by Lou Cameron
The sentry shrugged and ducked back outside. Then the noncom rubbed a hand across his sleep-drugged face and said, “Wait. You’d better show it to me. The old man will have my ass for breakfast if we let anything fuck up this mission even worse. The officers are giving birth to cows over that crazy American with the machine gun.”
As he pulled on his pants and boots he added, “Americans have no sense of proportion. He was not supposed to shoot us up. We were supposed to shoot him and his Britisher friends up. Fortunately, they now seem stuck in the jungles across the lagoon. The signalman phoned a little while ago that they are sending distress calls with the radio equipment they were not supposed to know about.”
The two Germans left the tent and headed for the north shore. Others had been awakened by the commotion and were stepping out of the other tents, yawning and asking what was up. The corporal told a gunnery sergeant to go back to sleep. It was probably nothing.
Then, as he neared the water’s edge and saw Captain Gringo’s raft grounding on the coral sand with a steam car filled with naked people already rolling forward, he managed one good scream before a burst of machine-gun fire blew his lungs out his back and sent the sentry at his side sprawling dead without ever knowing what had hit him!
Gaston had the German machine-gun from the outpost braced in front of him, as well, as the two soldiers of fortune drove up the sloping beach into the gun emplacement, both firing full automatic. The Indians, as planned, rolled out and hit the deck.
The nice thing about the two big guns being dug in behind sandbag walls to seaward and landward was that there was only one direction anyone could run. So Gaston swiveled in his passenger seat to hose the bottleneck as Captain Gringo drove in tight circles, mowing down anything dead ahead and rolling over the wounded with his hard rubber tires until the belt was used up. As he stopped to reach down for a fresh belt, Gaston put a good burst into the knot of moaning Germans piled up on the road south and ceased fire. The Indians leaped to their feet and joined the fun and games, using their machetes and poison arrows on a lot of people who probably would have died anyway.
Captain Gringo finished reloading the Maxim and said, “Come on, Gaston. It’s time you earned all the ass I’ve been getting you. You know where the base camp is, and I just got you a couple of eight-inch guns. Can do?”
“I can aim and fire. But those big shells and eighty-pound powder charges are a bit much for a man of my advanced senility, Dick!”
“Get Decepciona and the Indians to help you load. They’re quick pupils. Pile out, dammit. I’ll cover you with these two machine guns!”
Gaston drew his revolver and rolled out to run toward the guns, stark naked save for grease as he bellowed for Decepciona to get her adorable bare ass over to him. The sight must have been very distressing to a badly wounded German just sitting up. He screamed. Gaston blew his face off and kept going, muttering, “Silly Boche!”
Captain Gringo drove the steamer over other Germans to where the sandbags formed wings on either side of the service road to the main base. He braked to a stop and made sure there was a fresh belt for the Spandau, too. It was getting lighter by the minute and he could see almost a quarter of a mile down the road. It formed a sort of tunnel between the trees the Germans had left on either side for camouflage.
He winced as Gaston fired one of the big eight-inchers behind him to send a shell screaming south. A second ear-splitting detonation whipped his bare back with its shock wave sooner than he’d expected. How the hell could even Gaston reload and fire so fast? Oh, right, the old artillery ace was using both guns, letting the Indians manhandle the heavy ammo on one as he fired the other. Pretty slick. Ouch! There he went again, and the first shells were already landing with duller roars a dozen miles or so to the south. If Gaston was aiming as good as he was firing, the base camp was in big trouble!
Farther out to sea, the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Maine was out on the bridge wing, staring shoreward as he listened to the distant thunder of big guns. A junior officer joined him to say, “Sparks says he’s still picking up that S.O.S., sir. It seems to be coming from the mainland. It can’t be another vessel in distress as we thought.”
The skipper said, “Somebody’s in trouble. Listen to those big guns on the horizon. Order Captain Gates to get his marines ready. We’d best send in a landing party.”
The junior officer frowned and said, “Ay ay, sir. But, ah, Honduras is supposed to be a friendly country.”
“So I hear. I hear big guns, too. the U.S.S. Maine is cruising these waters to keep the peace, mister. And I mean to keep the Mosquito Coast peaceful if I have to kill every one of the damned greasers. The Honduran military isn’t allowed to have bigger guns than the U.S. Marines. If some sons of bitches have armed the rebel faction with eight-inchers, Uncle Sam is going to be mad as hell about it. Get those marines ready to go ashore and restore order with their Krags, dammit! You have your orders. Any questions about ’em?”
“Just one, sir. What if they train those big guns on us as we steam in?”
“What? Fire on the U.S.S. Maine! Unthinkable, mister. Nobody nicks the paint of the Maine if they don’t want a war they’ll remember!”
On shore, Captain Gringo was blissfully unaware of the hornets’ nest he’d stirred up with his radio signals meant to confuse the Germans. But he had other troubles. It was almost broad daylight now, and a mess of white-clad German marines were boiling up the road from the south on the double, rifles at port as they jogged in perfect step.
They spotted him at about the same time, slid to a stop, and spread out to take cover in the trees on either side. He growled, “Nice going, you poor dumb assholes. Didn’t your mothers ever tell you that mangroves don’t grow thick enough to stop a bullet?” He crouched down, held the grips of one machine gun in each hand, and opened up with plunging fire, moving the two streams of hot lead like a giant pair of garden shears as he traversed blindly but effectively at maximum range.
He ceased fire when he saw some gays way down the road, running like hell the other way. There weren’t too many of them. He grinned and reloaded both machine guns, just in case some wise-ass was still brave enough to try to move in on his belly through the brush.
Nothing happened for a while. Gaston had stopped firing. A few minutes later the Frenchman joined him, followed by the sweated-up but grinning Indians. Gaston said, “Eh bien. I expended every shell on hand, and if I did not flatten that German base, I most certainly worried the merde out of them! Let us return to the raft and get our adorable asses out of here. We can drop our friends off at the north base of the peninsula, put our pants back on, and be in Patuca in no time.”
They all piled in. Captain Gringo opened the throttle and drove south down the service road, saying, “Watch the trees on either side. You never know when some wounded snake in the grass will be a poor loser.”
“Dick, you are going the wrong way, dammit!”
“No, I’m not. Even if we had the fuel to make Patuca, which we don’t, it’d still be a piss-poor place for two wanted men to turn up. By now Sylvia and the others have made it to the British consulate in Patuca. Said consulate will have told the Honduran authorities there’s a mess of trespassers on Honduran soil. I don’t want to shoot it out with the Honduran army if I don’t have to, do you?”
“Mais non, we trained some of them a while back, as I recall! But where can we go?”
“Depends on what we find at the main German base. Decepciona, tell your friends to bail out and run into the trees when I slow down. It won’t be long now. I see a break in the cover up ahead.”
So the Indians rolled over the sides a few minutes later and Captain Gringo opened the throttle wide to drive into the German camp lickety split, both machine guns firing wildly as they bounced over shell craters Gaston’s barrage had left all over the place. Flattened wreckage and bodies lay all around, and a screaming German ran out from behind some stacked cases waving a white pillowcase in a gesture o
f surrender. Gaston snarled, “Surely you jest!” and chopped him down with a burst of Spandau fire.
Captain Gringo slid to a stop by a pile of fuel drums. He said, “Cover me while I refill our empty cans. Don’t shoot any more poor bastards who want to give up, Gaston.”
“You get the diesel oil and let me deal with Boche! You were not there when they fired on our white flag in ’70, Dick.”
Nobody else showed his or her face as Captain Gringo got the diesel oil. When they had enough, he put his fingers between his lips and whistled for Decepciona and the other Indians. They came running. As they leaped a shell crater and were passing a downed German marine, he made the mistake of raising his head. One of the machete men lopped it off without breaking stride.
They piled into the steamer. Captain Gringo opened the throttle again and spun a cloud of sand behind them as he revved the wheels with the throttle wide open. So they were doing about forty miles an hour when he hit the sandbag parapet south of the base, plowed through it to bounce over the dry moat, and tore through the barbed wire as if it hadn’t been there. As he slowed down to steer between the trees of uncut jungle to the south, he mused aloud, “That’s the answer to barbed wire. Remind me to write a letter to my congressman if we ever have a war with Germany.”
“I don’t think they will listen, Dick. Your loving Uncle Sam still wants to hang you. Will you tell me, now, where we are going?”
“Back to Puerto Cabezas. We can drop our redskin pals off at the next westbound trail.”
They were speaking English, so Decepciona still didn’t know the honeymoon was over. Gaston said, “Eh bien, I’ve exhausted my imagination trying to think up some way to make zigzig with Mimi. Do I have time to screw Decepciona right, if you’re through with her?”
“No. We couldn’t have killed everybody back there, even though you did one hell of a swell job. I want to get a good start on any pissed-off survivors. I don’t want to be around when anyone else comes along to mop up, either. They could have heard your cannonade up in Patuca if the wind was right.”
“Eh bien, I agree Patuca might not have a healthy climate for two wanted men at the moment. But have you forgotten they are hunting us in Puerto Cabezas as well?”
“No, they’re not. The last time the cops there saw us, we were tearing ass out of town in a horseless carriage. We’ll ditch this in a swamp before we get there, then walk in under cover of darkness, looking innocent as hell. We know better than to head for Fifi’s again. But the posada Sylvia picked me up in should be safe until we can find a boat headed for Costa Rica. The barkeep who called the cops is dead. Nobody else there could have sicced the cops on me. The cops don’t make a habit of sweeping that part of town.”
They drove on until they came to a place in what looked like virgin jungle that the scouts recognized. Neither white man could see how, but it was their jungle, and if they said the invisible path led back to their people, they had to be right.
With Decepciona’s help, he got them all out and headed for home. The men started west without comment. But the two girls said they wanted to say goodbye properly. Gaston grinned, took Decepciona’s arm, and asked, “Dick?”
Captain Gringo sighed and said, “How soon they forget. Okay, I have to refill the main tank, anyway. But make it a quicky.”
Gaston started leading Decepciona into the trees as she asked him, innocently, “Is not Dick person coming too?”
“Mais non, mon petite. This time I mean to discover for myself if you are as tight up front as you are behind. Come say goodbye to your Uncle Gaston like a good little girl.”
Captain Gringo grunted in annoyance as he refilled the steamer’s tank. He knew he was dumb to feel annoyed. Decepciona had been the kind of dame every man said he was looking for, until he found one. It was a shame you couldn’t meet a dedicated sex maniac who was devoted to you alone.
He tossed away the empty tin and moved around to the seats, wondering if he should start thinking of getting dressed again. The oil on his naked skin was almost all rubbed off by now, and people might talk if he went into town bare-assed.
He saw that Mimi had climbed into the backseat and was reclining against the cushions with her thighs spread invitingly as she smiled mutely at him. He said, “You’re a pretty little thing, too. I’ve always admired skinny dames with big tits, but, Jesus, haven’t you had enough yet?”
The Indian girl of course had no idea what he was saying and couldn’t talk to him. But she put her fingers to the slit of her oiled, shaved pubis in a gesture that needed no words. So Captain Gringo grinned and said, “Oh, hell, since you put it that way …” as he climbed in the backseat with her, already rising to the occasion.
Mimi took his dawning erection in hand to guide it into her as he added, “We’ve probably got time for a quicky. Gaston will take forever with a new partner and …” Then, as he felt what he was getting into, he thrust hard and groaned, “Oh, yeah, let’s hope Gaston takes at least a couple of hours getting back!”
The Renegade Series by Lou Cameron, Writing As Ramsay Thorne
Renegade
Blood Runner
The Fear Merchant
Death Hunter
Macumba Killer
Panama Gunner
Death in High Places
Over the Andes to Hell
Hell Raider
The Great Game
Citadel of Death
The Badlands Brigade
The Mahogany Pirates
Harvest of Death
Terror Trail
Mexican Marauder
Slaughter in Sinaloa
Cavern of Doom
Hellfire in Honduras
… And more to come every month!
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