Digna had seen the helicopter descend. She, as much as her charges, noted the model and colors. From her tent in the center of the encampment she began walking toward the pad to investigate. She paused along her way to briefly watch Edilze, herself now holding a battlefield commission as a captain, put eighteen artillery crews through their paces on the central parade ground of the post, between the headquarters and the tent city.
The old and well loved Russian 85mm guns were long lost and not to be replaced. Instead, the gringos had been forthcoming with newer, lightweight 105mm guns. Still, a gun was a gun; a sight, a sight; a collimator, a collimator. A couple of days’ intense training from the gringos had been enough for Edilze and her original crews to be able to use the guns and teach others how to use them.
Good girl, Edilze, the grandmother thought.
Cortez took one look at the gun crews and their neatly stacked rifles and began to turn around to go back to the helicopter. The inspector, made of sterner stuff (which was not hard), grabbed the general by the arm and forced him back to the path.
“Smile,” directed the inspector. “Act normal. We are doing nothing but bringing this woman in for consultations with the president. Everything is normal. And it will stay normal as long as you don’t lose your nerve.”
“This is insane, ridiculous,” Cortez insisted. “She will resist. Those soldiers of hers will tear us limb from limb.”
“If you do not shut up and put a warm and friendly smile on your face,” said the inspector, “I will shoot you here and now and then ask her to help me carry your body to the helicopter and arrest her there.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Not only would I, I should,” answered the inspector. “Maybe others do not know, but I am a policeman and I do know. I make it my business to know. You are a coward, a disgrace to the Republic, and a disgrace to a proud name. Now shut up, we are almost upon her,” the inspector concluded.
Digna recognized Cortez, from a picture she had seen once in the paper. She didn’t know anything about him, except that his division had taken appalling casualties in its hopeless drive to save as much of her home province of Chiriqui as possible. He seemed nervous to her.
Perhaps, she wondered, he is embarrassed that he couldn’t save my home. Well, he tried and that counts for something.
The inspector she knew little more of; just that one, dimly remembered entrance into her death room at the hospital, followed by her resurrection and rejuvenation, and the meeting where she had been given her assignment. He had seemed a very cold and logical man then, though he smiled now. Perhaps the smile was in recognition of her promotion and the medal she wore at her neck.
Shaking hands with Digna, the inspector announced, “I’ve been sent here with General Cortez to bring you to Presidente Mercedes. He has a serious problem with assimilation of the new refugees and, noting the success you are having with them, and the prestige you have with them, he has asked to consult with you and perhaps put you on the televisor.”
Digna shrugged. “When does he want to see me?”
“Now, if possible,” answered the inspector. “That is why the helicopter is waiting.”
“Just one moment then,” Digna said. “Edilze!”
Looking up from where she was instructing a new gunner on some of the finer points of the new gringo artillery sights, Edilze patted the young woman on the shoulder and began to trot over.
“Yes, Mamita?”
“I have to go the City for… for how long, Inspector?”
“Not more than a few days, surely, señora.”
“For a few days then,” Digna continued. “You are in charge while I am gone. Listen to Tomas Herrera in my absence.”
“Si, Mamita,” the younger women agreed.
Young Paloma Mercedes tried frantically to telephone Julio. He had to know, he had to be told, what was coming, what her father was doing.
There was no answer at any of the numbers she tried, neither his, nor his family’s. She had no clue where else to look. Even Julio’s friends had disappeared into the hungry maw of la Armada.
I thought I hated him. I thought he was being a fool. The more fool I for thinking that my father was worth a bucket of spit.
And he was right all along, I see that now.
“Oh, God, I hate this part,” whispered Diaz as the restraining cord was released and his glider was hauled upward by the balloon. As usual, the glider began to spin underneath the balloon immediately.
“Oh, fuck,” Diaz muttered, as he felt his gorge beginning to rise. The glider was spinning clockwise, giving the lieutenant the unpleasant view of the two cruisers spinning below. Experimentally, Diaz nudged the glider’s stick slightly to the left. The rate of spin slowed. He nudged it a bit more and the spin reversed itself from slightly clockwise to slightly counterclockwise. Diaz eased up until the spin became imperceptible. At the angle at which he managed to stabilize the glider, the two cruisers were lost to view. He played with the stick a bit more, swinging the glider back toward the cruisers. Perhaps more importantly, at the same time he placed the body of the glider between himself and the just rising sun.
Why the hell didn’t I think of this sooner? he asked himself.
Santiago, a substantial town and the provincial capital, had become the main logistics base for the defensive line being constructed to the west. Here the supplies were stored and directed forward. Here the flow of replacements was managed. Here, also, Boyd had set up a surreptitious antipersonnel landmine factory.
The factory used aluminum soft drink cans, plastic containers, wooden boxes turned out by local carpenters, and glass bottles. These were filled with explosives. In that form they were moved to the defense line being constructed behind 6th Mechanized Division and the remnants of the First. Detonators moved separately; it would have been the height of folly to transport detonators that relied on the sensitivity of their explosive rather than mechanical action in company with the truckloads of unarmed mines that left the factory daily.
Bill Boyd knew, in the abstract, that he was breaking the spirit of international law to which his country had agreed by overseeing the manufacture of antipersonnel landmines. He simply didn’t care; the laws that prevented a people from defending itself were simply bad laws, unworthy of respect, worthy — in fact — of being flouted at every opportunity.
Still, somehow he was not surprised when a half a dozen uniformed and armed men, plus one in plain clothes who may or may not have been armed, showed up at his headquarters to arrest him.
Boyd was even less surprised to see Cortez aboard the helicopter. He looked at the West Point trained general with disgust that almost equaled Cortez’s disgrace.
“So… your uncle’s found a job for which you’re temperamentally suited, has he?” Boyd asked rhetorically and with a sneer.
“He’s a filthy coward and a traitor,” piped up a woman’s voice from deeper in the helicopter’s hold. At this, half a dozen voices, all sounding male, joined in with agreement.