“Now,” I said, “slither out of those tights and sit down on the john so I can fix your knees.”
She was studying her face in the bathroom mirror. “Will it get worse?” she asked.
“It’ll probably color up a bit more by morning. But he missed the eye by enough; at least you won’t have a shiner to worry about. I think you can cover most of it with makeup…”
“Sam!”
“What?”
She was staring at me indignantly. “I just told you what happened!”
“Sure, baby, sure,” I said. “Now get those crazy-looking nylons off, what’s left of them, unless you’d rather have me take them off for you…”
“But Sam!”
I drew a long breath. “Damn you, Dillman, why do you keep trying this kind of nonsense on me? I’ve been moderately frank with you. I’ve more or less told you I’m a professional; I’ve even let you know pretty much what kind of a pro I am. And in the exercise of my nefarious profession I’ve been slugged in the face more than once. I’ve seen others smacked, men and women both; I’ve even smacked a few myself. And you’ve ripped the skin of your hand and scraped some of it off your knees. If you’d really fallen on your face, which isn’t easy to do, you’d have some bad scrapes there, too, wouldn’t you, instead of just a bruise? Somebody took a good swing at you and knocked you spinning, and you landed on hands and knees—hand and knees. Now let me see about those knees, will you, and just shut up altogether if you can’t talk without treating me like the village idiot.”
She started to speak angrily and stopped. I put my arms around her and led her, stiff and hostile, back out into the bedroom where I’d have more maneuvering space. I knelt before her and untied and removed her sturdy walking shoes. She lifted her feet on command, like a robot. I reached far up under her skirt and worked the nylon wreckage down her hips and thighs and legs; and whether or not the operation affected me sexually is none of your damn business. She stepped out of the stuff when I asked her to; but when I told her to sit down in a nearby chair she didn’t move.
I rose and looked at her hurt, handsome face. The shattered look was in her eyes again. Her mouth was trembling. It shocked me deeply. She was not a woman I’d ever expected to see weeping. Then she was in my arms, shaken by great wrenching sobs. I held her and rode out the storm with her; presently it began to subside.
“It’s silly!” she gasped at last. “I’m just being a silly woman, but nobody… nobody has ever laid a hand on me before. So casual, so contemptuous, slapping me down and leaving me sitting in the dirt with my face all numb and my clothes all dusty and untidy and my stockings ruined…” She drew a long ragged breath and tried to laugh. “I’m sorry, darling, I didn’t mean to… It was just such a… such a terribly humiliating experience!”
After a moment, I said, “Knees. We were going to do something about those knees, remember?”
“All right, I’m all right now, but please bring me a Kleenex so I can blow my nose.”
I pulled one of the big basket chairs closer for her—the other had my clothes draped over it, and I’d surreptitiously tucked my gun under them after recognizing her voice at the door. Returning from the bathroom with the requested Kleenex and the proper medical equipment, I washed and peroxided and Band-Aided the skinned knees. Then I covered them with a towel and spread the stained skirt over that and, with cold water, sponged the blood smears from the hem, where it had brushed against her lacerations.
“It should be all right when it dries,” I said. “Who was it, Frances?”
There was a little pause. “I can’t tell you,” she said at last.
I said, “That’s pretty stupid. If one of our party had suddenly gone haywire and belted you one, you’d have got up and broken a chair over his head. It has to be somebody you couldn’t afford to fight; somebody who could slap you around like this and make you take it without striking back.” I watched her closely. “Somebody, like, for instance, that government fink who calls himself a guide, the one you didn’t like me talking so loudly in front of because he might make official trouble for you. Ramiro Sanchez.”
She hesitated, and said too quickly, “All right. Yes, it was Ramiro. He thought his position entitled him to… certain privileges. I guess I was rather tactless, rejecting his advances. Maybe I lost my temper and made some personal remarks I shouldn’t have. So… he got a bit rough.”
I nodded slowly; but I was suddenly sick inside. She was lying to me, but that was nothing new; she’d always lied to me. But the realization had suddenly come to me that she was faking here. Not that the bruised cheek and damaged stockings weren’t real, or the blow that had caused them, or the resulting emotional upheaval… but was I truly the kind of guy on whose shoulder strong and independent ladies chose to cry? This strong and independent lady?
Suddenly I understood that Dr. Frances Ransome Dillman would never of her own accord have come to me or any man, not even her husband, for reassurance after such a crushingly humiliating experience. She was a very private individual, and she would never voluntarily have let me or any man see her like that, bruised and torn, disheveled and half-hysterical. Given a choice, she’d have found a secret place and fought it out with herself in the dark, alone. But she’d been given no choice. She’d been brutally struck, and then ordered to seek sympathy from me by somebody she felt compelled to obey; and I’d been flattered enough by her trust to accept her presence as natural, until now.
I looked at her for a long moment. Then I grinned wolfishly and said, “That’s the way you get people killed, Dillman.”
Her eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
I reached under my discarded clothes and brought out the Smith and Wesson. “Well, obviously, being a gentleman, I’m obliged to go out and teach this bastard Sanchez how to treat a lady… You did say Sanchez, didn’t you?”
She was staring at the weapon in my hand. They’d slipped me a tricky one this time: a standard snubby in .38 Special caliber, the chief’s Special with the small, rounded, child-sized butt; but some quick-draw genius had been at it, grinding off the hammer spur so it wouldn’t catch in the clothing, and removing the front of the trigger guard for easier access. He’d also smoothed the action considerably, but there’s only so much you can do with that double–action mechanism, since it has to cock the hammer first before dropping it on the primer.
It still takes a long, strong, steady pull on the trigger; and personally I’m old-fashioned enough to thumb-cock the hammer and then use the crisp, light, hair-trigger mechanism to fire the piece—two separate operations—when real accuracy is required. But I’d have to live without that option for a while, since that smooth, spurless hammer would be slippery and dangerous to cock.
“Oh, God, you have a gun!” Frances breathed, and looked at me accusingly. “You told me—”
“I told you I didn’t have a gun in Mexico. I didn’t have a gun in Mexico. I never told you I didn’t have, or wouldn’t have, a gun in Costa Verde.” I swung out the cylinder to check the loads and snapped it back into place. “Well, you can sit right there while I pull on my pants and go take care of this lousy woman-beater Sanchez. You did say Sanchez, didn’t you? Yes, I remember clearly, Sanchez was the name. Say good-bye to Señor Sanchez, Dillman.”
She made a sound of annoyance. “Oh, stop being silly,” she said. “You’re not really going to kill anybody; and you know perfectly well it wasn’t Ramiro, anyway. He’s much too vain to make a play for a woman a foot taller than he is; he knows he’d look ridiculous. But I’m not going to tell you who…”
I held up my hand. She fell silent and it came again: the rattle of metal outside the locked door as somebody was careless with a weapon out there and let it brush against a belt-buckle, perhaps.
“Oh, goody,” I said cheerfully. “The lady inside to keep me busy with her hysterics, and the guard outside to make sure I stay put if she fails to keep me properly entertained… while what is happening out there, Dillman!” Th
en I shook my head quickly. “No, never mind. For a scientific lady you have a very strange attitude toward the truth; I’d better go find out for myself. Just sit tight and keep quiet, please.”
“Sam, please, you mustn’t—”
Tossing aside my pajamas, I turned on her, and the fact that I didn’t have any clothes on didn’t bother me a bit; we’d never been particularly modest with each other. I said, “I should think you’d have had enough of being leaned on for one evening, Frances. Please don’t make me get rough with you, too. Gags and bonds are very uncomfortable.”
She drew a sharp breath, but let it out soundlessly. I hauled on pants, stuck my feet into shoes, and got a black turtleneck—practically mandatory equipment for night operations—out of my suitcase and pulled that on. I clipped on the tricky little waistband holster and put the loaded gun into it and pulled the shirt down over it. I turned to the woman still sitting stiffly in the basket chair.
“You have a choice,” I said. “You can open the door and warn the guard and he’ll raise the alarm and his friends—I assume he’s got some—will come running, and a lot of people will get shot, probably including me. Or you can sit right there and wait for me to come back, and the chances are that nobody’ll be hurt because all I’m after is information; I haven’t the slightest intention of interfering with anybody’s plans. Suit yourself.”
She didn’t speak. I moved to the window and opened the jalousie-shutter very quietly.
“Sam.” Her voice was almost inaudible. When I looked back, she whispered, “Be careful, darling.”
Then I was outside. A moment later I was far enough away from the illuminated walks and buildings to make a careful scouting trip to a point from which I could see the door of the cabin from which I’d just departed. There was a man stationed there, all right: a real bandido type complete with hat, serape, weapon, and reserve ammo; but those boys lost something when they switched to automatic firepower fed by clips. A webbing ammunition carrier equipped with a series of snap-closed pockets, three magazines to a pocket, isn’t nearly as dramatic-looking as one of those fine, picturesque old bandoliers full of shiny brass cartridges. His weapon was the same Ml6 as I’d seen carried by the roadblock troops. Well, that figured. Most revolutionary forces seem to have little trouble in liberating enough government equipment to stay in business.
Making like a snake, and hoping I wouldn’t meet one, I made my way through the landscaping, taking advantage of the ornate bushes and shrubs, some of which were better equipped to defend themselves than I was. I turned the corner of the main building and crawled forward through the broad-leafed planting there until I could see the parking area out front.
Several beat-up Jeeps and a husky, battered six-by-six vehicle were parked there. The red cross on the side of the truck body did not look too permanent or too professionally applied; it was already peeling. The man I’d come to look at—I couldn’t see her accepting a blow from anybody else; and I was still waiting to learn why, proud as she was, she’d take it from him—was standing in front of the ambulance.
There was no doubt of his identity. The picture was so classic I wanted to laugh: a Pancho Villa group shot updated. There were the humble Jeep drivers and assault-rifle toters lounging casually in the background; and there was the arrogant and heavily armed three-man bodyguard standing wary and alert. Posed in front of them all was the generalisimo himself, a real Latin-Patton with two ivory-handled single-action Colts sagging on crossed gunbelts in the old-fashioned way; no trick quick-draw belts or fancy buscadero outfits for Lupe of the Mountain.
He was a big man for this part of the world, with a good belly on him, and a great black drooping moustache that could have made him look like a comic bandit but didn’t. He was dressed in stained and wrinkled khakis. The swarthy, jowly, unshaved face under the greasy uniform cap with the gold insignia was shrewd and cruel; you knew that the shadowed little eyes had seen everything twice; and remembered it all from the first time, anyway.
Then he stepped forward, since there was movement at the front of the hotel to my right. A small man came down the steps there carrying a folded wheelchair which he opened at the foot of the stairway. Ricardo Jimenez appeared above on his aluminum arm-crutches. He gave them to a taller man to carry and made his way down the stone stairs, slowly and painfully, with the aid of the wrought-iron banister: He retrieved the crutches from the man who had followed him down, and stood leaning on them as Lupe Montano came striding up to him, followed at a discreet distance by the fearsome threesome. Montano threw his arms wide in a flamboyant gesture of greeting, and embraced the younger man heartily.
Stepping back, he said in Spanish clear enough for me to understand, “You look somewhat better than the last time we met, outside La Fortaleza. It is a pleasure to see you again, amigo.”
Ricardo laughed. “I cannot say that about you, General, since I was not conscious enough to see you the first time. But I am happy to be here.”
“General? What is this stupidity? I am Lupe and you are Ricardo. Come, we have much to discuss…”
More men came down the stairs behind Ricardo, keeping a wary lookout behind them. Among them I recognized the well-armed bandido type who’d guarded my door. Montano snapped his fingers, and the wheelchair was brought forward. Ricardo sat down and was rolled to the massive truck and lifted inside, chair and all. Montano snapped his fingers again, and the men all piled into the Jeeps. Motors roared and the whole cavalcade disappeared into the night.
When I got back to my cabin and slipped inside, the place was dark. I couldn’t see Frances, and I knew a pang of disappointment. Then, in the faint illumination from the window, I saw the skirt and shirt neatly arranged on the chair in which she’d sat; and the pale slender figure awaiting me on the bed…
13
In the morning, with pyramid-prowling in mind, I got out a pair of jeans, bought new in Chicago. I did a bit of swearing while working my belt through the loops. It’s a rather special belt, of necessity a bit wider than some; and while it used to fit all normal pants, currently the cheapo manufacturers of clothing, and even some not so cheapo, are saving a few mils here and a few mils there by making belt loops smaller and smaller, even on outdoors clothes where substantial support is essential. It seems like a hell of a niggling kind of economy.
After finally threading it through, I checked out the belt and the little last-ditch weapon it contained, supposedly an improvement over the trick buckles we used to be issued, which were good only for cutting yourself loose if somebody tied you up. I couldn’t help remembering that the last time they’d “improved” that particular piece of equipment they’d almost got me killed when the new model hadn’t worked quite the way it was supposed to. After pulling on the jeans, I got into a short-sleeved guyabera shirt—the kind with the epaulets—that hung loose enough around the middle to conceal the little revolver I tucked away in its clip holster inside the waistband of the pants. Soft rubber-soled desert boots completed the working costume of the archaeologically minded photojournalist.
Properly robed and armed for whatever the day might bring, I hoped, I shouldered my camera bag and set out to track down some breakfast, passing the swimming pool where a hotel employee, male, was using a small net with a long handle to fish out the leaves that had blown into the water overnight. He didn’t seem to be taking his work too seriously. In the dining room, the only members of our group present this early were the elderly Hendersons, also dressed for jungle exploration. They were well along with their meal, but they waved me over to join them.
“Maybe you can tell us, Sam,” said the formidable Mrs. Henderson, after I’d seated myself and given my order. “We were wondering what the disturbance was in the middle of the night; but the waitress just shrugs and says quien sabe.”
I pushed my camera bag under the table where nobody’d trip over it. “Well, it’s too bad,” I said, “but Dick Anderson had some kind of an attack, epileptic seizure—I guess he must have susta
ined a bit of brain damage in the auto accident that crippled him—and I just happened to hear him knock over a chair as he fell; I was in my cabin next door. I got hold of Frances and we routed out some of the hotel staff. Happily the phone was working—I gather it doesn’t always—and they got an ambulance down from the nearest town with a clinic, some eighty kilometers away. Dick had come around all right by the time it got here, thank God, but he was pretty weak, and the doctor who’d come along said he’d better go into the hospital for observation.” I laughed ruefully. “It got to be quite a production, actually. They’d even got together an unofficial escort, armed to the teeth. There had apparently been some reports of bandidos locally, and the government doesn’t want to take any chances of having one of us millionaire Americanos kidnaped while driving around these jungle roads at night, even in an ambulance.”
Henderson frowned, his old eyes thoughtful. “Bandido, that’s a local euphemism for rebel or revolutionary, isn’t it? Damn it, Sam, I’ve got a bad feeling in my old-soldier bones. I hope we haven’t landed in a hornets’ nest. If I’m any judge of troops, those sloppy conscripts we saw along the road yesterday would be no use at all against a determined guerilla force, for all that they’re weighted down with U.S. equipment until they walk bowlegged.”
Mrs. Henderson was gathering up her belongings. “Well, you can stay here and make military talk, Austin; I’m going back to our little thatched hut and load my camera… Oh, hello, Frances. Sam just told us about Dick Anderson. It’s too bad; he was so looking forward to seeing the ruins. Do you know how he is this morning?”
“I just had the hospital on the phone, and he’s doing fine,” Frances said. She looked lean and competent and picturesque in slim, well-fitting jeans and a long-sleeved silk shirt or blouse, open at the throat. The silk was a particularly bright, flaming shade of red. She’d done a good camouflage job on her bruised cheek, but makeup couldn’t quite conceal the slight swelling. She laughed. “Did Sam also tell you how he knocked me down, the brute? Actually, he was carrying Dick’s crutches over his shoulder, making sure they got into the ambulance; and I walked right into them just as he started to swing around, stupid me. It was a rather hectic midnight crisis, and I guess we were all a bit rattled.”
The Annihilators Page 11