The C47 banked steeply; I looked down the wing at a small cluster of wood framed, metal roofed buildings beside a red dirt road, and had a startling flashback of flying into the Special Forces camp at Mangbuk, in the Vietnamese highlands, over sixteen years before. Someone said it was the village at Rus Rus. At 11:03, less than five minutes later, we touched down on a straight stretch of the red dirt road a few miles away. "Suave," someone said: soft landing.
We climbed out and piled our gear off to the side of the road. We were immediately approached by a patrol of 3 or 4 Honduran soldiers, but they seemed neither surprised nor alarmed by our presence. I made a questioning motion with my camera, and one soldier stood obligingly at attention alongside the C47 while I took his picture. He seemed unconcerned that he was giving me photographic evidence of his government's knowledge of activities taking place on its soil which it claimed were not.
The area was a grassy savannah, flat to gently rolling, sprinkled with sparse young pine trees. We sat on our duffel for nearly three hours waiting for a vehicle; our circling over Rus Rus had been the signal for them to start toward us. We brushed aside cartridge casings (M16, AK47, and .308, which is the civilian equivalent of the 7.62mm NATO round used in the M14 rifle and M60 machine gun), stetched out, napped, talked, took pictures of one another.
Maco Stewart was perched on his duffel bag reading Robert Heinlein. Larry Pino was saying he remembered stories of his people, generations earlier, taking journeys as long as ten years to this part of the country in search of parrot feathers. I heard Shooter talking with a couple of the Indians, saying "I love it down here. There's no law..." except the gun, or except strength: something like that. Flaco told us we were only a few kilometers from the Nicaraguan border.
We were driven to a camp where we were directed to a large olive drab tent and told to claim a cot. I looked the place over and immediately grabbed a cot nearest one of the two tent openings.
"You got a thing about doorways too, huh?" It was Shooter, dropping his gear onto the other cot near the opening. We began to chat, discovering that we were both exMarines and Vietnam vets. He said he'd been there for a short time in the early 1970's. As we talked, he picked up an expensive looking black and chrome briefcase, set it on top of his gear, and snapped it open. Inside, in its custom fitted velvet nest, was an Israeli-made 9mm Uzi submachine gun, along with a folding stock and two long magazines. He took it out, snapped the heavy wire stock into place, slid a magazine into the receiver, slapped it home, and pulled back the bolt, chambering a round. He did all this with the easy dexterity of an experienced secretary dialing a touchtone phone. He also took from his duffel bag a pistol belt with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol in a black nylon holster with a Velcro flap. He loaded the pistol and strapped it on. Good system, he explained: two weapons firing the same cartridge. Easy resupply.
Before we'd settled in, it was decided that we shouldn't stay there after all. Back in the pickup, back on the red dirt road. We came to another, larger camp comprised only of tents, save one tiny pole structure with a barred door which had obviously been a jail cell. This was one of several such camps slightly removed from the Rus Rus river, but generally referred to by its name. The Indians thereabouts pronounced the name "Roos' Roos'," with a softly rolled initial r and a sibilant, near "sh" sound at the end. I took it to be an onomatopoetic mimicry of the sound of the river flowing.
The camp was unoccupied when we arrived. On the way in we passed a small sign that read HOGAR DEL TEA (HOME OF TEA). I remembered reading an article in Soldier of Fortune magazine about Tropas Especiales Atlánticas, which the article had said was MISURA's version of Special Forces. 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. 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."
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