The Devil's Footprint (50 page)

A helicopter patrol passed by in the distance, tracked by a Starburst
missile team and one of the SAS on a GECAL — just in case.
 
The pilot was flying nice and straight and
was about 3,000 feet up.
 
He was
obviously an unworried man.
 
He was also
a lucky one.

"What a hellhole," said Lonsdale, wiping his face with a towel
and then draping it loosely around his neck.
 
"No people, no water, no greenery.
 
Just sun like a flame out of hell, and snakes and
scorpions and terrorists.
 
No
wonder they call it the Devil's Footprint.
 
He must have thought he was home."

Fitzduane yawned.
 
"You're
forgetting oil," he said sleepily.
 
"Tecuno has not got much else, but it has got oil."

"Oil and the devil seem to run together," said Lonsdale
lazily.
 
"That's my insight for the
day."

Fitzduane did not reply.
 
He was
asleep.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Madoa Air Base,
Tecuno
,
Mexico

General Luis Barragan's naked body was not responding to Reiko Oshima's
ministrations.

Her tongue explored his groin and plowed little damp trails through his
plentiful and already sodden pubic hair, but to no avail.
 
The supergun might be ready to test-fire in a
few days, but Barragan's personal weapon was down for maintenance.

Privately, he was of the opinion that he had more than done his
duty.
 
He had taken her twice over the
last three hours and had brought her to orgasm in other ways.
 
That really ought to be enough for any woman,
but Oshima did few things in moderation.

He wondered about her upbringing.
 
What had caused a middle-class Japanese brat like Oshima to reject her
upbringing and turn to a philosophy that was little more than destruction
turned into a religion?
 
Upon reflection,
he decided he did not really care.
 
It
was too hot and she was phenomenal in bed and she served her purpose.
 
The fact that her schoolteacher had exposed
himself to her when she was seven — or whatever had set her off — was of little
consequence.
 
Probably, it was as simple
as a severe case of repression.
 
All that
Japanese social obligation and enforced group behavior was enough to drive
anyone nuts.
 
Though was Oshima
insane?
 
Not in a legal sense, he
thought.
 
She was rational in her way and
certainly was aware of the difference between
right
and wrong.
 
So it could be argued that
she was insane.
 
But she was certainly
warped.
 
Seriously sick was another way
of putting it.
 
And
obsessive.

Whatever Reiko did, she did obsessively.

An evil woman?
 
By conventional bourgeois standards, without question.
 
But a great lay.
 
And in this kind of heat, what else was a man
to do in the middle of the day.
 
Apart from rest.

He did not like admitting it even to himself, but right now rest was
decidedly the preferred option.

Distraction was required or Oshima was going to wear away parts of his
body he was rather attached to.
 
She had
a tongue like velvet sandpaper, a penchant for marathons — and the stamina to
go with it.
 
But fortunately she had a
strong sense of duty, which she exercised to excess like everything else.
 
And General Luis Barragan was, at least
nominally, her superior.

Mention work and she hopped to it.
 
Of course, she had her own long-term agenda, but right now she had done what
she had been hired to do extremely well.
 
Security at the Devil's Footprint was as tight as one could wish.
 
The only slipup had been Patricio Nicanor,
and frankly that had been Barragan's error in the first place in hiring a
Zarrista.
 
Well, who would have expected
such idiocy in his own family!

But Oshima had redeemed the Nicanor situation before any damage was
done.
 
An incredible
operator.
 
Hard
to control, but worth the effort.

Oshima's relationship with Edgar Rheiman remained a worry.
 
Both, ideally, were needed if the project was
to be brought to completion, but the reality was that whereas Oshima's security
talents were incredibly useful, Rheiman's scientific skills were essential.

With Rheiman, the whole Devil's Footprint project would not have been
possible, and without a weapon such as the supergun, breaking Tecuno away from
Mexico
would
have been much more hazardous.
 
The
supergun meant they could thumb their noses at
Mexico City
.
 
Tecuno would become an independent country, and from then on the
possibilities were endless.

Oil profits, drug profits, money laundering, forgery,
arms trading, the fast-growing area of electronic piracy, the counterfeiting of
branded goods.
 
There were so many
opportunities to exploit if you ran your own country.
 
Because who was to touch you when you were
the law?

God knows the Mexican elite had proved that very point over the
years.
 
It had not done much for the
population as a whole, of course, but no intelligent man really gave a fuck
about the masses.
 
There would always be
a very few who ruled and prospered — and General Luis Barragan intended to stay
one of them — and the rest were a resource to be used.

Idealism:
 
nice if you were a
middle-class adolescent.

The practicalities:
 
what most
people concerned themselves
with.

Barragan considered
himself
a practical
man.
 
He was not an opportunistic
strategist like his brother-in-law Diego Quintana, or a fanatic like Oshima, or
a major talent with rather bad habits when it came to women like Edgar Rheiman.
 
He was a hands-on, take-charge kind of guy
who got things done.
 
The world was run
by practical men like him.

Which brought the subject back to Rheiman.
 
Oshima had moved from tonguing him to small
nips with her lips.
 
Now the scientist
was someone guaranteed to distract her.
 
Just as well, because when she started to bite down there the omens were
worrying.
 
This was a woman who would not
necessarily stop.

"Oshima-
san
," said
Barragan.
 
"There are some matters
we must discuss.
 
With regret, but time
is short and there are issues to review."

Oshima lifted her head.
 
She
looked, he thought, like some animal disturbed momentarily from eating its
prey.
 
A plastic surgeon could have
minimized her scars.
 
As it was, she wore
them like a badge of pride, her long black hair tied back to reveal every
detail.

She was a frightening and erotic sight.
 
Her lips were full, the skin of her face and body shiny with sweat and
bodily juices.
 
Her
teeth white and sharp.
 
Shadows
reminded him of blood.
 
Fortunately, it
was an illusion.
 
If there had been
blood, it would be his.
 
That was not a
prospect he liked to contemplate.

There was a moment of hesitation, and then she rose from her end of the
bed and sat cross-legged, facing him.

She was completely naked and appeared entirely unselfconscious as she sat
there, her sex revealed — indeed displayed — by her posture.
 
Her breasts were firm, the nipples
prominent.
 
She was in superb physical
condition for her age.
 
She was old
enough, he realized, to be a grandmother.
 
Hard to imagine.
 
Had Oshima ever had children?
 
He thought not.
 
But then again, Oshima's past was something
of a mystery and not something she talked about.

"Rheiman worries me, Reiko," he said, his manner now less
formal as he saw he had her attention.
 
"More to the point, your attitude towards him concerns me.
 
We've less than a week to go and there is
much at stake, and there you are, Reiko, still playing games with him.
 
Or are you?"

Oshima's eyes were on him as she replied.
 
He had rarely encountered a woman with more beautiful eyes, and Luis
Barragan prided himself on knowing many women.

"Rheiman is a sick man," she said.
 
"He killed in
America
and he has killed again
since he came here.
 
Six women have died
in this camp alone."

"Prostitutes brought in for the men," said Barragan.
 
"Of no consequence.
 
They could not be returned anyway."

"At your request, I gave him — lent him — the Irishwoman," said
Oshima demurely, casting her eyes downward.
 
"What more could I do, my general?"

Barragan eyed her suspiciously.
 
When Oshima was submissive, she was up to something.
 
She could never let a situation alone.
 
Always there was a subtext, a maneuver, a
scheme.

"You can let him play with the damned woman for as long as it
lasts," growled Barragan.
 
"I
want him content for as long as his services are required, without interference
from you."

"And if she dies?" said Oshima softly.
 
"After all, she is mine, my general, and
she has a purpose to serve."

To be played with and broken and finally to be
dismembered solely as an act of vengeance against this man Fitzduane.
 
Barragan shuddered inwardly.
 
He found it hard to imagine the level of hate
this woman felt toward her enemies.
 
Barragan had his opponents killed as any sane man in his position would
do, but he did not dwell on the process.
 
Such things were necessary, no more.

And this Irishman.
 
What would he do?
 
By all accounts he was resourceful, yet in
truth what
could
he do?
 
He would have no idea where his wife had been
taken.
 
The Devil's Footprint was about
as remote a spot as could be imagined and was virtually a sealed
environment.
 
So how could the man find
out?
 
But if by some miracle he did
manage to locate his wife and throw together some operation, he had no chance
of penetrating the defenses.
 
Using
state-of-the-art stealth helicopters, the American Drug Enforcement
Administration had tried and had failed a year earlier, and Tecuno's
antihelicopter precautions had been increased since then.
 
So Oshima's optimistic move at picking up her
enemy's wife was a distraction from the main event but posed no real
threat.
 
Though perhaps
it was an indication that Reiko needed to be kept under tighter control.

"If Rheiman strangles her as he has strangled the others, it will be
unfortunate," said Barragan, "but there are priorities.
 
Personally, I don't think he will for some
little time.
 
This is not some
puta
.
 
This is a real Caucasian woman he can talk to, boast to,
fuck
if he wants to.
 
The woman is helpless.
 
She is a
marvelous plaything, and not easy to replace in this part of the world.
 
No, he won't kill her yet.
 
So don't interfere, Reiko, or I may forget
what you can do for me."

Oshima said nothing.
 
There was the
briefest flash of anger and then she bowed her head submissively.
 
She held the position and then her head bent
lower.

Seconds later, Barragan was surprised to find that his most favored
appendage seemed to have recovered.
 
He
lay back to enjoy and think.

Rheiman was happy and was delivering the goods.
 
Oshima had been pulled back from stirring up
the Americans before any serious damage had been caused.
 
Valiente Zarra had been taken out with some
finesse.
 
The PRI would get back into
power as normal, and Diego Quintana could handle them and President Marinas
with both hands tied behind his back.

Most important of all, the base was secure.
 
The plateau defenses could not be breached
without his
knowing,
and his combined defenses in and
around the Devil's Footprint could handle anything.
 
Not that the Americans would ever mount such
a mission.
 
If the media was right, all
President
Georgie
Falls
's
firmness of resolve went into his prick and he had no more for anything
else.
 
Clearly, his
cojones
were
not up to the job.