The Infiltrators

by Donald Hamilton

  I resumed my position at the crest, put my arm back through the rifle sling, replaced the spent cartridges, and settled down to wait some more. It was dark, for all practical purposes, when I got my answer: there was a man with an automatic weapon hidden exactly where I’d expected one, in the brush above the mine entrance. At least the telescopic sight, with its ridiculously large objective lens, picked up a dark shape rising from behind a bush over there, holding something that gleamed faintly. In the moment of hesitation, while the unknown, gent was looking around warily to determine if it was safe to come down, I put the dim, dim cross-hairs in approximately the right place. The Remington shattered the evening stillness with its whiplike Magnum report. There was the same breathless little pause while the bullet covered the distance; then the distant man was falling and rolling, winding up in front of the mine entrance behind a hump of tailings where I couldn’t see him.

  It took me an hour to make the final approach. I didn’t worry about the first target. I’d had three good shots at that, all hits. But the second target, in near-darkness, had been a much shakier proposition. But when I could see him at last he was lying in front of the tunnel entrance where I’d expected to find him. I studied him for a while from the corner of the ruined building I’d used to cover my advance. He didn’t move and I couldn’t see his gun anywhere, but to hell with it. I was a pro, not the International Red Cross. I aimed the rifle roughly at the center of the sprawling black shape over there, and pulled the trigger. The muzzle flame was spectacular in the dark; the report was deafening. The body jerked, and an arm fell outwards in a tired fashion, and the hand released something that shone faintly in the night.

  Moving forward cautiously, I kicked away the mean-looking knife and looked down at the body of the man who’d presumably tortured and killed Birnbaum’s secretary, Mrs. Silva, and skillfully executed Officer Crisler. The second 7mm bullet had done the job—it occurred to me that I’d wound up firing more shots than I’d expected, but my shoulder was still holding up under the pounding. There was something familiar about the dark dead face, but the name didn’t come to me immediately, not until I’d got out the flashlight for a good look.

  Then I found myself being wrenched backwards in time to a long-ago year when I’d bought a dinner for a lovely young girl attorney to thank her for making arrangements for me to question a killer in his cell; a killer who’d later been turned loose due to the legal efforts of the firm of Baron and Walsh. The dead man at my feet was Willy Chavez, still mean enough with a bullet in him to wait with his knife to gut the man who’d shot him. In a sense we’d started with Willy and now we were ending with him, I hoped. A circle of some kind had been completed.

  Well, there would be plenty of time to make sense of it later. The open mine shaft was waiting; but before diving in there I moved to the other body, and turned it over, and shone the light on the heavy dead face of Phil Burdette. There was, of course, no pleasure in the victory now. There had been a certain sense of achievement earlier, immediately after the shooting; but the trouble with the lonely game we play is that, unlike chess, checkers, or Pac-Man, there’s seldom anybody to share your triumph when you win. Asking a dead man to admire my fine marksmanship wasn’t very rewarding. And there was no way for him to express his admiration for my cleverness in figuring out that a dodo like Bennett couldn’t possibly be running even a Johnny-come-lately law-enforcement agency like the OFS. Bennett simply had to be a figurehead who’d blackmailed his way into a position of prestige and power with what he’d found in Madeleine Ellershaw’s safe-deposit box, but who’d been willing, even happy, to leave the real work and responsibility of the agency to a true professional. Burdette.

  “Adiós, compadre,” I said softly to the dead man on the ground, as one pro to another.

  Then I got the spare clips out of his camouflage coverall; he was dressed like a real commando type, although he was hardly built like one. I found the gun he’d dropped on the hillside above. An M16, as I’d anticipated, it was a better weapon for what came next than the slow and awkward bolt-action rifle. Making sure the premises were secure behind me before entering the mine—if she was still alive in there, she could wait a few minutes longer—I checked out the buildings and found one empty; but there was a little 4WD Japanese pickup truck tucked away in the other. The key was in the ignition lock, so we had transportation out of here without wandering around the hills in the dark looking for a lost Eagle. I unloaded the Remington and put it, along with pack and canteen, into the bed of the diminutive truck. Then I went and found Chavez’s weapon where he’d dropped it; it’s only in the movies that you leave a lot of stray firearms scattered around the scenery. I unloaded all weapons except the one I was using and hid the ammunition, except a spare clip in my pocket, behind a loose board, so that at least somebody’d have to hunt a while before using this artillery against me.

  I was stalling; I didn’t really want to know what was lying inside that mine. Christmas was gone and I didn’t believe in Santa Claus anyway. What the hell had he done for me recently? But the time had come, and, carrying the assault rifle, I made my approach according to the rules. Willy Chavez’s presence still bothered me, and I sensed that I was overlooking something simple and obvious. Although I couldn’t take time to figure it out, at least I could take the normal precautions. I hoped there weren’t too many spikes and splintery timbers to receive me as I made the final dive inside. My hope was rewarded; all I got was a lot of dust and a twinge in my side. I lay there for a while, listening, and heard nothing. Gun ready, I shone the flashlight down the tunnel and saw nothing but a long dusty hole in the ground, apparently going on forever beyond the reach of the light. A second dark hole opened up to the right about twenty yards ahead. Rising cautiously, so as not to crack my already battered skull on the low ceiling, I drew a long breath.

  “Madeleine?” I called. “Hey, Madeleine!”

  The pause that followed was endless; then a faint voice answered me. “Matt?”

  I knew a violent surge of an emotion I didn’t allow myself to identify. It was no time for sentimentality, with two dead men outside; but I’ll have to admit that, while I took a few precautions, I made the final approach in a rather hasty and unprofessional manner. When I hit the light I couldn’t see her at first among the rocks and debris that littered this side tunnel; then I realized that the dusty object lying against the left-hand wall was not geological in nature. In fact it moved a little.

  I hurried forward and knelt beside her. Her ankles were tied and her wrists were still handcuffed. Ropes secured her fore and aft, as the sailors say, to the old uprights supporting the mine roof at this point. About ten yards farther on the whole business had collapsed to block the tunnel. I broke a light-stick I’d taken from the pack and stuck it in a crack in the rock above her and put away the flash, looking down at her in the weird greenish chemical light.

  Her eyes were open, looking up at me. She’d apparently thrashed around a lot, trying unsuccessfully to free herself, covering herself with the dust of centuries—well, decades. She didn’t look a bit like the kind of immaculate girl captive you see on TV, with the careful hairdo just slightly disordered and the pretty dress perhaps slightly torn at the shoulder. Well, they never do.

  Her parched lips moved in her incredibly dirty face. “What took you so long?” she whispered.

  I leaned over and kissed her gently. “Sorry about that.” I wrinkled my nose. “You don’t smell so good, Mrs. E.”

  “What the hell did you expect, leaving me here for weeks?” She grimaced. “Matt, why am I always such a disgusting mess whenever you find me? Ever since you picked up that revolting female zombie at Fort Ames…”

  I said, “Does it really matter, as long as I do find you? Let me get those handcuffs off first. What the hell did they do to your wrists?”

  “The handcuffs cut into me. I did that when I… You remember. That policeman who was going to shoot you.”

  “Yes. I owe you
one for that. Just lie still, damn it. Let me get those ankles before you start thrashing around. Okay. Anything broken that you know of?”

  She shook her matted head. “No, but I don’t seem to have any feet. At least I can’t feel them.”

  “You will,” I said grimly. “All right, let’s sit you up, carefully. How does that feel?”

  Sitting, she made an attempt to cover herself with her torn and filthy wedding shirt, since the zipper of her equally filthy ski jacket had ceased to function.

  “I’m all right, Matt. Really. Just awfully dirty. But if you brought some water… well, I guess I’m kind of awfully thirsty, too.” Then her streaked face twisted with pain. “Oh, God, I think my feet are coming back to life. Jesus!”

  I put the M16 into her lap. “You sit there and hold that; they taught you how to use it, remember? I’ve got a canteen and some clothes for you. I’ll be right back, and we’ll get you cleaned up a bit.”

  “Please don’t leave me here!” It came out as a panicky cry. Then she controlled herself, abashed. She looked down, and took the gun I’d given her and checked it, and looked back up at me. “Sorry. I hate hysterical women. Trouble, Matt? I heard some shooting outside.”

  “There was a kind of welcoming party, but it’s taken care of. At least I think so, but the old ESP is kicking up a bit. You’re not really in top combat form at the moment, so just sit tight. I’ll be right back.”

  “Don’t be too long, please. I’ve had about enough of this lousy black hole in the ground.”

  I took out the revolver, less cumbersome than the assault rifle in these close quarters anyway, and made my way back towards the main corridor, if you could dignify that wormhole in the hill with such a fancy name. I was getting a kink in my back from the effort of reducing my six feet four to the midget height required in here. I hesitated, not liking the business of emerging from a lighted tunnel into a dark one; then I went out low and fast, or started to. A metallic gleam ahead checked me; instinct threw me back and down heedlessly, with a clear picture of a double-barreled shotgun aimed my way around the corner where the two tunnels met. Once you’ve seen those big twin muzzles from the wrong end, you never forget them.

  The shotgun fired, making a thunderous crash in that confined space that I was only dimly aware of because I’d landed wrong, on a fallen boulder, on my injured side, and the pain was unbelievable. I couldn’t move and I certainly couldn’t breathe; one attempt to draw a breath convinced me that I’d have to find a new method of oxygenation or, hell, just strangle quietly and peacefully. I’d lost my gun and, paralyzed by the breathtaking pain, couldn’t make myself grope around to find it, or even go for the little automatic that was still up my sleeve.

  Stupid, I thought numbly, taking care of the two outside so carefully, checking everything so meticulously out there, and then getting too eager to rescue the girl to take a good look down that obvious tunnel where a third enemy had been waiting all the time, letting his associates die unassisted, just waiting, waiting for me to come to him…

  I was dimly aware that the man with the shotgun was in the entrance to our side tunnel now, taking deliberate aim to finish me. The elderly, handsome face pressed to the fancy stock was that of Waldemar Baron, Attorney at Law, the man who’d deliberately confessed to a serious breach of legal ethics so he wouldn’t be suspected of even more serious crimes. Well, who else would Willy Chavez be working for around here but the lawyer who’d saved him from the chair, or at least a life sentence? But I still couldn’t see a busy and highly visible public figure like Baron being the mysterious Mr. Tolliver in his spare time. Not that it mattered now, with the side-by-side muzzles of the expensive shotgun steadying for the final shot…

  The M16 opened up behind me, full-auto. I heard the wicked little metal-clad projectiles snapping past and smashing into the body of the man in the tunnel entrance. Stuff was sifting from the ceiling in the eerie glow of the light-stick: dust, little stones, even a big rock somewhere, jarred loose by the reverberating reports of the GI weapon. Baron fell forward on top of his gun which, miraculously, did not fire the second, still loaded, barrel when it hit.

  I decided it was time to give respiration another chance. It was a mistake. Something was really very wrong inside my chest. Then the coughing started, tearing me apart, and I passed out.

  29

  I wound up in the hospital all taped up, of course; mummified, practically armor-plated from navel to nipples. They get as big a charge out of doing that to you as Jackson had got out of his two-bit porn movies. But even before that they did nasty things to my rib-punctured lung and stuck needles into me just about everywhere and even had me trapped in a plastic tent for a while breathing some kind of gas they pumped in, presumably oxygen, but you couldn’t prove it by me.

  Fortunately I wasn’t really around while all this was happening. I was off somewhere watching the silly character in the bed from a considerable distance and not greatly concerned with his pitiful sufferings. But even during this period of dissociation something kept nagging at me, the sense of a job unfinished, and a possible answer came to me, and I crawled back into the body that was affording them such a lot of professional entertainment and asked for McCullough. At first they pretended they couldn’t understand what I was saying, then they told me I wasn’t well enough to have visitors, and finally they got him for me, with his jeans and girlish hair and icy eyes. He didn’t give me any nonsense about how happy he was I’d made it, and how great I looked, and how I’d be out of there as good as new in no time at all. He just waited to find out why he’d been summoned.

  “Tolliver,” I whispered. “I’ve got a hunch—”

  He took something out of his pocket, a newspaper page, and unfolded it, and put it into my hands. “Maybe we had the same hunch,” he said.

  I didn’t have to search for the name. The obituary was the longest on the page, as befitted the prominence of the dead man, who’d died of a heart attack in his home at the age of seventy-two. I read that he’d been a lifelong resident of Santa Fe, the son of well-known Santa Fe citizens, named; and that he had been a successful attorney and partner in a prominent law firm, named; until an automobile accident had confined him to a wheelchair. There had been a wife who’d predeceased him by fifteen years, named, and three children, named, who’d produced several grandchildren, named. The deceased had been a veteran of World War II. Graveside ceremonies would be performed on a certain date—already past—at a certain time at the Santa Fe National Cemetery. Arrangements were through a certain mortuary.

  The name at the head of the column was WALSH, HOMER WILLIAMSON. The mysterious senior partner of Baron and Walsh whom I’d never met, and never would meet now. I folded the paper carefully and gave it back to McCullough.

  “Agent Orange?” I asked, with professional curiosity.

  He nodded. Officially, the orange capsule that fits our new little automatic hypo is known as Injection C, but the color had made the other name inevitable. This is the one that takes a little while to work but can’t be detected in the body after death. Agent Red is instantaneous but detectible; and Agent Green just puts them to sleep temporarily, as Jim Dellenbach’s partner, Nolan, had discovered back in Missouri.

  McCullough said, “I confirmed first, of course. It wasn’t hard. Mr. Walsh was really quite proud of his secret achievements as the mysterious Mr. Tolliver. He was aching to boast about them to somebody outside his organization if he died for it. As he did.”

  I licked my lips. It was still hard to concentrate. “How did you come to suspect—Hell, never mind the details. It got done. If you want a pat on the back, you’ve got one.”

  He grinned. “All that gaudy praise, I can’t stand it. Well, they want me back in Washington. Bob Wills will be around in case you need somebody. See you around sometime.”

  “Not if I see you first,” I said. “I hate independent young bastards who figure things out for themselves instead of showing proper deference to the senior ag
ent in charge.”

  He grinned again. If he didn’t watch out, it could become a habit. He made a very rude gesture and went out. I watched him go and decided that how he wore his damn hair was his business; but if I ever got so concerned about how my head looked I’d leave the stuff comfortably short and invest in a set of fancy wigs suitable for every occasion, like some fairly tough, sword-bearing gents of a few centuries back.

  After that, perhaps due to the relief of knowing that the mission had got completed, even if not by me, it was suddenly all over except for the long healing, and the hope that someday in the distant future I’d be released from my adhesive-tape corset and permitted to draw a real breath again.

  I was even allowed to submit myself to the terrible strain of picking up a telephone and calling Washington. Mac said he’d heard I was probably going to live and he approved; but there was a small problem of my having delivered the wrong merchandise before I was disabled. I said there had been a mistake in the original order. The shipment had been correct as delivered; and I’d committed myself to having the item ordered in error returned to stock. All of which double-talk was meant to indicate that Burdette had been the right man; and that Bennett was a lightweight and no threat to the national security, and that since he’d come through with the information I wanted he should be turned loose with a kick in the pants.

  Mac brought me up to date on other matters. It seemed that, coincidentally, at just about the time I’d had my unfortunate and almost fatal car accident, cause and location carefully unspecified, a terrible thing had been happening in the hills some distance outside Santa Fe. A certain prominent attorney out hunting jackrabbits on his own property had stumbled upon a government agent—thank God not one of ours—engaged in some kind of a mysterious investigation of a deserted mine on the place. Curious about his presence, the lawyer had gone in after him. There had apparently been a misunderstanding in the dark, fire had been given and returned, and both men had died, proving what dreadful things guns really were.