The Retaliators

by Donald Hamilton

  "Matt, you've taken leave of your senses—"

  I said, "Very good, sir! Oh, very good indeed! You obviously have the situation clearly in mind: you've got a senseless maniac heading for the border with a powerful truck, two hostages, a couple of loaded guns, plenty of spare ammo, and a very itchy trigger finger. Your own private senseless maniac, sir. Call me Frankenstein, Junior."

  "I believe," he said carefully, "that Frankenstein was the creator, not the monster, Matt."

  "Well, you're the creator, all right, and you know better than anybody what kind of a monster you made. You've used it often enough for your own purposes. Now I'm using me for my purposes, sir. I've got two bullets earmarked, one for each hostage. The rest are for any hostile targets that present themselves—Americans, Mexicans, Apaches, or Tarahumara headhunters, I don't give a damn. If they try to stop me, they'll need a couple of front loaders to shovel up the bodies afterwards. Nobody's making a sitting target of me the way they did Roger. They can get me, but they'll have to take me moving, and I'll be moving fast. And shooting back. Pass the word, sir."

  He took another five-count before he spoke. "Exactly what do you want, Matt?"

  "No interference," I said. "I go through clean, not a fingermark on me, or I die right there with lots of company. Hell, it's as good a place as any to say goodbye, a damn sight better than Euler's private agent-assassination preserve, wherever that may be. Tell him he can let me pass; or he can have a one-man massacre he'll never forget."

  "Where?"

  I hesitated; but even if the call hadn't been traced by this time, which was unlikely, Euler could pretty well figure out where I had to go.

  "It's the crossing between Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora."

  "Very well. I'll try to convince Mr. Euler that you mean business, much as I disapprove, but I can't promise that I'll be able to persuade him to let you through."

  You had to hand it to the guy. Even in a time of stress, he could correct me about Frankenstein, and remember the nice distinction, almost forgotten nowadays, between convince and persuade.

  I said grimly, "If not, you'd better warn the local undertakers to brace themselves for a rush of business. Tell Euler I hit the gate in one hour, with or without fireworks. His choice."

  eight

  We stood there for a moment after I'd hung up. The filling station attendant had, I saw, finished topping up the oversized tank of the carryall. I had gas for three or four hundred miles—but the first mile into Mexico was the tough one.

  "I didn't know I was a hostage," Clarissa said, looking at me reproachfully.

  "If you're coming along," I said, "there's no reason I shouldn't make use of your presence, is there? Of course, you're free to bail out if you like. As you heard, it could get rough. Make up your mind." I turned to Kotis. "Stick very close while I go over and sign the charge ticket.... Mrs. O, if you're coming, you can get back behind the wheel and start her up."

  Clarissa hesitated. Then her shoulders moved in a kind of helpless shrug under the yellow corduroy of her nicely tailored jacket, and she walked away towards the truck, a big, good-looking young woman. She'd have made a truly striking figure if she'd stood up straight instead of slouching in an effort to make herself look smaller. Her motives in sticking with me weren't quite clear to me, but then, I didn't think they were quite clear to her, either. I shepherded Kotis over to where the attendant waited by the charge machine; two minutes later we were driving away.

  The stalling that followed was bad; it always is. Riding around covering Kotis from the back seat and checking my watch frequently, I tried to put myself into Euler's mind, but I didn't have much success since I didn't really know the man. If he was as tough as Mac, I didn't have much longer to live: Mac plays the hostage game with nobody and for nobody, and the standing orders by which we operate read accordingly. I didn't take a great deal of pride in what I was doing. It's always a lousy business. I could excuse myself with the fact that one of my hostages was actually a volunteer of sorts, while the other deserved no consideration from me after what he'd helped do to one of my colleagues. Nevertheless, it was still a crummy way to put pressure on anybody, even Andrew Euler, and I wouldn't have done it if I'd had a choice.

  I gave a final glance at my watch. "Sixty-five minutes. That's long enough. One way or another he should be ready for us.... Take a right at the next corner," I said to Clarissa. "Any trouble, and you hit the floor, remember? And you, Mr. Kotis, behave yourself and don't bother to tell me I'm crazy and can't get away with it. You'd better hope I get away with it."

  "I'll be good," the BIS man said. "But of course you are insane. You know that, don't you?"

  It was fairly courageous of him, and his voice was steady. He wasn't much of an agent, by our standards, but he wasn't a total loss.

  I grinned. "We all have our little insanities, Kotis. Maybe one day you'll find some of your own.... Mrs. O, please take us down through that underpass. Now right at the corner up ahead. Okay, we're on the glide path, two blocks from touchdown.... I surely do hope your boss values your services highly, Mr. Kotis, and can't bear the thought of losing them."

  The man in front of me cleared his throat. "Why don't you ask him? There he is."

  We were approaching the border gate. A man stood there watching us come. I drew a long breath and cocked the revolver I held.

  "Don't!" said Kotis sharply, hearing the click. "Look, he's alone. He's telling you it's all clear."

  The gate drew closer. There was, as Kotis had said, nobody in sight except the single, waiting figure. I didn't kid myself it was my cleverness that had cleared the trail, if it was really cleared. The guy who was running interference for me here was Roger. Those kamikaze lads can really shake you when they decide to make that final, screaming dive into the flaming muzzles of the guns. With Roger's example fresh in his mind, Euler had apparently decided he couldn't afford to meet another of Mac's wild men head-on. Well, it was the reaction I'd been working for, wasn't it?

  I gave the guy full credit nevertheless. It required something in the way of guts to handle it personally. After all, I might, being a hopelessly erratic and unpredictable nut by my own telephone testimony, have decided to pay off for Roger while I had the chance and to hell with the consequences. But Euler stood there calmly, watching us approach.

  "Stop me beside him," I said to Clarissa.

  "Matt, I... I think I'm going to be sick."

  "No, you aren't," I said. "You're a big, brave girl and you just dote on thrills and excitement."

  "What's my size got to do with being scared?" she asked resentfully, but her voice was steadier. Beside her, Kotis sat stiffly erect on the front seat, silent and motionless.

  The truck rolled to a halt beside the waiting man. There were no visible signs of an ambush. Off to the left, in the northbound lane, a dusty station wagon full of kids and luggage had just come to a stop, obviously homeward bound after a nice family tour of Mexico. The U.S. Customs man was going into his act, quite normally. He didn't even bother to look our way. Maybe he'd been told not to. Actually they don't give a damn what you take out of the country—that's the Mexicans' worry.

  There was, of course, the possibility that a delayed-action trap had been set for me—I remembered the furor caused a while back when some overeager border or Army personnel had yanked back into the U.S. a deserter who'd already made it across the line into Canada. It could be that Euler was going to allay my suspicions, waiting until I'd stepped over the critical international boundary and relaxed, thinking myself safe, and then he would lower the boom somehow....

  I looked over into Agua Prieta beyond the gate. To the left was nothing but a row of shabby little shops, cantinas, and offices selling Mexican insurance to incoming U.S. tourists. To the right was the Customs and Immigration Building, with its small parking area. A truck full of Mexican soldiers was standing there in plain sight. A non-com of some kind—I don't have the ranks and ratings straight down there—loun
ged by the tailgate, chatting with a civilian wearing a dark suit and big sunglasses. As I watched, the civilian took off his glasses and started polishing them with a large, immaculate white handkerchief, after first shaking it out with an elegant snap of his wrist. He turned to look my way casually.

  I let my pent up breath escape, and eased my grip on the revolver a bit. There were going to be no over-eager infringements upon Mexican sovereignty. I knew the man. I could guess that the white handkerchief, the traditional flag of truce, was a signal to me that all was safe south of the border and the situation was firmly under control, being in the capable hands of Señor Ramón Solana-Ruiz, who'd once saved my life and was now standing by to perform an encore, if necessary. Of course, I'd done a few things for him, too.

  Euler was waiting. I rolled down the window between us.

  "You're ten minutes late," he said. "You said one hour."

  "I wanted to give you plenty of time to make your arrangements, or unmake them," I said.

  "You can congratulate yourself on the success of your terrorist tactics, Mr. Helm. There will be no interference." His voice was bitter and contemptuous.

  He was a compact man of medium height, in a brown business suit, a pink shirt, and a dark red tie, dark enough that it would have looked reasonably conservative in other surroundings, but I couldn't figure the shirt. Some folks just think pink is pretty, I guess, but somehow the color scheme wasn't one I'd have expected him to select from what little I knew about him. Well, if my only mistake here concerned Euler's taste in shirts, I could live with it.

  He had wiry, wavy, dark hair that was turning pepper-and-salt gray. His sideburns were almost white, giving him a distinguished, elder-statesman look. His face was squarish and deeply seamed without any suggestion that the crevasses were derived from exposure to the weather; these were indoors creases. His eyes were wrong. They were brown eyes, and they showed a hint of uncertainty that was as out of character—the character I'd constructed for him—as the pink shirt. The hallmark of the dedicated crusader is absolute assurance. It never occurs to him that he might be mistaken about anything. This man had obviously had his fundamental beliefs shaken quite recently—I could guess when. When he spoke, however, there was no uncertainty in his voice.

  "You're an evil man, Helm," he said. "The world cannot afford people like you and your associates any longer. Certainly, this country can no longer be responsible for activities like yours, regardless of what methods our enemies may use. We cannot win by descending to their level."

  "Right on, Mr. Euler," I said. "Next time I see my friend Jack Salter, code name Roger, I'll tell him how you feel about homicide as an instrument of national policy. I'm sure he'll be impressed."

  The wrongness in Euler's eyes deepened, and now there was a slight angry tremor in his voice when he spoke: "The man was a... a mad wolf! We were not expecting... He forced us to kill him in self-defense."

  I grinned cheerfully. "As one mad wolf to another, congratulations, sir. You're catching on. It's always self-defense. Didn't you know?"

  He drew a long breath, and brought his voice under control. "You're a traitor, Helm. We have proof. If you ever step on U.S. soil again, we'll be waiting."

  "Sure," I said. "Well, if there's nothing else, I'll say good-bye. Your boy will be turned loose as soon as we're in the clear. Obviously, you're worried sick about him, the way you keep pestering me with questions about his welfare."

  Euler threw an odd, startled look towards the man in the front seat, as if he'd forgotten all about Gregory Kotis. He looked beyond to the figure behind the wheel.

  "And the lady?" he asked.

  With no guns or roadblocks in sight, and Solana-Ruiz waiting pointedly with his miniature army just across the international line, I no longer had to rely on my hostages, real or phony. It was just as well to set the record straight so nobody made any desperate efforts to rescue a kidnaped millionairess.

  "Ask the lady," I said. "Go ahead, tell him, Mrs. O'Hearn."

  She hesitated, and spoke quite clearly: "The man you arrested on trumped-up charges and shot to death was my brother, Mr. Euler. I'm not really a hostage, I'm here of my own free will. And I think I'll continue to ride along with Mr. Helm. At least he's not hypocritical about his violence."

  A strong emotion showed in Euler's shifty brown eyes for a moment, and it wasn't just anger at the way he'd been misled about her status. Then a battered pickup with Sonora plates pulled up behind us. After a moment, the driver tapped his horn impatiently.

  "Hasta la vista, Mr. Euler," I said. "Mrs. O'Hearn, we're blocking traffic. Drive ahead, tell the Mexican official at the gate we're stopping at Customs, and take us over there. That building to the right. Park beside the military vehicle."

  There was still a moment of suspense as we pulled away; then we were in Mexico. In the parking area, Clarissa stopped the carryall and slumped weakly in her seat.

  "Oh, God, I'm limp and dripping as a dish rag," she said. "If that's the way you earn your living, you can have it."

  I said, "You probably didn't like caviar on the first try, either. Okay, Kotis, take it real easy. You don't want to die after the war's all over—"

  "That is not necessary now, amigo."

  Ramón Solana-Ruiz had come up behind me as I backed cautiously out of the truck with my hand on the gun in my pocket.

  He said, "You do not need him now. You can send him home."

  There were things to be said, like thanks, but they were better said without one of Euler's men listening. I said, "Okay, out you go, Kotis." I urged him around the carryall, and stopped him. "Just a moment and you'll be cleared for takeoff. I want to make you an apology first, and give you a warning."

  He turned to look at me, surprised. "An apology?"

  I said carefully, "I don't like this hostage racket. Even though I've got no reason to be considerate of your feelings, I'm sorry I had to do it, and I'm sorry you had to be on the receiving end. That's the apology. Okay?"

  He studied me for a moment, frowning, and did not answer. At last he said, "And the warning?"

  "A lot of things got said along the way, some significant, some not," I said. "Maybe you'll dismiss them all as part of the general lunacy of the situation. That's your privilege. But maybe you'll wake up in the night some time and start thinking about what you were told. If so, and particularly if you decide to do something about it, watch your back. It might not be a bad idea anyway. That's my professional advice, no charge. Okay, on your way."

  He hesitated, wanting to ask questions; then he turned quickly and walked diagonally across the wide street to where Euler waited just beyond the international boundary. I saw them shake hands. Euler clapped Kotis on the shoulder in a friendly fashion. They moved off together.

  I went back to where Ramón was talking animatedly to Clarissa O'Hearn. Well, he'd never been backwards about approaching an attractive woman; few Latins are.

  nine

  I shook Ramón's hand. "That's another one I owe you," I said. "It was a pretty sight, you and your soldier-boys and your hanky. Remind me to buy you a cerveza some time. But how the hell did you know where to come?"

  "Your chief and I worked it out," Ramón said "After talking with you this morning, he got in touch with me through elaborate and secret channels—I understand there is some difficulty with your security people." He grinned. "Your politics seem to be almost as complicated as ours, friend Matthew. There is always one politician grasping for power at the expense of another, is there not? Anyway, he told me you were replacing the man we were expecting, Salter, who had been detained, and that you might require help at the border. Agua Prieta seemed the most likely crossing for you to use. It was arranged that if later information indicated you were crossing elsewhere, your chief would let me know. He did not, so here I am." He glanced towards Clarissa. "The lady tells me that she is Salter's sister, and that her brother has been shot trying to escape. I thought we Mexicans had a monopoly on the ley-de-fuga techniq
ue of disposing of awkward prisoners. Perhaps we should charge your Mr. Euler royalties. In any case, the political situation you are leaving behind seems to be fairly serious."

  "Yes, but it's not your concern, or mine either, right now," I said. "Let Mac worry about what happens north of the border, for the time being. Our business is here in Mexico. Do you have any word on this guy Ernemann? And can you tell me how to get in touch with our agent Norma—Virginia Dominguez?"

  He shook his head. "At the moment, I am afraid the answer is no to both questions. I may have more information in the morning."

  "Did Mac have any message for me he hadn't wanted to try to transmit over a bugged phone?"

  "Again, no. He said he thought you understood what was required with respect to Señor Ernemann, and I could tell you anything else you needed to know." Ramón glanced at his watch. "Unfortunately, at the moment I must go and thank a certain officer for the loan of his soldiers—it pays to be punctilious when dealing with the army—and also check with some of my informants. Meanwhile, I suggest you drive on to Caborca; that is about a hundred kilometers west of the road junction at Santa Ana. Do not hurry, particularly after sunset; remember that our roads are not made for fast driving in the dark. Accommodations will be held for you at the Motel Del Camino, no matter how late you arrive. I will see you there in the morning and we will talk."

  "Sure," I said. "If you're in touch with Mac in the meantime, let him know I made it all right, thanks to you." I grinned. "Oh, and please offer him my apologies for any disrespect I may have shown him during our last telephone conversation. It was necessary for dramatic effect."

  "Of course." Ramón hesitated, threw a glance towards Clarissa, and said: "I mean no slight against the unfortunate Mr. Salter, whom I met only once, when I say it is a pleasure to be working with you again, Matthew. How do you say: it is like old times?"

  It was nice of him; but as we drove away I hoped it wouldn't be too much like old times, which I recalled had been pretty hairy old times upon occasion. We left the dirt streets of Agua Prieta and picked up speed on the paved highway, heading west. Presently I realized that Clarissa hadn't spoken since we'd left the border. When I glanced at her, I saw that she was watching me oddly.