The Viper Squad (13 page)

Security was tight. Mike and Cesar had nothing but revolvers, and would hardly be able to get in close enough to use those.
Even if they did, they would not stand a chance of escaping after the attack.

Mike’s attention focused on a long toolhouse. Its windows were barred, and an armed guard stood at its door. However, the
man’s duties seemed to consist more of signing tools out and in than actually guarding the building, and his Kalashnikov assault
rifle was slung by its strap across his back in a comfortable but not readily accessible position. He often wandered away
to talk with whoever was getting into or out of cars in the parking lot.

Mike had some ideas floating around in his mind. Things would have to depend on what he found in that toolhouse. When the
guard wandered off for one of his little chats, Mike and Cesar ran in a crouch through the bushes till they got to the rear
of the toolhouse, then ran along its side and through its open door. Cesar stood inside the door, watching in case they had
been seen. Mike searched about inside.

“Damn, Mike, he’s coming back by a different way,” Cesar whispered loudly. “He’ll see us if we try to leave.”

“So we stay,” Mike said unconcernedly, pulling a long roll of heavy cable from a shelf.

Cesar backed away from the door. A minute later, they saw the shadow of the guard as he stood outside on duty again. Cesar
looked at Mike. Mike put his fingers to his lips and pulled out his revolver. If the guard came inside, he would see them
right away, for there was no place for
them to hide just a long open space with a floor of rough boards and walls of shelves loaded with light tools and supplies.

Mike gestured at the cable and tools he wanted them to take. Cesar nodded. When the guard left next, they would take them
and sneak away.

The guard coughed. They saw his shadow move; then blue cigarette smoke wandered in along the shaft of light through the open
door. Then his body darkened the door—way and he stood there looking at them for an instant.

He leaped out again fast as a deer and slammed the door after him. Mike heard a bolt being shot home as he reached the door
too late, and then another. The guard yelled an alarm and was answered by others.

Mike and Cesar looked about them. They were prisoners. The windows were barred. The walls, floor and ceiling were constructed
of wide, rough-cut boards. They had revolvers. The guard had an automatic rifle. More guards were coming. Cesar cursed. Mike
winked. He handed Cesar a jimmy and took one for himself.

Four other guards joined the one outside the door. They checked the safety catches on their Kalashnikovs and nodded to him.
He slid back the two bolts and pushed in the door. The guards went in fast, rifles held at hip level, ready to empty the magazines
into the intruders.

No one was there. Just a long open space with shelves. They watched, amused, as the guard who had raised the alarm walked
the length of the toolhouse and looked, mystified, at the barred windows.

“Know where the gringo spies have gone, amigo?” one of the four said. “Back to your house to make love to your wife.”

The others laughed and one said, “Look under the bed.”

They left and were followed outside by the guard in charge of the toolhouse. He was apologizing.

As in an old honor movie, a hand rose from beneath the
floor and raised a board. Mike climbed up from beneath it, replaced the board fast and tiptoed up behind the door. When the
guard walked in again after the others had gone, gun at the ready, to look things over, Mike brought down the steel jimmy
on the back of his head.

“Okay, Cesar,” he called.

Another floorboard rose and Cesar appeared. The guard’s skull was stove in, and they put him beneath the floorboard after
relieving him of his rifle and spare magazines.

They carried the cable and tools outside to the bushes at the edge of the parking lot. The yellow Citroen was parked close
to the undergrowth, so Mike was able to conceal the two cables he attached to the car’s bodywork and run them back through
the bushes toward the electrical transformers. He climbed the Hurricane fence around the equipment, having checked for the
presence of guards, and Cesar threaded the two cables through the fence to him and then climbed over himself.

Mike bared three feet of heavy-duty wire at the end of each cable, then he took one and Cesar the other. Mike pointed to the
place for Cesar to let the bared end of his cable drop, and at his signal, both wires fell simultaneously onto the high-voltage
contacts. Huge sparks snapped like pistol shots, a smell of ozone spread in the air and the heavy copper wires melted like
chocolate over the steel contacts. But they held.

The car should now be part of this high-voltage circuit, insulated from the ground by the rubber and air of its tires—ready
to zap a load of power through anything that connected it to the ground.

Mike and Cesar climbed back outside the fence and positioned themselves in the bushes with a clear view of the Citroen.

Mike looked at his watch. “Ten minutes to twelve. I’m betting he drives into the town for lunch at twelve sharp. Let’s hope
they don’t start up a search for the missing guard before then.”

But no one was looking for equipment from the tool—house this close to lunch hour. Mike and Cesar saw three figures enter
the parking lot from the far end.

“He’s early,” Mike whispered to Cesar. “He’s the tall one in the center.” He readied the Kalashnikov. “Let’s hope the right
man touches that car first. If I have to use this rifle on him, we won’t stand a dog’s chance of escaping from here in the
middle of the day.”

“Fire if you have to,” Cesar ground out coldly.

Mike smiled. “I’m betting on their confusion to give us a good start. It’ll take them awhile to figure out what’s happening
if I don’t have to use this rifle.”

The three men neared, and Mike and Cesar watched in silence.

The tall man reached with his key to insert it in the door lock. Sparks flickered about his hand. He stiffened and his mouth
opened in a silent scream. His eyeballs rolled back in his head and he sank slowly to his knees, his right hand still glued
to the car door.

His nearest companion shouted something and tried to lift him by his armpits. He too writhed about, but as he fell, he lost
contact and broke free of the flow of electrical power. He lay on his back on the ground, unmoving, his eyes closed.

The third man looked from him to the first, now huddled motionless against the yellow Citroen’s door. A ribbon of back smoke
curled upward from where his clothes and skin burned on contact with the steel. The third man looked about him wildly and
then ran.

“Let him go,” Mike restrained Cesar.

Both of them retreated deep into the cover of the bushes in the direction of the coast. Some distance from the communications
center they holed up till after dark. Mike used the Kalashnikov to commandeer a small fishing craft, and they made their rendezvous
offshore with the Coast Guard cutter. Mission complete.

Mike had done occasional things since then for a couple
of other federal agencies, and as a result enjoyed a limited immunity from government interference. So long as he stayed
away from sensitive areas. El Salvador was a very sensitive area. The powers that be would slap him down real fast if they
had any notion he was moseying in that direction.

Campbell had been in El Salvador twice before, each time as a point of unobtrusive entry to somewhere else—once to Honduras,
the other time to Guatemala. He knew he needed someone very familiar with what was happening there, yet who could be relied
upon because he was not personally involved. In other words, he needed someone who understood Salvador but was not Salvadoran.
Cesar Ordonez. Mike knew his phone number in Miami. Their paths had crossed several times since their trip to Cuba, and Mike
had tried twice unsuccessfully to enlist him on merc assaults in Africa. Cesar was less a soldier of fortune than an anti-Castro
fighter. He had told Mike he would have gone with him to Angola to fight the Cuban reds there. The Salvador guerrillas were
getting Cuban aid. Maybe he would go there. It was worth a try.

“This is Mike Campbell. Remember me?”

“Sure, Mike. Go ahead. You can talk on this line.”

Mike recognized his voice but did not want to say too much. “I’m going somewhere I expect to run into some Cuban technicians
and advisors. I thought you might like to meet them.”

There was a silence at the other end of the line, then a laugh.

“You wouldn’t shit me, Mike?”

“No guarantees, but I hear they are in this place. Money is good too.”

“I don’t care about the money and I don’t care about the place.”

Mike gave him Andre Verdoux’s number.

After Mike had hung up, Andre said to him, “Looks like you’re stuck with me, like it or not, Mike. It seems
I’ll be organizing our training camp and taking care of logistics.”

Mike laughed. “I couldn’t have a better man for the job, Andre. Stateside we’ll need all the help you’re willing to give.
No deal overseas, though.”

“Understood, mon vieux, understood,” Andre purred. “Where will we train?”

“Where Washington will least expect us,” Mike answered. “Right in D.C.’s backyard.”

M
IKE
Campbell pulled the pickup next to his mobile home. Tina rushed out to meet him. They em—braced long and hard, to the amusement
of the old couple in the aluminum lawn chairs on the next lot in the trailer park. Tina helped Mike carry in the loaded shopping
bags. As soon as they were inside, she jumped him.

Mike caressed her long black hair out of her eyes, stroked her cheeks and kissed her lips. He felt her soft body press close
to him in a kind of wordless plea for him not to leave on this mission. He felt himself rise to the warm provocation of her
belly and thighs. Then he gathered her shapely body into his arms and cared her to their bed.

The old folks in their lawn chairs shook their heads at the rhythmic shaking of one end of their neighbors’ mobile home.

“Going at it real good for this early in the day,” the old boy commented with a wink.

“That man is an animal,” his wife said disapprovingly. “I can’t imagine why on earth that woman tolerates him.”

Mike set up ten separate medical kits, each one independent of the others, the extras to replace lost or damaged
kits or to be given to friendly forces in the field. He wanted to bring as little as possible of a suspicious nature through
the El Salvador customs—but he could not compromise on medicines. Weapons he knew he would find in abundance there, but quality
medical supplies were often not to be had abroad for any kind of money. Each team member would bring his own kit in with him.

He packed the bottles and packets tightly into coffee cans and snapped on the plastic caps. Two broad-spectrum antibiotics,
tetracycline and ampicillin. Chloroquine and primaquine against malaria. Flagyl, as an anti-amoebic. Paregoric and Lomotil
against dysentery, and Metamucil against the opposite, constipation. An electrolyte solution in case of dehydration. A bottle
of pure alcohol to rub on arms and legs to disinfect and ease the itch of cuts and insect bites, which tend to fester quickly
in the tropics. Band-Aids. Ointments against eye and ear infections. Merthiolate as an antiseptic and germicide. Vitamins,
salt tablets, aspirin, Tylenol #3, codeine, Novocain, morphine . Cortisone against swellings and asthma, Benadryl and epinephrine
against allergies. A surgical mini-kit including sterile-sealed scalpel, tweezers, mosquito clamps, sutures, needles, gauze
pads and bandages. Scotchcast, a fast-hardening plastic for making casts for broken bones. He made notes to add things he
had forgotten to buy.

Each kit contained a small quantity of every item, so the kit’s bulk was not so great as a list of its contents might indicate.
The experienced men would not bitch about having to carry what inexperienced men might regard as an oversupply. The importance
of having an adequate medical supply was one of the first grim lessons Mike had learned as a merc. He and others with only
regular army experience behind them had not realized how much they had depended on the backup forces a regular army provides
as a matter of course. The irregular soldier, whether merc or guerrilla, more often than not cannot
depend on any backup. Mike had seen mercs die slow and agonized deaths in Africa for want of some drug no one had thought
to bring into the bush—or succumb to African river blindness, transmitted by black flies, for want of the little white pills
taken only twice a week.

He packed the kits into three cardboard boxes. He would send them by UPS to Andre Verdoux in New York on his way to the airport
in Phoenix. Mike had booked a flight to New Orleans and a connection from there to Mobile, Alabama.

Before leaving, he phoned Andre to warn him not to leave it up to the men themselves to get their shots. Verdoux promised
to personally ensure that each man received the inoculations Mike had decided on.

Andre was going to be a problem. He was being sneaky and keeping a low profile, making himself indispensable. Mike knew his
game and couldn’t do anything about it. Because Andre
was
indispensable. Bob Murphy or any of the others Mike would trust in a firefight, but if he sent any of them to Woolworth’s
for a ball of string, he’d be willing to bet they’d come back with something else. He could depend on Andre. Pity he was over
the hill.

A soldier needs a gun. This is often a problem for a merc who wants to infiltrate unnoticed into a designated zone. If he
tries to bring the hardware in with him, he increases his chances of being detected before he ever even gets started. If he
waits till he is positioned where he wants to be, he may have to use second-rate equipment and find that his promised supplier
proves less dependable than he had believed. Another problem is that a man who sells armaments is often also willing to sell
information, so that the existence of a mission becomes known through its requirement of weapons.