The Mission War (16 page)

“You have something in mind?” Ki asked.

“Smoke.” Diego looked at his match and blew it out, watching the curling smoke rise into the darkness of the stable.

“You want to smoke him out? How?” Jessica asked. She didn't think much of the idea and she was letting Cardero know it.

“That,” Diego Cardero admitted with a smile, “will take a little thought.”

“Ki,” Jessie pleaded, “don't let him try it—it's madness.”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps. But if we can get him out into the streets, finish him, and then withdraw to a more defensible position—into the hills, perhaps—we might yet save San Ignacio and its inhabitants. And,” he added more coldly, “the world would be rid of the ape, Mono.”

“Don't let him do it, Ki,” Jessie said again, but Ki was far from sure that it was a poor idea. Dangerous, yes, but maybe it was their only alternative in this war they were apparently losing.

“I can't stop a man from doing what he feels he must,” Ki answered, and Jessica Starbuck made a disgusted, hissing sound.

“You have another idea?” Diego asked. He took Jessie, turned her, and looked into her eyes. He was smiling that infuriating smile. Jessie softened a little.

“Not an idea in the world,” she admitted reluctantly.

“Then let us see if this one has some merit.”

The man behind them appeared like a magician's illusion. But then Fly Catcher was sometimes more of a shadow that a real man of blood and bone. He spoke quietly to Cardero in their tongue. Cardero answered, gesturing toward the cantina. The Indian nodded and pointed.

“What's up?” Ki asked.

“He thinks we can make it across the rooftops. It's a hell of a jump from the feed store to the cantina, but if we can make it, we can get to the chimney that rises from the oven in the cantina's kitchen.”

“The smoke might never get out into the cantina proper,” Ki pointed out.

“Might not,” Cardero agreed. “We might not get to the roof. Hell, we might not get across the street, Ki, and you know it.That's no reason for not trying.”

“No,” Ki agreed. “It is no reason.”

Cardero was a brave man and a good warrior. Still, Ki couldn't shake the feeling he had that there was something more to the mystery of Diego Cardero, despite what he had told them about his motives for wanting to get to Don Alejandro. Did he really have to join Mono to do that? Or was it for sheer profit that he had joined the bandit leader?

One fact was indisputable. Cardero was willing to lay his life on the line now to try to smoke Mono out of his den. It was a long chance, but it was a chance. Ki nodded agreement.

“What do you want us to do?”

“Let's scrounge some rags first, plenty of them. Tie them into big bundles. Then let's find some kerosene. And,” he added, “one match.”

Cardero grinned and even Ki had to admire the man's poise and confidence. Of Fly Catcher he had no doubts whatsoever. He was a skilled and determined man. His thoughts were focused on one objective, hurting the slavers—hurting the slavers and getting his wife back.

Rags were easy to come by—old horse blankets and discarded cloths filled a small cupboard in the back of the stable. Kerosene, used for lanterns, was found in a five-gallon can in the same cupboard.

Cardero tied the rags into bundles and soaked them with kerosene. When he was finished, he looked to Fly Catcher. The Papago didn't speak, didn't so much as nod. He simply turned and started away into the darkness.

He was a warrior going out to war just as the men in his tribe had done for thousands of years. The enemy was there, just across the street, and the time had come to destroy the enemy of the Papago people.

The time had come to kill the slavers.

Chapter 14

Ki, who usually shunned firearms but who was expert with them, snuggled down behind the sights of Cardero's Winchester. Only a rifle would do in this situation; Ki's
shuriken
rested in the pockets of his borrowed monk's robe. The sight on the Winchester swept across the front window of the cantina, the closed and barred door. Anyone appearing at door or window would be shot down. This was no time for mercy.

Jessica Starbuck also held a rifle. Her eyes lifted frequently to the rooftops. She had trouble concentrating on her primary task—covering the two silent men who worked their way toward the cantina roof. Bundles of rags were strapped to their lithe and agile bodies. Their minds were intent on the death of Mono and his
bandidos.

Diego boosted Fly Catcher to the roof of the grain store, and the Indian reached down to tug Cardero up. Then the two men worked to the opposite side of the roof and paused there a minute.

“That's a hell of a jump,” Jessie said to Ki as they watched.

“They'll have to get a running start,” Ki answered.

Ki was right. As they watched, Fly Catcher retreated a little way and then began a mad dash toward the edge of the roof. He flew threw the air, arms windmilling, and landed with amazing softness on the roof of the cantina.

“They'll hear them,” Jessie told Ki.

“They won't be able to do anything about it if they do hear them. The bandits can't shoot through the roof.”

Cardero had backed up, and now he ran toward the gap between the two buildings, launching himself into space. He missed and Jessie gasped. His boot toes scraped the edge of the roof and slid back into the void beneath him. Fly Catcher grabbed his arm just in time and drew him up and onto the roof.

They could see Cardero lie still for a long minute as if he were catching his breath. He rose to a kneeling position and then stood, glancing once toward the stable.

“They'll make it,” Ki said. “They've gotten to the chimney.”

And Cardero and Fly Catcher were at the chimney. Jessie saw a match strike, a small, glowing point of red light against the darkness. Then there was a larger, brighter glow as the kerosene on the rag bundle Diego held caught fire and was dropped into the chimney.

Smoke billowed into the air. Bundle after bundle was forced into the chimney and then the chimney mouth itself was closed with a dry bundle of rags. What smoke there was now only had one direction to go—down into the cantina's kitchen.

“Get ready,” Ki said. If things worked out properly, Mono and his bandits, choking and gasping, would burst from the cantina, guns blazing, to be met by a murderous answering barrage of bullets.

Things didn't work out properly at all. In fact, the daring project turned to disaster within minutes.

Jessica Starbuck and Ki saw the two men on the rooftop begin working their way back and then Jessie saw something that stopped her heart cold.

“Ki!” she cried out loudly. Below Diego and Fly Catcher in the alley, a man had appeared. It might have been Arturo—things moved too quickly to be sure. The
bandido's
rifle boomed as Diego Cardero leaped for the roof of the feed store across the alley and it was obvious that Cardero was hit.

Diego landed awkwardly roughly, on the rooftop, rolling to one side and clutching his chest. Fly Catcher had been ready to leap, but now he drew back as a second bullet cut the night, chipping plaster from the wall of the adobe, inches from the Papago Indian's head.

Jessie opened up with her rifle. Four spinning .44 slugs creased the darkness between the stable and the cantina, and Arturo—if that was who it was—fell back, firing his own rifle from his hip, levering through five, six, seven slugs until his repeater was empty. Bullets scored the walls of the stable around Jessie and Ki. One bullet caught an iron hinge on the door and whined off erratically into the night.

Fly Catcher leaped and Arturo could do nothing about it, he was behind a barrel, thumbing cartridges into the magazine of his weapon frantically.

Ki had begun to fire now as well, his carefully sighted shots peppering the rain barrel, which must have been full of water. There was no evidence that any of the bullets penetrated the far side of the barrel, and in another moment, Arturo, his rifle fully reloaded, aimed a deadly swarm of bullets at Jessie and Ki, who kept their heads down while Arturo made his escape.

Cardero was still down on the rooftop.

Now from the cantina windows, the bandits opened up; perhaps they believed they were under a full-scale attack. Perhaps the smoke within had maddened them. Ki hoped it was the latter, although there were no signs of smoke issuing from the broken cantina windows.

From the surrounding rooftops, the unorganized San Ignacio militia opened up, firing into the cantina. This fire didn't do much to chase the bandits away from the windows. The entire Mexican force seemed to have fired their weapons at first and were now simultaneously and laboriously reloading.

As if a cease-fire had been called, the guns from the cantina halted also, and the street was deadly silent. Jessica's ears rang still. She looked to the rooftop opposite and saw that Cardero and Fly Catcher were gone, and in another minute the two men hobbled into the stable, Diego holding his chest and leaning heavily on Fly Catcher's shoulder.

“Didn't expect that,” Diego panted. “Didn't expect that bastard to be in the alley.”

“Shut up,” Jessica said, “and lie down. Over there on the straw. How bad is it?”

“Haven't looked. Hurts like hell.”

“Most gunshot wounds do.” There wasn't much sympathy in her voice. Maybe she was still angry with Diego for having tried this foolhardy stunt.

“Smoke. Any smoke, Ki?”

“I don't see any.”

“You will—have to.”

Ki nodded, though he figured if he hadn't see it yet, he wasn't going to see any fire and smoke. Mono had gotten it out. He didn't say any of that to Cardero who was lying back on the straw, bleeding profusely.

Jessie tried to stem the flow of blood but wasn't having much luck at it. Fly Catcher put his bow and quiver aside, took a rawhide sack from around his neck, and got to work.

He sprinkled some sort of powder on the wound—Ki guessed it was powdered deer antler, but couldn't tell for sure. Whatever it was seemed to coagulate the blood some so that Fly Catcher could get to work with something else from his medicine sack: a steel needle and deer-gut thread.

The Indian's hands were deft and knowing. Fly Catcher had seen battle wounds before. When he finally straightened up and indicated to Jessie that he was through, the wound had been closed tightly, the blood flow slowed. The bullet that had caught Cardero had cut through his chest muscle from side to side, burning a bloody groove across Diego's body but luckily causing little permanent damage.

Cardero wouldn't lie still. He struggled to his feet, making his way to the door where Ki still stood watching the cantina.

“No smoke.” Diego chuckled a little. “What the hell—we tried. And what now, Ki? What exactly do we do now?”

Ki had no answer. The choices were to assault the cantina and lose a lot of people or wait and get caught between Mono and Halcón coming with reinforcements. There wasn't a hell of a lot of pleasure to be derived from contemplating either alternative.

“Ki?” Jessica asked, but he was silent, strangely silent, and Jessie knew that they were in deep trouble, very deep trouble indeed.

 

 

Dawn brought no change in their situation. Ki's eyes were heavy. The men on the rooftops would be haggard from a night's watching with their nerves on edge.

“We should send half of them home,” Jessica said. “They won't be of any use to us if they're falling asleep up there.”

Cardero said, “They won't be much use to us at home.” But either way it probably didn't matter—not if Halcón brought help. Mono had to be extracted from the cantina before Halcón came. How long did they have? A day? Two?

“There must be a way,” Ki said as if he had been sharing Diego's thoughts, “some way.”

“If we could—” Diego's words were cut off by a shout from a sentry atop the roof next door. Ki turned around and looked up into the brilliant morning sun.

“Now what?”

The man was waving his arm furiously and now others rose mirroring the gesture. Ki started up the side alley at a run, Jessica at his heels and Diego hobbling behind. He reached the rooftop in minutes and had time to look out toward the south where the sentry was pointing before Jessica joined him.

“What is it, Ki?” she asked, already afraid that she knew the answer.

“A body of men, many men, riding this way.”

“It can't be Halcón—not so soon.”

“Can't it?” Ki asked, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun. “Who else can it be?”