Renegade 22

by Lou Cameron

  “Like this?”

  “Yeah. Now I’ll lie down beside you and we’ll skip the crap about how I’d never hurt you for the world and only want to make you mine. You flinch and bite your lower lip when I put my hand between your legs like this and … damm it, Martha, that’s not flinching. You’re supposed to keep your legs together!”

  “Pooh. How are you going to make me yours if I don’t spread my legs?”

  “I’m supposed to worry about that. Okay. You keep your legs together and, ah, tremble when I kiss you and then kiss your nipple like this and … Don’t shove it up to me, damm it. You’re supposed to be shocked. Nobody’s ever touched your tits before, see?”

  That struck her funny and she laughed like hell. He laughed, too. Then he said, “Okay, let’s try another approach.”

  “Goody. You haven’t eaten my pussy yet.”

  “I’m not about to, either, on your wedding night. Let’s try it this way. Pretend I’m ugly and covered with running sores and that you don’t want to let me because I’ll probably give you a dose.”

  “Ooh, how icky!”

  “Hey, that’s a great expression. Practice it. Okay. I’m trying to lay you and you don’t want me to. It’s awful. You’re a beautiful princess being raped by an ogre, see?”

  It worked, up to a point. The redhead enjoyed sex games and she was reasonably convincing as she tried to shove him back with her soft palms, rolling her head from side to side on the pillow with her eyes closed as she pleaded, “No, no, a thousand times no! I’d rather die than say yes.” But then she blew it, when, as he forced her thighs apart and fumbled his ogre’s ugly dong into position, she added, “Wheeee!” and came up to take him damn near balls and all.

  So he gave up and just enjoyed her for a while. He was wondering if she meant to spend the whole night with him, and what he’d tell Gaston when and if the Frenchman came in from next door. But the redhead solved the problem by saying, as they were doing it dog-style, “I really have to get back to my own quarters, Dicky wicky.”

  “Do you have to go right now?”

  “No. Let’s come again before I go.”

  Meanwhile, in the room next door, Gaston had put Inocencia to sleep with his own lovemaking and was sitting up in bed, smoking, when he noticed the place on the wall where a coral block had fallen out. Knowing he was in a rather delicate position, and having encountered walls with ears before, Gaston got up quietly to investigate. He took along the oil lamp and some matches in case it should go out.

  He held the light up to the gap and peered in. He saw the gleam of wet soap where wet soap should not have been. He frowned and poked the plug out with a match stem. Then, seeing light on the other side, he blew out the lamp on his side before peeking through the pinhole.

  Then he grinned with relief. No jurado had been spying on him and El Criado Publico’s daughter. His young friend, Captain Gringo, had made friends with the redhead after all. He watched them going dog-style for a time. Then he decided a gentleman didn’t take such naughty liberties with a friend and turned away, murmuring, “Bless you, my children,” as he relit the lamp.

  On the red satin bedspread, the sultry Inocencia opened her eyes dreamily and asked why he was out of bed. Gaston rejoined her, saying, “I was merely stretching my poor old legs, ma chère.”

  Inocencia spread her own, sensuously, as she murmured, “Come back to bed, querido. You are not as old as I took you for, where it matters.”

  He did, of course, but as he remounted the stunningly beautiful girl he asked, “Is it safe for me to stay much longer?”

  She said, simply, “Si, my father has not once come to sleep with me since he began this silly nonsense about reforming the world.”

  *

  At the breakfast table, neither Inocencia nor the redhead acted like they had done anything in bed the night before more interesting than saying their prayers. So neither soldier of fortune more than smiled politely as they said good morning, ate, and got the hell out of there.

  Gaston asked Captain Gringo to go with him when he checked out the blacksmith. As they walked down the slope together, Gaston said, “I have something to tell you about the très strange morality of this new republic, Dick. To be begin with, I spent most of the night with Inocencia.”

  “I heard you creeping in the wee small hours.”

  “Eh bien, I waited until your redhead left, to be discreet. Our great leader’s daughter tells a strange tale about her childhood, Dick.”

  “Did she tell you she’s been screwing that jaguar?”

  “Ah, that accounts for the smell, and I see it was you who plugged that pinhole with soap. Bestiality is only one of her problems, although it doubtless explains why her strange pet seems so devoted to her. She told me her father began having sex with her right after her mother died, when she was eight years old.”

  “Oh boy, and you believed her? The mixed-up little dame obviously hates her father, and what does a dame always say about a guy she hates?”

  Gaston shrugged and said, “We have all heard rape fantasies, of course. But hers are rather unusual. For one thing, she says she enjoyed sex with her own father. She said until he got a bit on in years and began to take more interest in politics than her rather formidable body, she sincerely loved him and desired no other man but him. They both read more than might be good for them, and he told her, when he broke her in as a child, that according to some German philosopher, superior people like them were above the mundane morality of lesser mortals. It sounds like a German. I told you how they fired on our truce flag back in Seventy, non?”

  Captain Gringo grimaced and said, “I read the book Zagal wrote, too. He seems pretty letter-of-the-law for a superman who molests little girls.”

  “Merde alors, every ruler expects his subjects to behave. In merry England they lock up common working men for molesting an adult woman on the streets. But the Prince of Wales is still living openly with more than one married woman, and I still think Jack the Ripper was Prime Minister Gladstone.”

  “I thought he was the Duke of Clarence. Getting back to the local first family, Inocencia is weird for sure. If her old man’s a reformed baby raper, what do you expect me to do about it? If you had the brains of a gnat you’d stay the hell away from her.”

  Gaston said he had the brains of a gnat but the cock of a man, and pointed out that Jim Bowman could mess them up pretty good, too, if he found out about Captain Gringo and the redhead. He added, “The most practiqué solution, should Esperanza get back before we are all killed by the Colombian army, would be to board the Nombre Nada, with or without the girls, and sail almost anywhere else, hein?”

  Captain Gringo didn’t answer. It sure was boring to hear everybody play the same gramophone records, over and over around here.

  At the smithy, they found Gaston’s crude cannon finished before the promised time. The blacksmith looked it. He was covered with cuts and bums as well as sweat when he showed it to them and pleaded, “You will tell our great liberator I did my very best, no?”

  Gaston said he sure would. Captain Gringo asked, “Why are you so worried, amigo? Don’t you enjoy being liberated?”

  The smith made the sign of the cross and replied, “Oh, very very much, I assure you. I agree it is only just what the punishment should fit the crime. Es verdad, I believed this long before El Criado came for to put things in perfect order here.”

  Gaston asked about the gun carriage he’d sketched. The smith said the shipwright would have it finished soon and offered to go fetch him. Running. Gaston said not to bother, but to have someone wheel the whole mess up to the fort when it was ready. He asked how much they owed. The smith looked like he was about to burst into tears as he replied, “Es por nada, I assure you, señores! It was an honor to have been of service to the new government. It would be wrong to take payment for serving one’s country, no?”

  Captain Gringo took out some money and put it on the anvil, saying, “Don’t be an idiot. Not even d
er Kaiser gets his cannon from Krupp por nada.”

  The smith stared down at the money as if it were a cobra coiled to strike, and gasped, and, “For the love of God, don’t try to get me in trouble, señores! I did as you asked, no? For why do you wish to see me taken to the pits of justice? You do not have to test me with temptation. I have not asked for dinero. Look, I am not touching the dinero, see?”

  Captain Gringo muttered, “Waste not, want not,” and put the money away.

  The smith fell to his knees in sick relief, eyes closed in silent prayer.

  Outside, Captain Gringo growled, “Okay, so what’s a pit of justice?”

  “Merde alors, how should I know? It sounds like something I, for one, do not wish to fall into! Perhaps if we asked at the cantina?”

  “Skip it. I’m tired of seeing probrecitos piss their pants every time I talk to them wearing this uniform. Are you sure we’re fighting for the good guys this time, Gaston?”

  “We know the Colombian junta are bad guys indeed. I shall have to ask Inocencia about these pits of whatever. I think they have her pet jaguar in at least one of them. Apparently our host is holding other prisoners in the old fortress dungeons.”

  “That smith back there didn’t act like he was just worried about going to jail, and Zagal admires the Spanish Inquisition.” They’d moved up the slope a way by now. So Captain Gringo turned and swept the seaward horizon with his eyes as Gaston said, “Great minds run in the same channels, I see. But I do not see the black sail of la Nombre Nada out there, alas.”

  “Yeah, we’ve got to hang around at least until she gets back. I’d hate like hell to risk an overland running gunfight with a guerrilla army we just trained pretty good. I don’t want Esperanza sailing in blind if anyone here is mad at her pals, either. Let’s just go on back up and play her by ear some more. Inocencia’s hopefully just nuts and that smith could just be stupid.”

  *

  They had the crude but impressive wrought-iron cannon in position on the parade by that afternoon. It was chambered for the same four-pound rounds as the howitzers on both sides. Gaston said that with the tube elevated to forty-five degrees it might have a little more range than a howitzer, despite its smooth bore. Accuracy, of course, was too much even to dream of.

  Near sundown one of the scouts Captain Gringo had ordered out to patrol came in with dismal news. Unless the scout was nuts or the map was wrong, the Colombian column had pushed in closer than Captain Gringo had expected until they got some big guns of their own. The scout showed them where the Colombians were bivouacked in the jungle to the southwest and said they hadn’t set up their own howitzers when he’d lit out.

  Gaston nodded at the map and said, “Oui, they are just out of range for the howitzers they know we have, even with our superior altitude. Naturally, they can’t suspect I, the best artilleryman in all of Latin America, have a longer tube as well as higher ground to play with, hein?”

  Captain Gringo said, “They’re way out of range, genius.”

  Gaston said, “Thank you. I am. If I wrap the projectile in greased rawhide for a smoother fit, then fire it with a surcharge of loose powder from some of the other rounds we have to spare …”

  “Gaston, you’re loco en la cabeza!” Captain Gringo cut in, adding for the others in the room who might not have been out in the hot sun so long, “That cobbled-together hunk of junk wouldn’t be safe with a fixed round. Double charge her and she’ll split open like an overripe banana!”

  Gaston shrugged and said, “It would take at least a triple charge to reach those map coordinates, Dick. Naturally I intend to use a long lanyard, and we had better make sure all the windows facing inward are open. It will be trés noisy no matter what happens, hein?”

  Gaston studied the map again, memorized the figures, and marched out, muttering, “Soup of the duck.”

  El Criado Publico looked at Captain Gringo and asked nervously, “Do you think he knows what he is doing?”

  The American said, “No. But we have to do something, and we just can’t shake ’em up from here with the howitzers.” So they let Gaston try.

  It took him twenty minutes and a lot of cursing before he and his improvised weapon loaded and aimed. Then he ordered his gun crew to run for cover as he backed away, unreeling a long length of rawhide riata attached to the sort of mousetrap firing mechanism he’d devised.

  As everyone watched from a safer distance, Gaston got behind the pile of sandbags he’d had them build for him a hundred fifty feet away. Then he pulled.

  The resultant roar was deafening and the whole hill trembled as the triple charge hurled the patched shell skyward and, for some strange reason, failed to burst the breech or the tube.

  Gaston stepped into view again as everyone cheered, took off his cap, and bowed. Then he got back to work recharging for a second round.

  Far out in the jungle, bedded down for the night, well out of howitzer range, Colonel Maldonado was writing at the folding field desk in his tent when he heard something he knew he shouldn’t be hearing and looked up with a puzzled frown.

  Gaston’s big gun was wildly inaccurate to begin with and he was firing blind in any case. It still worried Colonel Maldonado when the first shell screamed down ass-over-teakettle, hit short and wide of the camp with an audible thud, then exploded when its time-fuse went off.

  Maldonado ran outside and shouted, “Douse those damned campfires!” as an aide ran up to him while everyone else ran around like the ants of a stepped-on nest. The aide saluted and said, “We seem to be under fire, sir.”

  Maldonado grimaced and said, “Tell me about it. That report from our field agent in Limón was right. Nobody but that damned Captain Gringo pulls military rabbits out of his hat, and somehow the son of a bitch has gotten his hands on a long-range field piece!”

  “But, sir, our agents also tell us our friends in los Estados Unidos managed to sidetrack the big guns meant for the rebels.”

  Another four-pounder came in, over and wide the other way. Maldonado winced and said wearily, “They have us bracketed with the guns they don’t have. That tears it. We have to move back poco tiempo!”

  “You are ordering a retreat, sir?”

  “I am ordering a strategic withdrawal, goddamn your mother’s sour milk! I do not wish for to hear that word again! We’ll move back just out of range and dig in. Then we’ll wait until the big twelve-pounder I sent for gets here. Then we’ll huff and we’ll puff, and after we knock down the walls we’ll go in with butt stock and bayonet. No quarter. I am a reasonable man, but, by the balls of Santiago, those sons of a one-legged whore have spilled the blood of my muchachos, and those rebel bodies we recovered were out of uniform. The rules of civilized warfare are quite clear on that point. Officers and gentlemen do not take mere guerrillas alive!”

  *

  The Colombians moved back, spread out, and dug in, deep, outside of Gaston’s range without taking any further casualties. None of Gaston’s wild shots landed anywhere near anybody, although the noise helped them move pretty well. Maldonado didn’t keep all his people out of range. He was an old pro. So he naturally sent out recon patrols, and, since Captain Gringo was a pro too, the next few days were sort of interesting.

  Captain Gringo told his own patrol leaders to be careful, so they were. A good jungle scout was hard to find, by either side. Neither big guns nor automatic fire was much use against small parties moving invisibly through tall timber. So the little fighting that took place when patrols bumped into each other was mostly machete work or shoot and run. Both commanders had issued orders to take prisoners if at all possible, but for God’s sake to avoid being taken. So in truth there was little blood spilled as both sides ran like hell on making contact. But each contact was recorded with a penciled X on both sides’ situation maps. Thus, within forty-eight hours Maldonado and Captain Gringo had felt each other up enough to have a pretty good grasp on who was where with what.

  Captain Gringo told El Criado Publico that the e
nemy was obviously waiting for heavier artillery and offered to lead a combat patrol out to ambush the battery before it could get within range. El Criado Publico refused, saying he wanted his best men and every machine gun on home plate. He probably read more law books than books on military strategy, and he was a stubborn cuss about everything.

  Neither Captain Gringo nor Gaston got laid for the next few nights. Whatever the girls had in mind, the soldiers of fortune had to stand alternate guard-mount day and night. Aside from the rebel privates having a tendency to sleep on picket duty, more than a dozen simply vanished as the siege started getting serious.

  The alcalde of the village sent a delegation asking permission to evacuate his people. Captain Gringo thought it was a hell of a good idea. But again El Criado Publico was stubborn. He said they would all stand together through thick and thin, and that any villagers who wished to could take shelter within the walls of the fort itself.

  There were no takers. The villagers sent no more delegations and at night there were fewer lights burning in the windows down the slope. The experienced soldiers of fortune didn’t point this out to the boss. It was no skin off their noses if some pobrecito decided to take his wife and kids on an overnight camping trip, right?

  Thus hopefully there weren’t too many women and children killed when Maldonado dropped the other shoe late one afternoon. His first long-range shell landed smack in the middle of the fishing village, sending roof tiles flying like red confetti.

  Gaston was on watch atop the walls at the time. So Captain Gringo rolled off his bed fully dressed and ran to join him, shouting for one and all he met along the way to take cover and pass it on. Another shell landed on the waterfront as he joined Gaston. He nodded at the mushroom cloud of mud and cobblestones and said, “They’re way over.”

  Gaston said, “Oui, but give them time. Firing from a lower position surrounded by tall trees, they of course can’t see what they are doing. But I grasp their intent. It’s what I would do in their place. They will fire a few more rounds, then knock off and send patrols in after dark to see where they landed, hein?”