The Threateners (30 page)

At last she drew a long breath and said, “I’m sorry about this, Mr. Helm. I wish you’d try to understand. . . .”

When I didn’t give her any help, she left the sentence incomplete and turned and walked away, slowly. She was obviously stalling, hoping I’d call her back and say something to her, either something nasty that would prove I deserved to die, or something noble that would tell her that I really appreciated what a wonderful thing she was doing, preserving a unique and precious species from extinction, and that I forgave her for sacrificing me, among others, to do it. I don’t know. I have no trouble understanding the world destroyers like Gregorio Vasquez, but the world saviors like Patricia Weatherford mystify me, which undoubtedly says something unpleasant about me.

I decided that my move should be made about 11:30. I didn’t want to have to deal with a freshly awakened guard but I wanted to give this one time enough to get sleepy. Later in the night, or morning, they might get even sleepier; but I didn’t care to cut things too fine. This way, if things didn’t look right on this watch, I’d have time to abort and try again later. I set my mental alarm and closed my eyes. . . .

A scuffling noise aroused me. It took me a moment to realize what it was; then I turned my head and saw Belinda halfway between our two cots. Kind of like a jackrabbit in slow motion, on hands and knees, the idiot girl was making awkward progress toward me, right out in the open room under the grimy light bulb, where anyone just glancing through the door couldn’t help but see her.

“Get back!” I hissed, waving her away as well as my bonds permitted. “Get back to your cot, damn it!”

But she kept coming, and I didn’t dare speak again. Reaching me, she grabbed me by the arm with both tethered hands and shook me violently.

“Damn you!” she whispered. “Damn you, they’re going to kill us in the morning and you just lie there snoring!"

I said, “I told you to wait for my signal, Belinda.”

She looked at me for a moment, her anger fading. “Oh, shit, did I goof? I was so scared—”

“Never mind,” I said. “Just get back where you belong before. . . . Oh, Christ, she’s heard you, here she comes! What the hell are you doing?”

What she was doing was kissing me passionately, kneeling beside my cot. Well, it wasn’t exactly an original idea, and if we’d been dealing with pros, it would have been a waste of time; I couldn’t believe even amateurs would fall for it. But it wasn’t a bad way to waste time, and I cooperated to the best of my ability. We got as close as our bound hands allowed and let ourselves work at it breathlessly, oblivious-well, almost oblivious—of the approaching footsteps. Then Belinda lifted her head irritably.

“Go away!” she snapped at the freckled young woman standing over us. “If you’re going to sell us to the butchers tomorrow, you can at least. . . Go away!”

She put her mouth to mine again, without waiting for a response. After a while we heard footsteps moving away.

“Okay, now my belt buckle,” I whispered after a certain amount of time had passed. Being somewhat distracted, I wasn’t quite sure how much. I kissed the lady’s ear. “You said you had strong fingernails. It’s covered with foil that’s supposed to peel off. It’s sharp underneath, so be careful, don’t cut yourself. . . . Hold it, something’s happening out there!”

Somebody had come into the hut, several somebodies. I heard a chair fall over; apparently Patricia Weatherford had spilled it, getting to her feet hastily. I heard her voice.

“What . . . ? Oh, you want me to move over that way? All right, but why does it matter where . . .
Oh, no! Oh, don’t, please don’t, no you can’t!”

Then the automatic weapons opened up.

I rolled off the cot on top of Belinda, and got us both underneath it, and flipped it over onto its side between us and the doorway end of the room. Hard as that mattress was, it ought to be good for something, like stopping a bullet, or at least slowing down a ricochet. The racket of several assault rifles set to full auto firing at once beyond the open door was unbelievable. Belinda had burrowed against my back as closely as her bound hands allowed; I felt her cringe at each new burst in there. The Latins have a love affair with the rat-tat-tat guns, they purely love to hear them sing their murderous, staccato songs. The shooting continued longer than there was any sense in; there weren’t all that many people around to be killed. Actually, when it has to be done, I prefer to use just one bullet per target. Economical.

At last there was silence in the other room. I heard a command being given and figured it was our tom, but there was nothing to be done about it. Nobody came through the door. “Who are they?” Belinda breathed at last.

“Oh, I think it’s Senhor O’Connor and his crew. Those Kalashnikovs have a pretty distinctive sound; I’ve heard them before.”

I heard her swallow hard in the darkness. “You’re very calm about it. They’re going to kill us next, I suppose.”

“Actually,” I said, “I think they’re gone.”

“Oh, Jesus!”

“Are you okay?”

After a moment she whispered, “I . . .I guess so. I just . . . just never died before.”

I struggled to my feet, and set the cot upright, and helped her up, and guided her to it. She moved like a sleepwalker, and sat down heavily, and rested her face against her bound hands.

“Are you okay?” I asked again.

She looked up irritably. “Don’t keep asking that. Sure I’m okay. I didn’t even wet myself. I’m great. What do we do now? Isn’t it about time to put the Great Escape back on the tracks, Mr. Houdini? Move around so I can reach that buckle.”

I said, “Never mind the buckle.”

She stared at me. ‘ ‘But we’ve got to get out of here before they come back and—”

I said, “Don’t be stupid. If they’d wanted to kill us, we’d be dead.”

“But—”

I said a little impatiently, “Sweetheart, how many shots were fired in the other room?”

“I don’t know. Hundreds, by the sound.”

“And how many bullets came our way?”

“Well, none . . . I don’t understand what you’re driving at!”

I said, ‘ ‘Four or five men emptied four or five assault rifles in there, maybe even reloading a time or two, and not one bullet passed through this room; even though the walls aren’t thick enough to stop a marble from a kid’s slingshot. Doesn’t that say something to you? Doesn’t it tell you that they were very careful not to direct their fire this way? I assure you, baby, there’s just no way it could be accidental. Hell, they even made the Weatherford girl move before they opened up, I’ll bet so she’d be standing against one of the other walls, not the partition between the rooms.” I grimaced. “They obviously had their orders: shoot as much as you want, boys, have lots and lots of fun, make lots and lots of noise, but if you send one stray slug into that other room,
El Viejo
will eat your cojones on toast in the morning. Or whatever ‘balls’ translates to in Portuguese.”

"But if they want us alive, why haven’t they come for us?" “Because they’re in no hurry. The plane won’t land until dawn. Meanwhile they’re waiting to see if we’ll come to them."

“You mean, they’re lying in wait outside . . . ? How do you know?”

"Because if they’ve got any brains, they’ve got to be. Look, we ought to be pretty panicky in here, wouldn’t you say, after hearing all that shooting next door? We’ll be expecting the same firing squad to come for us any minute, won’t we? As you did. So if we have any getaway secrets we’ve been saving, that Palomino didn’t spot when he searched us, now’s the time we’ll trot them out, right? And slip out of here triumphantly—right into the arms of the waiting security guards, with all our hidden tricks and weapons on display, ready to be confiscated.”

Belinda sighed. “I suppose you know more about it than I. . . . So what do we do?”

I said, “It’s obviously no use trying to make a break tonight, with everybody on the alert, so we just catch up on our sleep some more. And this time, if you want to share a cot with me, I get the inside.”

They came for us well after daylight.

Ricardo made it again, although I thought I heard the topmost leaves of one jungle giant slap into the underside of the plane lightly, just a farewell pat, as our hero pilot jumped us off the runway and shot us skyward like a jet, with the wheels slamming home and the straining engines shaking the plane to pieces—at least there was enough rattling and clattering and buzzing that I expected some important parts, like the wings, to fall off before we were clear. But we made it, apparently without losing anything essential, and Ricardo put us into a tight left turn that laid the aircraft over and would have let me—I had the seat on that side—look down at the asphalt strip we’d just left if the cabin curtains hadn’t been drawn, as before. Presumably the workers were already hurrying to turn it back into an innocent cornfield.

I became aware that Belinda was squirming beside me. She seemed to be trying to accomplish something with her feet, hampered by the tape that bound her legs together. Palomino, still riding shotgun, hadn’t strapped us in as thoroughly as on our last plane trip. Perhaps because he was running short of the stuff—he seemed to have retrieved the diminishing roll he’d left with the late Patricia Weatherford— he’d simply let us retain the tape that had been put on our wrists in the hut, earlier, and secured our legs. I suppose it improved our chances of escape, but at the moment, at least, there was no place to escape to, and I was beginning to wonder if escaping was such a great idea, anyway.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked Belinda.

“My shoes!” she said, with a grimace of disgust. “Ugh, I can’t bear to . . . ! Oh, God, I’m going to be sick again!”

I said unsympathetically, “Well, if you have to, aim it the other way, please; I’d rather not have it in my lap. And you’d better leave your shoes on even if they are a bit messy. If things happen in a hurry, we’ll have problems enough without you limping around barefoot.”

Actually, there wasn’t much blood on her beat-up pumps, but there had been no way either of us could have avoided stepping in it a little. With four people shot to pieces in the front room of the hut, the floor had been pretty well flooded. They still hadn’t been removed when we were taken through. The ones who’d been asleep had apparently managed to make it off their cots before the bullets cut them down; and they all lay where they’d fallen, sprawling gracelessly in the congealing lake of gore: the tall, blond boy who hadn’t wanted to talk about it, the handsome black girl with the big racist chip on her shoulder, the balding little professor who loved sea cows, and the sturdy, freckled, young woman who should have been playing in the French Open or Wimbledon or whatever prestigious tennis events they run in the spring, instead of conducting wild-eyed money-raising projects in the Brazilian jungle. But they do get blinded by their great shining causes; and I suppose it could be argued that being totally concerned, even if it leads to occasional excesses, is at least a slight improvement over being totally unconcerned.

I saw Belinda stare for a moment at the bodies; then she stumbled outside and I could hear her vomiting helplessly. Urged on by Captain O’Connor, I followed more slowly. I’d seen dead people before, both fresh and stale, and they don’t affect my digestion much, but as I picked my way out of that butcher shop I knew I was going to miss Spooky Three even if she had slapped me pretty hard. I’d become kind of used to looking over my shoulder and seeing her there. I glanced at the captain of security, whose heavy face didn’t look like that of a humorist, but he’d had his little joke nevertheless, leading them to think, happily, that they were leaving this place on the morning plane. . . .

Belinda had stopped trying to poke off her shoes. She also seemed to have conquered her recurring nausea, but her eyes were still wide and shocked.

“Why?” she asked. “Why would they kill them?”

The antecedents of that were a little scrambled, but the meaning was clear. “A mistake was made,” I said. “In that business, when a mistake is made, you kill somebody, it’s standard operating procedure. It keeps the boys and girls on their toes. Palomino half expected to die, remember. He knew somebody had to. The choice was between him, the MPS gang, and us. Aren’t you glad
El Viejo
didn’t choose us?” When she didn’t answer, I went on, “Besides, they’d served their purpose; what more could they do for Vasquez? This way he even saves a little blood money, not having to pay them off a second time, although I doubt that figured largely in his calculations; he’s got the stuff to burn.”

Belinda started to speak again, but changed her mind and settled back in her seat. It was a long flight, and I was starting to wonder about the fuel situation, even though a lot of gas had been pumped aboard at the cocaine-factory when Ricardo and Palomino picked us up; but at last our pilot dove suddenly and made one of his crash-bang landings on a rutted dirt airstrip that fought right back. We were allowed to relieve ourselves in the nearby bushes, one at a time, while Ricardo dragged the camouflage netting from a stack of fuel drums at the side of the strip and filled the plane’s tanks laboriously by means of a hand pump. Then we were leg-taped again and airborne again after the usual noisy acrobatics.

“Oh, my God!”

Startled out of a semidoze, I looked at Belinda. She was staring forward, past Palomino’s head, and by straining sideways a bit I could get almost the same view through the windshield. It was a jagged wall of rock that reared up spectacularly against the sky ahead, capped with white even now, at the end of the South American summer. Or maybe, up there, it was the beginning of winter.

There are times in eastern U.S., and elsewhere, when I get a little impatient with folks who talk about mountains when the rocky stuff to which they’re referring only goes up a mere mile or so into the air. Hell, in Santa Fe I live at seven thousand feet, and at one time, in the winters, my wife and I used to drive fifteen miles up behind town several times a week to go skiing at ten thousand. That was back when I indulged in innocent pastimes like matrimony and skiing. But the South American mountains are high enough to earn anybody’s respect, even that of an old cliff dweller like me. In fact, there are twenty-thousand-foot-plus Andean peaks that, I believe, are as tall as anything the Rockies have to offer, or maybe even a little taller.