The Demolishers

by Donald Hamilton

  At least, when I’d last known him, I’d classified him as a potential sword-cane type. It seemed unlikely that, in a getup that demanded a walking stick, he’d be satisfied with just a wooden stick. However, the face I was seeing now was not quite the face I remembered. It was lined with suffering, and it was noticeably emaciated as was his body—he looked like a cancer patient who was beginning to show it, although it probably wasn’t cancer. Of course, some of it could have been makeup and acting; but we’d suspected illness when he’d ceased operations after that Costa Verde business. Herman Heinrich Bultman, known as the Kraut, one of the best exterminators-for-hire in the business. The man who intended to change the map of the Caribbean because somebody’d machine-gunned the old German shepherd bitch he’d named after Marlene Dietrich.

  It wasn’t my job to stop him. I’d refused that job. As far as I was concerned, Bultman was free to remodel or totally demolish the sovereign nation of Gobernador in any manner that pleased him, as long as he didn’t interfere with my job of demolition directed at the CLL. That was the deal I’d made with Mac: I’d only go after the Kraut if he came after me. But here he was.

  I shook my head as Dana started to speak. “Drink up your coffee and act natural. Then pick up your purse and magazines and come along to the gate, chatting brightly all the way.”

  She drained the cup and slid off her stool. “That old man with the cane?” she asked, laughing as if it were a big joke.

  “He’s the one, and a deadlier gent you’ll seldom encounter. Yours truly excepted, of course.”

  “Modesty,” she said. “That’s what I like about working in that place. You meet so many shy and unassuming gentlemen… But he didn’t look very dangerous.”

  “It’s got to be mostly a disguise. I mean, at last report he was training a tough commando unit in Montego; he’d hardly be up to that if he were as decrepit as he looked just now. However, we know he was badly hurt on one of his last jobs and while he seemed to have recovered pretty well, aside from the loss of a foot, something else could be going bad on him. Now I’m saying something very funny, ha-ha.”

  She laughed obediently. “Bultman?” she said. “That’s the name, isn’t it, Herman Bultman? I remember, it came up on the computer screen several times in connection with that military nonsense in Montego to which the CLL has been contributing men, ninety-three the last I heard.” She glanced at me. “Funny, funny, funny. Your turn to laugh.”

  “Laugh, laugh, laugh,” I said, and laughed. “Why do you call it nonsense?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t think Bultman’s invasion force is a real threat…?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Haven’t you done any checking at all? Your friend the Kraut has only a few hundred men. Perhaps they’re very dedicated, perhaps he’s trained them well; but the President of Gobernador, that Yankee-lover whom they hate, has a home guard of several thousand, also well trained, with plenty of arms and equipment courtesy of Uncle Sam. And it’s not inconceivable, these aggressive days, that if he really gets into trouble, the U.S. Marines will bail him out. Washington considers the installations on Isla del Sur of vital importance.” Dana grimaced as we walked. “It’s nice to think that the heroic spirit of the patriots reclaiming their country will inevitably carry them to victory over the cowardly oppressors who have stolen it, and that the people will rise up to help them. It’s undoubtedly what Bultman’s men are telling themselves, but it didn’t happen at the Bay of Pigs, and it won’t happen here in miniature, unless Bultman has a secret weapon up his sleeve that nobody knows about. Otherwise he’ll simply be leading a lot of brave men—I suppose even the rabid CLL contingent doesn’t lack for courage—to their deaths.”

  It was a new view of the situation, but there wasn’t time to consider it now. I said, “Here we go through the idiot scanners. Brace yourself. They’re going to scream as usual at my change and keys and belt buckle.”

  “Well, if you weren’t so rich and didn’t wear those Texas-sized buckles…”

  We went through the routine and stepped aside to let others pass while I threaded the belt I’d had to remove back through the loops of my slacks.

  “The long-haired one in jeans and ripped T-shirt is our personal escort,” I said.

  “Which long-haired one in jeans and ripped T-shirt? You’ve just described half the passengers.”

  “The tall, dirty-blond one, male, carrying a denim jacket and a big paper bag that probably holds an UZI and half a dozen loaded magazines. The scanners wouldn’t worry about little things like that. Just belt buckles.”

  Actually, the machines had seemed to be operating at fairly sensitive settings, and I’d sweated a little walking through the arch the second time with all my legitimate metal piled on the plastic tray.

  “You think he’s with Bultman?” Dana asked. “Why?”

  “No sign of annoyance when I held up the line; no expression of amusement or sympathy when he passed the funny tall man struggling to put his belt back on. Just deadpan, eyes front; and in spite of his hippie getup, if they still call them hippies, he couldn’t help showing that he’d had military training somewhere. Anyway, when you’ve been in the business as long as I have, you can kind of spot the killer types, even the young ones. That boy has homicide on his mind.” I laughed heartily. “Joke, joke, joke.”

  She laughed a bit uncertainly. “Ha-ha, ha-ha. What do you think he’ll do?”

  “Improvise. I don’t think he was meant to carry the ball. He was just a backup in case things didn’t work out inside the airport as planned. Now the responsibility is on his shoulders and he’s trying frantically to figure out what to do. Well, he knows what to do; he’s just got to come up with a way to do it.”

  She shivered. “What do you mean, if things didn’t work out…?” Then she frowned suddenly. “Aren’t we walking right into a trap? Once we’re on the plane… What if they’ve put a bomb aboard?”

  “And sent a guy along to be blown up with us, just so we won’t lack for company?”

  “A hijacking, then? They’ll just take over the plane and…” She stopped talking as we entered the waiting room.

  I said, “We’ll sit over there where he can keep an eye on us. No sense making things difficult for the poor fellow; he might think we’ve got him spotted.” Seated, I said, “This is where a cigarette would come in handy, or particularly a pipe, to help us look peaceful and unsuspicious. I quit way back when I was a half-baked photojournalist because it fogged up the darkroom, long before they made a religion of it; but there are still times when I miss being able to fiddle with the old pipe and tobacco and matches. You could really make a career of those matches…”

  “Matt! Stop chattering like an idiot. What if they hijack the plane?”

  I asked, “Did you ever really look at the seating plan of a DC-10?”

  “No, why?”

  “It’s a hell of a big plane. Sure, determined men and women could take one over; determined men and women probably already have, or other planes just as big. I haven’t kept track of which brands of flying machines have been hijacked and which haven’t, if any. But it’s a major operation, like taking over a good-sized theater full of people; and while Bultman’s quite capable of organizing it, what would he gain? He just wants two people, us; actually he just wants one person, me. And presumably Sandra, but she’s not here. If he grabs a whole DC-10 to get me, what’s he going to do with the other three hundred and some passengers, assuming a full load? Not to mention the crew?”

  “He and his friends haven’t shown much regard for innocent bystanders so far, Matt.”

  I shook my head quickly. “You’re talking about the Caribbean Legion of Liberty. Sure, they’re a bunch of ruthless publicity hounds, anything to intimidate folks and attract attention to their sacred cause. They seem to have concentrated on restaurants so far, as the public gathering places most suitable for bombing, but I doubt if they’d pass up a plane if it came easy. But Bultman�
��s a hound of a different breed entirely. He’s a pro, he’s got invasion on his mind, and the last thing in the world he wants at the moment is to be publicly connected with an air atrocity. That could make his sanctuary in Montego too hot to hold him and louse up his plans before he’s ready to make his assault on Gobernador. But your reaction is exactly the one Bultman was hoping for.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I said, “I told you, this is an expert we’re talking about. I can give you a long list of dead men: Bultman’s hit parade, if you’ll pardon the pun. So, with that in mind, tell me what’s odd about the performance you just witnessed. What’s the first thing that comes to mind?”

  Dana hesitated. “Well… well, wasn’t he a little clumsy? First he let you spot his men following us; and then he marched past us himself. To be sure, he was in disguise; but it wasn’t a very good disguise. At least you managed to penetrate it. That doesn’t seem like very expert behavior to me.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “It was very expert behavior. He alerted me by having a few too many of his people tailing us a little too closely. That was so I wouldn’t miss the real show: Herr Bultman himself doing his senior-citizen walk-by act, in costume. How was I supposed to respond to that? I figure I was supposed to react just as you did: Oh, my God, it’s the sinister Kraut himself and he’s got us surrounded; if we get on that lousy plane we’ll be trapped and killed!”

  “But why… You mean, he doesn’t really want us on the plane?”

  “We’ll make an agent of you yet,” I said. “That’s right, he wants us anywhere but on that airliner, if I have him figured correctly. When they closed in on us like that, so obviously herding us toward the gate and the plane, I was supposed to forget all about flying to Puerto Rico and think only of self-preservation. I was supposed to panic and make a run for it like a steer crashing out of the chute that leads to the gent with the big mallet. Remember, Bultman likes big operations involving lots of manpower. What probably happened was that the CLL asked him for help; they weren’t getting anywhere with killing Sandra and me. We escaped their ambush in Miami Beach, Angelita’s bomb missed Sandra in her Newport hotel room, the bomb in her Old Saybrook house blew up the wrong people, and Dominic Morelos died trying for the two of us in the Connecticut woods nearby, leaving his dead brother unavenged. Meanwhile, other members of the Legion are dying mysteriously elsewhere. Sonny Varek’s people blew away the two men who were Angelita’s partners in the Mariposa caper; and even though we’re really not supposed to figure in this punitive operation—it’s supposed to be strictly private citizens rising up to take vengeance on their own hook—I took a chance on getting Louis’s hit team to take care of the two members of the Council you fingered for us, very discreetly.”

  Dana shivered slightly. “Yes, I suppose I did put the finger on them. Well, that’s my job, isn’t it? All right. The Koenig and Galvez killings came in on the computer and you’ll be pleased to know that the perpetrators, as the police like to call them, remain unknown and there seem to be no repercussions in our direction.”

  “Louis’s perpetrators always do a nice clean job. Of course the cops probably have pretty good information about Arthur Galvez and Howard Koenig—if they didn’t have it before, I’m sure Mac arranged for it to be passed on to them—and they aren’t going to worry too much about how two top terrorists got dead.” I shrugged. “Anyway, as far as we’re concerned here, the way it probably worked was something like this: The CLL top brass started to feel the pressure, so, as I said, they took their problem to Bultman. Although he’d probably have preferred to concentrate on his military business, he couldn’t afford to refuse them because he needs the recruits he’s getting from them and, probably, the information they’re supplying him about conditions in his target area on Gobernador. I’d be surprised if he wasn’t using them as a source of intelligence as well as manpower.”

  Dana said, “Yes, that’s correct. But hasn’t there been a change of, well, let’s call it emphasis? The Caribbean Legion started out simply trying to eliminate a certain embarrassing witness, Mrs. Helm. You were endangered only because you were her escort. Now the CLL seems to have instructed Bultman to forget her and concentrate on you. At least he isn’t hanging around her hospital in Connecticut; he’s here at the airport in New York giving you his personal attention.”

  I grinned. “That’s Bultman’s change of emphasis, not the Legion’s. It’s a compliment. He knows me. He knows that if I’m around, and there’s homicidal trouble around, it’s not a coincidence; and I should be disposed of, fast. Furthermore, I got the better of him once; and although we wound up working as allies on that operation, he’s not forgetting the defeat. If he’s got to take time out from his invasion project to soothe his panicky associates, he’s not going to waste time on Sandra when he can get a crack at me. He has a personal score to settle. He’ll worry about minor details like girl witnesses after I’m dead.”

  Dana said dryly, “Proving he’s the fastest gun east of the Hudson, I suppose.”

  I said, “What’s wrong with wanting to be the top expert in your field? Competition is the lifeblood of America, right? You just disapprove because the field happens to be homicide.” I shook my head sadly and went on: “Once he’d agreed to do the job, Bultman presumably rounded up a bunch of his toughest commandos and flew them up here, planning to take care of me and Sandra as fast as possible so he could get back to his real business in Montego and Gobernador. As I said, he goes in for large operations. I’ll bet there’s a gunner or two of some kind covering every exit of this building I’d be likely to use. He stationed them there, warning them to lounge around casually, of course, and not attract the attention of airport security. Then he went inside with his deliberately clumsy surveillance team, and his old-fogy act, to scare me off the plane and flush me out of the building and into the sights of his waiting marksmen. A gangland-style killing on the ground, or even two if you got caught in the cross fire, wouldn’t attract nearly as much attention as something that happened in the air. Then he’d go for Sandra to wind up the job; but I’m gambling that as long as I manage to stay alive he’ll give me top priority, if only for old times’ sake.”

  Dana didn’t seem too interested in the question of Sandra’s safety. “So the only way we can get out of here, without shooting our way out, is to take the plane.”

  I nodded. “If I have it figured right, there’s only one safe place for us at the moment, and that’s our long-awaited DC-10.”

  “And if you have it figured wrong?” She grimaced, rising. “Well, we’ll soon know. Here we go; they’re boarding us now.”

  There was the usual delay on the ground; then we were airborne. Dana gripped my arm as the jets rammed us back into our seats; I felt her fingers tighten convulsively at the small rumble and jolt as the wheels came up. Four and a half hours later we were landing in Puerto Rico.

  26

  It wasn’t Kennedy or Heathrow or Orly, or even Stockholm’s Arlanda, but San Juan’s Isla Verde International Airport wasn’t any little boondocks airstrip, either. Inside the sizable modern building, we found immigration no problem since we were American citizens arriving in U.S. territory; but we had to retrieve our luggage and that involved the usual endless wait at the snakelike conveyor belt that wound its way through the baggage-claim area. Even though the room was a large one, a DC-10 load of passengers filled it almost to capacity.

  I noted our shadow lounging in a corner of the crowded area. He was now wearing his faded denim jacket instead of carrying it, perhaps to alter his image slightly; he was still, however, lugging the same brown shopping bag. Although of heavy paper, it had got slightly ripped in transit. He was in his late twenties, a tall young man, over six feet, with bony masculine features that contrasted oddly, and rather unpleasantly, with his long feminine hair. I mean, if the pretty boys want to look prettier it’s understandable; but for a gent with a face like Mount Kilimanjaro to go in for greasy golden locks was inc
omprehensible to me and therefore disturbing.

  He wasn’t very good at discreet surveillance. He’d spend long intervals ignoring us; then he’d throw a sudden panicky glance our way to make sure we hadn’t vanished. That figured. Bultman would have had plenty of tough jungle fighters to choose from but few if any trained and experienced undercover operatives, when he’d picked his hit team hastily way down there at his training camp in Montego—well, it wasn’t really so far from where we now were in Puerto Rico.

  The baggage conveyor rumbled into action at last, and we moved forward for a better view of the stuff gliding past, as did everybody else in the room.

  I said to Dana, “Try to keep an eye on our long-haired friend and see if he’s met by anybody. Also… Do you know what Modesto looks like or do we have to wait for him to identify himself?”

  “I know him.”

  “Okay, when you spot him, give him the signal for immediate contact and never mind being cute about it: I want a gun. I’m not one of your fastidious undercover heroes who disdain crude implements like firearms and do it all bare-handed or maybe with silk gloves on. That’s a big guy and chances are he’s just had some intensive combat conditioning, while all the exercise I’ve been getting lately is sitting on my butt behind the wheel of a sports car. He’s working himself up to something. I’d like to be armed when he decides what it is.”

  She asked dryly, “What are you going to be doing while I’m watching out for all these people?”

  “Looking stupid and unsuspicious,” I said. “So that when I unleash my secret powers it will come as a terrible surprise to him.”

  “There’s my bag now. It’s the gray one… Well, you saw it earlier.”

  It took a while for mine to arrive; then we were emerging in the concourse after passing through a fairly dense crowd of people waiting to greet arriving friends.