Backlash

by Don Pendleton

  The scent of flowers was heavy in the damp air, wafting around the porch on the breeze. Bolan hoisted himself up and sat on the railing. Rivera seemed almost comatose, only a slight nodding of his head suggesting he wasn't a statue but a living, breathing man.

  At the first thump of the chopper rotor Bolan dropped to the stone floor of the porch. The sound still made his pulse race a little. He knew where it would break over the hill, and was staring at the spot with anticipation. The whirling blades clawed at the sky, and the chopper rose as if it were screwing itself into the bottom of the sky. Out of the corner of his eye Bolan noticed that Rivera was still motionless.

  The chopper hung in the air for a moment, then seemed to slip on a cloud and dropped to the apron like a stone. Bolan moved toward the door. He had his hand on the knob when Rivera broke his silence. "It's still not too late for you to back out, Mr. Belasko."

  "If I wanted to back out, I never would have come this far, General."

  "I know that. But…" He stopped as if searching for the right word, then waved a hand absently in the air. "Never mind."

  Bolan jerked the door open and stepped inside for his bag. When he stepped back onto the patio, Rivera was no longer there.

  He started down the winding gravel path to the helipad. Something about the chopper seemed strangely familiar. It was a Huey, and he had seen thousands like it, but there was something more, something he couldn't put his finger on. By the time he reached the apron, the pilot had shut the big engine down. He stood on the apron with hands on hips, watching Bolan jog toward him.

  The warrior tossed his gear into the chopper. From behind mirrored shades the pilot watched him with a bored expression. Bolan leaned against the open door. Far up the hill Rivera stepped off the patio and started the downhill trudge. The old man moved gracefully. At this distance Bolan would have taken him for a man twenty years younger. Negotiating the turns smoothly, without lagging or apparent loss of wind, Rivera made it to the bottom of the path and walked over to the chopper with his gear balanced on one shoulder. He dumped the duffel bag into the chopper, then climbed in without a word.

  "Friendly fuck, ain't he?" the pilot mumbled. Bolan didn't answer, and the pilot looked at him curiously. "Get's it from you, I guess."

  He climbed into the cockpit, and Bolan hauled himself into the rear of the chopper. He noticed the Huey was loaded for bear. He hadn't seen one packing so much since Southeast Asia. The familiar minigun was lashed down, but loaded. Pods of 2.75-inch rockets, also full, hung from the undercarriage. The presence of so much high-tech armament was both comforting and disconcerting. It was nice to know it was there, but disturbing to realize it might be needed.

  The general had already belted himself into one of the bench seats along the fuselage, and Bolan picked the jump seat just behind the open cockpit. He noticed a headset hanging from a peg and slipped it on. When he rapped on the pilot's helmet the man turned. Bolan pointed to his headset and the pilot opened his mike.

  "What's the trouble?" he asked as the engine coughed, sputtered, then broke into a roar.

  Bolan listened to the engines for a moment. When he felt the familiar shuddering of the floorboards, he said, "Just thought we should stay in touch during the flight."

  "Good idea. You used to one of these buggies?"

  "More than I'd like to be."

  "Nam?"

  "Where else?"

  The pilot chuckled as he opened the throttle, and the bird started to lift off. "This is the closest to Nam I've seen, and I've been everywhere since."

  "Combat here?"

  "Hell, yes. Forget what you read in the papers. That ain't the half of what goes on down here. I've already lost two Hueys and three friends."

  "Sandinistas?"

  "One time, yeah. The other, I'm not so sure. It all happened so fast, but I'd swear it was a friendly."

  "A mistake?"

  The pilot shrugged. "I have to think so, don't I?"

  "Why wouldn't you?"

  "Our guys are crazy. They spend more time arguing among themselves than they do fighting the other side. And I'm talking live ammo. We had one guy, a captain or something from Somoza's National Guard, take a unit into Segovia Province to wipe out a whole village. There weren't any Nica troops for fifty miles, so I knew it wasn't an accident. Turns out the mayor of the village had insulted his mother's sister. Fifteen years ago. Can you believe that?" To prove he couldn't, the pilot shook his head in exaggerated mystification.

  "What do you know about Guillermo Pagan?"

  "Nothing." The answer had been too abrupt. But it was obvious the pilot would say nothing further. Bolan waited for him to redirect the conversation, but it seemed he was fresh out of subject matter. The warrior stared out the open door at the treetops a hundred feet below.

  The Huey swept down the far side of the hill. Bolan could make out the rear of the hacienda for a few seconds, then it dropped behind the trees and disappeared. The road to the ambassador's residence dwindled to a rutted dirt road. The pilot trailed it for a quarter of a mile, then swept to the left over the trees to follow a sluggish stream that cut through the bottom of the valley.

  Bolan watched Rivera, who seemed to be deep in thought. The general leaned back against the back of his seat, his eyes narrowed to slits. He felt eyes on him, turned his head away and closed his eyes completely.

  The chopper lurched suddenly, and Bolan heard the engine cough at the same time. He jerked his head around and saw the pilot struggling to keep control. The steady thump of the rotors was gone, replaced by an intermittent fluttering as the engine rose and fell.

  "We've been hit," the pilot barked.

  Bolan climbed into the copilot's seat, and the pilot pointed to the left, where a pair of motor launches hugged the shore. A half-dozen men were firing automatic rifles at the crippled Huey. "Shouldn't have stayed so low, but I didn't expect trouble this close in."

  "Can you get away from them?"

  "Not sure. I think the fuel line's been ruptured. The engine seems okay, but I don't have control and I don't have full power. I don't want to go down in the trees. I'd rather ditch in the water."

  "Take it straight up," Bolan ordered. He left his seat, crawled into the main cabin, jerked the headset loose and used the wall for balance as he moved to the open doorway. Belting himself in, he unlimbered the M-134 minigun and slammed the door gunner's headset on. "Swing her around," he told the pilot.

  "What for?"

  "Just do it."

  The warrior waited for the crippled bird to pivot. It kept slipping as the engine labored to hold it stable. He swung the minigun around and opened up on the launches. The chopper climbed a little, and Bolan banked his fire. A hundred geysers suddenly erupted as the Executioner swept the 7.62 mm stingers across both launches. The men in the boats hit the deck.

  The first belt was gone, and Bolan turned to look for another. Rivera slapped it into his hand. The warrior tossed the empty belt out of the open door, slammed the reload in place and opened fire. The lead boat had begun to drift into open water, and Bolan concentrated on its stern. Raking back and forth, the 7.62 mm slugs shredded the tail end. A puff of black smoke gushed through the floorboard, then spurted like a thin tube straight into the air. Bolan kept up relentless fire, pausing only once or twice to spray the second boat.

  Then paydirt!

  The fuel tank ruptured and an orange balloon inflated around the boat, swallowing it entirely. When the balloon deflated, the boat had been reduced to blackened slats, just barely staying above the waterline.

  A sudden flurry of activity on the second boat caught his eye, and he swung the minigun around. One foot braced on the gunwale, a bearded rail of a man hoisted a LAW rocket to his shoulder. Bolan stitched him up and down with the minigun, and he tumbled backward. The LAW fell from his shoulder and he squeezed the trigger in a spasm as he fell. The rocket slammed into the small cabin, and the second boat was wrapped in black smoke and yellow fire. The flames had b
egun to recede when the rumble of the blast swept past. Bolan could barely hear it under the ragged cough of the choppers engine. "Set her down," he barked over the intercom.

  "Suppose the pontoons are ruptured?" the pilot asked nervously.

  "Do we have a choice?"

  In answer the pilot backed off, and the chopper began to descend, wobbling from side to side like a dying yo-yo on a tangled string.

  Rivera slapped Bolan on the shoulder, and the warrior turned to see the old man grinning for the first time in days. He shook his head, then braced himself as the chopper touched down with a splash. The Huey listed a moment, then settled in. Bolan leaned out of the door to check the pontoons. There were no bubbles and no hiss. As far as he could tell, the pontoons were intact.

  The chopper drifted toward the far shore, where Bolan and the pilot hooked the bank. They tugged the crippled bird in and tied up. The pilot opened the engine housing while Bolan kept watch. "Fuel line's okay," he said. "Still got to figure this out, though." Five minutes later he hooted, "Damn, there it is. Shit, just a couple of wires chopped in half. I can fix that in ten minutes." He went to the cabin and came back with a handful of tools and a couple of crimp splices. "Won't be long. Get you there by lunchtime."

  While the pilot grunted and cursed under the open housing, Bolan watched the two blackened shells drifting in the current. He shook his head slowly, and Rivera asked, "What's wrong?"

  "I'm not sure." In the quiet he could hear the water lapping at the pontoons. Through a gap in the trees on the far bank, he saw a bright flash of light, then heard an engine roar into life.

  The whine of a transmission lurching over uneven ground snarled through the undergrowth, and Bolan caught a glimpse of a jeep bobbing among the trees. One of the occupants was there and gone in a flash. He looked familiar, but Bolan wasn't sure where he had seen him before. Then it came to him.

  It was Harry Martinson.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Bolan eyed the small band skeptically. Rivera seemed more impressed, but Bolan wondered how much of it was feigned enthusiasm. One hundred men wasn't much of an army. But if the warrior had no enthusiasm, and that of the general was suspect, the men more than made up for it. They milled around Rivera like fans surrounding a movie star, pressing in on him until he was all but hidden at the center of the slowly tightening knot.

  Rivera was the soul of patience, shaking each hand in turn, asking each soldier his name and once or twice asking whether a man was related to this Chamorro or that Gonsalvez. Bolan hung back, watching the entire performance through hooded eyes. Rivera made eye contact with him once, and the smile he flashed seemed real enough, but Bolan couldn't help but think of a dozen other such bands. What they were preparing to do would leave several of them dead, others crippled and, more than likely, all but a handful of them bitter and permanently disillusioned.

  He knew Rivera couldn't be ignorant of that eventual outcome, and wondered whether it was the ability to blind oneself to the inevitable that made one fit to command an army of boys who wouldn't be men until it was too late for them to understand the difference.

  The pilot, too, stood to one side, one hand resting on the scratched shell of the Huey. He glanced at Bolan, shook his head as if to say what a waste it all was, then climbed into the Huey and cranked up the engine.

  The clamor of the still-celebrating warriors was suddenly swallowed by the rumbling engine, and as the chopper started to climb, the men all turned, their hands frozen in midair, their mouths open in childlike wonder. Rivera took the opportunity to extricate himself from the throng, threading his way through the astonished maze like a man pushing through a warehouse full of mannequins.

  "It's very gratifying," Rivera confided. "I wasn't prepared for this."

  Bolan noticed the tears in Rivera's eyes. In spite of himself, he was moved, glad for the old man. Rivera was turning out to be far more complicated than he had imagined. It wasn't enough to convince the big man that Rivera wasn't just one more cynical opportunist, but there was something real somewhere under the carefully cultivated exterior. But then, Bolan reminded himself, some people argued Hitler must have been a good guy because he liked children.

  As long as they had blue eyes and blond hair.

  As the chopper disappeared, a silence enfolded the camp. The soldiers began to drift back to their tents, strangely quiet, as if the excited chatter had exhausted their ability to make noise. Rivera, his arms folded across his chest, stood there until the last man was out of sight. He turned to Bolan, the tears gone now, and nodded.

  He turned away, his eyes searching for the tent left for him. When he found it, he broke into a stiff trot, waving an arm over his head like a cavalry officer leading a battalion of one. Bolan followed.

  Inside the tent, Rivera was already seated at a folding table. "Come in, come in," he said. "Sit down."

  Bolan stood there, the canvas flap curled tightly in one hand.

  "I said sit down. We have a lot to talk about."

  "Oh, really?"

  "Yes, we do. Or rather I have a lot to say and you have to listen because you're the only man here, beside myself, who will understand what I'm saying. And I'm not even sure about me."

  "I don't really care to listen to some elaborate justification of your past, General Rivera. There's very little you can say that will change my opinion of you."

  Rivera nodded. "Of course, you would feel that way. I know I would in your position. But there's a great deal you don't know. Not history, exactly, but also very much history. We're all products of our times, Mr. Belasko."

  "Look, General, obviously I'm no fan of Ortega and his crowd."

  "That goes without saying."

  "Maybe. But, by the same token, I'm not shedding any tears over the late Mr. Somoza. As far as I'm concerned, whoever took him out did the world a favor. And Nicaragua, too."

  "It's not that simple."

  "It never is to hear guys like you tell it. There's always some excuse, some greater evil to be fended off. So you fry people, you torture them, you drag them from their homes in the middle of the night and put a bullet in their brains. Well, I've got news for you, General, that's not my idea of democracy."

  "It's not mine, either." Rivera stood, walked to the tent door and looked out onto the empty square of parched earth. When he resumed, it was as if he were speaking to the air. "You know, when I received my commission in the army, it was 1953. I was a member of a small cabal of officers, all of them young like myself, wellborn and well-intentioned. We didn't like what the Somoza family was doing to our country."

  "But you went along with the program."

  "No!" Rivera whirled around. For a moment Bolan thought the old man was going to charge him. "No, we didn't. Not at first. We spent a long time, talking about what we were going to do, how we had to have a plan. It was no good just taking one eye for another. It was no good just to throw the old regime into a prison cell, or to line the members up against a wall and do to them what they had done to so many others. We wanted something real."

  "So why didn't you do anything about it? What happened?"

  "It's not enough for you to know that. First, you have to know what we had decided, the poor little rich boys… We decided on genuine reforms. Redistribution of wealth. Not all at once. Nothing Communist. It wasn't like that. But we wanted to allow the people to own land, let them farm their own property. But we knew it wouldn't be easy. There was too much power concentrated in too few hands. And, besides, we would be going against our own families. Do you have any idea how difficult that was for us, to even think about something like that?"

  Bolan grunted. "Thinking comes easy, doesn't it, General? It's the doing that's hard."

  "No, you're wrong. Thinking doesn't come easy. Not that kind of thinking. Not for men like us, with our backgrounds, our families, our… history. We would be turning our backs not just on the old way, but on the only way any of us had ever known. We were going to erase four hundre
d years, expunge it as completely as if it had never existed. You don't do that lightly."

  "I'm sure." Rivera ignored the irony.

  "For six months we argued. We considered dozens of proposals. It was like a contest, each man trying to come up with something more startling than the others. Everyone of us was trying to find some middle ground between the dictatorship we had and the future we knew wouldn't come overnight. It was important to set things in motion, but not too fast. It had to have momentum, but not enough to sweep us all into chaos. Wisdom, Mr. Belasko, that's what we were looking for. But we were too young. We didn't have any wisdom. We were idealists, plain and simple. And there was too much we didn't know. About ourselves, mostly."

  "So you gave up."

  Rivera collapsed onto a canvas chair, his body sagging as if under a great weight. For a long time he said nothing. He stared at the ground in front of his chair. Bolan held his peace, waiting for Rivera to speak again. When he did, his voice was that of a man confronting something he hadn't dared to think about for too long.

  "So we did the only sensible thing. We asked for help. We asked the American ambassador for help. We sent a delegation to meet with him. He assured us he was sympathetic and that he would do what he could to help us. Two days later every single member of the delegation was arrested. They were tortured in ways I won't describe to you because I can't bear to think about it. But not one man broke. Not one man gave up a single name. Somoza was convinced there were others. There had to be. He was right, of course, but he was helpless to do anything about it."

  "I still don't understand."

  "No, of course not. You've never betrayed anyone. I know that. I can see it in your eyes. But if you look into my eyes, you'll see my betrayal, my victim. You'll see me. I turned my back on every thing I believed in, out of despair and self-loathing. If I couldn't change things, very well, then I would out-Somoza Somoza. I would hide my guilt in my zeal. He would never suspect me because I would give him no reason."