by J P S Brown
from the shooter.
After Martinillo, Joe, and Che Che filled the buildings and any aircraft that was there with white hot phosphorous, they would direct automatic rifle fire on the people who ran out of the buildings. Kane’s assignment was to hold the horses and protect the gunners’ backs. La Culebra’s sentries could be expected to come running when the shooting started. The horses and mules would be conditioned to the small arms fire during the next month of training. They could not be conditioned to the brightness of the phosphorous, the explosions of the rockets, grenades, and barrels of fuel that would cause a rain of shrapnel and metal debris. Kane could expect that the animals would try to break away during the fireworks.
Each man was responsible for the placement of the saddles and the tightness of the cinches on his animals at all times. All weapons and ammunition would be returned to the same pack animals. Nothing but empty cartridge cases would be left behind. Every round of small arms ammunition would be smeared with garlic.
The partners would set up a hidden camp in a stand of pines on the rim of El Carrizal, a box canyon that branched off Arroyo Hondo. No trails led to that campsite. The seven men would eat and sleep on a spot where they could see fifty miles in every direction: to the Sea of Cortez in the west, to La Golondrina in the north, to the village of Guadalupe Victoria in the east, and to the Camino Real, the main trail for horseshoe traffic between Sonora and Chihuahua, to the south. A brush corral for the horses and mules would be built in El Carrizal Canyon below the camp.
The horses and mules were to undergo severe training. El Carrizal was at the same altitude as the high Sierra of La Golondrina and the animals would be ridden hard for the next month. Three days before the raid, they would be ridden and packed to San Bernardo and trucked from there to Vogel’s ranch at Cibolibampo.
Little Buck would not be used in the raid. The bobtail truck that would be used could not be traced to the partners. Any animal crippled on the raid would be destroyed by incendiary grenade to prevent identification. No dead or wounded raiders would be left behind. All the necessary weapons, ammunition, and explosives had been delivered by Billy Buck’s Mexican counterparts by Mexican Navy cutter to a remote beach on the Sea of Cortez and stored in a safe house.
During the four weeks that remained before the raid, all seven partners would study the maintenance and care of the AK-47s and RPG-7s. Every hand would snap in and take rifle practice with live ammunition, and their animals would stand close by to become accustomed to the noise. Che Che, Martinillo, and Billy Buck would design a sandbox that would show the topography of the terrain between Cerro Prieto and La Culebra and would include every trail, mountain, canyon, building, and aircraft that the raiders would traverse and target.
The box canyon of El Carrizal was four miles from El Trigo and the most secluded area in the region for their camp and activities. Their rifle fire in the canyon could not be heard a mile away. The closest other ranch, except Martinillo’s Las Animas, was more than ten miles away, so the hideout would be their own secret sound stage.
Every man on the team would be trained to do every other man’s job. All would undergo daily physical training.
Kane asked Martinillo again where the Arabs and pelones stored their weapons.
"The bearded teacher made the pupils stack them in the big warehouse every evening before supper, and he always locked the door and pocketed the key," Martinillo said.
"They must be awful sure that nobody will give them trouble," Kane said. "Did they keep any weapons close at hand in case of attack?"
"Only the sentries on the rim of the canyon kept their weapons."
’Are you sure the Arab locks the door?"
"He did when I was there."
"I wonder who he thought would steal from him?"
"I thought they might have kept their weapons in the bunkhouse after they caught me spying on them, but no, when Billy and I were there they locked everything up as before."
"Good. That will make it easier for us to cull that bunch of trained pests away from humankind," Kane said. "I only wish we could catch a whole convention of them up there."
The raiders would wear black from head to toe, including black hoods. They would charcoal their light-colored boots. Dark colored animals would be used. White marks on their horses and mules would be blackened with charcoal. One phosphorous grenade was to be assigned to each animal and fastened to his saddle, in case it had to be destroyed. Kane asked Martinillo if he could get Lucrecia to make the black coveralls and masks. Martinillo said he thought she would be glad to do it.
"Let’s talk about Kosterlinsky," Vogel said. "What if he bivouacs within the sound of our gunfire and bombs?"
"No matter where he is, when the raid starts, we should have the advantage of surprise," Kane said. "We’ll certainly try to have him located before we fire the first shot. If he bivouacs too close to La Culebra, we might decide to turn around and try again some other night. Remember, we ought to complete our destruction of the camp in only a few minutes. If he rushes toward the sounds of the assault, he’ll meet black riders on dark mounts head-on. His troop will be in single file on the trail as we are. He will not recognize what we are, and he’ll have little time to organize his troop to spread out and open fire. There are no straight and level stretches on that trail between La Culebra and Cerro Prieto, so if we encounter him it will be with a suddenness that will astound him. We’ll have our rifles ready and hope he does not. We can’t predict what will happen after that, but we’ll drill for every possibility we can imagine."
"One more thing," Vogel said. "We haven't said enough about the sentries."
"Only two sentries patrol our side of the ravine," Billy said.
"Martinillo and I were at La Culebra two nights. On both nights the sentries slept in bivouac with the cavalry troop. If the troop is in bivouac at its usual campsite on top the mountain when the assault begins, the sentries will probably be with it. If the cavalry is not in the vicinity we have no idea from this reconnaissance where the sentries will be. We’ll have to slip in and blow up targets to attract them so we can kill them, because we’ll never find them in that darkness before the first phosphorous rocket goes off."
"I thought about that too," Kane said. "I’ll have to head off the sentries when they come running."
"How about the sentries who are posted on the other side of the ravine? What kind of trouble will they give you?" Vogel asked.
"None," Billy said. "They’re a quarter mile away. Their Uzis don’t have the range to bother us, and they’ll never make it across the ravine in time to do us harm. The canyon will be so lit up with phosphorous that we’ll be able to pick them off if they try to cross it anyway."
Everybody was assigned his mount for the raid. Vogel and Jack Brennan would ride a pair of well-built, dog-gentle, El Trigo mules to La Golondrina. Che Che would ride Vogel’s Colorado, a dark bay horse with no white marks on him. Martinillo would ride the dark brown Paseador mule, because they knew each other so well. Joe Brennan would ride the black Negrito mule, because the animal was smooth, surefooted, and wise enough for both rider and mount. Billy Buck would ride Kane’s horse Lagarto, a dark roan with a round white spot on his forehead. That spot and several tiny white spots on his hips would have to be blackened. His sides also had white spots on them, but they would be under the saddle. A few swatches of wet charcoal would make him invisible in the dark.
Che Che would furnish three dark brown mules to carry the cargo. Kane had seen them at the hacienda. They were so perfectly matched, they could have been triplets. They were so stocky and well muscled that Kane had already remarked to Vogel that they must be half quarter horse. Che Che could not have taken them from the partners' mares, so they must have been sired by one of their studs. Kane asked Vogel about that. "What would you do if it was your job to take care of good horses that belonged to owners who lived hundreds of kilometers away and you wanted your donkey mares bred to their studs?" Vogel asked.
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Kane grinned.
"You’d invite one of your bosses’ studs to a party every time one of your burritas came in heat, and you would keep inviting studs until you found one who liked a little strange stuff. After all, with your bosses far away, what would be the problem? Ownership is established by the dam, not the stud, anyway."
"Ay, compadre. Why did I even ask?" Kane said. "We taught the youngster well, did we not? Otherwise who could have furnished us with better pack mules for this sashay?"
Kane gave Che Che a token scowl, and Che Che looked down at his hands and said, "I have nothing to say"
"What youngster? Che Che’s fifty-five years old, compadre," Vogel said.
"That old and we’ve yet to give him a good stud?"
"I guess that’s right, but I don’t think he wants a horse. He has no use for one. He’s learned how to furnish himself with everything he wants up here in this Sierra where nothing is ever given to him."
"That’s good, then," Kane said.
Kane decided to ride Gato. When he announced this, not one of his partners objected, although he suspected that they thought the horse might be too young and green for magnified, grownup, nighttime fireworks on the edges of cliffs.
"He’s a youngster," Kane said. "But I could ask for no better partner on this raid. He’ll probably be my last top horse, and I want him to do this with me. No one will see how dashing a figure of a man on a horse we will make in the dark, but I want to make it anyway.
"This could be the old geezer’s last sashay, and how could anything be better for a man who has spent his life in search of one good mount after another? I’ve owned a lot of good horses, but only two that I called my top horse, and young Gato is the second. I won’t ever look for another. Young as he is, I already know he’s a marvelous horse and evidently so do you. None of you has been so fearful that he asked if I thought we ought to wear steel helmets on this sashay, so I don’t think I’m imposing on you by riding a green horse. We’ll all sacrifice enough style by wearing black masks and coveralls, and we’ll have to think about leaving our hats at home. I’m too old and set in my ways to ride a safe, foolproof horse for my last raid. I have to do as I always have, risk it all on my best, high-powered animal. To do that, I'll go on one that might be unpredictable and make a mistake, but ay caray, how I will go."
Kane translated what he had said for the Americans and they laughed.
"Before you felt you had to make this speech about the mount you intend to ride, I had made up my mind to speak for Jack and tell you that you and Joe should be the ones to go to La Golondrina and make the movie," Vogel said. "Jack and I should go on the raid, because we are better raiders, and I want to ride Gato."
"Next time." Kane laughed. "This time, you be the moviemakers and we’ll be the brigands."
"OK," Jack said. "We don’t mind furnishing the diversion this time, but next time we go on the raid."
"We’ll have to find somebody else to raid then, Jack," Kane said. "The Lupinos will never get over this. Even if the financial loss and the wipeout of their thugs don’t cripple them, their sensibilities will fall into a funk. They’re going to think their asses have been laid bare for all of Mexico to see. They’ll probably get in bed and cover up their heads until the Muslims take over the world."
"You hope," Jack said. "I hope so too."
"Don’t anyone get caught, that’s all," Vogel said. "Stay on your horses and stay together. You’ll have to stay close to one another in that darkness, or you won’t all come home together."
"Let’s hope we can shoot everybody so there’ll be no pursuit," Billy said. "If we destroy them all, they can’t come out of the ravine after us, no, Martinillo?"
Martinillo smiled gently and extended his hand for one of Vogel’s cigarettes.
That afternoon, Kane flew to Camauiroa with Billy to get the first load of armament. The next morning he went alone and brought back the second load, provisions for their camp at El Carrizal, and bolts of thin, black, cotton material. The other partners caught up the horses and mules and set up the camp.
Che Che met Kane at the airstrip with Gato, Colorado, and the triplet black mules at sundown and helped him unload the cargo and pack it to El Carrizal. They saw a glimmer of the Carrizal campfire from high on the Arroyo Hondo trail beneath the airstrip, then did not see it again until it warmed their hearts as they rode into camp.
Billy and Martinillo gave them a swallow of mezcal and served them a campfire supper of fried beef jerky, eggs, and coffee that Lucrecia had brought from Las Animas. She had come to see Martinillo and had already gone home. She had been too long alone without her husband and family so he had been obliged to tell her that he would only be an hour away from her at El Carrizal. When Kane heard that, he told Martinillo to saddle Paseador and go home. He could commute every day from Las Animas.
Kane asked Martinillo to take the bolts of black cloth for the coveralls and masks to Lucrecia. This brought a laugh out of his partners, but he reminded them that they had agreed to wear black, and now they would have to be fitted for it. Martinillo said he would bring Lucrecia to camp the next day to take their measurements.
Kane and Jack unrolled their beds on the ground outside their tent beside each other because the night was clear. Kane would have liked to groan as he unraveled himself in bed, as a grandfather would do when he lay down near somebody who cared. He gritted his teeth instead. He might be old and sore, but he got stronger every day and brigands did not groan. He had not heard one complaint from his friend Jackie Lee Brennan. He did not think Jack had uttered a complaint since he first met him in 1942 at Saint Michaels, when Kane was eleven and Jack was nine. Jack’s mother worked as a Harvey Girl in the Alvarado Restaurant at the Albuquerque train depot. His father had died on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The day they met, Jack and Kane had chosen each other as lifelong friends. When one had something, so did the other, and they had never groaned or complained to each other. "Thanks for letting me in on this," Jack said when he settled in his bedroll.
"Thanks for throwing in with me again. We’re awful lucky to have you and Joe," Kane said. "When was the last time you spent a night outside like this?"
"I can’t remember the last time I even looked at the stars. That’s why I thanked you. Before I came down here, I was getting old. I’m not old enough to get as old as I was getting."
"You’re in good shape. I had been on my ass for eighteen months I and had gone soft, myself."
"Well, you won’t get any softer now, but you might get your ass shot off."
"Who could ever imagine such a thing?"
"This is a good idea, for me to hide in this timber and train on these trails to get ready for the raid, even if Vogel and I aren’t going."
"You never know when you need to be in shape. My granny used to say that her church was the great outdoors, and when you sleep on the ground and cover yourself with the stars, you’ll be in a lot better shape than people who don’t. I figured we’d even get smarter if we did this."
They slept.
Kane made another trip to Camauiroa for the last of the armament the next morning. The rest of the partners finished cutting brush to fence a pasture of grass and browse for their animals.
The training routine for the raid began the morning after that. Che Che was the first man up to build the fire and put on the coffee. Martinillo and Joe wrangled the horses and Billy helped Che Che cook breakfast. The three oldsters hung morrals full of grain and alfalfa pellets on the horses and mules and took responsibility for their care and for the maintenance of the tack and pack gear. They brought in spare saddle horses and pack mules in case any broke down in training. Kane did the shoeing, not because he liked to do it, but because nobody else in the world did it to suit him.
All seven partners did a half hour of calisthenics before breakfast, supervised by Joe or Billy. After breakfast Billy gave them school on weapons. Each of the raiders was constantly reminded of his pla
ce in the order of march on the trail. The order was strictly observed in every drill. Vogel and Jack brought up the rear on every sashay and led the spare horses tied head to tail to condition them.
Every day the raiders saddled their horses and packed their mules with all the gear they would carry on the raid, and then struck out on the trail uphill for two hours of conditioning. At the end of the second hour, they dismounted and set up for a dry run with the RPG-7 anti-tank weapons.
After they rehearsed the unpacking and manning of the weapons in a dry run, and repacked and remounted in proper order, they rode another conditioning hour downhill back to camp. They pushed their animals hard, but paced themselves and stayed together in a tight group. They walked and cooled their animals another half hour before they grained them, then turned them out into the brush-fenced pasture to rest. In the afternoon they studied their weapons and rehearsed each step each man would take in the raid. Each partner stood up and recited his role, from the time he packed his mule with the gear he would carry and saddled his horse at the Cerro Prieto staging area, until he repacked his mule and left the ravine after the assault.
Vogel gave Joe riding lessons, and he soon found his seat on Negrito. Problems such as an encounter with government cavalry or the crippling of a horse were discussed and resolved and a practice drill devised for each contingency. They used pine logs as dummy animals, then blindfolded themselves and saddled the logs with riding saddles and pack saddles, then packed the same gear in the same places on the pack saddles, then unpacked the gear and set up for the assault, then repacked it, as they would on the night of the assault in the dark of the moon. They practiced their knots, especially the sheet bend they would use to string their animals together head to tail. Blindfolded, they led their animals up and tied them head to tail, then untied them, then tied them again.