “No, we have been stopped,” Charlie answered. “You’d better get up.”