Ник Картер - War from the Clouds

The stockade was recognizable by its high, barbed-wired fence, the armed guards around its makeshift gate and the scraggly, woebegone unarmed peasants peering out through the fence. I strode up to the guards and was pleasantly surprised when they snapped to attention. It was a plus gained for me by the arrogant Cubans and I decided to make best use of that plus.

“Bring the prisoner Antonio Cortez to the gate,” I ordered in my best Cuban Spanish. “He is to be interrogated regarding information he may possess about an American who has come to Nicarxa to interfere with the revolution.”

The guards — four of them — stared at me and at each other. They didn’t seem about to follow the order with any degree of expeditiousness.

“Hurry it up, damn you,” I said, being as arrogant as I knew the Cubans to be with these simple peasants. “Colonel Vasco is waiting for this information. Bring Cortez out here.”

They bumped about a lot, into each other and even into the barbed wire where they snagged their already tattered clothes. But they got the gate open and, while three of them poised with aimed rifles at the motley crew of prisoners behind the fence, one of them went in to fetch a skinny, dark-haired, black-eyed boy who looked enough like Elicia to have been a twin. The build was different, though, and the height.

Antonio Cortez looked surly and uncooperative as the guard brought him to me. He seemed about to spit on my boots and I wouldn’t have blamed him. If he had, though, I would have had to knock him flat for his efforts, to keep up my image as a Cuban non-com.

“Come with me,” I said, palming Sergeant Pequeno’s forty five and leveling it at Antonio. I glanced over my shoulder at the guards. “It’s all right,” I said. “I must interview him out of earshot. I will take full responsibility.”

They seemed nervous about it, but the one man closed the gate again and the others lowered their rifles and snapped again to attention. It was working like a charm. So far.

When we were out of earshot, I turned to face Antonio, my back to the guards so that they couldn’t read my lips if they were so inclined. That was a mistake on my part, but I didn’t know it then.

“Don’t say anything, Antonio,” I said. “And don’t express any surprise at what I have to say. Just listen and keep looking surly and angry. Do you understand?”

“Who are you?”

“A friend. An American. I was sent here by your sister.” His eyes widened and a smile flickered on his lips. “Don’t change expressions,” I snapped. “Damn it, the guards are watching.” The surly look came back.

“How do I know you speak the truth?”

“For one thing,” I said, losing patience, “You have no choice. You’re to be shot in a few hours. If I work it right, I may be able to walk out of here with you, pretending that I’m taking you to Colonel Vasco.”

“Sure,” he said, really surly now. “And once we’re out of the compound, you’ll kill me yourself.”

“Don’t be stupid. If I wanted you dead, I could fire eight now. Better still, I could leave you for your little party at noon. There’s another thing.” I fished the gold chain and locket from my pocket. “Your sister gave this to me. There’s a note folded up in the locket. You can’t take a chance on reading it now. You have to trust me. And we...”

“You bastard,” Antonio exploded. “You took this from her. You killed her and took this and came trying to convince me to tell what I know of the counter-revolution.”

“Again,” I said, sighing more deeply as patience ran thin, “don’t be stupid. I left Elicia very much alive at the home of your cousin. She gave me that chain and...”

“What is our cousin’s name?”

I told him the name Elicia had given me, having never met the cousin.

“You could have gotten the name from the authorities,” he snapped. “They know all my family and will kill them as soon as I’m executed. But of course you know all that since you are from the authorities.”

“And you’re strictly from hunger,” I said, losing all patience with this bullheaded little counter-revolutionary. “Listen to me. I’ll tell you how I happen to be here.”

I told him about following the Cuban Marine, about stopping him from raping Elicia. I made the mistake then of telling him that it was one of a series of rapes. He exploded in rage before I finished.

“You filthy pigs,” he screamed. I could hear — even feel — the guards stirring behind me. At any moment, they would open fire on Antonio, kill him and then bring the local commander to question me about what the hell was going on. I held up a hand to shush the hothead, but he was off on a tirade.

“I will kill you all for what you’ve done to my sister. I will not die at noon, you filthy bastard. I will live and I will lead the counter-revolutionaries to wipe every stain of you from the face of Nicarxa. You come to me with a chain and a locket that you took from my sister while you were defiling her, you fucking animal...”

The guards were rushing up behind me now. I could hear the click and slap of their rifles as cartridges were injected into the chambers. I had only seconds to act, and it would take a week to calm down the raging Antonio Cortez.

I leaped forward and knocked the slender Nicarxan flat on his ass. In the same motion, I had Wilhelmina in my left hand. I whirled as the startled guards tried to decide where they should aim their rifles — at me or at the fallen Antonio.

They hesitated too long. I let fly with both guns — Wilhelmina and the Marine sergeant’s sidearm forty five. With four well-aimed shots, I downed all four guards.

But there was a hue and cry all around the camp beyond the stockade and I saw fresh guards gathering up weapons and running in our direction. I reached down and grasped Antonio’s hand, pulling him to his feet.

“Follow me,” I snapped. “If you do, we might have a chance of getting out of here. If you don’t, then you can go to hell for all I care.”

I took off running, hoping I hadn’t lost my sense of direction for the trail that had brought me into this nest of trouble.

There was no way I could use the gas bomb, even if I could get to it in time. I would have killed Antonio’s friends in the stockade — and there were more of them than I first thought. The sound of the shots brought dozens of them out of low, mean huts into the stockade yard.

And guerillas and Cuban Marines were streaming out of barracks beyond the stockade. Running alone wouldn’t do it for us. I had to create a diversion.

“Get the guards’ rifles, and sidearms,” I shouted to Antonio as I sprinted for the gate in the barbed wire fence. “Come on. Make it quick.”

I opened the gate and the dissident guerillas came streaming out, going for the weapons that Antonio was already assembling in a pile. Antonio himself clutched a Russian automatic Volska and was priming the chamber for an assault on the on-rushing guards.

We both opened fire at the same time, Antonio with the wicked Volska, me with Wilhelmina and the forty five. The guerillas all hit the dirt, flat on their bellies. Some of them even turned and ran. But the Cuban Marines, better trained and better motivated, kept on coming.

Just when it looked as Antonio and I would be overwhelmed by the Marines, who had already opened fire on the run, a half-dozen of Antonio’s friends took professional stances to our right and opened a withering fire against approaching Marines. Their three Volskas and three forty fives thundered in the dusty compound.

This time, even the Cubans took cover. There is such a thing as bravery and dedication: there is also such a thing as stupidity. The Cubans weren’t stupid.