The Hungry Blade

by Lawrence Dudley

  Several more soldiers sprinted out, officers shouting orders, trying to get into position, aiming to fire. More shots rang out, missing. The plane was lifting off, the wheels maybe a foot in the air. It reached the second hangar. Something extraordinary—Falkenberg banked hard. The fighter teetered over at a crazy angle, almost a crash.

  My god—what? He’s going to crack up, Hawkins thought. Instead the starboard wheel touched down and caught the tarmac with a piercing screech, braking it hard. The plane pivoted on the contact with a snapping jerk, spinning on the point of the wheel, whipping around ninety degrees, the nose aiming straight into the hangar. Falkenberg expertly banked hard the other way, touching down briefly on the port-side wheel with another screech, revving the engine to the max, straightening out, then lifted off again and roared into the hangar a foot or two above the ground. He flew through the hangar, vanishing out of sight and out of firing range.

  Corrialles and his troops ran to the rear door, guns raised. In the distance they could hear the plane, now barely visible, disappearing into the dark, banking and turning away toward the mountains. Corrialles and the others fired a few desultory shots, then gave up, watching the dim speck disappear into the night sky.

  Hawkins held back, still tightly gripping Aust’s arm. In a way, he marveled at what just happened. The exquisite skill, the commanding mastery of machine and air it took for Falkenberg to pull that little maneuver off, to improvise so quickly and adroitly on the spot. Amazing, he thought, one simply had to admire it.

  It was a damn shame they got away, of course. But this operation was in the crapper anyway, Hawkins simply knew that instantly, it wasn’t the kind of thing you needed to think over. Corrialles could try reconstructing his coup, but even if he did, there’d be no Nazi alliance, no fakery with treaties, no use for the plans for bases, the planes and simulators, or all the rest of the stage props upstairs in the flight school. Mexico and the States would not be conned into a war with each other, there’d be no distractions or diversions from helping Britain and resisting Hitler for Washington.

  And the paintings? I’ll happily help, Hawkins quickly thought—and we’ll see to it they get impounded the moment they arrive in New York. What will Corrialles do with those Spanish Francoists? Hawkins wondered, he can’t trust them. This should be interesting. He remembered Corrialles shooting the cowardly bull. How far will he go?

  Corrialles ran past Hawkins and Aust, the same deep growl as before. He sprinted into the big hangar, pointing the pistol at the line of men against the wall, turning to face his soldiers. He made a short quick speech. Hawkins and Aust followed.

  “What’s he saying?” Hawkins said.

  “These men—foreigners—invaders—trying to get Mexico in someone else’s war—others—traitors, betraying Mexico—would destroy all—duty calls—must defend Mexico—freedom and independence—” Aust said, all quick bursts, breathless.

  The men against the wall began crying out, louder and louder into a screaming cacophony—“¡No! ¡No! ¡Por favor! ¡En nombre de dios!”—pushing and squirming, mouths open, eyes white.

  He’s going to go all the way, Hawkins thought. But let’s not have him go too far. He grabbed Aust by the lapels and pushed him back by the door. Corrialles’s next words needed no translation.

  “¡Fuego! ¡Mátalos todos! ¡Dios sabrá lo suyo!” Kill them all! God will know his own! Aust gasped as Corrialles emptied his Colt into the ranks of men against the wall. After a split second the Hotchkiss machine guns on the trucks opened fire, followed a split second later by the soldiers raising their rifles and firing in single volley. Shouts turned into a single continuous scream as the bullets struck. The men in front fell forward onto the pavement or back into the arms of or against the now blood-spattered men behind them, the machine guns sweeping in from the sides, rolling all the men down in a steady tumbling wave. A second volley slammed out, now blowing dozens of holes in the sheet-metal hangar wall, blood and brains flying against the inside of the tin and the rafters.

  The machine gunners reached the middle, stopped to reload, then swept fire back outward through the ranks of the remaining men struggling to get around or past the bodies of their fallen comrades, pushing and throwing the bodies aside. Fighting and shoving each other, the survivors were frantically trying to escape, desperate to get out of the way, a mad scrimmage of flying, twisting arms, elbows and fists, heads banging, bloodying each other more, all the while ducking and wresting one another in front, trying to hide behind each other at the same time, the stronger pushing the weaker forward, if only for a few precious seconds. Four or five made it to the front of the hangar and began frantically running across the field and up the runway, desperately trying to escape. Six or seven of Corrialles’s soldiers and one of his captains sprinted after them, the infantrymen quickly down on one knee, steadying, aiming, and carefully firing.

  As the bullets struck, the doomed men were knocked forward like they’d been swatted in the back by an invisible hand, legs flying and stumbling as if they’d tripped, crashing hard on one foot, arms windmilling, another hard step, then another before diving and crashing facedown into the dirt or the concrete, legs and arms splayed out.

  Inside the firing tapered off. The soldiers moved forward, aiming and shooting at men hiding under the bodies of others, lying silent but uninjured, trying to assume the pose of death. It was to no avail. With the general watching and pointing—“¡Aquí! ¡Allí!”—with the empty pistol, stepping into the gore, kicking a few bodies, the soldiers gave a quick coup de grace to the heads of the ones not obviously dead and torn apart by the fire. After several more shots, then a final pair and the jingling of ejected shells, the hangar fell eerily silent.

  -57-

  A thick wave of blood rapidly flowed across the floor. As it approached his feet Hawkins felt a momentary urge to throw up, right into the puddle itself. No … won’t do, he thought. Can’t. Don’t. He choked it down. Yes, disgusting, horrifying to see so many men die, literally, not figuratively, under your nose and watch the terror in their eyes. The sight of tumbling bodies, the shattering shake of bullets tearing them apart, the smell of blood so strong that you could stickily taste it in your mouth across the hangar, together produced a prickly tension, a pins and needles sensation across the skin that told you this was not normal, this was hell itself. These men were the enemy. But they were men like any other men, like him. What General Corrialles did wasn’t necessarily unexpected. Hawkins had instinctively known—assumed—this was bound to end badly for someone once General Corrialles caught Eckhardt and Falkenberg. Hawkins earlier shot two of them in the street himself. But still …

  Knowing something was about to happen, Hawkins expected himself to go cold, to shut down and not feel as usual. But he did not, the professional mood did not hold, and he felt a sense of relief that surprised him. Thank god I can still be repulsed and repelled by the specter of so much death. I’m not Eckhardt, at least not yet. There was something strangely comforting about his nausea. I haven’t lost myself.

  Corrialles seemed nonplussed, pointing around with the now empty pistol for his men to fetch the trucks. He gestured his officers in, issuing orders as he walked, “¡Fíjelo en el fuego! ¡Consiga ese carro de la gasolina! ¡Fíjelo en el fuego! ¡Consiga ese carro de la gasolina!”

  “What?” Hawkins said to Aust.

  “He’s going to burn the building down.”

  “Go back to the car and stay there,” Hawkins said. He ran into the flight school past men carrying the bodies inside and up the stairs to Eckhardt’s office. Corrialles may not want anything up there, but I do, Hawkins thought. Inside he swept up all the fake treaty papers, threw them in a sack, then rifled the other drawers for all the papers on the Nazi sympathizers. On the way out the door he glanced across at the ancient painted tumbler. He grabbed it and stuck it in the sack, too.

  As Hawkins came out the door Corrialles was
across the tarmac, directing traffic, after a fashion. One of the sergeants was backing up a large tanker truck, angling it into position. It was marked gasolina de la aviación in big red letters. The sergeant drove it forward, getting some distance, then gunned it into reverse, door open, shoving something into place on the floor with his foot, then stepped onto the running boards, swinging on the door, jumping off. The tanker lurched back, picking up speed, roaring across the tarmac and parking lot. With a tremendous smashing boom it crashed through the wall of the flight school, almost disappearing inside, only the grill and headlights visible. A pop. Flames started to appear. Then a grinding, rending noise and the headlights suddenly pivoted up to the sky as the weight of the tanker, loaded with several tons of petrol, broke through the floor. With a rippling, rumbling sound the headlights slid backward into the basement, almost vanishing before an explosion echoed from the cellar. A huge ball of fire blasted out the hole in the wall, then blew out the windows with a tinkling crash before blowing open the doors. Flames engulfed the entire building in seconds, sending Hawkins, Aust and all the soldiers running back and away to escape the searing heat.

  Behind him some of the trainers were burning, too, the flames spreading from the open cockpits and engine compartments, licking along the canvas wings.

  Corrialles turned and saw Aust by the car.

  “¡Usted!”—you, he shouted. He ran up to Aust, pointing the big Colt at his head. He pulled the trigger. It clicked uselessly. Corrialles cursed, almost throwing it, looking to his men for another.

  “General—no!” Hawkins shouted, pulling Aust behind him. “They lied to him, too! He didn’t know, you saw his face.” The general grimly glowered at Hawkins, lips tight, then tapped the empty pistol on Hawkins’s chest.

  “Why—or why wouldn’t he? They were living with him.”

  “Eckhardt probably didn’t trust him because he’d lived in Mexico for so long,” Hawkins said. “We still need him to insure the paintings. Here—wait.” Hawkins pulled Aust around, handing him the fake treaty papers. “Look at this. Have you seen any of this?”

  Aust read the first few lines, treaty of alliance and mutual assistance between the deutsches reich and the united states of mexico, signed

  “September?— September, wha—” Aust was skimming quickly, “Adolf Hitler … Miguel Corrialles, Presidente—mother of god, what is this?”

  “A conspiracy,” Corrialles said, “against Mexico.”

  “Please, I swear, I knew nothing about this,” Aust said. “I am Mexican now, this is my country—”

  “Very well. You get a chance to prove that.” The general turned, now tapping Aust on the chest with the pistol. “If you are lying, if you are involved in this, by god, I will kill you with the rest of these traitors. Do you understand?” Aust nodded, unable to speak, gasping and wheezing in fear.

  “What about Eckhardt and Falkenberg?” Hawkins said.

  “You saw—” He waved a hand out the hangar.

  “Maybe they’ll go back for their things.”

  “Yes. It is possible.” Corrialles mulled that a second, then gestured and handed off the pistol to one of his men. “Hawkins. You said we need Aust. You still want to do business?”

  “Yes. Why not?”

  “Indeed.”

  “What about Eckhardt and Falkenberg?” Hawkins said. “What they know, they could ruin everything. The paintings are safe on your base, but—”

  “Yes. They are now very dangerous.”

  “And who knows what other friends they may have?”

  “This is true. Take Aust. I’ll send men with you to his house.”

  “Not too many—”

  “Agreed, they might see. We will talk later.”

  It was a long drive back across the Valle de México to the Campo Militar. Then Hawkins drove Aust back to his house followed by a troop truck, making sure all was in order there before returning to his hotel. Aust was silent the whole way, slumping against the car door, apparently stunned. The silence is good, Hawkins thought. Time to think.

  Eckhardt and Falkenberg. Not going to draw the US into a stupid invasion, he thought. Points for that. They got away. Deduct some. We may be able to pick up their trail, though. That’s a draw. They’ve lost the paintings, and their base. Points for that. Corrialles still has the paintings. A new thought struck him. My god, the paintings—I don’t have to destroy them! They’re safe! That brought a huge wave of relief, physical, palpable. When I ship to the legendary Alpert Gallery, or to Parke-Bernet, we’ll have the FBI seize them, and eventually get them back to their rightful owners, hopefully they can be found and they’re still alive. Goodly number of points for that. W, General Houghton, in particular, will be relieved.

  The men killed—points or deductions? he wondered. Don’t know. Do I care? he thought. No. Those men were a threat to his country. What, exactly, was General Corrialles to do with them? He could hardly arrest them … the plotter of the coup. Take eighty prisoners? Where? How? What would he do with them? He’s a general, he’s a veteran of the civil war here—maybe he realized what that entailed. And the dead were all, in the end, Franco’s Falangists, Nazi sympathizers, local Fascists Eckhardt recruited, the enemies of freedom and democracy and Mexico. On the other side of the ocean we’re shooting them every day and every night, or trying as hard as we can to shoot them or blow them up. Is it that different? No doubt it was the only thing to do. I can live with it, Hawkins decided.

  With that, the deeper meaning of the night really hit him.

  I came here to fight the Nazis, he thought. I have. And I won.

  -58-

  The sound of traffic on the Paseo de la Reforma slowly slipped a soft baby finger into his ear, gently rousing Hawkins from his sleep. He rolled over, watching the curtains blow in the open window. Almost eleven. Best night of sleep in months, he thought. No worries, at least for the moment. Yes, a good night’s sleep was the best spoil of victory. No doubt about that.

  Should go down, send for Lilly, he thought. Nah—he felt no urgency. The tension had rolled right off. Instead, he lazily stretched in bed, then hopped into a long, satisfying shower before drifting down to a leisurely brunch in the hotel café. Half an hour after that he was waiting in a booth at the Reforma. Lilly walked in and sat down in the booth across from him, smiling and winking, looking spectacular as always. She must’ve been getting some sun—sleeveless short summer dress, legs tanned, face a little bit of color under her wide straw hat. She shut the booth door as she dialed. Oh well, he thought.

  It took half an hour to dictate every detail, with both of them dropping extra pesos into the coin phone. He’d worried she would be upset or horrified at the shooting, some sort of squishy response. Instead a breathy “good riddance” came over the handset. He finished.

  “I’ll be heading out to Aust’s now,” he said.

  “Brilliant, Roy, simply brilliant.” She started to giggle. “The paintings are safe! And he’s going to ship them straight into our hands. I do hope you plan to be out of the way by then. He’s likely to be very cross with you.”

  “Yes, cross! I should say so.” They were both watching each other laugh at a distance through the closed glass doors, their voices on the handsets oddly intimate and hushed, as if they were lying side by side whispering in each other’s ears.

  “Especially considering all those men he shot.”

  “Yes. Tough break for them. Hear from your fella in the army?”

  “No.” She sounded irritated and frustrated. “Not in ages.”

  “Any news of the war?”

  “Yes. I’ve been telexing back and forth with Beth in New York, also Jenny in the army office in Ottawa. We’re holding in the air. But catching up on the ground.”

  “How so?”

  “We’re replacing our losses. At the beginning of the battle Fighter Command was short on pl
anes. Now the air force is short on pilots. Jen thinks they must be getting more confident, they’re refusing to rush officers through training.”

  “They don’t want to throw them away.”

  “Righto. Remarkable story, though. The air force is collecting the wreckage of crashed Hurricanes and Spitfires and dumping them in hotel ballrooms and the like, and then turning civilians loose on them with hand tools.”

  “They’re not trained airplane mechanics?”

  “No. No experience whatsoever. Told them to do their best, put one together from the pieces.”

  “And?”

  “They did.”

  Hawkins opened the booth door and leaned out, “You’re making that up!”

  She flipped her door open for a second, “No!” before pushing it shut. “It’s all true. I swear. I was a Girl Scout. No lies here!”

  “I’ve heard some incredible things lately, but that takes the cake.”

  “Same here.”

  “I better get back to the Imperial. Thank you, Lilly, things are looking up.”

  -59-

  In bar, the note said. Riley was wearing the suit and tie, on a stool, hair pomaded, sipping a beer.

  “You know, this is most interesting,” she said as he sat. “If I was wearing my guayabera and sandals, dressed as a campesino, they would throw me out.”

  “They tried to.”

  “Yes. And if I was dressed in a dress—”

  “As a woman.”

  “Yes. They would assume I was a whore. They might call the police, have me arrested.”

  “That doesn’t only happen in Mexico.”

  “As you say. It is quite illuminating, the world you live in as a man, as a rich gringo.”

  The bartender put Hawkins’s beer down. He took a long drink. What to say to that? he thought. A natural instinct said, Defend the world you live in, justify and protect it, because you’re in it and you have a stake in it—but that didn’t seem right, either.