Marchand Woman

by Brian Garfield

  There were some bad dangers in this last possibility though—suppose Carole showed up in fifteen minutes’ time, having changed her mind or having been chased by one of Rodriguez’s scouts? Suppose she ran this far seeking sanctuary and found Anders and the Bronco gone?

  In the end he decided that he might as well play it for keeps. By the time help came the outcome would be decided anyway, and he couldn’t risk abandoning Crobey and Carole. He wasn’t that far gone.

  They’d been scouring the jungle foot by foot but now some unspoken logic brought everybody together at once, by the bank of the pond. Council of war.

  Julio said, “Maybe she fell in the water and got swept over the waterfall.”

  Cielo said, “Anything is possible.”

  Julio was looking at Cielo, pinning him with his gaze. “We can’t let her get away, you know.”

  “Then find her,” Cielo snapped. “What do you expect me to do about it, Julio?”

  “If she gets away she’ll tell everything.” Julio wheeled toward two men coming in from the jungle. “Santos—Badillo—take one of the Jeeps, take a run down the trail, see if you can find this Anders with the stalled car. Where Emil says they left him.”

  Cielo said, “Bring him alive. We must find out how much he knows. He shouldn’t give you trouble—Emil says he’s sick and he hasn’t got any weapons. Santos, I know you. If you kill him I’ll be very angry with you.”

  The two men slung their Uzzis and batted away obediently through the trees.

  Julio was waving his arms. “The rest of you search the stream, both banks. If she came out she left tracks. If she didn’t you’ll find her body in the water.”

  Cielo was bouncing the revolver in his fist. It was the woman’s revolver. He’d found it back up the slope. Suddenly he laughed. “She’s alone, she hasn’t got a weapon, she must be hurt pretty bad—look what we’ve come to, Julio.”

  The others were fanning out along the bank. Julio glared at him. “You want her to get down to the valley and tell everybody where we are, Cielo? Is that what you want?”

  Men moved through the trees, as insubstantial as fog. Cielo felt the tension inside him. His chest was lifting and falling. He cleared his throat and dragged a sleeve across his forehead. “I’m going back to the camp.”

  “You ought to help us find her.”

  “They’ll find her or they won’t. I’m too tired to play these stupid Boy Scout games. Cristo—this whole stupidity is Emil’s fault. Killing the Lundquist boy, killing the CIA woman. These calamitous delusions. All he wants is killing. Now we must pay for Emil’s sins.”

  “It’s not finished.” Julio stayed him with a hand on his sleeve. “Listen to me. We’ll find the woman and we’ll bring Anders up here and find out if he’s told anybody else. Listen, the killing’s hardly started, you’d better recognize that. Anders, the woman—and Crobey’s seen all our faces. We can’t turn him loose, can we.”

  “Ah, man, who cares about that anymore? Nobody wants to kill Harry. Nobody except Emil. We’ll pull out, Julio, we’ll leave this place, that’s all. We’ve been here too long anyway.”

  “They can identify us!”

  “So? What of it? We can steal a boat. They won’t find us in Venezuela or Brazil.”

  “And the weapons? Just leave them here? After everything?”

  “Julio, the guns will never reach Havana anyway. Forget it. It was a bad dream. The old man’s hallucination, that’s all.”

  “You never wanted anything out of this except the money, did you?”

  “I’m a realist. It’s all I’ve ever expected to come of this.” Cielo looked around. All the men had disappeared but now he saw two of them making their way back upstream along the far bank: They must have clambered down past the waterfall and crossed the stream on the rocks below. They went along with their noses to the ground, seeking tracks.

  Julio said, “I’m a realist, too, you know. I recognize we could never bring it off by ourselves, not this handful of us. But we’ve got the weapons now, the money. With those we have power. There will always be people to fight the Communists—from San Juan to Santo Domingo. We can be a nucleus—barter our services throughout the Caribbean.”

  “You’re dreaming, Julio, my ears are deaf to it. You remind me of Emil. Well let me tell you—I don’t want to be a general in your crusade. I want to go out in my new boat and catch fish, that’s all. You and Emil can fight it out between you.”

  The man across the pond stood on the bank and lifted both arms wide with an expressive shrug of his shoulders, signifying that he’d found nothing. Julio acknowledged it by pointing up toward the head of the pond. “Keep looking,” he shouted.

  Cielo turned away from the pond. “Better get back to camp. Maybe she’s out there dying in the jungle somewhere but we can’t take the chance. Let’s get things packed up. We’ll have to evacuate.”

  Julio came along after him, puffing with the circuitous climb. Off to the right Cielo could see the toboggan slide trough of the woman’s fall. He marveled that she could have walked away from that. It was the mud, he thought, this damnable muck.

  He felt sorrow for the woman. Crobey’s woman. Well, he felt sorrow for them both. The woman would get lost out there and the jungle would kill her. If she hadn’t drowned already.

  “Let’s hurry. I don’t trust Emil up there with Crobey.”

  “Vargas will keep them separated,” Julio said.

  “Emil would slit Vargas’ throat if it seemed useful.” Cielo scrambled over the lip onto the road and hurried toward the camp.

  Through the trees he had a glimpse of the mouth of the cave above the camp. How ludicrous, he thought. All that ordnance—the heavy weapons, the vehicles, the tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition. All that and they couldn’t even wage effective war against Crobey’s unarmed woman. Oh, we’re the terrors of the Caribbean, all right.

  She crawled wincing to the edge of the high trees and looked out, panting in the thick steamy air. The rain was letting up. Pains stabbed through her and she had to wait for her vision to clear.

  The flat was open to her left. Farther along the cliff she saw a fresh scar, white jagged bits of rock like exposed bone and a couple of poles that looked as if they’d fallen down. A length of cable lay curled sinuously, its end frayed like Medusan hair, and not far from her squatted a little gasoline engine with a winch drum. Someone had spent some time beside it because there were half a dozen empty beer bottles and soda pop cans.

  She lay with her chin on the back of her hand, soaked through, hair matted, tattered as a barrio urchin. She was studying the camp below the cliff. Four or five rudimentary huts—thatched conical roofs, African-style. Two Jeeps were parked haphazardly between the two largest huts. While she watched, she saw two men come up into the camp from the path beyond. She didn’t recognize them, though she could see neither of them was Emil Draga. They both wore green combat fatigues and military caps and she wondered if they were aware of the irony of that: Castro and his men wore the same uniforms.

  The two men went past the Jeeps calling out ahead of them. In response a man appeared in the door of the largest hut: a huge man, too bulky to be Emil Draga. There was a brief exchange of words down there; then the two men went inside the hut and the huge man crossed the campground to another hut, went inside briefly and then emerged, backing out, his submachine gun leveled. Another man followed him out and, obeying the gestures of the huge man, walked around ahead of him toward the big hut. The prisoner limped a bit. She saw nothing but the back of him but it was Harry all right, and her heart soared.

  Emil was pacing back and forth, rubbing the cloth bandages they’d wrapped around his wrists after Vargas had sawed off the manacles. Julio was rummaging in his duffel bag under one of the cots, looking for dry clothes to change into. Cielo stood near the door and watched while Harry Crobey stooped to enter the hut, followed by Vargas who went straight across to the radio and sat down with the Kalashnikov across his knee
s to fiddle with the tuner knob. The radio sputtered and hissed but there was nothing on that band. Harry Crobey looked from face to face with sardonic amusement. When no one spoke to him he sat down at the camp table and began to play solitaire.

  Vargas looked up. “Emil wanted to kill him so I kept them separated.”

  Crobey glanced at Emil. “I invited him to try with his bare hands, since Vargas wouldn’t give him a weapon, but he’s a chicken-shit bastard.” He leered. Emil was a head taller and forty pounds heavier than Crobey, and could spot him nearly thirty years, but Emil wasn’t a fool. Not in that way. Crobey knew a hundred ways to kill a man bare-handed.

  Emil declined to rise to Crobey’s bait. He only said to Cielo, in an offhand way, “He knows our faces and of course he must be killed.”

  Cielo said, “That might be futile. There are others. We can’t kill every last one of them. To you, Emil, the answer to every question is a bullet, isn’t it. The fact is it probably won’t matter to our security whether Harry goes free or not.”

  He saw Crobey’s eyes flash but Crobey was too wise to ask questions.

  “Then again,” Julio said, “she may be dead in the jungle. That was a hell of a fall she took when you kicked her over the cliff.”

  Cielo addressed Crobey: “Who else have you and Anders told about this?”

  “I can’t speak for Anders. He’s probably telling the whole world about it by now. Me, I only told three or four friends.” Crobey grinned at him. “You’re right. Maybe I’m worth something to you alive, as a hostage, but it won’t do you any good to waste me.”

  Julio said, “Of course he’d say that anyway, whether it’s true or not.”

  “It’s more likely true than not true,” Cielo said. “When the others return we’ll pack our personal belongings and take enough small arms to defend ourselves—in case. We’ll go down the back side of El Yunque and fade into the country to the south.”

  Emil was looking at Vargas’ Kalashnikov, possibly gauging his chances. Cielo said, “Emil, we’re not taking you with us. You’ll have to make your own way.”

  “I always knew you were a traitor.” Emil said it without heat and without looking at him; he was still facing Vargas, who returned his gaze evenly, with bovine indifference. Vargas had a thick skin and a gentle soul but Emil knew better than to attack him head-on.

  Emil said, “You people have bungled everything, right from the start. You’ve been humoring my grandfather, isn’t that it? You’ve never had any intention of carrying through with his wishes.”

  “Neither have you,” Cielo replied. “Your grandfather’s dream is a free Cuba. Your dream is a dictatorship—your own.”

  Julio said, “We’re going to have to kill Emil, too, aren’t we.”

  It made Cielo look at him. Julio’s eyes were sad. “You were right, you know. Once the killing starts it never stops. Emil’s the one who started it. It can only stop when he’s dead.”

  Emil swiveled—now he was facing not only Vargas’ but Julio’s as well.

  Crobey slapped one card down on top of another. He said, “If all you blokes kill each other I can just walk out of here. Right? It’s a splendid idea, chaps. Go to it.”

  Emil looked about him with disdain. “Kill me and my grandfather will avenge it. Your women, Cielo, your children. My grandfather will have them killed, and you and your brother and all your men—no matter how far you go, no matter where you try to hide.”

  Julio said, “Not if you die in an accident witnessed only by me and my brother. And Vargas here.”

  “And Crobey,” said Crobey. “Don’t forget old Harry.”

  “Christ, Harry,” Cielo said, “your presence gives me a ripe pain in the ass right now. What are we going to do with you?”

  “I don’t know, old sport. But I don’t see as you’ve got anything to gain by killing me.”

  “For the love of God,” Cielo murmured haplessly, “I don’t want to kill anybody.”

  The man who’d gone to search upstream came running urgently back to the pond and stood above the waterfall summoning the others with shrill whistles. When two men came in sight downstream in the drizzle he waved his arms violently and the two men shouted back into the jungle.

  By ones and twos the others appeared below the waterfall and the first two men waited impatiently while they climbed up to him. Then he led them upstream, excited, to show them what he’d found—freshly overturned stones in the stream. Someone had gone up through the chasm to the rimrock above.

  “It must be the woman. Come on—we will look on top for her tracks.”

  Confused as to his bearings, Anders fought to stay awake. Fever drenched him in sweat and something was going wonky with the one good eye he had left. He slammed down into a lower gear and fought the wheel. The primitive roadway had all but petered out by now. He’d have to get out and walk soon.

  He clenched his stomach muscles to fight back dizziness and shoved the Bronco forward in an effort to pick up speed while he could still drive at all. Rosalia was gone but he had the illusory vague sense he could redeem himself by accomplishing this mission; at least he had to give it his best shot. But then his eye clouded over and he dragged his sleeve across it. He was having trouble co-ordinating his body and hit the accelerator by mistake. He was going about fifteen miles an hour up the gravel when he went off into a culvert. The Bronco slowly tipped over and fell on its side. Glenn Anders was knocked out, and he would remain that way when the guerrillas came to drag him back to the camp.

  Listless stupidity was wearing off; she was thinking more clearly now and her nerves started to jangle—the terror that had muted itself expanded inside her now and she trembled uncontrollably. All the aches and stings of her injuries grew acute; she noticed new agonies she hadn’t felt before.

  This was madness. There was nothing she could do—nothing but make a fool of herself and get killed. Christ, the best combat soldier in the world would know enough to get the hell out of here. She was beginning to remember a lot of Harry’s dicta—among them that a soldier’s first job was to keep alive: He’d quoted Patton’s line about not dying for your country but making the other bastard die for his country.

  All the same she was working, moving, preparing for the attack. The soda pop bottles, mud and gravel from the ground, gasoline from the tank of the donkey engine, her shirttails for fuses. She had three of them in one hand, the bottlenecks clutched in her fingers like a busboy carrying Cokes, and she was making her way down the switchbacking footpath—terrified because if anybody stepped outside the hut they’d see her on the face of the cliff above them. There was no place to hide. They could pin her to this wall like an insect On a display board.

  Chilly dispassion had deserted her; it must have been the effects of the shock. She felt debilitated with terror now and she kept thinking of all the things that could go wrong. She made her way down the steep path one step at a time, testing the footing with a shaking foot, sliding one shoulder along the wall, terrified of toppling over the narrow shelf—it was a sheer drop. The arms cave that Anders had described must be over to her left somewhere but there were outcroppings of rock and she couldn’t see it. Still, she needed to keep that in mind. If the arms were unguarded.… But they wouldn’t be that silly, would they? No. It meant there’d be someone in the cave, and she had to remember that because it meant she’d have someone behind her when she approached the camp.

  Come on now. One step at a time and don’t think about anything else until you get to the bottom.

  The man in the cave sat with a bottle of beer and his memories of a Norwegian girl in a fly-specked room in Guatemala. He was half asleep and didn’t want anybody to catch him dozing so he got up and walked around the cave. The rain had let up but a kind of mist hung in the air, cloud tendrils prying into the cave and he felt clammy.

  He stopped beside a bipod-mounted mortar and rested his hand on its uptilted muzzle. Such a primitive device, the mortar, yet devastatingly effective: An op
en steel pipe with a firing pin at the bottom of it, that was all it amounted to. He liked that sort of simplicity. Complicated mechanisms disturbed him; he distrusted them.

  He walked across the mouth of the cave and stopped suddenly. Was that a movement over to the right at the base of the cliff—someone slipping into the trees?

  He looked away, looked again: But the movement didn’t recur. After a moment he lifted his rifle and sat down to watch that quadrant, alert now, ready to kill.

  Coming over the rimrock the half-dozen men deployed through the trees seeking tracks; there was a shout from up ahead and it drew them all onto the rim by the donkey engine. Here they studied and discussed the evidence they saw in the earth. There were fresh tracks, made since the downpour. The tracks were hard to make out, since everything was imprecise in the squishy clay, but it was evident someone had spent a bit of time here, rummaging about.

  The area beyond the donkey engine was slab rock; it didn’t hold tracks. The men fanned out, a few into the jungle, two more going forward along the rim. One man began to descend the narrow switch-backing footpath that led to the camp at the bottom of the cliff.

  She could see him coming down the cliff and she could see the angular one who squatted just inside the mouth of the big cave with a rifle in both hands; she saw them from her hiding place back in the sodden trees and she wondered if she had left tracks that the one on the path would find when he got to the bottom.

  She saw two more men up top, fitful glimpses of them as they made their way along the rim above the cave. And there’d been voices—even more of them above her somewhere.