The widows war, p.18
The Widow's War, page 18
He wondered how Ryan would have acted. Maybe he would have shot half a dozen men out of hand. And maybe he would have been right. But Ryan was gone now, to whatever hell had taken him. And perhaps he was better off.
Moulins had no fear of defeat, provided it was defeat with honour. Defeat through incompetence would be intolerable. For a moment, he was greatly tempted to take comfort from his bottle of brandy in the Nissen hut. And it occurred to him, with sour rage, that La Vuelva was hardly at this moment showing her mettle as a great national leader.
By midday, Task Force Belladonna had at least the appearance of some order. The men had been herded into platoons, and Moulins had retired to one of the canvas huts to brief the officers. They already had No-Entry Jones’s two reconnaissance reports, with photographs, of the proposed landing zone. The whole area appeared deserted, and the Negro had reported no sign of coastguards or enemy patrols. Just the road leading directly north.
A lush green coastline, with a long tropical beach. Isolated. Placid. The perfect spot. But as Moulins studied the photographs, he felt a shameful sense of inadequacy. He knew that all depended on surprise: that it would only need one heavy machine-gun to slaughter the whole force even before they got off the beach. And he remembered Ryan’s words on the boat to Madeira: that the operation might be just as bloody, and end just as badly, as Dien Bien Phu — only without the glory, or the dignity.
Commandant Moulins’ last act on earth might be to preside over a small, pitiful military disaster.
When Ryan reached the road, he found that the decision as to which direction to take had been made for him. From the north, towards the town, a long swerving convoy of trucks was bearing down on him. He could see by the drivers’ faces that they were terrified. A Russian jeep with four men in it had been forced onto the side of the road, almost colliding with Ryan’s Skoda, which was still in the entrance of Colonel Macho de Rivera’s driveway.
Ryan took a calculated risk. He rolled down the window and shouted: ‘What are you running away from?’
The men in the jeep saw his uniform and the red pennant on the car. One of them saluted and yelled back, ‘Aguaje, mi Coronel! Tremblor de tierra!’ The man seemed too frightened to salute, just gesticulated back at the road behind him.
Ryan understood the second phrase, but the word ‘Aguaje’ puzzled him for a moment. It must have something to do with agua, water, and water was about the last thing Ryan had seen since leaving the swamp. The jeep had begun to career away, tucking itself perilously in between two six-wheeled trucks, when he realized.
Lord God Almighty! he thought. That was all these poor bastards needed. The shell of the barracks had been strong enough to resist both tremors, but the danger was not over yet. Even if they were several miles from the epicentre of the quake, and there were no more to come, there was still another, perhaps more devastating peril in store for them. He knew that there were two essential rules about an earthquake. You got out of your house and tried to reach an open space; but if you were near the sea or a large lake, the last thing you should do was make for the shore.
Unless the man in the jeep had been merely mouthing a panic-stricken rumour, he had been trying to tell Ryan that there was a tidal-wave coming up behind them.
Ryan backed further into the driveway and consulted one of the maps from the Skoda’s glove-compartment. The road out of Carrudas was only about one kilometre from the sea. He would have to wait until the convoy had passed, then chance his luck and follow them south, where he would try to reach the L-19 and raise someone on the plane’s short-wave radio. Failing that, he might find some fishing village on the way, and either by force or money get hold of a boat. He had found in the colonel’s wallet a wad of 100-escudo notes. Although he had no idea of the exchange rate, he guessed that a half-starved fisherman would probably not turn him down.
The convoy ahead was weaving chaotically through the rubble. Some way outside the town they passed a little white church which had collapsed into the road like a piece of smashed porcelain. Ryan guessed that Carrudas must have been an entirely military town, for he had so far seen no ordinary civilians, either among the dead or the fleeing.
After about two miles, the convoy stopped. Ryan drove slowly up behind it, halted a few yards from the last truck, and called out, ‘Who is in command here?’
A thin young man with a single tab on his shoulder stepped forward smartly. ‘I am, mi Coronel!’
‘Why do you stop?’
‘We have orders to re-group outside the town, mi Coronel.’
‘Where are you from?’ Ryan was careful not to address the young man by any rank, since he was still ignorant of the Island’s military insignia.
‘We come from Llaja de Zancha, mi Coronel. There has been much damage. Many of our comrades have been killed or injured.’
Ryan saw more men moving cautiously into the Skoda’s headlamps. They looked bewildered and scared, but Ryan also detected a general expression of relief at the sight of a senior officer. He turned to the first young man. ‘What is your name?’
‘Teniente Orlaro, mi Coronel.’
Ryan nodded. He noticed that the lieutenant carried no weapon. ‘What is the total strength of this convoy, Teniente?’
‘We have eight trucks, and two half-tracks, mi Coronel.’
‘And how many men?’
‘Thirty-seven, I think, mi Coronel.’
Ryan squared his legs and stared at the row of bewildered faces before him. ‘Teniente, what are your precise orders?’
‘To remove the vehicles, mi Coronel, as far as possible from the disaster zone, in case there are more tremors. They will then be utilized for relief-work.’
‘So why do you stop?’
The young man hesitated and his eyes dropped. ‘Forgive me, mi Coronel, but I have two brothers in the garrison left in Carrudas. I had decided to wait, and if there are no more tremors, I will return to help.’
‘You have acted from personal motives, Teniente. You have disobeyed orders.’ The boy’s face had gone pale under the headlamps as Ryan went on: ‘I am now in command. This convoy will continue south, where you will await further instructions.’ And again he noticed that the other men looked relieved at the sound of his words: it was clear that their only wish was to get as far away from Carrudas as possible. ‘Get back to your places!’ he yelled, and was just turning to open the Skoda’s door when the young lieutenant stepped up to him.
‘I omitted to inform you, mi Coronel. We have a prisoner.’
‘Prisoner?’
‘We picked him up near the barracks in Carrudas. He has a broken arm.’
‘What sort of prisoner?’
‘He says he is from Puerto Rico, mi Coronel. I have been instructed to guard him until he can be fully interrogated.’
‘Where is he?’ Ryan instinctively touched the bulge of the holster under his tunic.
The young man led him past the rear truck and pulled open the flaps on the one ahead. Ryan peered into the darkness of the truck, as the lieutenant turned on a torch. The whites of No-Entry Jones’s eyes stared back at him. His woolly hair and blue tracksuit were ashen with dust; one wrist was tied behind him, his ankles were lashed together with wire, and his boots had been removed.
Ryan turned calmly to the lieutenant. ‘Who gave orders to have him tied up, Teniente? The man is injured.’
‘He is a foreigner, mi Coronel,’ the boy said innocently. ‘And we are told that all foreigners who come here without papers are spies and enemies of the Republic.’
‘He is also black. He may be seeking refuge from White Imperialism. Have the man untied and return him his boots. I will take responsibility. You will see that the convoy is moving in thirty seconds.’
He turned and got back into the Skoda, and they began to move again, very slowly. Ryan guessed that they were hindered by the speed of the two half-tracks.
His immediate plan remained uncertain. But of one thing he was sure. If he could free No-Entry and get inside one of those half-tracks, he would at least have a sporting chance — even if it did mean eliminating a whole platoon in the process.
Commandant Moulins had ordered that the embarkation of Task-Force Belladonna would take place at 7.00 p.m. local time.
The crossing, barring accidents, should take them between twenty-six and twenty-eight hours, which would give them at least an hour’s darkness after landing. Yet the plan was still against the Frenchman’s rules of war: a major attack or invasion should always be launched in the small hours before dawn.
In the late afternoon, when he calculated that La Vuelva would be awake, he visited her in the Nissen hut. She was sitting up on the camp-bed, her hands clasped to her knees, staring in front of her. The bottle of brandy stood between her slim boots, almost empty now.
She looked up at him, the muscles round her mouth taut, her eyes hidden again behind her dark glasses. He knew from experience that she was not drunk, nor was she quite sober. ‘Is everything in order, mon Colonel?’ Her French was careful, controlled.
‘I would like to discuss certain matters with you, Madame.’
She nodded stiffly, but did not reply.
‘Since I have your complete confidence, it is only correct that I repay you with my complete honesty. Firstly, Madame, the men are not merely untrained, they are lamentable. They simply do not understand these new Russian weapons. Secondly, they do not respect their officers — and what is worse, what officers they have do not respect them. It is my opinion that the whole operation amounts to a suicide venture.’
Her head straightened. ‘Do you have any further comments, Commandant?’
‘Unfortunately, I do, Madame. I accept that Capitaine Rodriguez’s suspicions about Colonel Ryan may be mistaken. But even if the colonel is not a traitor, there is always the possibility that his reconnaissance plane was shot down over the Island and that he has been captured. What guarantee do we have, in such a case, that he will not tell all?’
She took a packet of black cheroots from her pocket and slowly lit one. ‘You have my guarantee, Commandant. Colonel Ryan is a loyal officer. He will tell nothing.’ Her voice carried the clear implication that she did not think quite the same of Moulins. ‘But we must not be pessimistic,’ she added briskly. ‘Ill luck has deprived us of the colonel and the plane. Good luck has given us a traumatic, national disaster on the Island. If we do not attack now, our best chance is lost.’
The Frenchman knew it was useless to argue. But he was a dutiful man: he saluted and began to turn, when La Vuelva called after him:
‘You see that suitcase over there?’
Moulins nodded towards the pile of expensive luggage in the corner.
She drew on her cigarette. ‘And where is your luggage, Commandant?’
‘In my room, Madame.’
‘You have not, of course, unpacked your three jars of marmalade from London?’
‘No —’ he hesitated — ‘you instructed me not to.’
‘Because they are still our most valuable asset.’ She sat forward on the bed, elbows now on her knees, and her mouth moved into a smile. ‘Does that alter your attitude?’
The Frenchman remained standing, his mouth drying up and his face growing white. ‘It is not war, Madame. It is a kind of madness. Supposing —’ his voice was feeble but angry — ‘supposing these germs are used? Do you have any idea what would happen?’
‘Yes. Many people will die. You are used to seeing men die, Commandant. That is one of the things I am paying you for.’
‘I did not understand that it would be this kind of war.’
La Vuelva leaned down and uncorked the bottle of brandy. ‘What kind of war do you want it to be, mon elegant Monsieur? You are not still dreaming of the heroics of Austerlitz or Verdun? You are not even fighting for your country this time.’ She lifted the bottle to her lips. ‘You are fighting for me, Commandant Moulins. And you will fight, if necessary, with all the means at my disposal.’
He saluted again and walked into the twilight, mindless of the platoons of men around him — still lethargically stripping and assembling their guns — and trudged the quarter of a mile to where the palms hid the PT-boats. His thoughts were mercifully dulled by the heat. He had a job to do.
The lagoon on which the boats lay was not so much a shell of blue water as a stagnant pond on which the flat-topped boats floated like basking whales. He yelled some orders, and a couple of officers slouched up to his side. One of them was Captain Rodriguez.
Moulins addressed him in his pedantic Spanish. ‘We leave in exactly thirty minutes, Capitano. Is everything in order?’
‘It is,’ Rodriguez replied, and observed the tired, parched lines round the Frenchman’s eyes.
‘Start the engines, Capitano. I want the boats lined up along the beach in fifteen minutes.’ Moulins noted, with sullen satisfaction, that all the guns, ammunition and supplies had been loaded aboard. A couple of men lit hurricane-lamps. He watched as each engine was started, and listened to the roar of diesels as the first boat began to move towards the mouth of the lagoon. Another engine chattered and failed to fire.
‘Get over there, Capitano!’ And he waited while the heavy figure of Rodriguez loped round the lagoon to the inert PT-boat. There was a pause; then a prolonged chunting of the engine, before it died; and then a scream, followed by another — a choking cry of agony and terror.
Moulins ran round the lagoon. In the half-light he saw a man writhing at the bottom of the last boat, just behind the engine hatch. The screaming kept up. It was Captain Rodriguez. At first the Frenchman thought he was trying to remove his jacket; then he saw what looked like a rubber tyre wrapped round his neck.
The tyre moved, squirmed, made to crawl down the man’s back, then a diamond-head jerked sideways into his arm. The man was howling and thrashing about like a maddened bull.
Moulins saw, with a gasp of horror, that the reticulated jaws were buried deep in Rodriguez’s stout upper arm; and that the man was bleeding from two puncture marks in his throat. The snake seemed to have got its fangs caught in the material of his tunic and was twisting its silvery-grey body around in a hideous rhythm with its victim. In the next second it slipped over the side into the dark water and was gone.
The Frenchman leapt aboard and turned the captain’s face over. It was mauve, with the eyelids twitching, while the whole body rolled and arched like some obscene gymnast. This continued for several seconds, gradually subsiding until Rodriguez lay shivering in spasms on the deck-boards. Moulins moved helplessly over him.
It took the man nearly ten minutes to die — during which Moulins learnt, to his fury, that the first-aid kits on board each boat contained no snake-bite serum. He had the body removed and hastily buried under the sand-dunes.
None of the soldiers showed any emotion. Moulins could not decide whether this was a good omen or not. Either his troops were a band of barbarians or they were so hardened to the sight of death that they feared its prospect as just another act of Providence.
Eighteen minutes later — only three minutes behind schedule — all six PT-boats were drawn up along the beach, with their flaps down in the shallow water, awaiting embarkation. Rodriguez’s rank had been assumed by Cabo Fisco, whom Moulins had promoted to temporary acting second-in-command. To the Frenchman’s eye, the young corporal seemed exceptionally keen and alert, as well as being undeniably adept in weaponry.
The embarkation was less speedy and efficient than Moulins would have liked. When it was complete, he boarded the leading boat. Cabo Fisco went in the second.
The last people to appear on the beach, besides the three radio operators and a couple of guards, were General Romolo and La Vuelva. Under the bobbing beams of the ship’s lights, Romolo kissed her hand, then boarded the first boat, climbing into the forward wheel-house to join Moulins and the helmsman, who was also chief navigator.
La Vuelva stayed on the beach: a small, frail figure in her khaki suit, hair blowing slightly in the evening breeze. She raised both arms, waited for the cheers to subside, then spoke. ‘Men, God go with you! I go with you as far as this beach. But I shall follow. And together we shall march in triumph to the liberation of our country!’
They cheered again, and went on cheering, as she walked slowly, steadily up the sand into the darkness. Then Moulins gave the order and the engines started.
Mexicana’s once-weekly flight from Mexico City to the Island — the only airline in the non-Communist world to operate such flights — was ten minutes out from Montecristo’s Simon Bolivar Airport.
The pilot had just announced that they were coming in to land when those over the port-wing observed a curious phenomenon. Far below they saw what looked like a row of clumsy fireworks, some giving off a vivid purple gas, others showers of sparks, and some that bubbled and boiled over, in long creeping tides of orange flame.
The plane’s wings shuddered with the heat-waves, and the pilot quickly gained height. Beneath, the volcanoes were now bursting in a continuous necklace of juddering bright light. The passengers craned over, fascinated, but also becoming apprehensive.
One such passenger was a Dr Lopez, a chubby smooth-cheeked young man wearing rimless bifocals which matched the photograph in his Dutch passport. He was anxious, not for his own safety, but that the eruptions should prevent their landing and so frustrate, even destroy, his well-laid plans. He disguised his worries by opening a paperback of Sartre’s philosophical essays, translated into Spanish.
The plane landed late, but without trouble. Dr Lopez collected his luggage and limped through Customs and Immigration, where the officials pretended not to notice that he had a club-foot. Outside the terminal there were no taxis, and he boarded one of the old Ley land buses that had been sold to the Island some years before.
He sat at the back and looked out at the dark drab suburbs. Usually at this hour the city was almost deserted, except for a few couples returning from the cinemas, which showed a stale diet of Soviet and East European films. But tonight news of the earthquake and the erupting volcanoes had spread a mute panic throughout the capital. Most of the cafés and bars, even restaurants, had been closed under the regime’s anti-bourgeois decrees, so there were no public places in which to meet and talk, except on street corners and in the squares — and even this, although not officially proscribed, was frowned upon by the authorities ‘in the interests of public order’.
