by Lou Cameron
He went back to his main body and moved down the line once again to make sure every man was well placed. Then he joined the machine gun crew nearest the approaching enemy column. He didn’t want to make the gunner he’d assigned to the Maxim feel unworthy of his confidence. So he sat on a log nearby and chewed an unlit claro, resisting the impulse to repeat “his orders about holding fire no matter how tempting a target might be passing in review.
A million years went by before a scout ran breathlessly up the trail to tell him the Colombians were coming. Another million years went by. A parrot shit on the bill of his cap as the jungle came back to life now that he and his men had played dead so long.
And then at last a point scout came up the trail, rifle at port as he moved cautiously and probably feeling very lonely. He swept the thick jungle growth on either side as he scouted ahead of the column. But of course he didn’t spot anything. Captain Gringo had promised to bust the ass of anyone who blew it.
The point man moved on out of sight. The parrots went back to crapping and cussing above the once-more-deserted trail. Captain Gringo knew Hernando would let the scout cross the river unmolested before they knifed him quietly, so he forgot about him.
He resisted the impulse to check his watch as they waited. So it only seemed like an hour or so before the main column came up the trail yakking away and paying even less attention to their surroundings. They had a man on point to worry about it.
The young guerrilla behind the Maxim sucked in his breath as the infantry passed, two abreast. Captain Gringo nudged him with a warning foot and the machine gunner nodded. He was going to be okay.
The guerrilla scouts had been right about it being a full company of infantry in the lead. There was a modest interval, and then the mule train came up the trail. The scouts had been right about the dismounted howitzers. They looked like four-pounders, too. As the first mule packing ammo passed, Captain Gringo read the lettering stenciled on the ammo crate and saw that he was right. Woodbine Arms, Ltd., sold stuff to anybody with money.
Supply mules came behind the light artillery, followed by more infantry. Someone in Panama City was taking El Criado Publico seriously indeed.
He spotted officers passing with the others, but nobody with a higher rank than captain. He didn’t know just what this Colonel Maldonado looked like, yet. The last time they’d tangled, Maldonado had played chess at a distance, too. But the son of a bitch was good, and field-grade officers weren’t supposed to get themselves killed in the field. Captain Gringo hoped that this time his nibs would be a little closer when the shooting started. Maldonado made him nervous. And if they could pick off somebody who really knew what he was doing, the others figured to be easier to deal with.
Captain Gringo had no way of knowing, of course, that well to the rear, Colonel Maldonado was pissed off about things he found more important than a handful of unwashed gringo-backed guerrillas. Maldonado was in the doghouse again. He’d made it as high as chief of Colombian military intelligence before that last power shift in the Colombian junta. So he really wasn’t enjoying this shit detail the winners had handed him. But a good soldado carried out his orders to the letter, and his orders were to wipe out Los Jurados to the last man, and any women left over.
But the two professionals were not fated to meet that afternoon. By this time the point man had been taken out, and the advance was two-thirds across the ford when Hernando’s party opened up on them. When Captain Gringo heard the distant crackle of small-arms fire, he drew his pistol, chose a Colombian officer as his target, and put a .38 slug in his ear.
Then all hell broke loose.
The infantry on the trail before Captain Gringo’s ambush started for the cover on the far side and took well-aimed fire from that side, too. Then the survivors headed for home, shooting blindly as they ran back along the trail through flanking fire. The kid behind the Maxim drew a trip wire of death across the trail and the pile-up was awesome until a lucky blind shot silenced him forever, and silenced the machine gun for as long as it took Captain Gringo to shove his corpse out of the way and get behind it.
Everyone on both sides was using smokeless powder. But smokeless was a relative term. So the air was turning blue and hazy as he fired a long burst into now-dim running figures and called out, “Another belt, pronto!” to his ammo man. There was no answer. As the Maxim choked on the end of the spent belt, he turned to see the ammo handler flat on his back, staring up at the tree canopy with a silly grin on his face and a sticky red worm of blood crawling along his hairline.
Another bullet hummed like a bee in Captain Gringo’s ear and he knew it hadn’t been a lucky shot, Some son of a bitch had his position spotted and was firing from cover on the far side of the trail.
He armed his weapon with another belt and jerked it off its mount to crab sideways with it, shooting from the hip as he got behind a tree. Something solid thunked into the far side of the tree. He doubted it was Paul Bunyan’s ax. He took off his hat and skimmed it away. He spotted the muzzle flash across the frail this time as his tormentor fired at it by reflex. He nodded grimly, took a deep breath, and swung the machine gun muzzle around the far side of the free to blow the wise-ass and the bushes he was hidden by to red and green confetti. Then he went to get another ammo belt. Nobody seemed to want to argue about it.
But by now there was nothing left to shoot at. Nothing moving, in any case. Some of the bodies sprawled on the frail by the score had been hit a dozen times by now. So he called out, “Cease fire!”
They did. Pablo ran over to him, grinning like a mean little kid, to salute and ask what happened next. Captain Gringo said, “Move two squads up the frail to secure those pack mules. Get ’em off the frail and under cover on the double.”
“Si, si. What about the men leading them?”
“What the fuck do we want with them? Get moving, muchacho!”
Pablo did. Captain Gringo whistled in some other noncoms and told them, “Move your people back from the frail. I’m expecting incoming mail.”
“What about our own dead and wounded, Captain Gringo?”
“We carry our wounded. Colombia can bury, stuff, or do whatever they like with our dead. Let’s get our living the hell out of here, before they buy it, too!”
A giant tore canvas across the sky above, and as the first shell hit, short and wide, he added, “See what I mean? ¡Vamanos, muchachos! It’s time to get our asses and those mules someplace that’s not so noisy!”
*
They didn’t make it back to the fort with all the mules and field guns, and they’d left eleven good men behind, too. But as they staggered through the fortress gates well after sundown they still had the four Maxims, seven four-pound howitzers, and enough ammo to matter. Gaston said the hitherto-useless shells Esperanza had delivered would fit the captured weapons as well. So things were looking up.
As Gaston supervised setting up a howitzer on each point of the star fort, with the one leftover aimed at max elevation from the center of the parade, a council of war was held in Zagal’s office.
El Criado Publico and his young squirts seemed to think the war was over and that they’d won. Captain Gringo warned, “It’s just getting a little harder for the other side, El Criado. I didn’t get to shoot any bird colonels this afternoon. So old Maldonado and his guys are holding a meeting just like this one, about now. Maldonado’s good, and he can count. He knows now we’ve got the same kind of guns as he has, and he’d be a real dope if he hasn’t got this old Spanish fort well detailed on his own situation map.”
A junior jurado laughed and said, “He must know it would be sheer suicide to attack us now. I’ll bet they don’t stop running all the way back to Panama City! The muchachos tell me the river crossing ran red with their blood to the sea, and you must have killed a whole company along the trail, no?”
“More like a couple of platoons,” Captain Gringo replied, explaining, “You’d be surprised how few dead bodies it takes to look like a wiped-
out brigade. It doesn’t take more than a dozen cancan girls to spread across a whole stage and make it look like every girl in Paris is showing you her crotch at once. Meanwhile, trained troops can accept up to about a one-third loss before their officers can’t keep them from retreating. We sure didn’t wipe out anything like a third of Maldonado’s column, and he’s got ’em trained pretty good.”
Another jurado said, “Let them come, then. We can handle them.”
Captain Gringo said, “They’ll be coming. The second idea is still up for grabs.”
“What do you suggest?” El Criado Publico asked gravely.
The tall American repressed a yawn and said, “We’d better eat and get some sleep, for openers. I’d say our ambush bought us at least another forty-eight hours. If I was wearing Colonel Maldonado’s boots I’d bury my dead, make camp, and send for replacements and heavier artillery before I did much more.”
Another uniformed tyro asked, “For why does he need more guns? You just said you only captured a few of his weapons, Captain Gringo.”
The American said, “Maldonado knows exactly how many of his four-pounders we captured. He knows we’re dug in on higher ground, too. So Gaston would have the range on him in an artillery duel, and Gaston’s good. Unless that Colombian colonel’s an idiot, and I don’t think he is, he won’t move into artillery range until he has longer-range artillery. The advantage the attacker always has in these dumb Alamo situations is that his lines of supply remain open and he can move in or move back whenever he damn pleases.”
He looked at the situation map, nodded, and added, “Okay, the nearest railroad’s so far we can forget it, and the nearest decent port to land heavy stuff figures to be San Cristobal, a hundred miles by crow, and a crow can’t carry a siege gun. If they could get gunboats in across the shallow lagoon to our northeast, they’d have done so by now and wouldn’t be fucking around in the jungle. So, yeah, maybe more than forty-eight hours. Then we could be in big trouble.”
On that note the meeting broke up and they all went to dinner.
Some of them did, at any rate. Gaston was still working to set up the guns and Inocencia hadn’t come to the table when Captain Gringo arrived after washing up. He found Bowman and the redhead across from him tonight.
The other American looked sort of green around the gills and Martha Pendergast seemed a little tense about something. He didn’t worry about it. It was probably either a lover’s quarrel or maybe not enough loving at all. They both toyed with their food as their host pontificated at the head of the table about defending the fort to the last drop of his blue blood. The other jurados looked a bit more dubious about spilling their own. But he could probably depend on them sticking around at least until somebody got hurt.
The food, as usual, was good and more than ample. As long as the old man wanted to talk about siege warfare, Captain Gringo suggested it might be a good idea to cut the rations in half, at least, saying, “The first thing Maldonado’s going to try will be to cut us off from the village and surrounding farms. We’re okay for water, thanks to the nice deep wells the old Spanish engineers drilled down through this rise. But we could wind up on short rations before he gives up for the rainy season, if he does, and these long stuffy meals use up a lot of grub.”
El Criado Publico shrugged and said, “My people and I are used to dining in the high-born Spanish fashion, and in any case we have supplies on hand to last us indefinitely.”
Captain Gringo insisted, “That Colombian strike forced headed our way could have indefinite plans about leaving, too, sir. I keep saying it, but nobody seems to want to listen. You don’t overthrow a government by letting it besiege you in a fixed position!”
The silver-haired El Criado Publico said, “I am open to suggestions, if you know a better way, Captain Gringo.”
So the American swallowed the coffee in his mouth and said, “Any way would be better than trying to fight from fixed positions. As I see it, you’re in much the same position as Washington was at the beginning of a revolution that worked, except that Washington had a lot bigger army. He kept it moving around, never letting the British box him where they might have wiped him out with their superior arms and trained regulars. The Continental Congress wanted him to hold New York to the last man. But he retreated to White Plains anyway. He knew that once he let himself be surrounded it would all be over. The British took New York. So what? There was no last drop of rebel blood to be spilled there. So they had to chase him to Philly. He let ’em take Philly, too. Again, so what? The redcoats were out to capture the Continental army, not real estate.”
One of the junior officers frowned across at him and said, “I thought your great Washington won by simply beating the British, Captain Gringo?”
The ex-West Pointer shook his head and said with a wry smile, “That may be the way they teach it in the history books today. But in point of fact Washington lost most of the time. He’d have lost every time if a couple of British generals hadn’t been awfully stupid. The point is that he lost lots on battles and won the war.”
The redhead across the table asked, “How on earth could he have done that, Dick? You don’t sound very patriotic!”
Her escort growled, “He’s not patriotic. He’s a renegade. He’s full of bull, too. Everybody knows Washington was a great general!”
Captain Gringo smiled pleasantly at Bowman and said, “That’s what I just said. Washington won because he kept his Continental army in the field for eight long years by refusing to play the game the way the redcoats wanted him to. In the end the Brits gave up, not because they’d been beaten, but because the war was expensive and figured to go on forever. The situation here is similar. We don’t have to burn down Bogota to beat Colombia. We just have to convince them Panama’s not worth the time and trouble.”
The older man at the head of the table nodded sagely and said, “In that case, what are we arguing about? As I said, we can hold here until hell freezes over!”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Even if we could, so what? What would it cost the Colombian junta to keep you bottled up in one small corner of the isthmus while they go right on running and collecting taxes from the rest of it? If I was running your revolution I’d start by evacuating this backwoods fort and making them work at fighting us! I’d move closer to Panama City, where people read newspapers, and hit and run until guys who were tired of the dictatorship came out to join us. Can’t you see Bogota doesn’t really care what a few simple fisherfolk out in the middle of nowhere do or say? Hell, there’s only one railroad running across the isthmus. A handful of guerrillas could cripple the economy, and you have more than a handful, El Criado!”
The older man shook his head and said, “Unthinkable. I did not come down here for to be a bandit leader. I have already begun my social reforms here. I need the port for to receive more supplies from my backers in los Estados Unidos.”
Captain Gringo shrugged, swallowed more coffee, and suggested, “Let me take a couple of hundred guys out for some distracting tactics, then. If we were to raise some hell in other parts, Maldonado might chase us instead of besieging you here, see?”
The rebel leader asked Bowman what he thought of the idea, as if Bowman knew. The liaison man shrugged and said, “It sounds like Jesse James to me. But that comes as no great surprise, from a Jesse James.”
“Up yours, too,” Captain Gringo said, sweetly.
El Criado Publico said, “We shall discuss diversionary tactics at a more convenient time. After we repel the current assault.”
Captain Gringo said, “El Criado, once Maldonado has us boxed, there ain’t gonna be no diversionary nothing! You know how the Continental army won its only two important victories? At both Saratoga and Yorktown the redcoats took up siege positions and let us Yanks pound them until they had to give up. Every time they fought us in the field, they won!”
The redhead said, “My Jim is right! You’re just horrid to speak that way about the father of our count
ry, Dick Walker!”
That was too dumb to answer. So he didn’t try. Inocencia Zagal came in, wearing a pout and a puzzled frown as well as black velvet. She took her seat, saying, “I can’t find my pet, Diablo, anywhere. How could he have gotten out of the fort? Nobody I asked has seen him since I left him tied up in my room this afternoon when I went down to the village!”
Her father, at the head of the table, said, “I assure you your cat is safe and well, my pet. I had him locked up down below in the fortress dungeons.”
The chestnut-haired beauty gasped and demanded, “For why? How dare you do such a thing without consulting me, father!”
Her father said soothingly, “You were not here. I did it not for to annoy either you or that dangerous animal, Inocencia. We may be under fire here at any moment, and one can hardly have a wild jungle cat running loose at such times, eh?”
“But, father, I have Diablo under perfect control, I assure you!”
“That may be so, Inocencia. But have you ever tried to control that powerful jaguar amid falling debris, or with the smell of blood in the air? Be reasonable, child. I know you love your pet, as he no doubt loves you. But he is nevertheless a large, dangerous beast. I have seen domesticated farm animals turn on their owners when startled by a loud noise or, heaven forbid, pain. The jaguar stays down in the dungeons, where he can neither be harmed or harm anyone, until after this emergency ends.”
He sounded like he meant it. Inocencia got up and flounced out of the room as Martha Pendergast murmured, “Poor thing. She seems so fond of that big cat, and it’s sort of cute, once one gets used to it.”
Captain Gringo managed not to laugh. It wasn’t easy. As if to change the subject, El Criado Publico said, “We must consider the safety of our civilian citizens, Captain Gringo. We obviously don’t have roofed quarters enough for the whole village. But if we let them camp on the parade—”