The Frighteners (39 page)

At least I could congratulate myself on foreseeing an eventuality like this and getting rid of the hidden weapon that might, in the end, make the difference between survival and otherwise, although in this camp of heavily armed men I couldn’t at the moment see how a little .22 could be utilized effectively. I felt the warm sun on my bare foot and saw the big man kneeling beside me with the butane lighter, the kind designed for setting fire to pipe tobacco and other reluctant combustibles. I told myself that, hell, I’d been burned before, what was the big deal? Then the lighter flared and the pain came and I concentrated on keeping the sound effects to a minimum. I’m not an iron man, I can holler with the best, but it wasn’t a screaming situation yet.

I heard Sigma’s voice: “Well, Dr. Becker? Excuse me, Dr. Beckman. You can stop it with a word. Where are those weapons?”

Jo said bravely, “I didn’t notice him paying much attention to my moans and groans; why should I worry about his?” But her voice was strained.

Sigma laughed. He not only laughed, he kept on laughing; it was almost an attack of hysterics. Big Tunk Rutherford crouched beside my foot, holding the lighter and awaiting further orders, his pleasant, boyish face impassive. I saw Jo looking at me, her expression showing puzzlement as well as sympathy, but I couldn’t help her; I didn’t know what the hell was going on either. After he’d regained control, Sigma had to remove the dark glasses and wipe them with a crisp white handkerchief and dry his eyes. He returned the glasses to his face, refolded the handkerchief, and put it away carefully. He stepped forward and slapped me hard.

“So brave!” he sneered. “So stupid! I just had to have the pleasure of seeing the great undercover hero gritting his teeth and sweating, trying not to scream, groaning and grunting, refusing heroically to betray the information. . . . You brainless clown, what do I want with those arms now? I hope nobody ever finds them; I sincerely hope they stay lost forever! Now that Mondragon is dead they are certainly no use to me. The continued hope of them bought me his assistance; I let him believe that, although I didn’t know the exact location of the hiding place, I at least knew how to go about learning it. And as it turned out I wasn’t deceiving him, I could eventually have got it from you, or Dr. Beckman, or the little Indian girl. But of course I wouldn’t have. The last thing I want, now that Washington has withdrawn its approval and started an investigation, is a well-armed and well-publicized revolution here in Mexico. If Señorita Sisneros hadn’t killed our tame general, with all he knew about me, I would have had to have somebody else do it as soon as I no longer needed him. But this is a much more satisfactory solution: the great revolutionary hero shot to death by a woman he’d wronged. No suspicion of a Yankee assassination or, for that matter, of a Mexican government execution.” He frowned down at me. “Could that be why you brought her here? Perhaps you have a few more brains than I suspected. You do have some friends among the authorities, I believe; you could be acting on their behalf.”

He didn’t make it a question; and I volunteered no answers to the question he hadn’t asked. I was trying to ignore the throbbing in my foot and the various other unbearable agonies I had to bear while figuring the possibility of a break. The big question mark was Antonia. I decided that there wasn’t really enough cover here to let her sneak up to us, good as she was at moving silently and unseen; and she was supposedly carrying a pistol bullet anyway. The idea of her being wounded, perhaps badly wounded, was disturbing, more disturbing than I’d expected; after all, the girl really meant nothing to me. We’d never been lovers. What had developed between us was merely a casual relationship—call it a business partnership—of no great significance, right? Anyway, I reminded myself, pistoleers are as bad as fighter pilots for claiming hostiles shot down that weren’t. However, I’d better assume the worst and figure out a way of dealing with the situation with whatever assistance Jo could provide, without waiting for help. I became aware that Sigma was speaking again.

“Betrayal,” he was saying harshly. “Treachery! Washington is full of cowards afraid of taking effective action. They call it a war, but what they really want to see is just a harmless snowball fight that’ll impress the citizens without involving any serious casualties. . . . Snow, ha! Not a bad figure of speech, if I do say so! Snow and grass and all the other vicious substances pouring across our borders; but if anyone takes real steps to prevent it, valid political steps, they panic and cut off his funds and tty to disgrace him, even if the operation was originally authorized at the very highest level. ... As I said, treachery. So now they are investigating me! Well, they are going to be disappointed, they are not going to bring me down with the other patriots who’ve been used as whipping boys recently. They will have no evidence. Nobody has found those ill-fated arms, and even if somebody does find them, there’s nobody alive to connect me with them.”

I licked my lips. “What about the money Mondragon paid Will Pierce to buy them with, the first payment, the one that was actually made? It was U.S. government money and it came from you, didn’t it?”

I didn’t really expect him to answer except with another kick; I was surprised when he laughed instead.

“My dear man, anyone unable to juggle government funds skillfully enough to lose a few hundred thousand dollars, or even a few million, where no accountant can find them, has no business accepting an administrative post in our great, confused bureaucracy. I can assure you the transaction is well hidden, and the only man besides Mondragon himself who could have caused me trouble in that connection, Pierce, is dead. And if he should have mentioned me as the source of the money to that assistant whose name had slipped my mind, Medina, well, Medina is dead, too. And shortly Pierce’s inquisitive partner, now lying wounded in Kino Bay under your name, will also be dead with whatever suspicions he may have entertained—I doubt that they were ever more than suspicions, but Cody is a persistent old man who was closely associated with Pierce for many years, and why take the risk of having him stumble on something?” Sigma paused. “Which leaves only you. And the lady. I suppose I shouldn’t have tried to be quite so clever, using you in the manner I did. It was a mistake; instead of being useful camouflage you turned out to be a considerable nuisance, but we’ll take care of that now.” He cleared his throat, slightly embarrassed. “Dr. Beckman, I regret this very much, but I think you can see that I have no choice now but to eliminate the two of you.”

Jo said calmly, “As a psychiatrist, I can assure you that’s what all murderers say. There’s never any choice; they must kill.”

He didn’t like that. “My dear lady, I am not a murderer, I am simply a realist who understands what has to be done for survival. . . ."

He was interrupted by the sharp chatter of an assault rifle. I turned quickly and painfully to see Antonia on top of the rock on which I’d last seen the sentry; she must have dealt with him silently in order to take his place. She must have taken his M-16 in her usual thrifty fashion, because there was one slung across her back while she held another firmly to her right shoulder as she fired downwards systematically in short bursts, using the sights, at the men and vehicles below. The break had come so suddenly it almost slipped by me, but I recovered a little faster than Rutherford and Sigma, who were still staring at the slender, lethal apparition silhouetted against the sky. I managed to get my right leg up and kick the big man hard in the chest so that he went sprawling. Fortunately I’d been lying on my back in the jeep when they’d decided to handcuff me, and they hadn’t bothered to turn me over to get my arms behind; I managed to reach out with my shackled hands and grab one of Sigma’s legs. When I pulled hard, he came down, and I dragged myself on top of him.

“Jo, shoot Rutherford!” I gasped. “Never mind this one, I’ve got him, just empty the whole clip into the big bastard, he’s too big to monkey with. Shoot him anywhere, he’s wearing no protection. Just shoot him and keep on shooting!”

Sigma was struggling to free himself; he was also trying to reach the Browning on his belt, which wasn’t a bad idea. I heard the little .22 automatic go off behind me as I reached the larger pistol, kind of hauling myself up the frame of the man beneath me. My left leg wasn’t a hell of a lot of use or, rather, whenever I tried to use it, everything hurt so badly I almost blacked out. But I got one handcuffed hand on the butt of Sigma’s weapon and when he tried to pry my hand away I managed to use the other hand and the leverage of the manacles to twist a finger for him until it broke. He screamed and went slack under me for a moment, long enough for me to drag the heavy automatic out of the russet leather holster and raise myself up to hammer it into his face with all my strength. I’d have shot him—after all, that was what I was here for—if I’d known the condition of his weapon, but if he had no cartridge in the chamber it would have been a two-handed job to ready it for firing, hard if not impossible to manage with cuffs on.

The little .22 was still snapping behind me like an angry Pekinese. Across the clearing, Antonia’s M-16 was still firing, and other weapons of varying decibel levels had joined the chorus. I wished the stubborn, gun-happy girl would pull out; she’d already given me the distraction I needed. Sigma had gone limp at my blow, so I rolled off him, determined that the Browning did have a round in the chamber, cocked the weapon, and swung it in the general direction of Marion Rutherford.

Jo had the big man stopped. Apparently he’d got to his feet and gone for her, and she’d kept backing away and shooting. Now her gun was empty, and he was just standing there, swaying, bleeding from four wounds that I could see, but there was just too much beef there to be put down by the tiny, 40-grain bullets. He lifted his big hands and started toward her again, and I took careful aim and blew out his

brains with the 9mm Browning. I suppose you could say I’d got back at him for trying to trap me near Cananea and siccing Mason Charles on me in Hermosillo, but to hell with that. You can waste your life trying to balance the ledger perfectly. He fell like a tree.

Jo tucked the little gun carefully under her waistband. She turned, took two steps, and vomited. Well, there was nothing I could do about that; she was a grown woman and capable of wiping her own mouth. I laid aside the Browning and fumbled in Sigma’s pockets; when he started to come to life I picked up the pistol again and slammed it alongside his head. I continued to search his pockets. We seemed to have been forgotten under our mesquite, but a firefight was still continuing around the parked vehicles. The noise was, if anything, growing in volume. I couldn’t understand how one small girl, even with automatic weapons and spare magazines, could stage such a battle, but in order to come to her assistance I had to get my hands free. . . .

“No, it’s me!” Jo spoke quickly as, suddenly aware of her presence, I whipped the gun around. She drew a sleeve across her mouth. “Sorry about that. What can I do?”

“Check the big guy for a handcuff key. Skinny little thing with a round shank and just a little sideways nubbin at the end. Kind of a sharp prong sticking out the other end. . . . Never mind, here’s one.”

It was on Sigma’s key ring. Jo held out her wrists and I got the cuffs off her; then she performed the same operation for me.

“Do all handcuffs open with the same key?” she asked.

“Never mind the research, get me Rutherford’s M-16, over there. . .

“That will not be necessary, señor.”

It was a soft male voice I’d heard before, speaking from behind me. I rolled myself over painfully to look, and there was Lieutenant Ernesto Barraga, in full camouflage regalia, the little man I’d thought about very recently in another connection. I suppose it says something about ESP.

Barraga said, “You will not need the weapon, Señor Helm. The situation is under our control.”

I said, “Where the hell did you come from?”

“We have always been watching, señor, but it took a certain time to assemble enough men after we saw you wounded. For this, my apologies.”

I looked over toward the cars; other little commando types in camouflage suits and berets were disarming Sigma’s men. But there was no one on the rock. Then I saw one of Ramón’s men kneeling beside a small figure lying at the foot of it.

“Oh, Christ, no!” I said, and got to my feet somehow.

Jo protested, “Matt, you mustn’t. . .”

“Shut up and hand me that assault rifle.”

I don’t know why the Army loves it so. It’s not much of a rifle and, unlike the more powerful and longer M-l, now obsolete, it makes a lousy crutch. I wound up emptying the bastard weapon so it wouldn’t shoot me, and using it, butt down, as a half-assed cane. I thought of pulling my boot back on but the idea of bending over that far wasn’t attractive, and the bum was the least of my worries. With the aid of the M-16, I limped across the open space past the bullet-riddled rolling stock. There were a lot of flat tires and some leaking gas tanks, but this wasn’t a movie, so there were no picturesque, blazing fires.

I saw a couple of men I recognized. One was the tall individual called Gamma who’d captured Jo and driven her here; the one who, with a shorter partner named Peterson into whom I’d recently put a bullet, had put handcuffs on Buff Cody a long, long time ago. He was standing with three other sullen men, guarded by well-armed little brown-faced commandos. The second familiar face belonged to Captain Luis Aleman, Ramón’s second in command, to whom I owed some bruises and ring-cuts and a certain amount of humiliation. Well, as I said, the ledger is never completely in balance; and I had more urgent matters on my mind.

The man who was kneeling beside Antonia rose as I came up. “Are you Señor Matthew Helm? She ask for you.”

“I’m Helm. How is she?”

He shook his head and walked away. I lowered myself to my knees, and it didn’t hurt much. There was a much bigger hurt that made my little physical disabilities irrelevant. She looked even smaller lying there. They’d spread the
serape
over her like a blanket. There was a little blood at the comer of her mouth. I found a handkerchief and wiped it away. Her eyes opened.