by Lou Cameron
She was conning him, he knew, but he couldn’t figure out how to make her tell him what this was all about. He said, “Well, if we come to any nice bushes between here and Bogotá I’ll invite you into them first.”
“Don’t be beastly, dear. You know I have this thing about the idea of anyone bursting in on us while I’m in, well, an undignified position. Surely it will keep until we can do it right, in a nice private hotel? I want to take a shower with you and then I want you to do something very naughty that I just thought about last night.”
He said that sounded swell as well as utterly depraved, and changed the subject. She was giving him an erection. She probably wanted to. He didn’t mind a lady trying to arouse him, if they intended to follow through. But like the Divine Rowena, Liza seemed to want to practice where nobody could take her up on it.
A while later he excused himself by saying he wanted to talk with the sergeant of their escort. He left her there in the fairly fly-free shade and waded through the flying hordes, really looking for Gaston. His trail-wise sidekick had had the same idea, but Gaston had found his shade on the far side of the camp. Captain Gringo hunkered down beside him and said, “Gaston, we’re in trouble.”
“Merde alors, what was your first clue? We have been in trouble since we met in front of that Mexican firing squad.”
The American said, “Remember that time Greystoke hired us to look for a secret German naval base?”
“Oui, but I assumed he had forgiven us for the noise we made.”
“Yeah, it all turned out right in the end. But I’ve been thinking. The goddamn Brits never take the short and simple way when there’s a complicated way around.”
“True. It’s those strange schools they send their children to, no doubt. That must be why they use such big words, hein?”
“This is serious, Gaston. You remember how Greystoke hired us for what seemed a simple job, and then it got all wheels within wheels?”
“Oui, he was using us as cover for his real objective. He was most surprised when we succeeded. We were supposed to draw attention from a British team while we failed. I am still somewhat annoyed that they intended me to be a very dead red herring. But this time we are not pulling any of the Crown’s chestnuts from the fire, hein? Our real mission is for your Uncle Sam and—”
“How do we know that, Gaston?”
“Comment?”
“Oh, sure, we talked to some guys in the American Consulate. They were probably working for State. But we know the big trusts own everyone in Washington and that a lot of the big combines are international.”
“Aha! You think perhaps we are on another quest of the wild goose, as pawns of the great powers?”
“I don’t know what to think. We know Liza works for Greystoke and she’s giving off very mixed signals. Do you buy an old pro like Greystoke sending a neurotic consumptive nymphomaniac out on anything important?”
“My congratulations on the nymphomaniac part, I was only aware she was very strange. I see your problem. She is either pretending to be tiresome for some ulterior motive, or else Greystoke has indeed saddled us with a confused and unreliable woman to … What? Get us killed?”
“That’s what it’s starting to look like. There’s no reason for Liza to be acting like she has been. On the other hand, if the Brits only wanted us out of the way, they could have done it a lot easier in Limón. The same thing goes for those guys from State. If they hadn’t felt up to shooting us themselves, they only had to finger us for the police and the rewards on us would have done the rest.”
Gaston nodded and said, “That is the trouble with logic. It leads one up a blind alley no matter how one studies the board. Let us consider the reaction of the guts. How do your guts feel about the mission, so far?”
“Lousy. I could swear someone slipped me a Mickey Finn last night. But that won’t work, either. I was allowed to wake up and I’m not missing a thing. If we had any choice, I’d say our best bet would be to turn around and start running. But the hell of it is that we don’t seem to have a choice.”
Chapter Fifteen
They rode into the ambush late that afternoon. Of course it took them by surprise. An ambush is supposed to.
The attackers had picked a hairpin switchback on another nearly vertical slope. They were on the trail above and as the strung out column of weary travelers struggled up the lower pathway, the long ragged line of straw-hatted gunmen simply lay flat with elbows propped over the edge and proceeded to fire down into their victims.
A screaming peon girl ran in blind panic off the side of the mountain to roll endlessly in a series of bloody bounces until she vanished into the depths below.
As a horse and rider followed, Captain Gringo yelled, “Fall on the high side!” to anyone who might be listening as he rolled off his own mount and grabbed for a bush. He was none too soon, for a bullet thunked into the saddle he’d just vacated and sent his screaming horse cartwheeling down the mountain!
Some of Vallejo’s soldiers had come unstuck and were shooting up the slope, as he made his way back down the trail, but their position was hopeless. There was almost no cover for anyone down here, while the sons of bitches above only had their heads and shoulders exposed. He spotted Liza wedged between a fallen horse and the high side. She had her gun out and was potting up the hill at something. He dashed past her, shouting, “Keep your head down, damn it. They’re out of pistol range.”
Little Theresa had been smart enough to fall against the mountain wall when her spooked mount went over the side. She was trying to help a wounded soldier on the trail. It was a waste of time, he knew, but it gave her something to occupy her mind until somebody got around to aiming at her.
He ran to the end of the line, where a mule lay on its side with its legs hanging out over nothing much. The soldiers of the machine-gun crew were running like hell, down the trail and already out of earshot. But the mule hadn’t gone over and the Maxim was still lashed to the pack saddle. A bullet spanged off a nearby boulder as he tore at the lashings. He didn’t think anyone on his side was trying to keep him from stealing the Maxim. He pulled the machine gun free, leaving the tripod in place on the mule-pack. There was a belt in the action. He hefted the Maxim and started legging it down the trail as if to run away and somebody above jeered as they sped him on his way with a bullet that ticked his heel.
As he rounded a slight bend, he was out of range and could see other soldiers and some passengers running down the mountain far ahead of him. He ignored them. He stopped behind a boulder and risked a look back up the trail. He couldn’t see the straw hats, topside. Ergo, they couldn’t see him. Things were looking up.
He started up the steep slope. He spotted a just possible gullied semi-chimney and made for it, packing the heavy Maxim over one shoulder and using his free hand to sort of crawl-climb on three limbs. He slid one foot back for every two feet up and he knew if he looked down he might give up, so he didn’t. He couldn’t give up. Gaston and the others were dead if he did.
The erosion line he followed petered out near the edge of the upper pathway and he paused, gauged the distance to a clump of shrubbery, and crabbed along the slope for it, his boots milling a cascade of dust and pebbles down the mountain, but somehow keeping him on the slope until he grabbed a branch with his free hand, got his breath, and willed himself on up. He hooked an elbow over the rim of the upper trail, got his bearings, and rolled himself on to the deserted stretch, around the bend from the attackers.
He got to his feet and started walking, Maxim braced on one hip, the ammo belt trailing in the dust behind him. As he rounded a trailside boulder he heard a scream from below and glanced down to see another of his fellow traveler bouncing down the rocky slopes like a torn and bloody rubber doll. He gritted his teeth and stepped around the boulder, firing from the hip as he saw the men lying in a row on the shelf in front of him. The first he killed never knew what hit them. One looked his way open-mouthed in time to take a burst of lead and dust
full in the face, blowing his hat and half his head away. When the rest of the platoon-sized band became aware of where the fire was coming from, there wasn’t much they could do about it. He had them lined up like a row of potatoes he was spading with a solid stream of lead and fire; it was like knocking down a row of dominoes. He dropped some on the trail and blasted others over the edge to roll down to the survivors below. Those who made it to the bottom still breathing were smashed and beaten by the enraged travelers and pitched over the next edge to roll on down the mountain. Captain Gringo still had a third of the belt left when, seeing he was wasting ammo on reshooting mangled corpses, he ceased fire. He walked to the edge and looked down where over half the travelers were alive and waving as they cheered up at him. He waved back, hoisted the hot weapon on his shoulder and moved down the trail to the hairpin.
There, he met Sergeant Vallejo and a couple of his soldiers, coming the other way and looking delighted but amazed to still be alive. Vallejo shouted, “Nobre de Dios, Señor Canada, I thought the bastards had us! How did you get behind them? Where are the men who were supposed to be on that fucking gun?”
Captain Gringo handed the Maxim over to one of the soldiers, saying, “Be careful, the jacket is hot. We’re going to have to word what just happened sort of delicately to your superiors, Sergeant. Your machine gunners sort of, well, messed up.”
“The bastards ran away? I will kill them! Better yet, I will tell the officers and they will have the cowards shot for desertion!”
Captain Gringo shrugged. “You’re the boss. Of course, turning them in will make your outfit look bad, but—”
“Madre de Dios, of course it will look bad, but what else is there for us to do? How am I to account for what happened here if I do not tell the truth? Maria y José, they will probably have my stripes for this, but at least I won’t be shot. They will be furioso when they learn a civilian, and a foreigner, had to save the day when my cowards ran like rabbits!”
“Gee, I wouldn’t want to see you boys in trouble. Couldn’t we sort of, well, slant the story, as we say in the newspaper game?”
The three of them exchanged hopeful glances. The sergeant asked what he meant. Captain Gringo said, “Look – you boys just shot the shit out of a whole band of rebels here. Why not leave me out of it? After all, I can’t be promoted or get a medal, can I?”
“You would do this thing for us, Señor Canada?”
“Why not? We’re old drinking comrades and, as I said, there’s nothing in it for me. But who knows when I’ll need a friend who’s just been made Staff Sergeant?”
“You are muy simpatico, Señor Canada, but what about the others? The peones, of course, would not dare to contradict a soldier, even should anyone ever ask for an opinion from such unimportant people. But your friends from other places—”
“Leave it to me. I’ll explain that I don’t want to go through a lot of explanations. They’re all in a hurry, too. Besides, you and your men really did most of the fighting. I just gave you a hand, right?”
“By my very God, that is the simple truth, Señor Canada. But you are still most kind not to wish for to hog the credit. I, José Vallejo, am forever in your debt. But come, let us go back and gather the survivors. We shall have to make the rest of this leg mostly on foot, but we are almost to the next railhead. We should be there by nightfall. You and your friends will bear witness to our victory when we turn you over to the next section, no?”
“Of course. I’d better do the talking. Some of them don’t speak such good Spanish.”
“El Señor is most understanding. By the way, how many of the banditos did we kill up there on the trail?”
“I make it almost a platoon. Some fell off the mountain, so, what the hell, let’s make it about forty-eight.”
“There are only thirty men in a platoon, Señor Canada, and you said—”
“Hey, I know what I said. But round numbers aren’t convincing and I wouldn’t want to take any off and rob you boys of the credit. So let’s just toss a few in. Who’s going to know the difference?”
Chapter Sixteen
The story improved with the telling, as Vallejo passed them on to the next relay of guards at the downhill terminal of a cog railroad; once he had a license to fib, the burly sergeant proved a born-again General Bolivar. Even discounting some of it, the other soldiers had to be impressed. For while Vallejo had lost six of his men and a dozen unimportant travelers, he’d saved the mail, hung on to his weapons, and totally wiped out a guerrilla band that had been giving them trouble in that sector for some time. Vallejo wouldn’t be promoted. He didn’t have the family connections. But he would be put in for a nice medal. The clans were willing to share a few of the good things in life.
The cog railway took them up and over the crest of the west range. A short coach ride – oxcarts for the peones – connected them with another railroad that crossed the swampy vale beyond until the land once more steepened and it was time to get out and walk. It was one hell of a drag, but there were no further incidents with guerrillas and, all in all, the trip inland took one day short of a week and only resulted in the conception of two bastards on the trail. Peon women had nothing to say about whether they serviced a soldado or not.
The morning they arrived in Bogotá the superior officer of Lieutenant Colonel Maldonado was entertaining, if that was the word, one of Maldonado’s junior officers in his quarters. El Arano did not know everything. Like many men of superior intelligence who have to work with lesser lights, Maldonado tended to overestimate the advantages of brains over brawn and/or pull. Stuck with a bisexual superior he dismissed as a dimwit, Maldonado would not tolerate an aide who wasn’t both bright and heterosexual. He’d have been in better shape with a few loyal queers working for him. They’d have been able to tell him that one of his aides, while nominally a rather brutal Don Juan, was ambitious enough to take the part of a passive sodomite, or perhaps a cannibal, if it meant a chance to get ahead.
And so the good-looking young major gritted his teeth and took it, as he knelt on all fours across the colonel’s bed and presented his rump for military inspection and the older man’s pleasure. He didn’t know what real queens got out of it, but it cramped his bowels when the fat son of a bitch was all the way in. His confused genitals expanded and contracted as the colonel’s shaft slid back and forth over his prostate, up inside his rectum, and his own penis was drooling something that was either semen or piss on the sheet. He didn’t know whether he had to come or urinate and it felt uncomfortable’ either way, but hopefully the old bastard was almost there, so the major moaned in mock pleasure, like the whore he was, and wriggled his rump to encourage the old fart.
It worked. The colonel closed his eyes as he stood behind his latest conquest and dug his nails into the younger man’s hips as he thrust harder, collapsed forward, and sighed, “Oh, nice. You have such a sweet tight ass, Pedrito.”
“I am glad to be of service, my colonel,” replied the catamite as they both fell forward on the bed. The colonel withdrew and wiped his shitty shaft on the sheets, saying, “Soon I will have you coming with me. I could tell you are starting to like it better, no?”
“Si, my colonel, it is most intriguing.”
“It’s a shame you spoiled yourself with women before I discovered you were adventurous, Pedrito. I have found that a virgin boy enjoys anal sex almost from the beginning. One becomes attached to the method by which one reaches his first climax and you, I fear, are still penis-centered.”
The aide lay on his side, fondling his own genitals, and shyly asked, “Could I do that to you, my colonel?”
“No. I too am penis-centered. As you may have noticed, I am less well-endowed than yourself. I don’t want that big tool of yours inside me. Rank has its privileges, eh? But be patient, Pedrito, I have a nice surprise for you this morning. But first let us rest as I recover my breath and desire.”
The major nodded silently as he wondered what the freak intended next. He knew he
was on a faster road to advancement than normal military service to Maldonado offered, but sometimes he wished he hadn’t started this. The colonel had promised him the moon, when he’d seduced him that afternoon a few months back. So far, all he’d gotten out of it was a sore ass and a three-day pass the bastard had made him spend with him.
The colonel played with his own genitals as he asked, “Tell me, what is El Arafio doing about those mines my brother-in-law, Senator Vargas, was interested in?”
The major said, “Nothing. I told you he seems worried about a break with the Germans. But I had my own people check it out and it is true that the German company is only mining worthless rock over there. Have you told General Reyes that El Arafio has him under observation?”
The colonel shook his head and said, “Not yet. I too have learned the advantages of playing the waiting game in a most surprising world. I will tell you something about Rafael Reyes, if you promise to keep it secret. You see, Reyes is not the playboy people take him for.”
“You mean he is, ah, like us?”
“No, alas, his tastes in sex are rather banal. I’ve never understood why he keeps so many mistresses. After all, a woman is only a woman. There is no surprise in seducing a woman. They either screw or they don’t screw. I find predictable sex a bore. His mundane vices are not what I am speaking of. Reyes and his clique are very dangerous. You see, the bastard is very ruthless and very intelligent. I don’t know what Maldonado suspects him of, but I can tell you this: Reyes will always pick the winning side. I think it must be a family trait. His clan has been here since they marched over the Andes with the Pizarro brothers, and each generation holds more land and money, and the power that goes with such combined wealth. When Bolivar rose against the Spanish, others made the mistake of assuming the crown would win. The Reyes clan was one of the first to join the Liberator. When the first United Republic tore itself apart in civil wars, the Reyeses again managed always to land on their feet no matter which way the tide of victory went. Si, if Maldonado can be called El Arano, Rafael Reyes must be considered El Gato. Trust me on this. Watch General Reyes as you were ordered to, but be sure and jump the same way he does when he makes his move!”