The Retaliators

by Donald Hamilton

  He hurried out, I didn't follow to see him off. Presently I heard a small plane take off outside.

  I had a second martini and decided that was enough for a steel-nerved super agent with a razor-sharp mind that was better kept clear, considering the number of folks who'd declared themselves in favor of my demise—not to mention the ones of the same persuasion remaining undeclared. I signed the check and took a little walk down by the palmy, muddy river. It looked like a good place for alligators, if they have alligators in Mexico, but all the wildlife I really saw was seagulls and some long-legged white shorebirds, egrets perhaps. The short-legged gent trailing along behind I considered more on the order of a domestic animal, which of course didn't make him any less dangerous. After all, statistics show that the deadliest beast on the North American continent is the ordinary domestic dairy bull.

  I wondered where Amado had deposited Clarissa O'Hearn for safekeeping before coming here to keep an eye on me. I sighed, wishing I had a simple system for telling the good guys from the bad guys. Not to mention the girls. I headed back to the cabin to shower the remaining sand off before dinner. I had the key in the lock when I noticed that the telltale I'd arranged as a matter of routine had been displaced. Somebody'd been through the door since I'd left the room. Perhaps a maid had entered to turn down the beds, except it didn't seem to be that fancy a place, and it was a little early in the day for turning beds, anyway. I was aware that my bodyguard was coming up from the river.

  It was a neat problem. If I went in the way one ordinarily enters a hotel room, and somebody was waiting inside I didn't want to see, I could be suddenly dead and Amado would just have the fun of avenging me. On the other hand, if I took the standard room-entering precautions, and there was somebody inside I did want to see, my antics would betray that person's presence to my husky guardian.... As I hesitated, there was a small knocking sound from inside the door: three light taps followed by two. I drew a long breath and marched inside.

  "Close the door quickly, estupido!" It was a low whimper from the shadows to my right.

  "Hi, Norma, it's about time you showed up," I said.

  seventeen

  Our girl in Baja, Virginia Dominguez, was smaller than I remembered her. After the company I'd been keeping she looked tiny: a pretty little black-haired, dark-eyed, olive-skinned señorita-doll that should have come out of the box complete with a long, full-skirted, Spanish-style dress, a lace mantilla, and a fan.

  Actually, she was wearing the kind of white-mottled bluejeans that look as if they'd gone fifteen rounds with a bottle of Clorox, and a red-checked gingham half-blouse. I mean, it was demure and complete as far as it went, with a discreet round neckline and little puffed-up sleeves, but it only went an inch below her breasts. The lower half of the garment was missing, leaving her midriff bare. The pants were so tight above, you wondered if it was safe for her to sit down, but they flared widely below. I could remember when jeans were neat, snug, practical garments suitable for wearing on horseback, but if this girl ever swung a leg over a spooky bronc, with all that piebald denim flapping, she'd get tossed into the nearest clump of cactus.

  Here, however, the floppy pantslegs served a useful purpose. As I watched, Norma crouched and drew one leg up, exposing a nicely proportioned little leg decorated with a tricky little sheath, into which she slipped the wicked-looking little knife she had been holding.

  "Still the cold-steel girl," I said.

  "Go pull the curtains so I can get out of this corner without his seeing me. I'm tired of crawling around on the floor to keep out of range of those windows. Did you know you were being watched?"

  I glanced out the window and saw Amado, the human gorilla, leaning against a tree outside, smoking a cigarette. I pulled the draperies and turned back to the little black-haired girl in the corner, wondering how Roger had planned to make use of her, and just what the hell I was supposed to do with her now that I'd found her at last.

  I mean, there are certain types of missions that really require a sexy female agent, and others where a good, silent, knife specialist comes in very handy, and still others where just any additional warm body is useful. I couldn't see that any of those conditions pertained. The chances of Ernemann, engaged in an important job, allowing himself to be seduced into helplessness and knifed to death were infinitesimally small; and I could see no other possibilities for Norma to employ her special talents here. I knew she was just barely competent with firearms. Sending her up against an expert chopper-man was simple murder. With an accurate rifle and a little luck I could handle him alone, risking nobody else in the process.

  I'd just got rid of the responsibility of one girl, although maybe not exactly the way I'd have liked. I found that I resented being saddled with another—but of course I couldn't afford to let it show.

  I switched on the light. "Ramón told me he was leaving his driver to protect me," I said. "He didn't say from what. He also didn't mention a guy who tailed us all the way down from Guerrero Negro—"

  "That was no guy, that was me," Norma said. "I'd been keeping pretty far behind you, clear out of sight in fact, until we reached that place with the monument, the 28th Parallel; but when we started getting near civilization, such as it is around here, I figured I'd better close in a bit. Up north, there was no town big enough that I couldn't spot that conspicuous blue bus of yours, just driving through, but I was afraid I might lose you in Santa Rosalia or Mulege."

  I watched her walk over to the nearest bed, test it with her fingertips, and confirm the diagnosis with her fanny, bouncing up and down a bit like a kid—but I remembered that she'd once given me convincing proof that she was definitely not a kid. It had been one of those quick hit-and-run things that happen in this racket: a long night of waiting with all preparations made and nothing to do but sweat it out to the crack-of-dawn deadline. I suppose we'd both figured why the hell not—soon we might be dead.

  When she looked up at me, tossing the long, glossy black hair back from her small face I saw that she was also remembering the shabby little hotel room in a distant Spanish-speaking city, but there had been no real sentiment involved. It had been simply a brief moment of relaxation in the middle of a tense and dangerous business, nothing to justify a lot of romantic reminiscences. Nevertheless, it was a personal reason, if I needed one, for not risking her life unnecessarily now.

  "Not to get inquisitive or anything," she said, "but Who's the big, handsome broad you've been hauling around?"

  I said, "That's no broad; that's Mrs. Oscar O'Hearn of the Arizona O'Hearnses—you've heard of O'Hearn, Inc. She happens to be Roger's sister."

  "I didn't know Roger had a sister."

  "I did," I said. "He told me all about her once. She's genuine, all right. He sent her to warn me a few days back when things started getting complicated; and she kind of got more and more involved. You'll be interested to know that her husband is a dear friend of General Hernando Díaz, of whom you may have heard."

  Norma wrinkled up her small nose in a way I remembered. "Is that supposed to make sense?" she asked. "You've got the wife and Díaz has the husband—"

  I said, "Sweetheart, on this job nothing makes sense. And I haven't got the wife any more. Solana-Ruiz just took her away from me and locked her up somewhere. He thinks she's a very wicked woman, and he may be right."

  "Judging by his appearance, he fancies himself as an expert on all kinds of women—I got a good look at him when he had breakfast with you this morning. I don't like those macho Latin smoothies, Matt."

  I grinned. "Look who's talking about Latin smoothies! What's the matter, you got race prejudice or something, Chicana?"

  It was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes narrowed. "Don't call me that!" she snapped. "Let the goddamn pot-smoking U.S, pachucos play militant and call themselves Chicanos and talk big about La Raza—The Race, for God's sake, as if there was no other! I don't know why the hell other people, like you Swedes for instance, put up with that kind of loudmouthed cra
p."

  I'd forgotten that, like a good many solid U.S. citizens of Spanish descent, she detested the newfangled name that had been foisted on them, she claimed, by a bunch of scruffy activists.

  "Who's a Swede?" I asked lightly. "Nobody here but us Americanos, honey."

  "That's what I mean!" she said. "You don't go around being a professional downtrodden Scandihoovian and yelling about Blonde Power and stuff; why act as if you expected that kind of bullshit from me?"

  "Okay, okay," I said. "Simmer down. I apologize for whatever it is I've got to apologize for.... Is that why you haven't made contact before, because I had company?"

  "Well," Norma said judiciously, "it was an inconvenience, let's say. I didn't know how much you wanted her to know."

  "Actually, as I recall, you were supposed to get in touch with Ramón's people by phone."

  "Si, jefe," she said. "I do remember the instructions, jefe, and I do most humbly apologize for not carrying them out. However, I wasn't too sure about Ramón and his people, either, after something that happened in Tijuana. A couple of well-dressed characters grabbed me right after I crossed the border. They looked like Mexicans, they talked good Spanish, and they acted like cops anywhere in the world. Polite cops, but still cops. After that little encounter with authority, if that's what it was, it didn't seem advisable to make any phone calls until I found out exactly who was screwing whom. I never trust these damn hands-across-the-border deals, anyway."

  I looked at her for a moment, remembering two dead men among the sand dunes near Laguna de la Muerte, and the BIS identification I'd been shown.

  "I think you may be doing Ramón an injustice," I said. "I don't think those two guys belonged to him. Anyway, they grabbed you in Tijuana, but now you're in Mulege over six hundred miles south. Aren't you leaving something out?"

  She shrugged. "Just the old shoelace trick. As I said, they were polite. They couldn't leave the poor little girl tripping over all those nasty trailing strings all the way to the waiting car, could they?"

  "You mean, they hadn't frisked you?"

  "Oh, sure," she said cheerfully. "They got a hunk of old iron out of my purse, that I carry for just that purpose. A decoy, you might call it. It seems to make men feel they've really accomplished something when they find a gun on a girl. They think they've got the whole problem licked."

  I grinned. "And they actually let you bend down and tie your shoes? How innocent can you get? Did you kill anybody?"

  She shook her head. "I didn't figure it would be diplomatic, if they were actually Mexican plainclothes operatives of one kind or another. I just flashed the blade at one and he backed off so fast he fell over the other; I guess he's got some prejudice against singing soprano in the local choir. Then I ran like hell. After I'd lost them, well, there's a village called La Jara up there that's practically solid Dominguez. I paid my respects to the senior Mexican members of the family, and borrowed a little Datsun wagon with Baja plates, and headed off to make contact with Roger as ordered. And while we're on that subject, what about Roger?"

  "Three guesses," I said. "I'm here, aren't I?"

  She was silent for a little; then she sighed. "Well, he wasn't a bad guy for a screwball, but it always scares me to work with a guy who carries a death wish like that. If he wants to get himself spectacularly killed, that's his business; but I don't want to be part of anybody's smoky Götterdämmerung, thanks just the same."

  There was another silence. It was time to change the subject. I asked, "How did you find me?"

  She said, "You came to the rendezvous at Laguna Seca, didn't you? I'd been lying on the ridge above it so long the birds were nesting in my hair, with a pair of cheap binoculars I'd picked up in Ensenada. I wanted to run down and throw my arms around your beautiful neck, of course, but what with the Tijuana incident, and your lady passenger who wasn't included in the instructions, I decided I'd better just keep myself handy for a day or so, until I could talk with you privately.... Matt, what the hell is going on, anyway? How did Roger die? Who were those guys in Tijuana? What was all that shooting off by the sea this morning—I wanted to go in and help, in case you were in trouble, but Ramón was watching the road and that damned little Datsun is no cross-crountry jeep, not in sand, it isn't. I found that out the hard way."

  I said, "In theory, of course, we're just routinely tracking down a professional hitman named Ernemann who's annoyed somebody in Washington; or maybe he's simply got too big to be allowed to run loose any longer. In practice, it's got a hell of a lot more involved than a simple touch... How about a little mescal while you listen to the long and incomprehensible story?"

  I'd said the wrong thing again. She snapped, "Will you for God's sake lay off the condescending racial bit? I drink whiskey and gin just like white folks, Massa Helm!"

  "Will you for Christ's sake relax?" I said. "I offered you mescal, Missy Dominguez, because that's what I happened to pick up in Ensenada. If you don't want it, by all means say so, but let's not make a political crisis out of a little booze, huh?"

  After a moment, she smiled wryly. "Sorry about that, Matt. Maybe I'm oversensitive...."

  It took me about half an hour to bring her up to date. When I'd finished my recital, she held out her glass without speaking, and I poured her another healthy slug, and replenished my own glass more sparingly. After all, I was a couple of martinis ahead of her.

  "So you think the men who grabbed me in Tijuana were Andrew Euler's minions," she said thoughtfully. "You think they were planning to take me back into the U.S.? And when they lost me, they set out after you with more drastic intentions?"

  "That's the current theory, subject to revisions."

  "And I've got twenty grand in my bank account that doesn't belong there?" She threw me a mischievous sideways glance. "Do I get to keep it?"

  I grinned. "You're a mercenary bitch. Here are five more big bills for you to drool over—actually fifty hundreds."

  She hesitated, and took the plastic-wrapped package I held out. "What's this for?"

  "It's part of Roger's unearned loot, entrusted to me by his sister Clarissa on his instructions. We're supposed to cram it crudely down the throat of whoever set him up, when we learn that person's identity. Spending part of it to make the identification is legitimate, I think, just so there's enough left to choke the guy with."

  "Choke, hell," said Norma. "I think the sister handed you an expurgated version, if that's what she told you. That's not where Roger would have said to put it." She studied the wad of bills in its vinyl envelope. "What am I supposed to do with this, really? Spell it out for the dumb little girl, Matt."

  I said, "That's just in case you need to bribe somebody, or buy a new car, or something, to get back across the border inconspicuously."

  "Across the border?" She stared at me incredulously. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  I said, in what I hoped were my most reasonable tones, "We've got to settle some important priorities, doll. We've got troubles ahead of us, sure; but there are big troubles behind, too. Remember, for all practical purposes, we're stateless persons, traitors to our native land. They'll be waiting to grab us any time we try to go home. There's a character up there who hates and detests this organization and is doing his damndest to wipe it out. If we don't pull up our socks and figure out how to deal with him, you and I, right here, he's very likely to succeed.

  Norma licked her lips. "You're forgetting, we weren't sent down here to deal with Andrew Euler."

  "Right," I said. "But the fact is, Ernemann's pretty much a one-man job. I've handled plenty of guys of Ernemann's caliber all by myself, if I do say so myself. And I'd like to think somebody was back at the home ranch, preparing the way for my triumphant return."

  She looked at me narrowly. "You couldn't be simply sending the dear little girl out of danger, could you?"

  I said, "My God, you're hard to live with tonight, Dominguez! One moment I'm a racial bigot and the next I'm a sentimental slob. You know damned
well I'd blow your brains out without hesitation if I thought the assignment required a dead female body five feet two. Don't talk nonsense."

  She hesitated. "Well, I hate to go running back to the States after chasing you this far, and leave you to tackle the big bad wolf alone."

  I was encouraged, but I didn't allow myself to show it. I said, "Don't kid yourself. Ernemann's a cinch compared to what you've got to do. Here, I've got the forces of law and order more or less on my side. Up there, they'll be laying for you. You've got to slip across the border unseen and play detective with every BIS agent in the Southwest looking for you."

  She hesitated, and made a face at me. "Okay, you big squarehead, what do I do?"

  "Now who's slinging the loaded racial terms?" I paused to get my thoughts together, and went on: "Two things. First, the place where Roger was killed. For some reason, Euler's people are sensitive about it. Find out why. It could be anywhere, I suppose, but I have a hunch it's within a day's drive of Yuma, where Roger was picked up.

  "A day's drive from Yuma," she repeated dryly. "That pretty well covers the U.S. from the Pacific to Texas, depending on how fast a driver you're talking about."

  "Did I say it was going to be easy?" After a moment, I went on: "The second thing is to find out what really happened in that shoot-out. There are a few discrepancies in the story I got, and I can make some guesses, but we need facts. I think your key is Gregory Kotis. I've already told you about him. He's one of Euler's fair-haired boys, of course, and he was even in on the shooting, but I don't think he feels very good about it. He looks like the original plastic man, BIS model, but he improves on acquaintance. I think he can be reached if you use the right approach. That's assuming you can locate him and he's still alive. If he's dead, you're going to have to find out how and who...."

  Ten minutes later I left the cabin and headed for the dining room in the main hotel building. I was aware of my official shadow separating himself from the tree that had been holding him up, and finding himself a comfortable new observation post on the low wall that separated the hotel grounds from the airstrip. From that perch, he could watch the dining room door but he no longer had a view of my cabin. Norma could slip away unseen, which was the general idea.