Warren Murphy: Survival Course

A squat muscular man in a salmon-colored T-shirt and red baseball cap stepped out onto the bare sunporch.

"Who is that?" he demanded.

"He calls himself Remo. We think he is DEA."

"CIA," Remo corrected. "Get it right. I'm CIA. I'm only pretending to be DEA."

The man walked down to meet them. He carried no weapon, only a blue can of Inca Cola in one hand. He drained it quickly and dropped it to the ground.

"Litterbug," Remo said pleasantly.

"What you call me?" the Senderista comandante demanded.

"You the boss of this chicken outfit?" Remo asked.

" I am Cesar. I am a delegate to the People's Republic of the New Democracy."

"Got news for you. The old democracy's stronger than ever."

"Why are this prisoner's hands not fettered?" Cesar asked abruptly.

A handful of FAL rifles poked at Remo. Remo smiled unconcernedly.

"You will allow your hands to be tied," Cesar said flatly.

"Maybe after the interrogation." Remo smiled good-naturedly.

"Bring him," Cesar spat.

Remo was escorted into the sparse one-room interior. At a glance, he could tell it was an abandoned cocaprocessing factory. There were vats and the flat trays on which the paste was dried by sliding the screen-mesh trays into an electric oven. The rough interior was bare of furniture and lacked plumbing. The house had been built of raw plywood. There wasn't even a door, just a frame covered by tattered mosquito netting.

Cesar whirled and demanded, "Now, what is this about your being a CIA spy?"

"I admit it. Freely," Remo said soberly.

Cesar hesitated, looked to the others. They shrugged.

"He admitted it from the first," Pablo explained. "How could we believe him? Only a fool would admit this to us."

Cesar looked Remo up and down. He saw a tall Anglo man who might be a mature twenty-nine or a youthful forty-two, clad in a white T-shirt and black chinos. American-made chinos. His shoes were of very fine leather, the kind Americans called loafers. His dark, humorous eyes sat above high cheekbones.

As the man's wallet was passed to him, Cesar noted that he was well-muscled but on the lean side. His wrists were very thick. They looked hard, as if carved from fine pale wood. He rotated them absently, as if limbering up for a workout.

Cesar looked to the ID cards.

Big mistake. Suddenly the wallet flew from Cesar's hands.

He looked up in anger. The wallet had returned to Remo's hands. Cesar hadn't seen him reach out for it.

"Take him!" Cesar barked.

Rifles swapped positions. Gun stocks lifted. They drove down for the americano's head and unprotected shoulders.

It looked for a satisfying instant as if the Yankee would be driven to his knees. Cesar saw the stocks come within a hair of his head.

Then they went chunk! against the hardwood floor, carrying their owners with them.

The cream of Delegate Cesar's Shining Path guerrilla unit fell all over one another, their ponchos flapping, their rifles tangled among one another.

The gringo was absolutely nowhere to be seen.

"Donde? Como?" Cesar sputtered.

A tapping finger caused him to turn around. It was a reflex action. Had he not been so stupefied by the sudden vanishment of the americano, Cesar would not have turned. He would have run. Instead, he did turn-to see the American's goofy grin. Steellike fingers took his throat.

Cesar suddenly went as stiff as the hardwood flooring under his feet.

He watched out of the corner of his eyes as the thin americano went among his companeros, calmly and methodically snapping necks and shattering skulls with stiff-fingered blows until the squirming heap of ponchos became an inert heap of ponchos, much like a stack of Andean rugs.

Then the americano came back for him.

"Time for the interrogation," he said, his fingers returning to Cesar's throat. Cesar found he could suddenly move. And he did. He ran.

And fell flat on his face, never seeing the foot that tripped him.

A hard knee pressed on the small of his back, holding him down by the spine. Cesar couldn't move.

"Please," he panted. "What do you want?"

"Believe I'm a spy now?" Remo inquired coolly.

"Si! Si,"

"Good. Not that it matters. Let's start the interrogation. "

"Hokay. Who do you work for, really?"

"You got it backwards, pal. You're the interrogee."

" I will tell you nothing, imperialista!" Cesar spat.

"I've heard that one before. Usually before I do this. "

Remo reached up under Cesar's throat, found the Adam's apple, and gave it a sharp squeeze. Cesar's tongue jumped out of his suddenly open mouth like Jack coming out of the box. It stuck out so far Cesar could plainly see the taste buds on its blunt pink tip.

"Now, let me see . . . where did I put that butane lighter?" Remo wondered airily, making a pretense of slapping his pockets with his free hand.

Cesar's eye widened. He experienced an immediate vision of his tongue shriveling into crisp charcoal before his helpless eyes. Who was this americano who could manipulate his highly trained body as if he were a puppet?

He tried to tell the yanqui imperialist that he would talk. All he managed to produce was a nasal hum and some leaking drool.

"If that's a si, stick out your tongue," Remo said cheerfully.

Cesar pushed at his tongue. He thought it was already all the way out. To his eternal surprise, it emerged another half-inch. He had had no idea it was so long. He hoped the root would hold. It felt very strained back there at the root of his tongue.

"If I let your tongue back in, will it wag for me?" the yanqui named Remo said.

Cesar tried to nod. No nod came. He pushed at his tongue, mentally damning the stubborn root-anything to spare him this humiliation.

Suddenly the fingers were at his throat again. His tongue recoiled like a turtle's head. The crushing knee lifted from his spine.

Shakily Cesar was rolled over to a sitting position. He felt his throat. It hurt. His tongue felt like sundried beef. He swished it around his stickily parched mouth. Eventually he got it semimoist--enough to spit.

"What do you wish to know?" he croaked.

"Word is, you Maoist throwbacks are in league with the Colombian cartels," Remo suggested.

"We spit on all narco-trafficantes!" he said, suiting the words to deed.

Remo complimented Cesar on his power to expectorate and went on, "That's not what I hear around the of campfire."

"The narco-trafficantes made this valley the lawless place that it is," the comandante admitted grudgingly. "Perfect for us. And the campesinos-those who grow the coca leaf-their interests must be protected."

"I'll take that as an admission of guilt," Remo said. "Next question. Pay close attention. This is the big one."

"si?"

"The Colombians want the President killed before the summit. Some say you boys took the assignment."

"We do not need the Colombians' filthy drug money to bring down the American President. He is our enemy too."

"Do I detect another si?" Remo asked archly.

"Si. I mean, no. We were offered this thing. We turned it down."

Remo's fingers took the man's throat again.

"Not what I heard."

Cesar's eyes widened. "Very well," he said. "We were prepared to do what they wished. But the Colombians changed their minds. They hired others. I do not know who."

"You can do better than that," Remo prompted.

"'I truly do not know who," Cesar protested. "It is not my concern. I am a revolutionary, not a gossip."

"Great epitaph," said Remo Williams, who believed the man, and, having what he wanted, drove the heel of his hand into the Senderista comandante's face. The face was instantly transformed into a flat membrane in which faint hollows were the memory of the organs of sight, smell, and taste. There was no blood. It was all collecting behind the gravellike curtain of the facial bones, many of which had been pushed back into the brain with fatal consequences. Cesar the Senderista fell forward, his featureless face striking the floor with a gravelly beanbag sound.