Killing Che

by Chuck Pfarrer

  At Hoyle’s condescension, the policeman’s dark, blank eyes rose to the rearview mirror. The brutality in them was distinct.

  “As much as I’d enjoy prolonging your end, it will be sufficient that your body be found at your headquarters in Vallegrande.”

  “Executed by the guerrillas, of course.”

  Arquero smiled. “A dozen witnesses will swear that your compound was set upon by a column of insurgents.” He made an impudent, malicious gesture indicating impending murder. “The intrepid military adviser, killed in the service of his country. After the trouble you’ve been, at least you can be of some propaganda value to me.”

  The car drove on, its tires humming on the pavement. Now and again a rock cast itself up under the fenders with a bang.

  “For that detestable bitch.” Arquero shook his head. “How could this be worth it?”

  Hoyle was silent, but he asked himself: For which woman had he given his life, Maria or Tania?

  “You could have stayed on the right side of this.”

  “Which side was that, Arquero? The bloodthirsty bastards in the mountains or the bloodthirsty bastards in La Paz?”

  “You are an ass.” Arquero sniffed. “What great plans you must have had. How wonderful you must have felt to intend so much good.”

  At the side of the road, garbage blew into the air as the car sped past. When they came close to town, there were shanties on the right and left of the roadway, and people were about, the poorest people, who lived on the edges of civilization. The car slowed to take the oblique turn onto the road toward the airfield, and as the driver braked, a clutch of beggars moved toward the car. A boy of about fifteen stepped into the road that joined the highway, and the policeman leaned on the horn. Almost indifferently, two beggars lobbed their rags at the windshield.

  It was a peculiar thing that Hoyle so closely watched the rags fly at the car. He noticed that they seemed heavy and sluggish in the air, and they smacked into the windshield, one at eye level with the driver and the second landing with a slap in the center of the hood. The rags were smeared heavily with axle grease. Wrapped in each bit of cloth was a single stick of dynamite, of the type miners used, a short red waxy cylinder. A lit section of time fuse sputtered from each of the explosive charges.

  The first of the rags slid off the windshield and bounced onto the roadway behind the car. Hoyle saw the smoldering fuse tumble past the rear window. He watched the beggars flatten on the ground, and he saw the tallest one throw off a poncho to reveal the long crescent-shaped magazine of an assault rifle.

  Fuse crackling, the second charge remained plastered to the hood of the car, less than a foot away from the driver. The policeman stood on the brakes, a gesture of instinctive futility, and Hoyle threw himself to the right, onto his shoulder. He curled onto the backseat and covered his face with his arms.

  The first charge detonated behind the car, and the vehicle seemed to lurch up and to the right. A hot gust of noise surged against Hoyle, an overwhelming concussion, and in the millisecond it took to screw closed his eyes, the shock wave blew into the backseat and Hoyle perceived a jolt of starlight.

  The second stick of dynamite then detonated against the hood of the car.

  An orange ball of fire burst against the windshield, propelling a thousand cubes of shattered glass in front of it. The explosion tore off the hood, the roof buckled up, and the policeman was struck in the face by a piece of molten high-velocity metal. He was killed instantly.

  Driverless, the burning car rolled back onto the highway and toward the median. It crossed the road, trailing white smoke, and came to rest upright in a ditch on the other side of the opposing lane.

  His uniform jacket blown into ribbons, Arquero was thrown toward the steering wheel. He was knocked temporarily senseless by the blast, and his pistol skittered out of his hand and across the dashboard. In the backseat, Hoyle was whipped forward heavily as the car lurched to a halt. He pulled his bound wrists over the back of the seat and looped his wrists over Arquero’s head. Pulling his bonds against the colonel’s throat, Hoyle jerked back with all his might. Arquero’s head snapped back, and his breath escaped in a sharp, guttural roar. Hoyle pulled tighter, strangling as best he could. Arquero struggled forward, and his outstretched fingers swung toward the dashboard. The pistol lay there, jammed under a layer of shattered glass. Fire now leaped from the engine; oil and fuel took light and spread across the entire front of the vehicle.

  Arquero put his hand directly into the flames. The blood on his hands sputtered as his fingers closed over the weapon. Arquero whipped the pistol over his shoulder and cranked off a shot backward at Hoyle.

  The muzzle blast engulfed Hoyle’s face. The light was violent, unbearable, more astounding than any of the explosions or the fire. For the second time in fifteen seconds, he lost all sensation in his body. The bullet ripped past his face and tore through the roof above his head.

  Hoyle lifted his bound hands, struggling with Arquero for control of the weapon—blood poured in a solid wave from a powder-burned gash in his face. Hoyle could see only in outlined smudges of light. The pistol pointed up, then to the right, and slowly, Arquero gained control of it. He turned in the seat and levered his arm down. Hoyle could still not see anything but a painful brilliance—in this aching glare, he felt Arquero wrenching his fingers backward. Arquero pushed down on Hoyle’s wrists, and slowly, the muzzle of the pistol turned at Hoyle’s chest.

  Charlie then appeared at the passenger-side window. He jammed the barrel of a short revolver against Arquero’s ear and fired a bullet point-blank into the colonel’s head. Spitting blood, Arquero jerked forward, and his arms flailed wildly, like a machine out of control. He flapped onto the burning dashboard.

  Hoyle fell backward onto the seat. The back doors of the car were pried open and Hoyle was dragged away from the flaming wreck.

  Half-blind, half-conscious, Hoyle was not sure of what he saw. The beggars, all of them, carried pistols or rifles. They had thrown off their jackets, and red strips of cloth were tied around their arms above the elbow. Hoyle recognized their weapons as Russian and the armbands as the symbol and uniform of Communist militants. Hoyle saw Charlie waving his pistol. He heard shouts, and a joyous sort of growling came from the men surging around the burning car. Trembling, astonished, Hoyle could barely raise his arms and was unable to resist as he was jerked across the two-lane and onto the dirt road. He tried to bring his legs under him, but the men continued to pull him across the pavement.

  Hoyle’s ears buzzed, and it seemed like the light of the sun was being poured onto the road around him. The hands came off his body, and the men carrying guns stepped back and away from him. Light came from everywhere; it was as if he’d looked into the sun. He saw that Charlie was there. Again Hoyle could see an expression of restraint, almost of world-weariness, on his face. With his pistol, Charlie waved the others away, and then Hoyle remembered nothing more.

  THE DOCTOR’S NAME was Anias. Long after dark, he came up to a small house perched on a steep hillside outside the village of Domasco. The door to the house was guarded by a thin man who held a pistol and a lantern, and when the door opened halfway, the physician scooted in like a burglar. Charlie had told him only that the patient was a gringo and that he had been in an accident. Anias came into the house and found Hoyle lying on a straw mat with his eyes closed. One arm was draped over his face, and when Anias gently moved it, Hoyle did not stir but remained unconscious. It could not readily be told if the patient was alive or dead, and Anias bent down and listened to hear the sound of Hoyle breathing. He could smell blood and cordite. Anias cleaned out gunpowder from a gash on Hoyle’s face and bandaged one eye tightly. Dr. Anias was not at all certain that Hoyle would regain sight in his right eye. The burns on his face seemed to indicate that he had been struck by lightning, a man punished by God, and Anias did what small things he could for his patient.

  Hoyle remained unconscious for most of the doctor’s ministeri
ng. Outside, it began to rain, and the sound of it against the cobbles and tile roofs was first a whisper and then a steady drone. Hoyle licked the blood from his lips, and his unbandaged eye flicked open. He could not move at first, and he ached over his entire body. He could see no farther than a small blotch of lamplight, but he detected shadows shifting in the room around him, and he heard Charlie’s voice, whispering the low tones all of mankind uses around the sick.

  Hoyle heard someone say, “I closed the wound to his face. But there’s damage to the retina. He’s going to have to be kept still.”

  “How long?”

  “A couple of days.”

  A door opened somewhere, and the sound of the rain surged into the room. Hoyle’s knees bent in an attempt to roll over, but he gave up. Bit by bit, the things he could see with his left eye began to make sense: He saw a table and a chair and the pile of mats he was lying on. Hoyle touched his face and felt the bandage plastered over his right eye. A pain beat around his skull as though a bird were trapped inside.

  Charlie sat across from the rack of mats. His legs were stretched out in front of him, and his ankles were crossed. There was a rifle across his lap, and his hands rested on it with seeming impatience. He was hardly recognizable now, tougher, self-assured, a man who’d done good. When Hoyle stirred, Charlie casually lit a cigarette. The match flared at the end of his fist, and the red band of cloth wrapped around his coat sleeve glowed. Hoyle realized that he had never seen Charlie smoke.

  “You,” Hoyle said, “you’re Bolivian Communist Party, aren’t you?”

  The rain crackled outside the window. Charlie drew on his cigarette and did not answer for a few seconds. A silver-gray wisp of smoke curled up from his hand and hung in the room like the beginning of hate.

  “I always have been a member of the Communist Party. Since before I came to work for the embassy.”

  “No one knew,” Hoyle said.

  “No one asked.”

  The smell of the dank room came to Hoyle, as though the mats hadn’t been dry in a hundred years.

  “Tell me something, Mr. Hoyle. Why should rich people live on haciendas when poor children are dying because they don’t even have clean water to drink?”

  “I can’t answer that, Charlie.”

  “Why are you fighting people in my country who are trying to do something about it?”

  Behind Charlie, Hoyle could see two other men with rifles, the same men who had dragged him from the car. They stood in various attitudes of deference, listening to Charlie. It was slowly obvious that he commanded them.

  “Why did you help me?” Hoyle asked.

  “You are just one person. Killing you would not kill what you stand for.” Charlie placed the rifle against the wall. “I don’t know why I thought it could ever be different,” he said. “My Party is like my country. The Party intended good things. But it is broken at the top. It is spoiled. By greed. By the love of power. The Party betrayed Che Guevara because they were ordered to by Moscow.”

  “Charlie—”

  “Do not speak, Mr. Hoyle, listen. I was ordered to liquidate you by the Party. They ordered me to betray you. There is still a death sentence on your head.”

  “Why did you save my life?”

  “What does it matter?”

  Hoyle’s fists clenched; maybe it did not matter. “What will happen to you? When the Party finds out you let me live?”

  “I am just another Guaraní. Just another Indian. I can walk away. They won’t find me.” Charlie stepped on his cigarette. “The end has come. The Fourth Army has cordoned off La Higuera. The Rangers have cut off Che Guevara and seventeen others in a place called the Yuro ravine.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Hoyle got up from the pile of mats and staggered to his feet. Lightning flashed behind his eyes, and a numbness seemed to jolt through his body. “I have to get there,” he said. “How far is it to La Higuera?”

  “Sixty kilometers. You won’t make it in time.”

  “I won’t make it if I don’t try.”

  There were police patrols in the streets, and no one could be certain which of them were loyal to Colonel Arquero and would shoot Hoyle on sight. Hoyle was taken by Charlie and the armed men to a house on the steep side of the village, and a rope was tossed out the back window of a place overlooking the highway. Charlie’s cousin Barnabas waited below with a jeep. As Hoyle prepared to lower himself down the rope, Charlie handed him a shabby roll of paper Bolivianos and the Rolex watch.

  “You’ll need this. Getting around the roadblocks can be expensive.”

  Hoyle looked at the roll of bills—it was the same money Charlie had been given by Arquero.

  “I thought you said this was strictly business.”

  “This is Bolivia, Mr. Hoyle. This is how we do business.”

  57

  LIKE PHANTOMS, THE column glided through the forest at the bottom of the canyon. And they were very nearly phantoms. For the pursuing Ranger companies, it was as though the guerrillas had been swallowed whole into la selva. When Guevara realized that the army was mounting pursuit, he ordered that the pack animals be set loose and driven back uphill. The mules and the red mare galloped up the road and through the ranks of soldiers sent down from La Higuera. This confounded the trackers, and then a black night descended, and the rain washed away any trace of the column or its retreat south and downhill into the Yuro ravine.

  The column groped down the canyon, then away from the cursed village. In places, the gorge was steep-sided and narrow; other parts were wider, perhaps five hundred meters across, and cover at the bottom ranged from scruffy patches of brush to thick stands of jungle. Moving slowly, the guerrillas made only two kilometers through the entire night. Begnino’s shoulder began to trouble him, and he was the first to fall behind. Moro was too sick to walk, and El Chino was now nearly night-blind; they fell behind as well. The stragglers became separated from the main group at about midnight, and the entire column had to wait while the rear guard searched for them.

  When they again took up the march, Guevara could not tell for certain how far they had traveled, and he dared not use a light to consult his map. He was sure the Rangers would continue the chase at first light. They would have called for reinforcements, and their superiority in numbers would be magnified by yesterday’s victory. Guevara felt it was best to go to ground and wait. He halted the column in a thick copse of jungle, and the comrades spread out and took cover.

  Little by little the rain lifted, and the clouds directly above the canyon began to pull apart. The sun pinched itself above the eastern rim of the canyon, but the clouds there remained in a thick, intractable layer, and the light came only as a vague shade of gray. Over the western slopes, the sky opened, and powder blue was lit by flecks of orange and gold. Although the sun was in the east, the light came from the west, creeping gradually down the steep sides of the ravine. It was a sky that seemed entirely wrong, reversed obstinately, and to compound this perception, a bright silver moon sank through the clouds of the broadening day.

  As the light came down upon them, Guevara was able to consult the map and orient himself. Across the southern end of the canyon, a steep, mostly barren rise barred their way; there was no hope of crossing the hill in daylight. The column could not retreat back toward La Higuera—the army was there in force—nor could they move off to the west to ascend a pair of adjoining canyons, as these were nearly devoid of cover. If they tried to continue south or west, the soldiers on the overlooking ridges would see them clearly; and if aircraft came, they would be surely cut to ribbons. The column was bottled up, and soon it would be surrounded. Guevara grasped that he was in the worst tactical position of his life.

  None of the comrades knew that as they’d passed down the canyon, a farmer had seen them, dark shapes lurching through rain. He’d seen their packs and weapons; the old man knew the canyon well, and he knew how far the guerrillas might go and the few pla
ces that they might find water or take shelter. He had sent his son pattering up the trail to La Higuera to warn the army, and the news reached Captain Salinas of the Rangers just as Guevara was making his morning arrangements.

  At daybreak Guevara decided to break the column into three groups. Antonio and four others would be posted in a thicketed belt halfway up the western slope, and Pombo was to take his group to positions on the east side of the ravine. Guevara, Willy, and two others would stay with the sick in a stand of jungle at the bottom. Seventeen men altogether hidden in ragged insufficient cover.

  The water and ammunition were divided up equally, and Guevara spoke to the comrades of their predicament. “I am not going to insult you with a pep talk. Our odds are not very good.

  “Today we’ll not seek to fight the enemy. Our positions will never hold. We’ll lay up until dark, then try to slip out the bottom of the canyon.”

  A ring of anxious faces stared back at him.

  “If we have contact, I will move toward the east ridge and hold them off as long as I can. We’ll regroup on the other side of the hill to the south. Everyone who breaks the encirclement should find cover and wait there. Then we’ll head northeast, toward Cochabamba and the border.”

  The noise of an airplane droned over them. They could not see it through the trees and the clouds, but it was an indication that the army knew where they were. The pink had gone out of the sky, and it would be full daylight soon. No one knew what to say, none of the comrades wanted to bring bad luck by wishing good luck or saying goodbye. Guevara looked around at the faces: How many times, in how many places, had he faced calamity with these same men? He had always before managed to smother defeat, and it was almost impossible for him to imagine anything but victory. In Oriente, in Santa Clara, in all of the Sierra Maestra, he had faced long odds. He had faced defeat in the Congo, and he had lived to write history. He still believed, that was obvious, and on this morning it was enough. One by one, the comrades each came up to him and shook his hand. Some embraced him. When they touched him, it was as though they were trying to capture some of the faith, the certainty, and the self-belief that had brought him so far. They did this, every one of them, even Begnino, who was wounded, and Moro, who could barely stand. They were all still the faithful, sharing a commitment to the Idea. Now, in silent affirmation, they dedicated themselves to Che Guevara and to what would come.