Monkey on a Chain

by Harlen Campbell

  I thought briefly of Anna, waiting back in Tierra Amarilla. It would be hard to face her again if something had happened to Juanito. I rose to my knees and peered over the top of my rocks. There was a flurry of movement up ahead, almost even with Roy’s position. I released the safety on my weapon. It was about time to start the dance. I began looking for the third group, the one I figured Corvin for. My first target. I’d just located them and begun to sight on them when two things happened, one right after the other.

  I caught a flare of light out of the corner of my eye, like a match lit and instantly extinguished, and then either Hughie or Louie fired a short burst, maybe ten rounds. The Uzi made a gentle burping sound. The muzzle flash was clear. The rounds ricocheted off the rocks directly in front of me. I rolled back behind them and cursed. Things were going to get complicated, but it was good to know where I stood.

  I peered around the edge of my rocks. None of Corvin’s people was visible any longer. I had to assume that the burst was meant to mark my position and maybe get me to firing. But Corvin couldn’t know I was behind him, and he had sure as hell seen a target up ahead. I did nothing, just waited. There was some muffled conversation up ahead, then someone fired a burst up toward the east face of the canyon, toward the source of the first burst. Hughie and Louie returned fire. This time they seemed to be aiming at Corvin’s group. I took the opportunity to roll away into the brush. I began making my way slowly forward. The last place I’d seen Corvin was about eighty meters ahead and across the road.

  Roy joined the firefight. He also seemed to be shoot-ing down into Corvin’s positions. I heard a scream from that direction.

  There was a shallow gully in the brush, about a meter deep. I rolled into it, rose to a crouch, and ran up it, maybe fifty meters. I figured I was about forty meters from the last place I’d seen Corvin. I began a low crawl toward the road. The firing was getting heavier. Rounds were pouring down almost continuously from both sides of the valley. They seemed to be aimed for a general area thirty or forty meters ahead of me. Two of Corvin’s groups were returning fire from either side of the road. Corvin gave no hint of his location, but I had last seen him across the road, perhaps twenty meters up from my present position.

  I had to risk a look. I crawled as close to a clump of mesquite as I could and rose to a half-stand, just high enough to see over it. Corvin wasn’t visible, but there was a small crop of rock between his last position and the beginning of the slope up to the cliff. I assumed he would have tried to reach it. I pulled the pin on a frag and threw it as hard as I could in that direction. Then, just for luck, I lobbed another in the general direction of the nearest group of his men, the one on my side of the road, and hit the dirt.

  The grenades went off with two cracking whumps that echoed up and down the canyon. All the firing stopped. I heard some cursing and a low, moaning kind of wail from the nearer group, nothing from the rocks I thought Corvin might have made for. The cursing was a gringo. The wailing had no nationality.

  I crawled up along the road a few meters and hid by a pile of prickly pear. Roy and the Mexicans began pouring fire down again. They were spraying the whole area, as though they weren’t sure of their targets. There was return fire from two locations on the other side of the road. On my side, nothing. I waited, listening. After a few minutes, I heard some rocks clattering back in the direction of the ravine I had just left. I moved back in that direction and waited. The firefight seemed to be concentrating on the other side of the road.

  The sounds of moving men came closer, and then I saw them. Three shadows, moving slowly. The one in the center seemed to be wounded. I dropped them all with a wide, sweeping burst, then ran forward and flopped down in their middle. They were all out of action. One was still breathing, but his chest was bubbling badly.

  He must have felt me near. He said, “Medic? Medic?”

  He must have known there wasn’t a medic in miles. I suppose it was more a prayer than a request. Or maybe just a reflex. I chucked their weapons out of reach, picked up a couple of clips I could use, then dashed back to my cactus. There was another lull in the fighting. Corvin’s crowd trying for a better position, I thought, and the others waiting for targets. I worked my way ten meters back down the canyon. I expected them to try to withdraw.

  The moon was now fully above the cliffs, and it seemed as bright as the midday sun had been. There was no sound from any of the animals I’d heard before. I waited for developments. They weren’t long in coming, but the quarter was unexpected. There was a clatter of stones falling from high up on the western face. Roy was on the move. A short burst came from the rocks at the foot of the eastern face, down-canyon from me. Corvin was retreating, and he had gotten past me while I dealt with the party in the ravine. But then a new group began firing. An M16 and two hunting rifles farther down than Corvin.

  Everybody stopped when those shots were fired. I smiled to myself, dashed across the road, and rolled into a shadow. My back exploded with fire. I convulsed and rolled back out beside the road. More goddamn cactus. There wasn’t time to do anything about it. I rolled over again in the dirt, trying to break off the spines, then crawled for cover.

  A hunting rifle cracked about twenty feet away. I said, “Andy?” as loud as I dared. There was silence, followed by a rustling, and he appeared beside me.

  “Porter? You hurt?”

  “Yes. No.”

  “You act hurt.”

  “I tried to hide under a cactus. Where are the others?”

  He waved down the canyon. “Back there. Maybe a hundred feet.”

  “Get back to them. Move them into the rocks down the canyon. Corvin’s trying to move that way. Lay down enough fire to stop him, but keep your heads down. Keep Juan out of it.”

  He grunted and disappeared into the brush. I began crawling painfully toward the rocks Corvin’s men had fired from last. When I was about forty meters from them, I found a low ridge and waited. My back and right hip were burning. I tried to ignore them.

  I heard a man running somewhere up-canyon, off to my left. I figured it for Roy or his partner. There were two bursts of automatic fire way up the canyon. April and Sissy. I hoped they were shooting at shadows.

  There was some movement up the cliff toward the right. Two shadows. Hughie and Louie joining the fun. I sighted on them, but before I could pull my trigger, they were cut down by a burst from below. They folded and fell soundlessly. The rest of us poured fire into the rocks. Ricochets were sparking fire from the cliff face and zinging back overhead. I stood and lobbed a grenade into the rocks above their position. It detonated and shards of rock whistled through the air overhead. A silence followed.

  I saw a black shadow wave back and forth against the moonlit stone. “Hold fire,” I yelled.

  There was another burst from my right. “Goddamn it, Roy, hold your fire!” His weapon fell silent.

  “You can’t let the bastards off, Rainbow!”

  “My call, Roy! Hold your fire!”

  A pause. A gringo yelled from the rocks. “How about a truce?”

  “Nothing doing!’ I called. “Stand and come down slowly! No weapons!”

  There was some conversation up above, but they didn’t have much to talk about. There was only one choice for them. Die now or maybe die later. How much later wasn’t up to them, and they knew it. Three shadows detached themselves from the rock and began a reluctant descent. “How many are you?” I called.

  “Three.”

  “How many dead?”

  “Two.”

  “Corvin with you?”

  “No.”

  I cursed, remembering the firing from above the ranch house. I stood and called Andy over. The others stood, slowly. Roy was forty paces to my right. His weapon to his shoulder. I shouted, “Don’t do it, Roy!”

  He fired anyway. Two of the three dropped in time. The third was blown backward. I had my weapon on Roy.

  “Goddamn it!”

  “You getting soft, Rainbow?
” he called. “Come on, we’ve got to finish them. You know that!”

  “We’ve got other business,” I told him.

  There was another burst of fire above the house. I yelled at the deputy to take over and began running toward the road. After a two-second hesitation, Roy followed. He was behind me, but I didn’t care at that point. Anyway, I figured I had moved down to number two on his list.

  The firing continued, intermittent, ahead of us. I seemed to be flying over the ground and yet everything was in slow motion. I hit the road and pounded up it. There was another burst of fire. A short group of three rounds. I figured that was Corvin or his remaining Filipino.

  I hit the open area between the house and the corral. Roy was about thirty feet behind me. I cut to the right of the stable and waved him to the left. The brush whipped me as I ran for the rocks. A short burst came toward me from halfway up the slope. I couldn’t return fire for fear of hitting April or Sissy. There was a flash and a loud ka-whump from the rocks. I hit the dirt, rolled once, and went up the slope at full speed, screaming.

  Roy was firing behind and to the left of me. A splinter of shattered rock cut into my calf and then I was with Sissy and April. She came at me with tears all over her face, yelling something I couldn’t understand. Sissy stood six feet away. He had propped himself against a large boulder and was aiming downslope. I became aware of a howling. Aaah! Aaah! Aaah! I hugged April into me and turned to look down.

  Corvin was spread out against the sand twenty feet below us. His right leg lay beside him, connected only by a strip of skin. His right hand was somewhere else. The bones of his forearm were white and black in the moonlight and pointed up at Roy, who was pointing down at him with something black that barked twice. Corvin’s head exploded and what was left of his arm dropped into the black mud.

  I let go of April and aimed my M16 at Roy’s chest. He grinned up at us.

  “We got him,” he called. “It’s over!”

  “Not yet, Roy,” I said.

  His smile faded. “What do you mean?”

  “Drop it, Roy.”

  He lowered the barrel, but kept his finger on the trigger. “What’s going on?” he asked. “He killed Toker. I had to kill him. You know that!”

  “This wasn’t about Toker,” I said.

  “Huh?” Beside me, Sissy had lowered his weapon. He looked at me without comprehension.

  Roy forced a laugh. “Sure it was,” he said. “Corvin was trying to hide his skimming on the Luzon deal. You said so yourself.”

  “But how did he know April had started looking for her father, Roy? If he was close enough to tap your phone, he could have just taken you out. How would we have known? So he wasn’t your enemy. He was a puppet. You pulled a string and he planted the Claymore that killed Toker. You pulled it again and the detective died. Only you could have known I’d go to Luzon, but Corvin showed up there, calling in some markers from the old days. He was the so-called embassy man the Filipino cop talked to.”

  “But I didn’t know about April!”

  “Sure you did. Toker promised Sissy he’d find Phoung’s kid, but he didn’t know how. Hell, he sold cars for a living! He had to turn to you for help. You were the man who found her in Hong Kong, Roy. She finally recognized you.” April stirred uneasily in the shadows beside me.

  “I wondered why you kept rubbing your face when we met in Juarez,” I continued. “I figured you were nervous, but it was just a habit. You’d shaved off a beard, and your hand remembered it. You had to shave, because the last time April saw you, ten years ago in Hong Kong, you had a beard.”

  Roy stared up at me. “You’ve lost it, Porter.”

  “Then tell me how Corvin knew, damn it! How did he know about Johnny Walker in Phoenix or about my place in Placitas? How did he know April wanted to find her father?”

  Roy’s head didn’t move, but I could see his eyes sliding from side to side even in the moonlight. “You’re lost in the boonies, Rainbow,” he said softly. His face was a ghostly white against the dark rock behind him. “Corvin had contacts. Maybe we’ll never know how he learned about you, about April, but think about it, old buddy! Corvin was tied into Toker, into that shit in the Philippines, probably into the detective. Corvin!”

  He spoke quickly, earnestly. “I covered your asses for years. I took care of you, you and Sissy and Toker and Johnny, every damned one of you, and I never took a nickel! Not a nickel!

  “You’ve got Corvin for everything without involving me. Shit, I even did the dirty work for you!” He waved the barrel of his weapon at the mess by his feet. “Why are you trying to lay this crap at my door? Why turn against an old friend?”

  “Because of the second booby trap,” I said softly. “The grenade was shoddy workmanship, not Corvin’s style. But it fits you, Roy. Toker’s house was searched after the cops left. That was you. You never liked leaving anything on the table, so you went after the jewels. Corvin didn’t know about them, but you did. Toker told you. He trusted you. And once he was dead, they were fair game. You went after them and you took the opportunity to tie off the last loose end. If that grenade had taken April out, all the bodies would have been buried. But Toker had already told her about me. That was your bad luck.” I was acutely aware of the white knuckles on April’s rifle as she stood by my side, breathing heavily.

  “Rainbow…?” Roy swallowed. I was surprised he had any spit left. There was a kind of hesitation in his voice. Not like fear, exactly. More like a gambler who is about to push his last chip onto the come line. “This is where it all falls apart. I didn’t have any reason to kill Toker, and Corvin did. He had the skimming to hide. But what did I have to gain? The jewels? They’re peanuts to me. Hell, I gave them away in the first place, remember?”

  But I was tired of listening to him squirm. Tired.

  “Cut the crap, Roy. It wasn’t Squall Line and it wasn’t the jewels. It was Phoung. She’s dead, and you killed her, you bastard! Somehow, you found out she was hanging around with Max Corvin. She knew about the third delivery, and you were afraid she was going to sell you out to him, so you killed her.”

  Beside me, Sissy groaned. Roy shook his head hopelessly and dropped his weapon. He raised his hands and started climbing slowly toward us. “No,” he said. “No. You don’t understand. Max couldn’t do anything to me. It was Phoung…”

  He was gasping for breath, trying to talk and climb at the same time. “I tried to keep my promise, Sissy! I tried to get close to her again, and I told her too much. The third delivery. Corvin’s skimming. But she wanted to punish us. For you, Sissy. For your death. She blamed us. All of us.”

  He scrambled over what was left of Corvin, talking desperately. He looked like a ghost in the moonlight, but he was no ghost yet. I could smell him, and the rocks clattered away down the slope when he stumbled in his haste.

  “She was going to go to army intelligence. She would have ruined everything for us. For all of us. Don’t you see? I did it for all—”

  I had begun to squeeze the trigger when an explosion on either side of me hit my ears like hammer blows. Roy was thrown backward and down-slope and came to rest on top of Corvin. The echo of the shots rang up and down the canyon and died away. Roy twitched once with some sort of spasm that looked like he was trying to sit up, but he was dead.

  April dropped her weapon and fell against me, sobbing. Sissy lowered his and slid slowly down to sit on the rocks and stare at us, his bad leg stretched stiffly out in front of him. We looked into each other’s eyes for long minutes, until April got herself under control and pulled away. Then we went down to the house. I started the generator and put April to bed on a couch. I left Sissy sitting there beside her with a bottle of American whiskey. I found a shovel and went out to get the cleanup started.

  Andy and Juanito had their two captives stripped and spread on the ground when I reached them. Steve challenged me from the dark as I approached. I was in such a mood that I just barked at him. Fortunately, he recognized
my bark.

  We set Juanito to digging a hole. Steve and I took the captives and made them carry the dead back to where he was digging. Fortunately, there were no wounded. I had managed all the crises I could stomach for one day and was happy not to have to decide what to do with wounded prisoners. When we had all the meat accounted for, I told Juanito to give the shovel to the prisoners. They took turns with it, digging slowly, interrupted by fits of shaking. I let them shake. When they tried to talk, I fired a round over their heads. I didn’t much feel like conversation.

  The sun was well up by the time they finished. The captives dumped all the bodies but one into the pit. I stopped them as they reached for Roy and rolled him in myself. I didn’t know why I wanted to do it. For old times’ sake, maybe. I had no words for him.

  The prisoners filled in the hole and then I gave them a chance to talk. They were just mercenaries, hired for the job. Nothing I had to worry about. I sent Steve to the house for paper and pens. When he returned, I dictated a couple of confessions. They wrote as I spoke. By the time I was through, they were happy to sign. They had a chance to live. As long as I never heard of them again.

  We tied them up and stashed them in the bed of Sissy’s truck. I sent his family out to make a final, daylight sweep of the area. I told them not to bother picking up the brass. There was too much of it. But it was important that there be no unexplained bodies lying around. All the weapons would have to be accounted for and destroyed. I told them to drain the fuel tank by the landing strip and refill the horse trough, but to let the animals run. I figured that eventually someone would steal them, and that was about as good a shot as they were going to get. Then I went in and woke April. I had a favor I needed done.

  She had tweezers in her purse and was delighted to help. I stripped down, very painfully, and lay on my stomach on the floor while she dug the needles out of my hide. I think I dozed off toward the end. That’s hard to do. Try it sometime.