by Lou Cameron
“Oui, I, too, have been speaking with a couple of English ladies whose husbands work for their embassy. Something trés bizarre is going on around here, and I don’t mean the enchanting blowjob I just enjoyed.”
They went to Gaston’s room, just down the hall from the one Captain Gringo was sharing with Golondrina. Gaston produced a bottle he’d purloined from the bar upstairs and poured a couple of hotel tumblers half full as Captain Gringo lit a smoke, sitting on the bed. By this time they’d compared notes and they’d both gotten much the same story from various people connected with-the British embassy. As he handed Captain Gringo his drink, Gaston said, “Eh bien, unless that orgy upstairs was some astoundingly diabolic plot to fool two adventurers who were never invited, the Brits don’t know they are invading Honduras this season!”
As Gaston sat down, Captain Gringo said, “Yeah. It’s possible Whitehall no longer informs its embassy staffs when there’s going to be a war. But old Grover Cleveland and the U.S. Marines are still sulking about that half-assed attempt of theirs to grab the Orinoco Delta just a few months ago. It would be stupid as hell for England to get into another flap over the Monroe Doctrine with the queen’s unruly nephew, Kaiser Willy, making so much trouble for them in other parts of the globe. And even if we assume the whole British government is as nutty as a couple I just met upstairs, it still won’t work.”
“True. To expand the borders of British Honduras calls for invading Mexico or Guatemala, not Honduras. I, too, read maps. What do you think the people we just signed up with are really up to, Dick?”
“Beats the shit out of me. But I seem to be the C.O. of a heavy weapons company and you’re my adjutant and ordinance officer, so they must have somebody they want us to fight for them!”
“Okay, they did not issue us such pretty commissions and book us into this hotel as some obscure joke.”
Captain Gringo took a thoughtful sip of his drink before he said, “Hey, let’s think about this hotel again. The queen’s birthday is not a military secret and that short colonel must have known they’d be throwing that wild celebration upstairs tonight before he sent us over here, right?”
“Oui, but so what, as you Yanks say?”
“So what indeed. He didn’t tell us about it. He didn’t warn us that this hotel was crawling with potential enemies and possible spies.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “He must have assumed we could take care of ourselves, non?”
“Bullshit. He has us down as a couple of wild-eyed ruffians. Hell, a couple of nice little Honduran lads probably would have wandered up to the next floor by now if only to complain about the noise. It was a wide open sex orgy, Gaston.”
“Oui, I noticed that. It was most enjoyable but, alas, I could not get either of the ladies I laid to come down here for the night.”
Captain Gringo insisted, “Pay attention, damn it. I met a lady, too. And I talked to her, just as that slick son-of-a-bitch from the Honduran embassy must have figured I would!’*
“Merde alors, you told her you were a commissioned officer in the Honduran army, Dick?”
“Of course not. I told them I was from the American Embassy staff and I think they bought it. They had no reason not to, since they’re not planning anything the U.S. Government would be interested in.”
Gaston sipped his own drink, nodded, and said, “Oui, they had no way of knowing how discreet we are. You are right, my old and rare. Honduras wants to plant some rumors. They want it to get around that a crisis has developed between them and the British. But why?”
“I’m not sure. But try it this way. What do you know about the current government in Honduras?”
Gaston thought and said, “It has never been too clear whether they had a government or not. As you know, Honduras means “empty depths” in Spanish. The early explorers neglected both our Honduras and the British Crown Colony with the confusing name to the north. Honduras was part of the old Mexican empire when the Spanish lost their mainland colonies back in ’21. When the Mexican hold on Central America fell apart, El Salvador and Guatemala took turns trying to run Honduras. The people who live there are few in numbers and fight rather tediously with one another whenever left to by their more powerful neighbors.”
“Back up. What do the Hondurans fight each other about when they’re not being invaded?”
Gaston shrugged and said, “The usual merde about liberalism and conservatism. The Church and landed interests seem to find it confusing to live here in the nineteenth century. They liked things better in the middle ages. Naturally, the educated classes who were not fortunate enough to inherit a few hundred square miles, or the peonage that goes with them, tend to thump the drum for Libertad, which is the droll way people down here say wanting a slice of the action, hein?”
“Gotcha. So who’s running things in Honduras at the moment?”
“A, how you say, middle-of-the-road junta who managed to bury the machete back in ’85 when a compromise was forced on them by another war with the Guatemalan dictatorship. I understand they shout a lot at one another in the capitol of Tegucigalpa, but while neither the liberals nor conservatives are too happy with the quaint arrangement, they have no choice. Every time the Hondurans let down their guard, somebody invades them. Perhaps the people who just hired us have this year’s invasion blamed on the wrong people, hein?”
Captain Gringo finished his drink and said, “I’m starting to get the picture. We weren’t signed up to fight any goddamn invasion. It’s a goddamn revolution!”
Gaston started to object, but he’d been down here longer than Captain Gringo, so he simply refilled his glass and said, “Ah, oui, that would account for someone wanting to sign up non-Honduran officers in such a hurry. The regulars of the Honduran army are probably loyal to the current government in Tegucigalpa, but how would Tegucigalpa know what obscure officers in a distant embassy were up to? But what is all this how you say razzle-dazzle with the British about, Dick?”
“You just answered your own question. No matter how careful you plot, some word has to get out. They couldn’t put out a call for soldiers of fortune without a cover story. So they made up the bullshit about a threat from a powerful foreign power, knowing that was the one thing everyone in Honduras is worried about. How many other guys like us have they recruited?”
“Who can say?” Gaston shrugged. “The rogue who recruited us says Lefty O’Toole and a couple of ex-Texas Rangers have already left for the fighting front, wherever that might be.”
Captain Gringo put a hand over his glass as Gaston offered silently. He said, “I have to get back to my adelita. Meanwhile, we don’t have to feel so shitty about double-crossing the guys we signed up with. They haven’t given us a dime, the commissions don’t mean shit, and they’ve been lying to us like a rug. As I see it, that short colonel we just talked to is too small a potato to be the master plotter. There’s probably some general in the capitol, gathering hired guns for the fake emergency he’s sold the civilian politicos and loyal officers in Tegucigalpa. After he gets enough of us down there to back his play, guess who the new El Presidente figures to be when it turns out the Redcoats aren’t coming after all?”
“Merde alors,” Gaston sighed, “doesn’t anyone down here ever come up with anything new? I like the picture you paint, Dick. But what are we to do about it?”
Captain Gringo stood up and said, “There’s nothing we can do about it, for now. They think they’re using us and we have to use them to get out of Costa Rica. The steamer ought to make a few stops along the way. Maybe we can get off before we ever reach Honduras.”
“Mais non, we are wanted in Nicaragua, too remember? The thrice accursed steamer shall not stop anywhere this side of Honduras where we would not be shot on sight!”
“Okay, we’ll just ride to the end of the line and play our own tune by ear.” Captain Gringo shrugged and continued, “Try to get some sleep. The tune may turn out to be a Quick Step.”
~*~
Actually
, they got quite a bit of rest on the way to Honduras. They had no further adventures during the next couple of days at the hotel and nobody even looked at their papers when they caught the train down to Limon to board the coastal steamer waiting for them there. Apparently the first husband Captain Gringo had run into that wild night hadn’t been important enough to draw much heat and of course the second husband, didn’t give a damn. The Hondurans who’d hired them didn’t seem to be riding herd on the two men and the girl as they traveled, and Gaston was of the opinion that the smartest move would be to just forget the whole deal and let Honduras worry about its own revolutions, invasions, or whatever. But Gaston wasn’t the guy Costa Ricans might shoot when and if they got around to it and the girl, Golondrina, was wanted too, so what the hell.
The steamer trip up the Mosquito Coast would have been downright boring if Captain Gringo hadn’t shared his paid-for stateroom with his volunteer adelita and if Gaston hadn’t lucked out with a rather horsey, but obviously lonely Belgian-widow traveling alone. She’d been overcome with joy to meet a distinguished older man who spoke French and if Captain Gringo knew Gaston he’d probably be teaching her some old Spanish customs, too.
Golondrina made Captain Gringo teach her a few tricks she’d somehow missed as they lolled away the lazy days and nights together with a Don’t Disturb sign hanging on their stateroom door. She’d never known how long he’d spent going down to the lobby indeed that night at the hotel, since she was a sound sleeper, once satisfied, although that could take some doing.
She was willing to take it Greek. She’d have probably let him bite her ears off if that was what her soldado wanted. But her heart wasn’t in it the one time they tried. So he settled for just dogging her old-fashioned style as he enjoyed the view of the sunlight through the porthole on her little brown rump, contrasting it in his mind with the larger pink behind of old Cynthia. The Islamic custom of keeping a harem was probably not much fun for women, but he could see the advantages it had for men by the time he’d had Golondrina in every position. But if a guy had to be stuck with one woman, Golondrina was about as nice as they came and came every time he stuck her.
After getting the experimental stuff out of the way, they took to just long, lazy old-fashion and protracted orgasms in what she called the romantic position. It would have been romantic to him, too, if the poor little mestiza had a grown woman’s mind to go with her delightful little body. But half the fun of sleeping with a woman was the pillow talk between the noisier fun and, though she tried, Golondrina just wasn’t equipped as a conversationalist. Aside from being uneducated, she wasn’t really the brightest woman he’d ever met. At times he felt like he was talking to himself as he held her in his arms with her adoring eyes fastened on his lips as she tried, so terribly hard, to fathom what the hell he was talking about.
During the second evening on the steamer, he came close to hurting her when they were sharing a post coital smoke and he found himself telling her the story of his life as she nodded, brightly, like it mattered to her.
He’d told her about his boyhood in Connecticut, his years at West Point, and the mess he’d gotten into in the Army Of The West when he’d given a break to some Mexicans fleeing across the border from the tyranny to the south and found himself under arrest when things went sour. He said, “I had to kill the Officer Of The Day getting out of that army guardhouse the night before they were going to hang me. Then Gaston and I teamed up south of the border and ...”
He stared thoughtfully down at her pretty brown face and said, with a crooked smile, “That was before I ate those missionaries, of course. Did I ever tell you about the time I raped my grandmother?”
“No, Querido. For why did you rape your grandmother? Was she pretty?”
“Jesus H. Christ! Have you been paying any attention to a word I’ve just said?”
Golondrina’s eyes filled with tears as she stammered, “Of course I have. Your real name is Ricardo Walker and you were a First Lieutenant in the Yanqui army and you had to run away because they were going to hang you. Do you take me for a stupid deaf woman?”
He sighed and kissed her before he said, “I take you for what you are, Muchachita. But if I told you I deserved to be hanged back in the States it wouldn’t matter to you, would it?”
“For why should it matter to me? I am your adelita. Have I done something to annoy you, Querido?”
“I don’t think you’d know how to annoy a man—on purpose.”
She smiled, took his hand, and ran it over her soft warm flesh to her groin as she said in a relieved tone, “Bueno, I was afraid you were getting tired of me.”
He was. Or he had been, until he felt the way she was kissing his fingertips with her moist vaginal lips. There wasn’t a thing wrong with the way she made love from the neck down. But he couldn’t help wishing, as he rolled atop her and she welcomed his flesh into hers with a glad little sob, that he’d seen that middle-aged Belgian widow first She was old enough to be his mother and anyone could see she’d never been pretty, but, Jesus, he needed somebody he could talk to in bed, and the horny old broad sounded well educated.
In the next stateroom after Gaston and the older woman Captain Gringo was thinking about were talking indeed, and it was driving the Frenchman out of his mind. The Belgian woman was named Claudette and her nude body, while a bit shopworn by Time’s cruel teeth, was clean and not nearly as old looking as her face. Her breasts were small but still firm and her long pale legs were very nice indeed as one thigh rested over each of Gaston’s shoulders. But, merde alors, didn’t she ever shut up?
Claudette was saying, “And then my youngest daughter married this truly bourgeoisie German and went to live in Hamburg, so I never see her anymore; but my eldest and her husband still visit me when I’m at home and... what are you doing, mon cher?”
Gaston thought what he was doing was perfectly obvious and most women liked it. He had the gray hair between her legs parted with his forked fingers as he ran his darting tongue in and out between her inner lips with practiced skill.
She leaned back with a sigh and said, “Oh, that does feel nice. As I was saying, my eldest and her husband will be meeting me in Antwerp and I am so looking forward to some decent cooking again. I hate the way these Hispanics pepper everything so, don’t you?”
Gaston wished he had a pepper mill in his hands right now as he started sucking on her clit, running two fingers up inside her. She was all right once he got her in the mood, but Merde alors, it took forever. While he was aroused enough to start without her, he knew he’d strangle her if she said anything about her triple titted daughters while he was laying her!
“That tickles,” she giggled, “you naughty thing. I might have known when you told me you were from Paris that you did naughty things like that.”
He couldn’t answer with his mouth filled. She was starting to contract on his exploring fingers now. For a woman who said oral sex was naughty, old Claudette was willing enough to be eaten. But the silly provincial bitch said she’d never taken it in her own mouth and was too old to start now. This whole affair was becoming trés fatigue. He envied his friend, Dick, having that simple little mestiza all to himself next door. He doubted Golondrina was one of those idiotic women who jabbered at a man in bed. He wished he had a simple little adelita who just plain liked to make la zig-zag without a lot of tedious discussion.
Claudette was breathing harder now as she started moving her hips, fucking his face. She moaned and said, “Oh, I want it real, Gaston!” so he kissed his way up her belly, keeping his finger in her until, as their lips met, he slid his erection into her and, yes, for a time the widow just made love as le bon Dieu had intended women to. Gaston smiled wryly at himself as he thought about the younger couple next door. No doubt they were doing the same thing and enjoying it as much. But when you were about to come, it was impossible to imagine how anything could be better. The grass always seemed greener on the other side of the fence. But this woman would have bee
n fine, if only she had fewer brains and didn’t want to hold pillow conversations between times.
~*~
The steamer wasn’t met by a brass band when it put in at Puerto Cortes. But a second lieutenant named Bardo had come down to the docks to meet Captain Gringo and Gaston. He’d brought two squads of Honduran regulars along to meet them, too. So it was hardly the time to tell anyone they didn’t want to play after all.
A wistful Claudette stayed aboard to wave bye-bye, of course. Little Golondrina insisted on tagging along even though Captain Gringo had been pointing out the advantages of New Orleans to her for a couple of nights. Golondrina said she would follow him to New Orleans or anywhere else, but that he would have to shoot her to get rid of her. He didn’t want to shoot her, but if he didn’t get rid of her, fast, somebody else was liable to.
Lieutenant Bardo accepted Captain Gringo’s adelita without comment. He was a well-brought up Hispanic who knew one did not mention another man’s woman unless he’d been given permission to, and Captain Gringo didn’t even tell them the girl’s name. He wasn’t out to be rude. Who Golondrina might be was none of their business and they could figure out how to spell their own reward posters when and if.
Lieutenant Bardo had brought a carriage. So the four of them climbed in behind the coachman as the soldiers formed ranks on either side to get there the hard way. The coachman snapped his whip and the spavined bay between the shafts trotted off, with the soldiers trotting along in step with carbines held at port. Captain Gringo nodded approvingly and told the Honduran officer, “Your men are legged up pretty good, Lieutenant Are they with the outfit we’ll be serving with?”
“We shall be serving in the same brigade, Captain Walker,” Bardo said with a smile. “But my men and I are with one of the rifle battalions. You and Lieutenant Verrier, here, are to help form the cadre of the new special battalion General Morales is forming.”
The two soldiers of fortune exchanged glances. Gaston knew it was his turn, so he asked, “Do you have generals in command of battalions these days? In most armies I’m familiar with, a battalion commander is usually a Lieutenant Colonel.”