And then something roared around the curve, dust and bullets spattering. It was a pickup truck filled with guerrillas. Tucume, still on his feet, emptied the M 16, pouring bullets into the windshield. Then he threw himself down.
The vehicle skidded across the road. A grenade exploded; men screamed and the air filled with the smell of dirt and metal turning into incandescent flames. The general picked up the AK-47 but could not find a target in the cloud of smoke and dust around him. The rocks cracked and shuddered, as if they were coming apart. Finally the cloud in front of him cleared and Tucume saw a guerrilla running toward him, gun held as if it were a sword, a wild look in his eyes. Tucume fired two bursts, catching the man in the chest. The man continued toward him. Tucume fired again, then threw himself to the right as the man ran on as if propelled by some supernatural power. Finally his legs folded beneath him and he collapsed.
The truck had overturned at the side of the road, spewing its passengers into the field. Black smoke curled from the engine compartment, and little fingers of flame poked out from the side of the hood. Tucume started to shout a warning, but as the first word came out of his mouth a fireball surged from the underside and flashed across the road. The percussion was so strong that it knocked the general off his feet.
Before he could get up, he saw a guerrilla taking aim at him at the edge of the road. Tucume tried to turn around and bring his own weapon to bear, but he felt as if he were moving in heavy oil, his body held back by some strange form of gravity. Before he could pull the rifle up, the guerrilla pushed down his shoulder, pumping the weapon’s trigger.
But no bullets came out; the guerrilla’s weapon had either jammed or gone empty. Tucume fired his own weapon, missing with his first shot but not his second. The guerrilla grabbed at his stomach, then slid down to the ground.
The clatter of gunfire began to recede. Tucume, breathing heavily, got up. One of his soldiers lay on the pavement a few feet away. At first, the general thought the man was lying in wait for more trucks, but then Tucume saw the red creases across the side of his head and turned away.
“General, we have suppressed the rebels,” said one of the privates running up behind him. The words sounded almost comical to Tucume, the report so official and antiseptic, far at odds with the chaos around them.
“Jimenez is dead,” he told the private.
The man squinted. Tucume realized the young man was in a state of shock; this was his first experience in combat.
“You did well, son,” the general told him. He gripped the young man’s shoulder, but the stony expression did not change.
“More!” yelled another of Tucume’s men. “Coming down the road.”
“Back here,” shouted Tucume. “Behind the truck!”
As the others ran to take cover, Tucume realized that this new group would not be guerrillas but his own soldiers, the men who had ambushed this group or been ambushed by them on the road ahead. Rather than taking cover, he ran toward the roadway, raising his rifle in his right hand and holding out his left. Two young khaki-clad soldiers appeared, M16s at their waists.
“I am General Tucume!” he yelled as the men squared off to fire. “We have killed the enemy.”
One of the men pressed his trigger. Bullets flew to the left of the general.
“I am your commander! Put down your gun! Put down your gun!”
Men flooded around the corner. More gunshots were fired and there were screams.
“I am General Tucume and I command you to stop firing!”
The air burned again, and the smell of blood mixed with the scent of pulverized stone.
“I am General Tucume and I command you to stop firing!”
And then there was silence. Tucume stood at the edge of the road, unharmed. The soldiers began running toward him, shouting, tears streaming down their faces, apologizing.
My ancestors have protected me, Tucume thought to himself. Yes. I knew they would.
Yes.
“Your comrades are down the road,” he told the men. “Approach them carefully. We do not want any accidents.”
By the time the Jeep caught up with him, Tucume had reached the two trucks the rebels had ambushed. Three of his men had been killed by a grenade, and two peasants who’d been nearby had been caught in the gunfire.
The two trucks were supporting the sweep into a rebel village about a mile ahead and had been surprised by fleeing guerrillas. In Tucume’s opinion, this showed that the lieutenant in charge of the element was derelict, but the man had paid with his life for his lack of preparation and awareness. The soldiers had done a reasonably good job rallying. The peaks had prevented them from communicating with the units farther north, just as Tucume had been.
The BBC reporter tried to give Tucume his pistol back, but the general told him to keep it. “It’s possible you may need it yet,” Tucume said. “It will be dark soon. I’m not sure what we’ll find ahead.”
The privates who had accompanied Tucume earlier got into the SUV and led the way. The adrenaline from the fight swirled in his veins. Images from years ago floated up from his memory — he felt as he had in Ecuador, the sting of battle pushing him on.
It was too easy to become the bull, prodded in the ring to the point of madness. He had to stay within himself. Tucume glanced at the AK-47 he still held, reminding himself that he was a general now, not a lieutenant; his ancestors might indeed be protecting him, but he must still move with the caution and prudence befitting a leader.
The guerrillas were devils, arrogant devils, believing that they had the people’s interests at heart. What did they know of his people? Only what they had learned in school, from vapid professors drunk on the sham power of words. Communism — what was that but a mad European theory, another disease to poison his people?
When the election was over he would eradicate the guerrillas. Vidal’s operation against the Senderistas would be his model. He would go beyond General Vidal; when Tucume was finished, no Maoist would remain anywhere in the Andes or the surrounding land.
“That was a brave thing you did,” said Ross from the back.
“What was that?” said Tucume, still distracted.
“Leading the soldiers.”
Tucume shrugged. “Just a soldier’s reaction.”
“Not all generals would do that.”
“True generals would. In any event, I did not think about it.”
The driver hit the brakes. Tucume turned around and saw two of his men standing in the road, hands out to stop them. One of his trucks was parked in the road ahead. A knot of men were gathered at the rear.
“General!” shouted a sergeant near the truck as he got out of his Jeep. The men around him snapped to attention as a unit. Tucume recognized the man — he had served with him against Ecuador in 1995, when he had been a rail of a boy, barely sixteen. He’d proved himself under fire and now led others as thin and raw as he had been.
Major Sican, in charge of the unit, came up and greeted him. Tucume had chosen Sican, a dull but honest man, to command the mission because he was related to one of the generals in Lima; his account to the general staff would be believed without question.
The major’s eyes widened as he saw Tucume’s uniform.
“We ran into some guerrillas trying to escape,” Tucume told him. “Otherwise we would have been here sooner.”
“There’s blood, sir. Are you hurt?”
Tucume hadn’t noticed the blood caked on his pants legs. “This is our enemy’s blood. What is the situation?”
The major looked to his left. Ross had come up behind him and had his notebook out.
“Don’t worry. He’s all right,” Tucume told the major. But then he turned to Ross and told him to put the notebook away. “It may make some of my people nervous,” he added in English. “The young men especially. Many are illiterate, and they associate writing with problems.”
