The Ambushers (5 page)

“Bah!” he said. “El Fuerte was a pig. But his men... Did you see them come, señor? Their leader was dead, but other leaders rose among them. We shot those, and still they came, right up to the guns... President Avila would execute them all for rebels and bandits. In this country, you understand, a rebel is a bandit always. And El Fuerte was truly a bandit. But there are times when I remember that those are my people, too—yes, even the ones who did that to your female agent. After all, she came among them to deceive and kill. They had some provocation, señor. Perhaps one day they will find a leader worthy of them. In the meantime—” He grimaced. “In the meantime, I help gringos shoot them down at five hundred meters. You will excuse me. I mean no offense. But I do not like to see brave men die.” He hesitated. “One favor, Señor Helm.”

“It is granted,” I said formally.

“The gun. The big rifle. I am sure our President would like to see it, the gun that killed El Fuerte half a kilometer away. May I take it to him?”

“Sure,” I said. After all, it was government property. I had no further use for it, and I was sure that a gift to cement inter-American relations would meet with official approval. “Sure. Take it. On one condition.”

“And that is?”

“That you or one of your men carry the heavy old bastard out of here. It almost broke my back on the way up.”

He laughed quickly, and we were friends again, or as close as we were likely to come with our different backgrounds.

“You are
muy hombre,
Señor Helm,” he said. “If there have been misunderstandings, I apologize. You are much man.”

I said, “Good night, Colonel. It’s too bad you couldn’t learn to shoot as a junior officer. I think you’d have made a swell general.”

In the morning everything was quiet. We started down the hill, carrying Sheila on an improvised stretcher, since she proved incapable of making it under her own power. In the late afternoon, without incident, we reached the river. In the evening, the landing craft came along to pick us up and take us downstream and out to the ship.

It was a practically perfect operation in every respect, I thought. Two days later I was in Washington learning otherwise.

After a week of it, I wasn’t very eager to get back to the second-floor office on Monday morning and find out from Mac what else I’d done wrong, so I did my duty and visited the recognition room in the basement, as we’re supposed to do whenever we’re in Washington. I went through the files, refreshing my memory about the people in our line of business considered important enough to be given a certain priority. I read up on Dickman, Holz, Rosloff, Vadya, and Basil, all nice people who’d kill you as soon as look at you.

There were some old names missing, the ones we’d caught up with here and there or somebody had; and there were some new ones who’d just graduated to priority status. Reading about their latest accomplishments made me feel much better. It was like reading about old friends getting up in the world. These were people you could count on, unlike the supercilious sons of bitches in the Pentagon and State Department and elsewhere in this lousy town that had probably been a fine swamp before some fool decided to drain it.

Mac didn’t disappoint me. He had a new list of criticisms some bright lad in spats had thought up on the golf course over the weekend. Well, I guess I’m being unfair. I don’t believe they really play golf in spats. I stood at the window and looked down at the sunlit street, listening. The girls walking past below looked fresh and pretty in their gay summer dresses or tight, bright pants. They were probably nice enough girls, I reflected. It was unreasonable to dislike them because they’d never seen a man killed, or a woman broken by brutality and systematic degradation.

I said without turning my head, “Goddamn it, sir, if it was intelligence they wanted, why the hell didn’t they apply to the CIA? I went down there to shoot, not to take notes and photographs. Have they made up their minds what we’re dealing with yet?”

Mac rustled some papers on his desk. “Your description apparently fits the Rudovic III or IV,” he said. “That is a miniaturized version of the other side’s best intermediate range ballistic missile with some very interesting developments that give it almost the range of the larger prototype. The differences between the two models are internal, affecting the propulsion system and the type of solid fuel used. The later model has a range of some sixteen hundred miles, according to our best information, which isn’t very good. The previous model was supposed to have a twelve-hundred-mile range. It is probable, but not certain, that it was the older Model III that was lent to Castro, one of which he hid out and passed on, perhaps to get it off his hands before his Russian friends learned about it.”

I said, “It doesn’t much matter which one. Neither could hit the U.S. from down there. But there’s always the little ditch known as the Panama Canal, which is within range of both.”

“Precisely,” Mac said. “A lot of the details of the mobile Rudovic system are still unknown here, but it has been definitely established that all models use nuclear warheads. Here in Washington it is generally referred to as the Moscow Mite.”

“It may look small from Washington,” I said. “It doesn’t look so damn small when you see it from a bunch of jungle ferns just outside the barbed wire. Is there any word from President Avila yet?”

Mac said, “The president is very busy with military affairs. Following the success of a daring raiding party that attacked the rebel headquarters and killed the bandit leader Santos, we are told, Federal troops have advanced into the area and are busy mopping up the disorganized remnants of the self-styled revolutionary army. As soon as the situation is stabilized, says the Ministry of State, a thorough investigation will be made.” Mac paused deliberately. “There is still some feeling here in Washington that it would have been very nice if you could have settled the matter while you were on the spot.”

“So they’re still on that kick.” I turned to look at him. “Which officious jackass, of the dozens I’ve met lately, made the suggestion this time?”

“The comment was made in conference Friday night. The name of the commentator will remain confidential. I pointed out that you had a specified assignment and carried it out brilliantly. Without specifying the nature of the assignment, of course.” Our duties are not supposed to be common knowledge, even among the higher circles of Washington officialdom.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I suppose they think I should have stuck it in my pocket and brought it home for them to look at. Hell, it only weighs what? Five tons? Ten tons?”

Mac said, “Well, there is no doubt that a sample of the Rudovic, any model, would be gratefully received. However, I doubt anybody really feels you were in a position to supply one.”

“Maybe they can get it out of President Avila.”

Mac said dryly, “The president of Costa Verde is our great friend and a true democratic leader of his people, to be sure. Still, I doubt anybody here wants to see him get his hands on a nuclear weapon. Nor does anybody have great hope that if he does get his hands on it he will turn it over to us.”

“I see,” I said. “So I’m the patsy. Well, I could have died heroically shooting thirty-caliber holes in that overgrown firecracker, I suppose. Since I don’t have any idea where the thing keeps its brains, the chances of my doing any real damage would have been slight. And I’d probably have had to murder a Costa Verde Colonel to do that much.”

“Ah, yes,” Mac said. “Your friend Hector. I can never pronounce that last name.”

“Their jays are aitches, sir. The accent is on the second syllable. Himayness.”

“A short evaluation of Colonel Jiminez is desired by the military.” Mac reached out and flipped a switch. “We are recording now. Subject Jiminez. Proceed.”

“His men refer to him as
El Coronelcito
,” I said. “That is an affectionate diminutive meaning The Little Colonel. Any resemblance to Shirley Temple is probably accidental.”

“Shirley Temple?”

“There was a movie, ‘The Little Colonel’, from a book by the same name. Or a series of books. For girls.”

“Indeed? Go on.”

“The most significant thing about Jiminez, I think, is that when informed he was to rescue a woman prisoner, he brought two women along without being asked. I don’t believe they were part of the normal task group organization, although they certainly pulled their weight right along with the men. I think Jiminez just figured our girl, if still alive, was apt to be in pretty bad shape and would prefer female attendants in her misery. Of course he was perfectly right.” I paused. “This guy has got something. I think it’s called compassion, but don’t transcribe that. It’s not something I’m an expert on myself.”

Mac said, “I don’t think our military planners are interested in his compassion, Eric.”

“Then they’re making a bad mistake,” I said. “Because Hector’s compassion is very interesting, and he’s apt to make general yet. He’s a good man. He’s not a softy, you understand. Physically, he’s a pretty little fellow in excellent condition who smokes big cigars that he keeps in a pistol holster. He threw away the pistol because he couldn’t hit anything with it, he says. He’ll stop to light up in the middle of a fire fight. Latin bravado, sure, but it’s reassuring to the troops. You figure, if he can put on a show without even a gun to shoot back with, so damn well can you. In action, I’d trust him all the way as long as our objectives were identical, but no further. Where politics are concerned, I wouldn’t turn my back on him for a fraction of a second. He’s got deep thoughts, our little colonel has. I wouldn’t want to say what’s at the bottom of them.”

“And Avila? Was he discussed?”

“El Presidente
was barely mentioned in conversation. Jiminez indicates he’s bitter against the rebels and would like to stand them all up against a wall and use them for machine-gun practice. It looks as if he might get his chance. Well, that’s a normal presidential attitude down there, I guess. Or anywhere.”

“End of recording on Jiminez and Avila,” Mac said, and pressed the switch again. He looked up. “That brings us to the mysterious visitor in the sun helmet. We’ve finally managed to dig up some pictures for you.” He pressed a button and spoke into the intercom; he was getting gadgety as hell, I reflected. He said, “Would you bring in the photographs, Ellen? And pick up a tape for transcription?”

We waited in silence, until a pretty girl came in with a manila envelope which she laid on the desk. She was wearing a blue dress and high-heeled blue pumps, and her pale blonde hair was soft and shiny. It wasn’t fair of me to resent her. She was well trained, I knew—they all are in that office—and because she had access to certain information she carried a small capsule hidden somewhere on her person. One day she might have to take it, or worse, she might not have time to take it. That day just hadn’t come yet, for her.

She smiled at us, extracted a small reel of tape from the recorder built into the desk, and went out without speaking. Mac opened the envelope and drew out a thick sheaf of photographs, holding them out to me. I took them and sat down to go through them. You wouldn’t believe how many scarred Germanic characters there are in the world. We seemed to have pictures of most of them.

I was aware of Mac shifting positions in his chair as I approached the bottom of the pile. Then the man in the sun helmet was looking at me from a glossy print, with the stern, martial expression of any army officer posing for an official photograph, which this was. It was a German Army photo, and the man was wearing a general’s uniform. The uniform brought it back.

“Von Sachs,” I said without looking at the identifying caption. “Heinrich von Sachs.” I looked quickly at Mac. “You knew?”

“I was fairly sure from your description. I wanted you to pick him out yourself. You remember him now?”

“Yes, sir. He’s damn close to the top of the list, now they’ve got Eichmann, isn’t he?”

“Very close. The difference is that Eichmann, when captured, was no longer actively dangerous. He was simply hiding out, trying to preserve his life. Von Sachs is a different breed altogether.”

“Sure.” I looked at the scarred, rather handsome face in the photograph. The face I’d seen through the telescopic sight had been older and grimmer, but then, whose wasn’t? I said, “I guess he called himself a patriot. Maybe he still does. Maybe he is one. He just had a nasty way of showing it. They had him running the slaughter pens for a while, to keep him in line, didn’t they? But they had to give him back his command eventually. In a military way, he was a good guy to have around, I guess, if you didn’t mind your victories liberally seasoned with atrocity. And that wasn’t something that kept Hitler up nights, as I recall.”

“We are not concerned with his atrocities except indirectly,” Mac said rather reprovingly. I remembered that he had always worked on the theory that we were a practical organization—a tactical organization—and that the sword of retribution was not our weapon. He had never accepted an assignment that involved killing a man just because he was a louse, perhaps because once you get into that racket it’s so hard to know where to stop. “Nevertheless,” he said, “when you took that shot at von Sachs, it’s too bad you missed.”

I looked at him across the desk. I laid the pictures gently before him and rose and went to the window.

“My apologies, sir,” I said. “It was an oversight. The next time I will mow down everybody in sight, just in case there’s somebody on the premises somebody wants dead.”

“Eric—”

“I will also,” I said harshly, “be careful to carry enough explosive to blow up any installation of military value anybody might possibly want destroyed. I regret I did such a sloppy job, sir. I am terribly sorry I simply knocked off the guy I was sent to knock off. If you will give me another chance, sir, I promise it won’t happen again.”

He said, “Sit down, Eric.”

“Just tell me one thing, sir,” I said. “Is there anything or anybody else I carelessly neglected to destroy or assassinate down there? I like to get all my reprimands in one package.”