“So this is Nicaragua?” Lefty read. “Don’t look so tough to me.”
Panama looked back for a reply as Lefty wrote below the sergeant’s message, “I’m afraid this war is a joke!”
The two men exchanged knowing smiles as Panama bit off a large chew of tobacco and Lefty continued to observe the ground far below. As they passed over the mountains, he spied the figures of the tired Marine squad and their two pack mules. Unable to distinguish who they were, he reached for the pad and wrote, “Who do you think those men are below?”
Panama turned his head, read the message and gazed down from over the side of the ship, straining his eyes in an attempt to distinguish the men. He lifted his head in a moment, glanced back at Lefty and pantomimed to the boy to loan him the pad and pencil, upon which he scribbled, “Looks like a squad of loafing Marines. I’d like to fly low and give their lazy brains something to think about.”
Lefty nodded his head in approval, laughing at the same time as he lounged down in the cockpit, closing his eyes in an attempt to grab a half hour’s sleep before they landed at the Managua airport.
Below, the Marines turned to each other, rubbing their necks to relieve the strain of gazing so long with their heads upward bent.
“Mamma!” exclaimed the sergeant. “Wait till them flyin’ devils open high and wide upon this guy Sandino!”
“You said it!” agreed another. “There ain’t goin’ to be much of a war left for us when those guys get started!”
The skeptic gazed at the two prophesiers with a lingering look of disdain. “There ain’t no war and there ain’t goin’ to be no war!”
“You’re crazy!” someone shouted. “What are them there planes doin’ here if there ain’t no war?”