The Viper Squad (25 page)

“Ordonez, Murphy, Waller—no, you stay here, Harvey—Nolan, you three select two men apiece from our Salvadoran buddies here
and move out as scouting parties,” Campbell said. “That means you don’t engage their forces, you come back to us instead.
And look out for a bimbo with blond hair.”

As Ordonez, Murphy and Nolan picked their men and prepared to move forward along the stream bed, Harvey Waller resentfully
asked, “Why did you change your mind about sending me?”

“Because if you had laid eyes on any of them, Harvey, you couldn’t resist the chance to blast them.”

“True enough,” Waller grunted and stopped bitching. He wasn’t going to tell Mike how he had spent weeks hunting down that
commie prof in Harvard and how he had waited for just the right moment.

All three scouting parties came back several times as the battalion advanced, but each time they had nothing to report. When
they had moved into the valley itself, keeping to the wooded cover of one slope, it was not long before all three scouting
parties appeared almost simultaneously with news of armed guerrillas directly ahead in the scrubby evergreens. They could
not approach nearer because the guerrillas had placed outlying patrols of three and four men.

Mike said, “Clarinero will stay put here till he gets a radio message on our whereabouts, and then he’ll decide how to act.”

“It could be he knows we’re here,” Andre suggested quietly, “and that he’s ready for a showdown.”

“That’s what he’ll get,” Mike said without hesitation.

Campbell gathered his team about him.

“Okay, men, let’s not forget our primary objective. We’re
not
here to fight rebels. We’re here to pick up a rich
man’s daughter, alive and unhurt. Remember that. If anything happens to her, our mission has failed. Objective number two
is to take out Comandante Clarinero. We promised the general that, but it’s only number two.”

“I came here to kill Cuban communists,” Cesar said in a sour voice.

“All right. Objective number three, help Cesar fumigate some Cuban bugs. But first, the girl. Don’t fuck up on that. Which
means we can’t launch a frontal attack. Waller and Hardwick, you come with me. We’re going in to get the girl. Rest of you,
stay here and keep these soldiers quiet, even if you have to strangle them to do it. If you hear shooting, drive them on ahead
of you—stampede them in. Let’s go.”

A little way on, Mike stopped, and they fixed bayonets to their M16s. Then they moved cautiously forward till they saw a guerrilla
patrol moving among the bushes ahead of them. The patrol had three men, and though they lay in wait for it, it veered off
in another direction. A bit farther on, they heard another patrol—this time of five men, smoking and talking. Mike shook his
head and they kept out of sight till the patrol had passed.

Mike held up his hand for them to stop at a narrow, well-beaten path, probably a deer trail. They hid behind some trees and
waited.

They heard feet shuffling through the dry forest litter and then saw forms moving some distance away: three men, coming along
the path. Lance and Harvey looked at Mike. He nodded, holding up one finger to Lance, two to Harvey and pointing three at
himself. They nodded.

They scrunched down low as they could get behind the leaves of the low bushes, taking a last look at the steel bayonet at
the end of the barrel but not daring to move to make sure it was still attached tightly. Each one fixed on his prey, ignoring
the others.

Lance tried to control his breathing, keep it regular and easy—he felt he was gasping for breath like a fish out of
water. His heart was pounding. His goddam pulse was pounding! In his left wrist. His palms were sweating. He clutched his
M16, which felt greasy and slippery in his grip. His nose was running. The back of his neck itched. They were still coming
along the path. His right eye was watering. He would probably fuck up, and Mike would kill him if this kamikaze guerrilla,
who had probably been fighting since he was eight years old, didn’t first rip hind to bits.…

Lance Hardwick sprang up to meet the first man, who was ambling watchfully, M16 slung on his right shoulder, right hand resting
on the weapon. Holding his rifle sideways, Lance delivered an upward thrust of the flattened bayonet blade to the man’s midriff,
so that the steel slipped easily through the ribs, like a knife between the slats of a venetian blind.

Lance felt him struggle, skewered on the bayonet, a bit like a big fish tugging on a fishing rod. Then the contorted, writhing
body slipped in its agony off the blade and curled up on the ground, making horrible groaning noises, with blood streaming
out of the wound onto the man’s wrists and over his bare arms.

Lance vomited.

Harvey Waller did things in style. He hit the second man with the tip of the bayonet a few inches above his pecker, drove
the blade in and lifted up, raising the guerrilla off the ground like an oldtime farmer pitching hay. The bayonet cut up through
the man’s belly, and his entrails spilled out. Harvey set him back on his feet and jerked the blade from his body. The rebel
staggered about on the path, trying with both hands to keep his innards from falling out, not succeeding, and stepping and
slipping on his own guts and looking down in anguished horror at his empty, eviscerated body cavity and at the throbbing tubes
and entrails on the forest floor. He fell facedown in his own digestive tracts and did not move again.

Harvey looked pleased with himself.

Mike Campbell held his bayonet point to the neck of the third man. The guerilla looked back at Mike with pride and hatred
in his eyes, and did not flinch at the death of the first man. It was Harvey’s disemboweling of the second man that broke
him. By the time that was over, his hands and legs were trembling so badly he could not have used his rifle even if he had
not had a length of sharpened steel at his throat. A smell of shit wafted through the air, and then he also pissed in his
pants, leaking out over his combat boots.

Mike nudged him with the bayonet in his Adam’s apple. He said in Spanish, “You have a wife and children?”

“Si.”

“You want to see them again?”

“Si.”

“You know who we are?”

“The norteamericanos come to kidnap Sally Poynings.”

“Is she here?”

“She left by plane at daybreak.”

Lance spoke in English. “The bastard is lying, Mike.”

“Maybe,” Mike answered him, then said in Spanish to the guerilla, “Where is Comandante Clarinero?”

The guerilla looked at Mike with fear-distended eyes, his chin raised high by the pressure of the bayonet tip. “Directly ahead
of you, about eight hundred meters.”

“Do you have Cubans here?”

“Two. Paulo and Manuel. They left with the girl.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s your wife’s name?”

“Inez.”

“I’m going to take a chance on you,” Mike told him, removing the bayonet from his neck. “You got government troops that way.
You got Clarinero that way.”

“I go this way,” the rebel said, pointing up one valley slope, “and may God bless you, senor.”

“My regards to Inez.”

The man shucked off his rifle and ammo belt and ran up the hill so fast that even Harvey Waller half-smiled as he said to
Mike, “If I risked letting a man go like that, you’d curse me out for being a weak-brained pansy.”

Mike laughed. “No fear of you ever letting mercy lead you astray, Hey.”

As the mortar crews dug into the ground with shovels and set the baseplate, Campbell went from crew to crew, checking on their
work. He found fault with them all. The square, flat, pressed-steel baseplate of the M2 light mortar had a toothed spade under
its rear edge that, if sunk properly, took a firm bite into the ground and anchored the firing tube.

“You’re going to be ruing over our heads as we attack,” Mike yelled at one crew in Spanish. “You expect me to do that while
you fire with a loose baseplate? You have no accuracy when a mortar has a loose baseplate. You could bring your shells down
on my head. And you assholes better make sure you kill me, because any of you that scores a near miss on me is going to wish
he had been stillborn.”

The mortar crews went back to work to get their weapons set up properly. Each crew got the baseplate level and immovable in
the earth and set up the short, smooth—bore tube and its bipod with single-spike collars. They hand-cranked the elevating
gear. Mike reckoned the comandante’s main position was fourteen hundred meters away, which was well within the 1850-meter
range of the M2. One man stood by each tube, ready to muzzle-load the 60 mm high-explosive shells.

When Mike was satisfied, he nodded to Major Chavarria to give the order for his men to advance. The major himself stayed behind
to supervise the mortar crews.

As the mercs moved forward through the forest with the Salvadoran regular soldiers, Mike gave his team their instructions.
“This country’s civil war is not our business.
Our business is to find that damn girl. Clarinero knows where she is, which means we have to find Clarinero.”

The mortars opened up behind them, and the shells whistled over their heads and exploded in the forest ahead of them.

Between the explosions, Mike shouted in Spanish, “When the barrage stops, go in fast. Overrun them.”

The soldiers looked less than enthusiastic about this idea. Mike had been pushing them around since dawn, force-marching them
in the hills, and now he was pushing them into contact with the enemy—something they liked to avoid as much as possible. But
they dared not stand up to him, because they were afraid of him and the mercs. Also, they knew he was a friend of the general.
That meant he could do anything to them and get away with it. Fighting the guerrillas would be the easier way out—but they
didn’t have to look happy about it.

The mortar barrage stopped, and the officers and sergeants urged the men forward.

“Move it!” Mike roared in Spanish. In English he said to the mercs, who kept to the rear, “You hold back till we locate the
comandante.”

As the government soldiers met little resistance and saw that their mortar attack had scattered and confused the enemy, they
needed no further encouragement. Now they went in for the kill on their own account. Blackened areas with toppled trees and
uprooted soil marked the points of impact of the mortar shells. A few rebel bodies lay about, and the soldiers finished off
those who were wounded, but not many of the rebels had died in the mortar attack. The guerrillas were retreating in disorder
through the trees ahead of the soldiers. They hardly even paused to fire back at their pursuers. The government soldiers forged
on after them, firing from the hip as they went, shooting the rebels in the back and trampling on their bodies as they passed
over them.

“Comandante Miguel!”

Mike had heard the regular soldiers call him this. He and his team ran down to where a group of soldiers were spraying wounded
guerrillas with bullets. A sergeant, highly excited, pointed down at a man lying on his back. The man wore fancy handmade
leather riding boots and sported Pancho Villa mustaches.

“It’s Clarinero,” the sergeant said. “We got him!”

First Mike examined the man’s wounds. His eyes were bright and feverish, and he seemed weak already from loss of blood, which
was thick and sloppy as mud on the left side of his fatigues. A big mortar fragment seemed to have entered his chest cavity,
and he had a bullet wound in the left shoulder.

“Can you speak?” Mike asked in Spanish.

The wounded man answered in English. “Sally is gone.”

“I know,” Mike replied, switching to English also. “As you see, comandante, my men are not fighting yours. We are here only
for Sally Poynings.”

“I understand.”

“Where is she?”

The comandante’s face became contorted, and Mike guessed that this was not from the pain of his physical wounds so much as
from what he saw as his own disgrace. “The Cubans took her to Nicaragua in a plane this morning. They want money for her,
but I wouldn’t agree, so they tricked me and took her by force.”

“Where in Nicaragua?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve got to help us find her. You won’t be conscious much longer. You know you’re dying, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me anything you know to help me find Sally,” Mike said urgently.

“I don’t know anything.” Clarinero’s voice was growing weaker.

Mike helped him to some water from his canteen. “Tell
me. something. Anything. Paulo and Manuel were the Cubans’ names, isn’t that right?”

“Paulo Esteban.”

“Esteban!” Cesar Ordonez blurted out. “I know who that low bastard is.”

Clarinero smiled sadly. “Sally warned me about him. I thought I could always handle him.” His look became intense. “Maybe
he will return with the others. Yes. Listen to this. In four days, on Friday morning, five Cubans will infiltrate from Honduras
into El Salvador through the Sombra Oscura—Esteban may be with them. He is the one who will betray our revolution to Moscow.
He took Sally away.” His hand reached out and clutched Mike’s arm. “Sally—you must tell her … tell her that I loved her.”

The grasp of his fingers relaxed on Mike’s arm and the feverish light faded from Clarinero’s eyes. His mouth hung open beneath
his Pancho Villa mustaches.

Comandante Clarinero was not the first legendary man Mike had seen die. He knew they die in much the same way as any other
man.

“C
HAVARRIA
is only an errand boy for the Escandells—but you wait and see, he will outrank the rest of us,” Major Sepulveda told Mike
as they bounced along in a Salvadoran army Jeep. “Chavarria took officers’ training with me in Georgia, and we’ve both been
in Panama. You Americans gave up on him in both places. But he’s got the right connections, and the Escandells know he is
loyal to them no matter what. And that’s more important in the Salvadoran army than being ’a good soldier. Which I am! Which
is why the general sent me with you on this mission instead of Chavarria.”