The Frighteners (14 page)

‘‘I think we can dispense with the social formalities, Lieutenant Barraga,” said Captain Aleman. He looked at me without liking. “So this is the subversive arms smuggler we have been seeking!”

I’d forgotten that I was supposed to be a merchant of death here. It wasn’t a very good piece of country for me, I reflected. One gang, knowing I wasn’t a bankrupt oil millionaire named Cody dabbling in weapons to retrieve his fortunes, was trying to butcher me with machetes. And now another group of gents, who believed I was that arms-smuggling Cody, was pointing automatic weapons at me. I restrained the impulse to tell the tall captain that he couldn’t have been seeking very hard or he’d have found me sooner, like at the border.

He spoke sharply, “Why are his hands free? Tie them immediately. . . . No, behind him!” When Barraga had whipped a length of rawhide around my wrists, Aleman said, “That is better. I will take him to
El Cacique
.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Then Aleman was giving me a violent shove toward the nearest tent that, with my hands lashed behind me, would have had me on the ground if I hadn’t been expecting something of the sort. You can always tell the shovers and the slappers. They’re the ones who aren’t quite sure who they are and what they are, and it shows in their eyes. They have to keep proving their toughness at other folks’ expense.

“Inside, you!”

He waved the sentry aside and gave me another push that sent me stumbling through the door of the tent. He followed me in and swung me around and backhanded me across the face.

“Where is it?” he demanded.

Except for the two of us, there was no one in the tent. As I’d guessed, it was an office of sorts. GHQ. A sturdy folding table with metal legs and a plastic top functioned as a desk, well loaded with paperwork. There was a typewriter and a portable radiotelephone set. A folding metal chair was set up behind the desk, and a couple of others waited in reserve against the side wall of the tent. There was a narrow folding cot along the rear wall, behind the desk chair. It was neatly made up. An expensive, closed suitcase stood at the foot of it—an unmilitary touch, I thought. On an expedition like this you’d expect everyone to operate out of duffel bags and leave the fancy luggage home. On the other hand, rank confers certain privileges everywhere.

Getting no answer to his question, Aleman took another swing at me. The forehand wasn’t as bad as the backhand since I didn’t get the knuckles or the stones of the rings he was wearing, but I made it look spectacular, flinching away from the blow and letting myself lose my balance and go down. They always enjoy knocking you down; and when they’re beating on you, you want to keep them happy. If you make them sad, they may actually hurt you.

"
El Cacique
has stepped out for a few minutes,’’ the tall man said, standing over me. “I intend to have this settled before he returns.
Where is it?
”

I felt a little blood running from my nose; I made no effort to sniff it back. They love the sight of blood—other folks’ blood—and the human body holds several quarts. I could spare a few drops for public relations.

“Where is what?” I asked. “Dammit, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Captain!”

“Do you think I am so foolish?” he demanded. “We want the shipment of arms, Cody; waste no time pretending you do not know where it is! The arms intended for the rebels. We know they were landed on the beach at Bahia San Cristobal. Four trucks transported them inland. We know there was the crossdouble, as you Yankees call it. The rebels did not have the money they claimed to have, the money they had promised, so they tried to take the weapons without pay. But when they opened the trucks, they were empty. Fearing such treachery, your agent, Jorge Medina—you see, we know much about your clandestine operations—had hidden the cargoes before proceeding to the rendezvous.”

“Medina?” I said. “I don’t know any Medina.”

“That is strange, since his lady friend watched you visit him and arrange the smuggling. She is very bitter about the way you involved him in your criminal activities and sent him to his death.”

“They killed him?”

‘‘You know this very well. Yes, they questioned him, but they were rough and clumsy. Medina died at their hands, apparently without giving them the information. But do not try to make me believe that he was not operating under your instructions and that you do not know where he concealed the materiel!’’ Aleman shook his head sharply. “No, do not waste my time with more denials! Obviously the rebels learned that much from your man, that you also knew the location. That is clearly why they have turned their attention toward you. They tried to intimidate you, first by killing your partner, Pierce, and his woman, and then by attempting the life of his daughter, for whom you obviously have a certain regard since you just married her. Finally, when you would not yield to this manner of pressure and tell them what they wished, they tried to capture you for interrogation.” He was talking to intimidate me by showing how well-informed he was, which was fine for me, since he was telling me useful stuff I hadn’t known. But I had a problem: I’d been sent down here by Mr. Somerset to die as Horace Hosmer Cody; could I do anybody any good by continuing to live as Horace Hosmer Cody? I decided that I might as well stick with the impersonation for the time being, since Aleman wasn’t likely to believe he’d got the wrong man and stop beating on me, no matter who I claimed to be.

I said, “Oh, is that what they were doing? The way they were brandishing those machetes, I thought they had the same treatment in mind for us that they’d already applied to my partner, Will Pierce, and his lady friend.”

“You know quite well what they were after!”

“Look, you-all are barking up the wrong tree!” I reflected that I was sadly underqualified for this assignment; I wasn’t any better at talking Tex than I was at talking Mex. ‘‘I never arranged for any shipment of arms, hell, no! I’m a respectable businessman; where would I get arms? I never knew anybody named Medina, and I sure God don’t know where any guns are hidden. . . .”

All of which was the exact truth, of course, except for my being a businessman and respectable; but it didn’t help me much. Aleman stepped forward and kicked me in the side as I crouched there in abject terror. Fortunately he was wearing reasonably flexible jungle boots instead of rigid military brogans, but while I didn’t think any ribs were damaged, it drove the breath out of me for a little.

“You force me to take measures I do not like!” he snapped. “I think you will be less stubborn in a moment. . . . Bring her in!”

The tent flaps parted, showing three figures silhouetted against the outside light. The outer two were soldiers or whatever they called themselves here. The middle shape, supported between them, was feminine and familiar, but it seemed to be considerably more tattered than I remembered it.

The two men bore Gloria forward and dumped her onto the canvas floor of the tent and marched out again. With my hands still tied behind, I kneed my way clumsily to her side, as she struggled to sit up and made it. She wasn’t in very good shape.

For a moment, looking at her, I thought she’d also suffered a beating. Then I realized that her scratches and scrapes were not attributable to fists or clubs; she’d just been forced to do a lot of heedless scrambling through rocky and thorny places by people who hadn’t been as careful to pick the easy routes as I had. My jacket seemed to have got left behind, but she was wearing my Buff Cody hat. Too large for her, the big Stetson should have given her a comic look; but she was too dirty and battered and nearly naked to be funny. I was relieved to see her pull at her rags in an effort to cover herself as she sat there. Not that I was greatly affected by what showed and what didn’t—I’d already made its acquaintance—although Aleman, behind me, was undoubtedly licking his lips salaciously; but if she could worry about modesty her condition couldn’t be too serious. Still, while the big hat had protected her from painful sunburn, her face had a haggard look I didn’t like, and her lips were dry and cracked.

“Easy,” I said. “Easy, Mrs. Cody. Who let you out in that skirt?’’

I’d been afraid shed call me by the wrong name, but she got the message. She managed a weak smile. ‘ ‘Who let you out in those pants, Mr. Cody, dear?” She tried to lick her parched lips, as she regarded me more closely. “Horace! You’re hurt!”

“What’s a little nosebleed between friends? Are you all right?”

There was awkwardness between us now that we were no longer alone in the wilderness; we’d spent a day and a night together and had learned to know each other a little too well in some respects and not at all in others.

“Now there’s a really stupid question!” she said. “Do I look all right? If you really want to know, aside from being utterly destroyed, I’m simply dying of thirst. They wouldn’t give me . . .” She drew a long, shuddering breath. “I was watching the road, waiting for you to show, and suddenly they were just there, behind me, waving guns at me; and then they made me walk so fast! It was miles and miles through that barbed-wire brush, and I kept falling down in these crazy shoes, God, I’ll never wear another pair of high heels as long as I live! I tried to break them off like you offered to once, but you were talking through your hat, mister. It’s some kind of crazy space-age plastic that King Kong couldn’t break and they wouldn’t lend me a machete to chop. . . . They’d just yank me back to my feet and order me to keep up and drag and shove me along when I couldn’t. I’d used up all the water hours before, well it seemed like hours, and they wouldn’t give me . . .”

The captain, standing over us, interrupted: “The lady exaggerates. My men carried her most of the way. They are trained to water discipline, of course, and they know where to find it in this country if they really need it. They do not carry canteens in the field so there was none available for her.”

“Well, there’s some available here in camp, isn’t there?” I said. “Aren’t you going to let her have some?”

“Of course.” His voice was expressionless. “As soon as you tell me what I ask, the lady will have all the water she requires, enough to bathe in if she so desires.”

“You bastard!”

Calling them names is always pointless, of course, and it can earn you some quite unnecessary bruises. However, I had to keep in mind that I wasn’t an experienced agent here, with years of practice at keeping my temper. I was an arrogant, hotheaded Texas millionaire who’d be bound to make with the indignant dialogue. In fact, under the circumstances, I was sure that the real Buff Cody would have gone into much greater detail about the captain’s ancestry.

Captain Aleman smiled thinly. “Eventually, as her thirst increases, I am certain that the pretty señora will persuade her loving husband to yield. I can wait!”

“You’re a low-down, stinking coyote!”

It sounded pretty corny to me, but he found it convincing enough to give me a backhand crack to the side of the face. One of his rings nicked me above the right eyebrow and produced a little more blood for his pleasure. It was pretty much the same situation as I’d met in the men’s room in the restaurant in Cananea. Normally, whether the girl was threatened with execution or dehydration, Superagent Matthew Helm, code name Eric, would not have been permitted to deal; we can’t roll over and play dead every time somebody grabs a hostage off the street. However, to maintain my cover as Horace Hosmer Cody here, I was entitled to consider the welfare of my bride; I was merely concerned with the timing. Could I yield convincingly now-well, as far as I knew how to yield—or should I wait until I had a few more cuts and bruises and he’d knocked Gloria around a bit, brought out the knife he was bound to produce, and promised to spoil her face if I didn’t talk? I mean, I’d been here before. The moves are predictable.

Gloria stirred impatiently. “Horace, I’m really
awfully
thirsty, darling! What can he possibly want you to tell him that’s more important than . . . than me?”

I hesitated, a man struggling toward a reluctant decision. “All right, baby, but I’m afraid you won’t like what you hear. . . . I really don’t know where the arms are hidden, Captain.” I shook my head quickly. “Now don’t get violent again, dammit! I’ll admit I arranged for the guns and the ship, isn’t that enough for you?”

“Where did you obtain the munitions?”

I said, “I got them very indirectly through certain foreign channels, that’s all I can tell you. I don’t know exactly where the middleman I used over there got the merchandise. I didn’t ask; I didn’t want to know. I’m a respectable businessman like I said; I couldn’t afford to be directly connected with anything like that. Jorge handled this end of it. He fronted for me here in Mexico; he dealt with the revolutionaries and arranged for the trucks and drivers.”

I was making it up as I went along, mainly from what hed already told me, but I thought I was pretty close. Illicit arms operations generally follow a certain pattern.

“Go on.”

I said, “Jorge warned me that those wild-eyed dissident bastards didn’t look too reliable; we’d better take some precautions, like caching the stuff until we saw their money, even if it meant a lot of work unloading and loading again if the deal was straight. He said he’d let me know as soon as he’d scouted the route and picked a good spot, but he never did. Next thing I heard, he was dead. Hell, that’s why I’m down here, spending my honeymoon looking for a bunch of lousy guns!”

I looked significantly at Gloria, and she took the cue, saying in a shocked voice, “Horace! Were you actually dealing in . . . You were going to use me, our marriage, our honeymoon, to hide what you were . . . You know how I feel about guns!”

It was soap opera of sorts, but she was a pretty good actress; her anger and distress were reasonably convincing.

I said defensively, “Sweetheart, I have a lot of money tied up in those arms; money I can’t afford to lose and, as my wife, neither can you.”

Captain Aleman broke in: “Enough of this! You are lying to me, or at least withholding information. Possibly you were never informed of the exact location; but you would not be here in Mexico if you did not have some idea of where your agent would have hidden those weapons. At least you know whom to ask and where to start searching. I have listened to your evasions long enough. My patience is at an end. You force me to resort to more drastic measures!”