by Lou Cameron
Gaston trotted his way but didn’t t spot him until Captain Gringo said, “Oh, hell,” and moved the branches above him.
Gaston stiffened, dropped into a gunfighter’s crouch with the Winchester trained his way, and called out, “Is that you, Dick?”
“If I was anyone else you’d be dead. What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I was lonely. I got all the others to the Indian camp a long time ago and ran back to see if you needed help.”
“I don’t. There’s not room in this hole for the two of us.”
“Ah, I see the plan. Trés practique. Eh bein. I shall hide my adorable ass behind the log in back of you, non?”
“No, dammit! I dug in here because I wanted to keep some son of a bitch from walking up behind me and stepping on my head by accident. Nobody should climb over that log behind me when there are so many easier ways to go, but if anyone approaches from the other side, your adorable ass will make an adorable target. Start back to the Indian camp on the double. I don’t need a guide. I’ll follow the tracks,”
Gaston nodded but said, “Too late!” and dived over the big log out of sight. Captain Gringo had heard them too. They were coming down their compass heading like big-ass birds with the self-confident swagger of the armed and dangerous bully boy.
He grimaced in distaste and checked his Maxim’s action again. There was nothing to do but pull the trigger of the loaded and primed machine gun, but a guy wanted to be sure. He knew Gaston was as tense or tenser right now, but, unlike the gang coming their way, neither soldier of fortune made a habit of loud conversation while moving in on an objective.
Jesus Christ, they were a noisy bunch. Could that be a ruse? Any scouts they had out ahead would be walking tippy-toe, and the shouted military commands off to the east could be a ploy to distract. But he didn’t see said scouts, and, as the loud voices got nearer, he could tell that some officer or noncom was trying to keep his men in a neat skirmish line as they moved through the trees. He’d noticed that that first bunch had been lined up like soldiers on parade, too. He grinned wolfishly as he crouched in his hole. Please, God, let them pass in file on parade so he could mow ’em down like chumps!
They almost did. As he spotted the long line of riflemen coming through the trees from the east, a burly figure was running up and down the line like a platoon sergeant trying to keep them properly dressed down to pass in review.
They weren’t dressed like soldiers. Like the first bunch, they wore ragged peon disguises, but that wasn’t Spanish their leader was shouting. It wasn’t English, either. What the fuck was going on? Nobody but native troops or the U.S. Marines were allowed down here in Honduras. It said so, right in the Monroe Doctrine.
One of them spotted the rising smoke and brought it to their leader’s attention. He called a halt and sent two men forward to investigate. Captain Gringo let them pass. He knew what they’d find. He’d wanted them to.
They circled the campfire, one of them kicked at it for some dumb reason, then they waved the others in to the deserted camp.
They didn’t get there. As the skirmish line swept past Captain Gringo’s position, a little ragged, damn them, he stood up with the Maxim braced against his hip and opened up on them full automatic!
He cut half of them down with his first long burst, then hosed left and right to polish off the ones who hadn’t been lined up as their leader wanted them. Behind him, Gaston was banging away with his Winchester, for some reason. What was Gaston up to? Oh, yeah, the two guys by the fire. Nice going, Gaston.
He still had a quarter of the first belt left when he ceased fire for lack of moving targets. He rested the Maxim on the edge of the hole to climb out as Gaston’s rifle spanged again. He called out, “Dammit, Gaston, don’t finish off any wounded until I have a chat with them!”
Gaston rose from behind the log to reply, “I was not shooting at anyone on your side of the log, my hasty child. An odd little man in a straw hat was moving in behind you with one of those adorable new Krag rifles.”
“I stand corrected. Cover me while I have a look at what we just bagged.”
He drew his .38 to approach the first downed enemy he came to. The guy wasn’t ever going to be a threat to anyone, ever again. The bastard didn’t have a bit of I.D. on him, either. Just pocket change and an ammo bandoleer. The others all seemed to be playing dead Mexican bandits, too. But they were a little too far south, and that was not Mexican they’d been yelling as he’d mowed them down.
He saw he was wasting time on the enlisted scum. He moved over to the husky leader, sprawled face down in the dirt with his face in his hat like a horse eating oats. He rolled the slob over, saw that the hat was stuck to his face with blood and brains, and said, “Well, since you’re not in a mood to talk, let’s see what you have in your pockets.” There was no I.D. By now he’d learned not to expect it. Whoever had sent these guys out into the jungle didn’t want them identified when they lost. That sounded reasonable.
He found a pocket compass. That was no surprise. Then he found something that was. The Indians had been right about it being a black box. The leader had a set of earphones and a little crystal Marconi receiver under his shirt!
Captain Gringo holstered his .38, put one earphone to his head, and fiddled with the cat’s whisker on the rough germanium crystal without picking up anything except what sounded like someone frying bacon somewhere. He went back to join Gaston. As he stepped over the log he spotted another white-clad corpse face down in the distance. He nodded and said, “Thanks. Look what I found, mother.” Gaston took the crystal set and said, “Trés interesting toy to find on a mere guerrilla, non?”
“Hell, we’ve known all along they were some kind of military outfit. If I’m up on the state of the art, you can send those radio waves twenty or thirty miles, tops. Marconi keeps bragging that someday he’ll be able to send them across the ocean, but so far he can’t seem to do it.”
“Oui, we should be within sending range of their base camp over by the lagoon. Could they talk back with this thing?”
“No way; a Marconi sending set is too heavy for two men to carry.”
“Eh bien, in that case, base has no way of knowing this patrol was not such a grand idea after all. If we buried this garbage—”
“Forget it. Aside from it being too much work in this heat, they were following an azimuth this far, so any pals sent to look for ’em would find ’em in time no matter how deep we planted ’em. What I’m trying to figure is how they lined up on us, here, from back there!”
“Perhaps with that amusing electrical device?”
“I don’t see how. They could take a bearing on the transmitter with this crystal set. But it wouldn’t shoot a beam our way unless someone knew which way to aim it. Just following the compass works as well, and it’s a lot less complicated.” Gaston started to toss the crystal set away. Captain Gringo grabbed it and snapped, “Are you nuts?”
“Mais non, just tired of carrying, useless baggage. What good is that toy to us, Dick?”
“Jesus, you’re dumb! We just agreed it’ll take hours, probably all night, before they find their lost patrol. Meanwhile, they may send further instructions to them, see?”
“Perhaps, but do you speak German?”
“No. Is that what that was?”
“Of course. No Frenchman would ever mistake a Boche for a Dutchman or a Swede. Obviously, dear little Kaiser Willy is up to something trés dramatique in this part of the world again. He never seems to learn. But, as I just asked, do you speak German? I know a few words, but not enough to listen in on their radio conversations.”
Captain Gringo pocketed the set, nodded, and stepped over the log to get his machine gun as he growled, “Don’t worry about it. I’m beginning to think someone in our party might. Let’s get back to them pronto. Don’t mention this crystal set, and we’d better leave the details of what just happened here sort of fuzzy, too.”
“I understand, to a point. But why are we
going back to them, now that we know?”
“Know what? Who the spy or spies among us might be? I haven’t a clue.”
“Dick, now it is you who are not thinking. We have been had by that damned British Intelligence again! Can’t you see it? The last time we worked for Greystoke you told him we’d never work for him again, non?”
“Right; the cheap bastard tends to use people as disposable pawns, and when they live through one of his deals, he tends to welsh on paying the agreed price.”
“I was there. On the other hand, Greystoke knows you and I are the best in the business. He sent that girl to seduce you into joining this so-called treasure hunt because his agents, the so-called silly English people we’ve been guarding with our lives, needed a machine gunner who thinks fast on his feet. Why are you still following the car tracks? Did you not hear a word I just said?”
“Sure I did. Some of it makes sense. Major Wallace works as a British agent. Marlowe works as a German plant who blew up when he thought we knew more than we really did. Some of the others could be dupes, even as you and I. Meanwhile, we’re miles from anywhere, without provisions for a lonely cross-country romp, and night’s coming on.”
“Eh bien, we go on to the Indian camp. We load up one of the steam cars with goodies—perhaps Pat and Sylvia, if they don’t speak German—and then it’s off to Patuca and a beautiful pea-green boat before either the British spies or the German spies mop our poor bewildered asses, non?”
Captain Gringo trudged on in silence as he considered all their options. Then he said, “When you’re right you’re right, Gaston. I don’t like Kaiser Willy but I don’t like being used and abused, repeat abused. I don’t think we’ll bother taking the dames along, though. A guy with a spiffy Stanley Steamer can always pick up a dame, and even if we can trust ’em, they’ll slow us down, and what will we do with ’em after?”
“Don’t you trust Sylvia? I don’t think Pat could be a German or a British spy. Either job would call for more brains than she has. And I thought you and Sylvia were getting along quite nicely when I walked in on you.”
“Oh, well, maybe we can take them along if they’re awfully good.”
*
The sun went down like it came up in the tropics, with no screwing around, and it was pretty gloomy under a rain-forest Canopy even at high noon. So it was pitch black when they made it to the Indian village. Captain Gringo would have had trouble finding it after he couldn’t see the tire tracks, had not Gaston already known the general direction.
Naturally they were spotted by an Indian scout long before they saw the glow of night fires ahead. So as they walked into the village there was a multiracial welcoming committee waiting for them by the main fire between the thatched huts.
The village was fairly substantial, for, despite their sensible costume in a hot climate, the Mosquito Indians were slash-and-burn agriculturists. They had no defensive stockade around the village, but the Indians’ best defense was building villages that were not easy to find. There were no com milpas near the village. They cleared and cultivated patches at least two miles away from their women and children as a simple but effective military strategy. So the village was surrounded by virgin jungle.
The old brujo and a younger man with lots of feathers made welcoming speeches that the cute squaw, Decepciona, had to translate. They were so long and pointless they even bored her.
Captain Gringo half-listened as he exchanged nods with the whites in his party, watching over the heads of the short squat Indians.
Gaston had already told him that the steam cars were parked well out in the trees to the northwest of the village in order to avoid crowding the small spaces between the huts and to ensure a logical escape route if they had to leave in a hurry. Since Indian kids swiped things as quickly as any others, the supplies had been stored in one of the huts the Indians had provided for the expedition’s use. No tents had been pitched. That would have been rude, whether the whites liked sleeping in the hammocks the young chief had offered or not.
The head men finally ran out of things to say and Decepciona told them it was okay if they joined the other whites for supper. So they did.
The expedition had been issued its own neighborhood at the north end of the village of perhaps thirty families. As soon as the Indians backed off politely to let the whites sip tea and talk around their own night fire, Captain Gringo looked around and asked Bertie, “Where is everybody? We seem to be missing some faces.”
Bertie said, “Not only that, we’re missing a perishing steam car! I don’t know when it happened. But apparently Fenton, Gordon, and Matilda have had enough. They took off in the White that Gordon’s been driving!”
Captain Gringo started to rise, then settled back as he realized it was pointless to chase steam cars with a good lead in the dark. As Phoebe handed him a plate of beans and a secretive wink, he stared morosely across the fire, counting noses. They still had three steam cars. So, let’s see, he had seats for Gaston and himself, Sylvia, Pat, Phoebe, Bertie, the sullen Wilson, and the gulping Jerome. Who was driving what? They’d been reshuffling the steering wheels since starting out and, okay, he had enough drivers and maybe enough fuel oil.
Wilson apparently had been thinking along the same lines. He scowled into the flames as he said, “I don’t see what could have possessed them. When we saw they’d driven off, I ran to check our reserve kerosene tins and they didn’t steal any.”
Jerome gulped and said, “They’ll never make it back to Puerto Cabezas on what they had in Gordon’s steamer, look you! I never thought much of Gordon’s brains, and Fenton is no genius. But I thought Lady Matilda had more sense.”
Phoebe, sitting by Captain Gringo rather possessively, said, “They’re sure to wind up stuck in the jungle somewhere and I must say it serves them bloody right!”
Captain Gringo ate his beans and thought before he spoke. He had a pretty good idea why Matilda had cut out, poor cow. It hadn’t been Gordon’s or Fenton’s idea to take her along. She’d probably seen them firing up the boiler and insisted on going along.
By now she knew that he was wise to why she’d aimed that steam car right at the tent she’d just laid him in. A married lady with a reputation that meant more to her than her husband had had second thoughts after recovering her mind. It hadn’t mattered that he’d promised not to kiss and tell. Ever so veddy-veddy English ladies simply did not take it in the arse from uncouth knock-around guys who’d never been to the right schools.
He finished his plate as the others speculated on the fate of their missing members. Some of the speculation was pretty dumb. He washed down the beans with a cup of pretty good tea, whoever’d brewed it, and turned to Gaston to say, “I think it’s cards-on-the-table time. Now that we seem to have separated the wheat from the chaff, what say we take ’em all with us?”
Gaston shrugged and said, “Oui, if they’ll go. I have never been able to decide whether English or German species of idiots are more stubborn.”
Bertie frowned and growled, “Oh, I say, you bloody little Frog!”
Captain Gringo said, “Relax. He meant it as a compliment. He compliments my mother regularly.”
Then, as they all stared at him in the flickering light, Captain Gringo raised his voice slightly to be heard by all present as he said, “Okay, gang, the party’s over. Matilda just left because she’s, ah, impulsive. I think Gordon and Fenton just showed their hand, and it’s a good thing for you they decided to do it the easy way. The original plan was probably to kill you poor innocent dupes. Wallace was working for Der Kaiser. We just found out that the guys so interested in holding Laguna Caratasca against all comers are square heads. Probably German marines. Fenton and Gordon were with Wallace. You kiddies, and Gaston and I, were camouflage. Both Nicaraguan and Honduran authorities tend to accept the fact that adventurous Brits do all sorts of things too nutty to worry much about, so …”
“That’s crazy!” cut in Pat, of all people. The redhead dimpled a
t Gaston as she added, “Gaston said that remittance man, Marlowe, was the secret agent who killed poor Major Wallace!”
“Gaston was wrong. So was I. Marlowe was either a British agent or a patriotic bum who’d caught on. He tried to keep Wallace from reaching the German base and, as a last resort, went down fighting for the Union Jack.”
Bertie gasped. “My God! I was the one who shot Marlowe!”
“Don’t feel bad about it. Marlowe wasn’t waving the Union Jack at you at the time. He couldn’t take anyone else into his confidence, because he couldn’t know who was a German agent and who was just a jerk-off, no offense.”
Wilson grumbled, “You certainly seem to know a lot, of a sudden, Yank. Who told you all this muck about German bases and Wallace being a German spy? Dammit, we belonged to the same club, and I’m no bloody German spy!”
“Lots of people belong to the same clubs. Your Prince of Wales owns stock in Krupp of Essen and Der Kaiser is his cousin. Wallace may not have considered himself a traitor to Great Britain. Only a few people in the British Intelligence community are worried about the way Kaiser Willy seems to be preparing for one hell of a war with someone. A lot of perfectly decent Brits are betting on it being Russia, so they don’t care.”
Wilson shrugged and said, “Get to the point, man! It looks to me as if Wallace must have been working for British Intelligence if he was working for anyone!”
Bertie said, “He’s right, you know. Mayhaps Wallace used us with that tale of buried pirate treasure. But have you forgotten those German chaps waiting to ambush us back at the river?”
Captain Gringo said, “They weren’t waiting to ambush Wallace or his confederates. They were a welcoming committee! That’s why they hadn’t taken basic precautions despite obviously being trained marines. Marlowe was the only one who made any move to screw up the expedition, when you think back on it. If things had gone the way Wallace planned, they’d have arrested the rest of us, or worse, when we came busting out of the gumbo limbo. When Marlowe gunned Wallace while Gaston and I were wiping out his German pals, the other two had to lie low till they saw a chance to make a run for the base. Tonight they did. Next question.”