Renegade 21

by Lou Cameron

  Captain Gringo drew his .38. Gaston frowned and asked, “Have you thought the matter out, Dick? Such gentlemen of the road tend to grow in bunches. There will be more on the far side of the wagon trace, non?”

  “Yeah. I only want those two. Don’t use that fucking knife of yours. I want to talk to them first.”

  “Merde alors, about what? I can tell you what they are doing there. They are waiting for someone less prudent than us to wander across those open pepper fields into their most ordinaire ambush, non?”

  “Maybe. They could be mere banditos. They could be working for someone with more on his or her mind. You take the one on the right and I’ll pistol whip the other. Let’s go.”

  That should have worked, but it didn’t. The two soldiers of fortune fanned out to move in on their intended victims. Then a third ladrón, whom neither had spotted behind a tree, stepped into view, facing them, and started to say something about it getting late before he gasped, “¡Ay caramba!” and raised the pistol in his right hand to shoot Gaston.

  So Captain Gringo shot him, then blew away the squatting ladrón as he was turning his way, rifle and all. While all this had been going on, Gaston had of course blown the sombrero and half the head off his own victim.

  After that it got even noisier. The two soldiers of fortune had crabbed away from their own muzzle flashes and taken cover behind coffee-tree trunks as bullets hummed like angry hornets through spaces they’d once occupied. A long ragged row of white-clad figures flashed on and off by dappled moonlight shining down between the treetops as they charged more or less blindly, which would have been dumb against almost any two men firing from cover. It had even grimmer results against two of the deadliest gunslicks in Latin America. The only thing that saved the ones still on their feet after ten white-clad figures lay stark in the moonlight was that they’d fallen back in panic by the time the two adventurers had to stop and hastily reload.

  Gaston whistled and started running the other way. Captain Gringo hesitated, muttered, “When he’s right he’s right,” and followed, catching up on his longer legs to snap, “Cut right, back across the peppers. If they’re up to another charge they’ll move due west through the coffee.”

  “Must you explain the facts of life to a man old enough to be your proud papa?” Gaston snorted, suiting his deeds to his words as they broke cover together to dash out across open but dark distance. Neither spoke as they ran across the crunchy pepper plants. They were slightly winded and very sweaty by the time they made it to the hedgerow on the far side and hunkered down by unspoken accord to see how many guys were chasing them.

  Nobody was. Gaston gasped for air and spat before he said, “Eh, bien, those were not the usual highwaymen. They fought too seriously. Have you ever had the feeling that someone does not like you, and you can’t say why, Dick?”

  “Yeah, ever since I crossed the Mexican border a million years ago. Does General Portola lead uniformed guys or guerrillas?”

  “Those were not Nicaraguan army troops, Dick. Besides, why would Portola send an officer to alert us to his interest in us if all he wanted was our adorable asses?”

  Captain Gringo rose and said, “You’re right. The guy you met at the cantina could have just tailed you back to me and made boom-boom, or, hell, just turned us in to the British authorities. The constabulary would have turned us over to the Nicaraguan government they recognize. Let’s move sort of northwest and see if we can pick up another trail before we fall in a ditch. Thank God the moon’s out and almost full.”

  They started working around the hedge-in whatever, as Gaston observed, “If we assume Portola didn’t set that ambush for us back there, how do you like your strawberry blonde, Dick?”

  “I liked her a lot, in bed. But she won’t work either. Same reasoning. Why should the guys who sent her set me up for a great lay and a lot of bullshit about meeting me at midnight?”

  “True, neither of us would have been alerted had neither of us been approached by anyone. At the moment, we would both have been asleep, or at least in bed, back at that untidy little hotel.”

  They walked on for a time. Then Captain Gringo said, “Shit, it doesn’t make sense even if you assume a third side!”

  “There is a third side, Dick?”

  “At least a third. Maybe more. All sorts of people could be interested in whether that engineering firm does its job or not. But, assuming a third party doesn’t want us working for either Portola or Consolidated Construction, what was that bullshit back there all about? We were holed up in that firetrap hotel, as you just said. If they’d caught us off guard, about now, with all exits covered and a match applied most anywhere.”

  Gaston cut in to say, “That is how I would have done it. But we just proved they were rather bushy of the league. They may have known we were not off guard. Guessing which route we would take out of town would not call for genius, hein?”

  “Not if the guys doing the planning knew we’d been alerted. But if we assume they weren’t the ones who tipped us off that it was moving time—”

  “Oui, they have a spy in one or more of the other camps. I am betting on the construction company being indiscreet. El Generale Portola follows the standard practice of shooting any suspicious characters within his greasy grasp. But your adorable strawberry blonde has been trying to recruit hired guns, and who can say how many, aside from you, she screwed and chewed the fat with, hein?”

  Captain Gringo chuckled and said, “She chews pretty good. That’s probably the answer. Let’s not worry about it. Let’s just get the fuck out of here and let all the little wheels spin within all the little wheels while we line up something safer in good old San José.”

  They found a goat path and followed it until it joined a more substantial east-west wagon trace. Captain Gringo swung onto it and headed west. Gaston asked him what the fuck he thought he was doing. The tall American said, “We can’t go the other way, dammit! It leads back to town, and by now Greytown’s hot as a whore’s pillow on payday, as far as we’re concerned!”

  “True, alas, but you are walking us into even hotter territory, Dick. This is the road to Nicaragua’s current war zone!”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know. We gotta go some damned where, and I don’t walk through mud too good. Remember that cuesta of high sandy ground running north and south in line with the coast, a few miles inland? Well, we can follow this trail until it tops the cuesta, then swing left and whoopy-skippy through the reasonably dry and thin palmetto growth along said cuesta.”

  “You’re going to get us killed. Any bandits or wild Indians who avoid regular roads tend to stroll the high ground, too!”

  “Okay, have you got any better way south in mind?”

  “Mais non. But you’re still going to get us killed.”

  The moon played peek-a-boo as the two soldiers of fortune followed the trade route west. Fortunately, this stretch had been surveyed by British road builders and ran straight across the treacherous swampy areas. They passed a lagoon of scummy fresh water, infested with mosquitoes being snapped at by giant frogs being snapped at by even bigger alligators. Then Captain Gringo spotted palm fronds against the moonlit sky ahead and said, “Palmetto, front and center. Looks like we made it.”

  He spoke too soon. As they followed the road up a barely noticeable grade and moved into thicker, drier growth, a bull’s-eye lantern opened its shutter to shine its beam in their faces as, all around, they heard the dulcet tones of rifle bolts, latching lots of rounds in lots of chambers.

  They froze in place, hands polite, as Gaston muttered, “I said you were going to get us killed, Dick.”

  A voice from somewhere near the spotlight covering them said, in the polite casual tone of a guy who knew he had the drop on you, “We have been expecting you, Señores Walker and Verrier. You will come with us, por favor. El Generale is waiting for you in his command tent.”

  “So you are the notorious Captain Gringo,” said the fat man behind the com
bined field desk and map table as the two soldiers of fortune took their places across from him in the sling chairs indicated. So far, they still had their side arms, but that didn’t mean much with Krag rifles trained on their backs. It was hot as hell in the kerosene-illuminated command tent of heavy doped canvas, so the Butcher of Leon looked more like a baker who’d put in a hard day at his ovens as he regarded them with no expression on his dark greasy face. The soldiers of fortune were sweating too, and only partly because of the heat. El Generale Hernan Portola was not a friendly-looking guy as he sat there wearing class-A khaki officer’s uniform despite the steam room atmosphere. He nodded curtly at Gaston and added, “The mountain artillery in my train is impractical, if the contours of this map mean anything.”

  The two involuntary guests leaned forward to stare down with assumed interest at the ordnance map on the plywood between them and the spider whose web they’d blundered into. It was upside down to them, and neither gave a shit anyway, but El Generale’s eyes were starting to look even more suspicious as he mused aloud, “I must say I was not sure I’d have the pleasure of your company, señores. You know, of course, what happened to the agents I sent to contact you in Greytown?”

  They didn’t. So it was easy enough to look up at him again with expressions of puzzled innocence. El Generale still looked unconvinced as he explained, “When the men I sent to get you failed to contact me this evening as planned, I sent others to make discreet inquiries. They were unable to find you. They found out my original agents lay dead in the Greytown morgue. The British constabulary had just found them in an alley. Both had been shot in the back. So forgive me, I don’t mean to pry, but how is a man in my position to be convinced of your, ah, sincerity?”

  Captain Gringo smiled thinly and said, “Easy. We’re here, aren’t we?”

  “True, but alone. The officers I sent to recruit you were to escort you here. But they lie dead in Greytown, while you two, forgive me, could have been going almost anywhere when my men intercepted you, no?”

  Gaston laughed easily and said, “You would have to forgive me indeed, mon general, if I told you in detail what I think of your logique! Dick, here, never met either of your agents. I met one, it is true. I did not know he came in pairs. Like yourself, we wondered why he was not at the meeting place I’d arranged with him this afternoon. We heard some gunshots earlier. Until now we did not, I give you my word, connect them to anyone important to us. But with the police running about blowing whistles and no guides to show us the way, voila, we came looking for you, and so here we are.”

  “If you were searching for this camp and not just trying to escape.” Portola said flatly.

  Captain Gringo made a mental note that he was smarter than he looked before he told the officer, “There are three or four ways out of Greytown. Anyone with half a brain could guess you’d be camped here on this dry cuesta, for Pete’s sake.”

  Gaston added, “Mon Dieu, do we look stupid enough to assassinate two Nicaraguan officers and then charge blindly into their camp?”

  Before Portola could think about that, Captain Gringo said, “We had trouble in Greytown too. Some guys jumped Gaston, here, in an alley near our hotel. You can read about it in the papers, and your two officers were still alive at the time.”

  Portola looked relieved and asked, “Oh, were you the señores who left those bodies in that alley? That, at least, rings true. But who in the devil could they be working for?”

  Captain Gringo said, “Easy again. An outfit calling itself Consolidated Construction, Limited, sent a female agent to recruit us. You can see what our answer was. The mujer said she didn’t want us working for you. She said they had us under observation. Obviously someone working for them was trailing Gaston when he met your agent in that cantina. What else do you need, a diagram on the blackboard, for chrissake?”

  Apparently Portola did, but he drew the pattern in his own head as he let them sweat some more. After a while he nodded, slid a box of Havana perfectos across the map at them, and said, “Bueno. I’m glad you chose the right side. We have Browning, Maxim, and Spandau machine guns, all chambered for the same .30-30 rounds as our Krags. Which make do you prefer, Captain Gringo?”

  “I’ll stick with Maxim’s original patent, since I trained on it. The Browning fires a little smoother, but it’s sort of delicate for the local climate. The Spandau needs more work if the young Kaiser expects to ever do anything important with all those Spandaus he’s pirated from Maxim’s original design.”

  Gaston snorted in annoyance and cut in to ask, “Is there some point to all this discussion of machine-gun patents, or does M’sieur le General have some particular target in mind for les rat-a-tats?”

  Portola stabbed a stubby finger down on the map, marking the target area with another grease spot as he said, “The British firm wishes for to dam this stream and flood this jungle valley. I do not wish for them to do so. For political reasons, I cannot make my displeasure publicly known. I am therefore obliged to send a guerrilla band, led by you professionals, to take out the damned foreigners.”

  Captain Gringo said, “We heard all that from your agent and the dame from the other side, general. What’s the bottom line?”

  Portola shrugged and said, “I shall pay you a flat fee. Five thousand Yanqui, to share as you see fit, up front. You will get another five when I hear you have wiped the project out in a satisfactory manner.”

  The two professionals exchanged thoughtful glances. Captain Gringo asked, “What do you call a satisfactory wipe-out, general? No offense, but I’m not a butcher. So women, children, and unarmed peones are out.”

  The Butcher of Leon shrugged and said, “I don’t care what you do to the work force, as long as I can rest assured that cursed dam will not be built in the near future. Do it neatly, or do it sloppy, but do it, and the bonus is yours. Agreed?”

  Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Let’s go over the fine print. If we’re to stop the project to your satisfaction, we need some facts.”

  “Let’s talk about the money first!” Gaston cut in.

  Portola shrugged, reached in a drawer, and handed Gaston a check, saying, “As you see, it’s a cashier’s check made out to bearer on a Costa Rican bank in San José. When you take out the dam site, you won’t have to come back to me. In fact, I’d rather be able to say I didn’t know either one of you, should anyone ever ask. There will be another check like that one waiting for you in San José if I am pleased with the results of your mission. If I am not you will die before you can cash either.”

  Captain Gringo said, “Let’s stop trying to scare each other and get back to the brass tacks, general. Numero uno, who the fuck’s paying to have all that construction work done in the first place? I asked the dame they sent to recruit us, but she either didn’t know or wouldn’t say.”

  Portola shrugged and replied, “Nobody ever saw fit to tell us why they needed a flood-control and hydroelectric project on that tributary, either. The official word they sold Washington and London was the usual tripe about improving living conditions for the pobrecitos. They say they can improve navigation on the San Juan and set up a model village and industrial park on the riverbank as well.”

  “Do you think it’s a cover for something more sinister?”

  “Quien sabe? I don’t care what they really intend. It’s the Mosquitoes I’m worried about.”

  They both looked up. Gaston said, “The insects are trés formidable at this time of the year, mon General, but one would assume in time one could learn to live with a few mosquitoes, non?”

  Portola shot him a disgusted look and said, “I am referring to the Mosquito Indians, dammit. We’re already having enough trouble with the wilder tribes of our Mosquito Coast. And every time we have to shoot a few of the cabrónes, the triple-titted missionaries write more silly letters to the international press, accusing us of being uncivilized to our uncivilized minorities.”

  Gaston grinned and said, “Mon Dieu, how uncivil
ized of them! Everyone knows Leon is of the liberal party, non?”

  Fortunately, Portola didn’t understand Gaston’s sardonic wit. He nodded soberly and replied, “Public opinion is a pain in the ass. But what are we to do? We depend on the fucking Protestants in Washington and London to back us against the fucking Pope and the Granadines. Everyone knows the only good Indian is a dead Indian, but the damned Calvinist missionaries and the even worse Dominicans on the damned Granada conservatives’ side weep and wail as one, every time we have to shoot a damned Mosquito. You know, of course, how England used protecting the so-called oppressed Indians as an excuse to shove that base at Greytown down our throats. We don’t want anything like that to happen again. So I’m sending you two cutthroats to take out that dam and make sure it doesn’t see?”

  Captain Gringo lit the perfecto he’d accepted while he tried to make some sense out of what the fat man had just said. It didn’t work. He shook out the match and said, “General, I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about. What has building a dam in the middle of nowhere got to do with Mosquito Indians?”

  “Where did you think wild Indians lived, in the middle of Granada or Leon? The foreigners building that dam against our wishes in the name of so-called progress take the same position about the jungle valley they intend to flood being worthless and uninhabited, but—”

  “Gotcha!” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “I must be asleep at the switch tonight. God knows I’ve met enough Indians out in the middle of nowhere. The dam project figures to flood their happy hunting ground, huh?”

  “A couple of Mosquito villages and a thousand or more corn milpas too! You probably know los Mosquitoes are a slash-and-burn semi-agricultural tribe. If they’re flooded out, they’ll move into the happy hunting grounds of other bands. That will mean intertribal warfare, and you may have noticed we Creoles have our own intertribal warfare to worry about right now! It gets even worse if the Indians attack the construction workers instead of other Indians, or us. Let Consolidated Constructions, Limited, send out a call for help to the Royal or American Marines and—”