The Ambushers

by Donald Hamilton

  It took them a moment to make up their minds. I noticed that Catherine was missing. Looking over the heads of the crowd I saw her stealing away downhill. When she realized she was away clear, she started to run. For a girl, she ran very well.

  I wasn’t at all sure what she was up to, but I held the picture in my mind as something nice to die with, and shot a man in the face as he came in to split me in two. I shot the next one in the chest so close it scorched his shirt, and I pushed the machete into a third, and they fell back, but only for a moment. They were all yelling now. They came in again and I emptied the .45 into them and swung the machete like a scythe, using both hands, hacking and slashing to keep them off me.

  Down the canyon, I was vaguely aware, something was adding to the general confusion by making a raucous, squawking noise, like a raven with the croup. It meant nothing to me. I was just trying to stay alive for another second or two, although it was beginning to seem hardly worth the effort. I lost the machete and went down on one knee, and a familiar figure loomed up out of the melee: the tough little sergeant. He drove the butt of his machine pistol at my head, and I caught the weapon and yanked him down and got my hands on his throat and dug my thumbs in where they’d do the most good, or harm.

  He took a little while to die. I scrambled for the squirt-gun he’d dropped and pointed it in a general outward direction and pulled the trigger and rose, spraying the weapon like a hose, only to discover I was shooting at nothing at all. They were all running, and I was coughing, and smoke was curling out from under the bird against which I stood, and I could hear the hissing sound of the engines warming up. The damn thing was about to blast off. The squawking down the valley, I realized at last, was the warning siren of the control truck...

  I ran for the creek. Behind me, the Rudovic had begun to whistle like a tea kettle; there was a funny sort of earthquake vibration. I leaped down into the wash and threw myself back under the overhanging bank, drew three long breaths, buried my face in my arms, and closed my eyes.

  The canyon was full of thunder. Part of the bank shook loose and fell on top of me. There was a moment of intense heat, as if a giant blowtorch were playing on the dirt that covered me. Gradually the heat and noise died away. I suppose I should have waited a discreet interval for the fumes to disperse, but I wasn’t quite sure I wasn’t buried alive, and it made me panicky.

  When I came out of my shallow grave, I got a lungful of chemical fumes that set me coughing again. The stuff was all around me like a fog. I climbed up the bank where it had crumbled, and sunlight hit me, although I was still standing in white smoke to the shoulders. It occurred to me to look up and there was the bird, a small, gleaming, splinter in the blue sky at the end of a long, arching white trail of smoke.

  The rocket engines were still firing, I saw. Pretty soon they would cut out and leave the missile to follow its trajectory to the target. El Paso, von Sachs had said. Nothing could stop it now, I thought; and then there was a silent puff of smoke up there, and the tiny pencil of death broke up into a graceful rain of fragments. Belatedly, the sound of the explosion that had destroyed it hit me like a clap of thunder. I couldn’t help ducking although it was obvious that the nearest piece was going to hit miles away.

  The Volkswagen was a bit scorched, but it had been out of the area of the direct rocket blast. None of the dazed men wandering around made any attempt to interfere as I started the little car and drove down the canyon to the control truck. Catherine appeared at the door of the cab, and made her way over to me, limping as if her feet hurt. She still hadn’t managed to get her blouse buttoned. Von Sachs would have got an eyeful, had he been alive. I didn’t give a damn, and neither, apparently, did she.

  She got in and slumped wearily in the seat beside me. There was a little pistol in her hand.

  “It was one of the bearded technicians,” she said. “One ran but the other hit the firing button before I could shoot. Luckily the other button was marked. The one to destroy it.”

  “Sure,” I said. Smoke was curling out of the truck. As I watched, the whole vehicle burst into flames. “That wasn’t necessary, now,” I said.

  Her voice was dull and tired. “You said to burn it.”

  “So I did. Give me the gun.” I held out my hand. After a moment she put her automatic into it. Just what part she’d played still wasn’t exactly clear to me, but I said, “If you sold out Sheila, I’m going to kill you.”

  Catherine glanced at me quickly but didn’t speak. I put the car into gear and drove on down the canyon. The firing of the missile had apparently drawn off any sentries stationed along the trail. We met no one. Emerging from Copala Canyon we crossed the open valley beyond, parked the car out of sight, and went on foot to where Sheila and I had cached the luggage. It was still there, undisturbed.

  Something else was there, too. I walked forward slowly, looking at the small figure huddled against a rock. Hearing me approach, Sheila looked up. Her face was scratched and dirty and streaked with tears. She’d apparently run hard and heedlessly to get here so fast; her hands were cut from falls and the knees of her pants were torn.

  “I couldn’t do it,” she whispered. “I had him in the sights. My finger was on the trigger. It was a beautiful, easy shot, like on the target range. But I simply couldn’t do it!”

  “Sure,” I said. “That’s what happened in Costa Verde, isn’t it? You didn’t have any trouble with the grip safety of El Fuerte’s automatic. You simply couldn’t bring yourself to shoot him.”

  I should have known, of course. I remembered another time she should have shot and hadn’t. There was nothing to be bitter about. It’s a well-recognized phenomenon. It has nothing to do with marksmanship. Half the boys in Korea never fired their weapons in combat or fired to miss. Of course she might have told me, but to hell with that.

  I said, “Well, some people can kill people and some people can’t. It looks like you’re just in the wrong line of business, Skinny.”

  “Eric, I—”

  “Think nothing of it,” I said. I hoped my voice sounded nice and reasonable. “Everything worked out swell anyway, doll. Let’s get out of here before the road fills up with ex-empire-builders going back to their farms...”

  25

  When I got back to Tucson some days later, having disposed of my passengers and made my preliminary report along the way, there was a long package awaiting me in the motel office. I took it to my room and opened it, finding a long plastic case inside. Within the case was a rifle I recognized, much more solid and businesslike than the light sporter we’d taken into Mexico. There was also a note: THANK YOU FOR THE LOAN. PRESIDENT AVILA WAS MUCH IMPRESSED. JIMENEZ.

  I frowned at this briefly; then I went out to a pay phone and called Washington. There was no delay in getting Mac on the line.

  “Did you receive a package we forwarded after inspection?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. The meaning escapes me, for the moment.”

  “Then you haven’t seen the papers.”

  “Not for a day or two.”

  “The president of Costa Verde was assassinated last weekend by a hidden marksman operating at extreme range. There is now a reform government headed by Colonel Hector Jiminez.”

  I looked at the sunlit Tucson street outside the booth, but I remembered a jungle clearing at night, and a jaunty little man with a big cigar saying, If one has the firearms one can always find men to use them.

  I said, “Well, I told you Hector’s compassion was very interesting, sir.”

  “Some people here in Washington are upset. They had arrangements with Avila.”

  “I feel for them, deeply,” I said. “It’s very inconsiderate of these lousy little Latin countries to go reforming their governments and inconveniencing people, just as if they were sovereign nations or something.”

  Mac said, “They are also upset about the fate of a certain large item of armament. They feel that, so close to the border, it might have been preserved for examination. The
y feel, in other words, that perhaps its destruction was a little hasty.”

  I drew a long breath. “Yes, sir,” I said. “Hasty.”

  “I thought you’d like to know that our country appreciates our efforts, as always, Eric.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. For some reason I found myself grinning. Perhaps it was the tone of his voice. “Yes, sir. As always.”

  After that there was the usual business of cleaning things up officially, which took several more days. One evening I came back to my motel room to find Catherine Smith waiting for me. It was the first time I’d seen her since we’d parted just north of the border, but I’d done considerable thinking about her, and some research, while writing up my final reports.

  There wasn’t any doubt what she was there for. Her street clothes were neatly hung over a chair in the corner. She was dressed exactly as I’d seen her first, in the ruffly black negligee and the high-heeled mules and the other stuff designed for male appreciation. There were two stemmed glasses on the dresser. A bucket of ice held a couple of interesting bottles.

  The whole thing was so obvious it was kind of nice, if you know what I mean: I was so clearly meant to understand that we had some unfinished business to attend to, business that had once been interrupted by Max’s hypodermic needle.

  I said, “I won’t ask how you got in.”

  She smiled. I remembered that I’d thought her face rather plain without make-up, but it wasn’t plain tonight. Smiling, she came close to being beautiful, in an intriguing, off-beat sort of way.

  “I hope you like sparkling Burgundy,” she said. “One gets tired of champagne. How is the little girl with the tender heart? You know of course why she never confessed her weakness to you. She was afraid you would despise her. I am very much afraid she loved you, Mr. Evans.”

  I said, “Why would that concern you?”

  “Because you’ve sent her away, haven’t you? To lead a life more suitable for tender-hearted little girls?”

  I said, rather stiffly, “Well, she obviously has no place in this work. It was time to ease her out before she got herself and a lot of other people killed.”

  “And you are not going to see her again, are you? Because deep down inside you are aware, no matter what excuses you made for her, that no woman can love a man very much if she won’t kill for him. That isn’t real love, the kind we know, is it, Mr. Evans? But still, you are feeling sad and lonely, which is nice. It will make you appreciate me more. Now you may open the wine...”

  In the morning she was still asleep when I came back to the room with coffee—asleep or pretending. With her, it wasn’t safe to jump to conclusions. Anyway, she let me have a good look at her lying on the big rumpled bed, nude except for the sheer black stockings that, unsupported and forgotten, had slipped below her knees. They made her look like a naughty photograph.

  When I kicked the door shut behind me, she rolled over, stretched luxuriously, and opened her eyes to look at me.

  “Coffee is served, ma’am,” I said. I grinned. “Damn if you aren’t the most pornographic-looking woman I ever spent the night with.”

  She laughed. “I try very hard. It is nice of you to say that I am successful.”

  She sat up and discovered the untidy stockings and pulled them up for inspection. It had been a long, rough night and the nylons were hardly, let’s say, in mint condition. She wrinkled her nose at them, stripped the wreckage off her legs, dropped it into the wastebasket, and picked her ruffled negligee off the floor. She shook it out dubiously, found it undamaged, and with dignity brought it over for me to hold for her, as if it were a sable wrap and she were in diamonds and evening dress instead of stark naked.

  I set the coffee aside and obliged. After tying the little bow at the throat, she tilted her face up to be kissed. I performed this service also.

  She said a little breathlessly, “It was the damn sword.”

  “What was?”

  “The reason I came. One reason I came. You have been wondering, haven’t you?”

  “Well, the question did cross my mind.”

  “A man with a rifle or pistol, bah!” she said. “What is that but a machine with a machine? Bang, bang, bang. But a man with a sword... It was so beautiful, that fight. I forgot what you’d asked me to do, watching. The sunlight on the blades, the two men, the precise movements, so formal, like a ritual, like a dance of death. And then the lunge, like lightning from the sky. You could have walked over and taken me then, right there in the dust in front of all those men.”

  I said, “Life is just one lost opportunity after another, Vadya.” She started and looked at me sharply. I said, “Drink your coffee. Your plane ticket is on the dresser.”

  She licked her lips. “What name did you use?”

  I said, “There’s a list we have. We call it the high-priority list. There was a man named Martell on it, for instance, but he died in the mountains in New Mexico, so we checked him off. There are some other men, but they haven’t been checked off yet, so the names are classified. And then there are the women, including a mysterious lady called Vadya, very dangerous. The descriptions we have are not at all consistent. Sometimes she is described as enchantingly lovely, sometimes as dumpy and plain. Sometimes she is blonde, sometimes brunette. Even the color of her eyes changes. That can be done with contact lenses, you know. Mostly they are blue, however. I have read some very lyrical descriptions of Vadya’s eyes. There are also some fingerprints on record.”

  She licked her lips again, watching me. “I see.”

  “The prints on the outside of your little gun were badly smeared,” I said, “but we got a very good impression off the clip. You weren’t interested in von Sachs at all, dead or alive, were you, Vadya? That was just one of your tricks of misdirection. It was the missile all the time, wasn’t it? You killed the technician, you fired it, and then you destroyed it in flight. And set fire to the truck. A thorough job.”

  She reached for the paper cup of coffee, looked at it, hesitated, and looked at me. She shrugged as if to say that if I wanted to poison her, now that I had found her out, so be it. She drank, and nodded.

  “Of course. We could not have a Rudovic in the hands of an irresponsible fascist, and we certainly didn’t want your country to get it. It had to be destroyed.” She glanced at me almost shyly. “Did you say there was a ticket?”

  “To Mexico City. You have about forty-five minutes to dress and reach the airport. I’ll drive you.”

  She said, drawing a long breath, “I’m disappointed in you, my dear. You are being sentimental again. You should kill me.”

  “I know,” I said. “And I’ll probably regret this, but there’s been enough killing. I have permission to do it this way.”

  She said, “We have our lists, too. There is a man on several of them. A tall man responsible for the death of one Martell. For the death of one Caselius. For the death of one Tina, and others. And now for the death of Max. There are many black marks against you over there, Eric, also known as Matthew Helm.”

  I grinned. “It wasn’t entirely admiration that drew you here, then?”

  “No. After making my report, I received new instructions a few days ago.”

  I said, “Sure. I wasn’t certain I’d wake up this morning. But I guess you’ve got a little sentimentality, too. Enough not to spoil a pleasant reunion between two old comrades in arms. I was kind of gambling on that.”

  She looked at me for a moment longer with an expression I couldn’t read. Then she laughed and turned to dress. At the airport we stopped at the gate. I put into her hand the little travel case she’d brought to my room.

  “Goodbye, Eric,” she said. “Under the circumstances, I hope we never meet again. At least... I think I do.”

  As I watched her walk out to the waiting plane, I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it, either.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Donald Hamilton was the creator of secret agent Matt Helm, star of 27 novels that have sold more than 2
0 million copies worldwide.

  Born in Sweden, he emigrated to the United States and studied at the University of Chicago. During the Second World War he served in the United States Naval Reserve, and in 1941 he married Kathleen Stick, with whom he had four children.

  The first Matt Helm book, Death of a Citizen, was published in 1960 to great acclaim, and four of the subsequent novels were made into motion pictures. Hamilton was also the author of several outstanding stand-alone thrillers and westerns, including two novels adapted for the big screen as The Big Country and The Violent Men.

  Donald Hamilton died in 2006.

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