Infiltrator t2-1

by S. M. Stirling

  He’d gotten that way under mercilessly perfectionist instructors, though.

  “What is she even doing here?” he demanded, steely blue eyes snapping, a muscle jumping in his strong jaw, visible even through the short beard he wore.

  Epifanio Garcia, Dieter’s overseer, rose from where he’d been squatting on his heels and shrugged, his dark walnut face bland. “She’s a cow, Senor von

  Rossbach. She wants to be with her sisters.”

  The cow in question was definitely not with her sisters at the moment, unless she was standing on them. She was chest-deep and possibly sinking deeper into a disgusting and smelly bog. The cow bawled her distress, big eyes rolling in terror, showing the whites all around.

  “She’s supposed to be locked up in a paddock,” von Rossbach said coldly.

  “Some of them are escape artists, senor. This one is smart—for a cow.” Epifanio sucked his teeth and shook his head. “That’s not awfully bright, of course. Just smart enough to get into trouble.”

  Grimacing, Dieter considered the cow. He had plans for her. She was supposed to be the mother of a hybrid that would produce meatier, fatter cattle that could endure the privations of the Chaco. He was awaiting a shipment of sperm from the King Ranch in the United States so he could get started. Meanwhile he’d ordered her and three others separated from the main herd so that they would stay healthy.

  She was definitely sinking deeper. Judging from the tone of her last bellow, she knew it, too.

  Dieter allowed himself an exasperated sigh. “Well, I guess we’d better get her out.”

  Epifanio, in a few economical movements, had his lariat dropping over the panicked cow’s horns, down over her throat. He wrapped it a couple of times around his saddle horn and backed his horse, pulling the cow’s head up and not

  noticeably improving her mood.

  “I don’t really want to strangle her,” Dieter said. “I just want to get her out.”

  The overseer smiled and waved his arm expressively at the near-buried bovine.

  “There’s nothing else to drop a rope on, senor,” he said. “I’m just trying to keep her from sinking any further. What we’re going to have to do—”

  “We’re going to have to get in there with her,” von Rossbach agreed.

  Epifanio nodded. “And she’s going to kick the hell out of us, too.” The overseer grimaced.

  “Okay, strangle her,” Dieter muttered.

  Epifanio gave his boss a sidelong glance, not sure whether he was serious or not.

  “I know what to do,” Dieter said, dismounting.

  He took his own rope, and after tying one end to his saddle horn, he handed his reins to his overseer. “Don’t let him walk off,” he said with a meaningful look, which Epifanio returned with one of cherubic innocence. Then von Rossbach walked toward the bog.

  At the edge of the stinking, scum-covered quagmire he took off his boots and socks. He was certain to lose them to suction if he didn’t. It should be safe enough to put his bare feet in the muck. There were a number of poisonous snakes and insects in this country, but in all probability very few of them could live under a meter of slime. He seriously considered taking off his trousers, but

  decided that would make too good a story. Especially if he were to lose his underwear to the mud.

  Taking a deep breath, he stepped in. It was cool and far from smooth, he could feel things sliding through his toes. Very quickly Dieter was up to his knees and realizing that the smell was even worse that he’d found it on the shore, as if the earth itself had developed a severe case of flatulence.

  So this is where the bodies are buried. He’d been a village boy himself, born in an alpine hamlet where people were only a generation from living over the cow byres, but he’d left that as soon as he could. Twenty years in the big city had dulled his memory of how bad the countryside could smell.

  He walked toward the cow, making soothing noises, but she reacted with a fresh panic attack. She thrashed and mooed, waving her head around on her strong neck as though trying to reach him with her horns.

  Stupid beast, he thought. He was easily two meters away from her yet. They see differently, he reminded himself. Maybe I look a lot closer.

  Dieter yanked one foot out of the mud with an audible sucking noise, holding his arms out for balance. He sank it back into the bog and leaned forward to pull out the other one, then flailed for balance as his leg plunged to above the knee. He stood still for a moment as the cow went wild.

  I guess that would look threatening to a frightened cow, he thought. To her a human waving his arms with a coil of rope in one hand usually meant she was about to be knocked down, sat on, and branded. Probably not a happy memory.

  Sometimes he suspected that they knew why human beings kept them around,

  too. Pigs certainly did. He refused to have any of those on the estancia.

  Grimly he pulled himself forward, forced to lunge now because he was up to his waist in muck. At last he grabbed onto Epifanio’s rope and pulled himself along.

  Finally he was there. The cow bawled for help, eyes rolling.

  Dieter wound up and smacked her in the middle of the forehead with a massive balled fist; her head fell to the side with a drawn-out moo, like a tired squeaky toy. Then she lay with eyes half-closed, her steam-engine panting slowing to a steady deep wushhhh… wushhhhh.

  Epifanio’s eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. Clearly those muscles weren’t just for show.

  Meanwhile, Dieter, up to his chest in mud, pushed the rope halfway around her loins. Then he dragged himself over to her other side, and after an unpleasant, and all-too-long episode with his nose almost under the stinking mud, he found the rope again and dragged it through. Then he labored back to the forequarters of the cow, squatting and reaching down until his hands closed around the big cannon bones. He clamped them tight, took a deep breath, then straightened, pulling with legs and gut. That drove him deeper, but eventually the mud gave way with a deep sucking sound, and the semiconscious cow came up to lie with its mud-caked forelegs flat on the surface of the swamp. Then he tied off the rope and signaled to his overseer to back the horses.

  He held on to Epifanio’s rope, and when they got into the shallows he pushed her over on her side and slid the rope down over her forequarters, allowing them to drag her out completely.

  By the time she was on dry land she was starting to come to, but was very subdued. Her head wobbled on her muddy neck and she blinked in confusion.

  “She’s going to have a rotten headache, and a pretty sore stomach,” Epifanio observed.

  “She’s lucky she’s feeling anything,” Dieter said. “I think she would have gone under in another hour.”

  “Less than that, senor. I almost went under myself once when I was young and so stupid I went in after a cow by myself.”

  “Perhaps we should drain it,” Dieter said thoughtfully.

  ” Si, you could do that,” Epifanio agreed. “But it would be a big, expensive job.

  And at most we lose a cow or two a year to the mud. It would take a lot of cows to make such an expense worthwhile.”

  Dieter gave him a considering look.

  “Then I’ll have to see if I can’t think of an inexpensive way to do it.”

  He tied his boot laces together and slung them over his saddle, then swung himself up with a grimace for the work it was going to take to clean his saddle.

  To the annoyance of his horse, who whickered disapproval at the stench of its rider.

  Well, I’m not going to walk barefoot through that grass, horse, with all those snakes and scorpions hiding in there. And I’m not going to ruin my boots from

  the inside instead of the outside, he thought. You’ll just have to get over it.

  “I’ll leave you to bring her back to the paddock,” Dieter said, and thumped his bare heels into the horse’s sides.

  Epifanio watched the big man go and shook his head. They’d been nervous when this Euro
pean showed up to run the estancia. The rumor had been that he’d never run catfle before. More troubling, he turned out to be German; at least Epifanio thought von Rossbach was German. Things were different over there; it was all cities and snow, so how could he possibly know how to run an estancia?

  Mennonites were good farmers—there were plenty of them in the Chaco—but von Rossbach was the other variety of German. And while the Germans the overseer knew were very fine people, honest and hardworking, they were also stubborn and determined to have their own way, as well as being very demanding employers.

  But von Rossbach had worked out wonderfully. Better than wonderful. Epifanio had been certain that he, too, would end up covered with reeking muck. But here he was dry and clean. They didn’t make many like Dieter von Rossbach.

  He sat his horse, waiting for the cow to decide when she wanted to get up and sucked his teeth as he thought.

  The boss was always polite. Especially to Marieta, the housekeeper, Epifanio’s wife. For instance, von Rossbach took care never to swear in her presence. The overseer had heard him swear and the big man knew some colorful curses, so it was definitely a matter of courtesy. Even though Marieta herself swore like a trooper.

  Epifanio wondered how long the boss would stick around. He learned fast and he had plans for the estancia, but it was obvious that after only six months he was becoming bored.

  The cow heaved herself to her feet and stood for a moment on wobbly legs. She gave a juicy snort, then began to nibble some grass. The overseer dropped a rope over her head again and turned to lead her back to her paddock.

  “Come on, girl,” he said. “I’ll hose you down and you’ll feel much, much better.”

  Clean, but still sensing a ghostly whiff of the swamp about his person, Dieter sat at his desk, prepared to pick up where he’d left off. The casa grande was old, massive adobe walls, rafters of thick quebracho— ax-breaker—trunks. That was one reason he’d bought it when he came looking for a peaceful, quiet place to retire. It had character; the tiles on the roof and floors had been handmade, you could see the slight ripple. This office had windows that opened onto an interior patio, with a fountain and a pale crimson sheet of jacaranda running up a trellis on the opposite wall. Hummingbirds hovered around it. The whole thing was soothing… until you’d been thoroughly soothed.

  His workspace was utterly modern by contrast, with a state-of-the-art IBM, a nice little satellite-uplink dish to give broadband access to the Web, and a full suite of equipment. His answering machine was blinking, so he hit the play button and picked up his pen.

  “Senor von Rossbach?” a young female voice inquired. She paused as though she expected him to answer. “This is the Krieger Trucking Company? We’ve received a shipment for you from the King Ranch in the United States?” She

  hesitated, as if unsure the message was clear. “It’s waiting here for you to pick it up?” Another nervous little hesitation. “All right, good-bye.” And she hung up.

  Dieter checked his watch. Two o’clock—siesta would be well over by the time he got there. Anyone who expected Paraguayans to do anything during siesta went mad in short order—and he had to admit, in this climate the custom made sense. He looked at his neat desk and decided there wasn’t anything that desperately needed his attention right now.

  “Senora Garcia,” he called out, rising from his chair. “Do you need anything in Villa Hayes?”

  He found her in the kitchen, where she was plucking a chicken for dinner. She wanted him to call her Marieta and pretended she didn’t hear him when he referred to her as senora.

  “Do we need anything in Villa Hayes?” he asked again.

  ” Si. Laundry soap,” she said, not looking up. “The kind in the yellow box with the red letters, and matches for the stove.”

  “Anything else?” She usually had a list a foot long.

  Marieta shook her head. “I’m going in to town myself on Monday with Epifanio,” she said. “My grandnephew is coming on the bus from Tobati.

  He’s going to work here for you this summer.” She grinned up at him. “You’ll like him, he’s a good boy.”

  If he was as likable as her local nephews, he probably would. But if he was like her local nephews, there would also probably be as much soccer playing as cattle ranching. Dieter’s lips quirked up in a smile. What the hell, he could afford it, and they were good kids. Sometimes, just lately, he’d had wistful thoughts about children. Not something you even thought about, in his previous profession, where the phrase “giving hostages to fortune” had an unpleasantly literal meaning.

  “See you later,” Dieter said, and headed for his Land Rover.

  Sarah stared at the second drawer of her desk and sighed. As long as it’s there I’ll never get any work done, she told herself. She tightened her lips, and quickly, so that she couldn’t change her mind, opened the drawer, took out the flask, and went into the washroom. Without allowing herself to think about it, she opened it and upended the contents into the sink.

  Sarah came out screwing on the cap and looked up to find Ernesto giving her a huge, sunny smile. He raised one grease-blackened hand in salute and she returned it, her own smile a little ironic.

  One thing that this little struggle had taught her was that she had a fight on her hands. I didn’t realize things had gone this far, she thought. Sarah bit her full lower lip and considered the flask. “You want this?” she asked her chief mechanic.

  His eyebrows went up. ” Si, sefiora,” he said coming over to her. ” Gracias.”

  It was a nice flask, smooth steel with a cap that could be used as a cup.

  “No problemo,” she said, smiling as though it wasn’t. But Sarah found that she hated to give it up, and had to stop herself from yanking it back with a snarl.

  “I will take good care of it, senora,” Ernesto said anxiously, noting the look in her eyes.

  Sarah blinked. “I know you will,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Enjoy it.”

  She smiled at him. Then she walked back to her office, her heart pounding.

  At four-thirty Sarah went to the reception area to cover for Meylinda’s break.

  She needed a cigarette. She also needed a drink, but she needed a cigarette more.

  Maybe it was a good idea to give up drinking and smoking together, have one big torture session instead of two smaller ones.

  Maybe they’ll each cancel out the other’s cravings, she thought. I’ll be so paralyzed trying to decide which unhealthy thing I want more that by the time I make up my mind, I’ll have kicked both habits.

  She picked up a stack of papers for filing and noticed that her hands were shaking. Would this day ever end? And she was jumpy. If someone dropped something…

  Ernesto slammed the hood of one of the trucks and she jumped a foot. Sarah held her breath and counted to twenty before her heart rate went back to normal. Then she was suddenly furious, first with Ernesto for slamming and banging things around, then with herself. What was I thinking? How could I let myself get like this?

  Somewhere deep inside her was the absolute conviction that one day she would

  need to be on her game, strong and focused. One day it would happen and she had to be ready.

  But the logical, sensible, everyday side of her had talked her out of it, at least on a conscious level. She and John and the Terminator had taken care of the problem. They were safe, everyone was safe, it was over. The bad days were behind them, the running, the asylum, the stockpiling, all over.

  A crooked smile twisted her lips. Those stockpiles of arms and food baking in deep, well-camouflaged holes throughout the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico would bring in a lot of cash if she were interested in selling them—not to mention the gold coins. She still had contacts that could get rid of them for her and pay her well, keeping her name out of it. But she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  Maybe that was why she’d taken to drinking, to shut that part of her up. She’d kept fit; running eve
n a small farm would help you do that. But she’d gotten sloppy, and bored, and she’d let things slide.

  Well, it’s not too late, Sarah thought. This can be fixed. In a few months, no one will ever know how close I came to losing it. No one but herself, that is. And that’s how it should be.

  “This is Krieger Trucking?” a voice said behind her.

  A voice with a faint accent, a voice that froze every muscle in her body. She hadn’t expected this. It’s too soon, she thought. I’m not ready.

  “Hello?” he said again.

  Sarah turned slowly, trying to keep the terror off her face, knowing that it didn’t matter. Her thoughts jumbled together. “It” could read her fear in other ways.

  When she saw his face—its face—she couldn’t help but gasp. This close, the resemblance was too perfect, too complete. This can’t be an accident!

  “Ye-es,” she managed to choke out.

  “I’m looking for—”

  Sarah broke, she turned and walked away; by the time she hit the corridor that led to the garage she was running. She knew it had come for her and she raced through the garage and out into the alley without a backward glance.

  In their early days in this town she’d mapped out several escape routes; now she took the nearest and, she hoped, best. Running flat out, she made good use of the twisted alleyways.

  Dieter stared at the empty space that had just been occupied by a slender woman with short dark hair. Then he reacted, leaping over the counter and giving chase.

  He didn’t recognize her, but she unquestionably knew him. Of course, he wasn’t so much disguised as situated in an unlikely place.

  He’d spent most of his life as a counterterrorist operative, starting out in an elite unit of the Bundesheer, later working closely with American and Israeli intelligence. He was a good operative, but he was no monster, not one of the mad-dog killers of popular fiction. The woman had no reason to fear him unless she herself was guilty of something horrendous.