A Rendezvous in Haiti Read Online Free Page B

cross on foot and hike up, leaving the horses well out of range with Flanagan’s squad. Sergeant Flanagan was a former groom who had joined the Marines when his livery stable became a garage. McAllister liked the man and felt a kinship, and left one of the four Browning Automatic Rifles with him. Reassuring weapons: thank God for the BAR.
    The platoon would climb eastward but they would be in rain forest and the sun was not a factor. Six men crossed while the rest of the platoon covered them; when the far bank was secure the platoon followed. McAllister deployed them in two columns with a rifleman at point and another trailing, and flankers out wide, and the two laden mules at the center.
    They proceeded with caution—but with safeties on , by God. The village had promised peace and loyalty, and requested gifts; and while this rendezvous—negotiated by dubious Haitian gendarmes with inscrutable dark warriors and village elders—exposed the Marines to disastrous betrayal, Deux Rochers and its people came first. McAllister had seen more than one scampering child or bewildered crone shot to death, the Marine sighting swiftly through brush, or a mist of sweat, or a haze of ground heat, and the victim tumbling.
    With luck they would be away in an hour and camped on the plain by sunset. Luck. Around the neck Haitians wore little bags full of luck, ouanga bags they called them, and when McAllister stripped a corpse and opened one of these bags, he found shiny colored pebbles, petrified lizards’ tails, dried hummingbird feathers, a lead bullet, unidentifiable tiny bones, a small wooden crucifix. Luck.
    He inhaled the mingled odors of sweat, mule, scrub. His scouts were out wide, his men were veterans. His eyes ached: every bush was—well, an ambush. Fine time for jokes. He would tell Caroline when she arrived. Fine time to think of Caroline. Still, if he was to die he would like to be thinking of Caroline. She had honored him with plain talk, a steady eye and an honest blush. A hell of a thing, love.
    Not now! His eyes roamed a screen of trash trees. A thrush screeched and fled, a lizard scurried. Easy enough to imagine a skirmish line of Cacos only yards away; to imagine a volley, half a platoon of Marines wiped out in seconds. It never happened. Only at fords. But the Cacos were learning.
    A fat black bee buzzed toward the lieutenant like a lazy bullet, and veered away.
    Women and children. McAllister had returned from Belleau Wood with vivid memories of anonymous entrails and detached limbs—who was who? friend or foe? Waste, waste. In war was much waste. He had become a stingy killer.
    Life was too sweet. Love, he decided, did not improve an officer.
    Slowly and in silence the platoon worked uphill, scanning the slopes, noting unconcerned birds and lizards; pausing for long minutes to catch any break in the rhythm of birdcall and rustle.
    McAllister’s shirt was soaked, his boots were leaden. He was twenty-nine years old and breathing hard. The climb was heavy going for a horse Marine, and when Clancy flung up a hand McAllister was glad of the pause. In the hot silence a cuckoo whistled; when a breeze whispered through the forest, and leaves rustled, it was like the sudden passage of a summer storm.
    Evans pushed through the brush. “Looks good.”
    â€œIt does. Quiet but not too quiet. Push on for the village but have your trailer keep a sharp watch behind. Safeties off now, but what I said about women and children still goes. Questions?”
    â€œNone, sir.”
    And Evans melted into the brush, replaced by Clancy.
    â€œTell Dugan,” McAllister said. “Have him pass the word to the rear: sharp watch fore and aft. Then come here to me. You’re my runner.”
    Clancy said, “You need a point man, sir.”
    â€œI’m your point man, Clancy. Now do it.”
    No one came at them from flank or rear, and quietly they closed in. Like many Haitian villages Deux