by J P S Brown
The partners used their time around the fire for school, discussion, rehearsal, and planning. During the first week they snapped in every day with their AK-47s. That meant they wound their slings on their arms to hold their rifles still and practiced firing from the standing, sitting, kneeling, and prone positions. They carried their rifles at the ready when they moved horseback. They carried them during the conditioning rides and when they packed and unpacked the mules and manned the other weapons. They kept their rifles with them in camp. Like soldiers and marines, they made constant companions of their rifles. Vogel and Jack Brennan participated in the routine as though they would go on the raid. They trained in case the raid would have to go without the movie diversion at La Golondrina.
During the second week the partners practiced daily two-hour sessions of live fire. They used black bull’s-eye and silhouette targets that came with the armament, and Kane was satisfied that every raider finished that week a marksman. They practiced firing a half hour every afternoon with the sun in their eyes, because they expected to fire their rifles with the white light of the phosphorous rockets and grenades in their eyes on the night of the raid.
On conditioning rides during the final week, the seven partners rode with loaded rifles. Kane pointed out targets and ordered different raiders to take snap shots at them from atop their horses. They trained the entire third week at night, did all their saddling and loading, all their unloading, set ups, snapping-in with aimed rifles, and conditioning rides after dark. They found their gear and set it up with only the light of the moon and stars, mindful that on the night of the raid, they would have no moonlight. CheChe and Martinillo would be equipped with the most powerful, portable halogen lanterns manufactured by man, lanterns that shined brighter than daylight.
Lucrecia was the only person outside the seven raiders whose aid Kane had enlisted. She brought the black coveralls and hoods to the camp on a burro. She had made the masks with evenly sewn, oblong eyeholes. The comments the raiders made when they saw how their partners looked in raider suits made her giggle. She had made them for Vogel and Jack Brennan too. She asked everyone to put them on so she could see how they fit. She made each of them parade past her and pirouette. As a pilón, an extra boon to her work, she gave each man a pair of gloves of the same material.
Kane looked around at his partners in their raider suits and black hoods, and then looked for the old black hat he had resurrected for the raid, put it on, and found that it no longer fit. "If I wear the hood, I won’t be able to keep my hat on," he said. "My head will be too big. If I loose my hat, I won’t be able to stop and go back for it. People know me by the shape of my hat. Why didn't I think of that, before? We can’t wear our hats."
"Can you go naked into battle?" Vogel laughed.
"Who cares?" Joe said. "I know you don’t like to go anywhere without your hat, Jim, but who’s going to see you in the night? You don’t want to be seen, anyway."
"I care. I’ll see myself. I can’t feel right without my hat, can I, compadre? You wouldn’t either, would you?"
"No, but you’re the one who wanted the hoods and it’s a good idea. Unless someone can identify you by your saddles and your mounts, you’ll be unidentifiable with the hoods on. And you’re right, even when people can’t see our faces, they know us by our hats."
”How in the chingado can I swashbuckle without my hat? What’s the use of even going on a raid if I can’t wear my hat?"
"Why not wear them?" Martinillo said. "I’m wearing mine. I’ve never considered not wearing it. The Lupinos won’t find my hat, because I won’t lose it. And if they do and come after me, they’ll be sorry."
"Vale madre. I’m wearing it," Kane said. "I’m too old to go anywhere without my hat."
"Eso," Vogel laughed. "Do it. Put the hoods in your pockets in case you need them."
"What if you lose a hat on the trail?" Joe asked. "Think about it. Won’t it lead the Lupinos to our door?"
"Vaqueros don’t lose their hats," Martinillo said. "My compadres Jim and Juan and have kept them on in the wind and brush for seventy-five years. I have done so for sixty-five. That’s practice enough to keep them on for one more night"
"If my compadre Jim loses his hat, he has to buy breakfast for everybody." Vogel laughed
Three days before the raid, Kane flew alone to Rio Alamos. That night, he drove back to San Bernardo in an undocumented bobtail truck supplied by Beto Montenegro. Martinillo, Che Che, Billy and Joe rode down from El Carrizal with the animals and equipment and waited for him at San Bernardo. Kane hauled them in the bobtail to Vogel’s Cibolibampo ranch before first light. Vogel and Jack packed the El Carrizal camp to El Trigo on the extra animals and hit the trail for La Golondrina the next morning.
SEVENTEEN
Vogel and Jack Brennan arrived at La Golondrina early in the afternoon on the day before the raid. Fatima ushered them into the house for coffee and a swallow of mezcal, but then Rafa hustled them outside to the stables where he had assembled the crew and the camera, light, and sound equipment for the documentary. His crew consisted of the hacienda’s household, stable, farm, and vaquero workers.
Jack had written a script while at El Carrizal, so he was ready to begin. Fatima would translate his interview with the elder Lupino for the first scene. The script called for don Nesib to lead the camera through the stable to an interview with the ageless Abdullah in his living quarters. With Fatima acting as interpreter, Jack intended to tell about the Arabian traditions of horsemanship that Abdullah had brought to the Sierra Madre from his home in the Arabian desert. The first day also called for don Nesib to show off his stallions, broodmares, and cow horses.
That was what Jack’s script called for. However, when they arrived at the stables, they found Abdullah and Ibrahim had packed three mules with their beds and tools and were prepared to leave for La Culebra. Vogel and Jack knew that this would not be good for the raiders who planned to hit the ravine the following night, right after Abdullah and Ibrahim arrived in the bull’s-eye of the target. The seven partners had agreed not to target the Lupinos, Abdullah, the hacienda at La Golondrina, or its help. Besides that, they did not want to be found by the rifle sights of Ibrahim and Abdullah and not be able to shoot back. Jack shook hands with Ibrahim and Abdullah, took great pleasure as a filmmaker in their hawk-like faces and carriage, and asked Rafa to take his picture with them. He then asked Rafa to ready his crew and equipment to film Abdullah and Ibrahim as they prepared the horses and mules for a trip, because he needed that kind of footage for his film.
When Ibrahim told Fatima that he and Abdullah intended to leave La Golondrina within the next fifteen minutes, Jack acted flabbergasted. "Why do they have to leave today?" he asked "We need them here all week. We’re trying to make a movie, for God’s sake." He put on his astounded director’s face.
"They’re needed in the high Sierra for the corn harvest/’ Fatima said.
Vogel realized that Abdullah and Ibrahim were going to La Culebra to harvest opium gum, not corn. He wondered how Jack would hold them at La Golondrina.
"These two are the most colorful characters on the ranch," Jack told Fatima. "We have to have them. We can’t leave them out of the film any more than we can leave out the horses. They have to stay."
Fatima drew her father aside to explain Jack’s need for Abdullah and Ibrahim. Don Nesib bowed his head and listened but did not comment. Fatima called Jack over and asked him to explain his need to don Nesib. Abdullah and Ibrahim finished packing their mules, tied personal items on their saddles, slung rifles over their backs, mounted, and rode away on the trail toward the high Sierra.
Jack looked up and saw that the two hawks were about to disappear around a high bend in the trail. "Fatima," he said, "they’re leaving. Where are they going, and when will they be back?" He put on his devastated director’s look that said, "There goes my movie."
Jack looked at Vogel, then at his hosts. Nobody was paying any attention to him. No one looked up to
see where Abdullah and Ibrahim had gone, either. The hawks of La Golondrina had taken flight and might never come back, because they were headed for an aerie that was about to blow up.
At that moment Kosterlinsky and his troop appeared at the gateway to the hacienda and Toribio, the lookout, announced them. The troop came on in a rush with chains and accoutrements rattling in cadence. Captain Kosterlinsky raised his arm to the sky and called a halt in the front yard.
Jack had listened to talk about this troop for the past four weeks and now studied it closely with a marines good eye. The troopers carried their rifles in saddle scabbards. Only Kosterlinsky and the carrier of the unit banner carried side arms. Both their pistol holsters were covered by hoods that folded over the grips.
Jack announced that he would use the cavalry troop in his movie. When he found out that Kosterlinsky spoke English, he told him that he needed his troop for two days. Kosterlinsky graciously answered that it could be available that day and the morning of the next, but he would have to take it back on patrol the next afternoon. Jack decided to work the troop so hard it would be too tired to do anything but stay in bivouac at La Golondrina until the morning of the third day. He did not want Kosterlinsky and Jim Kane to come face to face in the high Sierra. Jack saw that Kosterlinsky was in love with the idea of being in a movie. That first afternoon, he worked the captain, his troop, and his horses until the sweat rolled off them, then worked them until it dried, then worked them until it rolled off again. He filmed an interview about horses with Kosterlinsky until deep in the night. He asked how they were obtained, what the Army’s criteria was for cavalry animals, and the names of the colors and breeds it preferred. Kosterlinsky’s commentary was mediocre, and he told such long, sonorous stories that Jack began to feel abused. He had thought he could tire the man enough so that he would want to lie down on the ground and sleep, as a true combat soldier would do after a battle. Instead, before Kosterlinsky finished with him, he was so desperate for sleep himself, he had to turn his head away and pry his eyes open with his fingers.
The raiders rested at Vogel’s camp in the thicket of Cibolibampo on the coastal desert. They cleaned their weapons and wrote letters, as soldiers do when they are about to go into combat. They came together periodically to plan and review their roles again. They smeared garlic on their rifle ammunition. The next morning they made their final preparations, then slept through the afternoon and ate a supper of broiled beefsteak and beans boiled in their own soup at sundown. Before they loaded themselves and their animals in the bobtail and the pickup, they blackened their faces with mesquite charcoal. Under cover of the first hour of darkness, the raiders hauled their animals and equipment to Cerro Prieto, unloaded, saddled their mounts and packed their mules, and struck out for La Culebra. They advanced the first seven miles on a trail through heavy brush. The climb to the high Sierra began north of the hacienda at La Golondrina and for about five minutes they were given a good look at the whitewashed buildings in the floodlights a league away. The night was so still, they heard a snatch of the trumpet melody of the mariachis. They saw the bivouac of Kosterlinsky’s soldiers and the picket line of their horses outside the
light of the hacienda yard.
No one said anything, because the team had agreed to keep strict silence. They did not worry about what they might encounter, because they had rehearsed for every contingency They moved on, moved fast, and were ready to fight. Every man and animal felt good. Kane listened to the team for a wayward sound as it pressed on and heard none at all. All any of the raiders could hear was the breathing of his own animals, the nearest creak of leather and brush of canvas, and the nearest footfall. Every animal was so surefooted that a rock seldom rolled. The stars gave Kane all the light he needed to stay close to Che Che.
Gato acted no less sure of his step in the dark than he did in daylight, and he was strong, agile, and intensely alert, as though he knew the high stakes involved in this nighttime race on new ground. The horse performed his best, but controlled and saved his effort and kept his poise in the dark. Anyone in the world, horseman or hiker, would have been able to tell that his heart was full with this job that Kane had given him to do.
The night was so dark that only other men on the prowl would give the raiders trouble. Kane felt sure that the nearest other combat patrol was probably in Iraq. Kosterlinsky’s troop and the wolves of La Culebra would soon be asleep.
When the raiders topped the last pitch of climb to the high Sierra, Che Che stopped the string to let the animals blow and to scout Kosterlinksy’s usual campsite at La Brava Spring. He dismounted and walked the quarter mile to the spring to see if any soldiers or sentries from La Culebra were there. The night was so dark that Kane wondered how Che Che could find the spring without stumbling and searching blindly but he knew the place well. He had camped there many times at the risk of discovery by Lupino’s sentries.
Che Che never discriminated against any place or any landowner when he wanted to use a place to grow his crops. He had grown his marijuana many years in this high Sierra and in tributaries of Lupino’s La Culebra ravine without discovery. Kane did not see him when he left to scout the spring and did not know when he returned until he laid a hand on Kane’s knee.
Che Che found no sentries or soldiers at La Brava that night. Now the raiders would have no way of neutralizing the sentries until they came to the fireworks of the raid. Maybe the sentries would be lucky and sleep through the raid and live to be grandfathers.
The raiders were able to move at a high trot through the pines on top of La Culebra mountain. Pine forests in most of the Sierra Madre did not have underbrush. Underbrush and the lower limbs of the timber had been burned off and the trunk of every tree was bald all the way to the top. Only the tops of the trees had foliage and the peaks of the trees were not sharp like Christmas trees, but round. This was the result of the mauguechis that the people cleared for their crops during the spring, the windiest and driest time of the year. New ground was cleared every year. The brush that the people cut down was set on fire and the wind carried the fire through all the underbrush it could find and burned the lower limbs off the trees. Fire left the ground bare and the trees bald on their trunks but crowned with heavy foliage.
So on the trail through that forest the raiders hit a high trot with no brush to impede them. The deep soil cushioned and muffled the footfalls of the animals. No saddle or load loosened, no rider voiced a sound. The raiders stopped on the brink of the ravine above the build- ings at La Culebra. Kane stayed on his horse, but everybody else dismounted and tied their reins around their mounts’ necks. Che Che tied Colorado’s lead rope to the tail of Kane’s pack mule. Every other man tied his animals head to tail into the string in the order of march, then the team unloaded weapons and ammunition and carried them to the edge of the ravine. Billy carried his grenades and M-79 launcher to the place where he would begin to lob them into the poppy field. Kane led the string away from the ravine and off the trail. He dismounted and tied his pack mule to Gato’s tail, tied Gato to a tree, and moved close to the trail to stand guard.
The reflection of the stars on light clothing showed him a man on the trail only ten yards away. The man’s figure was so dark and quiet that Kane only became aware of him because he bobbed up and down, as though he squatted to see the outline of Kane’s comrades on the skyline. When that did not work, he stood up straight again. He must have arrived only a moment after Kane dismounted. The sounds of his own movements must have covered the sounds that Kane had made. Three or four more steps and Kane would have bumped heads with him. Kane was not even sure the man was unaware of him. He could only be sure the man could not see him. Not even a cat could see him. Not even an owl.
Kane waited. If his partners fired their weapons before this sentry did, Kane would shoot the sentry. If the sentry discovered Kane’s partners before the shooting began, Kane would have to shut him down quietly. The sentry would be the one to make the call, but he, or Kane, was a
bout to die.
The man moved past Kane toward Kane’s partners. Kane drew the colmillo. The fine blade sang a little ringing snick when it cleared the sheath. The man stopped and Kane wrapped his arm around his mouth from behind and cut his throat. The man’s legs jerked and his feet and hands flopped, his rifle barrel banged against the side of Kane’s head, his head came unhinged under Kane’s arm, blood splashed on the ground, and he died. The dead weight of his body dropped out of Kane’s grasp but continued to writhe and thrash. Kane dragged the carcass off the trail by the collar and went back to see if the high smell of the sentry’s blood disturbed the animals. They stamped in place but kept their poise. Kane’s hat remained in place.
The whole canyon lit up as Che Che’s lantern illumined the bunkhouse target for the gunners. When the rockets fired up to leave, they singed ten square yards of brush and rock on the ground behind the launchers and left it smoking. Kane thought that the sound the first two rockets made as they left their launchers probably caused someone in the canyon to awaken and ask, "What’s that?" He had been careful not to look into the backflash, because he did not want his night vision impaired, but now he had to look. The white light of the phosphorous explosions in the bunkhouse blanked out the frames of the windows. The windshields of the helicopter and the Twin Beach aircraft on the strip seemed to widen and stare into the light. They would be the next target for the rockets. Kane looked away from his comrades. He was there to watch their backs. He heard people in the canyon bawl and scream. Two more rockets exploded on target, then two more exploded, another two, and one more. Both aircraft exploded off Kane’s left shoulder and he saw the helicopter collapse around a ball of fire. The AK-47s began to pop in disciplined bursts of three, and Kane knew that his partners were satisfied with the work the rockets had done. They had carried plenty of extras in case the first ones missed.