The Last Dawn

by Joe Gannon

  Gladys looked, and he was right.

  “The officers are, too, look at their epaulets, you can see the indentions on their shoulders before they took them off.”

  She leaned in to see, and sure enough. Ajax the rock.

  “… thousands of our citizens are in danger from this illegal attack. The FMLN bears sole responsibility for the violence, the deaths…”

  Ajax grunted.

  “What?”

  “How long has he been at it?” Ajax tilted his chin at the TV.

  “A few minutes.” Gladys checked her watch.

  “Hmph. So the press got there before him.”

  “So?” Gladys could not see where this was going.

  “So the Farabundos are watching television too.”

  “I think you might be right, young man.” Doña Estela watched the screen but nodded her head vigorously.

  Gladys turned her palms up. What?

  “If I was the Farabundos I’d lob some mortar shells right about now.”

  As if saying made it so, the TV image went wobbly, like a small earthquake shaking the ground. But it was the TV cameras rocking from the explosion. The president—it would be said later—stumbled from the impact and was steadied back on his feet by the generals, but Gladys could see he’d really been headed face-first for the floor and his wiser officers had held him back by his elbows.

  “Chicken-shit,” doña Estela spat, much to Gladys’s surprise.

  Estela slowly rose and headed for her bedroom where she would, eventually, put together enough of a persona to present to the world. “The Cristianis have all always been chicken-shits. The whole family. Shopkeepers.”

  When the old lady had tottered off, Jasmine laughed into her hand. “Isn’t she something? She was the first female doctor in El Salvador and her husband was a colonel. Killed in the Soccer War.”

  Gladys observed Jasmine as she watched the hurried conclusion to Freddy’s press conference. Ajax looked at Gladys and drew a question mark in the air—begin the interrogation.

  “Jasmine,” she said, “we can’t stay here much longer. We’ve got to find Peck. What can you tell us?”

  “Jimmy?” Jasmine seemed lost in the TV, which had gone back to live images of street battles. She shrugged, as if to say, What does it matter now? “Everybody knew Jimmy, he was kind of popular. I saw him at parties, he and Max did the nightclub scene, which, I am not completely naïve, meant cocaine and whores.”

  “But how could he hang out with…” Gladys politely did not finish.

  “With the escuadrones?” Death squads.

  “From what we know it doesn’t fit. Friends with these death squad Charlie types, no.”

  “I don’t know, Gladys, maybe men make truces when it comes to carousing. But he had a lot of friends, Max and his type. But the Fathers too, I met him there.”

  “Fathers?”

  “The Jesuits at the UCA,” the University of Central America. “Six of them. They’re about the only professors we have left, teaching the few students who still attend at the only university that’s still open. It’s a highbrow group, Spaniards mostly.”

  An explosion muffled the air and the concussion a second later rattled the windows. They all went out to the veranda where a mile or so away they saw a massive, fiery cloud ascend to the sky. Jasmine pointed.

  “That’s Escalon, near the Salvador del Mundo statue.” She grunted. “I think they just took out the McDonald’s there.” She clucked her tongue. “Estela will be upset, she loves their apple pies.” Jasmine wandered off, seemingly in midsentence. Off, Gladys assumed, to tell Estela she’d need a new dessert place.

  Ajax and Gladys were alone on the veranda.

  “This make any sense to you? This sound like the young Peck his parents described?”

  Gladys shook her head. “No. They said he was a firebrand, hated the government and the death squads. How was he partying with Max?”

  “Can’t see him whoring with those berserker boys. Maybe he was a switch hitter? Playing both sides?”

  Whoring. That reminded Gladys. She dug in her purse, took the pistol out, and found the crumpled-up paper on the bottom. “Claribel.”

  “See if the phone’s working.”

  22

  Moving through a city at war is a counterintuitive experience—at least when you’re a noncombatant. Every fiber of your body, as the hack would say, is screaming to stay low, creep along, peek around, duck, and dart.

  But those are precisely the moves the combatants are trained to watch for and kill. So there was nothing for it but to brass it out right down the middle of the street, nice and slow, a white flag flying.

  Ajax had seen it over and over again in Nicaragua in the late seventies when he and his compañeros of the Northern Front had been closing in on the capital. Red Cross jeeps did it all the time, rolling through barrios, speakers blaring: “Bring out your wounded. Bury your dead where they are.” Civilians, desperate for help, for food, would walk right down the middle of the streets, white flags flapping, hoping to get to the bodega before a bored sniper took up his scope.

  He and Gladys drove along a street slowly snaking downhill, right down the middle, doña Estela’s white pillowcases hanging as limp as they were probably useless.

  The phone had been working, and strangely, so was Claribel. She’d agreed to meet them for what she claimed was her regularly hourly rate, but which Ajax was sure was the “gringo rate.” He was a gringo, again. “El Gringo” had been his first nom de guerre in Nicaragua when he’d first gotten to the mountains, to the storied Sandinistas, who, when Ajax arrived, looked more like half-starved refugees than revolutionaries overturning the world. But what else would they call the kid from Los Angeles? Didn’t matter that Ajax’s father had made sure he was better read and more versed in Nicaraguan history, poetry, and politics. He’d grown up in los Estados Unidos and so he was el gringo. The memory disturbed him and he brushed it away, hurriedly, like a cobweb you walk into in the dark.

  They’d driven out of the tony section of town, where Max and doña Estela had houses, and down into Escalon, still an upscale barrio, but in the heart of the city. The streets were not as deserted as he’d’ve thought. Some solid citizens were already cleaning up the rubble, or at least sweeping it out of their doorways. Small groups stood around corpses frozen in their last moment on earth. A few groups had already taken up the public health business of burning the rebel dead in small pits they’d dug along the roadways—burning the bodies no one would come for.

  But one thing was very different. There were no soldiers anywhere. On the ride in from the airport there had been police, National Guard, and army everywhere—on street corners, foot patrols, or manning roadblocks. They were conspicuously absent now—except in the air where helicopter gunships zoomed low overhead. But Ajax knew this did not mean they were safe, it just meant even more was hidden from them.

  But they weren’t bad off either. They had a car, money, and guns—good ol’ Estela had thrust the keys and a bag into Ajax’s hands as they were leaving. The keys started her BMW from the early seventies, the bag was filled with banknotes from the sixties and a pistol from the 1948 Pan-American Games. It was a mere .22, but a target pistol and so was both well-balanced and not a sidearm you’d expect a guerrilla to carry in case they got stopped.

  They climbed down from Escalon into the main traffic circle—dominated by the statue of Salvador del Mundo, Jesus with His arms outstretched like a traffic cop. There were no buses, no civilian traffic at all. A Red Cross ambulance with red light flashing but no siren wailing passed them by. The driver gave them the once-over and shook his head, as if to say, I’ll be back for your bodies later. As they entered the traffic circle Ajax had a small laugh.

  “What?” Gladys perked up.

  “The McDonald’s.”

  Jasmine had been right. The golden arches lay in a ruin like the Philistine’s pillars toppled by Samson, if Samson had used an RPG.

 
; Ajax steered them slowly through the big traffic circle, no sign from Officer Jesus that he should not, and pointed Estela’s Beemer down the hill. (Ajax had taken to calling the car Chicken-shit, as that’s what Estela dubbed her driver when she found she could not raise him on the phone and have him come chauffeur Ajax and Gladys through a war zone. He’s just not picking up. Chicken-shit!) He and Gladys rode with their doors unlatched but held closed with their arms so that if they took fire they could eat dirt without having to remember the door handle.

  “You sure you can find it?”

  “Jasmine said just roll downhill from the statue to the Metropolitan Cathedral.” It was where Claribel had insisted they meet.

  “Interesting choice,” Gladys said.

  “’Cause she’s a whore?”

  Gladys cut him a look. “No, not because she’s a whore. The cathedral. You don’t know whose church that is?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Romero’s.”

  “Ah!” That caught his attention. Archbishop Oscar Romero had been a living saint, one of those Latin American prelates whose humility, whose genuine concern for the poor bordered on devotion. It had put him in direct conflict with the powers-that-be and was one reason why, in El Salvador, after communist, being a priest was grounds enough for execution.

  “I still remember that last homily he gave in 1980. You know?”

  “Gladys, in 1980 I was still hunting the Guardia in the mountains.”

  “I mean I heard some of Fidel’s speeches at the Academy, it was required listening, but he was always preaching to the choir, you know. But man, listening to Romero talk to the military…” Gladys leaned forward, looked through the windshield at the empty streets and lifted her hand like a stage actor. “‘In the name of humanity I beg you, in the name of God I order you! STOP THE REPRESSION!!’”

  She sat back.

  “Man, I still get goose bumps remembering it.”

  “And they shot him a week later.”

  “Killed him while he was saying mass.”

  “On the orders of Roberto D’Aubuisson, whose hand we almost shook. It was a good shot too. I remember that.”

  “A good shot? Jesus fuck, Ajax!” She looked away, truly disappointed it seemed. “He was a great man! You talk like a fucking assassin.”

  He tapped the brakes just hard enough to whiplash her, but he kept his eyes on the road.

  “Or a cop. It’s called forensics, Lieutenant. From fifty feet one shot to the head with a small-caliber gun, something like the twenty-two Estela gave us. On my best day I couldn’t’ve made that shot, could you?”

  Ajax knew Gladys was a dead-eye shot, it was what he’d admired most when they were first partnered.

  “No.”

  “So it wasn’t some death squad Charlie type like Monkey Man, but a real pro, probably not even Salvadoran. That eliminates a lot of suspects.”

  He let her stew for a moment. “Yeah, I used…”

  “To be a cop, I remember.”

  He hit the brakes for real now. He’d come around a corner and they’d run into the war: a heavily defended intersection, two small tanks, a .50 cal, and what seemed a battalion of troops.

  “Hands out the window.”

  They stuck their arms out as far as they would go. After a moment a soldier stepped forward and motioned them back. Ajax put the car in reverse until they came to a line of cars, parked before the fighting began and now bullet-riddled.

  “They gonna let us through?”

  “I think so, they’re worried about a car bomb, is my bet. Hide your passport, show them the ORDEN card.”

  “The guns?”

  “Gonna have to leave them.”

  “No.”

  Her face showed she meant, I will not be taken alive by him. And maybe the soldiers would accept the greater need for a woman to be armed, what with marauding terroristas on the offensive. Ajax had learned long ago that little helped the clandestine agent so much as the opposition believing their own propaganda.

  “Okay, keep it, but try not to look so … you know.”

  “What?”

  He freed the white flag he’d tied to the door.

  “Fierce.”

  “You were gonna say butch, weren’t you?”

  “Right down the middle of the street, hands up.”

  He hoisted their white flag in one hand, his identity card in the other. Gladys joined him, walking slow and steady toward the roadblock and its many guns and jumpy soldiers.

  “I wasn’t gonna say butch. I was gonna say look vulnerable, in need of a gun.”

  “You like them vulnerable, soft and sultry. Jasmine’s your type, with her cleavage like a cleft in the rock.”

  “Did you just say that?”

  “Cleavage? You want me to say tetas?”

  “No, ‘cleft in a rock.’”

  “Alto!”

  They were ten feet from the blockade and a sergeant stepped forward, his pistol pointed at Ajax.

  “We’re trying to get away from the terrorists,” he said, hopefully.

  “Papeles.” The sergeant had a steady eye and a steady hand when he took their identification cards. He seemed to recognize the significance of the ORDEN stamp of approval, but he searched their faces again, matching them to their photos. Ajax knew it was best in such situations to just put his passport face on and let the man look.

  The sergeant looked back, found an officer, and said, “Orden.” The officer nodded in return.

  “Pasan.”

  As they passed through Ajax looked the soldiers in the face. The men did not seem frightened. Many of them looked angry, which meant they’d already been in the shit. And they didn’t look beaten.

  Ajax nodded at the few who would make eye contact, thinking, Just nod back you sons-of-bitches.

  “Wait.”

  Ajax could hear Gladys’s breath catch, he hoped no one else did. A major stepped forward, wearing a different insignia than the others. Ajax guessed military intelligence.

  “Identification.”

  They handed them over.

  “You two are not Salvadoran.”

  Ajax could see Gladys’s hand slowly go to her purse and he reached for it, like a protective lover, but squeezed her fingers in a soft vise.

  “No, mi major. We are not.”

  The major looked their cards over, front and back.

  “You’re the Americans. The cubanos-gringos.”

  Gladys didn’t flinch, bless her. Ajax kept his passport face on.

  “Passports.”

  They handed them over, the major inspected them, compared them to the ORDEN photos.

  “I saw you at the party. At don Maximiliano’s. Last night.”

  “Was it only last night?” Gladys freed her hand and ran it through her hair like I must look a sight!

  “It seems a long time ago.” The major smiled at her. “The airport might be open tomorrow, you should leave the country.”

  “We’d like to,” Gladys jumped in, “but it is important we bear witness to this communist aggression, so the people back home can know what it is you fight for.”

  Damn, she is good! Ajax almost heaved a sigh of relief.

  “You better hurry then.” The major smiled. “There won’t be any communists left soon, this”—he waved at the bullet-scarred walls—“has given us permission to take care of them all!”

  “Good luck, Major.” Ajax took Gladys’s hand. “Good luck to all of you!”

  Hearts pounding and breath ragged, they walked on to the next block in silence.

  “You can let go my hand now. What the fuck was that?”

  Ajax released her.

  “We just walked over our own graves,” he said.

  “No shit. He didn’t know?”

  “Which means either they’re all too busy or communications are fried, or…” Ajax turned back and waved at the soldiers, but also, strangely, to make sure he and Gladys were actually where they were and not being sto
od against a wall. Some of the soldiers waved back, but the major was not watching them.

  “Or?”

  “Or Krill didn’t tell them.”

  “You think?”

  “Not if he wanted us to himself.”

  She blanched. Krill’s feet walking over her grave.

  23

  The Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador was packed to the rafters with the homeless, the hopeless, and the terrified.

  Ajax and Gladys had made their way through increasing numbers of soldiers until they reached Plaza Morazan—a square with a government ministry on one side, which explained the soldiers, the cathedral on another, and a small park anchored by a bronze statue of a man astride a horse, which, like all such landmarks, had become a target for pigeons and a rendezvous for lovers.

  The vaulted-roofed church was alive—hundreds of people full to overflowing. Families, refugees, the scared, the devout, and no few rebel sympathizers and army informers, Ajax was sure. Some families had staked out small areas with mats and bundles of their possessions, here for the duration. Others sat in the pews looking stunned, some knelt in prayer, some made the Stations of the Cross, or prostrated themselves before a painting of their patron saint—the martyred Romero. Ajax crinkled his nose—the tang of unwashed bodies, a whiff of fear, and the comforting aroma of rice and beans simmering and tortillas warming.

  The wretched of, if not the Earth, then at least of San Salvador, the savior. Redeemer. One mortar round would kill them all.

  “Any antidote to the inferno.”

  “What?” Gladys was scanning the crowds.

  “You see Claribel?”

  “Yep. Tenth pew back, far side.”

  “Walk by her, lead her over there.” Ajax nodded to a side chapel off the nave. “Meet you.”

  He wandered the long way around to the chapel, inspecting the crowds. There were some children with schoolbooks, the older siblings helping the younger as it was clear their parents could not. He found the source of the rice and beans, a few long tables with young men, maybe altar boys, ladling out victuals with tortillas. On the other side of the chapel some nuns tended wounded civilians, although none seemed badly hurt. But through a side door he caught sight of at least one body under a white shroud. He made his way around to the front of the church, before the main altar, a huge bronze cross bearing the body of Christ—El Salvador. Ajax turned his back on the Risen Carpenter to face the congregation packed cheek by jowl, waiting. Waiting for peace, or just a cease-fire. Waiting for a handout or a boost up. Waiting for the Messiah to return, or just for Romero to be canonized so they would have their saint to appeal to and be cared for.