The Viper Squad

by J. B. Hadley

  Everyone stopped fighting and looked at him. He flashed a badge for all to see, and the crowd slunk off except for a dozen or so who had some trouble getting up off the ground. These were helped away, and a large space was left around Bob, Joe, Lance, Harvey, the man with the gun and badge, and an emaciated character who seemed to be the cop’s sidekick.

  “You speak Spanish?” the badge asked in Spanish, tucking the gun into his bellyband beneath his shirt.

  “I do,” Lance said. “They don’t.”

  “You all together?”

  “No, him and me came to help these two when we saw they were in trouble with the crowd. We figured on helping two fellow Americans.”

  “You do that all the time?” the cop asked. “Help your countrymen in trouble?”

  “In foreign places, sure,” Lance said.

  “How did you know they didn’t speak Spanish if you never saw them before?”

  Lance gestured. “They wouldn’t have got into a fight if they’d been able to speak Spanish.”

  “You think so?” The cop looked him over. “I’m going to give you good advice. Don’t go in that football stadium. I’ll stop a taxi for you over here and you all go back downtown. Tell your friends.”

  Lt. Col. Francisco Cerezo Ramirez, of the Treasury Police in San Salvador, climbed the curving marble staircase, and when he reached the corridor above, noticed Turco peel off the wall and follow him. The colonel had a somewhat acid stomach this morning, and his henchman was the last person he wanted to see, yet he was afraid to send him away. This was what things had come to. Here he was, Lieutenant Colonel Cerezo, fearful of dismissing a lackey. But Turco had the ear of many important men and personally led one of the death squads financed by the Escandell family. The colonel was married to one of the younger Escandell daughters, and he represented the family’s interest in the Treasury Police. His own family was much less well-to-do and powerful than the Escandells, and his father and mother were proud of their son’s link to the ruling oligarchy. He had been promoted to his present rank a month before his marriage.

  Turco followed the colonel into his office, closed the door behind them and waited respectfully for the officer to sit before he did so himself. Despite his uncouthness, Turco had had a strict military training and never stepped out of line in matters like respect to his superiors, although all knew Turco did as he pleased when their backs were turned. Turco waited politely for the colonel to wish him good day.

  The Escandells had three sons with the rank of general, one in the air force and two in the army. They had cousins and in-laws, like him, and those beholden to them at every level in all branches of the armed and security forces. Didn’t they trust him? Is that why Turco had been assigned to him? The colonel knew that Turco had the ear of the three Escandell generals, which was more than he, their brother-in-law, had. They were often patronizing to him.

  This Turco was continually digging up problems that needed immediate attention. The colonel had to be wary with him because Turco was careful always to get authorization before proceeding. When Lieutenant Colonel Cerezo did not set limits on what he permitted Turco to do, the man ran amok and claimed to be operating under Cerezo’s orders.

  “Buenas dias, Turco,” Cerezo finally said, twitched his mustache and posed authoritatively behind his big desk. “Como esta, amigo?”

  Turco murmured a courteous reply and handed the officer some papers.

  The colonel sighed and impatiently looked through them, obviously waiting for a chance to dismiss Turco from his office.

  “From what I can understand,” Cerezo said, “these four norteamericanos involved in the disturbance yesterday at the stadium are all staying at the same hotel in rooms reserved by a Senor Hillman after two of them denied to you that they knew the other two; that this Senor Hillman himself has not appeared; and that the passports of these gentlemen have not been properly registered. Also you say that another norteamericano, and a Hispanic whom you have not seen, occupy another two rooms reserved by Senor Hillman. So? Get their passports properly registered. Threaten the hotel manager for not following procedure. What do you want of me?”

  “Colonel, the desk clerk thinks the Hispanic member of the group is a Cuban.”

  “A Cuban!” The colonel’s system sent a dart of acid into his already sour stomach. “Why didn’t the desk clerk report his presence before this?”

  “Because she is not completely certain. She heard him speak only in English. She is an educated woman and careful of her opinions. But she is sure enough he is Cuban.”

  “Possibly Cuban,” the colonel amended, by now fully awake and thinking hard. “Five norteamericanos who seem to want to hide their identities and a possible Cuban… not good, not good. Do they have wild hair and beards and wear peace buttons?”

  “No. These ones are dangerous. They are clever, and when they look you in the eye, you can see they are not afraid.”

  The colonel wondered for an instant what Turco saw in his eyes when their looks met. “Where are they now?”

  “In their rooms at the Ritz Continental. Still recovering from last night, I would say. Adolfo is in the lobby, watching for them.”

  “Don’t approach this… possible Cuban. You don’t speak any English, do you, Turco?” The colonel was pleased. His own English was good. “Too bad. It limits your capacity. You mentioned that one of the norteamericanos at the stadium spoke Spanish. You and Adolfo talk with him.”

  Turco stood immediately on getting the authorization he needed.

  The colonel held up a hand for him to wait. “Turco, I said talk with him.”

  Lance heard the rap on his door as he lay on his bed wondering which had been the cause of his hangover—the rum, the beer or the espiritu de cana. The rapping became more insistent. He decided it was probably one of the others looking for aspirin.

  “What do you want?” he called.

  “Coffee, senor,” a male voice called from outside the door.

  He didn’t remember ordering any, but now coffee sounded like a good idea. He pulled a dressing gown over his shoulders, opened the door and saw the hollow-faced man who had been with the cop at the stadium the day before. The emaciated man held his right hand close to his hip. Lance saw that it held a small automatic, a .22 or .25, with a silencer attached that was longer than the gun itself. With the pistol held close to his own body, well out of Lance’s reach, the gunman gave Lance a chance to take in the situation, no panic, one foot in place to stop the door being slammed, very professional.

  “Come on in,” Lance said. “You got some questions, I suppose. Where’s your amigo?”

  The cadaverous cop waited, and Lance looked out and saw the mean-looking one with the potbelly coming down the corridor from where presumably he had been standing guard.

  Lance wasn’t worried. He expected a little melodrama with Central American cops. And the mean one had caught him in an obvious lie about not knowing Joe and Bob. Lance was more concerned about what Mike Campbell was going to say than with this tropical Kojak and his wasted sidekick.

  They came into the room and double-locked the door after them.

  “No coffee?” Lance asked. “Let me order some sent up.”

  He picked the phone off the receiver but did not bother. to dial because big-belly ripped the cord from the wall. They forced Lance to kneel by the bed and tied his wrists behind his back with the telephone cord.

  “Sit on the bed. Here. People call me Turco. That is Adolfo. Your name?”

  “Lance Hardwick.”

  “On your passport?”

  “Miroslav Svoboda. I didn’t get a chance yet to change it there, but I’m legally Lance Hardwick.”

  “Why are you in El Salvador, Senor Svoboda? That is not a norteamericano name. No one in the United States is named Miroslav. You are from eastern Europe?”

  “No. My parents were. I was born in the United States.”

  Turco nodded significantly to Adolfo. “An eastern European and
a Cuban. What does that tell you?”

  “Marxists,” Adolfo said sadly, as if he’d just discovered a fruit fly in an orange tree.

  “That’s what it sounds like to me too,” Turco said.

  Lance was a bit taken aback that they knew about Cesar Ordonez. But it stood to reason, he supposed, since they were all in the same hotel. Obviously these cops had been doing some kind of background check. He was glad he hadn’t lied to them about the name on his passport.

  “Why don’t you leave me the address of your office, Senor Turco, and me and my friends will come around and see you this afternoon and straighten everything out?”

  Turco shook his head.

  What did he want? Money! That had to be it. But he had to be dignified about it. Give them anything. Mike would repay it if he could get rid of these two.

  “Senor Turco, my wallet and identification”—he did not say money—”are in the back pocket of my pants lying on that chair. Unless I lost them last night, which is very possible. Maybe you found them? No? And that belt in my pants”—he’d spell it out for them—”that’s a money belt. Why don’t you take a look at it?”

  Turco whacked him across the face with the back of his hand.

  “Sorry,” Lance said. “I didn’t mean any offense. What the hell do you expect me to do with my hands tied behind my back except try to buy my way out?”

  “Talk your way out,” Turco answered.

  “What do you want to hear?” Lance asked flippantly.

  “Why you and your friends are here.”

  “We’re on vacation,” Lance said brightly.

  Turco pulled the lapel of Lance’s dressing gown to the side and, light as a feather, touched his right nipple with the glowing tip of his cigarette.

  Lance screamed and rolled over on the bed.

  The two Salvadorans waited until he had recovered and looked up at them.

  “Release my hands,” Lance pleaded.

  “We’re going to have to do something to quieten the noise of your screams,” Turco told him.

  Adolfo volunteered, “I think I can be of help.”

  “Very kind of you, Adolfo,” Turco said. “You understand, don’t you, Miroslav, that this will go very hard with you and that it will be very slow until you tell us what we want to know.” He pulled a folded straight razor from his pants pocket as he was saying this, opened its blade and examined the light glinting on the vertical scratches left by the honing strap. “Of course you know what to expect. You have been trained to withstand any torture we could give you. Isn’t that what they told you, Miroslav? Where? In Prague? Or did you train in Russia? You speak fair Spanish. My guess is you came to us via Cuba. No, don’t say anything, Miroslav. It’s much more important that you listen now. Very carefully. Are you ready?”

  Lance watched Turco’s eyes. He had eyes like those of a sadistic schoolteacher Lance remembered from when he was very young, who liked to play with his victim, let him believe he was going to let him off, before hitting him with something worse than even his victim had been prepared for.

  “I’m listening,” Lance said grimly. His chest hurt like a crazed hornet sting that wouldn’t ease up.

  “Good. This is the way I work, Miroslav. I do not start with the fingernails or the eyes. I go straight for the balls. Empty the testicular sacs. No trouble at all with this blade, Miroslav. Some bleeding and some pain, but nothing like what is to follow.”

  Turco ran the flattened blade down Lance’s chest and sheared off some chest hairs. He effortlessly sliced through the dressing gown’s belt, then continued down Lance’s belly with the flattened blade.

  Lance held his body rigid, and his eyes stared down at the gleaming sharp steel of the straight razor as it neared his genitals.

  With a flick of the wrist, Turco lifted the blade off Lance’s belly and suddenly chopped its cutting edge down on his thigh. Lance felt only a sting as the honed metal parted his skin and saw his blood well up along the razor’s length. It had missed his penis by little more than an inch.

  Turco raised the blade slowly until it was before Lance’s face. He let the blood drip from the razor’s end.

  “Tell me why you and your friends are here,” Turco said softly. When Lance did not respond, Turco went on. “You will tell me. I know what I am saying. Adolfo and I have had much success in persuading men like you to give information. But you should not be thinking about us. You should be thinking about yourself. Because you will have to make up your mind very soon if you want to continue having balls hanging between your legs. I make no other promises, only that if you tell us what we want to know, I will not cut off your balls. On the other hand, I promise equally strongly that if you do not answer my question, you will feel this blade do its work.”

  Lance’s pain diminished with increasing fear. The fact that Turco was taking such great care to explain himself carried a sinister ring of sincerity. Turco and Adolfo reminded him of a pair of surgeons—careful, patient, experienced… skilled professionals.

  Turco nodded to Adolfo, who grabbed Lance’s left ankle and sat on his right foot, forcing his legs apart. Turco grabbed Lance’s balls in his left hand and touched the razor’s edge to their roots.

  “I’ll talk! I’ll talk!” Lance yelled.

  “I haven’t asked you the question yet,” Turco said softly.

  Lance felt the razor nick his scrotal sac.

  “We’re here to get Sally Poynings! The millionaire’s daughter who joined the guerrillas!”

  Lance felt the razor lift from his testicles.

  “Who sent you?” Turco asked.

  “Her father hired us.”

  Lance felt Turco release his balls.

  Turco walked to the center of the room and put the razor on a table. He nodded to Adolfo, who allowed Lance to sit on the edge of the bed again. Lance saw he had confused Turco with his information. At Turco’s bidding, Adolfo unbound Lance’s wrists and then worked at connecting the phone lines again. He picked up the receiver, nodded and handed it to Turco. Lance smoked a cigarette and massaged his wrists. While Turco dialed, he took the opportunity to pull on his shirt and pants. He was already feeling better now that he was no longer trussed like a sacrificial victim. The leftist posters he had collected as souvenirs bulged in his back pocket—crudely printed graphics of fists clenched and of chains being snapped, along with bullshit about what the Clara Elizabeth Ramirez Metropolitan Commando would do to the capitalist pigs. Lance intended to pin them on a wall of his West Hollywood apartment as a joke. Turco would probably get the wrong idea if he saw them, so Lance let his shirt hang loose over his pants and hoped the posters would not be noticed.

  “So there is a rich American woman with the leftists,” Turco was saying over the phone. “No, colonel, I never heard a word about it till this norteamericano told me just now. No. No. He’s not hurt. He can walk. Sure. I’ll bring him right over. I know this could be big for all of us. Top secret.”

  He put down the receiver and walked up and down the room, deep in thought, anger on his face. In the end, he went to the door and beckoned for Lance and Adolfo to follow.

  Adolfo prodded Lance occasionally with the little gun, which was now concealed inside a paper bag. Lance saw none of the others on the way down or in the hotel lobby.

  Turco told him to drive, and got in beside him. Lance adjusted the safety belt as Adolfo got in the back seat. Turco jabbed his forefinger in the directions he wanted Lance to drive.

  “So you come down here to show you are better than us,” he said in a menacing voice.

  “What do you mean?” Lance asked.

  “You find the girl and bring her back and say we couldn’t have done it.”

  “I don’t know why he hired us instead of dealing with you,” Lance said. “I don’t even know why it has been kept quiet about the girl having gone with the rebs. I’m just a hired gun. But one thing I can tell you—I never heard talk about any of us being better than any of you people.”
/>   Turco was quiet again. Lance figured he was pissed off at not having been informed by his superiors about Sally. He had no way of knowing that Turco and Adolfo had murdered Bennett and thus could be said to have a vested interest in the case. In truth, Turco had just assumed that the girl went back to the United States after her lover’s death. That she had not, and had joined the guerrillas instead, was of no great consequence to him; but that he had not been informed of it was. That might mean something. Then again, it might not.

  Traffic was heavy and their progress was slow.

  “How were you going to go about finding this girl?” Turco asked.

  Lance was pleased to hear the note of hostility in Turco’s voice replaced for the first time by something else. Curiosity. Lance had other worries in his head, now that he knew he was going to hang on to his balls. He had given away Campbell and the others. Blown the mission. In order to save himself. Any of the others would have done the same thing, he reasoned. But they hadn’t. And he had. He didn’t know how he could face Mad Mike on this. After being let live down the coke thing on the Chesapeake. He sure was fucking them over now.

  “Well, I don’t have the exact plans of what we intended to do,” Lance told Turco as he followed his directions to a big building. “All I’ve seen is our weapons and the local team in the eastern end of the city.”

  “Could you find them again?”

  “Sure. I know where the house is.”

  “Take us there now,” Turco ordered.

  “Like hell I will. I don’t trust you two no farther than I could throw you. You was speaking to a colonel on the phone. You tell him to come along, and I’ll drive you all there right away.”

  Turco pointed to an entranceway. Armed sentries walked up and down. “Pull in. Wait here. Adolfo, any trouble, shoot him:”

  “I would like to,” Adolfo said from the back seat.

  Turco was gone for about ten minutes, then returned with a uniformed officer, a small, self-important-looking man with a clipped mustache. The officer got in back with Adolfo while Turco held the car door open for him. Lance by now was half-amused at Turco’s swings from violence to almost servile politeness and back again. Turco climbed in the front seat beside him and courteously introduced him as Lance Hardwick, rather than Miroslav Svoboda, to Lt. Col. Francisco Cerezo Ramirez of the Treasury Police.