“General Vargas!” cried someone in the crowd.
Others shouted the name. “Vargas!”
Turning, Jake said, “I’ve been wanting to run into you, Vargas.”
“And I’ve been most anxious to encounter you, Señor Cardigan.” Stopping a few feet short of Jake, Vargas gave him a slight, stiff bow. “First, though, I must take care of this traitor.”
“Kill the traitor!” shouted a good portion of the crowd.
On the platform, held by two soldiers, the sweating fat man was watching Jake and the general.
“The thing is,” said Jake, “I don’t think Globo’s been disloyal to Warbride’s cause. He set me up, sure, but that should’ve earned him a—
“It’s extremely dangerous,” warned Vargas, “to intercede in an official execution, señor.” From his silver-trimmed leather holster he drew a long-barreled lazgun. “If you will step aside now, I—”
“Jake, why are you so interested in this traitor?” Warbride had detached her mikes, was sitting on the edge of the platform and gazing down at the two men.
“Have you questioned Globo?”
“Of course not—I don’t participate in that sort of thing anymore.”
“Be interesting if you did, since I think Vargas doesn’t want Globo to talk about what he’s been up to lately.”
“I don’t understand, cariño.”
“Don’t you really know that Vargas hired Globo to have me killed?”
She frowned at the general. “Es verdad?”
“Obviously not.” Vargas raised the gun to take aim at Globo.
Jake moved then.
He sprinted forward, across the gap between himself and the cyborg. His right hand chopped at the gun in the metal fingers. He knocked it free of Vargas’ grasp.
“Another traitor!” Several soldiers in the front row started to rise up.
“Back!” ordered Warbride, standing.
Vargas swung at Jake with his metal hand.
He hit Jake just below the breastbone, causing him to gasp and go staggering back.
Vargas followed him, striking him against the side of the head.
The harsh light of the clearing seemed to flare suddenly brighter.
Jake fell to one knee.
Vargas stood over him, raising his metal fist to strike him again.
But Jake made a lunge, butting the cyborg in the midsection.
Vargas coughed out air. He stumbled back, lost his balance, fell to his side in the dirt.
Jake charged, threw himself on the fallen man and started jabbing him in the ribs.
“Stop!” ordered Warbride from the platform.
Both men ignored her, rolling over as they struggled.
Jake caught a glimpse of Warbride’s metal arm pointing down at them. Then a thin, glittering line of green light jumped from her forefinger.
It cut through the night and hit Vargas in the face. The silver side of it made a sizzling sound and his whole body jerked. His metal fingers came clawing up to scratch at his face. Then he jerked once more and was still.
Jake pushed himself up off the ground, started to turn toward the platform.
The beam hit him in the chest.
He felt as though he were being lifted clear off the ground. The most important thing in the world was to get one more breath of air. But he could no longer breathe; he was frozen and couldn’t move. All the light went away.
He heard the wind. It was blowing harsh and hard outside wherever he was.
Jake slowly awakened. He was flat on his back on a wide, carved-wood bed, and his skeleton inside him felt as though it had been taken apart and then reassembled not quite correctly.
Pushing backward with both elbows, he managed to get himself into a sitting position atop the antique bed.
The night wind rattled the high, wide, plasglass windows that circled the dim-lit room. All that showed outside were the clear dark sky, stars and a pale half-moon.
He grimaced, shook his head, carefully, from side to side. He still enjoyed awakening, even though right now he had to undergo the discomforting aftereffects of having been knocked out with a stun-beam.
“Got one built into that arm of hers,” he said as he attempted to slide clear of the bed and stand up. “Very convenient for her.”
Stepping onto the thickly carpeted floor caused, for some reason, all his teeth to ache for a while. There were also assorted twinges making themselves known in his elbows and knees and along his ribs.
Doing it very gradually, Jake walked over to one of the windows. That produced a whole new set of aches and pains.
He was in a tower, very high up. The treetops of the Selva Grande showed about fifty feet below. They were swaying in the strong wind.
“This must be,” Jake decided, “one of the ranger stations. Taken over and redecorated by Warbride.”
Small plasglass panels had been set in the pale pink walls here and there around the room, and they glowed with a faint rose-colored light. The carpeting was pale pink and so was the only door.
Inhaling deeply, Jake started for the door.
It slid silently open before he was closer than ten feet to it.
Framed in the brighter, harsher light of the corridor was Warbride. Hands on hips, she stood smiling at him. She was dressed as she had been at the rally.
“I’m truly sorry, caro, that I had to incapacitate you for—” She glanced at the tiny watch built into her chrome arm. “For nearly four hours. But I wanted to cool you off—you and Rafe both.”
“You succeeded, Elana.”
Her smile broadened and she crossed the threshold. She walked up to him, put her arms around him and kissed him full on the mouth. “You remember my name,” she said finally.
Easing back from her, he said, “Would you prefer I shouted ‘Warbride’ a few times?”
Crossing to the bed, she sat on its edge. “The rally was—a political necessity, Jake.”
“I especially liked the story about how you got your nickname.”
Laughing, Warbride said, “My speechwriter came up with that six months ago—and it really seems to have quite an effect on audiences. He used to be a professor of literature at Mexico University, before that whore, President Romero, put his name on a death list. Originally I was saying I was raped by three soldiers. I decided five sounds better.”
Jake watched her. “It was also interesting to find out how your brother Jorge disappeared. I’d always thought he went into hiding to avoid being nabbed for dealing Tek.”
She shrugged one shoulder, brushed at her short-cropped hair with her silvery metal fingers. “We changed poor Jorge’s bio for propaganda reasons,” she said. “A martyr is better than a fugitive from the law.”
“I think you can help me, Elana.”
“Ah, then you didn’t come here to rekindle—”
“Whatever we had once, Elana, is long gone.”
“Muy triste,” she said with a sigh. “But also true, alas. What is it you need, Jake?”
“I’m working for the Cosmos Detective Agency, and they—”
“No longer a policeman,” she said, shaking her head. “I always thought that was a lifetime calling for you, Juanito.”
“So did I—once.” He went over to sit beside her. “Cosmos wants to find Professor Leon Kittridge and his daughter. Their skycruiser is supposed to have crashed near here a couple of—”
“You’re traveling with the Kittridge girl, which strikes me as very strange. Yet you say that you are searching for her and—”
“She’s not Beth Kittridge.”
“Isn’t she? From pictures I’ve—”
“Where is she now, by the way?”
Smiling, Warbride pointed at the floor with her metal forefinger. “Perfectly safe, Jake,” she assured him, “in a guest room two levels down. That niña is very fond of you—and she was very unhappy with me for stunning you.”
“What about the Kittridge skycruiser?”
“I
was told that it did crash here in the Selva Grande.”
“You didn’t see the wreckage?”
“No, but Rafe Vargas did.”
“What happened to Kittridge and his daughter?”
“Both dead,” said Warbride.
28
JAKE WENT OVER TO stare out into the clear black night. The wind was blowing harder. “I don’t think they’re dead,” he said, “because too many people are still trying to keep me from finding them.”
“Maybe it’s only that you don’t want to believe the truth.”
“The truth, Elana, isn’t something I expect to get from Vargas.”
“Just because I used the stunbeam on him tonight, caro, doesn’t mean that I don’t love him and trust him.”
“Violence and romance.” Grinning thinly, Jake turned to face her. “Tell me—what happened to Globo?”
“He’s in a cell down below. I want to look into his case myself.”
“While I was in Cuidado, Globo arranged to have me knocked off.”
“Yet you took a risk like tonight’s to save his life?”
“Hell, he was going to be executed for the wrong thing—that’s not justice,” he told her. “After Globo’s plan to get rid of me went flooey, I had a nice chat with him. He says it was Vargas who hired him for the job.”
She stood. “That seems unlikely, since Rafe didn’t even know you were in Mexico.”
“Sure, he did. Globo contacted him—or somebody close to him. I told you, I’ve been trying to arrange a meeting with you.”
“Then are you suggesting that Rafe is jealous of you—that he doesn’t want an old lover of mine turning up again?”
“Nope, that’s not Vargas’ reason at all.”
“Then what is?”
“Quite a few people are interested in Kittridge. That’s because he’s come up with a way to render just about every Tek chip on the face of the Earth absolutely useless,” Jake said. “If I find him first, then that process’ll be used to wipe out the Tek trade. For a while anyway.”
“You’re claiming that Rafe wants to keep you from locating the professor?”
“Yeah. And I’m pretty certain he knows where Kittridge and his daughter are.”
Angry lines appeared on her forehead and around her mouth. “I don’t see what your reason is for trying to turn me against him.”
“Propaganda and persuasion isn’t my specialty, Elana,” he said. “But I intend to find the Kittridges—and I figure Rafe Vargas is one of those who’s trying to stop me.”
Very slowly Warbride said, “If that’s true—then it means he’s lying to me, keeping back the truth.”
“It also means he’s tied in with the Tek trade.”
Her metal fingers tightened into a fist. “We have nothing to do with Tek, Jake, not a damn thing,” she told him. “You must know how I feel about that stuff—especially because of my brother.”
“Most of the recent rulers of your country haven’t exactly shared your views.”
She hit the palm of her flesh hand with her metal fist. “If I collaborate with the Tek lords then I’m no better than that puta, President Romero.”
“And Vargas agrees with you?”
After a few seconds she replied, “I’ve been assuming that he does, yes.” She took several striding steps toward the door, turned and pointed at him with her metal forefinger. “Come along, Jake, we’ll settle all this right now.”
Saying nothing, he followed Warbride out of the room.
The light from the overhead globes made the metal side of Vargas’ face glow palely silver. He was still in his uniform, and the medals on his broad chest glowed, too. He was sitting in a lucite armchair near the center of his room. When Warbride came striding in, the portion of his mouth that showed broke into a smile. “I want you to know, cara, that I completely forgive you for—” Then he saw Jake. “Why did you bring this cabrón here?”
Warbride halted a few feet from his chair. “We want to discuss something with you, Rafe.”
“We?” He was watching Jake. “Since when do you allow gringos to—”
“I want to know,” she demanded, putting hands on hips, “if you had anything to do with plans to have Jake killed.”
Vargas brought his silver fingers up to touch at his silver cheek. “Has he come whining to you with some childish fairy tale of—”
“Vargas,” cut in Jake, “I used to know her pretty well. I don’t think evasive bullshit is going to work.”
“You allow this man—fresh out of jail—to come here and accuse me?”
“Did you?” she asked.
“What possible reason would—”
“I can have Globo brought here.”
Vargas stood up, turning his back to both of them. “Very well, but you’re going to be angry with me, chiquita,” he predicted. “Keep in mind, though, how much I love you, and how much you mean to me. When I heard that Jake Cardigan wanted to come here for—”
“Why wasn’t I told about that?”
Back still to her, Vargas held out his metal hand and made a be-patient gesture. “I was—forgive me, it was childish—but I was jealous. I knew that you two had once been very close—granted it was many years ago—and I simply didn’t want him seeing you again.”
“That was a decision I should have made, Rafe.”
“Yes, surely,” admitted Vargas, shoulders slumping slightly. “It was wrong, cara, as was my foolish plan to have this insignificant cucaracha killed. Once I saw him face to face—why, I realized he was nothing but a pathetic, burned-out failure. Certainly no competition for me.”
Warbride asked him, “What about Kittridge?”
“Who?”
“Kittridge,” she repeated.
“I’m afraid, bonita, that I don’t know the professor.”
“Yet you’re aware he’s a professor?”
“Perhaps I’ve heard of him somewhere. A gringo, is he not?”
Reaching out with her metal hand, Warbride caught his shoulder and turned him around so he was facing her again. “Look in my eyes, Rafe,” she ordered. “Do you know anything about the crash of a skycruiser—Kittridge’s skycruiser—near here?”
He shook his head, but his eyes were on the lightglobe floating a few feet above his head. “Nothing, cara, except that it crashed.”
“Rafe!” She put her metal hand to one side of his head, her flesh hand to the other, and forced him to meet her gaze. “Swear to me that you—”
“I don’t have to swear a damn thing.” He pulled free, backed away from her. “Either you trust me or you don’t.”
“At the moment I have doubts,” Warbride admitted. “Again I ask you—what do you know of the crash?”
Vargas went over to the far side of the room to stand looking out a window. “There was no crash,” he said finally. “That was only a story that was circulated.”
“Then what did happen?”
Vargas watched the night wind worrying the treetops. “Keep in mind that funds for our cause are not always that easy to come by, cara, despite our many recent victories.”
“You made some sort of deal?”
“The skycruiser was forced down in the Selva Grande,” he answered. “For not interfering with that operation, for providing certain people safe conduct—well, we added a considerable sum to our treasury.”
Jake asked him, “Who paid you the money?”
Vargas didn’t respond.
Warbride said, “Answer, Rafe. I, too, am interested.”
“As I understand it, though I never met him directly—the money came from Sonny Hokori.”
“Mierda. You’ve been dealing with the Tek people while—”
“This has nothing to do with selling Tek, or even with manufacturing it. Hokori wanted to waylay Kittridge and his daughter, and he was willing to pay well for our cooperation. His people took care of all the details.”
Jake eased closer to him. “What did they do with the Kittridges after the c
ruiser was forced down?”
“I don’t know.”
“But they weren’t killed?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Where were they taken?”
“I also have no knowledge of that.”
“What about Sonny Hokori—where’s he?”
“As of two days ago Hokori was in Acapulco. At the Pleasure Dome, his casino complex there.”
“Could Kittridge and his daughter have been taken there?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t know.”
Jake next asked, “What about Bennett Sands?”
“He wasn’t involved in any of this—if that’s what you want to know.”
Warbride asked, “How much did Hokori pay you?”
Vargas looked back over his shoulder at her. “He paid us a handsome sum.”
“Specifically?”
“It was—it was five hundred thousand dollars in American dollars, chiquita.”
“Where is that money?”
Vargas looked up at another of the floating globes of light. “As a matter of fact, it’s still here in my quarters. I was intending to turn it over to you—and to explain all that had happened. But then this gringo intruded on us and—”
“Rafe,” she said, “this is muy triste.”
He touched his silver fingers to his silver cheek again. “But we’ve cleared the air now, been honest with each other—although I must admit I would have preferred to have this little talk in private and without a hostile intruder taking it all in.”
“I have loved you, Rafe,” she said sadly. “But you’re of no use to me if I can’t trust you.”
“But you can trust me, cara. Haven’t I told you everything?”
Warbride shook her head. “But too late, much too late.” Her metal arm swung up and her middle finger pointed at him.
“No, cara—please ...
An intense beam of crimson light went leaping from her fingertip.
It hit Vargas in the chest as he was trying to back away. Medals and ribbons burned and melted first and then a small, neat hole was burned clean through him. Blood came pumping out of the hole and then out of what showed of his mouth. Vargas’ arms flapped and he fell back against the wall. He stayed there until he died, which only took five seconds.
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