The Fighting Man (1993)

by Seymour, Gerald

  He said it out loud, but quiet, ‘Burn them, Gord, burn them fucking hot . . .’

  The Archaeologist could not help himself. He wept as he walked to the aircraft.

  They did not tack right and left. They took the line of the compass. They did not swerve east and west. Straight ahead on the luminous line of the compass needle. Gord had told them what he hoped for. Like those who thrash in drowning, the energy flooded back in them. Like men and women who will flail with their arms to the exhaustion point towards a floating raft, they blundered on the path given them by the compass needle. The name of the place at the end of the path of the compass needle was Canillá. It was two full days’ walk away.

  Struggling when they were against the gradient, running when they were going down. Gord had the cart and Alex was with him. The dog moaned in hunger beside her, and the Street Boy wheezed as he struggled to propel the wheelbarrow. She helped him when she could. She forced back the clawing undergrowth when the prick barbs caught in his clothes and when it wrapped round the cart . . .

  No anger in her voice. ‘It is running out on people’s trust.’

  ‘We came and we tried . . .’

  The sadness in her voice. ‘It’s leaving them worse than before you came.’

  ‘We may not make it out. We have shit to go through. We have a Kaibil battalion tracking us, round us. It’s not just catching a bloody number 9 bus. “Let me know, please, when it’s Trafalgar bloody Square.” It is a poor chance. The other way round is you and me, all of us, dragged through Santa Cruz del Quiché and Nebaj and Playa Grande, it’s sadism time, slow death time. It’s you and me, all of us, begging to be killed, pleading. We go out, and we leave something, we leave hope. We leave the memory. In the villages they can hold the memory. Dead, we are forgotten.’

  The shame in her voice. ‘I don’t think I could live with it, me safe, the people who followed us abandoned.’

  ‘We tried . . . You are a late bloody convert. We tried the only way that things get changed. Your way nothing changes. Your way is feeling comfortable gumming appeal envelopes and typing newsletters; lobbying politicians, and achieving sweet nothing . . .’

  The whip in her voice. ‘You bastard.’

  ‘We tried . . .’

  The shake in her voice. ‘How do they know? How are they always with us, the helicopter?’

  ‘I would have to sit down, and I don’t have the time. Hell. I would have to analyse. I would have to think. I don’t have the time. I don’t know.’

  The fear in her voice. ‘When will they hit us?’

  ‘They realize we are small. They will have seen from the air all the people that have left us. Perhaps tomorrow they will think we are ready to be hit . . .’

  She helped him to push the cart and he laid the strength of his fist over her hand.

  18

  The sleeping bag, empty, was still in the floor area inside the hatch. There was no mattress, only the thickness of the sleeping bag to protect a man, asleep, from the riveted and ribbed flooring. Arturo came to the helicopter. He had, himself, used a collapsible bed in a two-berth tent, rested well. He ate a meat sandwich and held a polystyrene mug of thick coffee. He yawned and he stretched. He felt good. Around him was the clatter of the waking camp that was sited beside the wide road. He finished the sandwich and drained the mug. They were working fast around him to break the camp and load up the lorries. He started the routine, beside the helicopter, of his morning exercises, squats and thrusts and then a stampede of spot sprinting. Small groups of his men, those who would be lifted forward and into the ambush positions, were being briefed by their officers, as he had briefed the officers before crawling into his tent. The sweat ran on him. The men who listened to the briefings and who crouched around the maps cradled the weapons they would use; it would be close-quarters fighting, it would be short-range engagement . . . He saw the flier. The flier walked towards him and carried a collapsed entrenching spade and a roll of lavatory paper and a small towel and a plastic throw-away razor. He saw the grey tiredness of the flier’s face and there were staunched cuts at the flier’s throat and a place on his cheek, near to the scar, where the razor had taken the head off a healing mosquito bite. The flier came past him, did not acknowledge him, and loaded his kit into the helicopter. The early sun slanted on them, lit the grey of the flier’s face.

  Arturo slapped the pilot’s back.

  ‘I’m feeling good. Mr America, are you feeling good?’

  Dismissive. ‘Fine . . .’

  ‘You had something to eat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Should you not have something to eat?’

  The flier looked at him, drawn eyes. ‘If I want something to eat then I’ll find something to eat.’

  Fuck him. If he did not want to eat then he would not be force-fed. If he wanted to fly on an empty stomach then he would not be begged to eat. A platoon of troops, thirty men, went past Arturo, going towards the first of the helicopters to have started up its engine, towards the slow warming swell of the rotors’ swing. There was the young officer whose father had taught Arturo, the commissioned recruit, at the La Polvora training camp of the Kaibiles. There was the sergeant who had been with him in the first platoon to break the defences at Acul in Institutional Re-encounter ’84. Those that had a free hand saluted him, most were too loaded by their weapons and their packs. Eager little bastards and ready to fight, ready to kill, the best . . . And this Arturo liked, they did not wear helmets, they wore proud the maroon berets of the Kaibil battalion, and they rejected the cumbersome movement-stifling flak jackets. The best . . .

  ‘Shit faces, I want them alive . . . If I cannot have them alive then I want them dead . . . No fuck-up, no escape. They were against idiots when they were at Playa Grande and Nebaj and Santa Cruz del Quiché. Now, they face the Kaibiles. I want them so that they can be taken, first best alive, second best dead, through every rats’ nest village in Quiché department. I want every man and every woman and every child in every village to see what has happened to those subversives when they met the Kaibiles. I want the spirit of rebellion beaten from every man and every woman and every child in every village. God go with you . . .’

  The platoon being lifted forward would be divided into four sections. Four ways would be blocked. The lorries would carry the follow-up force that would trail the march, but it would be one of the four sections that engaged his enemy. The sections would be in position and he would be above where he could command and control and give the ‘Contact’ order. It was necessary to get the sections in early, far ahead of the march, so that surprise could be achieved. He had enjoyed making the plan.

  Arturo teased. ‘Which of you will it be that brings me the baby whore Ramírez? Alpha or Bravo or Charlie or Delta section? Which of you will bring me the Englishman with the fire? Which . . . ?’

  They headed away from him, fast order and stamping their boots on the roadway, going for the helicopters.

  He turned to the flier.

  ‘We move in thirty minutes, right? What is your problem . . . ?’

  He looked again into the dulled eyes, sunken.

  ‘. . . Not the liberal shit. Do we find it distasteful? Are we fucking squeamish? They tried to destroy the country, my country. OK, I tell you something, Mr America, that may help you purge your liberal shit . . . It will not be the same again here. Too many commanders stood back. There are matters to be settled when this is over. Too many in the army hesitated. For me it is my country first, always my country, but it will be a new country where the old military are put to grass because they sat on their hands. You will be ready in thirty minutes?’

  ‘Ready.’

  ‘And tonight you will be back with your own people who will no doubt sympathize with you in your pain of having to work with Guatemalans . . .’

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to be getting on with the flight checks.’

  His pleasure at the anticipation of action was eroded. He did not know w
hy the flier poured cold piss over him.

  He was the back-marker.

  The Canadian trailed the march. He maintained the link, just. Most times he could see them ahead of him, some of the times they were merged in the trees and he lost them. He did not think that it had been decided he should go back-marker but it was the way it had worked out. Gord was at the front. The plan had been explained to him the night before, and, God’s truth, he had forgotten damned everything that had been told him. Just as, God’s truth, it was his seventy-first year, and his memory was poor when he was tired. Tired? Damned exhausted. The hip hurt. He would have liked to have helped more, and he had taken one of the two machine guns from Gord and there must have been 250 rounds of belt ammunition, ball and tracer, wrapped round him. Couldn’t have kept up the pace without the stick. The stick in his right hand and the machine gun across his left shoulder. They had explained the plan and all that the Canadian could remember was that he had to walk through this day and through another day, and he was not certain, damn it, that he could last . . . He did not stop at the rest halts. The rest halts were cut to three minutes in every sixty minutes. He caught them, each hour, at the rest halt, and when he caught them they were ready to move on. Hell no, no way he would hold them up . . . His mind meandered. There was a good Legion Club in Kingston, back up a side street from the lake. He might just get round to telling the guys a little of what had happened to just one veteran of the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa. Might just tell Dave and Bill and Duggie and Hamish because they might be interested, because they had been there when the Falaise Gap was closed on 21st August in 1944. Wouldn’t tell anyone else. Not the guys from 3rd Infantry or 4th Armoured, not the guys from Totalise and Goodwood and Atlantic, but he’d tell his good friends of Operation Tractable and the closing of the Gap what had happened to him in Guatemala. Be a hell of a job getting them to believe him . . . Wouldn’t tell Miriam. No, not for Miriam to know. He’d tell Dave and Bill and Duggie and Hamish about the Englishman with the flame thrower . . . Sure as hell that hip hurt, and there wasn’t the money now for the operation. His mind meandered on. Now, wait a minute, there was the little matter of the wicket gate at the back of the yard. Before he went down to the Legion bar, the first time, he’d have the wicket gate painted for Miriam.

  She might just skin him if . . .

  ‘Would you kindly come this way, sir?’

  The deference was a sneer.

  He followed the customs service man. The Archaeologist was ragged-bearded and had collected no luggage from the carousel, and his passport looked as if it had been in the bath with him and the watermarked photograph was clean-shaven.

  ‘Shouldn’t take too long, sir. When we’ve cleared the flight through then we’ll come back to you.’

  They were in an outer office. There was a customs service woman behind him, black and big.

  He croaked, ‘How long?’

  The customs service man had the passport and the AmEx plastic. ‘This is standard procedure when a passenger has no resemblance to the passport photograph, when the passport is damaged, when the passenger is travelling into the country without baggage. I’m going to check back on your passport, sir, I’m going to check American Express, I’m going to check with University of Minnesota, when the flight’s been cleared through.’

  ‘May I, please, use the telephone?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  The outer door closed. He paced. The customs service woman stood in front of the outer door . . . Three hours? Four hours? Might hand him over to the next shift . . . The folded paper, Gord’s paper, was in his breast pocket and burning it. He hadn’t slept on the flight, across the aisle a baby had screamed continuously from Guatemala City to Houston. The door to the inner office was half open and there was a desk and a telephone on it . . . ‘Do something more for me . . .’ He had done nothing. Seeing the worn face and the exhaustion, and the trust. ‘Do something more for me.’ . . . He paced. She had a hell of a night stick, and she had the muscle to use the stick, but she didn’t have a gun. He paced.

  He went by the inner door. He darted inside.

  The Archaeologist slammed the door shut on her.

  He twisted the key and her shoulder hit the door. He rammed the bolt. The door shuddered, held.

  The Archaeologist grabbed the telephone and it fell from the desk and clattered on thin-quality government carpet. He had the paper from his pocket. She was yelling and she hit the door again.

  He dialled it like it was written down once he had the outside line tone. He knelt on the floor and punched the numbers.

  International code, area code, exchange number, local number, and two shoulders hit the door and they were shouting for him. Local number ringing out . . . A woman’s voice, crisp . . . An answerphone bleeping, last the long tone . . . Panic time . . .

  The first splinter of the door. He tried to stay calm and read it like Gord had written it. The top hinge broke clear. It was the date and the time and the co-ordinates of the location. ‘You made a good decision, bunking out. Gord, he’ll be cold dead tomorrow, Gordon Benjamin Brown.’ Pray fucking God you come through, Gord. He gave them again, date and the time and the co-ordinates of the location.

  The message repeated over the telephone was ‘27–05–1509/9052’.

  The door came in towards him. He had the paper in his mouth, and gulped. The customs service woman pulled the telephone cable from the wall socket. He swallowed. The customs service man had a revolver aimed on him.

  He was handcuffed.

  The customs service man said happily, ‘You, asshole, are now in heavy trouble.’

  Tom Schultz stayed cold.

  As cold as when the weapons operator had hit the personnel carrier with the second TOW, the day before they were downed, and there had been a guy half out of the top hatch and waving a grey-white handkerchief when the second TOW had gone in. As cold as when he had come from the hospital to give the folded flag to the widow of the weapons operator at the small town cemetery and shaken the hands of the weapons operator’s kids. As cold as when his father had told him, snivelling, that if the Revenue ever hooked into him then he was for the federal gaol at Marion in Illinois. As cold as when he had come home, where they had drifted to, Tacoma outside of Seattle, not announced, and found his mother being screwed hard by the gook from the gas station, and the dollar bills counted out to a hundred and left neat on the table in the hall. Staying cold was living with it, staying cold was survival.

  The high sun seared through the Plexiglas of the cockpit shield. He had come across the desert, Gord, and risked living and surviving, Gordon Benjamin Brown, to lift out a pilot who was downed. He felt nothing of the rich warmth, stayed cold. Just another crap day’s flying . . .

  Arturo said into the microphone, ‘. . . Callsign Bravo section. It is yours. In your own time. They are yours, Bravo section. Out . . .’

  . . . One man always had to fire first. One man would fire and that would be the signal, and the other men would follow . . .

  They were among the old smoothed rocks that were lichen-covered and moss-coated. It was the absence of the birdsong that had alerted him. The big trees clung, thin-rooted, to the ground amongst the rocks. They were climbing, and the helicopter drone had dropped behind them. He was alerted because the happiness of the bright-feathered birds was gone from the forest. He had made the signals for care, caution, back down the march. No song from the birds, only the creak of the cart wheels and the whine of the wheelbarrow.

  . . . One man always had to fire first, the law of the ambush . . .

  Gord knew the sound. It was the sound from the man who fired first. The metalled click, the sudden movement ahead, the metalled scrape. The firing, the breech jam, the clearing of the breech. The man who fired first would be the man who had the best moment and the best aim and the best opportunity, and he had jammed. A second won, two seconds gained, three seconds achieved. Using three seconds, dropping behind the cart, and hoping, praying, crying
that the men behind him would use three seconds . . .

  The jam and the clearing of the breech of a lieutenant’s Uzi machine pistol, close-quarters and point-blank weapon, was signal enough.

  The shooting broke around Gord.

  The hammer of the gunfire. The crack of the incoming. The howl of ricochets off the old smoothed rocks.

  By three seconds, surprise had been lost.

  Going through the routine that he had learned, and the bullets’ flight above him and beside him. The firing ahead of him, and the firing of the machine guns from behind him. Heaving the firing lever. Flat on his stomach, reaching up, grabbing at the rusted arms of the cart and twisting them and jerking them so that the aim of the nozzle jets swayed across the rocks, among the rough of the tree trunks. Black oil squirting haphazard in front of him. Gord wrenched the ignition trigger. The fire flew.

  The fire snaked. The fire leaped among the rocks and lingered on them, then burst forward. The fire splashed against the wide trunks of the trees, ignored them, then thrust forward.

  Rich fire and black smoke cavorting ahead of him.

  A wall of smoke and fire ahead of him.

  A terror of hell in front of him, an inferno of smoke and fire, and all the time there was the hammer of the machine guns and the rifles on automatic behind him.

  Ahead of him they had no target.

  They had the fire and the smoke around them, and the fire caught them and the smoke choked them. Choking on the smoke, screaming, caught by the fire, a soldier ran towards them. The gunfire found him. Gord had his arm up, and he waved them forward from behind him. It was his training. If an ambush was broken then an ambush should be charged. The fire, and the terror of the fire, had kicked the hole in the ambush line. Precious seconds won and gained and achieved by the fire. He was bent behind the cart and he punched with the power of his legs to drive the brute forward, and he swerved the cart’s arm, manoeuvred the brute so that the oil and the flame, the smoke and the fire, played over new rocks and new tree trunks.