The Annihilators

by Donald Hamilton

  “Oh, my God!” Olcott’s voice sounded sick. “Elspeth said she was asking a lot of questions. Is that how she learned?…”

  “I’m afraid your wife is a bit too trusting, but it doesn’t matter now. The point is, if those men are all dead, there’s no problem, right? So if you can’t bear to finish one off, call one of us homicidal characters and we’ll be happy to do the job for you. But don’t for Christ’s sake let any of them get away. There’s plenty of ammunition. Use it.” I drew a long breath. “Okay. Over to you, Jim.”

  Putnam said, “Paul, you heard the man. Are you in or out?”

  Olcott swallowed. “Sorry if I seem naive. I’ve never done anything like this before. But I’m in if you’ll have me.”

  Jim Putnam said, “We’re not only happy to have you, we’re going to hand you the toughest assignment of the lot. As Sam said, our big problem is the man up by the Citadel. Not only can he spot everything that goes on down here; with his assault rifle he can raise hell with anything we try. It’s long range for an Ml6, but if he knows how to use it, and we’ve got to assume he does, he can make life damned uncomfortable, and probably very short, for anybody he catches out in the open. Ideally, he should be taken out before we even start operations. However, our one professional take-out specialist—I used to know something about it myself, but I’m way out of practice—is wounded and doesn’t much like climbing pyramids anyway, as we’ve all seen.” There was a ripple of laughter at my expense. Jim went on: “So that alternative is out. Which means it’s up to you, Paul. You’re the stalker and mountain climber and you’ve been up that pyramid once. Can you get into position up there without being spotted, and nail him when the action starts, before he has a chance to zero in on us?”

  Olcott nodded slowly. “Yes. I should be able to manage that.”

  “Remember, this Ml6 isn’t designed for the kind of one-shot kills you probably like to try for, hunting. You’ve got fifty-five grains of bullet instead of a hundred-and-eighty or whatever you’re used to. So use it on automatic and keep pumping lead into him; and if he should manage to crawl into cover anyway, don’t feel too bad about it. Just slap in a fresh magazine and give him a burst every time he sticks his nose out. Keep him pinned down, keep him busy, don’t let him get to where he can shoot at us, don’t let him get away, and you’ll be doing fine. And if he does hole up, don’t try to go in after him. You don’t know how. Wait until we’ve cleaned up down here, and yell for reinforcements. Sam and I will come up and ferret him out for you. Questions?”

  “Somebody’s going to have to show me the buttons and levers; I’ve never used an M16.”

  General Henderson said, “Yes, I think a little demonstration is in order, Captain. It’s not a weapon with which I’m familiar, either.”

  Putnam nodded. “Wait until I check the doorway… All right, if you’ll hold this flashlight, sir. This is the charging handle. Pull it straight back until it locks, but it won’t pull unless you hold it so you’re depressing this catch, here. The weapon also remains open after the last round is fired. Bolt release here. Magazine release here. Three-position safety here: SAFE, SINGLE, AUTO. Questions?”

  Olcott and Henderson each checked out a weapon with the aid of the flashlight. Both knew firearms and needed no further instruction. No questions.

  Jim Putnam said, “General, the low-level sentry over by the Copalque road is yours. Find yourself a spot over there from which you can nail him no matter where he goes. Your signal is gunfire up at the Citadel. The minute Paul opens up or his man does, you wipe out your target. And Paul opens up the minute his target spots Sam and me as we go for the Headquarters temple.” He looked at me. “There’s no cover at all between the Nunnery and HQ, Sam, so there’s no sense in us trying any sneaky belly-crawling. We have to make it while old Eagle-Eye up there is on the far side of the Citadel. I suggest that we make a straight run for it, hoping that even if he does spot us, we can get a grenade or two into each end of the building before the shooting wakes them and they come boiling out like hornets. I think we can make it if Paul can keep us from getting clobbered from above.”

  I realized that this was why Putnam had chosen me for his partner here. The old general could have done as well, or maybe even better, once he reached the target area, but at his age he couldn’t be expected to manage a hundred-yard dash. I hoped I could.

  “You call it,” I said.

  “I’m going to have to shortchange you,” he said. “You’ll be hitting the officers’ end of the temple, and you can have half the grenades, but I’ll have to ask you to use either your revolver or the Browning for the clean-up work. You’re not likely to have more than one or two to deal with and if you get a grenade in there right away, they shouldn’t cause you too much trouble. I’m sorry I can’t tell you if Lieutenant Barbera is in his quarters. They were kind of milling around earlier, and I lost track of who was going in and out. Sometimes an enlisted man stands guard over the stuff in there when both officers are out. Hell, for all I know Barbera sleeps with a kid soldier when his commanding officer’s away and other men’s wives aren’t handy.” His voice was totally without expression. “But I should say that the most you’ll have to handle is two, and the place may even be empty. The other room is larger, I’ll be dealing with more men, and the grenades may not be as effective in the larger space, so I’d better have the remaining M16 to handle the overflow. And whichever pistol you take, Mrs. Henderson should have the other, just in case somebody slips by us and heads this way.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I freed the Smith and Wesson, holster and all, and handed it over to the general’s lady. I preferred it as a weapon—I was brought up on revolvers—but with its sawed-off barrel it was strictly a short-range proposition, and it only held five cartridges against the thirteen that still remained in Sanchez’s automatic. (I had no trouble at all in remembering where the fourteenth round had gone.) I tucked the big Browning under my waistband after rechecking the loads. I saw Jim Putnam glance at his luminous watch dial.

  “Paul, how much time will you need?”’

  “I’ll have to go around the south end of the clearing so I can approach the pyramid from the jungle side. Can you give me an hour?”

  “Just about. We want to get it over with before they start stirring around to change the guards at midnight. Very well, at twenty-three-oh-five Sam and I will assume you’re in position and stage our heroic attack against fearful odds. Ready? It is now twenty-two-oh-five… Mark!”

  “I might as well go now, too,” General Henderson said. “I don’t move as fast as you young sprouts these days, and I don’t mind sitting under a tree until the action starts. Captain, it is a pleasure to serve under you. I’ll deal with my man and then wait at that end of the field to shortstop anything that gets loose and comes my way…”

  Then they were gone. In the silence, we could hear the footsteps of Gloria Jean outside, pacing her beat—well, it was hers now. Jim Putnam let out a long breath.

  “It’s not the fighting that gets you, it’s the goddamn briefing,” he said. “And the goddamn waiting. No sense in our getting out there yet, Sam. We can be at our jump-off position in five minutes.” He hesitated. “I’m rather curious about how you and Frances cleaned up on Colonel Sanchez and his cohorts.”

  Mrs. Henderson said placidly, “Yes, I’ve been wondering about that, myself.”

  I said, “Well, you see, I had that .38 hid out…”

  They appreciated the story I told them just as much as if it had been the truth.

  27

  The path seemed longer this time, which was odd. Usually a trail you’ve traveled a few times and got to know after a fashion goes by faster than it did when you were exploring it for the first time and didn’t know how much of a hike it was going to be. However, I’d experienced a certain amount of blood loss earlier; and since then, I’d done some more fighting and my ears were still ringing with grenade blasts and gunfire. I was only carrying one M
l6 on this trip, plus my little revolver, returned unused by Mrs. Henderson; but I also had a machete, a full canteen, and a haversack.

  On the plus side was the fact that I was reasonably clean and presentable for a change, having been sponged off and rebandaged by the general’s formidable spouse; I’d even got to exchange my bloodstained clothes for fresh ones. Nevertheless it seemed to take me a long time to raise the loom of the Monastery against the sky, and longer still before I found myself on the cleared Melmec road with the Arch of the Emperors darkly visible ahead.

  A sudden rustling and scurrying noise had me unslinging the assault rifle hastily, ready to hit the ground; then I heard the low, snarling sound of a four-footed scavenger standing its ground against the two-footed predator approaching. Clearly the bodies had already been found by the Eaters of the Dead, as the Melmecs had called them.

  I made a cautious detour, not knowing what the hell was there, only that it sounded sizable and brave; it could be anything from a coatamundi to El Tigre himself—or maybe just a pack of dogs from a native village. In any case, I wasn’t looking for more combat; but the encounter put a sudden fear into my mind. I hurried on and was relieved to find Frances lying at the side of the arch where I’d left her, alone and apparently unharmed.

  She didn’t speak. I got rid of my load and knelt beside her. “Roll over a bit so I can get at your wrists,” I said, and cut them free. “All right, now the ankles.”

  She sat up, rubbing her wrists. Rising, I helped her to her feet.

  She looked at me for a moment and spoke without expression: “Teacher, may I leave the room?”

  “Yes, Frances,” I said. “You may leave the room.”

  She disappeared around a corner of the arch, moving a little uncertainly after the long hours of immobility. Presently she returned, buckling the belt of her jeans. She smoothed down her shirt and brushed herself off a bit and pushed her hair back from her face with both hands, standing in front of me.

  “It’s a funny thing,” she said in an odd, thoughtful voice. “It’s a very funny thing. I’ve probably lost a husband I loved very much. When all this comes out, I’ll probably lose a university position I worked very hard to get. I’ve probably wrecked a very promising academic career. It’s quite possible that I’ll be sued for every cent I own and wind up penniless, jobless, disgraced, and ruined. If a certain individual cares to press charges, I may even wind up in prison for attempted murder. And as if all that was not enough to think about, I could hear the carrion-eaters working out in the dark, and I wondered when they’d get around to ripping me into little bloody pieces, and eating the pieces. But what was I really worrying about, lying here helpless, Mr. Helm? I’ll tell you, the only thing on my mind for the last hour or so has been whether I should urinate in my clothes immediately or hold out a little longer. Silly, isn’t it?”

  I wasn’t going to apologize for leaving her here so long, if that was what she was hinting at. I said, “I have water and beer. And some soggy crackers.”

  She said, “Warm beer at three o’clock in the morning is positively indecent, isn’t it?”

  I said, “Actually, it’s closer to four, but there’s no sense in trying to move until it gets light. They won’t start from Labal until they can see. When we hear the Jeep we can cut straight across to the road and join them. It can’t be more than a quarter of a mile through the jungle, and I brought a machete.”

  I gestured toward the steps of the arch, and we sat down side by side. I opened the haversack, set the carton of crackers between us, and got the cap off two bottles of beer. She picked hers up and drank thirstily.

  “Like I said, indecent,” she said. She threw me a sideways glance. “I suppose you killed them all, just as you did here.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Where Helm has been, no living thing remains.”

  She shivered. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “Do you want to hear about it?”

  She nodded. “In a way I’m responsible, so I should know about it, shouldn’t I?”

  “It was a very professional operation,” I said. “Jim Putnam and I went for different ends of the headquarters temple. We were almost there when we were spotted by the sentry up on the Citadel. He got off a hasty burst that missed; but Paul Olcott was in position and cut him down. At the same time I heard the old general open up at the far end of the clearing and I knew he had his man. Then I pitched a grenade into the officers’ end of the building, and Jim got two into the barracks end, and nailed a man who came staggering out, but another got around the corner. I heard him coming my way and dropped him with my Browning. Jim stepped out into the clear and finished him off with his .223; but in the meantime another had stumbled out and was limping down the field toward the escape road. We didn’t dare fire that way because we didn’t know where Henderson had taken cover over there. Then we saw something flicker among the trees—those flash-hiders leave something to be desired—and heard the general’s careful five-shot burst. The running min went down, and that was just about it. Except that later we had to climb the pyramid and dig out Paul’s man, who’d managed to crawl into a hole up there. But he’d lost too much blood to present a problem. No casualties among the good guys.”

  It hadn’t been quite that simple, of course. There had been the inspection of the blasted headquarters temple afterward, and the discovery that my grenade had been wasted on an empty room but Jim’s double explosive present had done a thorough and very messy job on three of the occupants of the barracks, no coups de grace required. Jim had sent me up to see if Paul Olcott needed any help at the Citadel while he reassured the rest of the party and got them started on preparations for pulling out.

  I’d found an undamaged M16 in the wreckage of the officers’ room. Climbing the pyramid with it slung across my back, in the dark, hadn’t been my idea of recreation, particularly since no matter how I hung it the damn gun kept bumping me where I hurt. Paul Olcott signaled me over to a mass of unassembled masonry that was presumably awaiting further restoration. They put those old fallen-down buildings back together like jigsaw puzzles.

  “I’m sorry; I goofed,” Olcott said when I reached him, panting. “I hit him a couple of times, I’m sure, but I guess I was a bit nervous, and I didn’t know the gun, and the shots went low. He managed to find cover over there in the corner behind the fallen pillar. He did a little shooting earlier, and I fired back; but there’s been no sign of life for a while. I didn’t want to go in after him until somebody else got here, for fear he was playing possum; but if you’ll cover me…”

  I shook my head. “Let’s not be hasty. I’ll take a look; you stay here and watch the rat hole.”

  He said stiffly, “It’s my job, Sam. You don’t… wound a lion and let somebody else go into the brush after it, dammit!”

  I said, “Any lions you wound you can have, with my compliments. This is a man; and men are my business. You did your job, you kept him off our backs when it counted, now let me do mine, okay?”

  But after all the heroic arguments, there was nothing to it. Approaching cautiously, I found an angle from which I could see the dark shape of the wounded man behind the pillar, lying belly-down, unmoving. He seemed to have a smashed thigh. There was a black pool of blood beneath it, and the leg lay at an angle that was just slightly wrong. There was an assault rifle on the ancient stone paving by his right hand.

  I could have made sure of him from where I was crouching, of course; but something made me close in warily, watching the hand. At the last moment, it moved to grasp the Ml6, and the prone man tried to roll over to shoot me, but he was too weak and slow. I stepped in quickly and kicked the gun away. He sank back with a groan. When I turned him over with my foot, he choked back a scream of pain. I reached down and added another Browning, and another knife, to our arms collection.

  I called, “It’s okay, Paul, but get Jim up here, will you?” Putnam had apparently been coming to join us, anyway; he appeared almost immediately
. I said, “I thought you might like to have this one for your very own, amigo.”

  We stood regarding the overly conscientious sentry who’d been so much trouble to us. Then Jim Putnam looked down at his M16 and set the selector very carefully to single fire. I touched his arm. He glanced around quickly, annoyed by the distraction.

  I said, “You know her better than I do. But some women are kind of unreasonable about being raped. I knew one who bought a little knife and, with some help, personally castrated both characters who’d done it to her. Really kind of a nice girl, too.”

  He hesitated, and turned his head. “Paul. Would you go on down and ask Gloria Jean to come up here, please?”

  Lt. Julio Barbera lay looking up at us with hating eyes, saying nothing. At last we heard footsteps and the girl appeared. She’d shed her borrowed sentry costume; and she was wearing a short-sleeved black knitted shirt and snug jeans tucked into her boots. The boots did not seem as big and clumsy with pants as they had with skirts. Even in the dim light I could see that she looked sturdy and attractive and very durable; a girl designed to last the right man a lifetime. She stepped forward and looked down at the wounded officer. I couldn’t make out her expression. Perhaps it was just as well.

  I turned and walked away, but I heard her voice behind me speaking softly but quite clearly: “No, I’ve never used one. You do it for me, please, darling. You know how.” A weapon offered and refused. And the crack of a single shot…

  But there was no need for Frances to know these details. We sat under the massive arch, listening to the ugly noises of the scavengers feeding back along the ancient road. I thought the sky was getting faintly lighter in the east, but it was hard to be sure.