Donald Hamilton: The Ambushers

"That is a foolish question," he said. "You have seen the result of my trip outside, you have sketched it in your little notebook. I was shopping for a weapon I'd been told was for sale."

I said, "Hell, El Fuerte wouldn't have sold it while he was alive. That was his ace in the hole."

"The ace was about to be trumped," von Sachs said. "His Russian backers had got wind of the fact that he had it, through informants in Cuba. They were displeased. They threatened him with dire consequences if he should use it. They wanted it back. All the time, of course, he was denying that he had ever seen such a thing. Meanwhile he was trying to find a buyer with cash. The Russians would have paid him nothing, and General Santos had gone to considerable expense and trouble. He thought it only fair that the transaction should show a profit."

"I see," I said. "And now you've got it here, how the hell are you planning to use it? I mean, you're not crazy enough to think you can blackmail either the United States or Mexico with just one overgrown whiz-bang?"

"Blackmail?" He frowned at the word. "I do not blackmail, Mr. Evans. When the time comes, not too far distant, I will fire the missile. And the city of El Paso, Texas, will disappear from the map of America. I think it will be El Paso. The bearded technicians tell me it is the easiest target within range, and your Texans are hot-headed and politically influential. They will insist on immediate retaliation-and against whom will they want to retaliate, Mr. Evans?'

I drew a long breath. "It's a tricky idea. Not original, but tricky. It might work in the movies."

"It will work here! No one up there above the border will know from which direction the missile came. All they will know is that an American city has been destroyed. Will you tell me that not one of your intercontinental weapons will be fired under such provocation? That no signal will go out to the captains of the atomic submarines with their Polaris missiles? And if one, just one, weapon is fired, will it not be answered?" He laid the gun gently on the table. "And when the radioactive dust settles, will there not be opportunities for a man at the head of a military force, with secret allies in your principal southwestern cities, Mr. Evans? Such a man could carve an empire out of the rubble!"

There was a little silence. As I'd said, the idea wasn't exactly original. Other people had thought of the possibility before, but none had gone shopping for the means to carry it out. At least I hoped they hadn't.

I said lightly, "Well, it sounds kind of like burning down the barn to roast the cow to get some bones to throw to the pup that hasn't been whelped yet. Do you know what I think? I think you're cracked, von Sachs. I think you just want to set the world on fire and watch the pretty mushroom clouds grow and grow. I think-"

"That's enough!" He had picked up the gun again.

"I think you'd just like getting the two largest countries that crushed Adolf Hitler to destroy each other. The rest is just crap for the suckers outside. Empire, hell!"

"Silence!" The hammer started to rise again.

"Go on," I said bravely. "Pull the damn trigger, you crazy Nazi butcher! Go on, shoot!"

The hammer subsided slowly. He sighed. "You are too eager to die, Mr. Evans. I do not think I will oblige you tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps… Guards!"

Well, if I hadn't egged him on, if I hadn't made him think I yearned for a quick death, he'd have had me shot right away. It was very ingenious of me, and I was sweating very convincingly as they took me out of there.

THE JAIL, brig, detention cell, or what have you, was a pigeonhole twenty feet up the face of the canyon wall, reached by a rickety ladder. The sergeant made me climb up, covered by his ugly little weapon; then he sent a man up to tie me securely. The knot-man was good, and I'm no Houdini. I tried to get some slack the way it says in the manual, but if I'd thought the man could read at all, let alone read English, I'd have said he'd been at the same book. When he left me it was fairly obvious that I wasn't going to be climbing down any ladders without help. Then they took the ladder away, and that was that.

Down below, the fire was blazing cheerfully and the boys around it were passing the tequila, mescal, pulque, tiswin, or whatever kind of cactus juice it was they had in the jug. Pretty soon one of them broke out a guitar and began to sing, just like in a movie. I wiggled forward to where I could look at the happy group below. Off to one side sat a lone, anti-social character with his back to a rock and a rifle across his knees, watching my cave. The light was still burning in the tent, I noticed, and the sentry still stood in front.

The guard with the rifle waved me back. When I didn't move at once he aimed his weapon my way. I took the hint and squirmed back into the darkness of the cave and tried the other end. Ten feet back from the entrance I hit solid rock. Well, I hadn't been about to explore any tunnels or crevices tied hand and foot. It was up to Catherine now.

Her next move was obvious, and soon I could hear her working on it. Her laughter and von Sachs' began to come from the tent more loudly and drunkenly as the night progressed. Presently they started singing the Horst Wessel off key. After that there was more laughter, and some horseplay that shook the tent canvas, and a male voice demanding and a female voice protesting, not very convincingly, and some more activity, and silence.

I lay in my pigeonhole above and wondered why I didn't like myself very much. I mean, it wasn't as if the woman were anything to me; and she'd merely done just what I would have told her to do if she'd asked for instructions.

The guitarist was long silent, and the fire was dying. When it no longer cast a glow on the ceiling of the cave, she came. I heard her down there, speaking to the guard in a slurred voice and giggling in an inebriated way at his answer; then there was a solid, whacking sound like an axe going into soft pine.

I heard the ladder being moved back into place. Something metallic was tossed into the cave. A moment later she followed it, sat for a moment panting, and crawled over to cut me free with the machete she'd sent ahead, presumably taken from the guard below.

"So!" she breathed, helping me sit up. "Now we must get down, before someone notices the ladder."

"Give me a chance to get some circulation back. What about the sentry by the tent?"

"Asleep. I was friendly. I gave him a beer. With something in it I happened to have along. Like von Sachs. They will sleep until morning, both of them. Your guard would not take a beer, a dutiful man. So he is dead. When they find him, we are betrayed. Now come. I will go first and hold you if you slip. Never mind the big knife."

"I want it," I said. "I have an idea about it."

"All right. Give me your belt."

She hung the machete about her neck and shoved it around to dangle down her back; then she moved onto the ladder and leaned back so that I could make my way clumsily into the space in front of her, with her arms around me. It felt ridiculous, and embarrassing in more ways than one, being held there by a woman, but my hands and feet still weren't much use to me. I would have fallen half a dozen times without her support.

At the bottom, I fumbled my belt back on with tingling fingers, and helped her move the ladder back where it had been. We passed the guard sitting against his rock with his rifle across his knees and his hat over his eyes, motionless, dead. I reminded myself not to underestimate my sexy ally; she wasn't anybody you wanted to turn your back on. We stopped in a sheltered place among the rocks.

She bent over to do something to her feet. "These damn sandals!" she whispered. "I might as well be barefoot."