“Got it!”
“I want you to only move out about five klicks and then come back. We’ll be expecting you in time for afternoon tea, 1600, is that clear?” I got their assents and said to Briscoe, “Sergeant, get these men on their way.”
“Yes, sir!” He took our designated scouts and led them aside. They checked gear and grabbed their weapons, and then Sergeant Briscoe led them back down the hillside towards the road.
I then had Specialist 4 Thompson try the radio again, but nobody was on the other end. I had him shut it down to save the battery. He asked, “Captain, what if we aren’t in Honduras?” Several of the other men were listening to us as well.
I just smiled and said, “I told you that answer this morning. We start walking north. I figure that if we aren’t in Honduras, we’re probably in either Nicaragua or El Salvador. Either way, Honduras is to the north. Let’s be clear on that, fellows. We all jumped in, we’re all going home. Are we clear on that?” I got some smiles back, and a variety of positive grunts and HOO-AHs.
I also added, “Don’t forget, I don’t care how inefficient the Army is, they aren’t going to just up and lose a platoon, are they? Sooner or later somebody is bound to notice we didn’t show up in the drop zone! They’ll come looking for us, just like we’re going to be looking for them.”
That got some excited nods and talk, as the men realized it wasn’t just them. They had people on the outside to help, as well. Thompson asked, “What do you think happened, sir?”
“No idea. The pilot probably just got lost and decided to drop us and try to find home. Unless he flew out to sea and never looked back, he’s probably home by now answering a whole bunch of very rude questions.”
“Serve the fucker right!” was a comment I heard from more than one voice. I agreed!
“What if he got lost and crashed? Won’t they think we’ll all have died in the wreckage?” I heard.
“Who asked that?” I said, looking around. A young private who looked nervous at being singled out raised his hand and gave me his name, Wilson. I nodded to him in acknowledgement. “That sort of thing only happens in the movies. You know, the plane crashes, giant fireball, everything is gone in an instant. What really happens when a plane goes down is that there is wreckage strewn all over the place. Even if the plane crashes, the rescuers won’t find our bodies, so somebody will figure out we dropped before the crash. All we have to do is figure out where we are, and then go home.” I shook my head and smiled at them. “We’re the Eighty-Second Airborne. We survived World War II. We’ll survive this, too.”
When Sergeant Briscoe returned, he got the men organized for the day, and then sat down next to me. “Excuse me sir, no disrespect, but you’re the guy called ‘Doc’, right?”
I smiled. “Only by captains and above, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir. Like I said, no disrespect, sir. I just wanted to be sure who you were.” I just nodded. “You’re actually a doctor, sir?”
“Mathematics, sergeant, although that seems like a very long time ago.”
“Sir, what the hell is a guy like you doing in the Army?”
I laughed. “You ever meet a recruiting sergeant that actually told the truth?” Briscoe laughed at that too, and then went and checked on the rest of the guys.
And that was the order of the day. Keep morale up. Take care of Private Smith and prepare him to be moved out. Rig stretchers for Smith and the body bags. Get food into the men and find some water in a stream down below to clean with halazone. Wait for the recon teams to return. We cleaned our weapons, and posted security so that nobody could sneak up on us, and instituted a sleep schedule. We even inventoried our ammo, since the Army really freaks out about issuing troops ammo (We had 5.56 NATO for the M-16s and a few frag grenades among the non-coms, along with some light demo gear.) It was all the shit that Fairfax was supposed to be doing, the fucking numbnuts!
The first team, of Martinez and Guillermo, came back after only a couple of hours. They had headed east along the road, but it petered out into a few logging trails after a couple of klicks. They high tailed it back and we all waited for Janos and Gonzalez. Their road must lead somewhere. They didn’t come back on time though, which made Fairfax say a few stupid things about punishment. I simply told him that we would give the men some time. Maybe they were chartering a bus.
They returned a little after 1800, on foot, and without a bus. Both men were grinning like little boys who’ve gotten away with something. Janos produced a road map for northern Nicaragua. “We stole it from a car in this little village down around the bend. We’re right… here,” he said, pointing with a grimy finger at the map.
Janos, Gonzalez, Briscoe, and I bent over the little map, and then I dragged out my wide area map. We were off my map completely, at least a hundred kilometers from where we were supposed to be. No wonder our radio was out of range! I looked around the little group. “Tell me about this town. What did you see?”
“It’s called Santa Maria de los Milagros, Saint Mary of the Miracles, and isn’t much more than an overgrown village. A few cars, some pickup trucks, probably a store in the center,” commented Janos. “Mostly empty farms around a crossroads.”
I looked up at that. “You didn’t go into the town did you?”
“No!” answered Private Gonzalez. “We’d have been spotted for sure. We just went down the road until we saw some signs of life, and then slipped up a hillside overseeing the town.”
“We also saw troops, sir, Nicaraguan troops, a convoy of them,” said Janos.
That got everybody’s attention. There was some hubbub that I waved back to silence. “Numbers and deployment,” I demanded.
“Two convoys, each a half dozen trucks loaded with troops. They looked like deuce-and-a-halfs, but funny, like foreign versions.”
“Probably GAZ trucks. They’re Russian, either from Russia or second hand through Cuba,” I answered.
The two men looked at each other. “I think you’re right sir,” continued Janos. “Anyway, six trucks and a Jeep, looked to be an officer. We had one convoy and then another about an hour later. That one stopped and everybody got out and had a piss call on the side of the road. I didn’t get a good count, but it looked like a short company, pure infantry. Lots of AKs, not much else.”
Great! I had two companies of Sandinista infantry in the area, and that meant at least a battalion around us.
I looked back down at the road map. The road we were on wasn’t even marked, although Santa Maria de los Milagros was a small dot on a larger road. That road ran north. If we skirted around the town tonight, we might be able to head north towards the Honduran border. I outlined my plan to the others. Both Janos and Gonzalez agreed it could be done. The two convoys were heading north, also, probably to reinforce the border in case the Yankees invaded.
Which we had done, by the way.
Lieutenant Fairfax had a contribution at that point. It was a really lousy idea, but at least he was thinking. “What if we steal some cars and pickup trucks, and use them to drive to the border? We could make it there in just a few hours.”
A few of the men actually looked hopeful at that idea, but I noticed the more senior troops, like Briscoe and Janos, were more thoughtful. I simply shook my head in the negative. “We need to do this in a way nobody knows about us. The perfect outcome is that we go home without the Nicaraguan Army ever figuring out that armed American troops have invaded the peace loving nation of Nicaragua. We start stealing cars and trucks, the cops and the Army will be all over us long before we ever hit the border. We’re going to have to sneak out of here.”