Renegade 28

by Lou Cameron

  Issuing new and classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!

  Captain Gringo— blasting off the coast of Costa Rica!

  She’s six foot six and all woman: a South Seas princess with smooth brown skin and a teasing, tantalizing tongue. Gringo agrees to take her cash—and other favors—to handle a death-defying job. His mission: to free her island people now toiling as slaves on Central American shores. Armed with a few rusty machine guns, aboard an old schooner with a crew of hardened island men and half-naked women, Gringo is about to sail into the hottest battle of his life—against impossible odds!

  THE CUTTING EDGE of the tropical cloudburst had caught Captain Gringo by surprise on his way back to the hotel that evening. So as it went on raining cats, dogs, and hail outside, the big blond American soldier of fortune was enjoying a sedate soak in a warm tub as his wet duds hung to dry in the next room. Naturally, his shoulder rig was hanging on the knob of the locked bathroom door, since he seldom took either a rubber duck or a double-action .38 in the tub with him. Thus he was chagrined as well as surprised when the door suddenly popped open and a deep she-male voice said, “Oh, here you are, Captain Gringo!” He growled, “And here you are, too,” as he frowned warily up at his unexpected visitor.

  She was a sight to make anyone wary. For while there was no doubt she was all woman and quite attractive; the big broad looming in the doorway had to stand at least six-foot-six. And even though her voluptuous curves filled her white linen blouse and skirts nicely indeed, she had to outweigh him by a good forty pounds!

  After that it wasn’t so bad. Her ebony hair was piled atop her head Gibson-girl style; so, along with the fashionable outfit suited to tennis or the tropics, she added up to reasonably civilized despite her Apache-brown complexion. Her almond eyes were even friendlier, and her features, while not as out of place in Central America as Captain Gringo’s, somehow just missed looking really Latina when one looked twice. She was about twenty-five and quite pretty, but she didn’t really work as white, black, or Indian. So what was left? And how the hell had she gotten in through at least two locked doors?

  He asked her. She looked down at the knob clutched absentmindedly in one big brown paw and replied, “Oh, was the door locked? I didn’t notice. I knocked and knocked. But I guess you didn’t hear me because of the hail outside.”

  He didn’t want to argue with anyone that strong, with his gun on the wrong side of those massive hips. So he said, “Well, you’re in now. Would you hand me a towel so I can get out?”

  She did so, but asked, matter-of-factly, “Why? Are you ashamed of your cock? Not to worry. My royal personage is tapu to commoners.”

  He laughed as he took the towel, asking, “Don’t you mean taboo?” And as he rose from the waves like Venus, wrapping the towel around his naked loins, she wrinkled her nose and answered, “If I’d have meant ‘taboo’ I’d have said ‘taboo.’ I wish you pink people wouldn’t insist on explaining our religion to us. Haven’t you fucked up your own enough?”

  He stepped gingerly out of the tub, noting with some relief that she backed out of the doorway to make room for him instead of swinging at him. As he followed her out into the bedroom of his hotel suite, he nodded thoughtfully and said, “Got it. You’re a Sandwich Islander, right?”

  She shook her head and said, “Farther south. South of Bora Bora. I just came from my lawyer’s. He said that while it’s true chattel slavery is illegal in Costa Rica, the local government has no jurisdiction; and my best bet would be to hire my own guns. So here I am.”

  “You’ve already said that.” He sighed, adding, “Do you always start your stories in the middle, Miss … ah?”

  “Oh, sorry. I’m Princess Manukai of Konakona. I’m used to being recognized on sight. Back home, people are supposed to get out of my way and pray until I pass.”

  “I believe they would. How did you make it all the way from the South Pacific without getting as wet as the rest of us common folk, Princess? Are you taboo, I mean tapu to common rain as well?”

  She laughed and said, “Silly, I’m staying here at the hotel. I got back from my lawyer and the German consulate before the storm broke. I only learned a few minutes ago the notorious Captain Gringo was a guest here as well.”

  He rolled the top of the towel so it wouldn’t slip when he freed his hands to move over to a sideboard, saying, “I’m having gin and tonic. You?”

  She nodded but told him to skip the tonic. So he poured her a straight gin as he mused aloud, “I wish people wouldn’t gossip about me in the halls so much, Princess. Just what did they tell you about me that makes me so notorious?”

  She sat on the bed, making it sag ominously as she replied demurely, “Just that you’re wanted for murder in the States, that you’re an ex-U.S. Army officer and ordnance expert who holes up here in Costa Rica between jobs and, oh yes, that your job is killing people for hire, with a machine gun. I can get you a machine gun. I come from a very wealthy family.”

  He handed her her heroic drink, sat on a nearby bentwood chair with his own less lethal one and said, “Before we go any further with this weird conversation, let’s get a few things straight, Princess. Numero uno, I’m a soldier of fortune, not a hired assassin.”

  “There’s a difference? Not to worry. The job I’m offering is a military invasion. I have about fifty warriors of my own waiting for us aboard my schooner down at Puntarenas. I’m afraid they may be a little unsophisticated for the type of operation I have in mind. So I need officers trained in the art of war as you pink people fight one another. Do you think your little French friend from the Foreign Legion could be persuaded to join us, Captain Gringo?”

  He grimaced and said, “People have been talking a lot to you, I see. Just what did they tell you about old Gaston, Princess?”

  She took a healthy belt of gin, as if it were water, and replied, “Just that his name is Gaston Verrier and that he is a very skilled artillery ace as well as an all-around and deadly soldier of fortune. You two often work as a team, don’t you? If you can persuade him to take part in the invasion, I’m sure I can find some field mortars, at least, for him.”

  Captain Gringo smiled crookedly and replied, “You’re right. You’re rich. And, while we’re on the subject, how come you dress like a rich young white chick and speak better English than a lot of them? No offense, Princess, but when you say ‘South Sea Islands,’ I can’t help getting this picture of naked people eating coconuts and one another.”

  She sighed and said, “Oh pooh, you’re as bad as the girls I went to school with at Vassar. It’s true the common people back home are a bit, ah, unspoiled. But honestly, do I look common to you?”

  “Not hardly, I heard the queen of the Sandwich Islands has a German band and hot and cold running water in her new palace on Oahu, too. How do you, ah, royals make out so well? Oil wells or something?”

  Princess Manukai shook her head and said, “Konakona ships copra, sugar and, of course, pearl shell, along with some pearls. It’s the pearl business that’s caused all the trouble. The blackbirders could get all the native help they needed here in Central America if all they were interested in was copra and sugar. Alas, my people are the best pearl divers in the South Pacific, so the blackbirders—”

  “Back up!” he cut in, adding: “They taught you English swell at Vassar. But they must have forgotten to tell you it’s not a guessing game. Who or what in the hell is a blackbirder?”

  She looked blanks then nodded and said, “That’s right. You Yankees called them slavers. Out our way they’re called blackbirders. I don’t know why. Our people are neither birds nor black. But the people who grab them are called blackbirders just the same.”

  He sipped at his own drink with a thoughtful frown as he tried to decide whe
ther she was serious or enjoying an obscure joke at his expense. Then he said, “Come on, Princess, chattel slavery’s been outlawed even in Brazil, now. We’re almost into the twentieth century. Are you suggesting people are actually being seized as slaves at this late date?”

  She said, “Suggesting it, shit, I’m saying it! Over a hundred of my people, and others from other islands, are being held as slaves just off the west coast of Central America and, goddamn it, it’s got to stop!”

  He didn’t answer until he’d taken another sip and studied her words some. He knew it was true some local big shots held their peones in little more than simple bondage. He knew primitive Indians were exploited, often at gunpoint; but, hell, there had to be some rules.

  He said, “Run that bit about the German consulate by me again, Princess. What on earth could young Kaiser Willy have to do with South Sea Island natives being kidnapped to dive for pearl shell off Costa Rica, for God’s sake?”

  She said, “They deny it at the consulate, too. But the international company working the pearl beds of the Guardian Bank is still German-owned.”

  “Guardian Bank?”

  “An archipelago of low coral islands about a hundred miles off the west coast of Costa Rica. The Costa Rican lawyer I spoke to says his government claims no jurisdiction over them.”

  “I’m not surprised. This is the first I’ve heard of them. Are they worth anybody’s time and navy, Princess?”

  “As islands, no. Most of the Guardian Bank consists of barely submerged reefs, dangerous to and hence avoided by shipping. Only a few of the larger keys remain above water at high tide, and that’s not saying much. They’re sunbaked, arid sand spits with little vegetation and no fresh water between rains. That’s why the people being held there are at the mercy of the pearlers. There’s no timber to improvise escape rafts, and no place to hide without food and water. No food and water, in fact, unless one’s willing to work from sunrise to sunset for the blackbirders who control all supplies and transportation in or out.”

  “How do you know all this, Princess? Have you ever been there?”

  “Do I look like a captive vahine? I know the little I do know about conditions there because my people are so brave we even frighten one another at times. One night a Konakona boy who’d taken all he could just started swimming east, hoping to reach the mainland.”

  “Jesus, a hundred miles, against the trade winds?”

  She shrugged and said, “He’d have never made it, of course. But after he’d swum all night, some decent Costa Rican fishermen spotted him bobbing in the ground swells and brought him ashore. Needless to say, they own a new fishing boat now. The boy spoke no Spanish, of course, but he knew a little English. So the Costa Ricans turned an American missionary in Puntarenas who bigger mission. The kind mission people put the boy aboard a copra schooner bound for Konakona, and the rest you know. How soon do you intend to put your pants on and help me rescue my people still held captive?”

  He grimaced and said, “I’m not sure we can help you at all, Princess. Gaston and I are soldiers of fortune, not buccaneers. Even if we were the navy types I’d say you really need, I’ll tell you frankly, we just got paid off for a more sensible-sounding dry-land operation and, well, Costa Rica’s one of the few decent countries down here that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with either the States or France. I just can’t see Gaston and me sticking our necks out that far from shore. Imperial Germany is one country that would really like to get its hands on the two of us, and you said yourself the krauts are in control of the Guardian Bank.”

  “Don’t you want to know what’s in it for you if you help me?”

  He didn’t answer. She put her half-empty glass on the bed table, stood up, and began to unbutton her blouse as she said, “I can offer you a thousand a week, each, plus a ten-thousand-dollar bonus if we succeed.”

  She opened her blouse, exposing a heroic pair of firm brown breasts as she added, “I can be generous in other ways as well, Captain Gringo.”

  He said, “I’m sure you can. But I thought you just said your royal personage was, ah, tapu?”

  She shrugged and began to unfasten her skirts as she said, “I’m not sure the tapu applies to pink people. Certainly not officers in the Royal Konakona Navy, Captain Gringo.”

  “Under the circumstances, call me ‘Dick.’ I didn’t know you had a navy.”

  “We didn’t, up to now. But if only you’d agree to be my, ah, admiral, you’d find me as generous, in every way, as your Queen Elizabeth was to her Francis Drake, Dick.”

  He laughed and said, “I’m not sure one could call her my queen, or that old Bess put out for her royal navy. If she was built at all like you, and did, it’s no wonder the Spanish Armada wound up in so much trouble! But hold the thought and don’t drop that skirt just yet, Princess. I just said I wasn’t sure about signing up with you, remember?”

  She let the white linen fall, a long way, to the carpet around her high-button shoes. Then she stepped out of her skirts, wearing nothing but said shoes and thin silk stockings as she asked simply, “Are you still not sure, Dick?”

  He was sure he wanted her so bad it hurt, for any man born of mortal woman would have wanted all six-foot-six of anything breathtaking as Princess Manuka of Konakona in the beautiful buff. Despite her size and pneumatic proportions, there wasn’t an ounce of flab under all that smooth tawny skin; and the little V between her hula hips would have looked yummy indeed had she been less than perfection elsewhere. But Captain Gringo was alive that evening because, in the past, he’d learned the hard way to think with his head instead of his glands. So he silently warned his sudden erection to behave itself as he told the princess, aloud, “I said to hold the thought.”

  “Don’t you … want me, Dick?”

  “Do I look sick or celibate, Honey? What I want or don’t want is not the point. The point is–I can’t commit myself to anything until I’ve talked it over with my sidekick and, frankly, checked you out.”

  “Why don’t you start with a physical examination, then? That’s not a gun you’re pointing at me from under that towel is it?”

  He laughed and said, “You know damned well what it is, and we both know what you’re trying to pull off here, aside from my poor teased pecker. You know damned well I’d promise you the moon, once we got to know each other even better. But it’s not my style to break my word or to get my fool self killed trying to keep it. So … look, you said you’re staying in this hotel, right?”

  “Room two-oh-seven.” She sighed, bending over, way over, to pull her skirts back up as she observed, “They told me you were a man of iron, damn it. How soon may I expect to hear from you, one way or the other?”

  He said, “As soon as I make up my mind, of course,” as he wistfully watched her put her clothes back on.

  When she had, she said, “Don’t take too long. You’re not the only soldier of fortune in these parts, you know.”

  He nodded and said, “Forgive me for not rising,” as she moved to let herself out, observing with a becoming blush, “I see you already have.”

  They both laughed like mean little kids. And then she was gone but hardly forgotten. He got up to lock the hall door after her. He couldn’t. Like the bathroom door, it was ruined forever. He jiggled the broken knob, sighed, and said, “It figures,” as he tried to decide what on earth he’d tell the hotel handyman when he asked to have both doors fixed. He wondered what good it would do to fix either. Obviously, Princess Manukai was too strong to be kept out by mere hotel locks. But so far, thank God, she seemed to be a friendly native. He wondered what she acted like when she got pissed off at someone. He didn’t think he wanted to find out.

  *

  Gaston didn’t want to find out either. When the dapper little Frenchman returned to the hotel, sensibly, after the storm let up as suddenly as it had begun, Captain Gringo naturally filled him in on the strange princess and her strange offer, leaving out the dirty parts near the end. Just as natural
ly, the American member of the team had put his own clothes back on by then. So Gaston’s first suggestion was, “Eh bien, let us make the tracks. Royal personages who twist off doorknobs with their bare hands make me trés nervous, and I know another posada here in San José where not even our mothers could find us, hein?”

  Captain Gringo stared soberly without answering as he digested Gaston’s words of wisdom. Gaston was over twenty years older than Captain Gringo and, as he never tired of explaining, had gotten to be that old in a dangerous game because he’d learned in his youth not to needlessly buck the odds. Gaston must have taken his younger comrade’s silence as disagreement, since he insisted, “Merde alors, it is too big a species of boo, Dick! The young woman may or may not have money, a schooner, even a modest handful of her own trés savage warriors to, how you say, back her play? But I do know the Guardian Bank. I was almost stranded there once, and once was more than enough! Should anything go wrong, and I see nothing right about her simple plan, we would wind up most stuck, a hundred miles out to sea, on a trés unfriendly shore indeed! Aside from mysterious German slavers infesting the barren little bits of rock, the Guardian Bank can kill you with no help from anyone! There is no food, no water, and because of the treacherous reefs around the few islets, no hope of a passing vessel putting in to rescue one’s adorable ass! The whole thing sounds like a disaster waiting for fools to walk into it and—Why the bemused smile, my old and rare? Was she really that good-looking?”

  Captain Gringo sighed and said, “Nobody’s that good-looking. When you make sense, you make sense. I’ll tell her the deal’s off.”

  Gaston asked, “Why? Do you really wish to witness a six-foot-six temper tantrum, Dick? Let her figure it out for herself once we are no longer on the premises, hein? There are plenty of other places for us to stay here in San Jose, and she was right about there being plenty of other soldiers of fortune in town as well. At the price she’s offering, she’ll have no trouble recruiting some maniacs and—”

  “That’s one of the things that’s making me feel shitty,” Captain Gringo cut in, going on to explain; “The poor kid’s already been all over town talking to lawyers and, Jesus, even the German consul. She found me in the first place by asking around town for some handy guys at gunplay. So by now, unless they don’t have a friend at all in this neck of the woods, that German-run pearling syndicate has to know just what her plans are!”