Ambush

"The colonel!" Sergeant Rojas warned softly.

"Where?" said Lieutenant Montoya.

He looked around quickly, but all he could see was the red of the Sonora desert, glittering with heat. Often it was possible to make out cars on the International Highway that led to the American boundary, 60 miles to the north; but not today. Today all that was a sea of blinding light, reflected from blazing rocks and hot sand. To the southwest, from which the colonel might also approach, he could make out the line of low hills; but as for the rutted road that squirmed around them, or the village tucked in among them, they were invisible, drowned in light.

Then Rojas handed over his binoculars, and with them Montoya could see a car speeding along the road below the hills and the village, and a long trail of dust that hung suspended in the still, superheated air behind it. That a man could see it with the naked eye was incredible; but Rojas was a Yaqui Indian, and the Yaquis claimed to have the best eyesight of any people on earth.

"It's a car, but how do you know it's the colonel's?"

"Who else has four-wheel drive, and what could go there without it? I will leave the glasses with the lieutenant while I relieve the guard. The colonel may need them, sir."

"Why, thank you, sergeant!" said the lieutenant.

"For nothing, sir," said Rojas.

He gave his men an order and marched them up the slope. He wore a steel helmet and boots, and he had every button buttoned, yet he did not seem to be in distress. His flat, swarthy face -- an old man's hard, wise face although Rojas was only 24 -- had a slight shine, and there was a dark stripe under the sling of his carbine; but that was all.

Lieutenant César Montoya wore cool summer tans, but he did not know how much more of this he could stand. I'd die in what I make those men wear, he thought.

He waited at the company truck until the command car roared up in a cloud of dust. Out jumped Colonel Arriega. He returned Montoya's salute smilingly and offered his hand. He was a tall man, not handsome, but intelligent-looking, and almost as tidy as Sergeant Rojas.

"Ah, César -- anything to report?" he said.

"No, sir," Montoya replied. "There aren't enough soldiers in Mexico for this job. Rubio comes and goes at will."

"Exactly what we were to prevent!"

"I know, sir. It's my fault."

"If he can't meet his girl, if he can't get out for food and water and to do business, eventually he must come out with his hands up. If, that is, he's really there!"

"Oh, he's there, all right!"

"You were not so sure, last time."

"Neither was Sergeant Rojas, sir. He is now, and I've never known that man to be wrong yet."

"Rojas. He's the man you told me about, the subject of your little experiment in rehabilitative psychology?"

"That's the man. I don't ask how he knows Rubio is there. What's the use? I'm not sure he knows how he knows."

The truck and car had gone as far as they could, even with four-wheel drive. Ahead was a steep, boulder-strewn slope, which the colonel studied cheerfully, as though looking forward to a nice hot climb. "Well, let us see for ourselves," he said. "I see you have some new binoculars!"

"The sergeant's. He also has a new wrist watch. It's odd how such things turn up in a remote village, but if I asked Rojas to explain them, I'm sure he could."

"César, I like that man!" the colonel cried, clapping his hands together. "A good soldier must be a good forager."

"Rojas is that. But he's also a savage, a sadistic brute. And, Joaquín, such traits don't make a good soldier. They spoil him. They degrade the profession of arms."

"Ah, you idealistic intellectual!" Arriega said, affectionately. "Take care that you don't spoil a good petty officer with your experiments. Men vary in goodness. Rojas commands brutes -- therefore he must be more brutal."

"I command all of them," Montoya pointed out. "I do not find it necessary to be a brute."

"Because you have intellect. A little idealism and a little savagery -- I like the combination! It makes me think you'll bag Rubio yet. Shall we go have a look?"

Arriega led the way up the slope, using handholds on red boulders that were fiery to the touch. At one point, the guards Rojas had just relieved stood aside respectfully for them, vacating the trail to perch like foxes on the rocks. These were Yaquis, too -- short, muscular youths who, like Rojas, looked middle-aged in their stiff, green field uniforms. Their bony faces might have been carved out of brown Mexican ebony, for all the expression they showed. But these men were sweating. They were tough, but not as tough as Rojas.

The colonel smiled at them. "Men, it is hot!"

They saluted gravely. A corporal answered for all of them: "Yes sir. As the colonel says, it is hot."

The soldiers went on down to the truck that would take them back to company headquarters in the village. The two officers kept climbing. "I like the looks of your command, César," Colonel Arriega panted. "You whipped some bad men into shape in good time."

"Thank you, Joaquín," said the lieutenant.

"Lay hands on Rubio and you'll be a captain. Then you may be glad you had a top sergeant like Rojas. What a job! The politicians ought to start a few less difficulties, or finish more of them."

This was as close as the colonel would come to complaining about being given ignoble police work and what amounted to a prison company to do it. He had spent a year with the Japanese army and a year with the American. He had returned without his mustache, and with a determination to give Mexico the best army of its size in the world. He believed in his country, his men. Well led, he said, his Mexicans could stand against any fighters in the world.

He should have been a general long ago. Unhappily, he was an impatient man, and perhaps too dedicated. He had been too brusque with politicians whose sons wanted to be staff majors in Mexico City and "co-ordinate" electronic development. So he remained a colonel, one it was unprofitable to know.

César Montoya had nothing to lose by knowing him. César was a year older than his colonel -- 42 -- and was only a lieutenant. The two had been friends at the university. César had remained there to teach logic. He married a lovely girl from a wealthy family. They had two children, and 13 years of happiness.

It ended when she died suddenly. After that, nothing was worthwhile, neither teaching nor being taught, neither the exquisite perfection of logic nor the perfumed pattern of wit and humor they had so enjoyed together. He walked about in a daze. Sometimes he slept in his chair and came to his classes in yesterday's shirt. Often he did not sleep at all, and when he lectured, he mumbled and rambled.

Then Joaquín Arriega came to him shouting, "No more of this, my friend. You need work. Into the army with you! Oh, wait until you see the command I've got for you."

Now César had not seen his son and daughter in a year. They were with his wife's parents, getting loving care and a good education. He had learned how not to miss them too much.

As for this job, it was at least a challenge, particularly since it called for a captain's rank. These men were serving second enlistments, and the army did not want to lose their expensive training. But they were also men close to dishonorable discharge or prison. They were troublemakers, alcoholics, rapists, thieves, deserters, killers -- the dregs of the army.

They fascinated Montoya who had not known that such men existed. He found he could usually obtain obedience without shouting; but he could shout, too. It seemed to him that these men were only children, their toughness notwithstanding. One must never overestimate their judgment or underestimate their intelligence. It was quite a bit like teaching.

He had solved most of his problem when he discovered that about half of his command were Yaquis. He divided them into platoons that way and taught them to compete. The other platoon had been left at departmental headquarters where, he hoped, it was not getting into too much trouble.

It took them half-an-hour to reach the top. Here they looked across a rocky canyon, steep but not deep, and barren of all but a few cactus clumps. Beyond it rose brown hills, and beyond them the high, blue haze of the Sierra Madres. The village had looked bleak and forbidding when Montoya first brought his platoon of scoundrels there. But this! This view always stirred him deeply.

He gave the colonel the glasses, and just then Rojas materialized. Rojas was always military, never stealthy, yet he could pop up in the most disconcerting way. He came stiffly to attention until Montoya said, "At ease, sergeant. Show the colonel how you have deployed your men."

Rojas pointed. "There, there, there and there, sir."

The colonel studied the deployment, but he was also studying Rojas. "Excellent, sergeant!" he said. "Not even a lizard should be able to get past you."

"He got past us last night in the dark, sir," said Rojas.

"Your men saw him?"

"No, sir."

Rojas looked helpless. Montoya said, "Colonel, a Yaqui always knows when someone gets behind him. If this man says he got through, he got through, believe me!"

The colonel put the binoculars to his eyes and peered down to the bottom of the canyon, where stood a small stone house, little more than a hut. It had one large, low window with no glass, and a roof of greasewood brush that kept out the sun. Rain was not a problem here.

It looked empty, but beyond it and concealed by it was the mouth of a tunnel that led a hundred yards into the other wall of the canyon. This old gold mine, one of hundreds in this part of Sonora, had not been worked in years. But if Rojas was right, somewhere down there, either in the house or the cooler mine shaft, was a man of only 30, but prematurely, handsomely gray, by the name of Rubio.

Rubio was a smuggler, wanted in Mexico for smuggling illicit gold into Arizona, and by Arizona for smuggling in illicit narcotics. The police had chased him for years. Still, Rubio had been a relatively trivial problem until just a few months ago.

Lieutenant Montoya and his scoundrels had been called in after Rubio, singlehanded, had robbed two buses and killed one of the drivers. He stopped them on the open highway and stripped them at pistol point, in the old way. He did not get much, but what he got he spent freely.

Overnight he was a popular hero combining the most appealing traits of Robin Hood, Jesse James and Pancho Villa. So far, the government was officially ignoring his antics. Officially, this was only a training exercise to make tough men tougher, and not the pursuit of a man who could become, and might be now, a dangerously attractive subversive.

Of course, everyone in the village knew better. They had certainly heard about Lieutenant Montoya's two raids on the stone house and the old mines. The derisive stories, which were too accurate (continued on page 212)Ambush(continued from page 106) for comfort, meant that Rubio himself had been watching and enjoying the raids from somewhere rather close at hand.

The politicians had forbidden any more raids on the house. The army must not be made to look ridiculous! This was all right as far as it went. But neither could Montoya put guards over the house in the village where Rubio's girl lived, nor patrol the roads and trails Rubio used in going between the stone house and the village. The village people used these same roads and trails, and they were voters, they must not be offended. Catch Rubio, said the confidential order, in other words -- but take none of the firm, positive measures by which alone he could be caught!

"With permission," Sergeant Rojas said.

The colonel lowered the binoculars. "Speak."

"I will detail men with rifles to protect me and go myself to put a grenade through that window, sir. If he is not in the house. I will go myself through the window and put a few in the mine shaft, and finish Rubio."

The colonel looked at the lieutenant. Montoya said, "On the basis of my confidence in this man, I request permission to reinterpret my orders, sir."

The colonel shook his head. "No, lieutenant."

"Sir," Montoya said earnestly, "we must not look absurd, I know that. But nothing is more absurd to reasonable people than to call this a 'training exercise' when this man's own training confirms that Rubio is there."

They stood there a moment -- the tall colonel who loved only the army, the teacher turned officer and the young, hard, wise, old-looking sergeant with the hand-carved face. The colonel said, "The difficulty is that we're not dealing with reasonable people. We must account to politicians, who must account to people who would not take Rubio seriously if they had reason. No, lieutenant. No more raids!"

Rojas' face showed no disappointment. The army -- and Lieutenant Montoya -- had done a good job on him. He got drunk, but he had learned to report back on time. He fought, but he did not start fights. He stole and did not get caught, seduced girls and was proud of it. and took orders reasonable and orders unreasonable with the same stoic docility. What, Montoya thought, have I got here? A good sergeant. But Rojas could be more, if only -- --

"Let us go," the colonel said.

Rojas followed the officers at a discreet distance. At the car, Montoya and Arriega shook hands, and then the colonel started the long, hot drive back to departmental HQ. Montoya thought. poor Joaquín, another failure! I let him down ...

"With permission," said Sergeant Rojas.

"Yes?" said Lieutenant Montoya.

"If the lieutenant will return to where we were with the colonel, I have an idea I would like to explain, sir."

The climb was almost more than Montoya could face, but he could afford to neglect nothing. "Very well, but it had better be a good one, sergeant," he groaned.

He was dizzy with fatigue and heat by the time they reached the top again. He was almost tempted to exercise the privilege of rank and sit down, but he did not. He mopped the sweat out of his eyes and smiled at his sergeant. "All right, what is this idea of yours?" he said.

"It is known that Rubio has a dog, a nameless dog."

"Yes, that is part of the legend, that dog."

"A white dog."

"If that is so important, it's white."

"A white dog is easier to see at night. Last night my men caught it. It goes and comes, goes and comes. We have observed it and finally caught it. We hoped to find a note on its collar, but there was none."

"No? I'm afraid I don't understand you, sergeant."

"The dog was going to Rubio. When it returns, it will carry a note to the girl, that Trinidad, arranging a meeting. Then there'll be another trip to Arizona, or a robbery, or perhaps a proclamation. In the village, my men hear that there may be a proclamation soon."

Montoya swore. It was not like the days of the Revolution, when anyone could call himself a general, issue a proclamation and get thousands of poor, confused, hungry people killed. But a proclamation could still be very bad indeed.

"You mean let it go, catch it on the way out and read the note?" he said.

"Surely they use a code, sir," the sergeant said, in his gentle voice. "We have tried following the girl, and she does not go anywhere when we do. And while we watched her, Rubio came and went at his pleasure. Once he even went into the store in the village and bought cigarettes for himself and pearls for Trinidad and a candy bar for the white dog."

"I did not know about that."

"I did not wish to worry the lieutenant, sir."

"This is no way to do it! What's your idea?"

"Sir, if we turn the dog loose and it goes to the house, it means Rubio is there. One grenade, sir? Just one?"

"No! You heard the colonel. No raids!"

Rojas showed no disappointment. "There is another way. I will send for the dog, with permission."

He gave an order. Montoya heard it repeated softly by one of the men. In a moment, a soldier came carrying the dog in his arms, taking care not to show himself to anyone who might be watching from the house.

It was just a dog, neither long- nor short-haired, not large and not small. It looked uncomfortable, and Montoya thought it might bite if teased. But it was anything but heroic-looking, this faithful dog of the Rubio legend.

"Hmm! You're sure this is the right dog?"

"There is no doubt, sir."

"And you think it's trained to carry messages?"

"It requires no training, sir. Rubio keeps it tied until it's hungry and thirsty, and then lets it go at night. The closest food and water are in the village, and it knows that the girl, Trinidad, will feed it. After it has eaten, it wants Rubio again. What training does that take?"

"You may be right."

"We caught it with a piece of meat, sir. It had eaten, but she gives it only tortillas. I have personally learned that, sir -- only tortillas."

"Sergeant, I'm sure you're right! What's your other idea?" said Montoya.

Rojas held out his arms to the other soldier. "Give me the dog and return to your post," he said. He waited until the young man was out of hearing. He turned to Montoya.

"Sir, the dog is now well-fed. If we free it, it will go straight to Rubio. I have here a stick of dynamite, one percussion cap, one piece of wire, and eight inches of fuse that burns one foot a minute. That's forty seconds. Twice we have timed the dog with my watch It goes from here to the house in thirty seconds. In another ten, it will be in the house in Rubio's arms. Even if he sees the dynamite, he won't have time to dispose of it, nor can he run, because the dog loves him and will follow him."

Montoya stared, horrified, at the stick of dynamite, already capped and fused, and ready to be wired to the dog's collar. "If the lieutenant wishes to time it," Rojas went on softly, "my watch has a large second hand. Forty seconds, sir, and then -- boom! This is not forbidden, is it? This is not a raid!"

Montoya recovered his breath. "Sergeant," he said coldly, "have you discussed this plan with your men?"

"No, sir. It is no business of theirs."

"It is no business of anyone's! Don't mention this to a soul. We will forget it, understand?"

"No, sir. If we are to catch this Rubio --"

"We're soldiers, not murderers, and don't give me that blank look, you know what I'm talking about! We have been over this before. I've talked to you until I'm hoarse, well, this sort of thing is exactly what I meant. Now you listen to me, sergeant -- I'm going to make a soldier out of you whether you like it or not! If you can't get over these savage ideas, we'll make a private of you and give you time to think it over."

Montoya was almost shouting before he finished. The sergeant stood there, holding the dynamite in one hand, the dog under the other arm. "With permission," he said. "If there is a proclamation, there may be riots. If there are riots, many people may be killed. This Rubio is a criminal. Why must he be given a chance to have people killed who are not criminals?"

It was dangerous to argue with a man on his own terms, but Montoya had never feared a proposition in logic. "Rojas," he said, "governments must have higher standards than any individual. If we stoop to this, there will be still more proclamations, don't you see? If a government exploits a dog's love of his master to kill them both in such a cowardly way, it does not deserve people's loyalty. Now turn the dog loose. I want to observe its behavior myself."

Rojas put the dog down. It went trotting down to the stone house, around the corner and out of sight. "Thirty seconds," said Rojas.

"It's his dog, all right. You had a good idea within limitations, and I thank you for it within limitations," Montoya said. "Now let's forget it."

Unfortunately, he could not in the next few weeks. The main result of the colonel's visit was that his other platoon was sent down to join him. It had a new lieutenant, Montoya's subordinate, a city type with connections, and lazy. It had only one sergeant, a man almost as brutal as Rojas, a worse woman chaser, and far from as good a disciplinarian.

The platoon had gotten into bad shape. Montoya kept it busy drilling and withheld all promotions. That at least kept his junior lieutenant and sergeant occupied. He used his Yaquis to keep an eye on Rubio.

The proclamation, when it came, was a protest against the presence of troops in the village. Every misfeasance the men had ever committed was remembered, even some he had settled and forgotten weeks ago. Montoya sent a copy to Colonel Arriega, but he got no reply, indicating that the colonel was not forwarding it to his own commanding officer. It was a kindness to Montoya, but dangerous to Arriega, who should have been making life miserable for the man on the scene.

Once the dog was tied for five days at the girl's house. If Rojas was right, this meant that Rubio was away. Sure enough, there was a police raid in a town in Arizona and some shooting. No one was hit and no narcotics were seized. But soon the girl Trinidad had a new dress and blue shoes, and the white dog was no longer tied at her back door.

One evening, while Rojas changed the guard, the lieutenant was up on the ridge sitting and thinking what a bad officer he had turned out to be. To a man of reason, words have explicit meanings, and in this context, "bad" meant "failure." This being true, Joaquín was also a bad officer, thanks to Montoya. And, to a man of Montoya's disposition, this was unbearable to contemplate.

It had been an unusually hot day. There had been a fight between some men of the second platoon and some village men. The lieutenant had received a letter from his dead wife's parents, enclosing a picture of his children.

Of course it was always hot, and there were always fights, so these were irrelevant. But the picture of his children -- the boy especially, because he looked so much like his mother -- made Lieutenant Montoya think despairingly, a man is not made of metal, he's not a digital computer. Rojas is probably the better soldier. I should have let him dynamite Rubio and be done with it ...

He looked up then.

He did not know why Rojas chose this moment instead of some other -- could a Yaqui read minds, too? Certainly he had never understood how the sergeant's worked -- only that few words were necessary between them. There never was a noncom to anticipate an officer's wishes like this Rojas.

Rojas was nearby, sitting on a rock with the dog in his lap. There was nothing wrong with this. Montoya had told the men to make friends with the dog and had bought meat for it out of his own pocket. No telling when the dog would come in handy.

But he saw a flash of flame, and he remembered that lately Rojas had been sporting a new cigarette lighter. Odd how such things turned up in the village, but they did.

Rojas put the dog down. It trotted down the familiar path toward the stone house, but it ran oddly, as though disturbed by something unfamiliar. It kept shaking its head, although it kept running, too. It was almost too dark for Montoya to see what was wrong, but he really did not need to see. He knew.

He shot to his feet, shouting, "Sergeant, what did you do?"

Rojas was watching the hand of his watch. "It was not the lieutenant's fault, being disobedience of orders, sir," he said softly. "It would be well, I think, to close the eyes against the flash. I will give the lieutenant the time."

The seconds ticked away. The lieutenant could only stand there guiltily and let them pass. The dog's white coat stood out clearly in the brief desert twilight.

Five feet from the corner of the house the dog stopped to scratch, trying to get rid of the dynamite and its sputtering fuse. Rojas swore softly and unslung his carbine. He clacked open the bolt and held the gun ready.

More seconds passed.

"Now!" Rojas said.

Montoya did not close his eyes, but he saw the Yaqui close his. He was aware of a bright flare over his shoulder, and then a heavy concussion wave came rolling up to shake him violently, and debris showered down around him.

Rojas open his eyes and brought the carbine to his shoulder. Montoya turned as he fired, in time to see a tall, handsome man with a young face and gray hair lean out of the window to see what caused the explosion.

Montoya actually saw the bullet hole appear in Rubio's forehead. He fell half-out of the open window, with fumes curling up around him from the smoking pit where the dog had stopped to scratch. Rojas ejected the empty cartridge from his carbine and turned to his lieutenant.

To a logician with army training, his duty was clear. Governments, having higher standards than individuals, sometimes assigned duties to individuals that were not humanly possible to perform. Very well then, if they were done inhumanly, there was a still higher logic by which failure became victory and disobedience heroism. I cannot take this man back to my command. Montoya thought, nor can I shame Joaquín with this savagery ...

He pulled his pistol out and fired. The bullet hit the young sergeant in the middle of his chest, perforating his heart. His young-old face filled with the first real expression Lieutenant Montoya had ever seen on it. Why, the sergeant seemed to be thinking, as he died -- why, this officer is tough, tougher than I thought ...!

It was cooler at departmental HQ, although not on the paved grounds where the company had been paraded for the award of the medal. Joaquín Arriega, a general now, presented it to Rojas' elderly parents. Brothers and sisters, all younger than the dead soldier, were there, too. None of them gave way to grief. They were a stoical family.

Killed, the citation read, while defending the public peace, by an enemy of his country ... The old folks' pension may have helped to assuage their grief. Certainly they had brightened up when Montoya, now a captain, gave them the binoculars, wrist watch and cigarette lighter.

The company looked smart. The men were lean, hard and well-drilled. The two new lieutenants were career officers, and fine men. Nobody with connections would use them to serve with Captain Montoya and the toughest outfit in the army.

In General Arriega's office, the two old friends could speak freely for the first time. "You look very well, César," said the general. "I suppose one of these days, now that you have your health back, you'll be returning to the university."

Captain Montoya shook his head. "No, Joaquín, I can never go back there now, I'm afraid. It's the army for me!"

"I'm glad to hear you say that!" Joaquín cried. "We need men like you. Remember what I told you that time? I said you'd make your rank if you got Rubio. and I told you then that you'd be glad you had a sergeant like Rojas. Too bad you lost him before you could complete your experiment with him. I should like to have seen how it would turn out."

"That?" said Captain Montoya. "Oh, yes, that. It was a failure."