Читать книгу Dead Men Don't Lie - Jackson Cain - Страница 22

Chapter 11

After a breakfast of carne de cabra, frijoles, and tortillas, Mateo took Richard outside. The sun was at zenith and burned in the cloudless sky like a white-hot poker. The temperature was over 105 degrees, and the air was as dry as a cinder block. Before them lay the fort’s huge square parade ground. Three hundred yards on edge, it teemed with companies of rurales, seemingly frenzied but actually engaged in disciplined activity. Dozens of companies of soldiers—over five thousand men in all—in sweat-stained gray uniforms and matching forage caps practiced close-order drill. Under the stern, unblinking eye of obscenity-bellowing drill sergeants, they shouted out their sweltering cadences. Companies of recruits in sweat-soaked fatigues were performing interminable push-ups, jumping jacks, knee bends, sit-ups, and leg lifts—roaring out the numbers of their repetitions. Other companies practiced field-stripping and reassembling their rifles. Whenever a company finished, the drill sergeant ordered them to take a half-dozen laps around the field.

Surrounding the parade ground were a score or more of huge, whitewashed, four-story adobe buildings. Half of them, Mateo told Richard, were barracks in whose bunk beds the base’s soldiers slept each night.

“Each of those barracks,” Mateo said, “holds hundreds of enlisted men. At night, we stack them like cordwood—in triple bunk beds.”

“And you dragoon all of them into your army like you did me.”

“We practice universal conscription in Sonora, and, yes, if the men resist, we enlist them by force.”

“I’ve died and gone to hell,” Richard muttered.

“No, we just walked past the guardhouse. That’s hell.”

“Lovely,” Richard said.

“Off to the right are two mess halls. The men eat there three times a day.”

“Eat what?”

“The enlisted men live on frijoles and tortillas. The latrines and showers are out back.”

“The enlisted men must need a lot of showers the way you work them,” Richard said, glancing at the perspiring soldiers on the field.

“Amigo, that is not possible. We suffer serious water shortages.”

“Beans and body stink,” Richard said. “Great.”

“We ride ’em hard and put ’em up wet,” Mateo said, a grin flickering under his black, downward-sweeping mustache.

Mateo pointed out offices, the dispensary, the officers’ quarters.

“What are those buildings like?” Richard asked. “The ones where you and the officers sleep?”

“Private rooms, all the showers you want.”

“The food?”

“Pollo, carne, and queso frijoles, arroz, mangos, café, cerveza, and tequila.”

“And women?”

“Muchas mujeres. You can even bring them into your rooms for the night.”

“And the enlisted barracks stink really bad?”

“The smell could drive a zopilote [buzzard] off a shit wagon.”

“You suggesting I should enter Officer Candidate School?”

He shrugged. “It’s a thought. But come, amigo, let us take a take a brief stroll.”