RUS RUS (PART 2)

     THIS POST BEGINS WHERE THE LAST ONE LEFT OFF, WITH A LITTLE OVERLAP FOR CONTINUITY. MACO STEWART WAS THE TEXAS OIL MAN WHO PAID FOR THE TRIP. HIS ASSOCIATE, MOSES FISKE, WAS ALONG AS A MOVIE CAMERAMAN. THE THREE "SECURITY" MEN, KNOWN AS "COLONEL FLACO," SHOOTER, AND "PERICO," WERE EITHER PAID BY STEWART, OR UNDER ORDERS FROM SOMEONE IN THE REAGAN GOVERNMENT, OR BOTH. BY THE END OF OUR EIGHT DAYS WITH THEM, I SUSPECTED BOTH. IN THESE STORIES, I SIMPLY CALL THEM "MERCENARIES."
   
     Fiske, Stewart, the four Indians and I  were given a military surplus pyramidal tent with canvas army cots. The three mercenaries moved into a nearby tent with steel-springed bunks. They all changed into camouflage fatigues, and all were now armed. Shooter had his Uzi and pistol, Flaco had a similar pistol, and Perico carried an M16 rifle.

     [The four North American Indians were Gary Fife, a Cherokee/Creek journalist; Mike Hunt, representing the Survival of American Indians Association; Larry Pino, of Zia Pueblo; and Bill Pensoneau, a Ponca. Though not an Indian, I was accredited to represent the Tachi people from near Fresno, California. I learned years after this trip that my great grandmother was a half Cherokee woman named Gatsie Helen Widders. The Tachi people accredited me on the recommendation of my friend Chris DiMaio, a Vietnam vet who is part Cheyenne.]
       
     Stewart immediately grabbed an entrenching tool, went outside the tent, and began energetically digging at the hard, rocky ground. He said that he had been in the Marine Corps – late in the Korean War, I believe – and was digging himself a fighting hole, just in case. Several Miskito Indians gathered around and looked on with bemused expressions. We came outside the tent to watch. Shooter walked up and stood with folded arms. He turned and said to me in a stage whisper, "This is better'n TV. They never saw a millionaire dig a hole before." He chortled. "Come to think of it, neither have I."

     We were treated to a canned speech by "Comandante Raúl," a twenty-nine year old MISURA officer named Raúl Tobías. I copied the speech, then translated it for the others. It began "We are here in the Republic of Honduras, 37,000 refugees. They are young volunteers with the idea of returning to their country, Nicaragua. Then the young men put forth their sacrifice and their last drop of blood to regain their lands. It is a difficult war against communism, but we are making that war...." and so on. It was obvious that he hadn't written the words, and that his delivery was rehearsed. Over the next several days, we would hear a number of such speeches, some totally canned, with crude prompts from behind by armed MISURA officers. Though much was canned, it was also obvious that these people had genuine complaints about the Sandinistas, who had indeed killed some Indians and driven many from their homes and burned whole settlements and killed or run off their livestock. Sandinista claims that they had been forced to clear the area because of CIA-sponsored FDN and MISURA raids across the border were also based in fact, but didn't cut much ice with the Miskito and Sumo people who had been driven from their homes.
     At dusk someone cranked up a small red Kawasaki generator, illuminating a single bulb in each tent. We ate whatever we could scrounge from our own packs. One of the Indians had brought pemmican, a traditional food for traveling. In one corner of the tent, I noticed several silhouette targets and about half a dozen LAWs, the Light Antitank Weapon that had replaced the earlier "bazooka," or 3.5" rocket launcher, used during WWII and Korea, and with which I had trained before Vietnam. The last thing I remember before falling asleep was watching a large grey spider, over two inches in diameter, crawling upside down along the underside of the tent roof. With that, the smell of the canvas, the putter of the generator, the feel of the canvas cot... it was Vietnam revisited. I felt strangely at home.

     Life in the camps reeked of the presence of the old "special operations" network of CIA officers and agents, military intelligence types, Special Forces people, "civilian" adventurers of various stripes, even the odd civilian fresh off a plane from Washington with a briefcase and secretive manner. Somewhere in the camp at Rus Rus I had noticed a slogan which was clearly an attempt to translate into Spanish one that was drummed into our heads when I went through Marine Corps boot camp, and which has been used to motivate generations of US recruits: "The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer." But in Spanish it had come out "Si es imposible lo haremos," or "If it is impossible we will do it," which to my ear sounded so odd that I imagined it evoking quizzical expressions among the Indians it was supposed to motivate.