Coello tapped his teeth with a fingernail. ‘I think you’re playing for time, Forester.’ He thought deeply. ‘If you can give me a sensible answer to the next question I might believe you. You say you are afraid of dying. If you are so afraid, why did you risk your life in coming over the pass?’
Forester thought of Peabody and laughed outright. ‘Use your brains. I was being shot at over there by that goddam bridge. Have you ever tried to talk reasonably with someone who shoots at you if you bat an eyelid? But you’re not shooting at me, Colonel; I can talk to you. Anyway, I reckoned it was a sight safer on the mountain than down by the bridge—and I’ve proved it, haven’t I? I’m here and I’m still alive.’
‘Yes,’ said Coello pensively. ‘You are still alive.’ He went to his desk. ‘You might as well begin by proving your goodwill immediately. We sent a reconnaissance plane over to see what was happening and the pilot took these photographs. What do you make of them?’
He tossed a sheaf of glossy photographs on to the foot of the stretcher. Forester leaned over and gasped. ‘Have a heart, Colonel; I’m all bust up inside—I can’t reach.’
Coello leaned over with a ruler and flicked them within his reach, and Forester fanned them out. They were good; a little blurred because of the speed of the aircraft, but still sharp enough to make out details. He saw the bridge and a scattering of upturned faces, white blobs against a grey background. And he saw the trebuchet. So they’d got it down from the camp all right. ‘Interesting,’ he said.
Coello leaned over. ‘What is that?’ he asked. ‘Our experts have been able to make nothing of it.’ His finger was pointing at the trebuchet.
Forester smiled. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said. ‘There’s a nutcase over there; a guy called Armstrong. He conned the others into building that gadget; it’s called a trebuchet and it’s for throwing stones. He said the last time it was used was when Cortes besieged Mexico City and then it didn’t work properly. It’s nothing to worry about.’
‘No?’ said Coello. ‘They nearly broke down the bridge with it.’
Forester gave a silent cheer, but said nothing. He was itching to pull out his gun and let Coello have it right where it hurt most, but he would gain nothing by that—just a bullet in the brain from the guard and no chance of doing anything more damaging.
Coello gathered the photographs together and tapped them on his hand. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We will not shoot you—yet. You have possibly gained yourself another hour of life—perhaps much longer. I will consult my superior and let him decide what to do with you.’
He went to the door, then turned. ‘I would not do anything foolish; you realize you are well guarded.’
‘What the hell can I do?’ growled Forester. ‘I’m bust up inside and all strapped up; I’m as weak as a kitten and full of dope. I’m safe enough.’
When Coello closed the door behind him Forester broke out into a sweat. During the last half-hour Coello had nearly been relieved of the responsibility of him, for he had almost had a heart attack on three separate occasions. He hoped he had established the points he had tried to make; that he could be bought—something which might gain precious time; that he was too ill to move—Coello might get a shock on that one; and that Coello himself had nothing to lose by waiting a little—nothing but his life, Forester hoped.
He touched the butt of the gun and gazed out of the window. There was action about the Sabres on the apron; a truck had pulled up and a group of men in flying kit were getting out—three of them. They stood about talking for some time and then went to their aircraft and got settled in the cockpits with the assistance of the ground crew. Forester heard the whine of the engines as the starter truck rolled from one plane to another and, one by one, the planes slowly taxied forward until they went out of his sight.
He looked at the remaining Sabre. He knew nothing about the Cordilleran Air Force insignia, but the three stripes on the tail looked important. Perhaps the good colonel was going to lead this strike himself; it would be just his mark, thought Forester with animosity.
V
Ramón Sueguerra was the last person he would have expected to be involved in a desperate enterprise involving the overthrow of governments, thought McGruder, as he made his devious way through the back streets of Altemiros towards Sueguerra’s office. What had a plump and comfortable merchant to do with revolution? Yet perhaps the Lopez régime was hurting him more than most—his profits were eaten up by bribes; his markets were increasingly more restricted; and the fibre of his business slackened as the general economic level of the country sagged under the misrule of Lopez. Not all revolutions were made by the starving proletariat.
He came upon the building which housed the multitudinous activities of Sueguerra from the rear and entered by the back door. The front door was, of course, impossible; directly across the street was the post and telegraph office, and McGruder suspected that the building would be occupied by men of Eighth Squadron. He went into Sueguerra’s office as he had always done—with a cheery wave to his secretary—and found Sueguerra looking out of the window which faced the street.
He was surprised to see McGruder. ‘What brings you here?’ he asked. ‘It’s too early for chess, my friend.’ A truck roared in the street outside and his eyes flickered back to the window and McGruder saw that he was uneasy and worried.
‘I won’t waste your time,’ said McGruder, pulling the envelope from his pocket. ‘Read this—it will be quicker than my explanations.’
As Sueguerra read he sank into his chair and his face whitened. ‘But this is incredible,’ he said. ‘Are you sure of this?’
‘They took Forester and Rohde from the mission,’ said McGruder. ‘It was done by force.’
‘The man Forester I do not know—but Miguel Rohde should have been here two days ago,’ said Sueguerra. ‘He is supposed to take charge in the mountains when…’
‘When the revolution begins?’
Sueguerra looked up. ‘All right—call it revolution if you will. How else can we get rid of Lopez?’ He cocked his head to the street. ‘This explains what is happening over there; I was wondering about that.’
He picked up a white telephone. ‘Send in Juan.’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked McGruder.
Sueguerra stabbed his finger at the black telephone. ‘That is useless, my friend, as long as the post office is occupied. And this local telephone exchange controls all the communications in our mountain area. I will send Juan, my son, over the mountains, but he has a long way to go and it will take time—you know what our roads are like.’
‘It will take him four hours or more,’ agreed McGruder.
‘Still, I will send him. But we will take more direct action.’ Sueguerra walked over to the window and looked across the street to the post office. ‘We must take the post office.’
McGruder’s head jerked up. ‘You will fight Eighth Squadron?’
Sueguerra swung round. ‘We must—there is more than telephones involved here.’ He walked over to his desk and sat down. ‘Doctor McGruder, we always knew that when the revolution came and if Eighth Squadron was stationed here, then Eighth Squadron would have to be removed from the game. But how to do it—that was the problem.’
He smiled slightly. ‘The solution proved to be ridiculously easy. Colonel Rodriguez has mined all important installations on the airfield. The mines can be exploded electrically—and the wires lead from the airfield to Altemiros; they were installed under the guise of telephone cables. It just needs one touch on a plunger and Eighth Squadron is out of action.’
Then he thumped the desk and said savagely, ‘An extra lead was supposed to be installed in my office this morning—as it is, the only way we can do it is to take the post office by force, because that is where the electrical connection is.’
McGruder shook his head. ‘I’m no electrical engineer, but surely you can tap the wire outside the post office.’
‘It was done by Fourteent
h Squadron engineers in a hurry,’ said Sueguerra. ‘And they were pulled out when Eighth Squadron so unexpectedly moved in. There are hundreds of wires in the civil and military networks and no one knows which is the right one. But I know the right connection inside the post office—Rodriguez showed it to me.’
They heard the high scream of a jet as it flew over Altemiros from the airfield, and Sueguerra said, ‘We must act quickly—Eighth Squadron must not be allowed to fly.’
He burst into activity and McGruder paled when he saw the extent of his preparations. Men assembled in his warehouses as though by magic and innocent tea-chests and bales of hides disgorged an incredible number of arms—both rifles and automatic weapons. The lines deepened in McGruder’s face and he said to Sueguerra, ‘I will not fight, you know.’
Sueguerra clapped him on the back. ‘We do not need you—what is one extra man? And in any case we do not want a norteamericano involved. This is a home-grown revolution. But there may be some patching-up for you to do when this is over.’
But there was little fighting at the post office. The attack was so unexpected and in such overwhelming strength that the Eighth Squadron detachment put up almost no resistance at all, and the only casualty was a corporal who got a bullet in his leg because an inexperienced and enthusiastic amateur rifleman had left off his safety-catch.
Sueguerra strode into the post office. ‘Jaime! Jaime! Where is that fool of an electrician? Jaime!’
‘I’m here,’ said Jaime, and came forward carrying a large box under his arm. Sueguerra took him into the main switch-room and McGruder followed.
‘It’s the third bank of switches—fifteenth from the right and nineteenth from the bottom,’ said Sueguerra, consulting a scrap of paper.
Jaime counted carefully. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Those two screw connections there.’ He produced a screwdriver. ‘I’ll be about two minutes.’
As he worked a plane screamed over the town and then another and another. ‘I hope we’re not too late,’ whispered Sueguerra.
McGruder put his hand on his arm. ‘What about Forester and Rohde?’ he said in alarm. ‘They are at the airfield.’
‘We do not destroy hospitals,’ said Sueguerra. ‘Only the important installations are mined—the fuel and ammunition dumps, the hangars, the runways, the control tower. We only want to immobilize them—they are Cordillerans, you know.’
Jaime said, ‘Ready,’ and Sueguerra lifted the plunger.
‘It must be done,’ he said, and abruptly pushed down hard.
VI
It seemed that Coello was leading the strike because the next time he entered the office he was in full flying kit, parachute pack and all. He looked sour. ‘You have gained yourself more time, Forester. The decision on you will have to wait. I have other, more urgent, matters to attend to. However, I have something to show you—an educative demonstration.’ He snapped his fingers and two soldiers entered and picked up the stretcher.
‘What sort of a demonstration?’ asked Forester as he was carried out.
‘A demonstration of the dangers of lacking patriotism,’ answered Coello, smiling. ‘Something you may be accused of by your government one day, Mr Forester.’
Forester lay limply on the stretcher as it was carried out of the building and wondered what the hell was going on. The bearers veered across the apron in front of the control tower, past the single Sabre fighter, and Coello called to a mechanic, ‘Diez momentos’. The man saluted, and Forester thought, Ten minutes? Whatever it is, it won’t take long.
He turned his head as he heard the whine of an aircraft taking off and saw a Sabre clearing the ground, its wheels retracting. Then there was another, and then the third. They disappeared over the horizon and he wondered where they were going—certainly in the wrong direction if they intended to strafe O’Hara.
The small party approached one of the hangars. The big sliding doors were closed and Coello opened the wicket door and went inside, the stretcher-bearers following. There were no aircraft in the hangar and their footfalls echoed hollowly in dull clangour from the metal walls. Coello went into a side room, waddling awkwardly in his flying gear, and motioned for the stretcher to be brought in. He saw the stretcher placed across two chairs, then told the soldiers to wait outside.
Forester looked up at him. ‘What the hell is this?’ he demanded.
‘You will see,’ said Coello calmly, and switched on the light. He went to the window and drew a cord and the curtains came across. ‘Now then,’ he said, and crossed the room to draw another cord and curtains parted on an internal window looking into the hangar. ‘The demonstration will begin almost immediately,’ he said, and cocked his head on one side as though listening for something.
Forester heard it too, and looked up. It was the banshee howl of a diving jet plane, growing louder and louder until it threatened to shatter the eardrums. With a shriek the plane passed over the hangar and Forester reckoned with professional interest that it could not have cleared the hangar roof by many feet.
‘We begin,’ said Coello, and indicated the hangar.
Almost as though the diving plane had been a signal, a file of soldiers marched into the hangar and stood in a line, an officer barking at them until they trimmed the rank. Each man carried a rifle at the slope and Forester began to have a prickly foreknowledge of what was to come.
He looked at Coello coldly and began to speak but the howling racket of another diving plane drowned his words. When the plane had gone he turned and saw with rage in his heart that Rohde was being dragged in.
He could not walk and two soldiers were half dragging, half carrying him, his feet trailing on the concrete floor. Coello tapped on the window with a pencil and the soldiers brought Rohde forward. His face was dreadfully battered, both eyes were turning black and he had bruised cheeks. But his eyes were open and he regarded Forester with a lacklustre expression and opened his mouth and said a few words which Forester could not hear. He had some teeth missing.
‘You’ve beaten him up, you bastard,’ exploded Forester.
Coello laughed. ‘The man is a Cordilleran national, a traitor to his country, a conspirator against his lawful government. What do you do with traitors in the United States, Forester?’
‘You hypocritical son-of-a-bitch,’ said Forester with heat. ‘What else are you doing but subverting the government?’
Coello grinned. ‘That is different; I have not been caught. Besides, I regard myself as being on the right side—the stronger side is always right, is it not? We will crush all these puling, whining liberals like Miguel Rohde and Aguillar.’ He bared his teeth. ‘In fact, we will crush Rohde now—and Aguillar in not more than forty-five minutes.’
He waved to the officer in the hangar and the soldiers began to drag Rohde away. Forester began to curse Coello, but his words were destroyed in the quivering air as another plane dived on the hangar. He looked after the pitiful figure of Rohde and waited until it was quiet, then he said, ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Perhaps to teach you a lesson,’ said Coello lightly. ‘Let this be a warning—if you cross us, this can happen to you.’
‘But you’re not too certain of your squadron, are you?’ said Forester. ‘You’re going to shoot Rohde and your military vanity makes you relish a firing-squad, but you can’t afford a public execution—the men of the squadron might not stand for it. I’m right, aren’t I?’
Coello gestured irritably. ‘Leave these mental probings to your bourgeois psychoanalysts.’
‘And you’ve laid on a lot of noise to drown the shots,’ persisted Forester as he heard another plane begin its dive.
Coello said something which was lost in the roar and Forester looked at him in horror. He did not know what to do. He could shoot Coello, but that would not help Rohde; there were more than a dozen armed men outside, and some were watching through the window. Coello laughed silently and pointed. When Forester could hear what he was saying, he shuddered. ‘The poor fool c
annot stand, he will be shot sitting down.’
‘God damn you,’ groaned out Forester. ‘God damn your lousy soul to hell.’
A soldier had brought up an ordinary kitchen chair which he placed against the wall, and Rohde was dragged to it and seated, his stiff leg sticking out grotesquely in front of him. A noose of rope was tossed over his head and he was bound to the chair. The soldiers left him and the officer barked out a command. The firing-squad lifted their rifles as one man and aimed, and the officer lifted his arm in the air.
Forester looked on helplessly but with horrified fascination, unable to drag his eyes away. He talked loudly, directing a stream of vicious obscenities at Coello in English and Spanish, each one viler than the last.
Another Sabre started its dive, the hand of the officer twitched and, as the noise grew to its height, he dropped his arm sharply and there was a rippling flash along the line of men. Rohde jerked convulsively in the chair as the bullets slammed into him and his body toppled on one side, taking the chair with it. The officer drew his pistol and walked over to examine the body.
Coello pulled the drawstring and the curtains closed, shutting off the hideous sight. Forester snarled, ‘Hijo de puta!’
‘It will do you no good calling me names,’ said Coello. ‘Although as a man of honour I resent them and will take the appropriate steps.’ He smiled. ‘Now I will tell you the reason for this demonstration. From your rather crude observations I gather you are in sympathy with the unfortunate Rohde—the late Rohde, I should say. I was instructed to give you this test by my superior and I regret to inform you that you have failed. I think you have proved that you were not entirely sincere in the offer you made earlier, so I am afraid that you must go the same way as Rohde.’ His hand went to the pistol at his belt. ‘And after you—Aguillar. He will come to his reckoning not long from now.’ He began to draw the pistol. ‘Really, Forester, you should have known better than to—’
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