The Aztec Avenger

by Nick Carter

  That would be a mistake. I knew I had to make my own breaks. One way or another, I knew that I had to force Carlos’ hand, and I had to do it quickly.

  Carefully, I avoided the patroling guards and moved around the back of the hacienda, then made my way to the edge of the cliffs. Lowering myself over the lip, I started down.

  In the darkness, I could barely make out the footholds as I let myself down the face of the rock. The cliff was steeper than it looked. Inch by inch, handhold by handhold, I let myself down. Once, my toes slipped off the slippery, sea-wet surface and only the desperate grasp of my fingers kept me from falling the hundred feet onto the boulder-strewn base of the cliff.

  I’d moved down only about ten feet below the lip of the cliff when I heard the guards come by overhead. The sound of the waves and the wind had kept me from hearing their approach sooner. I froze where I was, fearful of making a sound.

  One of them struck a match. There was a brief flare and then blackness again. Any second, I thought, one of them could take a step to the “edge of the cliff and look over, and the first I would know that I’d been seen would be a bullet blasting me from my precarious handholds. I was completely vulnerable, totally helpless. My arms ached from holding myself in the awkward position I’d been in when I first heard them overhead.

  They gossiped a moment about a girl in town, laughing at some trick she’d pulled on one of them. A cigarette butt came arching over the cliff, its red coal falling past me.

  “. . . vamanos!” said one of them, finally.

  I forced myself to remain motionless for almost another full minute before I dared take a chance that they’d gone. I began to move downward again, my mind concentrating on the sheer descent. I stretched out my foot, finding another toehold, testing it carefully, moving down another six inches. By now, my muscles were aching in torment. My right forearm, where Luis had slashed me, began to throb with pain. With a deliberate effort of will, I blocked everything from my mind except the foot-by-foot, slow descent.

  Once my foot slipped into a fissure and I had to wrench it free. My ankle ached from the sharp twist as I worked myself downward. My hands were torn, the skin on my fingers and on the palms of my hand were sandpapered raw by the rocks.

  I kept telling myself that there was only a few more feet to go, only another few minutes, just a little way further.

  And then, panting, almost completely exhausted, I was on the narrow beach and moving along the base of the cliffs, avoiding the boulders, forcing myself to run in a tired dogtrot around the curve of the headland, trying not to think about how much time had been wasted in my descent.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  On the far side of the headland, I found a sloping ravine that cut down between the steep cliffs. In the rainy season, it would be a torrent of water that poured the floodwaters from the hills into the sea. Now, it provided me with a path to the top of the cliff.

  Tripping, sliding over loose shale, I scrambled my way up the ravine until I came out within a hundred yards of the road. To the east, almost half a mile away, I could make out the glow from the spotlights over the front gate of Garrett’s hacienda.

  I waited by the edge of the road, forcing myself to wait patiently, trying not to think of how rapidly time was running out on me. The hour I’d allowed myself was more than three-quarters gone. Headlights finally glowed in the distance. I stepped out into the middle of the road, waving my arms. The car braked to a halt, the driver poking his head out the window.

  “Qui pasa?” he shouted at me.

  I came up to the car. The driver was a teenager with lank, black hair swept back over his ears.

  “A telephone. Can you get me to a telephone? El asunto es muy importante!”

  “Get in!”

  I ran around to the front of the car and slid into the seat. Even as I gasped, “Vaya muy de prisa, por favor!” he let in the clutch in a racing start. Gravel spewed from the rear wheels, the car leaped ahead, the speedometer needle swinging up to sixty, seventy and then past one hundred and ten kilometers an hour.

  Less than a minute later, he screeched in to the Pemex station and burned rubber coming to a halt.

  I flung open the door and ran to the public telephone. I put the call in to the Hotel Matamoros, thinking how ironic it was that Ortega himself had told me where to get hold of Teniente Fuentes!

  It took almost five minutes to get him on the line. It took another five minutes to convince him that I was going to give him the cooperation that Jean-Paul had asked me for in the minute before he was killed. Then I told Fuentes what I wanted from him and where to meet me.

  “How soon can you get here?” I asked, finally.

  “Ten minutes, perhaps.”

  “Make it sooner if you can,” I said, and hung up.

  Teniente Fèlix Fuentes had a face like a Toltec idol carved out of brown rock. Short, massive chest, powerful hands.

  “Did you bring the rifle?” I asked as I climbed into his unmarked police car.

  “It’s on the back seat. It’s my own personal hunting weapon for small game. Take care of it. Now, what do you have in mind?”

  Fuentes put the police car into gear. I told him where to head. As we drove, I outlined what had happened so far. I told Fuentes about Dietrich and his formula for making synthetic heroin. I told him that Ortega now had Dietrich a prisoner and what Ortega planned to do. Fuentes listened soberly as I brought him up to date.

  “And now,” I said, “I’ve got to get back into that house before they find out I’ve been gone. And as soon as I’m back, I want your men to raid it. We’ve got to flush out Ortega. If we can throw them into a panic, there’s a good chance Ortega will lead me to Dietrich.”

  “What excuse do I have to raid Garrett’s hacienda, Senor Carter? He’s a very influential man. So is Ortega.”

  “Is forty kilos of heroin a good enough excuse?”

  Fuentes whistled aloud. “Forty kilos!For forty kilos I would raid the Presidente’s house!”

  I told him where to find the heroin. Fuentes picked up the hand mike and radioed headquarters for rein-forcements. He was explicit. No sirens, no flashers, no action until he gave the signal.

  By this time we were back down the road that led past Garrett’s hacienda. At almost the exact spot where I had parked Bickford’s car only the night before, he stopped to let me out.

  I took the rifle and a rope grapnel from the back seat. I hefted the weapon. “It’s a beauty,” I told him.

  “My prize possession,” said Fuentes. “Again, I ask you to be careful of it.”

  “As if it were my own,” I said, and turned away, setting oil across the field in a crouching run. Fuentes backed the police car down the road some hundred yards or so to intercept the others when they came.

  I picked out a position on a slight rise about two hundred feet from the driveway that led from the road to his house. I was at a slight angle to the gateway. I dropped the grapnel at my feet and lay down carefully on my stomach, the rifle cradled in my arms.

  In a few minutes, two police cars drove up, the second one almost directly behind the first. Fuentes directed them into position, one on each side of the road that led past the driveway, the men in the cars waiting with engines turned off and headlights out.

  I lifted the heavy rifle to my shoulder. It was a superbly made Schultz & Larson 61 match rifle, a .22 calibre, single shot, bolt action weapon with a twenty-eight-inch “barrel and a globe front sight. The palm rest was adjustable for my left hand. The stock was carved with a thumbhole so that I could grip the semi-molded pistol grip stock with my right hand. Especially manufactured for International Match requirements, the rifle was so accurate that I could put a bullet through the end of a cigarette at a hundred yards. Its heavy weight, sixteen and a half pounds, made it rock steady in my grasp. I aimed it at one of the two spotlights mounted high above the left side of the front gate.

  Slowly, my fist contracted, my finger squeezing the trigger. The rifle bu
cked slightly in my hands. The spotlight smashed out simultaneously with the sharp crack of sound in my ears. Quickly, I worked the bolt, pulling it up and back, the spent cartridge flipping up into the air. I fed another round into the chamber and slammed the bolt shut and locked.

  I fired again. The second light exploded. There were shouts at the hacienda, but the front gate and the area around it was in darkness. Once more, I ejected the spent case and reloaded the rifle. Through the open grillwork of the gate, I could see the plate glass window of the living room that looked out onto the still floodlit pool area.

  I adjusted the sights for the additional distance and aimed again. I put a bullet through the glass, spider webbing it almost dead center. I heard faint screams coming from the house as I reloaded. I put the fourth bullet through the plate glass window not more than a foot away from the other hole.

  There were more shouts from the house. Suddenly, all the lights went out So did the music. Someone had finally gotten to the main switch. I put down the rifle where Fuentes would be able to find it easily, picked up the grapnel rope and ran across the field to the wall that surrounded the house.

  Now that I was close, I could hear the shouts and screams coming from inside. I heard Carlos yelling at the guards. One of them fired into the darkness until he emptied his pistol. Carlos shouted furiously at him to stop.

  Swiftly, I made my way along the wall. About forty or fifty feet away from the gate, I stopped and took the grapnel from my shoulder. I flung the hook up over the wall, and the tines caught on the first throw, the metal biting firmly into the brickwork of the wall. Hand over hand, I pulled myself up onto the top of the wall. Unhooking the grapnel, I dropped it over the other side and jumped down beside it, landing in a jarring crouch.

  As I ran through the shrubbery to the wall of the house away from the pool area, I coiled the rope again. Stopping below the balcony, I flung the grapnel once more and it caught on the railing.

  I pulled myself up until my fingers caught the wrought iron of the railing and, in a twisting scramble, I swung myself over the edge. It took only a moment to haul in the rope, and then I was running along the balcony to the room I had left more than an hour before.

  As I opened the doors to slip inside, I heard the first rising howl of the police car sirens. Consuela was still unconscious. In the darkness, I shoved the coiled rope far under the double bed. Quickly, I stripped off my clothes, letting them drop to the floor in a pile. Naked, I slid under the topsheet beside Consuela’s nude, warm body.

  I heard the insistant, rising and falling howl of the police sirens coming closer, then the shouts from downstairs and from outside. Then there was a pounding on the bedroom door. The knob was rattled angrily.

  Someone shoved the key in the lock and twisted it savagely. The door was flung open, slamming against the wall. Ortega stood there, with a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  “What the hell is going on?” I demanded.

  “Get dressed! There’s no time to lose! The police are here!”

  Hastily, I grabbed for my slacks and shirt and slipped into them. I shoved my feet into my loafers, not bothering to put on my socks.

  “Wake her up!” snarled Ortega, turning the flashlight on Consuela. She lay as I’d left her, her hair flowing over the pillow, her arm bent over, her head, her face turned sideways.

  I grinned at him. “Not a chance. She’s had too much to drink. She passed out on me just when it was getting interesting.”

  Carlos swore in frustration. “Then we leave her,” he decided. “Let’s go!” He motioned with his gun.

  I went out the door ahead of him. I heard the police sirens again.

  “What the hell are the police doing here?” I asked.

  “I’d like to know that myself,” Carlos snapped angrily. “But I don’t intend to stay and find out.”

  I followed Ortega down the hall to the stairs. He shone his flashlight down the steps. Brian Garrett was at the foot of the staircase, blinking in the beam, looking up with fright written over his florid face. He ran halfway up to meet us, the drunkenness leached out of him by the sudden panic.

  “For god’s sake, Carlos!” he shouted. “What the hell do we do now?”

  “Get out of my way.” Carlos moved down the steps to get past Garrett Garrett caught him by the arm. “What about the forty kilos of horse?” he demanded, hoarsely. “Goddamn it! It’s my house! They’ll get me for it! Where can I run to?”

  Carlos halted in midstep. He turned to Garrett, the light from his flashlight illuminating them eerily.

  “You’re right,” said Carlos. “You don’t have any place to run, do you?”

  Garrett looked at him with frightened eyes, mutely pleading with him.

  “If they catch you, you’ll talk. I don’t think I need that kind of trouble,” said Carlos, brutally. He lifted the gun and pulled the trigger twice. The first shot caught Garrett squarely in the middle of his chest He was opening his mouth in shock when the second bullet smashed his face apart.

  Even as Garrett’s body was crumpling slackly against the railing, Carlos was moving down the stairs again. He was almost running now and I was just a step behind him.

  “This way!” Carlos shouted over his shoulder at me as we turned at the end of the living room. He made his way down the corridor to the kitchen and out the service door. The big sedan was waiting there, its engine idling, the same driver at the wheel.

  Carlos flung open the rear door. “Get in!” he snapped. I threw myself into the car. Carlos ran around to the front seat, slamming the door shut

  “Vamanos, Paco!” he shouted. “Pronto! Pronto!”

  Paco put the car in gear and stepped on the accelerator. The fat, wide-tread tires dug into the gravel. We were picking up speed as we skidded around the corner, of the house, careening around the curve of the circular drive in front of the entrance. Paco spun the wheel desperately to straighten out for the gate, blowing the horn frantically, swearing as loudly as he could at the idiots to open the gates.

  He slammed on the brakes momentarily, slowing up the car until one of the gates opened enough for us to squeeze through, and then he stepped on the gas pedal again. The big car shot through the gate.

  The first of the police cars was parked less than twenty yards away, blocking the driveway to the main road. Police were crouched behind the car, firing at the gate as we came through.

  Paco didn’t hesitate. With a curse, he twisted the wheel of the car, sending it off the driveway into the rough ground of the field, still jamming the accelerator to the floorboards. In the darkness, without headlights, the heavy sedan hurtled across the field, bucking and lurching like a wild mustang suddenly gone berserk, throwing up a rooster tail of dust and dirt clods behind it.

  The bouncing, slewing roll of the sedan flung me helplessly from side to side. I heard a fusillade of shots being fired at us. The rear window disintegrated, showering me with shards of broken glass.

  There were more shots, and then the car ceased its pounding as Paco suddenly spun the steering wheel again and brought us back onto the road. We roared away in high gear.

  There was no pursuit. Once on the highway, Paco flicked on his headlights and brought the big car up to almost racing speed.

  Carlos sat up and leaned over the back of the front seat. He smiled at me and said, “You can sit up now, Senor Carter. For the time being, I think we are safe.”

  “What the hell was that all about?” I picked myself off the floor where I’d been thrown and sank back on the cushions of the seat. I took out my handkerchief and carefully brushed the sharp glass splinters from my trousers.

  “I think it was because the captain of our ship talked,” Carlos speculated. “He knew we had a load to be shipped. I think the police were guessing that it was at Garrett’s.”

  “Now what?”

  “Now we pick up Senor Dietrich and his daughter and head for the States. Our plans have not been changed. They have merely b
een moved up by a few hours.”

  “What about Consuela?”

  Carlos shrugged.

  “If she keeps her wits about her, she’ll be all right Garrett’s guests knew nothing about our activities. Consuela’s smart enough to claim that she, too, was merely a guest and knows nothing about whatever they find.”

  “Or Garrett’s murder? You took care of that problem, I see.”

  Ortega shrugged. “It had to be .done sooner or later.”

  “Where to now?”

  “To Bickford’s place,” Ortega answered. “That is where the Dietrichs are being held.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The soft, gentle expression was gone from Doris Bickford’s face. What came through now was the un-embellished, merciless core that was her real self, seeming even tougher because of the contrast with her small, doll-like features framed by her long, platinum blond hair. John Bickford prowled the living room like a huge, aging lion limping out the last few months of its life in angry bewilderment at the loss of its strength, its mane gone white with the years. He was at a complete loss for words. He couldn’t understand the change that had taken place in his wife in the last few hours.

  Herbert Dietrich sat on the couch, Susan beside him. Dietrich Was a worn, tired man, exhaustion from the day’s strain showing on his face, an old man on the verge of collapse, yet sitting erect and stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the weariness that had settled in his bones. But his eyes had filmed over with a dull, unseeing glaze, a curtain behind which he had retreated from the world.

  Doris turned to us as Carlos and I came into the room, the gun in her hand pointing quickly in our direction before she recognized us.

  “For god’s sake,” she said, acidly, turning the gun away, “what took you so long?”

  “It’s only three o’clock,” Carlos said, easily. “We hadn’t planned to leave until almost five.”

  “Are we ready to leave, then? I don’t think that he—” she gestured at her husband with the gun—”can hold out much longer. He’s a bundle of nerves.” There was sharp, abrasive scorn in her voice. Bickford turned around, worry showing openly on his blunt, scarred face. “I didn’t bargain for this, Carlos,” he said. “You can count me out.”