By Martin F. Sorensen
Glade
Kalinski called out “Hi, Jim” to Pvt. James
Strickland, who was walking by on his way to the mess.
“Hello, to you, Glade”, came the answer back. “Are you
going out after dinner?”
“You
bet I am. Got any good ideas in this
town?”
“Well,
since we’ve been stuck in this place for six months, I’ve been to just about
everything there is.”
“How
about someplace special, that nobody knows about?”
“Hmm-if
nobody knows about it, then I sure don’t.”
“Hey,
I’m not going to take you there if it means that everybody will know about
it. Are you up for it?”
“What’s
so special about it?”
“What’s
special about it, my friend, is that you can do anything you want there, if
you’re willing to pay for it and if they like you enough. You can get just about as rough as you want.”
“Why
didn’t you tell me about this before?”
“I’m
telling you about it just as soon as I know about it. Now we better shut up. We don’t want other people in the mess to ask
too many questions.”
They went in to the mess and had their
dinner. Afterwards they told anybody
listening that they were going out to have a few drinks and celebrate nothing
in particular.
This
night, when he took Jim Strickland with him, they walked the ten blocks down
dark streets until they came to a cantina with dim lights, a few tables. A
small, dirty sign outside on the wall read La Morenita.
It did not have a bar. Three women were
sitting at the tables, talking to each other.
No one else was in the room.
When
the two Marines came in, the women looked at each other. One of them whom Glade had never seen before
got up and came over to him and put her arm out to shake his hand and smiled at
him.
This
girl with long dark hair said to him, in a mildly accented voice, “Hello, Señor, it is nice to see you.”
He
was surprised to hear her speak in English.
She had a very prominent smile, and a way of cocking her head as if she
were continuously checking you out, or was maybe just unsure. But her laugh came easy and seemed to come
straight from the abdomen. She was shy
in a way the other girls had never been.
She didn’t touch him as they had, either, the women who thought nothing
of putting their hand quickly down into the crotch.
He
thought at first that she was playing a game, pretending innocence. She asked
him if he wanted a beer and went into the back and brought one out for each of
them. They both sat down at the table,
and looked for a moment at Jim Strickland dancing with one of the girls.
The
girl looked at Glade and said “I’d like to have a beer with you, and maybe even
dance, but I will not go up to a room with you.”
“Well,
honey, I don’t know what you are doing in this place if you won’t go up to a
room with me.”
She
looked him directly in the eye now, and spoke deliberately. “What is your
name?”
“Glade.”
“Glade,
I know you come here with other americanos to make
love to a whore, which is what all soldiers do. But I would like to get to know
you better before I make love to you.”
“Honey,
I’m not sure I came here looking for a girlfriend.”
“No,
mister, and I did not come here looking for a boyfriend. I do not come here
every night because I work at La Flor and I go home
at night to my mother and father.”
“What
do you do at La Flor?”
“I
help them put the coffee beans in bags, and do paperwork in the plantation
office.”
“Well,
do you have a name?”
“Yes,
I have a name. It’s Maria.”
“Maria?
Now that’s a common name if I ever heard one.”
“My
real name is Concepción Maria Valenzuela, but you might not even be able to
remember all that.”
“Yeah,
I’ll stick with Maria.”
“Glade,
would you go for a walk? We can come
back and dance a little if you like?”
“And
talk about what?”
“I
don’t know anything about shooting guns and you don’t know how to make coffee.”
She
stood up, put on a shawl that she had lain over the back of the chair, took him
by the hand, and went towards the door.
“Here,
if we hold hands, your friend will not worry about you. Wave to him when we go out.”
Glade
turned around, but Strickland was nowhere to be seen, so he followed the woman
out the door. They went out into the
warm Central American breeze.
“How
far do you want to go, Maria?”
“Ah,
so you will call me Maria. Not far. You want to get back and find yourself a
girl for tonight and I want to get back to my little boy.”
“You
have a little boy?”
“He
is eight years old.”
“Where
is the boy’s father?”
“I
do not know where he is. He left us a
long time ago. That is why I am living
at home with my mother and father. And you Glade, do you have a wife waiting
for you?”
“Hell,
no, never been married. You know, Maria,
I wouldn’t worry about your little boy’s father - sometimes its better to have
no father at all.”
They
continued walking in silence past a few houses.
He wanted to take her hand in his, but just as he felt the impulse, she
turned and looked at him.
“You
must think this is a very backward country.
We are so poor that we need soldiers from another country to keep
order.”
“Well,
I don’t know anything about politics, Maria.
I joined the Marines because I wanted to fight, and it looks like I’m
going to get a chance one of these days.”
“Why
do you think that, Glade? It has been very quiet around here.”
“I
don’t know exactly, but we are going to start moving out to places where
Sandino and his rebels have been. I hope
we do run into him because I would like a chance to show how well I can fight.”
“Fighting
can be very dangerous, I think.”
“Yeah,
you are sure right there.”
She
turned to him and said, “I must go home now, Glade, and you will want to go
back and find yourself someone to make love with tonight. But I ask you if I can see you again.”
“Yes,
Maria. When can we meet again?”
“This
Sunday. Can you come? To the plaza in
front of the cathedral at noon.”
“Yes
I’ll see you there.”
She
turned, and walked away into the night.
He turned back to the cantina.
When he went in, Strickland was sitting lazily at a table drinking a
beer.
“Come
on, Jim, let’s go back. Tonight’s not my
night. Let’s grab a couple of beers to take back with us.” They got up and went back to the barracks in
silence.
The
next Sunday, Glade went by himself to the plaza in front of the cathedral
around noon. He saw Maria standing next
to a little boy, about 8 or 9 years old by his size, who held his mother’s hand
tightly, but smiled at Glade when he looked up and saw his mother doing the
same thing. The plaza was full of people
in the hot, noonday sun, going in and out of the cathedral. There were many women, many elderly women in
black lace veils, who stood in various groups around the plaza.
Maria
bent down to look her son in the eye.
She put her hands on his shoulders, and said something to him in
Spanish.
Not
many men were in evidence, although a few stood by themselves or in small
groups of animated discussion. They did
not stop their talk when they saw the American come on to the plaza, but Glade
felt their eyes on him. A few of them stopped talking when he made his way over
to Maria and she held out her hand.
It
occurred to him that she was a well-known whore standing in front of the house
of God, and he thought to himself that they would be jealous of the attention
this whore paid to an American man who could easily pay an impressive sum for
her services.
When he reached her, he briefly looked around
him to make sure he was noticed by some of the men, and then he kissed her
gently on her cheek, and stepped back.
“Who
is this young man?” He knew, of course,
that the boy would be her son, and he wondered if one of the men in the plaza
might be the father. To him, all these
men in their dark hair and mustaches, with their dark eyes, looked very
similar. And very sinister. He imagined for a moment that he had a rifle
and could point it at any of them he wished and pull the trigger and watch the
body falling to the tiles on the plaza.
Maria
put her arm around the young boy’s shoulder, looked down at him, and said,
“This is my son Juan. Juan, dile Buenos Dias.”
She
looked up once again at Glade.
“He
does not speak any English. But it would
be very nice if he heard you say Buenos Dias in Spanish to him, Glade. He loves Americans, and I think I am sad to
believe that maybe one day he will grow up and go away and become a Marine like
you. I am afraid I have made a picture of you as very brave.” The boy looked up
at Glade and smiled.
Glade
for the first time in his weeks in Nicaragua looked in the eyes of a person and
felt some kinship. Here was a boy
without a father. His mother was a woman not like the others that he met in the
cantina. This woman was a mother who was not intimidated by her husband. These two facing him in front of the
cathedral were no longer so strange to him.
“Buenos
Dias, Juan,” he said, in his drawl-like manner of speaking the few Spanish
words he knew. He would have said
something more, that it was nice to meet him, or that he's sorry Juan’s father
isn’t around but he’s probably a fucking bastard anyway, and I know exactly how
you feel.
Maria
pressed her hand against Juan’s back, and the young boy put his hand on Glade’s
arm.
“Glade,”
she said, “why don’t you come with us to a bakery and we will have some good
cake and then go for a walk.”
She
moved forward, and the three of them walked across the plaza towards one of the
streets leading out from the other side.
They
went only a few doors down the street and entered a small bakery called Panaderia Lopez, bought some pastry for Juan, and went back
outside. They spent the next two hours
in the neighborhood of the plaza, with Maria holding one of Juan’s hands and
Glade the other.
She
pointed out the palace of the archbishop, of the mayor, of the president, of
the civil guard, the only building he found of interest.
He
entertained himself studying the guards in front of some buildings, as he
played out in his imagination a quick draw and exchange of pistol gunfire, each
time ending with the guard splayed out against the guard shack or the wall with
a large red splotch on his chest. At the
presidential palace with the more elaborately dressed guards, he tapped Juan on
the shoulder, and pointed to the guards, and the boy looked up at him and
smiled and nodded yes.
He
listened politely as she spoke of the history of Nicaragua, of the Spanish
conquistadors and the country’s liberation, as she pointed out the baroque and
renaissance aspects of the architecture.
After
they had seen the buildings in the neighborhood of the plaza, she told Glade
she had to get back home to help her mother.
She promised to meet him sometime at the cantina. They parted company.
Two
days later at the cantina, Glade saw her come in the door.
“Hello,
Maria. I’ve been waiting for you. We should have set a time to meet.”
“Yes,
I’m sorry about that. I have to be
careful with my son, you know. We both
like you very much, but you and I are only friends and I don’t want him to be
hurt.”
“Well,
I sure like him a lot. And you, too,
Maria. More than you seem to like me, I
think.”
“You
know, Glade, I already have told you that I am not a whore. I don’t go to bed with men for money, even if
they are Americans and have a lot of money.
I am not from a convent, either.
If you want to make love to me, you have to get to know me and care
something for me, and then you will find that I am very passionate. I want to
make sure you know that I am not just going to be your fuck tonight.”
“Hey,
wait a minute, Maria. I don’t want to go fast, maybe, but I want to go in the
right direction. I do want to know more about you, but I don’t know how long
I’m going to be here in Managua.”
He
sensed that she was a woman of personal pride, and a woman who needed a strong
man. He looked into her eyes as she stared at him, and he felt that she was
looking at him as a man, a man who could be a hero for both herself and her
son. He was sure she loved him, especially
because she did not want to be treated as a loose woman.
“I’m
sorry, I feel angry because we meet in this cantina. Why don’t we go somewhere else? Lake Managua is not far from here and it is
quite beautiful at night.”
He
agreed, and they left the cantina, and once again walked along the streets
until they came to the plaza with the cathedral in it.
“The
lake is just on the other side of the government buildings,” she said. He followed her across the plaza and down a
narrow street. They quickly found
themselves on an embarcadero with ornate railings and lampposts. The water lapped against the rocks below the
railing. The moon was visible in
scattered moving reflections on the surface.
They
moved hand in hand past a few houses with yellow window light.
“My
son likes you very much. Well, it is
more than liking. And I think you have some feeling for him, too, don’t you?”
“Yeah,
I must admit that I like the little kid, especially since he doesn’t have a
father.” He looked out over the water at
the faint blinking lights in the distance.
Over to the right, a small boat bounced up and down with the waves. He put his arm around her shoulder. “You know, Maria, it means a lot to me that
you didn’t want to go to bed right away with me, like the other girls. I would really like to get to know you
better.”
“Glade,
I do really want to go to bed with you.
But I will not do it in that cantina, and I must tell you something
else. I am not interested in making love
if there is no future between a man and a woman. I can only have love if I find a man I can
believe in, a very strong man.”
Glade
took his cue, put his arms around her, and gave her a kiss full on the
lips. She put her arms around his waist,
kissed him back, and pulled him gently towards her. They then walked for a few yards, with her
head leaning against his shoulder.
“I
will wait for you, Maria. I didn’t think
I could say this to anyone, but I love you.”
The
Glade and the platoon of Marines were called out from Managua to a little
village, following reports that guerrillas were near the town and were
threatening villagers who worked for the American company at La Flor coffee plantation.
The
road out to Boaca was just barely two lanes, with
thick green vegetation up close to both sides of the road. There were a dozen
Marines in two trucks who jumped down into the dust of the deserted central
square. The hot sun cast strong dark
shadows.
Glade
looked around the plaza, from which radiated several narrow streets of dirty
white buildings that were followed garishly painted huts and then the thick
green foliage. The plaza was large,
seemed too large for a town like this, maybe fifty yards on a side. There was a
fountain in the middle of it, but with no water coming out.
One
of the streets was wider than the others, and went out a long distance, maybe a
couple of hundred yards into the jungle. You could see that it ended abruptly,
a cliff, with the land visible several hundred feet below, and layers of dark
green hills shading off in the distance.
There
seemed nothing to fear. No one in sight.
They had heard stories of guerrillas who came in out of the jungle at
night, or who came into villages when no American Marines were near, and these Marines
would have been heard for miles with the deep roar of their trucks. So there was no reason to think anything
would happen here. They were just there
to make a show of force. There was no
enemy force here, no band of rebels.
Glade
jumped quickly down from the back of the truck, ran over to a small house, and
kicked in the door and pointed his rifle in.
“What
the hell are you doing, Kalinski?” shouted Capt. Tepps. “Get back over here.”
Kalinski turned around and smiled and walked
back over to the truck. Tepps had quickly descended from the truck. He looked Kalinski
right in the eyes.
“You
fucking idiot, are you trying to get us all killed? Just because you don’t see anybody doesn’t
mean they aren’t there. If you want to
kill yourself, then go over to that church and see what’s in it.”
Four
men walked slowly and cautiously over to the church. There was one small door in front, and a path
leading around either side of the building.
To the right was a small single-story residence with one window and a
door on the front and on the left a small outdoor shrine to the Virgin Mary. It
was about five feet tall, a round cupola with a small statue in the middle of
it, and a water faucet beneath the statue.
Glade looked at James Strickland, both with their rifles
pointed in front of them.
“Well, Jim, figure there’s any virgin putas
in that church? Maybe we’ll have a real good time here.” He looked around the plaza, disappointed that
there was no enemy.
“No,
Glade, I think this here church is gonna be empty,
‘cause everybody has left this miserable little rotting town.”
“Well,
I’ll tell you what, I’m gonna kick the damn door
open. Maybe we ought to just get the Browning automatic rifle and shoot the
shit clean out of it before we do anything.”
“I
don’t think so. We’re not supposed to
ruin more than we have to and we haven’t had anybody shooting back at us yet.”
“Well,
Jim, it may just be about to happen.”
Glade
moved just to the right of the door. He put his back to the wall, moved his gun
to his left hand, and with his right hand he reached over to the doorknob,
turned it slowly, and then quickly pulled the church door opened. The others crouched down in the dirt with
their guns all pointed at the door.
Glade
turned in to the door, lowered his rifle, and pulled the trigger twice in
succession fast. The loud retort was
followed by the sound of plaster breaking up and crashing to the floor. Then there was silence.
“Kalinski, what the shit are you trying to do?” yelled Capt.
Tepps. “Who told you to start shooting up the place?
We’re here to try to calm things down, not to start some goddamned battle. We still have to make it up the road to the
coffee plantation, and for all we know Sandino himself now knows where we are.”
“There’s
nobody in there, Captain”, Glade shouted back, “I’ll go in and see what’s
inside. I’ll be careful, as long as you guys cover me.”
Glade
took the Browning and pointed it inside the door, where he could see the pews
and the altar of the small church. They
hadn’t put any conquistador gold into this place, he thought. There were about 10 pews, and then a small
altar with a grotesque and garish painted wooden crucifix on it.
Glade
walked in and looked to the left, and saw the statue of St. Francis in two
pieces lying on the floor at the base of the wall, with the eyes of the saint
staring oddly straight at him. It startled him.
He took a step backwards, and was momentarily to the right inside of the
door, against the wall.
He
put the safety on the rifle and leaned it against the wall. He moved to the
door to announce to the others that the church was empty. An arm came from
behind, around his neck and choking him, and he felt a sharp knifepoint
sticking into his flesh just above his right hip and another one just under his
ear.
A
hand reached out and took hold of his rifle, and slowly pulled it away. He was
quickly forced to turn around, where he saw four men dressed like peasants.
Dark skinned, with the ubiquitous Nicaraguan mustaches, their eyes wide open
with fear, they crouched in the corner of the church, below the level of the
window, each carrying a rifle, and a machete tucked into the belt. The man
holding him forced him out in the doorway.
“Tell
the Americans to not move,” he said, “or you will be cut to pieces and they
will all be killed by others hidden in the jungle.” He jabbed the knifepoint
hard against Glade’s throat.
“Just
tell them to not move”. Glade did as he
was told, and the man pulled him back from the door, and forced him to the
floor. They moved Glade along the wall, past the altar and out the back
door.
Once
outside, they were in a very small courtyard. There were graves with wooden
crosses on them, and a small garden of shabby roses. They moved quickly out a gate in the back and
were immediately in the thickness of the jungle. The four peasants went in
single file. The last one held the Browning against Glade’s stomach. Someone
shouted in the jungle ahead. The man pulled the trigger, and when it wouldn’t
fire, he dropped it, and the four men disappeared into the jungle. Glade picked
the rifle up, took the safety off and fired two rounds into the leaves. Then he
turned around and started walking, pushing large leaves out of the way until he
found himself on the road facing the Marine truck with rifles facing him.
“What
the hell, Kalinski, we almost shot you full of holes,
coming out of there like that,” Captain Tepps said.
“Hey,
Captain, I just fired and they ran off scared shitless.”
“You
think they ran off,” Tepps said.
“Hell,
there’s none of them around any more,” Glade said.
As
they stood there talking, with the other soldiers still watching them from the
truck, a shot rang out. The Captain
opened his eyes wide, felt his back with his hand, and dropped suddenly to the
ground as blood spurted out his back.
Everyone inside the truck ducked.
Strickland turned quickly and sprayed a hail of bullets into the jungle.
Then he ran over, and with two other Marines gently lifted the Captain up and
carried him back around to the truck bed and lifted him up on it.
He
went very fast back around to the cab, climbed in, and watching both left and
right, continuously, he used the radio to contact headquarters in Managua. When he had finished, he told the driver to
go as fast as he could to the corner of the plaza by the church, and turn the
truck around with the side facing the plaza.
When the truck stopped, he ordered everyone out between the truck and
the church.
“Now
listen,” Strickland said, “you are going to get some duty you never planned
on. They are going to fly in a plane to
take the Captain out and give us more ammunition up here. The problem is
there’s one pilot and one plane, and it turns out this guy doesn’t have any
brakes.”
“What
do you mean he doesn’t have any brakes?
How the hell is he going to stop. Let’s get out of here.”
“Uh-uh,
we can’t do that. That would be to let
Sandino and his men know that we won’t stand and fight. You know Marines don’t run. Let me tell you
what’s going to happen. He’s going to
land on this street here, and you are going to have to clear it up for him.”
“God,
Strickland, do you see that sign down there, not very far away, it says ‘Gasolina’. You got
any idea what it’s going to be like if the pilot runs into that with your
plane. We’d better off taking our chances with the captain driving back to
Managua.”
“Well,
we don’t have any choice, he’s on his way. And to be honest, the way he’s going
to avoid going over the cliff is that you are going to run out there on the
street and stop him. Then, when we’ve unloaded the supplies, and put the
Captain inside, we can turn him around, and he can fly back out the way he
came.”
“What
if they start shooting at him from the jungle around here?”
“We’re
just going to have to take that chance.
We won’t all be hanging on the airplane, and when he’s all turned
around, we can fire into the jungle to make sure that anybody around will stay
out of sight. Now there are about twenty of us, so half will ride shotgun and
the other half better get started cleaning out the road, we don’t have much
time for all the things we gotta do.”
The
corporals sorted the men out and they began the work of cleaning the
street. There wasn’t much debris, but
they had to check a lot of places where there were plants growing in the middle
of the road and they had to check there were no potholes that could ruin the
plane’s chances of surviving the landing.
They figured if they could get the plane to land near the center of the
plaza, that would give them about twenty or twenty-five yards before it started
down the road into the jungle towards the cliff. They stood there for a second and stared at
the little gas station, and a small desolate-looking turret with a gas hose
standing a few feet in front of it.
“All
right, we don’t have much of a choice.
We’ve got to put something in front of that damned thing, rocks or
anything, and then we’re going to have to blow up the front of the two houses
across the street so the plane can swing wide away from the gasoline pump.”
A
couple of men jumped up into the truck and grabbed two satchels from up near
the cabin, and jumped down with their guns pointed at either side of the road
towards the houses and the thick underbrush and plants between. They knocked down the doors of the houses,
and made sure nobody was inside, then inside each house divided up the satchel
on either side of the door. When they
had laid out the fuse across the street, they got set to light it.
Honyust yelled, “Jesus, don’t light that
god-damned thing right now. What the
hell’s going to happen to the gasoline pump if something hot smashes into
it? We better figure out a way to
protect it.”
“We
could move the truck up against it,” someone said.
“No,
that won’t work. What if the truck gets
stuck there, then the road won’t be wide enough for the plane to get by?”
“Hell,
the damn thing is only four feet high.
Let’s just pile some doors in front of it, and rocks in front of the
doors and that ought to take care of it.”
“Good
idea, get to it.”
So
they went to several houses and took off the doors, each time making sure
nobody was inside, quickly gaining the conviction that nobody was at home in
this town at all. They put the doors in
front of the gas pump, tied them around with rope, and piled rocks in front of
the wood. They then set off the fuses,
which burned slowly across the street, and detonated small explosions in the
two houses.
When
the dust settled, they took sledgehammers and broke up pieces, and took them
out to the side of the houses, and made enough area free that they believed
they had enough room for the pilot to maneuver around the pump. They then walked back to the plaza and
waited, with a few men posted at various places for security.
Glade
was out in front of the truck, with his rifle pointed out to the center of the
plaza, towards the water fountain.
As
they looked up into the sky, they saw far off into the distance, across a long
valley with steep hills on both sides, the lone biplane moving silently and
slowly towards them. As it moved closer,
they could see the pilot looking left and right as he approached. He made one slow turn around the plaza,
waving to them as he flew in a steady drone overhead. Honyust went out to
the center of the plaza and caught the pilot’s attention, and pointed down to
where the gas pump stood.
The
pilot made another turn around the plaza and then flew low overhead and nodded,
and made one final long leg down towards the valley to make his approach.
Strickland left a couple of men in the truck with the captain, and positioned
the rest at three places along the makeshift landing strip, one before the
gasoline pump, one after, and a third at the entrance to the plaza.
The
pilot maneuvered the plane gracefully lower in its flight path, aiming to the
side of the plaza where the wide street led out. He suddenly made one quick
left bank, and as he passed over the jungle, lifted his left hand out of the
cockpit, and dropped three small objects in quick succession. The men watched as the small canisters
descended quickly to the jungle floor, and heard three explosions. The plane circled again around the plaza, and
then dipped down and began to approach the ground for a landing.
As
he flew lower and lower it became clear he would be able to land at the far end
of the plaza, and have twenty or thirty yards to slow down before hitting the
road with the gasoline pump on it. The
men stood ready. The Vought Corsair made
a final, slow dip down on to the plaza. The pilot stalled the plane ten feet
off the ground, and it dropped on to the plaza, made one great bounce and then
settled on to the dirt, the tailskid dragging clouds of dust across the
plaza.
When
he reached the edge of the plaza, two men jumped quickly out and held on to the
edge of the wing on either side, and two more nimbly caught on to the tail and
the plane slowed rapidly down. Several
more men moved in and held on the fuselage by gripping the edge of the
cockpit.
All
of them were running as fast as they could and trying to slow the plane down,
at the same time they all looked down to where the gasoline pump was. As they approached it, the plane had slowed
down to where all the men were hanging on to some part of the wing, and the
plane slowly turned right to avoid the pump, and came to a full stop ten yards
further.
Strickland
ran over to the pilot. The pilot saluted
him “Good morning. Lieutenant Schiltz at your
service.”
“We’re
sure glad to see, you Lieutenant. The captain’s in the truck over in the corner
of the plaza. Where do you want to have
us turn you around? And why did you drop
those bombs?”
“I
dropped the bombs because I didn’t want any surprises on that side of the
plaza. So now, move me down to the end of the road and turn me around and bring
the captain down here. Some of you can
unload the supplies in the meantime. When I start to take off, have them fire
into the jungle.”
“You
heard what the ace said, you guys. Take
up positions in the plaza facing this so-called runway and get ready to give
him some cover when he takes off. Kalinski, you’re
the hotshot, you go out by the water fountain, and when the plane takes off,
you start firing into the jungle. You’re the point man. Got that?”
“I
sure do, Sir, ain’t nobody going to stop this
takeoff, Sir.”
“We’re
depending on you, Kalinski. Don’t fuck up.”
“You
can depend on me, Sir.”
They
brought the captain back to the airplane in the truck, then backed the truck
out to the plaza and placed it again in the corner. Glade took his place in the center of the
plaza, waiting to hear the plane taking off.
He pointed his rifle into the dense jungle and fired off a round.
“Hey,
idiot, don’t shoot until the goddamned plane takes off” Strickland shouted.
Glade
kept his rifle pointed into the jungle.
He thought he heard rustling among the leaves, but he couldn’t be quite
sure. The pilot started revving up his
engine. He stared intensely at the
foliage as he heard the plane coming his way.
Suddenly a head with a bandanna covering the face showed between the
leaves, and the person stepped out onto the plaza. Glade pointed his rifle. The rebel quickly took off the bandannas and
Glade stared into the face of Maria Valenzuela.
“Goddammit, Kalinski, shoot”
shouted Strickland. Glade looked back and then looked at the woman again.
“Shoot,
or I’ll shoot you!”
Glade
stood there frozen. Suddenly twenty
shots rang out. The woman leaped
backward like a cloth doll, jerked violently by a giant invisible hand, dropped
her pistol in mid-air, and threw her arms out on both sides and landed on the
plaza in a small, bloody cloud of dust and dirt. The Marines unloaded their rifles on the
jungle in an enormous racket. The
biplane’s engines roared and it came out on to the plaza trailing a cloud of
dust that obscured the jungle next to it, and veered to the right and took off,
clearing the fountain with only a few feet to spare, and climbed up into the
sky.
Strickland
went out to where Glade was standing, then called two men over.
“Put
Kalinski under arrest for disobeying an order and
endangering all of us.” He pointed a finger at Glade.
“You’re
going to get a god-damned court-martial for this.”
Glade
was taken back to the barracks and put under guard while paperwork was prepared
to start court-martial proceedings.
There were no legal officers in Nicaragua, so the military commander decided
on sending him back to the United States on the next naval vessel headed
through the Panama Canal.
While
he was on the ship, Glade cut both his wrists, and was found unconscious in his
bunk. Upon his return to the States he was given a medical discharge.