Nick Carter - The Aztec Avenger

Once my foot slipped into a fissure and I had to wrench it free. My ankle ached from the sharp twist as I worked myself downward. My hands were torn, the skin on my fingers and on the palms of my hand were sandpapered raw by the rocks.

I kept telling myself that there was only a few more feet to go, only another few minutes, just a little way further.

And then, panting, almost completely exhausted, I was on the narrow beach and moving along the base of the cliffs, avoiding the boulders, forcing myself to run in a tired dogtrot around the curve of the headland, trying not to think about how much time had been wasted in my descent.

On the far side of the headland, I found a sloping ravine that cut down between the steep cliffs. In the rainy season, it would be a torrent of water that poured the floodwaters from the hills into the sea. Now, it provided me with a path to the top of the cliff.

Tripping, sliding over loose shale, I scrambled my way up the ravine until I came out within a hundred yards of the road. To the east, almost half a mile away, I could make out the glow from the spotlights over the front gate of Garrett’s hacienda.

I waited by the edge of the road, forcing myself to wait patiently, trying not to think of how rapidly time was running out on me. The hour I’d allowed myself was more than three-quarters gone. Headlights finally glowed in the distance. I stepped out into the middle of the road, waving my arms. The car braked to a halt, the driver poking his head out the window.

“Qui pasa?” he shouted at me.

I came up to the car. The driver was a teenager with lank, black hair swept back over his ears.

“A telephone. Can you get me to a telephone? El asunto es muy importante!”

“Get in!”

I ran around to the front of the car and slid into the seat. Even as I gasped, “Vaya muy de prisa, por favor!” he let in the clutch in a racing start. Gravel spewed from the rear wheels, the car leaped ahead, the speedometer needle swinging up to sixty, seventy and then past one hundred and ten kilometers an hour.

Less than a minute later, he screeched in to the Pemex station and burned rubber coming to a halt.

I flung open the door and ran to the public telephone. I put the call in to the Hotel Matamoros, thinking how ironic it was that Ortega himself had told me where to get hold of Teniente Fuentes!

It took almost five minutes to get him on the line. It took another five minutes to convince him that I was going to give him the cooperation that Jean-Paul had asked me for in the minute before he was killed. Then I told Fuentes what I wanted from him and where to meet me.

“How soon can you get here?” I asked, finally.

“Ten minutes, perhaps.”

“Make it sooner if you can,” I said, and hung up.

Teniente Fèlix Fuentes had a face like a Toltec idol carved out of brown rock. Short, massive chest, powerful hands.

“Did you bring the rifle?” I asked as I climbed into his unmarked police car.

“It’s on the back seat. It’s my own personal hunting weapon for small game. Take care of it. Now, what do you have in mind?”

Fuentes put the police car into gear. I told him where to head. As we drove, I outlined what had happened so far. I told Fuentes about Dietrich and his formula for making synthetic heroin. I told him that Ortega now had Dietrich a prisoner and what Ortega planned to do. Fuentes listened soberly as I brought him up to date.

“And now,” I said, “I’ve got to get back into that house before they find out I’ve been gone. And as soon as I’m back, I want your men to raid it. We’ve got to flush out Ortega. If we can throw them into a panic, there’s a good chance Ortega will lead me to Dietrich.”

“What excuse do I have to raid Garrett’s hacienda, Senor Carter? He’s a very influential man. So is Ortega.”

“Is forty kilos of heroin a good enough excuse?”

Fuentes whistled aloud. “Forty kilos!For forty kilos I would raid the Presidente’s house!”

I told him where to find the heroin. Fuentes picked up the hand mike and radioed headquarters for rein-forcements. He was explicit. No sirens, no flashers, no action until he gave the signal.

By this time we were back down the road that led past Garrett’s hacienda. At almost the exact spot where I had parked Bickford’s car only the night before, he stopped to let me out.

I took the rifle and a rope grapnel from the back seat. I hefted the weapon. “It’s a beauty,” I told him.

“My prize possession,” said Fuentes. “Again, I ask you to be careful of it.”

“As if it were my own,” I said, and turned away, setting oil across the field in a crouching run. Fuentes backed the police car down the road some hundred yards or so to intercept the others when they came.

I picked out a position on a slight rise about two hundred feet from the driveway that led from the road to his house. I was at a slight angle to the gateway. I dropped the grapnel at my feet and lay down carefully on my stomach, the rifle cradled in my arms.

In a few minutes, two police cars drove up, the second one almost directly behind the first. Fuentes directed them into position, one on each side of the road that led past the driveway, the men in the cars waiting with engines turned off and headlights out.

I lifted the heavy rifle to my shoulder. It was a superbly made Schultz & Larson 61 match rifle, a .22 calibre, single shot, bolt action weapon with a twenty-eight-inch “barrel and a globe front sight. The palm rest was adjustable for my left hand. The stock was carved with a thumbhole so that I could grip the semi-molded pistol grip stock with my right hand. Especially manufactured for International Match requirements, the rifle was so accurate that I could put a bullet through the end of a cigarette at a hundred yards. Its heavy weight, sixteen and a half pounds, made it rock steady in my grasp. I aimed it at one of the two spotlights mounted high above the left side of the front gate.

Slowly, my fist contracted, my finger squeezing the trigger. The rifle bucked slightly in my hands. The spotlight smashed out simultaneously with the sharp crack of sound in my ears. Quickly, I worked the bolt, pulling it up and back, the spent cartridge flipping up into the air. I fed another round into the chamber and slammed the bolt shut and locked.

I fired again. The second light exploded. There were shouts at the hacienda, but the front gate and the area around it was in darkness. Once more, I ejected the spent case and reloaded the rifle. Through the open grillwork of the gate, I could see the plate glass window of the living room that looked out onto the still floodlit pool area.

I adjusted the sights for the additional distance and aimed again. I put a bullet through the glass, spider webbing it almost dead center. I heard faint screams coming from the house as I reloaded. I put the fourth bullet through the plate glass window not more than a foot away from the other hole.

There were more shouts from the house. Suddenly, all the lights went out So did the music. Someone had finally gotten to the main switch. I put down the rifle where Fuentes would be able to find it easily, picked up the grapnel rope and ran across the field to the wall that surrounded the house.

Now that I was close, I could hear the shouts and screams coming from inside. I heard Carlos yelling at the guards. One of them fired into the darkness until he emptied his pistol. Carlos shouted furiously at him to stop.

Swiftly, I made my way along the wall. About forty or fifty feet away from the gate, I stopped and took the grapnel from my shoulder. I flung the hook up over the wall, and the tines caught on the first throw, the metal biting firmly into the brickwork of the wall. Hand over hand, I pulled myself up onto the top of the wall. Unhooking the grapnel, I dropped it over the other side and jumped down beside it, landing in a jarring crouch.