The Demolishers (44 page)

“Can you set me down?” I asked.

“I was afraid you’d say that. Sure, that beach is like a billiard table. But don’t be long; those government flyboys seem to have got hold of some of those there high explosives I’ve read about, and I don’t want any.” He was silent for a moment; then he glanced back at the wreck and said, “Poor old girl. Well, she died with her boots on. I wonder if she remembered Normandy when they hit her.”

Well, some people are sentimental about dogs and some about ships. Then we were settling in and climbing down to the sand. I still hurt enough in various places to make it a chore.

“Maybe you’d better stay and watch your bird,” I said to the pilot. “You’re supposed to be here in a strictly noncombatant status. If there’s trouble, light out fast. If I’m dead, nobody wants the body; if I’m alive I can take to the brush. Just get that whirly with its U.S. markings to hell out of here.” .

“Check.” But he walked a few steps towards the beached ship with me. “Hell, those are cages!” he said suddenly. “All smashed up now, but they started out as animal cages. The old bucket was a fucking Noah’s ark; and there’s a dog now. . . . Here, boy!”

Hunting-dog men go by the unwritten law:
Never touch,
or give orders to, somebody else s dog.
The ones who ve had nonworking canine pets, however, seem to have a compulsion to run up to any strange mutt and make friends with it. I grabbed the pilot by the arm.

“Easy, that looks like a very disturbed pooch,
amigo.
You’d better get back to your chopper while I take a look around.”

He went reluctantly. He still wanted to pat the pretty doggie. I had no such desire. A big, shaggy beast of the husky persuasion, the animal would have looked great in front of a sled on an Alaskan snowfield; in this tropical climate he made about as much sense as an igloo. He was drooling a little as he stood there, and I heard the low, rumbling growl that said clearly:
Buzz off, Buster, this is my territory.
But the smoke-blackened tangle of wire behind him had definitely been cages of some kind before the bombs hit and scrambled them. A lot of cages holding a lot of animals. Like the man said, a fucking Noah’s ark, where we’d expected a shipful of secret weapons. There were no visible bodies except for the live one guarding the ship’s bow door.

I said, “Relax, friend, nobody’s going to trespass on your property.”

I limped on, surveying the lush green vegetation that bordered the smooth sand of the beach. Something moved in the bushes off to my right. I saw the dog first, a small curly-haired terrier-type with a stub of a tail that was working very hard as he—excuse me, she—tried to play with something or somebody hidden in the brush. The little bitch heard me approaching and came running to dance happily in front of me on two legs. 1 was tempted to give this one a pat and an ear-scratch, but it seemed better not to get too friendly until I knew what the hell was going on. Getting no affection from me, the little dog ran back to its former friend. Not knowing what hid there, man or beast, I made the approach with care, gun in hand.

“I have been expecting you, Herr Helm,” a voice said. ‘‘It is all right. I have no weapon.”

I recognized the voice, of course. I said, “You’ll excuse me if my normal paranoia prevents me from taking your word for it, Herr Bultman.”

But when I reached a spot from which I could see him lying there, he had nothing in his hands. He made a strange black figure in some kind of protective clothing; after a moment I realized that he was dressed in heavy motorcycle leathers, complete with gauntlets and boots. There was also a helmet. He had the plastic face-plate pushed up. He’d apparently been caught by one of the blasts that had wrecked the LCT, and the leather was badly ripped along his right leg, side, and arm. There was blood on the sand under him. As I watched, he scratched the ears of the little terrier left-handed, lying there, and offered her the leather of his gauntlet to tug at, delighting her. However, after a moment she decided to favor me with her attention again.

“No, no,” Bultman said, as I reached down to let her sniff my hand. “It is too bad, she is a nice little dog, but she has had the injection. Do not touch her. Will you help me off with this helmet, please?” When I had it off, keeping an eye on his hands in case of tricks, he said, “Protection. I did not know what stage of the disease they would have developed when the time came to release them; and I preferred not to be chewed, although considering my last medical report it would have made hardly any difference. I had very little time left anyway.”

It showed in his gaunt, lined face. Of course the wounds made a difference, too.. I said, “You didn’t bring that bucket here alone.”

“Bucket? Oh, the ship. The crew went inland, that was the arrangement. They wanted nothing to do with my cargo of sick dogs. I had to unload them myself. I heard the planes coming as I was finishing, but there were still a few left in their cages and I couldn’t leave them trapped.”

He laughed again, a short bark. “We all have our little weaknesses, do we not, my friend?”

I stood looking down at him. So he’d had a secret weapon after all. “You brought a load of dogs to Gobemador?” “What did you think I brought, a load of tanks to help those patriotic fools dying twenty miles from here?” He saw the answer on my face, and shook his head at my stupidity. He said, “The people of Gobemador would not accept my healthy dog, their officials shot her to death, so I have brought them my sick dogs instead. The poor animals will not last long, the incubation period is ten days and they go fast after that; but I have been assured that they will last long enough to infect the entire island.” “Rabies?”

“Of course, rabies. It is endemic in many countries. We lived with it in Germany. You live with it in the United States. Let them learn to live with it here, since they cannot administer their quarantine decently.”

“And your whole invasion plan was simply a diversion. . . .”

He shrugged, and winced at the pain. “It is a good plan. They have a chance, those gullible heroes, but most likely they will commit suicide by fighting over who is to lead them now, and be pushed into the sea. But they will kill many Gobemador soldiers before they go, and keep the government forces too busy to worry about a few infected dogs. By the time action is taken, my slavering pets will be well dispersed. . . .” He winced as a pain went through him hard. When it eased, his face was even grayer than before. He licked his lips and said, “I need a favor, Herr Helm.”

“Do I owe you one?”

“It is the favor we all owe each other, in this business. I would prefer not to be finished off by the government troops, or my dogs. It is what you came here to do, is it not? I ask you to do it now. ...”

When I returned to'the helicopter, the pilot looked at me oddly; and he didn’t speak on the way back to base although he’d bent my ear the whole way down. There were several other flying machines between me and Washington, but they all made it, unlike the invasion force. It held out for three days but, contained by the government ground forces and hammered by the jets, it surrendered on the fourth day after the landing.

Chapter 35

In
Texas, the big yellow Labrador pup was very glad to see me. He was even happier, the morning after my arrival, to be taken hunting. It was a good day for waterfowl, gloomy and windy, but with no real rain to make things too uncomfortable. Bert Hapgood took us out to the same blind. The ducks flew well, I shot well, and Happy did a beautiful job of retrieving; but as usual he couldn’t understand why we had to quit so soon, with plenty of birds still buzzing the decoys.

I was sitting on the embankment cleaning my ducks when I heard the four-wheel-drive pickup approaching. It stopped behind me.

“I’ll be through in a Tninute,” I said without looking around.

“Don’t hurry,” said a woman’s voice.

I turned quickly. Mrs. Rosalia Varek was wearing snug, tailored jeans and a matching jacket. The jeans were tucked into little boots with high heels. Her hair was un-

covered and she wore it loose to her shoulders today, black and glossy, the way I’d seen it one night in Palm Beach, with her husband’s approval.

“No, no,” she said. “You’re a good doggie, but I don’t need my face washed.”

“Happy, down!” I went over and pulled him off her. “I said,
down
! What are you doing here, Lia?”

“I’m a widow now,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

“I have no intention of marrying again,” she said. “I have the security I wanted.”

I said, “Is that what you came here to tell me?”

“Last time he sent me to you,” she said quietly. “This time I’m my own woman, and I’m here of my own volition. But if you can’t figure out why, I obviously came for nothing.”

I figured it out.

Donald Hamilton has been writing Matt Helm novels for over twenty-five years. An expert yachtsman, he has also written nonfiction books and articles on sailing. He and his wife live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.