The Viper Squad (17 page)

“Don’t approach this… possible Cuban. You don’t speak any English, do you, Turco?” The colonel was pleased. His own English
was good. “Too bad. It limits your capacity. You mentioned that one of the norteamericanos at the stadium spoke Spanish. You
and Adolfo talk with him.”

Turco stood immediately on getting the authorization he needed.

The colonel held up a hand for him to wait. “Turco, I said
talk
with him.”

Lance heard the rap on his door as he lay on his bed wondering which had been the cause of his hangover—the rum, the beer
or the espiritu de cana. The rapping became more insistent. He decided it was probably one of the others looking for aspirin.

“What do you want?” he called.

“Coffee, senor,” a male voice called from outside the door.

He didn’t remember ordering any, but now coffee sounded like a good idea. He pulled a dressing gown over his shoulders, opened
the door and saw the hollow-faced man who had been with the cop at the stadium the day before. The emaciated man held his
right hand close to his hip. Lance saw that it held a small automatic, a .22 or .25, with a silencer attached that was longer
than the gun itself. With the pistol held close to his own body, well out of
Lance’s reach, the gunman gave Lance a chance to take in the situation, no panic, one foot in place to stop the door being
slammed, very professional.

“Come on in,” Lance said. “You got some questions, I suppose. Where’s your amigo?”

The cadaverous cop waited, and Lance looked out and saw the mean-looking one with the potbelly coming down the corridor from
where presumably he had been standing guard.

Lance wasn’t worried. He expected a little melodrama with Central American cops. And the mean one had caught him in an obvious
lie about not knowing Joe and Bob. Lance was more concerned about what Mike Campbell was going to say than with this tropical
Kojak and his wasted sidekick.

They came into the room and double-locked the door after them.

“No coffee?” Lance asked. “Let me order some sent up.”

He picked the phone off the receiver but did not bother. to dial because big-belly ripped the cord from the wall. They forced
Lance to kneel by the bed and tied his wrists behind his back with the telephone cord.

“Sit on the bed. Here. People call me Turco. That is Adolfo. Your name?”

“Lance Hardwick.”

“On your passport?”

“Miroslav Svoboda. I didn’t get a chance yet to change it there, but I’m legally Lance Hardwick.”

“Why are you in El Salvador, Senor Svoboda? That is not a norteamericano name. No one in the United States is named Miroslav.
You are from eastern Europe?”

“No. My parents were. I was born in the United States.”

Turco nodded significantly to Adolfo. “An eastern European and a Cuban. What does that tell you?”

“Marxists,” Adolfo said sadly, as if he’d just discovered a fruit fly in an orange tree.

“That’s what it sounds like to me too,” Turco said.

Lance was a bit taken aback that they knew about Cesar Ordonez. But it stood to reason, he supposed, since they were all in
the same hotel. Obviously these cops had been doing some kind of background check. He was glad he hadn’t lied to them about
the name on his passport.

“Why don’t you leave me the address of your office, Senor Turco, and me and my friends will come around and see you this afternoon
and straighten everything out?”

Turco shook his head.

What did he want? Money! That had to be it. But he had to be dignified about it. Give them anything. Mike would repay it if
he could get rid of these two.

“Senor Turco, my wallet and identification”—he did not say money—”are in the back pocket of my pants lying on that chair.
Unless I lost them last night, which is very possible. Maybe you found them? No? And that belt in my pants”—he’d spell it
out for them—”that’s a money belt. Why don’t you take a look at it?”

Turco whacked him across the face with the back of his hand.

“Sorry,” Lance said. “I didn’t mean any offense. What the hell do you expect me to do with my hands tied behind my back except
try to buy my way out?”

“Talk
your way out,” Turco answered.

“What do you want to hear?” Lance asked flippantly.

“Why you and your friends are here.”

“We’re on vacation,” Lance said brightly.

Turco pulled the lapel of Lance’s dressing gown to the side and, light as a feather, touched his right nipple with the glowing
tip of his cigarette.

Lance screamed and rolled over on the bed.

The two Salvadorans waited until he had recovered and looked up at them.

“Release my hands,” Lance pleaded.

“We’re going to have to do something to quieten the noise of your screams,” Turco told him.

Adolfo volunteered, “I think I can be of help.”

“Very kind of you, Adolfo,” Turco said. “You understand, don’t you, Miroslav, that this will go very hard with you and that
it will be very slow until you tell us what we want to know.” He pulled a folded straight razor from his pants pocket as he
was saying this, opened its blade and examined the light glinting on the vertical scratches left by the honing strap. “Of
course you know what to expect. You have been trained to withstand any torture we could give you. Isn’t that what they told
you, Miroslav? Where? In Prague? Or did you train in Russia? You speak fair Spanish. My guess is you came to us via Cuba.
No, don’t say anything, Miroslav. It’s much more important that you listen now. Very carefully. Are you ready?”

Lance watched Turco’s eyes. He had eyes like those of a sadistic schoolteacher Lance remembered from when he was very young,
who liked to play with his victim, let him believe he was going to let him off, before hitting him with something worse than
even his victim had been prepared for.

“I’m listening,” Lance said grimly. His chest hurt like a crazed hornet sting that wouldn’t ease up.

“Good. This is the way I work, Miroslav. I do not start with the fingernails or the eyes. I go straight for the balls. Empty
the testicular sacs. No trouble at all with this blade, Miroslav. Some bleeding and some pain, but nothing like what is to
follow.”

Turco ran the flattened blade down Lance’s chest and sheared off some chest hairs. He effortlessly sliced through the dressing
gown’s belt, then continued down Lance’s belly with the flattened blade.

Lance held his body rigid, and his eyes stared down at the gleaming sharp steel of the straight razor as it neared his genitals.

With a flick of the wrist, Turco lifted the blade off
Lance’s belly and suddenly chopped its cutting edge down on his thigh. Lance felt only a sting as the honed metal parted
his skin and saw his blood well up along the razor’s length. It had missed his penis by little more than an inch.

Turco raised the blade slowly until it was before Lance’s face. He let the blood drip from the razor’s end.

“Tell me why you and your friends are here,” Turco said softly. When Lance did not respond, Turco went on. “You will tell
me. I know what I am saying. Adolfo and I have had much success in persuading men like you to give information. But you should
not be thinking about us. You should be thinking about yourself. Because you will have to make up your mind very soon if you
want to continue having balls hanging between your legs. I make no other promises, only that if you tell us what we want to
know, I will not cut off your balls. On the other hand, I promise equally strongly that if you do not answer my question,
you will feel this blade do its work.”

Lance’s pain diminished with increasing fear. The fact that Turco was taking such great care to explain himself carried a
sinister ring of sincerity. Turco and Adolfo reminded him of a pair of surgeons—careful, patient, experienced… skilled professionals.

Turco nodded to Adolfo, who grabbed Lance’s left ankle and sat on his right foot, forcing his legs apart. Turco grabbed Lance’s
balls in his left hand and touched the razor’s edge to their roots.

“I’ll talk! I’ll talk!” Lance yelled.

“I haven’t asked you the question yet,” Turco said softly.

Lance felt the razor nick his scrotal sac.

“We’re here to get Sally Poynings! The millionaire’s daughter who joined the guerrillas!”

Lance felt the razor lift from his testicles.

“Who sent you?” Turco asked.

“Her father hired us.”

Lance felt Turco release his balls.

Turco walked to the center of the room and put the razor on a table. He nodded to Adolfo, who allowed Lance to sit on the
edge of the bed again. Lance saw he had confused Turco with his information. At Turco’s bidding, Adolfo unbound Lance’s wrists
and then worked at connecting the phone lines again. He picked up the receiver, nodded and handed it to Turco. Lance smoked
a cigarette and massaged his wrists. While Turco dialed, he took the opportunity to pull on his shirt and pants. He was already
feeling better now that he was no longer trussed like a sacrificial victim. The leftist posters he had collected as souvenirs
bulged in his back pocket—crudely printed graphics of fists clenched and of chains being snapped, along with bullshit about
what the Clara Elizabeth Ramirez Metropolitan Commando would do to the capitalist pigs. Lance intended to pin them on a wall
of his West Hollywood apartment as a joke. Turco would probably get the wrong idea if he saw them, so Lance let his shirt
hang loose over his pants and hoped the posters would not be noticed.

“So there is a rich American woman with the leftists,” Turco was saying over the phone. “No, colonel, I never heard a word
about it till this norteamericano told me just now. No. No. He’s not hurt. He can walk. Sure. I’ll bring him right over. I
know this could be big for all of us. Top secret.”

He put down the receiver and walked up and down the room, deep in thought, anger on his face. In the end, he went to the door
and beckoned for Lance and Adolfo to follow.

Adolfo prodded Lance occasionally with the little gun, which was now concealed inside a paper bag. Lance saw none of the others
on the way down or in the hotel lobby.

Turco told him to drive, and got in beside him. Lance adjusted the safety belt as Adolfo got in the back seat. Turco jabbed
his forefinger in the directions he wanted Lance to drive.

“So you come down here to show you are better than us,” he said in a menacing voice.

“What do you mean?” Lance asked.

“You find the girl and bring her back and say we couldn’t have done it.”

“I don’t know why he hired us instead of dealing with you,” Lance said. “I don’t even know why it has been kept quiet about
the girl having gone with the rebs. I’m just a hired gun. But one thing I can tell you—I never heard talk about any of us
being better than any of you people.”

Turco was quiet again. Lance figured he was pissed off at not having been informed by his superiors about Sally. He had no
way of knowing that Turco and Adolfo had murdered Bennett and thus could be said to have a vested interest in the case. In
truth, Turco had just assumed that the girl went back to the United States after her lover’s death. That she had not, and
had joined the guerrillas instead, was of no great consequence to him; but that he had not been informed of it was. That might
mean something. Then again, it might not.

Traffic was heavy and their progress was slow.

“How were you going to go about finding this girl?” Turco asked.

Lance was pleased to hear the note of hostility in Turco’s voice replaced for the first time by something else. Curiosity.
Lance had other worries in his head, now that he knew he was going to hang on to his balls. He had given away Campbell and
the others. Blown the mission. In order to save himself. Any of the others would have done the same thing, he reasoned. But
they hadn’t. And he had. He didn’t know how he could face Mad Mike on this. After being let live down the coke thing on the
Chesapeake. He sure was fucking them over now.

“Well, I don’t have the exact plans of what we intended to do,” Lance told Turco as he followed his directions to a big building.
“All I’ve seen is our weapons and the local team in the eastern end of the city.”

“Could you find them again?”

“Sure. I know where the house is.”

“Take us there now,” Turco ordered.

“Like hell I will. I don’t trust you two no farther than I could throw you. You was speaking to a colonel on the phone. You
tell him to come along, and I’ll drive you all there right away.”

Turco pointed to an entranceway. Armed sentries walked up and down. “Pull in. Wait here. Adolfo, any trouble, shoot him:”

“I would like to,” Adolfo said from the back seat.

Turco was gone for about ten minutes, then returned with a uniformed officer, a small, self-important-looking man with a clipped
mustache. The officer got in back with Adolfo while Turco held the car door open for him. Lance by now was half-amused at
Turco’s swings from violence to almost servile politeness and back again. Turco climbed in the front seat beside him and courteously
introduced him as Lance Hardwick, rather than Miroslav Svoboda, to Lt. Col. Francisco Cerezo Ramirez of the Treasury Police.

“Direct me to the eastern outskirts of the city,” Lance told Turco. “I’ll know the location when I see it, but we may have
to drive around a little while.”

“All that matters is that you find this house,” the colonel said from the back seat.

“Are you going to stop the mission, sir?” Lance asked.

“That will depend.” The colonel paused before saying, “I am keeping an open mind. You told Turco that you are being paid to
find this girl.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How much?”

“A hundred thou. Each of us team members gets that. I don’t know what our leader’s cut is.”

A silence followed this. Lance could almost hear their minds calculating numbers.

“Which is you leader?” the colonel asked after a spell.

“Mike Campbell. He wasn’t at the football stadium, so I don’t know if Turco and Adolfo have seen him.” Lance drove cheerfully
now, handling the wheel expertly.