45

Ka-Boom!

As the evening troop train left Cuernavaca, the women and children camped on top of the stock car sought relief from the late afternoon sun. They huddled under scraps of canvas, burlap feed sacks, articles of clothing, and palm fronds. A lucky few had umbrellas. They sat on their sleeping mats, but still they felt the heat of the corrugated steel roof under them.

By sunset the steel felt hot enough to toast tortillas, but Angel was grateful for a clear sky. Rain would have made blowing up the train more difficult, but blow it up she would.

The train made its usual slow progress across the valley and into the foothills. A full moon rose as darkness fell. Its orbit brought it as close to earth tonight as it ever came. It looked unnaturally large, as if it had defied the laws of the universe and left its usual orbit. It was so bright that its light cast shadows. Angel could see the pinks, purples, reds, and oranges of the bouganvillea flowers along the railbed.

The devout ones on the roof saw the moonlight as a sign that God was with them on this mission. Angel knew better. The Devil might approve, but she did not expect God to condone what she was about to do. She would have much to confess, if she ever met up with a priest again.

Angel had wrapped three eight-inch-long sticks of dynamite in oilcloth before folding a shawl around them to make them look like a swaddled infant. She wore her blouse loose to hide the thirty-two-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver stuck into the back of her belt. She put the sticks of dynamite under her belt next to the pistol. Over her shoulder she slung a pouch containing a pair of homemade grenades. She draped another shawl around her to cover everything.

She crossed herself and grinned at Antonio. “If I miscalculate…”

“Ka-boom!” Antonio had learned the word when he worked for the American Mining Company.

The Americans laughed when they said “Ka-boom,” but then, they weren’t the ones setting the sticks and lighting the fuses down in the tunnels. Antonio had stolen this dynamite from that same mine, so the laugh, he said, was on the gringos.

Angel took a liking to the word “ka-boom” and it became a joke between them when they made bombs or deployed them. Now it didn’t seem funny. If Angel’s arsenal detonated too soon it would kill everyone on top of the stock car.

Behind the engine and wood tender came the first-class passenger car with the officers. Behind that were three freight cars filled with conscripts who had set up their own camp inside. The mail car rattled along between the last freight car and the stock car that held José and the other prisoners. This train had no caboose.

Before leaving the station Angel had sold tamales to the two soldiers assigned to guard the mail car. She had passed the time of day with them as they sat smoking in the open doorway. Behind them she could see the weapons and ammunition stored with the sacks of mail.

Those same two men were now sitting on top of the car. More soldiers should have been keeping watch up there, but the train was climbing up into the mountains now. No one wanted to be picked off by rebel snipers hiding in the heights. Under orders, guards would climb up top, then sneak back down through the trapdoors in the roofs as soon as their commanding officer settled into his first-class seat.

The men on top of the mail car were there in hopes of seeing the tamale seller named Angelina again. Angel guessed they were deciding which of them would be the first to invite Angelina into the mail car so he could enjoy her. She would have bet that they were also discussing how much they should pay her, and whether they need pay her at all.

Antonio kissed her. “Be careful, mi Angelita.”

Angel kissed him back. “De la muerte y de la suerte, no hay quien seescape. There’s no escaping death and fate.”

Angel put a box of matches and a couple cigars in the pocket her friend Berta had sewed into her skirt. The folk of Berta’s village had also agreed to let Angel’s people pasture their horses and mules there. They would retrieve them when they finished this job.

Angel started for the front end of the car, stepping around the women and children. She could have tucked up her skirt, taken a running start, and leaped across to the mail car, but that would’ve alerted the guards that they might be getting more than they were preparing to bargain for.

She climbed down the rungs on the end of the stock car. Grasping the brakeman’s handholds, she stepped across the gap with the tracks roaring past in a blur under her feet. Once on top of the mail car, she shrugged her shawl off the shoulder without the pouch of grenades and cocked a hip at a come-hither angle.

In the distance she saw the bulge of rock projecting like a parrot’s head and beak. Beyond it was a railroad trestle spanning one of the many deep ravines. If Angel did not time everything perfectly they all would die, and the next charge she led would be through the gates of hell.

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Her vision narrowed like a camera’s aperture, but what she saw had a preternatural clarity. This was how she felt every time she raised her unit’s flag and galloped into a battle.

As the two soldiers approached, Angel arched her back as though to relieve an ache. She had seen the women do it often to show off the breasts with which God had blessed and cursed them. In the process she put a hand on the rubber grip of her pistol, just for reassurance.

She would not use the revolver unless she had to. A gunshot wasn’t like other sounds. The troops would hear it over the rumble, clatter, and creak of the train. They would come swarming up here.

Angel bantered with the two while she waited for the curve with a drop-off on one side. As it neared, she pulled one of the men close as though to kiss him. She pretended to lose her balance and shouldered him toward the abyss. He fell with his head and chest hanging over the edge of the roof.

When his friend bent to help him, Angel pushed him. She put her bare foot on the first man’s backside and shoved as the train went into the curve. The centrifigal force of the turn sent both men flying over the edge of the cliff.

Antonio jumped the gap to join her while Serafina, Socorro, and nine other women and older girls lined up at the near end of the stock car. Angel slid back the trapdoor in the mail car’s roof and peered in to make sure no one else occupied it. She lowered herself through it and handed Mauser rifles, full cartridge belts, and bandoleers of stripper-clips up to Antonio. He gave them to Serafina and the others, who buckled on the belts, slung the bandoleers over their shoulders, and passed the rifles to the rest of the women to hold.

Angel’s first plan had been to detach the mail car, too. Antonio pointed out that the weight of two cars moving backward downhill might cause them to overshoot the level ground they were aiming for. There would be nothing to stop them from rolling back down into the valley.

When Angel had passed as many rifles, pistols, and cartridge belts through the trapdoor as everyone could carry, Antonio grasped her hands and hauled her out. He left her there and returned to the rear of the mail car to wait for her signal to climb down and separate the two cars.

Angel ran shoeless and light-footed along the roofs until she reached the front of the first-class car. Up ahead loomed the rock shaped like a parrot’s head. It marked the site of the next part of her plan and it was speeding toward her.

Angel had thrown a lot of homemade bombs, but she had never handled dynamite. She did not know that what she was about to do was foolish to the point of suicidal. If she had known, she would have done it anyway. As her father’s old mayordomo, Plinio, always said, no one lives forever.

She did know that each of the three slow fuses allowed a different time before ignition—ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds. She had to pitch them accurately and in the proper sequence. Accuracy was not a problem for Angel, and Antonio had tied one, two, or three pieces of string around each stick to indicate the order in which to throw them.

Angel struck a match. Turning to one side and hunching her shoulders to shield it from the wind, she lit a cigar. She enjoyed the first few puffs, flexing her knees and rocking in rhythm with the train.

She signaled Antonio to get ready to uncouple the stock car. As the train slowed down on its approach to the longest of the trestle bridges, Angel sucked on the cigar until the tip glowed a deep red. Her first target was the big, mushroom-shaped smokestack. If she missed it, she would have two more chances. Landing the explosive in the stack was the key to the enterprise.

The first stick with the slowest fuse made a perfect arc. It tumbled end over end in tight revolutions, and flew straight and vertical into the stack like sugarcane down a chute. From there it should be able to blow open the boiler.

As the train clattered onto the boards of the trestle Angel lobbed the second stick between the wood tender and the first-class passenger car. It should land on the trestle and go off as the freight cars passed over it. The third one she heaved over the engine and onto the tracks ahead.

She sprinted back along the train’s roofs, pausing to light the fuses on the two grenades and drop them into the mail car. Enough ammunition remained down there to make a first-rate show, and she didn’t want a front row seat.

She leaped onto the stock car as Antonio uncoupled it. Angel knew the topography of the railbed like the workings of her rifle. The stock car rolled backward down a gentle slope and around a curve. It came to a stop on level ground while three explosions knocked rocks loose to roll down the sides of the canyon. The ground shook, rattling the badly riveted sleepers that held the rails in place. The rails bucked and the stock car vibrated.

“Ka-boom,” Angel murmured. She stood awestruck by a fireworks display like none she had ever witnessed.

Flames shot thirty feet above the outcrop between the train on the trestle and the runaway car. The blasts launched body parts, chunks of metal, splintered logs, and hot water from the boiler. Several drops of blood, blown by the wind, landed on Angel’s arm. She wiped them onto her skirt.

She refused to give in to the weakness of remorse. The men who had belonged to those detached arms and legs and heads would have done the same to her. And they would have done it after they had waited patiently in line to rape her.

Antonio jimmied the lock on the stock car door with a crowbar. The women dumped out the dirt and grass and pieces of wood they had stuffed into their satchels and tied up into their shawls to make them look full of personal possessions. They replaced the bogus goods with the small arms and pouches of ammunition. They all buckled on as many cartridge belts and bandoliers as they could carry.

Angel led the exodus off the roof. She and Antonio, José, the prisoners, and their families shouldered the federal army’s rifles and ran for cover among the trees and boulders. From there they would walk the three miles to the village where they had left their belongings and animals.