The corporal released her hair and turned back to the husband. He asked, "You want that, boy? Shall we gang-bang your wife? No? Then tell me what the fuck you were doing here. Just out for a stroll, you say. No doubt."
A private put his hand under the husband's chin and pushed up hard. The naval officer's head slammed into the wall behind. It struck the exposed brick wall hard enough to split the thin skin over his skull.
Even now Jimenez smiled at the memory, the same smile he had been using since boyhood whenever something really annoyed him.
He went on, "So the private's still holding this poor guy's chin and was cocking his arm to hit him in the face when I reached them and grabbed his arm."
"He said, and I remember this clearly, 'What the fuck…?' Then the private looked at me over his shoulder. Oh, Patricio, it was good to see. His eyes got big-like saucers-when he realized who I was."
"I smiled at him. Patricio, I confess… I was not always as even tempered as I am now. The private knew what that smile meant. He looked… well… a lot more frightened than that poor woman did."
The corporal's eyes bugged out. He stuttered out, "Ca-Ca-Captain Jimenez. Sir. They're spies. We were…"
Jimenez cut off the explanations and excuses. "I know what the hell you idiots were doing. I can see what you were doing. But I don't think you know what you were doing. Let the gringos go… with apologies. And pray it's enough."
The corporal insisted they were spies. That's when Jimenez lost his temper. He grabbed the corporal's uniform shirt and slammed him against the wall, following up with two quick punches to the solar plexus.
"That navy officer was spying, you know? Probably without authorization but still spying," commented Hennessey. "Then again, maybe he had authorization, too. I had awfully detailed and up-todate information when my company rolled out."
Jimenez sighed. "Yes, I know. I knew that even then. But I still didn't want a war we could not even hope to drag out very long, let alone win."
Hennessey was a bit odd about impending combat. He'd fret nervously, go to see everything, to check on everything, to look into the face of every one of his soldiers. And then, as it got closer, he'd simply begin to calm down. It was almost as if he was detaching a part of himself. Perhaps it was the part that was human. Certainly it was the part that seemed most human. In any case, when the time came, with something like an internal mental click, he would drop off fear, drop off trivial personal concerns, and become something very like a machine.
"Up there! The windows!"
A few vehicles ahead of Hennessey, a young soldier twisted his body to realign the heavy machine gun mounted atop the armored personnel carrier. "Target!" The flash from the muzzle lit the buildings to either side as fifty-caliber bullets, long bursts in steady streams, streaked out to punch through the thin walls of a third story room. The pounding of the heavy machine gun was a palpable blow over the entire upper half of the gunner's body.
The gunner, ears covered by his track commander's helmet and hearing under assault by the fifty's steady booms, could not tell that the shrieks coming from inside did not somehow sound military. Even Pina hadn't thought to conscript five-year-old girls.
From the other side of the street a single, mostly hidden, muzzle flash sparked. A bullet forced its way between the aramid fibers of the gunner's armored vest. He gasped and slumped down to the footstand. Blood began to drip, then gush. It flowed across the raised dots of the metal floor plates, gathering in the lower flat parts.
Confusion on his face, the dying soldier called out once, "Mama?" Then his body went limp, dead.
The soldier's platoon sergeant roughly pulled the body off of the stand. With one hand he dumped it to the floor even as the other hand scrambled for purchase on the inside of the hatch well. The platoon sergeant pulled himself up into the hatch, drew his remaining arm through, then grasped both spade handles of the fifty cal.
Again, there was the faintest flash from the side of the street opposite where the gun pointed. The platoon sergeant felt something strike his armored vest, then ripple through his left shoulder. He felt more than heard the crunch of splintering bone.
Not too bad. Doesn't even hurt much. He reported to his company commander.
"Sergeant Piroute, you don't sound right," Hennessey said coldly and calmly into the radio. He ignored normal radio procedure; Balboa had no real electronic warfare capability.
"I'm fine, sir. Just fine. A little hit. Not bad."
"Can you carry on?" Hennessey asked, still ice cold.
"Yes, sir. No sweat, sir," the platoon sergeant answered as his well drilled right arm jerked the fifty's charging handle, twice; ka-chink, ka- chink. Steadily, the gun turned towards the dimly perceived flash. The sergeant's thumbs pressed down on the gun's smooth butterfly trigger. Again, long, steady bursts lit the night. Fountains of powdered cement, wood and stucco emerged from a wall where the fifty's bullets struck. On the other side of the wall a sniper-young and brave but not too well trained-suddenly found himself minus the legs that had held him up. His dying thoughts were of his mother.
Heated by a lodged fragment of a tracer, a piece of wood began to smolder. Soon enough it would blaze.
The platoon sergeant, still ignoring his own wound, spoke orders into a microphone. The tracks rolled forward, toward Balboa's Estado Mayor.
"You managed to drag it out a lot longer than anyone could have expected," Hennessey said, by way of condolence.
"You pushed faster than anyone should have expected," Jimenez retorted.
Behind him was nothing but fire and smoke and dead bodies, some of them carbonized. The nauseating stench of burnt flesh overlaid that of burnt wood and diesel exhaust. Ahead of him was more smoke, more fire… and much of the fire was of the directed variety, the bronze- jacketed lead variety.
Hennessey ducked his head barely in time to avoid a random burst in his direction. The bullets made sharp cracks overhead. They were too close together to make out individual rounds. He spoke into a radio and, on command, a helicopter gunship came in low to rake a threatening section of the compound with cannon fire and rockets. Another command and a team of his infantrymen rushed the wall to emplace a demolition charge.
"Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!" the men shouted, racing back to the cover of their armored personnel carrier. Again Hennessey ducked as a dark, angry cloud blossomed from the wall.
His men resumed their fire as the last of the demolition-spawned fragments pattered on the ground. Hennessey lifted a hand, then swung it forward. One platoon, still covered by the armor of their carriers, raced for the breach. Hennessey's own track followed.
He didn't think it funny, at the time, that he was not afraid. It was just one of those things that was. Some people were calm before the storm and mere wrecks in it. Hennessey was always at his calmest and coldest under stress.
If the defenders were afraid, none of the attacking force could see it. Outnumbered, outgunned, to a degree also outfought, but not surpassed in courage, they continued to hurl their defiance at their assailants.
With a clang of metal on metal Hennessey emerged from the rear door of his carrier. He spared a quick glance at one of his platoon leaders. Phil will be fine, he thought, seeing one of the medics apply a bandage to a wounded leg. Another wider glance encompassed the men. They seemed ready.
Hennessey smiled confidently, nodded once and shouted, "All right, motherfuckers… Let's gooo!"
With a roar the men followed.
They followed as if into a vacuum. Bodies lay sprawled everywhere, in every manner of undignified death. Here lay a headless torso, there a torso-less head.
Hennessey shook his head with regret. He thought again of his old classmate, Xavier Jimenez, probably even now lying dead somewhere in compound. Jimenez would never run; this Hennessey knew.