The widows war, p.23
The Widow's War, page 23
He was now lying in the long pampas grass, on a rocky shelf overlooking the fork with the coast road from Carrudas. The sun flashed off the sea, two miles away, with a grey glare. From time to time he sipped the tepid brackish water from his belt-canteen and scanned the horizon through a pair of powerful Russian binoculars. The road both north and south was still empty.
He had left Hausmann — who had been recommended to him by Moulins — in charge of four men down at the junction with the main road. They had with them one jeep and were armed only with AK-47s. The rest of the force, together with all the heavy guns and rockets, was deployed along the rocky ridge some thirty feet above the junction; while the other seven jeeps and two motorcycles had been left up the narrow track inland, out of sight of the road.
The position on the ridge had been well-chosen: it commanded a wide view in all three directions, while providing perfect cover.
Ryan had spread the men out in groups of four, over a distance of about fifty yards. The flank facing south towards Carrudas was commanded by Cabo Fisco — whom Ryan had again selected on the recommendation of Moulins, but with some misgivings this time. The boy seemed both too nonchalant and too excitable for Ryan’s liking, but in the heat of battle, such characteristics were preferable to caution or timidity.
He himself commanded the northern flank, where he most anticipated an attack. With him was No-Entry, in charge of the radio; one man with a recoilless rifle, another with a rocket; while Ryan was manning a 12.7 heavy machine-gun dismantled from the second half-track. Beside him lay a long belt of ammunition, coiled up like the gleaming spine of a deep-sea fish.
They had now been here for nearly three hours. The heat was beginning to rise, thick and sticky, out of the pampas grass, reflected off the bare rocks like oven plates. Several of the men had stripped off their tunics, even their shirts, and had tied handkerchiefs round their foreheads. Ryan did not object: their bedraggled, abandoned appearance seemed somehow in keeping with their mission.
As for himself, as he watched the sun climb higher and felt the sweat stinging his eyelids and soaking into the ridge of red-and-gold braid round the high collar of his Soviet-style tunic, he wished he too could tear off his uniform; but he feared that it might detract from his authority — or at least the appearance of authority.
Just after 10 a.m. No-Entry received a radio message from Commandant Moulins, at base-camp in the stinking blockhouse, informing them that there had still been no counterattack against the invading force or the battalion of defectors.
This worried Ryan for two contradictory reasons. He could not understand why Gallo was not using his Air Force. Unless the earthquake had disrupted or even destroyed every airfield, the dictator’s first move — now that it was light — would be to dispatch at least reconnaissance planes; then, when he had their positions plotted, he could send in his air-strikes, complete with Russian air-to-ground missiles.
Ryan — like all soldiers who had been schooled in the arts of clandestine warfare — had a natural aversion to air-power. It seemed a mean, unimaginative, scientific way of fighting a war. You sat up there in your Perspex bubble, guided by electronics, your weapons aimed by computer; and even while your victims were being shredded and roasted below, you were already far away, watching the radar, tuning in for the next invisible target.
At 10.25 a.m. they picked up another radio message, this time from Santiago y Maria. It was not even in code — just a simple call-signal to a convoy which was moving north from Carrudas towards Ryan’s group.
The reply came back so clearly that the convoy could not have been more than a few miles away. It reported that one of their heavy T-54 tanks had broken down. Santiago y Maria answered with an order to bulldoze it off the road and make full speed ahead, irrespective of breakdowns.
Ryan turned to No-Entry. ‘Stay on that wavelength.’ As he spoke, he took the mouthpiece and spoke into it in Spanish: ‘What is your exact position, and what are your orders?’ — adding the call-signal which Santiago y Maria had used while addressing the convoy.
The reply came at once, without questions. The convoy was acting under the orders of the local Commander-in-Chief, General Pallas, that all surviving heavy armour from Carrudas was to withdraw north, in the defence of Santiago y Maria.
Ryan thanked them and went off the air. He knew their position and he had no intention of allowing them to pinpoint his.
As he turned from the radio he saw the tall, black-haired figure of Cabo Fisco dodging between the rocks towards them. The young man flung himself down in the grass beside him. ‘Tanks! A whole sacred line of them! Big ones — T-54s —’ he waved his long arm towards the road below, in the direction south — ‘coming this way!’
Ryan nodded. ‘I know. I’ve just spoken to them. But you hold your fire. I want those boys on our side.’
Cabo Fisco gave him a sly white grin. ‘And if they are not willing to come on our side? What then, Coronel?’
‘Return to your position, Cabo, and await my orders.’
‘God go with you,’ the young man replied, and raised his fist in a mock Communist salute, then weaved his way back, his head down below the high grass and parapet of rocks.
A moment later, Ryan heard the tanks: that familiar slow screaming clatter, with the engines whining and roaring as the tracks scrabbled to keep a level course on the loose dusty road. He raised the binoculars and adjusted them to the distance — just under a mile.
The big T-54s were out in front, with their hatches open, a couple of crewmen standing up in each, behind a heavy mounted machine-gun. The men in the first two turrets were not wearing the usual leather helmets with ear-flaps, but instead seemed to be taking the air, avoiding the heat and fumes inside. They were not ready for fighting, and they were not expecting to fight.
Yet as Ryan watched them come on, at no more than ten miles an hour, he was puzzled. The column did not look as though it were fleeing in disarray or panic. It was either regrouping or making an orderly withdrawal. But why?
It could only be that Gallo was pursuing a devious and dangerous strategy. For whatever else the man might be, he was certainly not a coward. Like Ryan, he would enjoy the challenge of ingenuity and adventure, rather than the tactics of formal warfare. In order to lure his enemy into the centre of the Island, he was withdrawing his armour north. What he did not know was that he now risked that armour.
Ryan watched the long pall of dust rising like a yellow smokescreen along the bleached horizon. The column must have stretched back at least a mile. On and on it came, with a pounding and rumbling that rose to a slow crescendo through the still hot air, until Ryan could feel the beat of the massive engines through the vibrating rock under him, and smell the dust and exhaust-fumes, as he now turned the binoculars on to Sebastian McIntyre Hausmann and his four men below.
Through the glasses he watched the blond-bearded Hausmann get out of the jeep and begin to stroll down the middle of the road, straight into the path of the leading T-54. When the two were no more than fifty feet from each other, Hausmann raised his hand for the tank to halt. Ryan heard the pitch of the engine change.
He signalled to the man beside him, who tuned in the radio’s UHF to the column’s wavelength. A voice came on, ordering all vehicles to halt.
Hausmann had reached the first T-54 and was now talking to the two crewmen in the hatch. Then the radio came on again: ‘Capitano, I am being ordered to leave the main road and to take the shortcut via Benisalem to Santiago y Maria. The officer says he is acting on the authority of SACA.’
A voice came back, brisk, self-confident — a young voice that Ryan and No-Entry recognized, even over the muted crackle of the UHF: ‘This is Capitano Monica to all troops. The column will proceed as ordered. Disregard all instructions, except those from General Pallas and myself. And detain this officer for questioning.’
What happened next was very swift, as though part of a well-rehearsed operation. The six men in the three leading tanks leapt down and surrounded Hausmann; while two more from inside each tank bobbed up in their place, manning the heavy machine-guns in the turrets.
Hausmann grabbed at his AK-47, just as three of the men thrust hand-guns to his head. A fourth removed his machine-pistol, and a fifth stood back and kicked him in the groin. Ryan watched his long body twist round and lie writhing in the dust, his knees drawn up level with his beard.
Ryan leant out and took the R/T transmitter. He said, ‘Capitano Monica, it requires no courage to kick a man in the cojones. Your column is fully covered. If you attempt to break out, we shall destroy each of your vehicles one by one. Your T-54s are too heavy for the mangrove swamp. They will sink. If you try and turn round on this side of the road, you will be in our direct line of fire. I await your decision.’
There was a crackle of static, then Captain Monica’s voice: ‘Who are you? On whose orders are you acting?’ He still sounded calm, but there was now a note of hesitation. Ryan guessed that he could not believe the rebel force had penetrated this far north.
He answered slowly and deliberately: ‘I am acting on the direct authority of SACA headquarters in Montecristo. The man you have so brutally assaulted carries a letter to prove this. I give you exactly sixty seconds to read the letter and comply with its contents.’
He next instructed the man beside him to aim the long silver tube of the 122mm rocket at the third tank in the column. He wanted to avoid killing Hausmann, who still lay hunched on all fours, vomiting in the dust.
Captain Monica’s voice came back, issuing rapid orders to search the man, and Ryan watched through the glasses as they found the letter. As they did so, Captain Monica’s slim figure appeared in the turret of the third tank. He jumped down, walked towards the group round Hausmann — whose inert body was still being covered by three guns — read the letter, then turned and said something to the crew of the first tank.
He was still speaking when the hot sluggish air was shattered by the shrieking roar of gunfire. It came from about fifty feet away, to Ryan’s right, and for a few seconds it deadened his eardrums. On the road below he saw Captain Monica leap backwards, as though he had been given a tremendous jerk from behind. His body slammed against the leading tank, then sagged down with his head caught among the heavy runners of the tracks.
Ryan swore foully. He and No-Entry looked in the direction of Cabo Fisco. The young man lay splayed out behind his smoking 12.7 machine-gun, grinning. ‘The mad bastard,’ Ryan muttered. ‘They’ll have our positions in a couple of minutes!’ He glanced at No-Entry and nodded: ‘All right, let them have it! You take the men — I’ll get the third tank. And careful you don’t hit that poor sod Hausmann.’ Then he yelled the order to fire, in Spanish.
Once more, the air burst round him like a paper bag. No-Entry’s fire was economical and accurate; his own 12.7mm ripped through the bodies of the men below, tearing their limbs, exploding into the hull of the leading tank with a whining clang and splashes of bluish-green sparks, as the metal casing shredded off the shells like strips of banana peel.
The man beside Ryan lined up the sights of the long, light rocket-launcher, aiming just below the turret of the third tank, close to where the spare drums of fuel were strapped to the side. As he pulled the trigger, Ryan felt the hot roar of flame over his shoulder, with a low ear-cracking howl, and a white streak that arced elegantly down towards the road, ending in a shuddering crack.
The tank juddered, then appeared to leap into the air, its steel hull crumpled, its turret lifted off, then the whole thing disappeared into a boiling mass of orange flame, swelling up like a giant cauliflower under a blanket of oily black smoke.
Ryan could see the other turrets slamming shut. The man beside him had the R/T still tuned in, but no further orders came through. On Ryan’s orders the man swiftly reloaded the 122mm rocket-launcher, careful not to burn himself on the searing hot metal. He now aimed at the sixth tank and hit it in the middle of its tracks. This time it lurched over, but did not explode.
The entire contingent now opened up together. Ryan was relieved — as well as slightly dismayed — at the eagerness with which they applied themselves to the task of killing their own countrymen. He could even hear them shouting and laughing as they watched the results of their fire, with the 105s and 12.7s drilling into the steel frames below, slicing down the crews as they tried to flee through the turrets before the fuel-tanks exploded.
Ryan had difficulty ordering them to hold their fire, and had to send No-Entry in person to curb the enthusiasm of Cabo Fisco. When it was all over, he spoke into the R/T: ‘This is Coronel Macho de Rivera. Your commander, Capitano Monica, has been foolish enough to disregard my orders. If you refuse to obey these orders and turn off the road, we will continue to destroy your entire column.’
As he finished speaking, No-Entry’s fingers gripped his wrist, while his other hand pointed down at the road. The turret of the fourth T-54 in the line — still almost completely hidden by the smoke from the third tank — had begun to move, its long deadly gun swivelling upwards, pointing almost exactly at Ryan’s position. He guessed that they had some special heatseeking device that could track down the 122s.
The man with the rocket-launcher fired a fraction of a second before the gunner in the tank. The two explosions were simultaneous.
Ryan felt the earth disappear beneath him; the sun went dark, and his face and body were pummelled and lashed by flying earth and shards of rock. At first he could not breathe.
There was blood on his face and hands, and he could hear a whimpering close by.
Instinctively he reached out and felt a body lying across his ankles. No-Entry was huddled over the remains of the radio-set, scarcely breathing, while the rock and pampas under him were wet with blood. The man with the rocket-launcher was dead.
Ryan muttered half to himself in English: ‘If that’s what they want, that’s what they’re going to get.’ He climbed to his feet and stumbled, still half-dazed, down the line of troops to his right, towards the flank held by Cabo Fisco. The men here were armed with more 122s. He shouted in Spanish, ‘Take out every other tank in the line! Aim for the tracks or the fuel-tanks —’ he broke off, with a spasm of coughing — ‘and make it quick — before they get a fix on our position!’
Cabo Fisco looked up from his gun, leering brightly. ‘You see how I killed that bastard officer, mi Coronel?’
Ryan blinked down at him, controlling his temper. If the young man had held his fire, as he had been ordered to, there might still have been a chance to bluff their way out and avoid this butchery. He said, ‘I’ll deal with you later, Cabo.’
But his words were lost in the roar of one of the rockets, followed a second later by another — then the double crack and boom as the first and fifth tanks went up in balls of flame.
He dodged back under the rocks, where the men had opened up again with an unbroken barrage of fire, smashing the bodies of the tank-crews as they struggled up out of the hatches, and tried to leap to safety. He reached No-Entry and rolled him gently on to his back. The Negro was half-conscious, bleeding heavily from the head. Ryan bathed it with water from his canteen, then tied the wound up with a handkerchief. The shell must have exploded a few feet below them.
He lifted the binoculars, which had somehow escaped damage, and examined the scene below. It was almost entirely blotted out by smoke and dust. At least six tanks were now on fire, and several others had been crippled; while the ones further back in the column were trying to shunt themselves round and head off the road towards the mountains.
But the going was bad, broken up by small precipices and shoulders of rock, impassable even for a T-54. Several of the smaller tanks and half-tracks were trying to break out through the swamp, but the two rockets on Cabo Fisco’s flank were keeping up a deadly fire, picking off every other vehicle one by one, as Ryan had ordered.
It was a massacre. The smell of roasting flesh now reached him, cloying and bittersweet, clinging to his nostrils and bringing up the bile in his throat. He looked round and saw Sebastian McIntyre Hausmann limping up towards him between the rocks. His face was taut with pain. For a moment, Ryan had forgotten both him and his colleagues in the jeep below.
For some reason the tank crews also seemed to have forgotten them, or at least had done nothing to try and stop them. The jeep, as well as the two valuable motorcycles, had been able to retreat, and were now parked under the rocks, out of the line of fire from the column. Ryan ordered Hausmann to fetch a first-aid kit and see to No-Entry’s head.
The fight had been going on for less than ten minutes when Ryan noticed a man running out of the smoke towards them. He was waving a piece of white cloth. Through the binoculars Ryan saw that it was his underpants.
‘Hold your fire!’ Ryan yelled — but it was hopeless against the appalling din. He had to run down the line on both sides, ordering the men individually to stop shooting.
By a happy chance the man with the underpants was not hit, and was able to reach the head of the column, next to the first burnt-out tank, where he now stood waving his pitiful flag of truce and shouting frantically. Ryan could just make out the words, ‘Rendamos! Sin condiciones!’
Without showing his head, Ryan shouted back, ‘Tell all the crews to dismount! Any tank that moves will be instantly destroyed! Entiene?’
‘Entendo!’ the man’s voice came back — a thin cry above the crackle of flames, almost inaudible to Ryan’s numbed eardrums.
During the next sixty seconds, at least a hundred men climbed down and began walking slowly towards the rocks, most of them with their hands on their heads. Ryan turned and called to his own men: ‘I am going down to talk to them. You will cover me, but under no circumstances are you to fire unless I give you the signal — which will be a raised arm.’
