The woman's head bent down as if she were crying. One of the Balboans grabbed her hair and pulled her head erect again. Jimenez thought she must have been threatened then, as she began shaking her head back and forth in obvious terror.
More words were spoken, none loud enough for Jimenez to make out clearly. He saw one of the troops smash the gringo's head back against the wall. Another made a half-ways grab at the woman's breasts, then reached down instead and patted her thigh meaningfully.
Jimenez's smile grew brilliant. Hands forming fists, he strode forward.
From clouds overhead and to the south the first hints of another warm sprinkling began to descend.
Hennessey stopped typing. He looked up at Jimenez and asked, 'What happened next, Xavier?'
'I heard the corporal say, 'Kick the fucking spy again.' Then some private did, kneeing this navy type's groin. That navy officer-he was a tough man… very… well, he hardly made a sound. But his wife was crying, streams of tears running down her face, begging for her husband. She looked terrified. Who could blame her? Not I.'
'Raul,' Hennessey turned his head to address Parilla. 'You were the commander of the old Guardia. They weren't like that before. What changed? What do you think caused them to act like that? With a woman, I mean?'
'Pina,' answered the short, brown and somewhat rotund Parilla in a single word. 'Our drunken idiot 'Supreme Leader.''
'Him? How?' asked Hennessey, raising a single eyebrow. In principle, he agreed, of course, but wanted Parilla's thoughts.
'Oh… I doubt I have to explain this to you, Patricio.' When the eyebrow remained raised anyway, he continued, 'Look, we had a little tiny force in Balboa before I was ousted. Maybe two thousand men. Maybe a few more. But they were select. Good men. Pina brought in… oh, Christ, Patricio, some of the people he brought into the force weren't much more than criminals themselves.'
To Parilla's side, Jimenez just nodded in silent agreement.
'And then he had to get rid of, get out of the way anyway, a lot of good people. It was only my nagging that kept our friend here in service. Somebody, after all, had to set an example.' Parilla leaned over and ruffled Jimenez's hair just as if the younger were still the old man's aide de camp.
Hennessey laughed, more at the gesture than at the words. He turned back to Jimenez. 'What happened then, Xavier?'
Jimenez sighed and shook his head with a mixture of regret and disgust. 'I saw the corporal lift the woman's head by her hair. I heard him say…'
II.
'What? You afraid he won't be able to perform in bed, bitch? How about I have a half dozen of my men give you the last decent fuck of your life?' The wife's mouth just formed a silent 'O' of pure terror. She began to plead for herself then, as well as her battered husband.
The corporal released her hair and turned back to the husband. He asked, 'You want that, boy? Shall we gang-bang your wife? No? Then tell me what the fuck you were doing here. Just out for a stroll, you say. No doubt.'
A private put his hand under the husband's chin and pushed up hard. The naval officer's head slammed into the wall behind. It struck the exposed brick wall hard enough to split the thin skin over his skull.
Even now Jimenez smiled at the memory, the same smile he had been using since boyhood whenever something really annoyed him.
He went on, 'So the private's still holding this poor guy's chin and was cocking his arm to hit him in the face when I reached them and grabbed his arm.'
'He said, and I remember this clearly, 'What the fuck…?' Then the private looked at me over his shoulder. Oh, Patricio, it was good to see. His eyes got big-like saucers-when he realized who I was.'
'I smiled at him. Patricio, I confess… I was not always as even tempered as I am now. The private knew what that smile meant. He looked… well… a lot more frightened than that poor woman did.'
The corporal's eyes bugged out. He stuttered out, 'Ca-Ca-Captain Jimenez. Sir. They're spies. We were…'
Jimenez cut off the explanations and excuses. 'I know what the hell you idiots were doing. I can see what you were doing. But I don't think you know what you were doing. Let the gringos go… with apologies. And pray it's enough.'
The corporal insisted they were spies. That's when Jimenez lost his temper. He grabbed the corporal's uniform shirt and slammed him against the wall, following up with two quick punches to the solar plexus.
'That navy officer was spying, you know? Probably without authorization but still spying,' commented Hennessey. 'Then again, maybe he had authorization, too. I had awfully detailed and up-todate information when my company rolled out.'
Jimenez sighed. 'Yes, I know. I knew that even then. But I still didn't want a war we could not even hope to drag out very long, let alone win.'
Hennessey was a bit odd about impending combat. He'd fret nervously, go to see everything, to check on everything, to look into the face of every one of his soldiers. And then, as it got closer, he'd simply begin to calm down. It was almost as if he was detaching a part of himself. Perhaps it was the part that was human. Certainly it was the part that seemed most human. In any case, when the time came, with something like an internal mental click, he would drop off fear, drop off trivial personal concerns, and become something very like a machine.
'Up there! The windows!'
A few vehicles ahead of Hennessey, a young soldier twisted his body to realign the heavy machine gun mounted atop the armored personnel carrier. 'Target!' The flash from the muzzle lit the buildings to either side as fifty-caliber bullets, long bursts in steady streams, streaked out to punch through the thin walls of a third story room. The pounding of the heavy machine gun was a palpable blow over the entire upper half of the gunner's body.
The gunner, ears covered by his track commander's helmet and hearing under assault by the fifty's steady booms, could not tell that the shrieks coming from inside did not somehow sound military. Even Pina hadn't thought to conscript five-year-old girls.
From the other side of the street a single, mostly hidden, muzzle flash sparked. A bullet forced its way between the aramid fibers of the gunner's armored vest. He gasped and slumped down to the footstand. Blood began to drip, then gush. It flowed across the raised dots of the metal floor plates, gathering in the lower flat parts.
Confusion on his face, the dying soldier called out once, 'Mama?' Then his body went limp, dead.
The soldier's platoon sergeant roughly pulled the body off of the stand. With one hand he dumped it to the floor even as the other hand scrambled for purchase on the inside of the hatch well. The platoon sergeant pulled himself up into the hatch, drew his remaining arm through, then grasped both spade handles of the fifty cal.
Again, there was the faintest flash from the side of the street opposite where the gun pointed. The platoon sergeant felt something strike his armored vest, then ripple through his left shoulder. He felt more than heard the crunch of splintering bone.
Not too bad. Doesn't even hurt much. He reported to his company commander.
'Sergeant Piroute, you don't sound right,' Hennessey said coldly and calmly into the radio. He ignored normal radio procedure; Balboa had no real electronic warfare capability.
'I'm fine, sir. Just fine. A little hit. Not bad.'
'Can you carry on?' Hennessey asked, still ice cold.
'Yes, sir. No sweat, sir,' the platoon sergeant answered as his well drilled right arm jerked the fifty's charging handle, twice; ka-chink, ka- chink. Steadily, the gun turned towards the dimly perceived flash. The sergeant's thumbs pressed down on the gun's smooth butterfly trigger. Again, long, steady bursts lit the night. Fountains of powdered cement, wood and stucco emerged from a wall where the fifty's bullets struck. On the other side of the wall a sniper-young and brave but not too well trained-suddenly found himself minus the legs that had
