Renegade 19

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Renegade 19 Page 14

by Lou Cameron


  Sylvia said, “I have one, Dick. You’ve about convinced me there was more to this treasure hunt than I could possibly have guessed. But what’s the bloody point of it all? What on earth are Germans doing in Central America and why did Wallace go to so much trouble to do what?”

  Captain Gringo took out a claro and lit it before he said, “Starting at the beginning: Once upon a time there was a Monroe Doctrine. It didn’t and doesn’t apply to the colonies that Great Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Denmark, and so forth already established over here before old Monroe got elected and protective. But Germany never managed to colonize much of anything, before Bismarck, and Bismarck comes after Monroe. So Germany can’t openly build any bases on this side of the pond. But they say Kaiser Willy cheats at cards, too. A while back, Gaston and I were hired to find and mess up a German navy base on the Pacific coast. The one at Laguna Caratasca must be one that British Intelligence hasn’t spotted yet. I thought at first they had, and that this was one of our old pal, Greystoke’s, wild and wooly missions. But not even British Intelligence would be wild enough to saddle a mission with four women and a mess of rank greenhorns, no offense, so there’s only one other way to read it. Wallace was making a delivery. He couldn’t just sail in by sea. The Royal and U.S. navies patrol the Mosquito Coast regularly, in addition to the Honduran gunboats that one could bump noses with off the entrance of a supposedly deserted lagoon. Nobody would stop a yacht or schooner with proper papers and the Union Jack flapping long enough to matter. But there would be a record in the log of some allied vessel, and when and if that Panama Canal gets finished and somebody puts a torpedo into anybody anywhere near it, old records will get dug out a lot.”

  Bertie said, “Anyone can see the advantages to Germany of a secret navy base near the narrow waistline of the Americas, Dick. But you say Wallace was delivering something?”

  “Yeah. Don’t ask me what. Probably some new technical equipment. If it was simply information, a schooner passing by one night could just send it by wireless, since the Germans on shore have Marconi stuff handy. This arms race they’re having since Kaiser Willy started scaring grown-ups with his temper tantrums has the invention business busy as hell. The diesel engine’s only a couple of years old and the square heads are already stuffing ’em in their torpedo boats and experimental submersibles. Whatever Wallace was bringing them to modernize that base some more had to be small enough to hide in a steam car, but too heavy to carry on foot. That was the whole point of this otherwise crazy steam car jungle expedition. Wallace was too slick to have it in his own car. If it had been in the White I left Marlowe in, Marlowe could have swiped or sabotaged it. Ergo, it was in Gordon’s steamer, and, since Gordon doesn’t live here anymore, we’ll probably never know what it was.”

  Bertie gasped. “My God! By now they’ve delivered. No wonder they didn’t need to steal extra fuel! The buggers drove straight for the lagoon to the east! But what will happen to Matilda, if she wasn’t in on it?”

  Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Her husband will probably wind up with a flora-dora girl from the Windmill Theater. Some of her other friends might miss her.”

  Pat said, “Surely those Germans wouldn’t do poor Matilda in, would they?”

  He didn’t answer. It was a stupid question, even coming from Pat, and there were more important matters to settle. He said, “Okay, let’s forget about the German base and our former playmates. Now that we know it’s there, if any of you feel patriotic you can write a letter to the Times or even ring up Whitehall when you get back to England. That’s the problem we have to worry about. We’re not going to be able to stay here long. By now the Germans know that we may be onto them, so they’re not going to want any of us to get away, and, thanks to Gordon and Fenton, they’ll find out where we are any minute!”

  Gaston said, “I think we have a night’s grace on them, Dick. Their two agents left before we returned with the news of that patrol we just wiped out. Even if they send out another, they won’t find the bodies before dawn, hein?”

  “Maybe. The patrol leader had a radio receiver. If they order him back and he doesn’t come back, they could put two and two together without finding body one. Gordon and Fenton will tell them how good I am with that machine gun, if they haven’t gotten the message by now. How far are we from the lagoon’s big guns?”

  Gaston was an old artillery officer so he gulped and said, “Merde, not far enough!”

  Bertie didn’t seem to know much about long-range shellfire. He asked, “Why did Wallace hire you two experts and issue you machine guns if the whole expedition was a ruse to deliver some thingamajig to his German friends, Dick?”

  Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Artistic touch, most likely. He had Marlowe down as a bum. Probably thought our reputation was overblown, too. Someone was sure to wonder why he’d take a mess of greenhorns out in the jungle with no security men at all. One of the guns was packed so it would have rusted to junk before we ever opened it. The other was screwed up more cleverly. The head spacing was set wrong and a couple of screws were loose when I field stripped it, cleaned it, and put it back together. He must have assumed I was a slam-bang hired tough who didn’t do things like that. Besides, he was leading us into an ambush where it wouldn’t have mattered if the Maxim worked or not. I screwed him up by taking my job more seriously than he’d expected. Let’s not pick at scabs, Bertie. What’s done is done. We have to get out of here pronto. You kiddies start loading the steam cars while I have a chat with the Indians. I take it nobody’s still being silly about wanting to look for buried treasure?”

  Not even Pat was that dumb, even if it meant having to explain to her rich relatives. Captain Gringo got up and went looking for Decepciona. He couldn’t ask any of the Indians where she was. So she found him by coming out of a hut to see why the kids and squaws were pointing at him and laughing so much. Decepciona said, “You should not be at this end of the village without an interpreter. But I am at your service. The chief, my uncle, says I am to serve you in any way you wish.”

  He wasn’t sure she meant that the way it sounded, even if she was standing there stark naked with mighty friendly eyes. He said, “Decepciona, I’ve got some really tough translating for you indeed. Do you know what cannon are?”

  “Of course. I am not an ignorant person.”

  “Good. You and your people have to move, pronto. The bad blancos have big cannon that can lob a shell many kilometers. Some other evil people may have told them we are here. If they did, I’m sorry, but this village is in danger of being blown to straw and splinters,¡poco tiempo!”

  “We must tell the chief and elders. Come.”

  She took his hand and led him to a slightly larger hut. He still had to duck his head to enter, though the short Indian girl found the doorway high enough.

  The young chief and old medicine man were seated around a little fire with some other important Mosquitoes. Decepciona didn’t seem to be mincing words as she opened up on them with machine-gun grunts and groans. Apparently she was a bright little gal who didn’t have to chew the rag much when you told her about white men with big guns. The old brujo closed his eyes and began to recite a poem or something, but Decepciona stamped her tiny bare foot and even Captain Gringo got her message when she flapped her hands and yelled, “Boom! Boom! Kawa-poof!”

  The young chief was a natural survivor too. That probably was why they followed him. He shut the old man up and started giving orders in a no-bullshit tone as Decepciona turned to Captain Gringo and said, “My uncle and great warrior says we can move at once to another camp where we used to live until the spirits of the soil refused us good crops. By now the thatch will have rotted away, but the campsite is already cleared and we know where the nearest water is. Do you think we will be safe there?”

  “How far is it, Decepciona?”

  “Far. It will take us most of the night to walk there. Your big-wheeled things can roll faster than we can walk, but if you wish to come with u
s you must follow slowly.”

  Captain Gringo blinked in surprise and asked, “Are your people still willing to accept us? I was afraid they’d be sore about us bringing all tins trouble on them, Decepciona!”

  “Why should they be cross with you? You are our guests. The other ones are the evil persons who wish to make boom-boom, no?”

  He smiled down at her gently and said, “I guess some people would look at it that way. A lot wouldn’t. I think we should be safe a night’s march away. There’s no way even a hot-shot German gunnery officer could range on a target he has no way of picking out. Tell your chief I thank him, Decepciona.”

  The pretty little naked girl shrugged and replied, “Why do you owe thanks to anyone? You have warned us. We shall heed your warning. We have treated you as friends. Now you have treated us as friends. Friends do not thank one another for doing what is only right. They help each other when they have a common enemy. Your people and my people are in this fight together, no?”

  *

  So the problem of whether he slept discreetly with Phoebe or had another shot at Sylvia just never came up that night. Instead of sleeping with anybody, they all got to tool along in the steam cars behind the marching Indians.

  The Indians carried torches, so Sylvia in the lead with the Stanley didn’t need her headlights to avoid things an Indian could step over but a Stanley had to steer around. The runty but strong Mosquitoes made good time afoot, although it was maddening slow driving. Not having the advantages of civilization, the Indians only had to carry small packs, consisting mostly of their few belongings wrapped in the hammocks each tribal member slept in. The young chief had seemed surprised and delighted when the whites offered to carry some of the heavy stuff in the steam cars.

  Captain Gringo, Gaston, and the two girls got to talk more than they really needed to as they passed the night at less than five miles an hour. It was generally agreed that their best bet would be to hole up at the new Indian village long enough to let the Germans get tired of looking for them, then pile everyone and all the reserve kerosene in one steam car and make a beeline for Patuca, the first seaport up the coast. When Sylvia worried aloud about German agents intercepting them there before they could board a ship out, he explained, “They won’t. They know that if we make it to any civilization and a telegraph office, their game is up. They never tried to rebuild that other secret base Gaston and I found for British Intelligence one time. The idea of a secret base is that it’s a secret, see?”

  Pat said, “Oh, I see, Dick. If we make it alive to Patuca, those horrid Germans will have to assume we’ve tattled on them whether we have or not. What will the Royal Navy do when we tell them about it, stand offshore and blow them to bits?”

  “Hardly. That would call for a declaration of war, and I don’t think either side will be ready to play out their family quarrel for at least twenty years. Queen Victoria will probably drop a note to her grandson, Kaiser Willy, chiding him for being so naughty. He’ll probably tell her she has him all wrong and order his navy to build some other secret base within cruising range of Panama. There are oodles of places to choose from on both coasts of Central America.”

  Sylvia sighed and said, “It’s all so infantile. This endless bickering between the great powers would read like a comic opera if only people didn’t have to get killed over it all.”

  “Pawns are throwaway pieces in any chess game, doll. If the old Widow of Windsor and her half-crippled grandson thought they personally would have to lead the first pawns into battle, we could forget about the big war brewing over on your side of the pond. But the chess masters don’t get put in the box, even when they lose the game, so we pawns have to look out for ourselves!”

  Sylvia shuddered and said, “I always thought Matilda was a natural survivor. Why do you suppose she did such a stupid thing, Dick?”

  He knew, but it wouldn’t have been gallant, or sensible, to say so. So he said, “She probably thought she was surviving pretty good. When she caught those guys loading up, they’d naturally have told her they were just punking out and driving back to Nicaragua because the fun and games were getting rough.”

  Pat said, “I’m glad she left with them. She was terribly stuck up. At least now we know we can all trust one another, right, Dick?”

  It was a good question. Gaston, too, had obviously been thinking about it. He said, “Eh bien. We agree British Intelligence can’t know about the place or it would not be there, whatever the late Marlowe was about to find out if he was working for anyone. Any other confederates of Wallace would have left with Gordon and Fenton. Ergo, all that is left are eight great fools, since I must in all justice include myself among the used and trés abused. Eight people can ride in one steam car, if pretty girls do not mind sitting in the laps of gallant gentlemen. Who gets Phoebe, Dick?”

  “That’s up to her,” said Captain Gringo, kicking him to shut him up. The damned old lecher obviously thought he’d found Sylvia sleeping off a swell time with him. This was hardly the time and place to explain.

  Long before sunrise they had run out of things to say, so they hadn’t said much for hours when the light started getting better. A little while later they rolled out into a clearing, or what would have been a clearing if the weeds hadn’t already grown shoulder high. The Indians went right to work with their machetes as the three remaining steam cars parked in line under the trees and everyone got out wearily to watch the Indians make camp.

  Rome wasn’t built in a day, but the Mosquitoes weren’t Romans, so they didn’t mess around. For people supposed to be lazy ignorant savages, they were organized better than some military outfits Captain Gringo could remember. New-huts sprouted like mushrooms as the womenfolk got fires going and put on the pots to boil mush. Before Captain Gringo could suggest it, the young chief sent his scouts out to secure the perimeter and, hopefully, bag some game for said pots.

  Decepciona came over to the whites to tell them their new quarters were ready. Sylvia sniffed thoughtfully as the naked Indian girl took Captain Gringo’s hand and led him the length of the village. She took him to a small but well-thatched hut with one big hammock slung between its two main poles. She turned to face him in the shade of the windowless hut. Her proud firm breasts still looked great in the dim light as she said, calmly , “The chief says you must all be tired and there is nothing for you to do here anyway. Would you like to sleep now, Dick? Or do you wish to make love to me first?”

  He laughed and asked, “Do I have a choice?”

  “Of course. You are a guest. Everything we have to offer is yours. I have nothing to offer but myself. If you do not think I am pretty, I can find another girl for you. But none of them speak Spanish.”

  “That’s very generous indeed. Do you want to sleep with me, Decepciona?”

  She lowered her lashes modestly and said, “I don’t know. I have never made love to any whiteman, let alone a giant. I think l am afraid, a little. But if you want me, I have no choice. The chief says we are to make you feel at home while you are with us.”

  He said, “I think you are very pretty. I think you’re scared to death, too. Why don’t we just be friends awhile until we’ve both had time to get used to the idea?”

  She smiled up at him radiantly and said, “Oh, you are so understanding. I think you are pretty, too. But a woman needs a little time to make up her mind. I was so afraid you would treat me roughly. I had decided to be brave, but—”

  “I understand, honey. Why don’t you go out and play with the other children?”

  She didn’t seem to like that much. But she ducked out, muttering something about seeing who was a child, maybe later.

  He hung up his things and consulted his watch. He’d just spent a long full night and they faced a long dull day. He’d nibbled field rations in the Stanley driving from the other camp, so who wanted Indian mush or any breakfast at all? That hammock looked inviting and he didn’t know when he’d have to do some serious traveling without sleep again, so
he peeled off his duds and climbed in naked. The Indians hadn’t provided a top Sheet. People who wandered naked in broad daylight had small need of modesty in bed, and he knew that most Indians wouldn’t dream of entering a sleeping hut without singing about it outside a lot, waiting for an invitation to enter.

  He stretched lazily and settled into the womblike cotton webbing to close his eyes and, he hoped, catch up on his sleep. He’d almost made it when Sylvia’s voice said, “Oh, here you are. Alone, I see. What’s the matter, didn’t you like that little squaw?”

  He opened one eye and growled, “Decepciona is a lady, which is more than I can say for some dames I know. What the hell do you want now, another game of prick-tease? It’s only fair to warn you I’m not wearing my pants today. If you want to sleep with me again, all previous contracts are null and void.”

  “Do you have to speak to me in that tone, Dick?”

  “I didn’t want to speak to you at all. This is the second time you’ve come in to pester me while I was trying to get some shut-eye. What the hell’s wrong with you, Sylvia? Can’t you find someone else to tease?”

  “I don’t understand you, Dick. Why do you keep calling me a tease?”

  He sat up, his nudity still partially hidden by the sagging webbing, and growled, “Oh, for God’s sake, let’s get it over with!” as he reached out an arm, grabbed her around her slim waist, and hauled her in.

  The unexpected move threw her off kilter, or she wanted him to think it had. At any rate, he pulled her half-atop him, put his other arm around her neck, and kissed her good. Her mouth had popped open in a surprised gasp as their lips met, so he tongued her deeply while he was at it. She couldn’t say anything but put up a struggle, a mild one at any rate, as he hauled her half-aboard the hammock.

  Fighting for balance, if that was what she was doing, Sylvia spread her legs wide as she was bent over him. He shifted his weight, sliding both their heads and shoulders up higher on the half-moon of the hammock. Then he groped with his left hand down across his own lap, grabbing Sylvia behind her right thigh, and lifted her right foot from the ground as she protested mutely with his lips on hers and struggled for balance with the one foot she was left standing on.

 

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