impossible.
“You believe that?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what?”
“The CIA?”
“The Americans?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why do you think that?”
“The weaponry was American made. They have history in those hills.”
“It’s good that you read your history, Orozco, but that was half a century ago. I know. I fought in the Bandit War when I was a young man.”
“Who else could it be?”
“Why don’t you go and find out?”
“That is why I came, General.”
Frias’s adjutant, Juan-Carlos, appeared, properly outfitted in a white steward’s jacket. He carried a tray in his hand. On it was a bowl with half a large avocado, seasoned with lemon to keep it fresh, lightly salted the way Frias liked it, then filled with an ice cream scoop of shredded crab, shrimp and rock lobster meat mixed with finely chopped celery, crumbled bacon and mayonnaise.
Juan-Carlos set the tray down on the side table and then disappeared back into the main house. Frias crushed out the cigarette and picked up the bowl. He took a spoonful and slid it into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed.
“Exquisite,” said General Frias. “Would you like Juan-Carlos to prepare some for you?”
“No, thank you, sir.”
“Then tell me what you want before my digestion is completely ruined, Orozco.”
“I need six MiL 8s and a dozen MRAPs.” MiL 8s were transport helicopters and an MRAP was a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle. The Black Wasps used a Polish-made AMZ Dzik.
“The entire air force only has ten MiL 8s, and you want six of them?”
“Yes, sir. I need transport for one hundred and eighty men. They’ll rendezvous with the MRAPs in Aserradero and head into the jungle from there.”
“Have your troops take trucks to Aserradero.”
“The MiLs can have them there in an hour and a half. Trucks would take at least two days. We need a presence on the ground right now.”
It made sense. Frias took another spoonful of the avocado mixture and ate it, thinking. After a few moments he nodded. Orozco was smart, he was young and he was tough. And not someone you wanted in Havana when
“Good thinking, Colonel Orozco. Do it, and may you have great success.”
“Thank you, sir.” Orozco clicked his heels, saluted, then turned on his heels and left the pool enclosure. Frias went back to his avocado. He finished his snack, then took a cell phone out of the pocket of his robe and punched in a number. It only rang once before it was answered.
“Done,” said Frias. He hung up the phone and lit another cigarette. With a little bit of luck, Orozco and his men would be corpses rotting in the jungle by St. Lazarus Day.
22
They moved along the faint jungle trail, Enrique in the lead followed by Domingo, then Eddie and Holliday in the rear. A point man throughout his military career, Holliday did not enjoy the position; militarily being the tail-end Charlie was vulnerable, poorly positioned to respond and able only to react to events farther up the line than to initiate them.
It was usually the position given to the least valuable member of a team and the most expendable. He was also the most poorly armed; Enrique had his shotgun, Domingo had his rifle and even Eddie had Domingo’s old machete. All Holliday had was Enrique’s bowie knife and a wooden staff sharpened at one end to fend off the wild boars Enrique said lived in these overgrown woods.
“Where exactly are we going?” Holliday said quietly.
Eddie turned his head slightly. “Enrique’s village. Las Vegas Grandes. He says it is not far now, perhaps another mile.”
“I don’t see any meadows around here—it’s all jungle.” Ever since they’d left the winding river more than three hours ago, the terrain had become steeper and more difficult. The trail they were following looked more like an animal track than anything made by humans, and even at that it was no more than three feet wide, the jungle foliage crowding in claustrophobically. Above them a flock of Cuban solitaires scolded them with their earsplitting cries, then took nervous flight, wings beating the air loudly as they rose into the sky.
All of Holliday’s senses were on high alert; it was too much like Vietnam where the jungles were killing grounds sown with trip wires, homemade land mines made of folded-over tin mess plates and even tiger traps filled with sharpened punji sticks covered in human excrement.
Villages full of old men and women could be booby-trapped, tunnel-riddled arsenals that could suddenly be full of suicidal enemies appearing out of nowhere and a ten-year-old kid behind the sights of an old Chinese-made RPD machine gun could wipe out a patrol in seconds.
On top of that, there was also a chance of being blown to atoms by an overenthusiastic artillery officer with an M107 twenty miles away or a kid high on some blotter acid sent to him in the mail by a stateside friend chucking a grenade into your foxhole because he thought you were a bloodsucking zombie demon trying to eat his brains. And none of all that prepared you for the bugs, the snakes, the foot rot and the mud. Vietnam hadn’t been a war; it had been the mother of all nightmares with the jungle as its dark, gloating heart.
Holliday squinted up the trail. Enrique was out of sight. The line was strung out; too much space between each man. He stopped. For three hours a dissonant choir of birds had screeched, whistled, hooted and rattled in the trees around and above them. Now it was silent.
“Shit.”
“What is it?” Eddie turned.
“No birds singing.”
Instantly, Domingo turned.
They rose like the floor of the jungle come to life, four Swamp Things with dangling shreds of foliage and rust-colored and mottled strips sewn and woven into nylon netting that covered them from head to toe, each armed with an MP5 submachine gun or something like it. Holliday’s twitching memories of his teenage horrors in Vietnam and Eddie’s shrill whistle had given the three men on the trail a tenth of a second advantage, but it wasn’t much.
Acting on nothing but old instincts and adrenaline, Holliday’s thought process was: “ghillie suit—Interceptor body armor—neck-groin.” He thrust the sharpened staff in low and just to the left of the crotch. The lower flap of the Interceptor vest covered the genitals well enough, but it didn’t do much for the femoral arteries running up the inner thighs on both sides.
The staff cut through the camouflage ghillie suit, glanced off the Kevlar groin flap and went a good three inches into the Swamp Thing’s leg. The creature gave a high-pitched screech, dropped his weapon, grabbed his leg and toppled over.
Ahead of Holliday a high, sweeping slash from Eddie’s machete had decapitated one man and a whirling
