“Better sit down. You look a bit shaky.”
“I’m all right.” But she sat down.
I turned back to face Mac. He wore one of his customary gray three-piece suits, perhaps a little lighter in weight than the last one I’d seen, in Washington. He picks them to match the climate. His hair was as gray as ever, his eyebrows as black, and his eyes as bleak.
He said, with a gesture towards the portable two-way radio, “I’ve been getting reports of you circling this neighborhood for over an hour, like a lost dog looking for a home.”
I said, “Sandra should be in bed. That arm is hurting her.”
“It was her choice to discharge herself from the hospital and come along to help us.”
“And roam around without protection? They’re already holding two hostages, assuming that both still live. Do we want to give them a third?”
“There was little danger,” he said. “I knew you would find that car eventually, so I stationed her there. I wanted you brought here, and I had nobody else to spare whom you knew by sight. Willard was needed here. I didn’t think it advisable to send a strange operative to slip up on you; you tend to get a bit trigger-happy under stress.”
“Thanks for the testimonial.”
He smiled thinly. “I have no objection whatever to trigger-happy agents, Eric. Some people would say we specialize in trigger-happy agents. I am merely cautious about approaching them. Anyway, Mrs. Helm was reasonably safe because most of the Caribbean Legion’s Council of Thirteen, what you’ve left of it, is pretty well forted up in their headquarters at 424 Pacheco, along with some rank and file to perform sentry and guard duty while they’re getting things organized and holding their meeting. Modesto managed to get the word out before they took him. It’s scheduled for tomorrow.”
I made a silent apology to Paul Encinias, alias Modesto, the man I’d never met although we had a lady in common. I’d said some harsh words about him, but you can forgive an inexperienced operative a few blunders if he gets his job done before he gets himself caught.
I looked at Mac, frowning. “You said 424? The number I was given was 427.”
“That’s the building across the street. It’s standing empty and I don’t think they have anybody in it, although there may be a lookout we haven’t spotted yet. This is a depressed area, and the building on this side of the street is also supposed to be unoccupied. The restaurant on the ground floor, Cafe Ernesto, has supposedly gone out of business. As you may have noted.”
“I never got that close,” I said. “I just saw the sign from a distance.”
“Actually, the derelict café is their meeting hall,” Mac said. “They are camping out in the empty rooms and apartments above it. The whole building is theirs. I suspect they have it pretty well guarded. I hope so.”
I glanced at him sharply. “Hope?”
He nodded. “I want them to feel safe in there. The fact that they are still there even though they’re aware of having been betrayed by Modesto indicates that they consider San Juan, and particularly this section of it, a sanctuary of sorts. They feel they are in friendly surroundings, among people sympathetic to their cause, the cause of freedom for little Gobernador now, larger Puerto Rico later, and finally the whole Caribbean with the exception of those few areas already free enough to suit them—like liberated, democratic Cuba.” He grimaced. “These self-styled patriots always tend to overestimate the popular sentiment in their favor. They persuade themselves that their fanatical beliefs are universal. They expect a great popular uprising whenever they wave a flag.”
I said dryly, “As we did at Bahía de Cochinos.”
“Precisely. Overoptimism is common phenomenon not confined to terrorists.” He shook his head, dismissing my irrelevant comment, and went on: “At any rate the Legion did have considerable local support until last year, when they murdered those children. Now even the people who believe strongly in Puerto Rican independence have little sympathy for this particular gang of baby-killers. And there have always been those who prefer to remain Americans, like the family that has given me the use of this apartment.” He regarded me for a moment. “Dolores was seen being taken from your rental vehicle to the Café Ernesto.”
“Dolores?”
“Miss Delgado’s working name. She chose it herself; insisted on it, in fact.”
It gave me an uneasy feeling to learn that Dana had made a point of conducting her mission of vengeance under the name of her murdered little girl; it hinted again at depths of emotion that belied the image our cool computer lady had been so careful to project. I didn’t ask why an attempt had not been made to liberate her while she was still out in the street and fairly available. Whatever he had planned here, Mac wouldn’t consider betraying his presence, and his operation, for the sake of one lousy agent.
“Did you notice her escort?” I asked.
“A small, dark-haired young lady with a knife, was the description received here.”
“It was probably my knife, sir,” I said. “I’d lent it to Dana, I mean Dolores. My knife, and my goof. I overestimated our girl a bit, I guess; but mainly I underestimated the kid we’d grabbed. At least I thought she was just a kid, somebody expendable they’d picked to deliver a message and a gun to the guy who’d tailed me from Kennedy. Now I think she’s maybe a bit older than I thought, and certainly much brighter and more important.”
“Explain.”
I gave it to him in detail, from my glimpse of Bultman at Kennedy to my belated realization that our young female prisoner must be a more significant figure in the CLL than I’d assumed; and my hasty return to the little city park to find our vehicle and the two girls missing.
“The girl left the tape she’d been bound with lying there to let me know she was free and it wasn’t Dana who’d driven the car away for some mysterious reason. A threat or a warning, you might call it.”
Sandra stirred. “I don’t understand. How could she have got free, all taped up like that?”
I said, “No problem. Dana obviously cut her loose.”
Sandra looked shocked. “You mean… you mean that Miss Delgado is on their side?”
I grinned. “Hell, no. But cute little Angelita held her breath until her face turned black, or went into dramatic convulsions, or just moaned and groaned into her gag and maybe even puked a little, strangling spectacularly on her vomit, until Dana couldn’t bear to let her suffer any longer and made with the blade. Don’t get proud, small fry. You’d have done the same thing.”
“I would not!”
I shrugged. “Maybe you’re right, but I doubt it. I hate to say it, since it was my fault she escaped, but this is probably the young woman responsible for the West Palm Beach bomb that killed Matthew, not to mention the Newport bomb, and quite possibly even the one here in San Juan.”
Mac said, “I see. You are reasonably certain, then, that the same girl was behind all these incidents, or at least involved in them, and that this is the girl?”
I shrugged. “It’s a guess, but it doesn’t seem likely that they’d have a collection of lethal young ladies that size and a collection of wigs to put on them. It’s too bad I didn’t have Sandra with me when I grabbed her at the airport. Sandy could have said for sure if she was the bomb-planting maid in our Newport hotel. But I don’t think there’s much doubt about it. Of course, if she’d thought there was a risk of being recognized, she wouldn’t have come; but she was aware that neither Dana nor I had ever seen her.” I frowned. “But what I don’t quite understand, sir, is why she’d give me that address right across from their terrorist fortress. If she could have been sure I’d go there alone, okay, but what if I stopped at a phone and called for reinforcements? They could have found themselves surrounded by a Puerto Rican SWAT unit, if there is such a thing. Or the U.S. Marines.”
Mac said, “You forget, she knew that the location had already been compromised by Modesto; she didn’t do any additional damage by giving it to you. And she undoubtedly also knew that w
e don’t often ask for police or military assistance.” He shook his head. “You give these people credit for too much caution and common sense, and too little arrogance. As I have pointed out already, in spite of discovering an informant in their midst, they haven’t scattered; they’re still stubbornly inhabiting an address they know has been betrayed. They are reckless and violent activists, remember; they’ve had a good deal of success to make them overconfident; they consider themselves clever and powerful and invincible; they are even associated with a daring military operation they fully expect to be victorious… What is it, Eric?”
“About that invasion,” I said. “Dana/Dolores feels it’s going to be a fiasco. She doesn’t think Bultman’s little force has a chance of effecting a successful landing on Gobernador; and even if the boys make it that far, they’ll never break out from their beachhead. It’ll be a Bay of Pigs junior grade. Unless the Kraut has a secret weapon of some kind, or something very tricky up his sleeve like massive reinforcements we don’t know about, Dana says, he’s going to be slaughtered along with his CLL allies.”
Mac frowned. “That’s odd. I took for granted… Bultman is no self-deceiving fanatic. It didn’t occur to me to have a military expert check the feasibility of his project. He spent a good many years as a mercenary before embarking on his kill-for-pay career. He has seen a large number of wars. I assumed that he wouldn’t embark on a military venture that had no possibility of success. Why didn’t Miss Delgado mention this to me?”
“Bultman’s little army was outside the scope of her duties, sir, except insofar as it was partly made up of CLL volunteers. Her business was with the Legion, and whatever information Modesto could give her about it. She probably thought you were aware of the military situation. But she knows the area, and she knows roughly what kind of defensive forces are available on Gobernador; too great, she feels, to be overcome by Bultman’s few hundred men and their limited equipment.” I shrugged. “I think she simply assumed that the Kraut was just another visionary hothead specializing in glorious lost causes. When I told her that he was a tough professional soldier, she was surprised and disturbed, wondering by what sort of military miracle he expected to get his pocket-sized task force ashore and inland in the face of the government’s greatly superior manpower and firepower.” I frowned. “Has there been any indication that he’s preparing some kind of a surprise?”
Mac hesitated. “Well, the LCT is missing.”
“My God, are there still some of those World War Two relics around?”
“He has a number of boats of various kinds,” Mac said, “some of which have been used quite openly along the shores of Montego for practice landings. The Landing Craft, Tank was one of the largest vessels of the little fleet, close to one hundred and twenty feet. Normally it would be crewed by one officer and a dozen enlisted men. Range seven hundred miles, top speed eight knots.”
“Not exactly a speedboat,” I said.
“No, but it can carry five thirty-ton tanks, or three fifty-tonners. So far no tanks have been seen, but delivered at the proper moment they could give the defense forces an unpleasant surprise. However, Bultman’s LCT has apparently been plagued with mechanical problems, not surprising considering its age. Recently, our local man reported that it was no longer in Montego. His assumption was that Bultman had either given up on it as too unreliable, or had it taken somewhere for expert mechanical attention. We are checking all shipyard facilities he might possibly be using, so far without results. Of course, he may simply have taken the nautical antique offshore and let it sink, to get rid of it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “And maybe it’s picking up a load of clanking metal monsters to spring on the Gobernador home guard at the psychological moment.” I shrugged. “Well, it’s not the immediate problem. I’d like to know what is, sir.”
“What do you mean, Eric?”
I said stiffly, “I thought I had a simple assignment. Ambitious, but basically simple. I thought I was supposed to run down and eliminate, or arrange for the elimination of, the thirteen members of the governing council of the Caribbean Legion of Liberty, plus the three individuals involved in the Mariposa bombing. I was supposed to take care that said terminations were not attributed to the U.S. government. In the interest of public relations they should, wherever possible, be laid at the door or doors of vengeful private parties. It was considered desirable to let these terrorists, and all terrorists, know that driven far enough, ordinary people do bite back. Anyone who intervened was also fair game, particularly Herman Heinrich Bultman—as I recall, the rules for attribution were somewhat relaxed where Herman was concerned, since he’s been wanted a long time by folks who shall remain unnamed. Have I described my mission guidelines accurately, sir?”
Mac said, “We both know what your instructions were, Eric. There’s no need to recapitulate…”
“Apparently there is, sir,” I said grimly. “Let me report the present status of my mission. The Kraut has declared himself in as you expected, but he’ll keep until I get around to him. Two of the assigned Mariposa bombers are dead. Unfortunately, as just reported, while I had a crack at the third, there was an identity problem and I lost her; but she’s here and I was planning to rectify my error shortly. Three of the assigned Council members are dead. After learning of the proposed meeting, I formed certain plans for dealing with the rest, but I thought I’d better come down here and scout out the terrain before I put my ideas into action. However, upon arrival, I find a number of our people already on the ground, including the bossman himself. So with all due respect, I ask: Whose goddamn mission is this, anyway?”
“There’s no need to be upset, Eric,” Mac said. “Checking back through the CLL’s old atrocities was a good idea; and you have done a fine job of putting enough pressure on them to cause them to call this emergency meeting. I would have continued to let you carry on alone, but Modesto’s message indicated a need for haste, and it seemed clear that you would need immediate reinforcements…”
He was interrupted by the walkie-talkie: “Trask calling Control.”
Mac picked up the instrument. “Control.”
“In position. Respectfully suggest you commence diversion as soon as it gets a little darker. Will report when planting is complete. Confirm E-hour, please.”
“Execute hour confirmed. Diversion shortly. How is the boy doing?”
“Having a ball, sir. Wickerman says his gadgets are a little crude but really very ingenious. They should present no problems; so we’re using them as planned instead of the stuff Wicky brought for backup. Any further instructions?”
“None.”
“Trask out.”
Mac returned the set to the protecting towel, beside the ugly little firearms. He looked up at me. “In case you don’t remember him, Eric, Wickerman is our explosives specialist.”
I grimaced. “I remember him. Somehow I never seem to get along with people who go in for loud noises—remember the guy we called Monk, out in Hawaii? I suppose the boy you referred to is Lester Leonard.”
Mac nodded. “Yes. I could see the shape of your plan when his hobby was described to me; I just telescoped your timetable a bit, and brought in Wickerman to make certain young Leonard’s materials would actually do the job and that they were positioned to best advantage.”
I was a little ashamed of my outburst. Nobody likes to have an operation taken over by someone else, even by the top man; but his explanation was reasonable. I hadn’t expected things to break quite so fast.
I said, “I was planning to ask for an expert to give the boy a hand; I’m glad Wicky’s here to help him.” Halfhearted apologies are a waste of time, so I went on: “Okay, you were right in speeding things up, sir. I thought I had more time. So we’re going to finish the job by using Lester’s whiz-bangs to demolish them and their café headquarters?”
“That is correct. Considering the number of restaurants they have bombed, it seems like poetic justice, don’t you think?” Mac’s smile was t
hin and fleeting. He went on: “Afterwards, we will vanish, and Mr. Leonard and Mrs. Helm will surrender to the authorities and confess to striking this vengeful blow at the terrorists who killed the lady of the young man’s dreams and the young woman’s husband. I very much doubt that, considering the local outrage over the Howard Johnson bombing, they have much to fear in the way of legal action, particularly in view of the discreet pressures we will exert in their favor. And the menacing Legion of Liberty will become an international joke, its fearsome Council of Thirteen smashed by a couple of angry youngsters. Other victims of similar fanatics may be encouraged to take similar retaliatory action. It is really an excellent idea, Eric, and a very satisfactory conclusion of your mission. I congratulate you.”
Anytime he hands out a lot of praise, it means he’s got a very dirty job coming up for you.
I said, “Let’s hold the congratulations until we see the results of the bang, sir. And even if it’s successful, there’s still Bultman.”
“I’m sure you’ll be able to deal with him properly.”
“When do the fireworks take place?”
“The execute is set at eight o’clock local time; Wickerman is certain his group can place the charges and get clear by that time. That’s an hour ahead of New York time, if you haven’t adjusted your watch.”
“It’s set.” I studied him for a moment. “What about Dolores and Modesto?” When he didn’t speak at once, I said, “I think we can assume that they’re both inside 424; and that Angela was steering me to the building across the street just so her friends could shoot at me conveniently from their headquarters’ windows.”
The Demolishers Page 30