The prevailing trade winds dropped most of their moisture on the Atlantic side of the Culebras, so once they were over the crest the night air was clammy and the brush around them began to take off for the stars. All of them, including the woman, were well legged up, so they made the far side with plenty of darkness to spare.
Captain Gringo called a halt a hundred yards down the slope where a charcoal clearing gave way to a wall of quinine trees and timber bamboo. He hunkered down and began to assemble the machine gun as Sor Pantera asked, “Why are we stopping here? We’re barely to the jungle and it will be daylight soon.”
He said, “I know. The bugs will chew hell out of us if we plunge in before daylight. I’ll show you later how to keep them off.”
He called to Chino and said, “You have a machete. I want you to hack out a clearly visible break in the bamboo, over to my left a hundred meters. Chop through until you reach the clear space under the shade of the main canopy. Then come back.”
Chino nodded and said, “I understand, Captain Gringo. You wish for them to waste time chasing down a path we do not intend to take, eh?”
“Sor Pantera said you were smart. Get to it. Gaston, I’ll want you to lead the main party into the trees at an angle to my right. Get a good mile in, sit tight, and for God’s sake wait for me this time.”
“I see your plan. You’ll want us moving just before sunrise, hein?”
“Yeah. I’m going to leave the tripod here. Goddamn legs keep hanging up on things and I’ll always be able to find a log to brace it over.”
“You’ll need a loader, won’t you?”
“No. Take the extra ammo belts with you. I’m just going to feed ‘em one and move out sudden.”
Sor Pantera sank to her knees at Captain Gringo’s side and gasped, “I see, now, what you mean to do!”
“Yeah, if they run true to form. They’ll move up the last few yards of slope at dawn, braced for a firefight. Most green troops fire down from ridges. When they get to the crest, unless they have a good officer in command, they’ll stand against the skyline congratulating themselves for taking the high ground and looking around at the view. The Prussians did a real job on some Frenchmen at Sedan that way.”
“But once you start shooting up at them, one man against God knows how many—”
“The survivors should be flat on their faces and trying to get flatter for a while. One man with a machine gun is more than one man. Don’t worry. I’ve done this before, Sor Pantera.”
She stared at him unwinkingly and said, “I believe you have. Gaston told us you were a soldier. I see he was right. You are a brave man, Captain Gringo.”
“I’m not trying to be a hero. A lot of things a soldier does is simple common sense, when you think about it. The job you did on that bandit back there was wilder.”
“Oh, that? I had no choice. They meant to kill us.”
“Right. The troops coming up the far slope about now aren’t out to pick flowers.”
He opened the action, dropped the belt into the bolt feed, and slammed it shut. He threw the arming lever and lowered his eye to the rear sight as he rotated the elevating knob. Sor Pantera asked, “Is it ready to shoot?” and leaned closer as if to peer along the barrel with him. He noticed the almost animal smell of her hair and wondered if she needed a bath or if the peasant clothing she’d changed to belonged to an unwashed maid. He said, “The gun’s armed. I’ve set it to sweep the skyline.”
“Gaston said you would need a loader. What does a loader do?”
“There’s usually a three-man crew on a machine gun. One man runs in fresh ammunition belts. Another feeds them into the gun and keeps the belts from twisting. The gunner’s job is obvious.”
“I understand, and I shall load for you.”
“No you won’t. In a few minutes I want all of you to clear out. This isn’t heroism, either. I’m going to pin them down, if I can, and pull back into the trees before they spot my position. I’ll have enough to worry about just getting my own carcass out of here. I don’t want to have to drag anything but the gun with me.”
“But what if you are wounded? Who will help you get away?”
“Honey, guerrillas who get wounded don’t get away, if they’re wounded enough to matter. If I’m hit and can manage, you can play Florence Nightingale a few miles deeper in the trees.”
“And if you can’t manage?”
“Why give them two for the price of one? Make that three. No one of you could carry me. If you want to play the game, you have to understand the numbers. So far we’ve killed two of them and they’ve whittled us to seven men and a girl. From here on, let’s make them work harder at it. I want you to stick with Gaston and to do as he says. He’s been at this sort of thing since before you were born. If anyone can get you out, it’ll be him.”
She nodded and said, “I will do as you say. You are muy toro, my Captain Gringo.”
She kissed him on the cheek and rose. The kiss had probably been meant in a sisterly way, but, damn, she certainly lingered in the air. He wondered if that was why they called her a panther. He’d assumed it was her catlike way of moving, but she even smelled feline. It was her own odor, he was sure. Nobody who wasn’t used to it would have put that blouse and skirt on if they were where the smell came from. He wondered if she had some glandular condition. It was a cloying sexual scent that repelled and aroused at the same time. He watched her moving down the line toward Gaston and wondered what it would be like with Sor Pantera. She wasn’t bad-looking, but bedding anything that primitive would be close to bestiality. He didn’t know how he knew, but he was sure women had smelled like that when his ancestors were hunting mammoth from some Ice Age cavern. If he lived through the next few hours he’d have to ask her what her own ancestry was. She didn’t feel right for a Spanish or mestiza woman. She belonged to some earlier race everyone had written off as extinct by now. Her features were human enough, but she was hairy as most men, and there was something not quite human in the way her heavy brows met in the middle of her forehead.
A nearby bird suddenly began to complain, and Captain Gringo looked up at the sky to see a pearl-pink cloud cross a star. He waved silently at Gaston and watched as his little band of survivors melted into the tree line. Chino trotted in from the other direction and the American waved him past, saying, “Get going, Chino. Good luck.”
“The same to you, amigo. If we don’t meet again, I said you were a real man.”
Then Chino, too, was gone, and Captain Gringo was left to greet the dawn alone, crouched behind the Maxim.
In one way, it seemed to take forever. In another, the sun bobbed up to his left with indecent haste. The skyline turned light blue and he could see the green and lion’s-mane colors of the grass on the ridge now. He was going to feel foolish if nobody came after all the dry wads of cobweb he’d been swallowing up to now.
It got brighter and some birds fluttered into his field of fire to start gleaning the slope for insects. Weren’t the troopers even interested? One of the captives must have talked by now. Maybe they thought there weren’t enough rebels left to bother hunting down.
Then, suddenly, a man in mustard uniform appeared on the skyline, followed by another and another.
Captain Gringo held his fire as he watched the patrol line up on the ridge above. There were a dozen now. One turned as if to motion following troopers up the slope behind him. It looked like a full combat patrol of at least thirty men. Two more popped up against the skyline as one who looked like an officer or NCO began to pan out across the treetops with a pair of field glasses.
Captain Gringo knew he’d be spotted any second. So he took a deep breath, let half of it out, and pulled the trigger.
The Maxim chattered its deadly woodpecker song as gouts of dust rose along the crest of the Culebra. He hosed low, cutting weeds and anklebones alike as men started dropping up there. Some, he knew, fell into the bullet stream with their legs chopped out from under them. Others simply ducked and rolled back over the slope. There was no way of telling for sure. But as he finished his traverse the ridge was clear, save for drifting dust and someone in the distance calling for his mother.
Captain Gringo rose, lifted the gun out of its tripod mount as he backed into the trees behind him. There was a puff of smoke, and a bullet slammed into the leaves above his head. He kept moving back, but fired a burst from the hip for luck before crabbing to his right. He ducked under a hanging vine, bulled through some thorns, and found himself in clearer ground between the buttress roots of main canopy trees that stood free of light-loving underbrush. He headed for the others, firing short bursts of four or five rounds from time to time. He fired into the air, not to hit anything but to make the troopers thoughtful about charging after him recklessly.
He ran west of the path he knew Gaston had taken, cut back to the tree line, and popped out as a long, ragged line of troopers came over the ridge with fixed bayonets. He braced the Maxim on his hip and shot away the last of his belt, hosing them from the flank and putting at least two more on the ground.
Then he ducked back in the trees, backtracked, and started legging it downslope with the gun over his shoulder. He didn’t run. He moved in the mile-eating silent stride of a trained infantryman. Green troops ran. Old soldiers walked. A man could run perhaps five miles or so before he began to hurt. A legged-up infantryman could cover fifty miles and still be fit to move on, taking only a little more time.
He found Gaston and Chino waiting for him where the path crossed a running stream. Gaston said, “I sent the children wading. They went downstream.”
“Where did you tell them to stop and wait?”
“I didn’t. I knew you and I would catch up sooner or later. These people are new at walking. How many did you get back there?”
“Five, maybe six. One was the patrol leader. We should have at least an hour on them, now.”
“Perhaps more. Those are not French Legionnaires chasing us. They may sit down to wait for their momma to kiss it and make it well.”
“Let’s hope so. But don’t bet your life on it. I got a look at their bayonet drill. They’re trained soldiers. They’ll follow slower now, but they’ll keep following.”
The three of them started down the stream in the sluggishly moving brown water. Chino said, “We’re going to pick up leeches wading like this.”
Gaston said, “You’ll bleed worse if a bullet hits you, mon ami. Nobody invited you to a stroll through the park to a picnic. You amateurs never seem to understand the seriousness of this profession.”
Captain Gringo said, “Ease up, Gaston, Chino’s all right. He cut the false trail I asked him to and he stayed behind with you to back me. He can bitch all he wants to. Good soldiers always bitch.”
Chino blushed with pleasure like a girl and said, “Fuck the leeches. Fuck the frogs, too.”
Gaston laughed and said, “Flattery will get you nowhere, Chino. I don’t like boys. Is that a snake over there to our right or have I been drinking?”
Chino laughed and said, “It’s only a culebra. A harmless snake despite its looks. They’re the creatures these mountains were named for. Of course, they do eat frogs.”
The American asked, “Do you know a bushmaster or fer-de-lance when you see them, Chino?”
The boy replied, “You don’t see a fer-de-lance before it strikes. The bushmaster is bigger and sluggish, like a fat rattlesnake. I know it when I see it. One bit my cousin a few years ago. He died before the priest they sent for arrived.”
Gaston repressed a shudder and said, “The bushmaster and fer-de-lance like dry ground, non?”
Chino said, “Yes. In knee-deep water one must only worry about the cottonmouth or anaconda. I think we’re too high in the hills to worry about caimen or crocodiles.”
“Sacre! What is this caimen creature?”
“It is like an alligator, only not as friendly. Don’t worry. We don’t have many caimen this far north. Just alligator in the fresh water, crocodiles in the salt marshes.”
Gaston slapped at his neck and muttered, “One or the other just bit me,” and Captain Gringo said, “Me too. Remember that Maya girl I was with in Tehauntepec? She showed me a trick the Indians use to keep the bugs off.”
“For God’s sake, let’s use it then. I’m being eaten alive.”
“Wait ’til we catch up with the others and put some distance between us and those troops. They won’t get really bad before nightfall.”
Gaston slapped again and muttered, “Merde alors! They are trying to fly away with me in broad daylight.”
Captain Gringo winked at Chino and said, “What did I tell you? Old soldiers always bitch.”
Chino blushed again. He was seventeen years old and frightened out of his wits, but the big American was treating him like a man. Chino decided he would be a man, even if it killed him. The hazing was working as they’d known it would. Between them, Gaston and Captain Gringo made quite a team. If they could keep these people alive a few more days, some of them might turn out to be real fighters.
In less than an hour they caught up with the others, resting by the side of the stream, and once again Gaston played the martinet as Captain Gringo played father figure.
The tough little Frenchman bawled the tired rebels out for acting like a bunch of weak sisters, and when one man protested he’d cut his foot in the stream Gaston snapped, “I spit on your foot and I spit in your mother’s milk! You want to rest just because you’re bleeding a little? Eh bien, wait here for the soldiers and you can bleed all over the place!”
Sor Pantera protested, “The boy is covering up for me, Gaston. It was I who asked them to stop and wait for you.”
“Sacre! We have barely started and already maidens are fainting among us! I told you this was no business for a woman, Sor Pantera! We have at least one hundred and fifty kilometers left to march. Had you told us you wanted to stop and have a baby—”
“That’s enough, Gaston,” said Captain Gringo. Then, as the others looked relieved, he added, “Everybody on your feet and let’s move it out. We don’t have an hour’s lead and we’ll have to do some fancy foot-work to throw them off our trail before it’ll be safe to hole up for the night.”
He told one of the stronger-looking mestizos to pack the Maxim and took the point of the column, pistol in one hand and a machete in the other. The man with the Maxim followed closely, with Sor Pantera at his side and Gaston bringing up the rear.
No orders had been given, but he knew Gaston would quietly kill any weakling who fell out. The ex-Legionnaire was most practique when it came to leaving prisoners for the enemy to question.
The tall American led them downstream for another couple of miles. Then he found a stretch of red shale running up from the water and cut across it, knowing they’d leave no footsteps from the stream. He used his machete sparingly as he led them through another brush wall. The edges of the clearings were the only places really overgrown with tangles. Once in deep shade the walking was easier, but unfortunately the damp forest mold held water-filled footprints after it had been walked over. He set a pace calculated to allow a reasonably healthy adult to maintain and was pleased to hear no complaints. The early crackdown by the authorities had weeded out the unfit to survive with Darwinian effectiveness. They’d already taken the usual wastage of green fighters. He wondered who had sicced the Army on them early. It hadn’t been Sir Basil’s plan for them to be crushed before they could demonstrate the Colombian Army’s need for modern arms. The Colombian Army was doing just fine. Either one of the rival rebel factions had betrayed the Balboa Brigade, or else Sally and Greystoke had figured out how much he knew. He hoped Sally wound up with piles, but it didn’t seem possible. He’d never figured out why buggery was so popular with English and German girls.
He came across a vine he remembered and snapped off a few leaves. He handed them to Sor Pantera and said, “Pass these back and tell the others to pick as much as they can on the fly and put them away for later.”
She did as she was told before catching up with him to ask what they wanted with the pungent leaves. He said, “I don’t know what the Indians call the stuff, but if you throw it on a fire and smoke yourself all over with the fumes, it keeps mosquitos away.”
“Oh, is that why Los Indios smell so smokey when they come to trade? As you know, we are mostly middle-class Creoles used to city life. Just how do we manage to get the smoke under our clothing?”
“We don’t. When it starts to get dark again we’ll have to build a smudge fire and take turns standing over it, naked.”
“Surely you jest! Do you really expect me to undress in front of seven grown men?”
“It’ll be fairly dark. Can’t build a fire until we’re sure nobody can spot the smoke above the trees.”
“But, if I stand nude, above the glowing coals … Forgive me. I don’t think I can do it.”
“There’s nothing to forgive, Sor Pantera. If you want to be eaten alive by mosquitos, that’s your business. While we’re on the subject, a woman alone among so many men may tend to worry more than she needs to. You’re going to be forced into more intimacy than your upbringing may have prepared you for. Just remember there’s safety in numbers. A woman alone with seven men is safer than if there were only one or two. Nobody will make the first move, because of the others.”
“I am not afraid of being mistreated. But I’m starting to feel very naked already. If I have to answer a call to nature—”
“You will, before the day is over. There’s no way around it. You just squat behind a tree and catch up as best you can. If Gaston makes sure of what you’re doing, think of him as a brother. He won’t cut you down for answering the calls to nature. Only if you can’t keep up.”
“My God! That’s hardly a way for a gentleman to talk to a lady!”
“I know, but we’re not at a fancy-dress ball. If we get out of this alive I’ll ask you to dance with me. Meanwhile, I’ve got to treat you all the same, as soldiers.”
She saw one of the pungent leaves, plucked it, and tucked it in her bodice as she sighed, “I don’t feel like a soldier. I feel like a frightened child.”
“Welcome to the club. Any soldier who’s not frightened is on his way to being dead.”
“But we’re not really soldiers. We’re a ragtag band of fugitives and there are so few of us!”
“I make it a corporal’s squad of infantry. It’s not the brass buttons and waving guidons, or even a person’s sex, that separate the soldier from the civilian. A soldier is a person who fights other soldiers, and we’re not being trailed by stray kittens.”
He bulled through some thorny brush and she fell back in file. He was forced to use his machete, but tried not to leave any more fresh-cut wood than he could manage.
He expected more shaded forest beyond the thorns. Instead, he came out on a swampy expanse of saw grass with a rusty abandoned steam dredge bogged down in the middle. As the others joined him, he said,
“We’re getting into the low country. This must be about as far as the French engineers got.”
Sor Pantera asked, “Is that the Panama Canal?” and he said, ‘Hardly. It looks like a feeder ditch. You have to keep the water level in a canal. They must have dredged dozens of feeders like this to divert streams from the hills. This one’s already clogged with weeds and silting up.”
The man packing the Maxim asked, “How do we get across?” and the American said, “We can’t. That saw grass would cut our legs to ribbons if we tried to wade, and there’s not enough clear water to build a raft. We’ll have to try to work our way around. We’re east of the railroad. So we’ll keep bearing east to higher ground and hope for a dam or bridge closer to the watershed.”
He led out, following the marshy shore of the wide feeder canal. They’d gone away when the woman said, “We’re leaving footprints.”
He said, “I know. Can’t be helped.”
“Won’t the soldiers see them?”
“Probably. That can’t be helped, either. If we duck back under the trees we won’t be able to follow this ditch, and we’ll leave a trail in there, anyway. Even if we could walk like fairies, any smart tracker will know where we’re headed. There’s no other way to go!”
Knowing it was the only hope, Captain Gringo picked up the cadence and led them at a grueling pace across the marshy ground. They slipped in the slime and tripped over roots. They cursed and sweat and were bitten repeatedly by little black flying things from the reeds. But they kept going, and in another two hours they found the ground drier underfoot as the land rose a bit. The deeper canal narrowed, albeit was too wide to cross. Then Captain Gringo spotted a long, low mass ahead and called a halt, saying, “Things are looking up. There’s a dam. We can cross the spillway to the far side.”
He led them slowly forward, as he studied what the Suez Society had wrought. The dam was a primitive temporary structure of earth piled behind driven piles and cross timbers with a long sheet of water pouring over the lip of the central spillway. They’d obviously meant to finish it with concrete, and why it was still standing was a mystery. Wood didn’t last long in this hot, humid climate. He climbed the dam wing gingerly and stared out across the acres of impounded scummy water upstream. The dam had an eight-foot head, and the rotten timbers held a fair-sized lake in temporary captivity. He stepped out on the spillway and stamped experimentally. Gaston came up beside him and said, “If we pried some timbers loose and let the damned thing burst, we wouldn’t have to worry about it holding.”
Captain Gringo nodded, but said, “I thought of that. It might wash out completely and we’d have nothing left to cross. Let’s cross one at a time and hope for the best. You get the others over and I’ll cover from here with the machine gun.”
“I thank you for the opportunity,” said Gaston dryly. Then he shrugged and walked across in the ankle-deep water over the spillway. He made it safely across and called out, “What are you people waiting for, an engraved invitation?”
The others ran across single file as the tall American waited with the Maxim braced against his hip. He saw the last man was over. So taking a last look down the path they’d come by, he hefted the heavy gun to his shoulder and started across. He was heavier than the others, even without the gun. The water-logged timbers quivered alarmingly under his feet, but held. He rejoined his comrades on the far shore and Gaston said, “So much for dramatics. Shall we be on our way?”
Captain Gringo handed the gun to Chino and said, “Not yet. Let’s burst this dam.”
Gaston started to say something. Then he looked across at the muddy trail they’d left and nodded. They cut down some poles with machetes and Gaston got in waist deep on the uphill side to wedge his pole between a pile and a weak-looking timber. Captain Gringo was about to join him when one of the others cried out, “Soldados!” and he looked to the west across the waving saw grass to see distant mustard figures moving up the far bank they’d just traveled.
Chino asked, “Do we run or shoot, Captain Gringo?”
The big American said, “Neither. Start moving into those trees over there.” Then he jumped in beside Gaston, chest deep in the water, and jammed his own pole into the dam.
Neither could see the oncoming soldiers as they worked with their heads below the level of the spillway. But Sor Pantera called out, “They see us! They are coming muy pronto!”
Gaston grunted, “It’s no use. My compatriots built this thing stronger than it looks, curse them one and all!”
“Run for it, Gaston. Maybe you can hold them off with the Maxim.”
“Fuck the Maxim! Let’s both run for it!”
“Go ahead. I just felt something give.”
“Damn it, Dick, this is getting silly! What do you think you are, a barrel of dynamite?”
And then there was a loud sucking roar and all hell broke loose as something gave and the old dam burst with a thunderous roar!
The water level went down suddenly, and Gaston was swept off his feet by the undertow. But Captain Gringo caught the Frenchman with one hand as he clung to a timber for their lives with the other. The lake dropped away from them until they stood in shin-deep running water and Gaston grinned and said, “Sacre, you are a barrel of dynamite!”
They struggled up the slippery bank to join the others, staring in wonder down the valley. A four-foot wall of foaming green slime was racing away from where they stood, at express-train speed. It picked up fallen logs, old timbers, and Colombian soldiers as it tore away around the gentle bend. A few minutes later the sudden flood had dropped to its previous level, but not an enemy was in sight. The wide expanse was covered with green-brown slime, and any footprints anyone or anything had ever made within miles had been erased forever.
The others were more awestruck than delighted by the fantastic destruction. But Captain Gringo was grinning, and even Gaston looked less pessimistic than usual.
Sor Pantera gasped, “I can’t believe it! I think we wiped them out!”
Gaston shrugged and said, “There will be others. Don’t forget they have the railroad. They can drop patrols off ahead of us, and one of the captives will have told them where we are going.”
Sor Pantera looked pleadingly at the tall American, and Captain Gringo said, “He’s right, unfortunately. But we’ve bought ourselves at least another day. Let’s go. We have plenty of daylight ahead of us. I’d like to make another fifteen miles before sunset.”
Chino asked, “Where are we to spend the night? We’re in the low country between the coastal hills. It’s all jungle. All the same.”
Gaston cursed under his breath and asked, “Do you want to tell them, Dick, or shall I?”
Captain Gringo said, “We’re not looking for a place to sleep, Chino. We haven’t time to sleep.”
“You mean we keep going through the jungle, at night?”
“Yeah, but first we have to wreck the railroad. We’ll do that as soon as it gets dark.”