The Lotus Eaters

Hacienda of Señor Estevez, Belalcázar, Santander, Terra Nova

Unable to sleep for all his worries, Estevez tossed and turned on his king-sized mattress. His wife, plump beyond her years, snored softly beside him. I would so much rather be in bed with Gabriela, or—better still—Isabel. But domestic peace was important. He couldn't sleep with either of his mistresses in his own home.

An unusual sound roused Estevez. He rolled to his back and sat straight up. Helicopters? Police come to arrest me? But what's that screech?

Whatever the sounds were, they couldn't be good. Estevez roused his plump wife. "Marta," he insisted, "get up and gather the children! Quickly, woman! Go! Get to the basement. I'll join you when I can." As the wife rose and began to rub the sleep from her eyes, Estevez ran out of the bedroom, pulling on a robe and shouting for his guards.

* * *

From five thousand feet overhead, Montoya turned on his siren, banked his plane over and began a dive. He felt himself pushed back into his seat so hard that he thought he could feel the stitching through his flight suit.

Flicking on the radio he announced his call sign for the mission and, "Diving to the attack." A voice answered, "Roger," with a strong Volgan accent.

Montoya saw the target hacienda and his personal target, a large barnlike structure a few hundred meters from the main building. Intelligence had identified this as a barracks for guards.

At twenty-one hundred feet, two blackish ovoid shapes, each a two hundred and fifty pound bomb, fell away from beneath Montoya's aircraft. He felt the Finch balloon slightly as its load was reduced.

"Bombs away." he announced to himself, pulling the stick back into the pit of his stomach. Whatever pressure he'd felt in the dive was nothing compared to the force pulling him down into his seat as he fought to pull out of the dive.

Far below, the helicopters began very slowly to approach the lawn around the hacienda.

* * *

The shriek coming from somewhere above wouldn't have been so bad if Francisco Estevez had ever heard it's like before. He hadn't. It might have been tolerable if some of his comrades had, and they'd been able to reassure him. They were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It might have been acceptable if he'd been a trained soldier. He was a tyro, recruited to his cousin's guard force to provide a sinecure to a relative. In short, Francisco was completely unprepared for the attack, mentally, morally, and as a matter of training. It was about the limit of his ability to join the dozens of other armed men racing from their barnlike barracks to the main house.

As Francisco fumbled with loading a magazine into his rifle while trying to run across the manicured lawn to his assigned position, he saw his elder brother. "What's going on?" he shouted out.

"Who the fuck knows? Just get to your position."

Twin explosions, so close together as to be almost indistinguishable, rocked the world behind Francisco. A wall of hardened air slapped his back. He was slammed forward and down, first to his knees, then to all fours, then to his belly. The metal receiver of his rifle punched into his stomach.

Francisco felt, more than heard or saw, pieces of flying metal and wood tear the air around him. Lifting off the ground and twisting his head, Francisco saw that the barn was gone, it its place an expanding cloud, black and angry, that threatened to engulf him. Francisco shook his head to clear it. This was a mistake, he found, as pain and nausea shot through him.

Half deafened, still Francisco heard or felt someone screaming close by. Through the dark and acrid smoke he crawled toward the sound. Though it was only a few feet, it seemed like miles. A legless man, bones showing and blood spurting, thrashed the ground. One leg, still shod and covered in denim, lay nearby. He turned the over the body of the screaming, legless man.

"Oh, no. Oh, hermano, what will I tell mother?"

The siren shriek overhead returned. It was followed by more explosions, closer to the hacienda. Then there were many more explosions, smaller ones. A rocket passed over Francisco's head. He never heard whether it exploded or not.

Heavy machine gun fire, each burst like a series of fists against a wall, passed by him. Bright tracer lines burned themselves into his retinas. He turned his head in panic as the steady whop, whop, whop of helicopter blades cutting the air assailed him. Like a cornered rabbit, Francisco looked frantically around for an escape. He heard more helicopters to his right and his left, explosions to his front. Picking his brother up on his shoulder, Estevez began to run to what had been his rear.

* * *

As two helicopters broke off from the main body to drop off the platoon that would seal off escape; the other four, landing on line, began to disgorge the rest of 12th Company across the lawn. Those armed with rockets and machine guns fired forward to cover the paratroops' exit.

"Look at that!" cried the copilot of the rightmost bird. The goggled pilot turned his head to see a Santandern struggling with a load on his shoulders across the ruins of a large wood building. Orders are orders: "Maximum feasible frightfulness," thought the pilot as he swung the IM-71 over slightly to bring its guns to bear. He pressed the firing button, causing the helicopter to shake with the recoil. Fifty-one caliber bullets, one in five a bright green streak, lashed the ground around the target. The image in the pilot's goggles flared.

* * *

Dirt, dust, and splinters of wood kicked up around Francisco Estevez. Two projectiles, at least, found him, passing through his lower torso. Both hips smashed to red ruin, he was bowled over, his load flying. Francisco landed in agony, his blood staining the green grass beneath him.

For a few moments he lay there in shock. Then, dimly, he remember his brother who had to be somewhere nearby. Francisco forced his arms to lift his upper body from the ground. Dragging his useless legs behind him, he pulled himself on his hands and elbows to where his brother had been flung.

* * *

The tracer-caused flare in the night vision goggled lessened. "One's still alive," said the copilot. "You know the orders."

A second burst followed, longer than the first. The Estevez brothers, distant relatives of Señor Estevez, died side by side, Francisco's hands still trying to pull his elder brother to safety.

* * *

The helicopters had each a single side door, mounted on the left, and rear clamshells. With the chopper bucking from the rotor wash kicked up from the ground, the crew kicked open the clamshells even as Samsonov jumped out of the side door to the ground. Automatically, the legate of the 22nd rolled and came to a prone firing position, eyes searching frantically for threats and targets.

The more heavily laden radio telephone operator, or RTO, jumped after Samsonov. Because the helicopter was slowly moving forward, however, the RTO landed closer to the target than his commander had. He crawled back toward Samsonov, taking a position to the left rear of the legate. Samsonov shot an inquiring glance at the RTO, which was answered with a smile.

"Almost as much fun as Pashtia, sir," said the RTO.

Samsonov raised an eyebrow. "Boy," he shouted, "you're not old enough to have seen Pashtia."

"True, sir," the RTO agreed, unabashed. "But every-fucking-body talks about it enough that it sure as shit seems like I was there. Sounds like it was fun, too."

Samsonov shook his head and shouted, "This is all just a job boy, just a job."

While Samsonov and the RTO exited the narrow side door, the bulk of the helicopter load had begun pouring in a double file out the back, through the clamshells. Warrant Officer Ustinov bent low, fearful of walking his head into the rotor spinning overhead. He was followed by Martinson.

Even before the platoon finished forming, Samsonov was the first to rise. RTO in tow, he began shouting into his microphone.

Someone was listening. Ustinov saw his company commander off to his left. The captain arose, blowing a whistle and hand signaling for his platoons to begin moving up. The captain had one arm curled overhead, the other pointing a rifle toward the hacienda. In the center of the 12th Company soldiers of the Weapons Platoon, serving as riflemen, did short rushes to form a rough line. Light fire, so far overhead it must have been unaimed, came from the direction of the target building. No Volgans were hit.

Ustinov and Martinson, still crouched low to avoid the helicopter's spinning rotor, moved up as well, pushing and prodding their platoon to get on line. The chopper gave off a differently pitched whine, lifted a few meters higher, and then, tail boom up and nose down, moved closer to the hacienda. At a certain point the chopper leveled off again. Its guns began firing steadily at the house. With troops behind it, rockets were, for the moment, right out.

To his right front Ustinov saw a line of tracers reach out twice toward the ruins of some large building, then return fire to the house. To Ustinov's left, far past the company commander, two more helicopters swung over after dropping off the platoon charged with sealing off the far side of the main building. They then added their fires at right angles to those of the helicopters that had dropped off the bulk of 12th Company.

Somewhere ahead someone was screaming. Whether it was a woman, which it sounded to be, or a man so badly hurt as to scream like a woman, none of the Volgans could tell. Martinson thought it was a man, and muttered, "I wish someone would put that poor bastard out of his misery."

Ustinov heard a siren wail coming above and to his front, and moving right to left. This was joined and then overwhelmed by a sound like a huge sail being ripped in half by a giant. That was the rattle of multiple, wing-mounted heavy machine guns, firing together. More tracers, red unlike the Volgan's green ones, spattered the area immediately around the house. The cacophony of screams, half pain and half terror, increased.

Turning briefly to look behind him, Ustinov saw Samsonov, now standing upright, calmly walking forward and still speaking into his radio. Well, he never was much of a one for taking cover, thought the praporschik.

The siren returned, this time moving left to right. Rockets exploded against the Hacienda walls, ripping off stucco and shattering glass. Ustinov listened to his radio for a moment, then shouted for his platoon to advance at a walk. Several score Volgan paratroopers stood up and began to trot forward, the steady crackle of their rifle fire preceding them, beating down any possible opposition. Helicopters pulled away and moved to a nearby landing area to await the recall. The Volgan advance slowed only once, to allow the men to fix bayonets.

When the company was about sixty-five or seventy meters from the hacienda, the commander gave the preparatory command "Into the assault". Ustinov echoed it. The commander then shouted, "Forward!" With a tremendous cry of "Urrah!" the Volgans began to run toward the house, spraying fire from the hip.

* * *

The sound coming from their assailants was terror incarnate. Bombs and bullets might kill, but that "Urrah!" was the sound of cold steel and shrieking death.

"Surrender, Señor. We must surrender!" shouted Estevez' deputy, Ernesto, over the firing.

Estevez risked a glance out of a shattered window. He saw a scene from Hell, if Hell were lit by tracers and flares. There was a line of—What? Soldiers? They look like no police I've ever seen—running forward. Some paused briefly to use their bayonets on any live bodies or corpses lying on the ground. A burst of fire, probably unaimed, drove Estevez back down behind the cover of the solid wall.

He told his deputy "About a hundred men, big and white. Gringo's." I should have told that young fool to stay away from the Columbians. Oh, well, a gringo jail is better than dead.

Still, he hung his head in indecision. After a minute's thought, Estevez spoke again. "Ernesto, tie that doily to the end of your rifle. Here give it to me." Estevez then pushed the end of the rifle out the window shouting, in English, "We give up. Don't shoot." From down stairs came the blast of grenades. The house shook.

My God; what if they're not very interested in prisoners? Then Estevez remembered a small gift sent to him from Balboa and realized, My God, what if they are interested in prisoners?