Which was the local answer to a call and asked if the line was good, not something you could count on here until recently. For standard phrases like that his Spanish was undetectably local; by now the European-Spanish accent he’d originally had was gone along with all or nearly all of the German one.
“¡Sí! Bueno,” someone on the other end said. “¿Se encuentra el Señor Sandoval?”
Horst realized with an internal click that Sandoval must be Zacarías’s surname. He tensed at the female voice, but it wasn’t her; expecting that was illogical, but he couldn’t help it, even if he didn’t know her location to within a few thousand kilometers. She might be up to some deviltry in Europe or even Asia, and not on this continent at all; anything but sitting quietly at home was believable. American women had been insolently brassy and forward even before the new regime, and more so now.
“He is not in the room at the moment, señorita,” he said, looking over his shoulder.
What he’d said was even technically true as Schäfer and Kraus dragged the body out by the ankles under Röhm’s direction, both looking a little pale and green at the sights and smells.
The voice went on: “Find him and put him on immediately, then, please. I’m returning his call and it’s urgent.”
The Spanish was native-fluent, local even, but . . .
The tone is pleasant and the words are polite, but it’s preemptory. Crisp, no-nonense, commanding. That is someone talking to Sandoval or Sandoval’s employees as if they were her servants.
Which since Sandoval had been turned and had apparently called out meant that this was, to a high degree of probability, his American controller. Probably his Black Chamber controller.
“Disculpé, lo iré a buscar de inmediato, señorita,” he said, promising to look for Mr. Sandoval right away, a useful turn of phrase in Mexico where inmediato could bear the same relationship to “immediately” as mañana did to “tomorrow.” He’d thought Yankees sloppy-careless about punctuality and exact performance of promises and orders, until he came here.
Then he set the receiver back in the cradle; that might buy them a few moments, but talking further would be futile at best, possibly harmful.
“We need to get out of here, now,” he said, striding back into the warehouse, where there was a frantic bustle of packing.
I wish it had been her on the phone, he thought. Even with the added risk. I won’t say killing her would make me die happy, but . . .
Then: No. The mission comes first. Remember that, Horst! She’s probably off somewhere doing something disgusting and evil far, far away. But maybe she will be here. It’s not out of the question . . .
“Stop that!” he snapped, as a clumsy octuplet of Mexicans and Germans started to back a wagon toward the bomb part of the flying bomb and others ran back and forth with crates and weapons.
“Do we have timers and detonators available?” he asked.
I shouldn’t delay . . . but if it is her, how poetic to repay that bomb on Rapsstrasse back in kind! Diehl’s headless ghost will laugh in heaven or hell or Valhalla.
The technician nodded uncertainly, obviously wondering what was going on. Röhm wasn’t, and grinned his troll’s grin as he spoke.
“Ist der Papst katholisch? My thought exactly, Horst. Pay the bitch back in her own coin.”
TWELVE
Hacienda of the Sweet Arrival
Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge Army Air Corps Base
State of Zacatecas
United States Protectorate of México
JUNE 21ST, 1917, 1917(B)
Earlier the same day, Luz stepped back and removed the empty magazine of her new Colt .40 automatic pistol, letting it fall into her left hand and setting it on the shelf. She hadn’t missed any of the targets that had popped up, and would have been shocked if she had, now that she was used to the new weapon. You still had to practice to maintain the skill, and there was a satisfaction to doing something difficult and doing it right. And in pushing yourself to do it better, which in her case mainly meant faster; it had been a long time since she missed much.
Rather like playing the violin, but less melodious, she thought, and removed her earplugs—light rubber on a cord that let you dangle them around your neck, yet another innovation of the Progressive era and a very recent one.
Among the renovations the Duráns had made to their new property’s headquarters was a separate building with a gymnasium and salle d’armes for the build your body part of the Party’s program. The latter included firing ranges of the very latest and most Progressive type. Luz checked the chamber of her .40—which was easy since the slide was locked back after firing the last round—slipped in another magazine, released the slide to chamber a round, snapped on the safety with her thumb, and waited with the muzzle carefully elevated. The machinery of the shooting range clicked and rattled as it reset.
That made her conscious of her surroundings again; it had just started to rain outside in blustery gusts amid a smell of wet dust. The building that contained the indoor firing range had only waist-high walls at its perimeter, with a high roof supported on pillars all around. It was shady but not dark, very comfortable on this early-summer highland day.
They’d spent the morning elsewhere, at the house stables helping young Alice stuff her plump and profoundly lazy but good-natured pony with treats, and then they’d led him around the corral with her perched on his broad, ambling back, kicking her heels and dreaming of headlong gallops on flashing-eyed Arabian steeds, and the pony walking just as little as he could, with deep martyred sighs when compelled to any effort whatsoever. That had kept them suitably out of the way while the guests departed. Now Alice was napping, and the adults could be about their business inconspicuously.
“I like this pistol,” Luz said to Ciara. “The weight and recoil are very moderate, and it’s a sweet piece of design, extremely well balanced; you’re right about how talented Browning is. I’m already as accurate as I was with my FN .380. And the twelve-round magazine could be very handy in a tight spot.”
“Sure, but don’t you have a sentimental attachment to that little bitty Belgian gun, since your da gave it to you as a birthday present when you were a girl?” Ciara teased. “Rather than giving you ribbons for your hair, or a dolly . . .”
“Papá gave it to me to protect my life, and by then I was already a bit old for dolls,” Luz said.
“Which is why you still have the one with the silk hair on a shelf in your old room from when you were a girl, and the stuffed bear with the mismatched button eyes?” Ciara laughed; they shared the master bedroom at the Casa these days.
“Well, I may need them again someday,” Luz said, then cleared her throat and changed the subject: “So I’ll keep the FN as a remembrance . . . or for when I need something very concealable . . . and switch to this for every day. It’s important not to get sentimental about tools.”
This part of the complex was a pistol range, only a few months old but with the slightly bitter-acrid smell of nitro powder already in the fabric of it. From back toward the center of the enclosure came the grunts and fists-and-feet-on-leather of two of the Zacatecas station’s operatives practicing modern all-in hand-to-hand combat as it had evolved over the past few years in the Chamber and the military—a mixture of Bartitsu, French savate, Japanese jujitsu, boxing, wrestling, and plain old-fashioned fork-of-the-crick riverboat-and-frontier no-holds-barred butt-stomp-and-gouge American dirty fighting. And over that Julie’s sharp voice, only a little muffled by the wire-mesh mask she was wearing:
“En garde! Prêt! Allez!”
On the heels of the last command the soft scuffle and ting-click and panting of Julie and Henrietta fencing with the epée began again immediately. That distant descendant of the rapier via the gentleman’s smallsword of George Washington’s day might not have any direct application in combat these days, but it was very good g
eneral athletic conditioning and taught hand-eye control and quick reflexes and bone-deep physical self-confidence.
I must get in a few bouts if I have the time; Julie can really push me.
“Now it’s your turn, querida,” Luz said. “Nothing fancy, just tap two into each target’s center of mass. Muscles of the arm engaged but not quivering-tight, squeeze the trigger, fire as you exhale with just a slight pause in your breath before. Bring the weapon up, sight, fire, let the sights fall to the next aiming point and then the pause in your breath for just a second as you take up the slack. Don’t jerk the pistol around, don’t force it, everything smooth. Fast you can build with time, but it comes after accurate—a slow hit is usually better than a fast miss.”
“Though a near miss can make them keep their heads down, eh?” Ciara said.
“Quite right, and we’ll get to that. But basics first.”
Ciara stepped up to the line drawn on the asphalt floor—combat shooting rarely involved a convenient counter at waist height, unlike popping bottles at county fairs—and waited until Luz nodded. She raised her identical Amazon, visually checked that the safety was off, and kept it muzzle up with her right side presented, leaning forward slightly with her left fist tucked palm up against the top of her breastbone, her right foot advanced, the left at shoulder-width distance and pointing at a forty-five-degree angle with both knees slightly flexed.
Luz had first learned the pistol in a different and more genteel upright fashion, but she’d adopted that stance and taught it to her partner. It had become popular in the last few years and was known in Chamber and military circles as the Andy. It was based on actual nineteenth-century professional duelist styles and also recent experience in the field, but named after Andrew Jackson, who was Uncle Teddy’s third most favored president after Washington and Lincoln.
Not least due to the fact that he’d greeted South Carolina’s first rumblings of secession with a blunt promise to hang anyone who tried it from the nearest tree and high as Haman . . .
Ciara stood quietly, her face intent. There was a conventional bull’s-eye down fifty yards from the shooting line, but that wasn’t the main target. The gallery was floored with sand, fifteen yards wide, and enclosed by high adobe walls thick enough to stop a bullet the way a sponge did water. Ricochets were still possible, but then so were strokes and heart attacks—you took reasonable precautions and then went forward.
Luz raised her voice: “Live fire here! Ernesto, on my mark . . . one, two, three, now!”
The attendant Ernesto threw an electrical switch and a mechanism of gears and wires clicked into operation. Ten yards downrange the outline of a man snapped upright and began to move sideways in a curve along a rail at a walking pace; it was made of steel with a fronting of white plywood to absorb shots, covered in turn with a cutout of black paper.
Ciara’s pistol came to the level . . . smoothly.
Crack! Crack!
The target fell down with a muffled clang, and two white flecks appeared on what would have been the center of a man’s torso. Another flipped up closer, shaped like a man lying down with a rifle . . .
Ciara shot with steady regularity until the last of the moving targets fell, then fired the last of her twelve rounds at the bull’s-eye and hit it in the upper right-hand corner of the outer ring. Luz shook her head as Ernesto dashed out to replace the paper covers, then to sweep up the spent brass, and Ciara checked the chamber by eye, snapped the slide home and reloaded, then holstered the pistol with the chamber empty and the safety on.
“¡Extraordinario!” Luz said.
Ciara was frowning; she was a perfectionist in her way. “I only hit five of eight,” she said, slightly fretful. “Hardly better than half! Counting the end target, and I only barely hit that at all. It’s just velocities and trajectories—why can’t I do better?”
“You only started practicing in January, sweetie,” Luz said. “I first fired a pistol with my father holding my hand when I was . . . seven? I think. And you’re just not a born shooter, none of this comes naturally to you. But you’re starting to hit quite often, which is what matters at the last, because you listen to the instructions and follow them precisely. Believe me, that’s rapid progress. Offhand pistol shooting is hard, much harder than using a rifle.”
Though how you’d do in an actual gunfight only time will tell, mi amor, she thought. You’ve got plenty of nerve, but the edge is another matter, turning fear into rage and rage into a cold living drive to kill. Most people don’t hit a tenth, or a hundredth, as often in a real fight as they do on a range, even a modern one like this.
Ciara smiled, showing her dimples. “It’s a machine, darling. I’m usually fairly good at operating machines with a little practice. Now show how it’s really done again.”
Luz actually shot better in action than at practice. She stepped up to the mark herself.
“Double speed,” she said, and Ernesto twisted the handle of his switch. “Set for a walking shoot.”
She thumbed the safety off and took the point-blank stance, the one you used when someone might pop up at your feet or be flattened against the wall beside a doorway you were going through and grab at your gun; you faced more to the front, with the shooting hand back and braced against your side. The left fist was clenched and held near the neck; in the real thing she’d have had her navaja in that hand, ready for a backhand slash or overarm stab down between collarbone and neck.
This stance required absolutely instinctive aiming, since you couldn’t use the sights. She took three deep slow breaths and spoke:
“Live fire here! Ernesto, on my mark . . . one, two, three, now!”
As he threw the switch, Luz began walking forward, her mind a receptive blank; beneath that ran memories, of fear and stink and pain, of feeling her own blood running down her skin, darkness . . . death caught in the corner of the eye, channeled into an awareness as total as a scorpion’s, and as automatic.
Motion. Crack! Motion. Crack!
Luz came to herself at the end of the range and shook her head, almost tasting the hot salt that spattered across your face when you shot at arm’s length. She walked back and found Ciara waiting for her, with Julie and Henrietta in their padded fencing costumes and the tall redheaded Ranger officer. The man was in the normal baggy drab field dress now, where the tomahawk looked much more natural, and he was stone-faced as he looked down the line of prone targets with one brow raised. He was somewhere between her age and his low thirties, though the weathered look of someone who’d spent most of his waking hours out of doors all his life made it difficult to tell precisely, and his face had the long bony square-chinned look his ancestors had probably brought from the Scots border country via Ulster.
“Ma’am,” he said after a long moment in a strong hill-country southern twang. “I reckon you can come hunt in the Wolf Valley country back to home just about any time you please.”
Julie chuckled at his expression of thoughtful purse-lipped interest as Luz reloaded and set her automatic in the new shoulder holster.
I didn’t plan it that way, but perhaps it’s for the best, Luz thought. Giving him something he can understand.
Rangers were the usual partners of choice for the Black Chamber when they needed active muscle, but she hadn’t worked with this particular man before, though his campaign ribbons indicated he’d been in the Intervention since the start.
It was a big war and this is a big country, she thought.
“Captain York, of Roger’s Ranger Regiment, currently attached to the 2nd Philippine Rangers,” Julie said in introduction; the Rangers provided the officers for their colonial equivalents.
Then to the two operatives from her station who’d been practicing all-in:
“Lee. McNaughton.”
That was said with a flick of her eyes toward the entrance. Both men—they looked about Luz’s age, or at le
ast a little younger than Julie—went that way briskly past the weights and exercise machines, the vaulting horse and parallel bars and climbing ropes, ready to quietly head off anyone trying to get in while their superiors were talking.
Then she went on: “And my colleagues, Executive Field Operative Luz O’Malley Aróstegui and Field Operative Ciara Whelan.”
“Ma’am, I am right pleased to meet you and Miss Whelan,” the lanky hill-country soldier said.
They shook hands in the modern fashion; his were big even for someone who stood six-two, and felt like flexible rawhide wrapped around a hydraulic grab as he gave a brief firm grip.
East Tennessee, and a country boy, she thought. And he recognized my name; not surprising, the Rangers are a small world and they gossip. Though those ear piercings for the Bugkalot jewelry aren’t exactly hill-and-holler style . . . not unless you count northeastern Luzon as hillbilly country. And the Bugkalot don’t let anyone use them unless they really do represent heads taken in front of witnesses. They must like him quite a bit.
“Likewise, Captain York,” Luz said, and took a look at one of the badges on his arm. “Ah, you’re one of Fred’s Children too, I see.”
The alternative nickname for graduates of Burnham’s scout-sharpshooter-wilderness survival school in the mountains near his Yaqui Valley estate in Sonora was bug eater, but that might not be entirely tactful on short acquaintance.
“You were at the Yaqui Base Camp, ma’am?” he said, smiling for the first time.
“Twice,” Luz said. “In 1913, when it was just getting started, and then again in late 1915 for the winter version. Let’s see what you brought us, Captain.”
They sat at a rustic picnic-style table not far from the edge of the building, where it looked out over a dripping field of young grass big enough for an outdoor rifle range, amid gray light lit by an occasional lightning flash and rumble of thunder. The falling water would make it entirely private and the staff had already left out coffee and lemonade and a plate of various types of pan dulce under a gauze cloth and withdrawn. An electric light gave a puddle of brightness over the table.
Shadows of Annihilation Page 28