The Demolishers

by Donald Hamilton

  Well, we were all paying off old grudges here. He’d had a hard day and he had a little vengeance coming; but it gave me a new slant on chunky middle-aged men who sell ladies’ dresses. I waited to make sure he was making it down the hall all right, even if a bit unsteadily. Outside, Willard had stopped shooting at last. I turned and approached the open door across the hall, cautiously. I heard a girl’s voice speaking.

  “Not to be so impatient, amigos. Stay with the gun. Wait. I said he would come to the front, did I not? With his ametralladora, he has thoroughly prepared the doorway to which I directed him. Nothing over there could have lived through that hail of bullets. Now, thinking it safe, he will cross the street and enter the building. Wait!”

  It was my cue and I stepped inside, saying, “He is here.”

  I had a freeze-frame image of the room. Two windows. At the right-hand one a large weapon on a heavy tripod mount. A sleek, military-surplus gunbarrel attached to a crude bolt-action mechanism that looked as if it had been fabricated in somebody’s basement and probably had. A small off-the-shelf telescopic sight on a rather flimsy-looking bracket sticking out to the left where the gun pointer crouched behind it holding something that looked like a camera cable release, presumably the firing device. The loader was on the right, beyond the gun; and the ammo he had ready was, as I’d guessed, standard .50 machine-gun stuff. I remembered how I’d threatened Angelita, promising that I’d get her no matter what kind of bullets her friends put into me first. The usual Helm hot air. After one of those massive, half-inch-thick slugs had knocked me flat, the way I’d seen it happen in West Palm, I’d have been in no shape to get anybody.

  Angelita, or El Martillo—or La Martilla, if there is such a thing in Spanish as a female hammer—was standing at the window to my left holding a Skorpian just like mine, ready to back up the heavy fifty-caliber bullets with a shower of miniature thirty-twos. She’d shed her borrowed too-big jacket; but she was still wearing her pretty, blood-smeared blouse and her tight, tattered jeans. Dana knelt beside her, between us. Clearly she’d been placed there so she could have the pleasure of looking out the window and watching me walk into the trap and die. Her hair was untidy and her clothes were dusty, but she wasn’t sagging in the manner of somebody badly hurt. Her legs were free, but her wrists were taped behind her. Sudden hope came into her eyes when she saw me.

  The girl with the gun made her decision instantly: Seeing me, she stuck her weapon into Dana one-handed before I could shoot, and reached down with the other hand to haul her up to form a shield. Angelita’s mouth was moving as she faced me. Undoubtedly, she was telling me to drop my gun or she’d shoot Dana, the standard movie script; but she had nothing to say that I had to hear. We never play that game; and what they always forget is that you can’t shoot two people with the same gun at the same time, at least not with a pipsqueak .32 that has hardly any penetration about at all.

  There wasn’t time to hold a long, stylized conversation about who was going to shoot whom if I didn’t do what. We all take our chances, and the place was definitely going to blow within ten minutes or less. Dana might survive a few bullet holes; but unless I got her out of here, wounded or unwounded, she wasn’t going to survive the explosion if our boy Lester knew his stuff. And neither she nor I was going anywhere unless I did a small job of local extermination first… I’d already swung right as these thoughts were going through my mind, and the little Skorpian was already chattering away at the rate of seven or eight hundred rounds per minute, I couldn’t recall the exact figure.

  I took the loader first since he was farther away and might be able to find some cover behind his big weapon if I gave him time; then I turned the machine pistol on the man at the telescopic sight. It was an amazing little gun, really. With that feeble cartridge, it had hardly any recoil and no tendency for the muzzle to climb in rapid fire, unlike the more powerful 9mms or, God help us, the bucking, thrashing .45 Thompsons. You just pointed it where you wanted the bullets to go, and they went there and kept right on going there.

  I didn’t have as good trigger-control as Willard. I used six on one man and four on the other, wasteful; but they got the job done. The empties squirted straight up as I’d been warned, and bounced and tinkled around the room. I was aware that shots had been fired to my left. The bullets hadn’t come my way and the reports had been oddly muffled, so it seemed likely that Dana was hurt, maybe dying, but there was no time for guilt or grief. I didn’t even take time to look that way. I just dove and rolled, hearing Angelita’s Skorpian start chattering again, the sound now unmuffled by a human body.

  Bullets tugged at my shoulder and leg as I took my evasive action, no tidy bursts here. The little angel just clamped down on her trigger and sprayed her weapon like a hose. I think she put some into her friends as she tried to track me across the room, but her swing was strangely erratic. Coming up facing her, I saw the reason: She had the weapon braced against her hip, Lady Rambo, and she had her eyes squinched almost shut against the rain of smoking little empties that bombarded her. I put the sights on her and gave her one short burst, and another to make sure. I was getting so I could send them off in neat little threes like Willard. It was about time.

  There was shooting elsewhere in the building now. I rose and walked forward. The girl was down, of course, but she wasn’t quite dead. Her brown eyes were staring up at me, hating me, but she died before I could set my weapon to single fire and complete the Martillo part of my mission—it occurred to me that this was the second of their Martillos I’d terminated. I hoped they had no more. She’d been a tough, bright little girl; and it was too bad. It’s always too bad.

  I moved to Dana, who lay in a tight little ball, hugging herself; but when I turned her over gently she relaxed a bit, looking up at me. Although some women might have blamed me for letting her get shot like that, there was no hatred in her eyes. At least not for me.

  She licked her lips. “Did you… get her?”

  I nodded. “I got her.”

  “She masterminded the Howard Johnson bombing, Matt, just like the others. She boasted about it. Well, if she’s dead, that takes care of it, doesn’t it? As much as it can ever be taken care of.”

  I clapped the spare magazine into the Skorpian. “Come on, let’s get you out of here before this place goes bang.”

  “Matt, don’t ever hate me,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I’ve been so sorry ever since I met you…”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about, and there was no time to find out, nor was there time to make a medical diagnosis or put a Band-Aid where she hurt. I didn’t even bother to determine if she could walk. I just hoisted her to my unwounded shoulder, hearing her choke back a cry of pain.

  “Matt. Matt, have you got her?” It was Modesto’s voice down the hall, slurred from the mouth damage. “You can come out, the corridor is clear.”

  “Coming.”

  With Dana over my left shoulder and the machine pistol in my right hand, I marched out into the hall—well, staggered out into the hall. I don’t do enough of the muscle stuff to pack a solid lady around easily. There was another dead man out there, in addition to the one I’d skewered with the crowbar and Modesto had shot with the .22; the newcomer also seemed to have a .22 hole in his upturned face. As I stepped out of the room, there was a tremendous crash of sound behind me. For a moment, I thought Lester Leonard’s charges were beginning to go off; then I realized that the gun pointer at the big rifle, still clinging to his cable release, must have squeezed it hard enough, dying, to fire his artillery piece blindly out the window.

  “This way,” Modesto called. He was on the stair landing, holding the Ruger in both hands. As I approached, he fired up the stairs. With my ears ringing from gunfire, I heard no sound from the silenced pistol, but I saw it jump. Modesto glanced at me. “Go on down. Your friend is holding them off down there. Better let me have that weapon; I think this one is running on empty.”

  He wasn’t exactly following the i
nstructions I’d given him, but I was in no position to complain. I tried to remember whether or not I’d told him about the explosives being planted, but things seemed to be getting a little hazy. I passed him the Skorpian and got a better grip on my burden.

  I said, “You’ve got a fresh clip, but don’t hang around up here. Some charges have been set and we don’t have much time.”

  “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Heading down the stairs, with my knees buckling from the weight I was carrying, I saw Willard at the bottom; as I watched he put one of his trademarked little bursts into the bar door. Behind me, Modesto fired up the stairs; he had pretty good trigger control, too. You never know whom you’re going to meet these days who’s fought in somebody’s war. Maybe I should retire and sell ladies’ lingerie. I resented the fact that everybody was getting to shoot but me. All I got to do was carry a girl who was bleeding all over me—or was I bleeding all over me?—I couldn’t tell. It seemed to take me forever to make it down that endless stairway, one precipitous step at a time…

  Then somebody took Dana from me and told me we’d better hurry. Sometime later there was a large explosion not too far away. It seemed to go on forever. Somebody called to somebody to look out; the whole rear wall of the building was collapsing. I thought with regret of the big fifty; I like oddball guns and it would have been fun to shoot a few rounds through the crazy thing. I thought of the girl called La Margarita and Angelita and a few other things. I thought of the little Gerber knife. Well, that at least could be replaced.

  There was fire now, the light flickering on the wall by which I lay, don’t ask me where. I saw the battered face of Modesto above me.

  I licked my lips. “Dana?” I whispered.

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. They couldn’t stop the hemorrhage.”

  Somebody in a white coat took inventory and told me I’d be all right although I had three bullets in me. It bothered me that I’d only counted two.

  34

  Herman Heinrich Bultman’s invasion force hit Gobernador two weeks later. Certain highly placed optimists with whom Mac was in contact had expressed the opinion that the demolition of the Caribbean Legion’s San Juan headquarters and its guiding Council would undoubtedly cause the Kraut to postpone or even abort his plans. Mac had consulted me as the resident Bultman expert, and I’d told him they’d better stop dreaming. Bultman was neither a patriot nor a fanatic. He was just an old professional hit man using his skill and training and experience to teach a bunch of trigger-happy uniformed jerks, and the officials behind them, and the nation behind them, the inadvisability of shooting a friend, even a canine friend, of Herman Heinrich Bultman.

  Sentiment was certainly a factor, but essentially it was the arrogant final statement of an aging and ailing assassin, I said, a reminder to the world that even in retirement the Kraut was not to be messed with. What had happened in San Juan wouldn’t affect him; he’d felt no love or loyalty towards the CLL. To him, it had been just one source of manpower and intelligence; he had others. Of course the people upstairs had experts of their own, and to hell with the opinion of a guy who merely happened to know the guy in question. So it came as a dreadful surprise to them when the sun rose one morning, down there in the Caribbean, to show the Kraut’s boys all ashore on one of Isla del Norte’s more deserted and sheltered beaches, moving inland in a determined fashion. Apparently the government forces, relying on U.S. intelligence reports, had been caught with their pants at half mast.

  When the U.S. Navy helicopter flew me past the battle zone in the middle of the morning, at a considerable altitude and a discreet distance off shore, I could see, through the 7x50 glasses they’d lent me, the tiny conflict going on over there on the shore beyond the grounded boats, a couple of which were burning. Except for the tropical surroundings—the blue water, the white sand, the green jungle—it looked like a D-Day movie seen on a small TV set at the far end of the room with the sound turned off.

  “They seem to’ve gotten off the beach, but they’re taking a pounding,” I said to the helicopter pilot. “Did I see a couple of jets?”

  “Yeah, those little countries always buy the flashy goddamn jets when they’d be a damn sight better off with some workhorse helicopter gunships. What the hell can you do with a jet except go fast and make a lot of noise and impress the girls?” He glanced at me. “We’d better get on down the coast before one of those government zoom-zooms makes a pass at us. We’ve got clearance, but the rocket jockeys do get trigger-happy. What are we looking for, anyway?”

  “A rusty old LCT. I didn’t see it over there.”

  The pilot glanced towards the distant beach. “Nothing that big over there. They picked a calm night and came across from Montego in a lot of little stuff, it’s only eighteen miles. I’ll bet, calm or no calm, most of the boys were seasick as hell, but they seem to be doing okay now. Just the same, I’ll be glad I’m not them when the government gets its ass in gear.”

  “I seem to remember that somebody once said the same thing about the Maginot line.”

  The pilot studied the sunny distant scene for a moment longer, and shrugged. “Well, however it goes, as my old pappy used to say, it’s a good day for dying.”

  We clattered on down the coastline. I watched the pretty shore go by below, and thought of another good day for dying—at least a lot of people had managed to use it for that purpose. The following morning, Modesto had come to see me in the hospital. They’d cleaned him up and patched him up and turned him loose; apparently he’d suffered no major fractures or ruptures from his beating, but he still had some dental work to look forward to. We didn’t really have much to say to each other; we certainly didn’t compare notes about a lady we’d lost. I asked him some questions and he answered them.

  Finally he said, “She spoke to me just before… She told me to make certain you did not blame yourself. She knew it had to be done that way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Vaya con Dios, amigo.”

  I watched him go out of the room, a stocky little man with a business to run; and where he’d learned to handle pistols and automatic weapons was his business. A little later, Sandra stuck her head in the door cautiously, determined that I was awake, and enlarged the opening so that her companion could enter as well. Lester Leonard was wearing slacks and a gaudy sports shirt; the same thick spectacles were sliding down his nose. My daughter-in-law was wearing a summery dress; the first time I’d seen her in a dress since she’d met me in the airport in Miami Beach. They asked the usual silly sickbed questions and I gave them the usual brave sickbed answers.

  Then I said, “I thought you kids would be in jail.”

  “I feel like a fraud,” Sandy said. “Lester was the real hero, all I did was sit and listen to the shooting, and all the reporters want to make an antiterrorist Joan of Arc of me, so brave with my poor wounded arm, although really, ducky, do you think it’s right to take the law into your own hands like that?” She grimaced. “We’re being exported.”

  “Deported,” said the boy.

  She shook her head. “They’re washing their hands of us and sending us home to the U.S.; that’s still the same country, isn’t it? It’s got to be a different country to count as deportation, doesn’t it? We’re just being exported out of Puerto Rico.” She glanced at me. “Oh, I called Elizabeth and told her about… everything. She sends you her regards.”

  So my former wife, the mother of my son, knew that the vengeance she’d asked for had been achieved. I wondered if, having had time to cool off, she’d still wanted it. I looked at the two young people by the bed. Both of them seemed to have put the grim retribution business behind them overnight. It was finished and they weren’t going to brood about the dead, loved or hated, any longer. A callous attitude, perhaps, but a youthful and healthy one. I found myself wondering if they were merely getting along well because they were nice kids thrown together by exciting circumstances, or if they were becoming seriously interested in
each other. Well, he was pretty far out on the screwball side, but a smart girl could do a lot with him, and when she was through she might have a genius on her hands. I was sure Matthew wouldn’t have wanted his young widow to mourn eternally. Then, as I had the thought, Sandra turned a little, and I saw that she did have a black mourning band on her arm.

  “What’s that for?” I asked.

  She hesitated, and her expression grew serious. “Actually, a policeman gave it to me since I didn’t have time to buy a black dress and he thought I should have something to show… That’s one reason they’re turning us loose, Matt. It gave them the excuse they were looking for; they could be bighearted and release us so we could attend Daddy’s funeral.” She shook her head quickly. “No, not the Caribbean Legion. It was that drug-chasing man who made me do a striptease, remember; the one whose agents got blown up in our Old Saybrook house? I won’t pretend to be totally shattered, you know we never got along; but he was still my daddy and it’s a shock. You always wish, well, that you’d tried a bit harder to…” Her voice trailed off. Then she grimaced. “I bet Lia looks great in black.”

  “Bob Tallman,” I said.

  “Yes, that was his name. The Dobermans killed him. Ugh.”

  Lester said, “Sandy, we’d better get going if we’re going to catch that plane; and they won’t like it if we don’t. What’s the phrase, persona non grata? Or personae non gratae, plural? Good-bye, sir. I hope you get well soon.”

  Sandra also told me to get well soon. I told them to have a good trip. Maybe I should have congratulated the boy on how well his home-brewed explosives had performed; but I wasn’t sure he was really aware of the deaths for which he was responsible. It had been an interesting technical problem and he’d solved it. The passion that had driven him to it would seem strange and a little embarrassing now. It was better to let him go his own strange way without rubbing his nose in reality.