"It's okay," Meredith said, recognizing that he could not be a party to any action that sent this unblooded officer out into the streets in his place.
"— the ops sergeant said it's just a routine convoy. Same route you had yesterday." The new lieutenant spoke nervously, infinitely unsure of himself. "I told them I'd be glad to do it."
"Take it easy, man. It's okay," Meredith said. "I just need to get some coffee."
3
"They call him El Diablo," the scout said, still breathless from his climb. The arroyo in which the guerrillas hid their vehicles lay far below the mountain village. "The country people say he has risen from the dead."
"What's he saying?" Captain Morita, the unit's Japanese adviser, demanded. His Spanish was limited to a very few words, and he showed little interest in learning more. Everything had to be translated into English for him.
Colonel Ramon Vargas Morelos did not mind that so much. He was very proud of his English, which he had learned in the border towns where he had worked hard as a drug runner in the days before he became a Hero of the Revolution. And the Japanese officer's lack of Spanish made him easier to control.
Vargas purposely delayed answering the Japanese. The man's tone was too insistent, almost disrespectful. Vargas was, after all, a colonel, and he took his time with the translation, glancing arrogantly around the smoky brown interior of the cantina. A litter of unmatched tables and chairs. An old dog who scratched himself with the imprecision of a rummy. Vargas stretched the moment, examining everything in the room except the Japanese. Disordered ranks of bottles behind the bar, a mirror split diagonally by a frozen fork of lightning. Fading postcards from Tucson and Pasadena, garish in the light of the storm lantern.
Finally, he turned to face Morita. "He says," Vargas began, "that the new gringo commander has brought a nickname with him. People call him 'The Devil.' " He did not bother to translate the matter of the American's supposed resurrection. It was one of those things that the Japanese officer would not understand, and Vargas had already suffered enough remarks about the backwardness of his countrymen.
Morita grunted. "That is hardly useful intelligence."
Vargas briefly turned his back on Morita and the scout and leaned onto the bar. "Hey, you fucking dog," he called to the bartender. "Bring me two fucking tequilas."
The bartender moved very quickly. Contented, Vargas rolled his torso around so that he faced the scout again, with his back and elbows resting on the long wooden counter.
"Go on, Luis," Vargas said. "Tell me about this devil who fucks his mother."
The scout was covered in sweat. The night was cool up in the desert mountains, but the climb up the trail to the broad, bowllike plateau where the village hid had drained the man's pores. That was good. It told Vargas that the man took his responsibilities seriously. Had he strolled into the cantina looking too easy and rested, Vargas would have shot him.
"There is a great fear of this one, my colonel," the scout continued. "The gringos brought him in from San Miguel de Allende. They say he was a bastard there. They say he has the face of a devil. He wears silver spurs, and he whistles an old Irish song. They say that no man who hears those spurs and the sound of his whistling will live long.
Vargas picked up one of the small glasses of tequila and gestured for the scout to help himself to the other. He had long since given up on offering drinks to the Japanese, who never accepted them.
"What does he say?" Captain Morita asked impatiently.
Vargas looked coldly at the Japanese, then made a sharp, dramatic gesture of downing his tequila.
"He says the American is a clown. He wears spurs. He whistles."
"He told you more than that," Morita said curtly. "What else did he say?"
"He said the American is one ugly cocksucker."
"What about his background? Did your man gain any information about the new commander's operational techniques? What kind of threat does he pose?"
Vargas laughed. Loudly. Then he wiped the back of his hand across his stubble. "Man, what kind of shit are you talking about? He don't pose no fucking threat." Vargas stuck his thumb in his gunbelt. It was made of soft black leather with a circular gold device on the clasp. "You know where I got this, Morita? I took this off an American general. Everybody said, 'Hey, Vargas, this guy's a tough customer. You better look out.' And you know what I fucking did? I cut his throat, man. Right in his own fucking house. Then I fucked his old lady. And then I fed her his eggs." Vargas spat on the plank floor.
"Ask your man," Morita said sternly, "whether he managed to collect any real information on this new commander."
Vargas gestured theatrically to the bartender. Two more. "You worry too much, man," he told the Japanese. But he turned his attention back to the scout. "Hey, what the fuck is this, Luis? You come in here with ghost stories. We don't need no stinking ghost stories. You tell me something serious about this dude."
The scout looked at him nervously. "This guy, my colonel, he don't play by the rules. He does crazy things. They say he's very different from the other gringos. He speaks good Spanish and carries himself like some kind of big charro." The scout paused, and Vargas could tell that the man was weighing his words carefully. "He brought his own people with him. He has this black guy who's pretty as a girl—"
"Maybe they fuck each other," Vargas said. The scout laughed with him. But not as richly as the man should have laughed. A question began to scratch at Vargas.
"Also, my colonel, he has a Mexican from north of the border. That one, he don't speak Spanish worth shit, but he talks real fancy English."
"That's good," Vargas said definitely. "All Mexicans go soft up north."
"And there's an officer who speaks with an accent. They say he is a Jew. From Israel."
"Another loser," Vargas said. "Luis, this fucking devil don't sound so bad to me."
The scout laughed again. But the sound was noticeably sickly. It was the laugh of a nervous woman. Not of a revolutionary soldier.
"You know, Luis," Vargas said, moving close enough so that the scout could smell his breath and get the full sense of his presence, "I think there's something else. Something maybe you don't want to tell me. Now I don't know why you don't want to tell your colonel everything."
"My colonel…" the scout began.
Vargas slapped a big hand around the back of the scout's neck. He did it in such a way that the Japanese would simply think it a personal gesture. Happy, dumb Mexicans, always touching each other. But the scout understood the message clearly.
"Here," Vargas said. "You drink another tequila. Then you fucking talk to me, Luis."
The scout hastily threw the liquor into his mouth, ignoring the usual ceremony.
"My colonel," he said, with unmistakable nervousness in his voice, "they say he is the one who killed Hector Padilla over in Guanajuato."
Vargas froze for a long moment. Then he made a noise like a bad-tempered animal. "That's bullshit," he said. He pulled his hand off the back of the scout's neck, then held it in midair in a gesture that was half exclamation and half threat. "Hector was killed in an accident. In the mountains. Everybody knows that."
"My colonel," the scout said meekly, "I only tell you what the people say. They say that the accident was arranged. That El Diablo infiltrated men into Commandante Padilla's camp. That—"