Once it was felt the last chopper was far enough away, an army mop-up crew, hidden in the surrounding bush, opened fire on the distracted guerrillas watching the final take-off. Within five seconds they’d mowed down all of the visible rebel ground crew. The chopper turned around and started heading back to pick up their sniper crew. They planned to wipe out the guerrillas, recover the guns and ammo and rescue the children.

But when the snipers rose out of their positions and stormed the farmhouse, the soldiers were themselves cut down from behind by Carbonell’s child brigade who had crept up behind them. 

As they attempted to flee, some of the mop-up crew were driven by gunfire into a recently laid minefield. 

At the same time, from inside the house, Carbonell, expecting treachery, was ready with the rocket launcher he used to blow the chopper out of the sky, sending shrapnel and the spinning rotor through the air like a whirlygig. The blades ripped the trees to spinach as his team was cut down by sniper fire. The body of the chopper dropped into the trees where it flared into a fireball. Pieces of it shot out in a spray of shredded parts that decapitated one of the Carbonell’s men who’d survived the shooting. Small fires were burning in a wide ring around the crash site.

…

Carbonell’s child back up crew outflanked the stranded army snipers. Carbonell never trusted anyone to deal fair and square. Especially when the stakes were this high. He bought that there was considerable corruption in the army and he understood why it was in the army’s best interest to secretly prolong the war. He was sure from a lifetime of battling the army that many top-ranking officials had to be profiting from the war and didn’t want to change the status quo. But in this case, even with the insurance policy represented by the families of the officers, Carbonell could not bring himself to believe in a clean deal that involved children being delivered into slavery by the army. His suspicions paid off when his youngest soldier had spotted the infiltrators and passed the word. They’d been in position since the night before.

When the soldiers moved in, their positions were noted and adjustments made. When the army snipers rose out of their nests to fire, the kids, though outnumbered, were right behind them. They didn’t even have to stand up to shoot. The snipers never saw them.

The race was on when the army snipers realized they’d been out-flanked. Those that survived the first rounds, bolted. The young rebels pursued their betrayers, picking off those who were lucky enough to avoid the land mines. Their leader escaped into the jungle where he fell unseen, into a depression deep in fallen leaves. He quickly burrowed under the leaf cover and remained motionless. As he lay there, he heard his crew being exterminated one after the other. On the run, he heard his troops who had survived the first hail of bullets being blown apart by the mines and then having their wails ended by what he knew to be shots to the head.

…

Victor Chavez, the ambush party’s leader and the sole survivor of the mission, was the Ecuadorian Master Sergeant from the Ipales border crossing station who had been contacted by Sandino and asked to participate as an advance spotter and provide armed insurance there to try and detect enemy emplacements possibly positioned before the army liaisons arrived by helicopter with the money. It was the only way to get ground reconnaissance of the area without notice as well as ensuring there were no border issues with Ecuador itself. He lay there in his leaf-filled depression on high alert for the rest of the day and most of the night with an eye out for enemy movement from the farmhouse without moving a muscle. Bugs crawled over him. A snake coiled in his armpit frequently enough to ensure this became an indelible memory. Keeping bugs out of his nose, eyes, and ears was torture, but luckily the snake was under the opposite armpit from his free hand and his face. Watching centipedes crawl the length of his nose and feeling their feet marching down his neck became fascinating. The bites received during his forced immobility were much less so.

Just before dawn, Chavez finally felt it was safe to emerge from the leaves. He almost expected to see one of the guerrillas leaning against a tree staring back at him with a gun pointed at his head. He did! But no, it was just an illusion that had his heart pounding. Slowly he bent over and replaced the leaves in case anyone came back this way to check. As he did so, he became aware of the wildlife hidden between his clothes and his skin. He started carefully undressing as he walked away from his nest, hoping there were no more landmines ahead. Over the next half an hour, he stripped completely, shook everything out and towelled himself off using his pants as he went. Once redressed and oriented, he set about making his way back to his. This was one report he wouldn’t be filing. He wondered how he was going to account for his missing men. This felt like the start of something much bigger for this area. He consoled himself with the thought that he had the money from Sandino. He’d share with the families of the men he’d lost but he intended to keep the lion’s share for himself. 

…

Some of Carbonell’s men survived the ambush. The early alert from Alias La Zorra gave them a chance to put bulletproof vests on. But they found out that even though their bulletproof vests were state-of-the-art, they weren’t enough to stop a bullet from a sniper’s rifle. Even though expecting an ambush, Carbonell’s men were dropped where they were by the army snipers. The five who survived were wounded. Carbonell later had to double-tap two of them to put them out of their misery.

The planned trip into the mountains with the weapons stash was intended to be a one-way trip for everyone but Carbonell. Once the money, the guns and ammunition were hidden, Carbonell planned to kill the porters. He had to or his arms depot would be subject to raids from his own people and eventually, rival groups.

Now he had a different problem. He had the guns and the money but only a crew of children, including the trafficked children, and three wounded men left to move it all with. He had a second problem. The noise from the skirmish would bring farmers from miles around who would descend on the freight like vultures. Local farmers would show up to see what they could scavenge from the firefight they must have heard. His best option was to make children do the work of grown men.

One of the wounded men was dispatched to go for help and bring food, more men and food for about 20 people altogether to last three days. He wanted the two wounded, but experienced men to teach kids how to plant land mines. There was water in the river, so no need for that. There was a stash of mines in the barn that had been hidden there earlier in the week for exactly this purpose, but he couldn’t expect kids to plant or even carry land mines without training.

Once the hidey-hole locations were identified, he divided them into groups of four per hole. They needed three holes for the crates, but the ground had to be cleared first so that the cover they needed to hide the disturbed earth would not be ruined by the explosion of the land mines they intended to create the holes with. 

With the work underway, Carbonell went back to the chopper rubble and poked around in the metal, coals and ash until he found the steel money box. It was locked but he’d seen the contents early on in the transaction process. There was no need to open it because he could feel the weight of the cash inside.

Carbonell decided the safest place to hide the money, for now, was under the outhouse. The kids objected to digging through an active latrine. Rather than waste time arguing, it seemed the easiest thing to do was to relocate the structure some distance into the trees, dig a new hole there, and use the contents from the existing latrine to “dress” the new hole. The new hole with some digging and some creative retrofitting provided shelter for the money box. He set the kids to carefully pry the outhouse apart to move it to the new location and set it beside the hole. A couple of other kids dug out the hole as deep as they could with picks, shovels and saws from the barn. No arms deal of substance could be considered without providing ways and means to hide the loot locally. 

They found steel scraps in the barn, leaning against a wall. The box went into the new hole, and the corrugated sheet steel went in over it to protect it. The hole was partially filled in to cover the box, then stomped solid. The pit was to be left open while the holes for the ammo were prepared, he told them. When they needed to take a dump, they were to use the fresh latrine hole. They tied a strong branch between two trees to use as a seat. The idea was to use the new latrine for as long as they were there, and then they’d move the outhouse over the new pit. The kids loved it until it came time to dig out the old hole. But they soon decided that shovelling human waste was better than a bullet to the head. 

The captive girls had objected to the lack of privacy. Carbonell stalked over to the tree line and cut three dense shrubs and gave one to each of them. “Hold this when you go. That will give you all the privacy you’re going to get.” And that was that. 

At the chosen site of the first ammo hole, he placed a land mine from the stash in the barn, put it in the still shallow hole, and reactivated it. They stood back and made a game out of chucking small chunks of metal shrapnel into the holes rather than wasting a hand grenade.

The resulting explosions left deep enough craters in the soft soil for the weapons. The noise kept the locals at a distance. Since it was kids doing the work, the crates had to be unloaded, moved into the holes, then repacked and the lids put back on. They were too heavy for the kids to move otherwise. Repacking the crates was harder and more time-consuming than expected, but once they figured out how the contents fit in, they got good, then fast at repacking in the bubble wrap. They had no nails so the lids were just placed on. That took three days working as fast as they could go. Even so, one curious farmer was spotted, killed and added to the top of the last ammo crate.

After the rest of the holes were filled back in and tamped down by stomping and jumping on them, they hid the disturbance with leafy debris. It was a lot of work, but by then, the bomb crew had arrived. After being briefed, they set about the business of booby-trapping the farm itself. Carbonell mapped it as they went. He didn’t want to blow himself up later when he came back for the guns and money.

Then came the last task for the ultimate in protection and camouflage. Each of the crew, the kids and Carbonell too, took their morning dump in the new latrine pit. It was a group dump and they all thought it was even more hilarious when one of the kids fell in. Afterwards, the ancient outhouse was repositioned over the hole. Leaves and branches were strewn around to hide their recent work. The last thing Carbonell did was drop a Bushmaster into the hole…

Carbonell knew the combination of the snake and the human waste piled over the money would remove any temptation the kids would have of ever trying to steal the cash. Besides, none of them knew that there was money in the box. Or if they did,  where would they spend it? None of them were going back to civilization unless the war ended and that would not be happening anytime soon. The adults he would take care of in good time.