He hesitated. He knew he was being suckered; he knew he'd be a damn fool to risk everything he'd worked for on the outcome of a crazy duel. And still, there was the matter of a Prussian aristocrat's honor. I'd questioned his courage, I'd cast doubts on the 'honorable origins of the betraying scar he'd retained through the years of flight and hiding where a sensible man would long since have had it removed by plastic surgery. There was that, and there was the waiting attitude of the men.
The sergeant with the machine pistol spoke quickly behind me: "Jefe no! Let me shoot him now!"
For answer, von Sachs grabbed his machete by the hilt and pulled it clear. There wasn't any polite on-guard stuff. He just came for me. Suddenly he was all over me, and he was good. It was all I could do to parry the flashing blade coming at me from all sides.
His men surged aside as I retreated. There were murmurs of approval and gasps of disappointment. It was a weapon they all knew, but they'd probably never seen it used by men who'd trained with foils and sabers. At that, von Sachs had the advantage. He'd learned his stuff with a real weapon. Padded and masked, he'd swung a blade weighing several pounds, sometimes dull for practice, but sometimes, as his face attested, honed and deadly.
I'd done my work with the modern fencing saber, a whippy toy not much heavier than a foil, employing a dainty technique that has little to do with blood and death. As a matter of fact, if you hit hard enough to sting your opponent through his thin canvas jacket, you're scolded for being Unsportsmanlike. On the other hand, I did know quite a bit about knives, and I'd done some work with the Japanese fighting stick, a closely related weapon.
He kept coming in, but not as fast as before, and I managed to break up his attack at last and come back at him with a straight-armed lunge that seemed to take him by surprise. He even looked a little disapproving as he beat the point aside and retaliated with a slashing cut to the head, which I parried. I knew I'd learned something, but there wasn't time to analyze it.
I'd weathered the first rush. He'd lost some of his steam, and it was time to think of strategy. It wasn't up to me to skewer him, anyway. I was just the decoy. I started angling my retreat towards the creek bed, well within rifle range of Sheila's position on the north rim.
We were sweating now. The scar was a livid streak on von Sachs' flushed face. I saw Catherine behind him, still held between her guards. That wasn't good, but maybe they'd release her when the shooting started. I didn't look at the canyon wall behind me. Sheila would be there. She'd have been there since the first hint of dawn. I could sense the loaded rifle up there, waiting. I could feel the crosshairs tracking von Sachs as he moved closer, advancing as I retreated.
It made me feel kind of cheap. The man was sincerely trying to kill me in fair fight, and I was just setting him • up for a bullet. Well, it's not a chivalrous age, nor is mine an honorable profession. I wasn't about to risk turning loose a wild man with an army and a nuclear missile because of some boyish notions of fair play. – I had it pretty well figured out now. I had to immobilize him for a moment, to make him a stationary target; and I had to get myself completely out of the way so that the chance of my lunging into the bullet wouldn't make Sheila nervous and hasty. I let von Sachs drive me back towards a spot where the almost dry creek bed 'had a six-foot bank undercut by past floods. I gave ground slowly until I felt the bank start to give; then I let out a despairing cry and jumped back and down, falling in soft sand. That got me out of the line of fire. Six feet above me, von Sachs came to a halt, panting.
He stood there, catching his breath, a beautiful target. I knew a certain regret as I waited for the shot. Good swordsmen are hard to find these days. The regret faded as the shot didn't come.
It was hard to keep from turning my head to look back and up at the rim. Something was wrong up there, terribly wrong, but there wasn't much chance of my seeing the answer from below. I got up slowly, while men crowded to the creek bank on either side of von Sachs, and still the Nazi stood there, machete in hand, and still nothing happened.
It became obvious that nothing was going to happen, presumably because something had already happened to the rifle on the rim or to the small girl behind it.
Catherine's guards had dragged her up to the edge of the wash. Her face told me nothing, but I remembered that she'd wanted von Sachs alive. She'd also said, One day you will pay for Max. I do not forgive you.
She was a clever girl. She must have made a deal with somebody; she must have figured out a different solution to her problem, one that gave her revenge as well as success.
What it was didn't really matter. Whatever she'd done, or had done, to Sheila, there wasn't much I could do about it at the moment. I could do something about von Sachs, however. She was welcome to him after I got through with him.
"Come on down, grandpa," I called, shaking my machete. "What are you waiting for, the boys to bring a ladder?"
He didn't like the implied sneer at his age. He jumped. going to one knee in the sand. I gave 'him a break, I let him get to his feet. Then I moved in to kill him.
XXIV
I ALMOST GOT HIM with my first real lunge, and I saw again that little start of surprise and disapproval as he escaped the point with a wild parry that left him open for a cut to the shoulder or face that I passed up. I didn't want to chop him to bits, I just wanted to finish him; and I had the answer now.
It was very simple. He'd never used the point or had it used against him. They fight for the scars and the honor over there; and there's no honor in a scar that starts at the front of the chest and comes out behind. They fight for blood only, not for death. The edge is sharp but the point is blunt. The idea that a man with a cutting weapon in his hand might use it for sticking, too, was not part of his experience. It had probably been outlawed by the rules he'd fought under, to keep them from losing too many students.
I was afraid I'd tipped him off, and I contented myself with slashing and chopping for a while, carrying the fight to him. The sand made it tough for both of us, but his legs were older than mine. He fought cunningly and defensively, however, giving ground upstream past the cottonwoods and the missile, sparing himself for another major effort. Then it came, and he drove me back with a flashing attack, turned, and ran for the bank, shelving 'here.
He held that rise for a minute or two. I couldn't drive him off it, but I could work my way upstream to where there was no longer any bank to amount to anything. There were no shots from above. There was no sign of life at the top of the cliff. I should have left her in Tucson, I thought. She'd be safe now.
Von Sachs almost took my head off with a savage cut. The parry jarred the machete in my hand. It was no time for regrets. We were in the cottonwoods, fighting at the base of the Rudovic III, slugging it out with ancient tools and techniques in the shadow of the weapon of the future.
He was tiring. I had him now, and I looked towards Catherine so she'd know I was making her a present of him. If I'd had any doubts of her treachery-.-Whatever the details might be-the fact that she was standing alone, unguarded, but making no effort to run for the truck as we'd arranged, would have convicted her. Her guards had forgotten all about her, seeing their jefe driven back. The men watching were all silent now. There would be a kind of sigh when a weapon failed to reach the mark, that was all.
I went in for the head, let von Sachs break up my attack, and gave him an opening. He was slow in taking advantage of it, but he came along nicely at last, and I teased him by retreating, and still he came, and I let myself falter as if my foot had slipped. I let my weapon swing wide as I caught myself. I heard the sigh of the men, and I saw the light come back into the German's eyes, and his machete made a whistling sound as he changed his attack from left to right to take advantage of the unguarded side.
In the middle of 'his cutover, while his hand was still high, I lunged, driving the point in hard and straight. He was coming to meet it. The blade went in clean and didn't stop until the hilt was against his shirt.
&nb
sp; I heard the groan of the men. I saw von Sachs' face change and die. The machete dropped from 'his hand. I braced myself and pulled my own weapon free. As he fell towards me, I caught him and got the pistol from his holster left-handed. Then I was standing at the base of the missile with the bloody machete in one hand and the cocked automatic in the other, facing the leaderless army that had been going to conquer an empire, for all the world like Errol Flynn playing Custer's Last Stand, or something.
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 and 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 exempire-builders going back to their farms…"
XXV
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. JIMINEZ.
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. They 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.
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