Beneath a Panamanian Moon (12 page)

Ramirez and Cooper raised their hands.

“Anyone else? No? Okay then, pay attention.” He gestured into the open firing range. “Most often, you will use Claymores in either an ambush situation in which you place them along the expected route of your enemy, or as a defensive deterrent to an insurgent force around a fixed perimeter. But be aware, gentlemen, that in the hands of a determined enemy, these defensive weapons can also become your worst nightmare. So, watch and learn, people.”

The translator whispered the translation and the men nodded their heads, the insult forgotten in their eagerness to see these weapons in action.

The firing range was about three hundred yards deep and twenty-five yards wide. A few rows of coiled barbed wire had been stretched across the field to simulate a defensive position. A single scarecrow, no more than a wooden cross, a gourd head, and an olive-drab shirt stood in the center of the field. On a folding table were wired detonating devices small enough to hold in your hand.

“Ordinarily,” said Hog, “you would clear a kill zone all around your position. This range is for demonstration purposes only. Do not, I repeat, do not fight in this narrow a corridor or your enemy will feed your
huevos
to his dogs. Now, are there any questions?”

There were none.

“Okay,” said Hog, “I want you all to put on your safety goggles.”

We did.

“Now, it's nighttime,” Hog said, “and it's as dark as Castro's asshole—”

The translator murmured and the Latin men laughed.

“—you're in your foxhole and you hear this sound.” Hog pulled a wire and a can rattled out in the field. “You ascertain the direction of the sound, locate the detonator of the mine in that area, and set it off like this.”

Hog picked up a detonator, switched off the safety, and fired one of the mines. The boom was louder than I expected and the scarecrow was knocked backward, stripped of his head, his shirt tattered to rags in one single explosive instant. The men went “Aaaah” like a family watching fireworks on the Fourth of July.

“You!” Hog pointed at me. “Come here.”

I stepped off the bleachers and stood in front of the instructor's table.

“Pick up that detonator.” Hog pointed to one. I did as I was told.

“This is the safety,” he said. “When you want to fire the Claymore, you switch off the safety and squeeze this.” He looked me in the eye, scrutinizing me for any trace of panic or instability. “You okay?”

I said I was.

He clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Outstanding. Now I want you to pretend. Can you pretend, New Guy?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“All right. Pretend it's night. Can't see shit. Pitch-black. You got it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You're on guard. You still pretending, New Guy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What do you see?” He held up three fingers in front of my face.

“Where?” I said. “What?”

“Good man.” He patted my cheek. Then he waved and a shadow moved out of the treeline. It was a man, camouflaged from head to toe and dressed in a sniper's Gilly suit. If he moved you could see him. If he stopped, he looked like another dusty bump of vegetation in the landscape.

Slowly the shadow worked his way under and through the wire until he was directly in front of the instructor's table. He laid a small canvas satchel at the foot of the table and pulled a handle. As he made his way back through the wire, he stopped at each mine and turned it around, facing us. When all the Claymores were turned, the shadow tied a string to the barbed wire and slowly crept back into the trees.

“You still pretending, New Guy?”

“Yes.”

“Now you hear a noise,” Hog whispered. Everything was silent. The men in the bleachers leaned forward in anticipation. Even the jungle animals seemed to quiet. Then, all the cans strung to the wire clanked.

“Quick, New Guy! What do you do?” Hog was pressing against me, nose to nose. “The man's coming, he's going to kill you, New Guy. He's going to cut out your mama's heart! Quick, do something!”

“But he turned—”

“He's gonna kill you, New Guy! Quick, take off the safety!”

I did.

“Now what do you do? What did I tell you to do?”

“Fire the mine?”

“Then fire it! Holy shit, New Guy!”

“But the mine's been—”

Hog screamed into my face, “Fire it, fire it, fire it! NOW!”

I pressed the detonator. The boom filled the sunlit morning and everywhere was the shush of little pellets hitting leaves and grass and uniformed men. The Latinos in the bleachers gasped, mouths open wide in terror. Then the canvas satchel popped and sent a thick stream of red smoke swirling into the air around us.

Hog was calm again. “You just wasted your clients, New Guy. Nice work. But don't think you're going home, because that satchel charge just blew you into tiny little pieces about the size of your pecker. Now, get your sorry ass back to the bench.” I joined Cooper and Ramirez. They were laughing and brushing sand off their clothing.

“Now, those mines were harmless. But in a real firefight you would all be in a massive world of hurt. The moral, gentlemen, is not to let your guard down. Don't assume that your firepower will save you because it won't.” Hog looked at the men on the bleachers. “Can anyone tell the New Guy what he should have done?”

“Stayed home,” Ramirez said.

A tall Latino stood up and said, “Use your weapon.” He was decked out in twin leather shoulder holsters, each holding a stainless-steel .45 with ivory grips. He drew one and held it high in the air. The sunlight glinted off the barrel. He smiled at all the other men as if to say, “I am the only real killer here. I know how to use my weapon.”

“Bueno, Helizondo,” said Hog. “Go ahead.”

Helizondo laughed and fired his big automatic toward the jungle. He emptied the magazine and looked around at the rest of us, a smile on his face.

“Now that Helizondo is dead,” Hog said, “having given away his position with his muzzle flashes, does anyone know what you should do if you hear something out there in the darkness?”

I raised my hand.

“New Guy, I thought you were dead.”

“A flesh wound,” I said, and Hog laughed.

“So, you want to try again?”

I nodded. “Use a hand grenade,” I said.

“Excellent. That's right. Use your hand grenade. Do not fire your weapon at night at any noise or you, like Helizondo, will be dead and so will your comrades because, like an idiot, you have given away your position to the enemy.”

Helizondo looked confused as the translator murmured Spanish into his ear. On the word
idiota,
Helizondo straightened as if struck. None of the other Latino men would look at him. Helizondo gathered his dignity, walked over to where I was sitting, and smacked me hard enough to send me backward off the bench. He needed to hit someone for the insult and, since hitting Hog didn't seem like a healthy choice, he chose me because I was the one who had shamed him with the right answer. I understood all this, through the stars that swam around in my head, but understanding and accepting are two very different things.

Before I could get up and defend myself, Ramirez had Helizondo on his back, the muzzle of the man's own .45 in his mouth. Ramirez was whispering in Spanish, too fast for me to understand. He finished by saying, “
Comprende,
motherfucker?”, and Helizondo nodded yes, his eyes wide, and Mad Dog Ramirez let him up. Ramirez ejected the magazine, pulled back the slide to clear the chamber, backhanded the magazine into the jungle, and handed the empty pistol to Helizondo, grip first.

“I can see we've run out of time,” Hog said, “not to mention patience. So let's take a break.” The Latin men stood in their small group and smoked cigarettes and glared at us.

“Thanks, Mad Dog,” I said.

“The name's Phil. Only my mother calls me ‘Mad Dog.'”

“Thanks, Phil.”

“Don't mention it.”

CHAPTER NINE

That afternoon, when the entire compound lazed away the hour after lunch waiting for the one o'clock rains to pass, I sat in my room and put together what I knew so far, which wasn't much.

The hotel was training bodyguards and home security. I still didn't know who the guests were, the men who would be the employers of the hotel's graduates, so I'd have to work on that, and the compound in the jungle still needed a look, but even if the guests turned out to be cousins of Saddam Hussein, and the facility was the exact layout of Madonna's Malibu beach house, that still only told me
what
was going on, but not why. And who, besides Phil Ramirez, was on the ground working for Smith? Who had bugged the Colonel's meeting with the foreign man, and could I depend on his help if I found myself wearing my ass for a hat?

The rains stopped and the sun turned the afternoon into a sauna. I was dreaming about air-conditioning and bored, beautiful women when Phil pushed open my door and said, “Frag class. Let's go.”

“Me?”

“Hog's giving a class on frags. After you wasted everyone with the Claymores, he wants you there.”

“What's to know about a grenade? You pull the pin and throw it.”

Phil leaned against the doorjamb, his hands in his pockets. “I know you're not arguing with me.”

Phil could have pinched my head off with two fingers, so I said, “Let's go.” While I was locking up, I said, “What do you know about Coop?”

“He's okay.”

“You served with him?”

“No, but I know guys who have. He's on our side.”

That might have been good enough for Phil, but it wasn't good enough for me.

The class was held on the same range as the morning's instruction on Claymore mines. This time the students stood behind a bunker made of earth and wood and watched as Iceman and Hamster demonstrated from a concrete bunker set into the firing line. Hog stood in front of us, his hands behind his back. “Has anyone here ever thrown a live grenade?”

All but two of the Latinos raised their hands. I had tossed exactly one hand grenade in basic training, but I'd tossed it far enough away, and it did explode, so I had my hand up with the rest of the men.

“New Guy, so, unlike the Claymore, this is a skill you've acquired?”

“I wouldn't exactly—”

“Come on down, show us how it's done.”

“It was a long time ago,” I said.

Hog nodded and said, “Okay, New Guy, fair enough. We don't want you fucking up with a live frag, so we'll give you a quick refresher.” He turned to Iceman and Hamster who waited in the bunker. “You men ready?”

Iceman nodded. Hamster, a boy-faced kid with chubby cheeks shifted from foot to foot. “I want to throw this time, Hog, let me throw.”

“Fine. Ice, you spot him.”

Ice nodded again.

As Hamster went through the motions, Hog explained what was happening. Once again, the translator did his thing.

“You grasp the hand grenade in your right hand,” Hog said, “if you're right-handed. Then raise both hands to your chin, elbows out, left index finger inside the pin.”

Hamster raised his arms, elbows out.

“You pull the pin.”

Hamster pulled the pin.

“You let the spoon go. That's this handle here, and it arms the fuse.”

Hamster let the spoon fly.

“Now count to three, and throw.”

Hamster counted to three and tossed the grenade like a football. When it was in the air, he and Ice ducked behind the bunker, shielded by three feet of steel-reinforced concrete. Those of us in the class dropped behind the earthworks and waited for the grenade, fifty yards away, to explode with a spray of dirt and a satisfying
crump
.

The men, turned on by the sheer power of a palm-sized piece of mayhem, went, “Oooh.”

“Now, New Guy, since you did so well this morning with the Claymores, I want you to take Ice's position and spot me as I throw. Once we take you through it, then it'll be your turn to throw.”

“Okay.” I stepped into the bunker. Hog waited for me, an olive-drab grenade already in his hand. As I took my place next to Hog, Hamster and Ice stood behind us. I was a little nervous, and I wiped my hands on my pants.

“Don't be scared, New Guy,” Hog said. “Your job as spotter is to make sure the grenade clears the bunker. You got that?”

“Uh-huh.” I blew out a short breath and wiped my palms again.

“You ready?”

I nodded.

Hog repeated his instructions as he went through each step. “Lift the grenade, elbows out. Remember, this isn't any John Wayne bullshit. You're going to throw this from just behind your ear, as if you were a quarterback.”

I heard the translator repeat “quarterback.”

“You pull the pin.” He pulled the pin. I watched him pull the pin.

“You let the spoon fly.” I watched the spoon fly.

“This arms the fuse. Now you count one—”

I watched Hog cock his right hand behind his ear.

“—two and shit.”

I watched the grenade slip from Hog's right hand, bounce off the dirt, and roll toward Ice and Hamster. Their eyes and mouths gaped in frozen terror. The students behind the earthworks scrambled for cover. I heard a rushing in my ears, like a flood of water over rock. I had no time. The seconds clicked by, the grenade sat in the dirt, and I dropped and covered the grenade with my body.

Lying there with the smell of the earth in my nostrils, the rushing in my ears, seeing Hamster's boot, a speck of red mud on the toe, I felt the hard lump of the grenade in my gut and I thought to myself, “So this is how it ends. My first unselfish act will also be my last. And I'll go out looking at a speck of mud on a stranger's boot.” I closed my eyes and tried to think of something better, and for no reason, I saw Kris Kelly's face.