The Viper Squad (26 page)

“I told the general I didn’t want Chavarria,” Mike put in.

“I don’t blame you. But this won’t be a help to me. The Escandells don’t trust me. I speak my mind and I don’t give a damn
who likes it or who doesn’t.” He laughed. “Last time I offended someone, I spent six months as military attache at our Buenos
Aires embassy.”

The major spoke no English, and Mike had to concentrate in order to follow his rapid, colloquial Spanish. After Clarinero’s
death, Mike and the team had been greeted as
heroes in San Salvador by General Victor Escandell—there had been another big party for them at his girl friend’s house.
But Mike felt depressed. He was further than ever from completing his mission. It was one thing to go after Sally Poynings
in El Salvador, but it was quite another to go into Nicaragua after her. The contras were fighting the Sandinista communists
on Nicaragua’s north and south borders, but inside the country it would be his team of mercs against everyone else. Perhaps
they would strike it lucky with these Cubans coining in through the Sombra Oscura, which Mike had learned was a mountain pass.
The general had put Major Sepulveda on this assignment, with Mike and the team along as observers, and had explained to the
major Mike’s demand that the infiltrators be taken alive. The major did not strike Mike as the type who took many live prisoners.

Campbell needed the Cubans taken alive if he was going to gather information on Sally’s whereabouts from them. The rest of
the team felt no better about things than Mike did, except for Cesar Ordonez, who was finally getting to go after some Cuban
communists!

“These are the bastards I’ve been waiting to come up against,” Cesar said fiercely. “These are the ones who gave my country
to Russia, who took everything my family had. I’ll get them for it.”

The others nodded vaguely, bored by now of Cesar’s preoccupations.

“That Paulo Esteban,” Cesar went on, “he’s the one I have to kill with my own hands. He was specially picked by Castro to
stir up trouble in other places.”

The Jeep carrying Major Sepulveda and Mike Campbell was followed by two trucks. They turned off the two-lane highway and traveled
along a narrow, twisting country road into the foothills. The occasional car or truck they met had to find a place to get
off the road to let the military vehicles by, even if it meant reversing some distance
before them. There was no argument about who had the right of way on the narrow road.

They finally pulled off this road onto a series of stony lanes at the base of a high range of mountains. The Jeep’s driver
never hesitated at forks or turnoffs, seming to know the way well. They piled out of the vehicles in a sheltered hollow on
a hillside, and the soldiers pulled camouflage netting over the two trucks and the Jeep, parked close together. They cut off
leafy branches and stuck them upright in the netting. Mike admired the quiet professional—ism of these troops. In a matter
of minutes they had concealed all three vehicles so that they were almost impossible to spot from elsewhere at ground level—a
much more difficult task than concealing them from the air alone. Soldiers crawled beneath the vehicles with what Mike recognized
as car bombs.

The major showed him the three triggering devices before he handed them to the men to arm the bombs.

“You see where the mercury runs along this tube and forms a couducting link between the two electrical contacts?” the major
asked, jogging the device steadily as it would be if it were attached to a truck over a stony road. “There’s a two-minute
delay after the contact is made, to give all the vehicles a chance to trigger their mechanisms if the guerrillas hot-wire
them and drive away. We don’t want the first explosion to act as a warning.”

“Those bombs don’t seem hard to disarm,” Mike observed.

“You’re right. We have to keep them that way, since we usually have to disarm them ourselves. But you’ll see, we’ll string
tripwires around the Jeep and trucks and attach the wires to antipersonnel fragmentation mines. When the guerrillas discover
the mines and disarm them, they never look any further.” The major laughed. “Joke is, they often don’t even see the tripwires
left for them to notice and they blow themselves up with the mines.”

“Don’t you lose a lot of trucks?” Mike asked.

“Yes, but there’s nothing I can do about it,” the major said. “If I leave a few men to guard them, they may be slaughtered
by thirty or forty guerrillas and the trucks taken anyway. No, I may lose a lot of vehicles, but I’ve had damn few successfully
stolen from me. I’ll kill those rebels any way I can, with trucks or with guns.”

“What if some innocent campesino is just curious and decides to take a look?”

Major Sepulveda grinned crookedly. “There’s no such thing as an innocent campesino.”

Having spent the night in the freezing mountain air with nothing but a bellyful of cold C rations and a worn military blanket,
Mike and his men had ever-increasing respect for Sepulveda and his soldiers. They heard no bitching at any time, and the two
sergeants had the twenty-two men in place at the Sombra Oscura before dawn broke.

Mike watched the steep-sided mountain pass in the faint gray light of early day and shivered. Whatever he had expected in
Central America, he had not foreseen he would suffer from cold!

The major crouched beside Mike and said, “You see now why they like to come through this pass? They can see clear through
it to the other side, and so can’t be ambushed inside it. Once they get through the pass and beyond the point where we are
now, they can spread out anywhere in the trees and we could never catch them. In order to arrive here at daybreak, when they
come through, we have to spend the entire night on the mountainside. It would be worth it if we knew for sure that someone
or something important was coming through, but they might not use this pass again for another two weeks. They have a choice
of twenty others almost as good. So it’s only when we have inside information that we stake out particular passes. Half the
time nothing happens even then.”

“My men and I have enough food and water to spend
another three days up here,” Mike said, “now that you’ve shown us the Sombra Oscura.”

“Maybe you won’t have to wait longer than today,” the major said. “When Cubans say they will come, they always do.”

The sky by now was a light gold color, and the pass, deep within its high walls, was in a chill gray shadow. The place got
its name, the major said, because the sun never shone in it.

In spite of the shadows and the sparse light of daybreak, they immediately saw the five figures when they appeared at the
other end of the pass. The five stood and watched for a moment and then they began to come forward.

“OK, Cesar,” Mike said. “Do your stuff. Be careful, and good luck.”

“Five of these red traitors for the meat grinder,” Cesar growled and winked at Mike. He stood and walked out to meet the oncoming
men.

They stopped when they saw him.

Cesar waved.

One of the five continued to walk forward. He stopped warily within shouting distance of Cesar.

“Comandante Clarinero sent me to meet you,” Cesar bellowed down the pass, and his voice echoed off its high walls.

“Radio Venceremos says the comandante is dead,” the infiltrator shouted back.

“He is. I was with him when he died. I have important messages for you. Is Paulo Esteban with you?”

“No.”

“Too bad,” Cesar cried. “One of you will have to go back with this information to Paulo. Do you know where to find him?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then come. It’s not good to stay here in the open.”

The infiltrator still had his doubts. “You are Cuban?”

“From Gibara.”

“I’m from Baracoa,” the infiltrator said.

“That’s just down the coast,” Cesar shouted. “Perhaps we share some friends!”

The prospect of hometown gossip overcame the infiltrator’s last lingering caution, and he waved to the others to follow him.
He and Cesar were still shaking hands and laughing when the others joined them.

The five Cuban infiltrators no longer clutched their Kalashnikovs watchfully. One admired Cesar’s M16 so much that Cesar exchanged
weapons with him. They were impressed by the way Cesar sauntered along as if he owned the place. They were highly pleased
at their good fortune in meeting another Cuban. None of the five particularly cared for Salvadorans anyway.

When the government soldiers sprang out at them, Cesar managed to push three of the Cubans off balance. The soldiers were
fast enough to grab all five before they could use their rifles.

“Nice work,” Mike complimented the major.

“With your assistance,” the officer insisted modestly.

Some of the military blankets they had slept in were now draped across boughs and saplings to form a cloth wall about seven
feet high and fifteen long. Four of the Cubans sat on the ground on one side of it, their thumbs tied together behind their
backs. From the other side of the blanket wall, the fifth Cuban screamed rendingly, howled, sobbed, talked, whimpered, then
screamed horribly again.

Most of the government soldiers sat about indifferently, smoking and warming themselves in the early morning sunshine, not
bothering to watch what was happening and not bothering either to move away so they wouldn’t have to see it.

Harvey Waller looked on with a smile on his face, not missing a thing.

Cesar Ordonez went for a walk by himself.

Lance Hardwick looked and then ran to Mike, gray—faced. “Jesus, Mike, you gotta stop them. They’re skinning the poor bastard
alive with boiling water and razor blades. He’s trying to tell them everything he knows and he can’t stop them.”

“Go take a walk, kid,” Mike told him in Spanish with a steely look on his face.

Lance began to argue, but Andre Verdoux, who realized that Mike was taking this attitude and speaking in Spanish for the benefit
of the four Cubans, led Lance away half-forcibly.

Mike pointed at the Cuban who had spoken first with Cesar. “You said you knew where Paulo Esteban was.”

“So you are the gringos after Senorita Sally,” the man said scornfully. “She does not want to go back with you, and you will
never catch her.”

“You’re next behind that blanket after they finish with your friend.”

The man looked as if he had just swallowed something that was now doing unpleasant things inside his stomach. “If I tell you
what I know, they would still torture me.”

Mike shook his head. “Before I came here, I thought I might have to offer a reward.” He pulled a manila envelope from a pocket
of his fatigues and held the papers it contained before the face of the Cuban—a one-way airline ticket from San Salvador to
Mexico City and a Costa Rican passport, both in the name of Federico Gomez.

A burst of squeals, almost like those of a pig, rose form the other side of the blanket; then a hoarse voice pleading for
mercy, offering anything,
anything;
then the words dissolved into screams and howls.

“That doesn’t look much like me,” the Cuban said of the passport photo.

“You’ve been ill since it was taken. Look, we’ll put you on board that plane and wait till it takes off. You can see here
that the general has guaranteed your safe conduct.
Once you’re in Mexico City, just identify yourself as a Cuban and your embassy will fetch you.”

The Cuban was hanging in tough, in spite of the sounds of brutality on the other side of the blanket. “I’ll tell you what
you want to know, but only if you stop the torture and free the others along with me.”

Mike shook his head sadly. “I tried to stop this torture before it started, but I found that instructions had been issued
without my knowledge. The most I am allowed is to make this deal with one of you.”

“You must free my comrades!” the man insisted. “You’re not in a position to make conditions—”

Mike was interrupted by hideous yells and then more screams.

“I’ll
tell you what you want to know,” one of the other Cubans said, looking terrified. “Only he and I know where Esteban is. Give
me
the ticket!”

“Senorita Sally is with Esteban in a training camp for Salvadoran guerrillas about fifteen kilometers south of the Honduran
border,” the Cuban that Mike had originally approached blurted out, making sure he was the one to be credited with the information.
“The place does not have a name. The camp is a clearing in a mountain valley. I can show it to you on a map.”

There was silence now from behind the wall of blankets. A soldier came out to where the four Cubans sat on the ground. He
was stripped to the waist and had smears of blood on his arms. Grabbing one of the Cubans by the hair, he hauled him to his
feet and dragged him stumbling to the other side of the blankets.

Mike untied the thumbs of his Cuban collaborator, which made one of the sergeants fetch Major Sepulveda. By the time the Cuban
had marked Mike’s map and given him directions, the man newly taken behind the blankets had started screaming in agony.

“We’ve found what we need to know,” Mike told the major. “Stop the torture.”

“Remember when the general told you that you were coming here only as an observer?” the major asked. “This is what he meant
by that. We have our own way of doing things down here, so don’t interfere.” He called over to one of his soldiers, “Drive
Senor Campbell and his men, along with this Cuban, to Ilopango airport. The Cuban has a safe conduct out of the country.”
He spoke coldly and quickly, and looked in Mike’s eyes impassively as a bloodcurdling howl rose from behind the blanket. Shaking
Mike’s hand, he said, “I hope you find the girl. If I can help, just let me know.”

Mike sent Harvey to gather the team and walked down the path with the soldier and the Cuban.

“Mike,” the major called after him with a smile on his face, “don’t forget to disarm the booby traps on your truck.”

The shouts and screams of the Cuban being tortured followed them down the mountain path till they turned into a valley and
were out of earshot.