The Viper Squad (11 page)

They heard the plane’s engines again, coming from the same direction it had approached before.

“He’s circled around and he’s coming in this time
higher than he was before,” Gabriela told them. “You can bet he’s spotted something if he’s afraid to come in low.”

The plane did not continue its flight path, but cut to the left and began to climb in a tight circle directly above them.

“Bastard has seen us!” Gabriela yelled. “He’s calling in the A-37s and marking our position for them!”

She ran to a nearby supply tent and came out carrying a four-foot metal tube with a scope mounted on it. In her left hand
she carried an energy pack and trailing wires. She hooked up the tube to the energy pack, placed it on her right shoulder
and sighted up at the plane through the scope. And waited.

“Damn,” Gabriela muttered.

“What’s wrong?” Sally ventured.

“I’m waiting for the sound signal that tells when the missile homing system is engaged. This is a Redeye, one of your American
surface-to-air missiles. Its infrared homing device zeroes in on the heat given off by the aircraft’s engines. I hope the
energy system has been maintained.”

Gabriela waited for the sound signal, balancing the tube on her shoulder and sighting the 0-2 plane through the scope as it
circled higher and higher overhead. Sally backed away from her slowly, holding her fingers in her ears.

There was no explosion—only a whistle as the four-foot missile was launched from its carrying tube. Twenty feet above the
ground, the missile’s main motor took over from its booster and the projectile shot toward its target at supersonic speed.

The two women and the recruits watched the missile streak up to the plane, now very high above them. Five seconds passed,
and the streaking dart of high explosives was almost upon its prey when the aircraft dipped its right wing and tumbled out
of its flight path.

The missile quivered in midflight, but its force drove it
on past the plane. The projectile rose a little higher, slowed and then dropped like a spent arrow.

“He saw it coming,” Gabriela said through her teeth. “We have another, but he’s near three thousand meters—almost out of range—as
it is.” She pointed to one of the recruits. “You, take this norteamericana away from here. Keep her out in the open, away
from the trees.”

Before Sally could protest, the recruit grabbed her by the left wrist and dragged her after him to the edge of the pine forest.
She heard the distant explosion of the Redeye missile hitting the ground and felt the heat of the sun beat down on her as
they left the shade of the trees. She followed the recruit down a slope, half-running and half-falling after him, dragged
by one arm. He stopped, pushed her down behind a large rock and lay on the ground beside her, looking fearfully up at the
sky. The push-pull observation plane continued to circle high above the location of the camp.

A green drab military jet screamed low over their heads, and its racing shadow on the ground passed over them.

A huge billow of flame—blue and white at its core, radiating out to boiling orange with black smoke fringes—lifted giant pines
by their roots high into the at. Second and third blasts followed the first in quick succession.

The jet disappeared, but the 0-2 came in on a wide circle to inspect the damage. The entire part of the forest where the camp
had been was now a roaring fire that was spreading with the wind up the mountain slope. Apparently satisfied with the results,
the push-pull plane completed only one pass and flew away.

Sally and the recruit, whose name was Miguel, waited until the fire burned itself out. They ran among the charred trunks,
across thick smoldering beds of dead pine needles, to where the tents had been. Trees were still burning around the first
bomb crater, and were it not for the cooling breeze from behind their backs, they could not have stood the heat all about
them.

They kept moving, running from one less scorched place to another, smeared now with ash and carbon, sweat seeping from every
pore of their bodies. There were big flames in the trees higher up the slope as the fire moved uphill away from them, with
loud crackling sounds of its burning and choking smoke floating everywhere. They could not find where the tents had been.

“Look!” Miguel pointed.

The bodies lay about the blackened forest floor with only fragments of burnt cloth adhering to their scorched flesh. The smell
of cooked meat revolted Sally as much as the sight of the charred corpses, but she forced herself to walk among them with
Miguel. She knew that none could possibly be alive, but felt she owed it to Gabriela to look for her, on the remote chance,
somehow, something… She did not know what, and went on looking.

Sally found the empty Redeye missile tube that Gabriela had fired. Another tube, this one loaded, lay next to a body charred
beyond recognition—burned even beyond her being able to tell whether it was male or female. The guerrilla fighters wore no
dog tags. Sally could not bring herself to move the flame-shriveled human remains with her foot in order to examine the corpse
more closely. She felt cold and empty—too much in shock to grieve for her friend Gabriela—and began walking toward the edge
of the burned-over area so she could feel grass under her feet again, get away from the heat and the smell of burning. Miguel
followed.

“They are all gone,” he said once they were downhill of the burned forest, “the friends I came here with, all gone now. I
cannot stay here without them. I will return home.”

Sally panicked. “Take me with you!”

“I am only a campesino from a small mountain village,” Miguel said. “What would I do there with a blond norteamericana? The
soldiers would hear of it and come. Either them or the guerrillas. I can’t take you with me.”

“But you could drop me off in San Salvador at the Sheraton, on your way,” Sally pleaded urgently.

“San Salvador! The Hotel Sheraton!” Miguel laughed. “I have seen pictures of these places. I have never been to a place like
a big city. I live in the mountains—in a place like where we are now—a few days’ walk from here. I will pray for you, senorita.”

“Thanks a lot, Miguel,” Sally said bitterly and watched him go.

The sun was getting low in the western sky, and she trembled at the thought of night coming on, with no one for company on
this mountain slope except for a dozen bodies bombed and then barbecued in a forest fire. The pines were still burning farther
up the mountain, and smoke from the fire stretched away over the valleys and slopes in a long yellow-gray cloud.

Sally thought of Chestnut Street on Beacon Hill. That was the real world. For the first time, she began to believe that she
might never see it again.

“W
HY
not put it bluntly?” Andre Verdoux asked Mike Campbell. “Just say to me, ‘Andre, you can’t come with us because I think you’re
over the hill.’”

“Andre, you can’t come with us because I think you’re over the hill.”

Verdoux shook his head. “Mike, you have to say it with conviction—as if you believed it.”

“I do believe it!”

“I wonder what you will do when the team gets in a tight spot and you find you can’t rely on these younger, inexperienced
men. You’ll regret not having me by you then. Remember the time in Angola when—”

“Forget it, Andre,” Mike interrupted. “If it were just you and me going alone, that would be okay with me. But I can’t endanger
the lives of the other team members by taking along one man who, through no fault of his own, can’t hack it with everyone
else. You got more guts maybe than any of the rest of us, but you’ve put a lot of mileage on your engine and body parts, Andre.”

“I’m in better shape than that lamebrain Aussie there,” Andre said, pointing at Bob Murphy.

Bob looked away, embarrassed for Andre. He had no liking for the Frenchman, but he respected him as a soldier and did not
want to see him humiliated.

Andre himself grew embarrassed by the way Bob did not return his insult through feeling sorry for him. He muttered something
in French and lapsed into silence.

Mike went to work to ease his own feeling of guilt at having to treat Andre this way. Mike had let Andre down easy several
times, and that hadn’t worked. Letting him down hard didn’t seem to be working any better.

They sat in the gun room of Bob’s Vermont home, sipping twelve-year-old Scotch and looking out through large windows over
the lawn to where Eunice and a gardener were hacking at rhododendron bushes.

The peaceful slopes of the Green Mountains rose on the far side of the extensive gardens and a large field with show-jumping
fences.

Mike opened that day’s
Wall Street Journal.
“It’s a good paper f’or Harvey Waller to use, since you can get it almost anywhere in the country. Though I find it hard
to imagine Harvey reading it.”

Mike said no more, because only he knew of Harvey’s heroic record as a Marine in Nam; his rejection in his hometown as a warmonger
and “baby-killer” after he came back; how this, on top of bad combat experiences, had all gotten too much for him, so that
now he associated with what Mike regarded as the loony fringe of patriots who saw the Russian KGB messing with mom and apple
pie and spreading gypsy moths and elm disease.

Mike flipped the newspaper pages till he came to the classified ads. “Here’s the section—BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES——in which
he says he has all his contacts put their ads. Seemingly he knows who it is by the kind of business, plus key words. You know
what he assigned to me? ARIZONA DENTAL PRACTICE—Root Canal Work a Specialty—Partner Wanted.”

Andre smiled grimly. “That man is emotionally disturbed. I find it interesting you value him more highly than me.”

Mike ignored him and turned to Bob. “Can I use your phone number here in the ad?”

“Hell, no,” Bob said. “I don’t want crazy Harvey calling me here. Use your own number in Arizona.”

Mike smiled. “I don’t think I will. For the same reason as you.”

“You may give him my New York number,” Andre said coldly.

Mike phoned Tina to say he would be back in Arizona the next day. But only for a few days. Then he had to take a trip.

“I see,” Tina said in a disappointed voice. “For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

“And it’s not Switzerland this time.”

“No, it’s not.”

She found the phone number for him for the Bunch o’ Shamrock saloon in Youngstown, Ohio. It was eleven in the morning, but
he made the call on the off chance.

“Shamrock,” a gruff voice answered.

“You the bartender?” Mike asked.

“That’s what I started out as this morning.”

“Joe Nolan there?”

“Naw.”

“Will you see him later?”

“Sure.”

“Tell him I called. Just say Faraway Hills, all right?”

A pause. “I get it. The Call of the Faraway Hills. You’re some joker, fella.”

This hadn’t been Mike’s idea—it was Joe’s. “Just tell Nolan. Can you write down this New York number for him to call?”

“Sure.”

Mike gave him Andre’s number.

 *   *   *

Like a lot of other people in Youngstown, Ohio, Joe Nolan was out of work. Some of those who had loaded up their cars, said
good-bye and left for a new life in what they called the Sun Belt had come back to the grime and spring cold of Youngstown—preferring
to be out of work among friends than strangers. A man who has spent fifteen years ladling; molten metal from a smelter does
not turn in the twinkling of some economic eye into a computer programmer tapping coded jargon onto a keyboard about people’s
credit status in a twenty-sixth-floor glass-shrouded “controlled environment.”

Joe was thin, moved fast, and his face was long and sad. He had very bright blue eyes, long teeth like a dog and light brown
hair. He didn’t mind being called “mountainy,” because his folks had come north from Kentucky during World War II to work
in the plants; but when a man called him a “hillbilly,” he had better mean it as a compliment—and not too many did.

Joe didn’t mind what he had to put his hand to to turn a buck. He had messed with dope-selling, but since that meant dealing
with assorted creeps at high risk, he was seeing if he could stay out of that type of employment. Lack of economic security
had not hit Joe hard, as it had most of his friends. Since coming back from his stint as a Green Beret in Vietnam, Joe had
gone from job to job, woman to woman, drink to drink.… When there were no jobs, there were always women and drinks.

From his mission to Vietnam with Mad Mike Campbell, he had taken home what would amount to three or four years’ pay for many
workers in Youngstown. He hadn’t blown it as he’d intended, but had paid for hospitals, funerals, weddings, christenings,
charter buses—everything imaginable—for his family, cousins, close friends, fellow union members, the guys down at the bar.
Not one bottle of champagne, no visits to Playboy clubs in New York or Chicago, not even a new car. Now the money was gone.
Had been for a month. But his family and friends had not forgotten how generous he had been when he had it. So in Joe’s eyes,
the money had not been wasted.

There was only one side effect of his generosity that disturbed him: it made him a respected member of respectable society.
He had always been a floater; the last thing he wanted was to be a pillar of anything. He hated the way people smiled at him
as if he weren’t a crazy son of a bitch anymore.

Well, he had found his opportunity now to show ’em that the bad old Joe Nolan they all hoped was dead and buried was still
alive and kicking.

His cousin Tommy was retarded, a big harmless slob of eighteen who shambled around the neighborhood with a smile on his vacant
face and drool running from his mouth. Occasionally Joe had kicked someone’s ass for making fun of Tommy. People who didn’t
know Tommy were often scared of him, but the locals all had a few kind words for him, and he went through enormous quantities
of homemade cookies and Kool-Aid.

“I reckon maybe it was Tommy’s own fault he got hit by that truck,” his mother told Joe at the hospital, “but that don’t mean
it’s right for the driver to take off and leave him lying there on the road.”