by Donn Taylor
Soon afterward, he rounded a bend and faced, less than a hundred yards ahead, a fence at least eight feet high and topped with tangles of barbed wire. The trail led to a large gate where two men, one a blond-headed giant, stood talking. Each carried what looked like a high-powered rifle. Sledge dodged back into the trees. Approaching by the trail would be impossible. With those rifles, the men could frighten him away at long range. If he refused to be frightened, they would simply kill him before he got close enough to talk.
He paralleled the trail and approached under cover of the trees. By this means he came within twenty feet of the gate without being seen. If physical security had been the only concern in setting up this base, its builders would have cleared a perimeter of trees some distance outside the fence. The fact that they had not suggested a fear of aerial observation—an almost certain sign of an illicit operation.
This close to the gate, Sledge stepped out into the trail. He kept his hands well away from his sides to show he held no weapon and called, “Hey, you guys.”
Both guards whirled and leveled their rifles at him. Sledge raised his hands and said with as much confidence as he could muster, “Let me talk to your boss.”
The blond brute recovered first and spoke, his accent heavily German, “You have no business here. Raus mit before you get shot.”
Sledge held his ground. “If I don’t walk out of here in one piece, my partner gives my information to the FBI. Which one are you? Erich or Dietrich?”
The bodyguard’s eyes bulged, but he said nothing. Sledge appraised the man’s great bulk and obviously corded muscles. He’d be tough to handle, if it came to that. Sledge hoped he’d never have to try.
But the moment was passing and the initiative was slipping away. Sledge raised his voice and demanded, “Which one?”
The other muttered, “Dietrich. But you can’t come here.”
“Let’s let your boss decide that.” Sledge stared the German in the eye. “Just tell him I’m here.”
Anger flashed in Dietrich’s eyes, and he demanded, “Who are you?”
This was crunch time. Sledge had planned this carefully, but whether the next few seconds brought failure and even death depended on how Dietrich Staab reacted. For a few moments Sledge continued his staring contest with Staab. Then he played his last card.
“Tell your boss I’m the guy who blew up his Colombian factory.”
33
Sledge felt a surge of exhilaration as he watched Dietrich Staab react to his challenge. A widening in the hulking bodyguard’s eyes showed Sledge’s thrust had struck home. The rifle remained pointed at Sledge’s chest as they stared at each other. Sledge could almost see Staab’s mental machinery grinding its ponderous way from shock toward the only tenable decision. Sledge tried to act as if confrontations like this were his everyday business.
Finally, Staab lowered his rifle and muttered to the other guard, “Keep him covered. I’ll see what the boss wants to do.”
He turned and walked from the gate into a wooden frame building some fifty yards distant. The thick growth of trees prevented Sledge from seeing either end of the building. From what he could see, he judged it a long structure with a single square room grafted onto its side at the midpoint. Staab disappeared into that room.
The other guard kept his rifle trained on Sledge’s midsection. A tremor of his hands and erratic twitch of one eye revealed a nervous state that any slight stimulus might provoke into rash action.
“Relax,” Sledge said. “I don’t have a weapon, and I’m not going anywhere.” To emphasize the latter point, he eased himself down into a sitting position in the middle of the trail, careful to keep both hands in sight. “What’s got you spooked?” he asked. “I can’t do anything from this side of the fence.”
The man hesitated, then spoke. “Weird things have happened. Somebody has it in for us.”
Sledge shrugged. “Not me. I just want to do business.”
The other looked doubtful. “You’re not the guy that zapped Capozzi?”
“I don’t even know Capozzi. You say somebody got to him?”
“Dead as a mackerel. In our Jeep, halfway up the trail. The note said he was impolite.”
That sounded like something Raúl would do. Could he be the “Mexican” the shopkeeper said was hanging around?
In any case, Sledge saw an opportunity to create dissension among the enemy. “Sounds like an inside job. One of your people probably had a grudge.”
The man’s mouth drew tight. “The Staabs say they were all accounted for.”
“Who accounted for the Staabs?” He made a mental note that both Staabs were in residence.
The other made no response as Dietrich Staab returned, carrying his rifle in one hand. His free hand lifted the latch on the gate, and a jerk of his head signaled Sledge to enter. Handing his rifle to the other guard, Staab spread-eagled Sledge against the fence and frisked him, then pointed toward the frame building. As Sledge complied, Staab recovered his rifle and followed.
Hairs prickled at the back of Sledge’s neck as he entered. He’d cleared the first hurdle, but now he had to face the real pros. The room itself was a simple square furnished only by a desk, a chair, a table that held two crowded plastic file boxes, and a few straight chairs that had known hard usage. Dietrich Staab stood at Sledge’s left, his rifle held in front of his chest with its butt available as a club. To Sledge’s right, beside the desk, stood another blond bruiser Sledge took to be Erich Staab. This one wore a holstered pistol of a make Sledge couldn’t identify at this distance.
At the desk sat the dark-haired man Sledge had seen beside the weapons factory in Colombia. The man tapped the spread fingers of both hands against each other in front of his chest. The quickness of his cold blue eyes reflected a facile intelligence capable of devising the terrible weapons whose results Kristin’s photographs recorded.
“My name is Williams,” the man said. “What do you want with me?”
Your name is Koenraad, Sledge thought. But he saved that bombshell for later. Deliberately, he lounged against the wall beside the door. “I thought we might make a deal,” he said. “You cut me in on the weapons sales, and I don’t give my information to the FBI.”
The man did not change expression. “You said something about Colombia. Tell me the details.”
Sledge held the man’s gaze. “I had a problem with Diego Contreras and stumbled onto the factory. Matter of fact, I watched while you and these two goons met with him by the airstrip.”
Both Staabs tensed, but subsided when Williams raised a finger.
Sledge pressed his advantage. “Contreras had sponsored one assassination too many, so I told the right people about his factory. You know what happened.”
Williams tapped his pencil on the desk. “I know what happened. Why do you think it earns you any consideration?”
“It doesn’t.” Sledge showed an insolent smirk. “It’s what else I know that does.”
“For instance?” He stopped tapping the pencil.
“Did you know that Contreras committed the massacre at Chozadolor?”
Williams gripped the arms of his chair. His pencil fell to the floor, which squeaked as the Staabs shifted positions.
“That’s right,” Sledge said. “He needed some guinea pigs to see if those chemical weapons really worked.”
The dark-haired man pursed his lips. “I read that the men were killed by conventional means. By right-wing death squads.”
“Contreras dressed his guerrillas as paramilitaries when they raided the village. Most of the village men were simply butchered. But Contreras held out twenty for his experiment.”
Williams said nothing, so Sledge continued. “He led those twenty into a field and killed them there with your weapons. I don’t know what means of delivery he used, but I do know the results.”
“So that’s why there was a shortage—” Erich Staab took a step toward Sledge.
Williams stopped him with a gest
ure but said nothing.
“That’s not all,” Sledge continued. “Contreras kept enough of your munitions to stage a coup against the Colombian government. His guerrillas were moving into position when the U.S. airborne troops hit the factory. Contreras was playing you for a sucker.”
Williams stirred in his chair. “How do you know these things?”
Sledge took the plunge. “I helped raid the factory, and I interrogated Contreras’s second-in-command afterwards.”
“That is all very interesting.” Williams relaxed and intertwined his fingers in front of his chest. “But it’s ancient history. What do you know that’s worth cutting you in?”
“For openers,” Sledge said. “Your name isn’t Williams. It’s Wevers Koenraad, and you’re supposed to be dead.”
The dark-haired man’s widened eyes proved Sledge’s bomb had hit its target, but the man’s manner became more deliberate as he asked, “What makes you think that?”
Sledge knew he was skating on thin ice. Even Brinkman didn’t have this one nailed down. “The weapons had to come from somewhere,” Sledge said, “and the old South African program is as good a guess as any. But that’s not the most important thing.”
He paused to let the tension grow. “I told you Contreras killed some of the villagers with your weapons. A colleague of mine photographed the results. The photos are in a safe place, and they’ll be turned over to the FBI if I don’t check in by tomorrow morning.”
“This still doesn’t buy you a piece of the action.” A mirthless smile appeared on Koenraad’s lips. “What if Contreras did commit an atrocity with chemical weapons? There’s nothing there to implicate me.”
“On the contrary.” Sledge took a deep breath and lied. “I also have photographs of you and Contreras handling some of the weapons at the factory.”
The cold blue eyes narrowed. “Were you with your colleague when she took the photographs?”
Sledge refused to walk into the trap, though his heart leaped at the first indication of what could have happened to Kristin. If he played this right, he might find out. “I have two colleagues,” he said. “One has the photos in a safe place. As it happens, the other is a woman, and she’s been out of pocket since yesterday.”
“Well,” Koenraad said, his manner suddenly relaxed, “it seems you have the advantage, Mr…I didn’t get your name.”
“Sledge, Jeb Sledge.” What was Koenraad up to? Why the change in manner?
“And what kind of a cut did you have in mind?”
“Twenty percent should be enough. Mama taught me not to be greedy.” This was too easy. Something told Sledge he was being trapped, but he couldn’t see how.
The dark-haired man again showed his mirthless smile. “Why not hold out for twenty-five percent? Wouldn’t that be better?”
Sledge started to say “Twenty is enough.” But even as his mouth formed the words, something hard smashed onto the back of his skull. The floor rose to smash him again, and someone kicked him twice in the ribs. Dimly, as he descended into a whirlpool of spinning black, he heard a voice commanding, “Tie him up and throw him in with the woman.”
34
Sledge’s head ached with pain so dominant it seemed his whole existence. Something hard pressed up under his right elbow. Then he realized the hard thing wasn’t pressing up. His arm was pressing down. He was lying on his right arm on top of a hard surface. The heavy jacket didn’t give him much padding. He tried to move the arm, but could not. It was tied to the left arm behind his back. His feet were tied, too, limiting their movement to about twelve inches. His legs lay on the same hard surface as his arm.
Then he remembered. He’d talked his way into Koenraad’s base, tried to stall until the FBI made its raid, hoped to find out what happened to Kristin. He’d made a mess of everything. His threat to give incriminating photos to the FBI hadn’t fazed Koenraad at all.
But if Sledge’s body was lying on something hard, why was his head resting on something soft? And whose soft hand was rubbing his cheek? With an effort, he opened his eyes. The glare of mid-afternoon sun blinded him momentarily and set his head throbbing, but his eyes soon adjusted. They told him his head rested on a thigh. The remainder of that leg, clothed in rumpled tan slacks, stretched down to a small foot in a petite walking shoe. It was a nice leg and a nice foot, so he took time to appreciate them.
He’d seen those slacks and shoes before. Kristin had worn them.
He turned his head and looked up into her face. She smiled down at him through bruised lips, and her left hand continued to rub his cheek. Her right hand rested palm-down on her lap. When she lifted it, he saw that a circular pattern of seared, crinkled skin marred the back of it, along with a smear of something brown.
“Your hand…”
“Burned with acid.” From her matter-of-fact tone, she might have been saying she had eggs for breakfast. “It hurts less than it did at first.”
“What…? Why?”
“They think I know more than I’ve told. Next time they’ll put it on my face.”
In a blaze of anger he tried to rise. He could not.
“Be still,” she said. “I had enough trouble getting you into this position.”
He fell back, energy spent and head throbbing.
“I don’t want to move,” he said. “I like it fine where I am.”
“Idiot.” Her smile through swollen lips transformed the word into an endearment. “What brought you here on this fool’s errand?”
He tried to shrug his shoulders, but found that impossible. “I heard the other fool might want company.”
She gave a sad laugh. “We are a pair of them. I never knew people could be as evil as these are. The walls are thin, and I’ve heard them talking. The dark-haired one that calls himself Williams—he’s a chemist, I guess. I heard him bragging that he’d found something even more deadly than the stuff we found in Colombia. That’s what was keeping him here: he wanted to finish his experiment before they break camp and run into Canada.”
“I guess that’s why he backed his base up against the border. Cross it where no one is looking and he can disappear into the population.”
Kristin frowned. “He bragged that he’d set a vial of that new poison on one of his lab tables and treated it like an altar. It’s too deadly to take with him, but he says it will be destroyed in the fire.”
“In the fire?”
“He plans to burn these buildings. I guess you know they’re going to kill us first.”
“I figured as much. Any ideas?”
“None. Too many armed guards. Oh, Sledge…” Her tears fell onto his face. “We’ve come through so much and finally found each other. Does it have to end here?”
“It looks that way.” He searched for possibilities and found none. “You’ve tried untying me?”
More tears fell. “Yes. I couldn’t budge the knots.”
“Then we’re finished.” He had failed, and his failure would cause Kristin’s death as well as his own. Despair crashed in on him like a great sea wave, and he felt himself drowning in a darkness of heart and soul. Eyes closed, he surrendered to the darkness.
A light slap on his face brought him back. “There is one thing we can do,” Kristin said. “We can pray.”
Sledge’s old rebellion surged, the bitter memories of how the church had wronged his father. “I haven’t prayed since I was kid.”
Kristin spoke softly. “Neither had I, except on the plane coming out here. But we have nothing else. Will you do it with me?”
His resentments raged flood tide, but he couldn’t refuse Kristin. As she bowed her head, he closed his eyes. He tried to pray, but his thoughts whirled in a chaotic vortex of anger and frustration with nothing constant except the wish for Kristin’s safety and a desperate plea for help. Even those thoughts bounced back from the walls and compounded his confusion. He gave it up as a bad job.
In contrast, Kristin seemed calm, almost placid. Beyond her face he saw, for the fir
st time, the window of their room. It was an ordinary window with six panes set in wooden frames. It was the armed guards, not the window, that barred their escape. But he had other uses for it. Why hadn’t he thought of this sooner?
“Take your shoe off,” he said. “Break one of the corner panes.”
Kristin did as he said. The breaking glass made a tinkling sound. Some fell outside, but most remained embedded in the frame.
“That narrow fragment in the lower right corner looks good,” he said. “Use your shoe and break out the other pieces so you won’t cut your hand. Then work out the slim one and cut these ropes.”
She again followed his instructions. With the other fragments gone, she grasped the flat surfaces of the chosen sliver between thumb and forefinger and worked it back and forth until it broke free of the putty. Holding the sharp fragment, she knelt beside him.
Before she could make the first cut, heavy footsteps approached the door. Sledge felt Kristin lift the sleeve of his jacket, followed by the chill of cold glass on the skin above his wrist. The elastic of the sleeve’s wristband snapped back into place. He felt Kristin tugging on the bonds as Erich Staab flung the door open.
“Get up,” Staab commanded. “The boss wants you.”
He watched with a smirk as Sledge struggled to stand without the use of his arms. Staab himself stood well clear, apparently guarding against a two-legged kick, until Sledge managed to lever himself up onto his knees.
The bodyguard seized him by the collar and, with surprising strength, yanked him fully upright.
The bonds on Sledge’s ankles limited him to steps of about twelve inches. He shuffled laboriously ahead of Kristin while Staab brought up the rear. They continued about three-quarters of the length of the long building, which Sledge recognized as a laboratory, to a table where Koenraad stood waiting. Next to the table was an ordinary sink. Kristin gasped.