by Lou Cameron
“Anyone who was ever cruel to you was too stupid for you to worry your pretty little head about, querida.”
“Oh, my God, if only I could believe your beautiful lies. But others have used and abused me, Ricardo. If you could know the way it stabs a woman to the heart to be jeered at in the cold light of dawn.”
He got rid of the second smoke and soothed, “Nobody’s going to abuse you, querida, but, speaking of using, that’s not a milk churn you’ve started playing with down there.”
She laughed in girlish delight as he rolled aboard her again and as he settled into the saddle she coyly mocked, “Haven’t you had enough of this old worn-out shoe?”
He thrust into her and as she bit down hard with her love-slicked flesh he growled, “It’ll be worn out by the time I get through with it!”
But this time they made love like friends instead of acrobats and now that he’d gotten used to the idea, he was starting to like old Vanessa. He couldn’t think of any improvements he wanted to make that counted in the dark, and this solved another problem. His hideout was not only a safe one. It offered all the comforts of home! He didn’t even have to ask, when, after they’d finished another round, Vanessa suggested a midnight snack.
He had no idea, as they finally dropped off to sleep in each other’s sated arms, that he’d never got to spend another night with her.
Chapter Four
The dirty sons of bitches who’d laid out the military presidio on the far side of town had known what they were doing.
Since leaving the States to escape a hanging, Captain Gringo had tangled with a mixed bag of military skills, or the lack thereof. Some Latin American officers he’d met had been nothing more than bush-league bandits. Others had been as good as anything West Point or Saint Cyr L’Ecole could turn out. A lot had been trained at The Point or Saint Cyr. The old Spanish aristocracy of Colombia tended to be pure white. Snobbish Castilian white at that. In his travels Captain Gringo had noticed that Costa Rica, Colombia, and other places where pure-blooded Europeans had remained in power tended to be run on more “civilized” lines. This was not “proof” of white superiority by any means. Nobody who’d fought Apache or seen the Aztec, Toltec, or Maya ruins in Mexico could put the American Indian down as an idiot. The apparent superiority of the pure Hispanic communities was a matter of education. The original Indian cultures had been wiped out with bell, book, and candle, leaving a sullen, ignorant, second-class imitation of a Spanish field worker to take over when the old Spanish Empire fell apart in most of these countries. But the white Creoles had hung on in the highlands of Colombia and while they were conservative and living in the past, their past was the Baroque era, when people built elaborate fortifications.
The first thing Captain Gringo noticed about the presidio he had to get into was that they’d made it tough to get anywhere near it without being seen by the guards on the walls. There was no moat. It was too dry up here for that, but they’d ringed the presidio with open ground. The locals used some of it for a park, but no trees or bushes grew within three hundred yards, or easy rifle range, of the walls.
The clever sneak who’d designed the layout had obviously assumed there was little chance a modern army with heavy guns would ever make it all the way up here to the highlands, so the presidio was designed to stand off moody local peons, as it had, in fact, during the recent riots and revolution. Nobody had taken a military installation from General Reyes. General Reyes had kept his men in the places he already held until both the other sides ran out of steam, then simply marched out to grab the rest of the country. So the presidio wasn’t the usual mass of angled walls and jutting bastions that made it so hard for an attacking army and so easy for a single infiltrator. The bastards had a high screening wall all around the outer perimeter. You couldn’t see a single roof top on the other side, so there was no way to judge the interior layout from out here. Just that big blank, staring, stupid vertical wall. You couldn’t even piss against it without crossing open grass the length of a football field. No sally ports. No drainage ditch running out from under the wall like Ethan Allen had used so coyly at Ticonderoga that night in ’75. The only way in or out seemed to be via the stout gates with a sentry box on either side. The goddamned sentries were wide awake in well-fitting uniforms, too.
Captain Gringo started to circle in what he hoped would look, at a distance, like a casual stroll. The rest of the town had spread out around the presidio, stopped by the deadline on all sides, of course. So there was a natural ring of tree-shaded walks, storefronts, and smaller plazas all around that featureless wall and its apron of open ground.
As he rounded a corner, out of sight of the main gate now, he spotted a boy herding a small flock of sheep on the forbidden lawn. Captain Gringo perked up. Maybe they weren’t as strict about walking on the grass as he’d thought.
Then he spotted the rifleman on the wall above, keeping a casual eye on the kid with the sheep. The young shepherd wasn’t trespassing. He was a military contractor. His job was to keep the killing ground around the walls as neatly mowed as a golf course. The grassy flats all around had been graded perfectly level, so even at night there’d be no shadows out there.
Captain Gringo stopped near a lamppost to scratch a light for a smoke. He glanced up casually and noted the lamp above was burning, even though it was a bright sunny morning. He grimaced as he lit his cigar, staring ahead. Yeah, they’d installed streetlamps all around the deadline. Burning twenty-four hours a day. Anybody trying to sneak up to the walls after dark would be outlined sharp as a black bull’s-eye, and the night guards’ rifles would be zeroed in for the range. Snuffing out a streetlamp would be no big deal, but that wouldn’t work, either. Anybody smart enough to illuminate their night perimeter would have standing orders about lights winking out too.
He was nearing a sidewalk cantina, fronting on the paved path he was on. On a sudden impulse, Captain Gringo stepped over to a green metal table and sat down. The two guys trailing him at a hundred yards hadn’t expected him to do that. So he spotted them as they ducked into a doorway back the way he’d just come.
Captain Gringo had spotted tails before, so he didn’t wave or offer any other hint he’d noticed. He moved his head casually back the way it had been pointed before he sat down and went on calmly smoking until a girl in a flouncy skirt came out to take his order. He asked for gin. He would have asked for the usual cerveza of the knock-around guy south of the border, but he’d changed into the wool suit and tie that went with his cover and since she could see he was a gringo, she might as well think he was a big spender who drank European.
The hairs on the back of his neck started marching up and down in quick step as he forced himself to sit there, his back exposed to whatever, as if he hadn’t spotted them. They’d been wearing suits and gringo hats. But he hadn’t gotten a good look at their features. So, okay, who the fuck were they? Police? That made no sense. If the new regime was aware he was in town, why would they be tailing him? Why not just pick him up, or try to?
His right hand started feeling its way toward the .38 under his jacket. He ordered it to stay put and muttered, “Easy, now. They had the drop on you before you spotted them. If they were out to nail you, you’d have been nailed by now. Let’s just eat this apple a bite at a time.”
The girl came back with his drink and waited expectantly. He smiled up at her and gave her a large bill. She murmured, “Does El Señor have something smaller? It is early. I am not sure we can make change for this.”
He said, “Keep the change. I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”
The girl looked dubious and replied, “A favor, señor? I am not ungrateful, but I am not a wicked woman either.”
“Anyone can see that,” he lied, adding, “The favor I ask is quite proper. But we may as well keep it our little secret. I want you to find me a mirror. The smallest one that you have around here. Just bring it out and place it face down on the table, like my change, and keep the chan
ge. Is that too complicated to remember?”
Apparently it was. She frowned down at him and stammered, “A mirror? El Señor wishes for a mirror, here at this table?”
“Yes, I’m very vain. Wait, it’s a joke. I’m waiting here to meet a friend who really is sort of silly about his appearance and …”
“Ah, I understand.” She nodded and walked away, muttering to herself about gringo locos. He thought it sounded pretty crazy, too, but it wasn’t as funny to him.
A million years went by and he’d finished half the gin when the girl came back with a conspiratorial smile and a little square shard of mirror glass. He thanked her, and as soon as he was alone at the table again he stood the mirror on edge against his glass and adjusted it until he had a view of the path behind him. Considering all the trouble he’d just gone to, there wasn’t much to see. The kid was still mowing the grass with the sheep back there. Nothing was moving on the tree-shaded walk.
Then he spotted a head sticking out of the same doorway and as it ducked back in, he could almost hear someone say, “He’s still sitting there.”
Okay, they weren’t going to move in just yet. What the hell were they planning? It would be siesta time in an hour or so. It was too cool up in Bogotá to really need the siesta, but old habits were hard to break and everyone who spoke Spanish around here was going to hole up until at least three in the afternoon anyway. There was no law saying the streets ‘had to be cleared at high noon. The police would probably be home enjoying a siesta too and … That might be it. The guys back there obviously were not working for the ruling junta. They might find it more convenient to knock a guy off while the ruling junta wasn’t looking. A guy alone in an alley during la siesta could be as alone as if it were midnight. Maybe more so. Latins were night people. But along about, say, 1:00 p.m. the streets of most Latin towns were more deserted than New York’s at 4:00 a.m.
Okay, he’d get back, to Vanessa’s before la siesta and have a good lay instead of a fight and … That was not a very good idea. If they weren’t planning to jump him as soon as the streets cleared, they might be tailing him to see where he was holed up. They couldn’t have tailed him from the friendly widow’s neighborhood. In the first place, he’d made sure he was alone before he ever checked in with Vanessa. In the second, he’d left her via a back alleyway and done some cutting and backtracking before leaving her barrio. He’d bought new clothes at a store in another barrio and left from there via a rear exit. So they’d spotted him within the past hour and … now what?
Captain Gringo decided to find out. He finished his drink and cupped the mirror in the same hand he was smoking with as he rose from the table and strolled on. He made sure he was in the shade of a pepper tree before he tried his rear view mirror. It worked. All he had to do was raise the cigar occasionally and make sure the sun didn’t hit the glass. The two men tailing him passed the cantina he’d stopped at and kept going. Another break. They hadn’t spoken to the waitress, so they couldn’t know about the mirror cupped in his mitt.
They were pretty green at the game in other ways. He would have been amused at the way they skulked from doorway to doorway if he hadn’t learned the hard way that the game was played for keeps down here.
He’d intended to circle the presidio all the way. But that was out for now. Even bush leaguers could guess he was casing the fortress if they watched him doing it! Figuring out who he was and what he was up to could be their game. It was possible they were local security agents, after all, if they’d simply spotted an obvious stranger near a military installation and had decided to keep an eye on him. So the first thing he had to do was to get the hell away from the presidio.
Captain Gringo turned a corner and did just that. He strolled off down a residential street, and two blocks later the bastards were still tailing him.
It took some doing. The street was narrow and the walk on one side was even more so. The walls of the courtyard houses came right to the walk in a solid line of polychrome stucco and there were no shade trees. The sun was almost straight up in a cloudless bowl of cobalt blue. He’d have been able to spot anything larger than, a lizard five blocks behind him in that narrow, dusty slot. But they kept trying. They sort of slid along the stucco from one doorway to another, and the doorways were at least fifty feet apart.
Captain Gringo opened the front of his jacket to free his gun for action if need be. It was not yet officially siesta time, but they were getting there, and he passed few people on the side street. He found himself alone on a long bowling alley stretch and tensed for action as he checked with the mirror. But they weren’t moving in for a kill. He couldn’t see where they could expect a better opening. Following him wasn’t going to get them anywhere, since he wasn’t going anywhere until he knew what the sons of bitches wanted!
He came to another corner and casually strolled around it, as if he had any idea where he was. He found a door niche and stood inside it, drawing his .38 as he glanced up and down the brightly lit and absolutely deserted narrow street. He dropped the cigar and snuffed it out with his foot as he pocketed the mirror. Then he waited.
The Ice Ages came and went. Man discovered the wheel and built a mess of pyramids. Then, shortly after Columbus discovered America, Captain Gringo heard the grate of shoe leather on stone and stopped breathing. The ’49ers were heading west when the two men came around the corner, saw him there, and froze in place with sick grins as Captain Gringo smiled at them above the muzzle of his unwavering .38 and said, “Buenos dias, motherfuckers. What’s this all about?”
Now, while it was two to one, prudent men seldom attempt to draw on a man who has the drop on them. So, while Captain Gringo was ready for it, he was surprised to see one of them go for the shoulder holster under his blue serge jacket. His astonishment at the other’s dumb move didn’t throw his aim off as he fired. The tall American’s round took the would-be assassin under the heart and slammed him dead to the dusty pavement as Captain Gringo covered the other and snapped, “Freeze, you stupid bastard!”
The other mysterious shadow might have intended to.
His hands came up to shoulder height in a gesture of resignation. But then he jerked like a puppet on a string as another gunshot echoed in the narrow street! Then he fell face forward to land dead at Captain Gringo’s feet with a blossom of red spreading between his shoulder blades!
Captain Gringo muttered, “What the hell?” as he realized he had most definitely not fired that second shot. Then a voice called from around the corner, “Achtung, Walker, do not fire! I am on your side!”
Captain Gringo took that under advisement as he watched and waited, gun leveled, until a small, dapper figure came around the corner, wearing a coffee brown suit, a derby to match, and of all things to be unexpected, walking a bicycle by its handlebars. If the little guy in the derby had been the one who’d just back-shot one of these other guys, he had put his weapon away.
Derby Hat said, “We must away from here be moving, nicht wahr? Come, on mein handlebars you will sit and I will us pedal to safety.”
“Who are you and what in the hell is going on?”
“I will upon the way explain. Let us out of here get! This place in no time will with police be crawling. Are you coming or not?”
Captain Gringo saw the little guy had forked one leg over the bike frame and was scowling at him from above a ferocious Kaiser Wilhelm waxed mustache that matched the handlebars pretty well. The American holstered his still-hot gun and stepped over to hook his rump over the chrome bars, back to the other as he muttered. “This is sure silly.”
The little guy in the derby grunted them forward and started to pedal furiously. Captain Gringo felt like an idiot perched like a bird on the handlebars, but he had to concede a point as, somewhere behind them, he heard a distant police whistle and the closer sound of some woman screaming. Not looking back, he asked, “Do you think we were spotted? It won’t be hard to describe two grown men riding double on a kid’s bike, you know.”
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His mysterious fellow gunman replied, puffing some with effort, “Ist not a child’s machine. Ist a very good German racing bike and I have often been observed on it, mein exercise taking. I don’t think anyone saw us. We are almost to mein place in any case. You will of course there have to spend the siesta. Even if the police were not for a murderer looking, a big blond gringo on the streets during the siesta would attention attract, nicht wahr?”
“I can see we agree on some things. You knew my name. I have you down as a German agent. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
The other said, “Of course. Have you forgotten us so soon? During the revolution you and your friend Gaston were of service to Der Kaiser.”
“Bullshit. We worked with some Germans because they were in the same fix the rest of us white folks were back then. It was let’s-kill-the-gringo time and, like it or not, you squareheads qualify as gringos down here.”
“No matter. Whatever your motives, you and Gaston were of some service to German Intelligence and now I intend to repay you. Needless to say, you are now aware you were being followed back there, nicht wahr?”
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask you why you shot that guy. I had him cold and he might have been able to speak up for himself if we’d let him.”
“Nein. There was not time, once you had fired the first shot. I was, as you can guess, following them. But they had a backup a few blocks away. I thought it would save time if we simply liquidated the whole team and were on our way. I can tell you anything they could have.”
“I wish you would. Who were they working for, General Reyes?”
“Worse. They were agents for El Arano, the head of Colombian Military Intelligence.”
“I think I heard about him the last time I passed through. He’s supposed to be pretty dangerous.”
“Ach, you Anglo-Saxons and your love of understatement.”
“Okay, so if the ruling junta had me spotted, why didn’t they move in? They have Gaston in the presidio. So why pussyfoot around? And while we’re on the subject of pussyfooting, where do you Germans fit in? And don’t hand me any more shit about young Kaiser Bill’s love of humanity. I’ve been following his career since he took over. A guy who’d fire Bismarck as a softy doesn’t strike me as a natural do-gooder!”
