The Viper Squad (6 page)

Sally looked up to see a somber-faced young woman in combat fatigues holding a huge automatic pistol in her left hand. A curl
of gray smoke rose from the gun’s muzzle.

The woman said to Sally, “I’m one of the dried-up bitches Leon was telling you about.”

Andre Verdoux, Mike Campbell’s buddy from the bad old days in Angola, met his plane at Zurich. The city was deep in snow.

“It’s beautiful,” Mike said with all the wonder of a desert-dweller.

“That’s the trouble with Switzerland,” Andre complained. “It looks like a color photo of itself. You may not think so kindly
of it in twenty-four hours’ time when you’re tramping around in the snow with a pack on your back. Eat, drink and be merry,
for tomorrow we climb.”

After a day in the city of Zurich, capped by a huge gourmet dinner, they retired to their hotel rooms at ten. Andre phoned
Mike’s room at three-thirty in the morning, and by four they were driving westward out of the city in pitch darkness and at
a temperature well below freezing.

Andre was in his mid-fifties. The older he grew, the fitter he stayed, and his constant attempts to prove he could still hack
it with the toughest sometimes got on Mike’s nerves. Andre, a Frenchman, had been with their forces in Indochina and had survived
the Viet Minh assault on Dienbienphu. He had been with the French in equatorial Africa and with the Belgians in the Congo.
After the Portuguese abandoned Angola, he and Mike had fought with Holden Roberto’s forces against the Cuban-led leftists
until the CIA abandoned Roberto. It galled them both that the American-backed anticommunists there had been forced to quit,
while the anticommunists led by Jonas Savimbi in the southern part of the country—backed by South Africa—held out to the present
day against the Cuban-dominated Angolans.

Andre and Mike had been together as mercenaries on a
number of missions since then. But now Mike felt it was time for Andre to hang up his guns and grow old gracefully. A man
past his prime can get too many of his comrades killed with his slow reflexes or lack of drive. For Andre, this was what he
had always feared. He would prefer a blade of tempered steel pushed slowly into his heart to suffering the colder steel of
icy rejection for his being “too old” to go on a mission.

Andre had persuaded Mike to take him along on a recent mission inside Vietnam. Mike had been unwilling at first, but finally
gave in because of Andre’s special knowledge of the area’s languages and customs. Andre had proved himself a valuable member
of that team.

Mike guessed Andre’s invitation to him to spend a week inspecting the Swiss army in training was intended to soften his expected
future resistance. Mike did not know what Andre’s status with the Swiss army was. Andre told him only that he was finishing
a two-month stint as a “consultant.” When Mike agreed to go, two days later he received in the mail an “honorarium” of $5000,
to cover his airfare and expenses. The check was from a Swiss merchant bank in New York City.

Andre swept the BMW smoothly along the dark road. The snow was pushed into walls on either side of the road, and they loomed
whitely in the headlights. The inside of the car was very warm. Mike was suffering from the multiple effects of the previous
night’s celebration and jet lag. He fell into a deep sleep, strapped into the bucket seat.

It was bright daylight when he awoke. His ears popped. They were in the mountains, about to enter a picture—postcard village.
Mike saw that the signs above businesses were in French—he should have guessed Andre would locate himself westward in the
French-speaking part of Switzerland. The BMW pulled into a schoolyard. About thirty men stood about, next to their packs and
weapons, stamping their boots to keep their feet warm.

Andre wasted no time on introductions. He outfitted Mike and himself in a green windproof jacket and pants, a peaked cap with
earflaps and rubber-soled boots. Sausage, raisins, cheese and chocolate were stowed in their backpacks along with maps and
a medical kit. In short time, the men were climbing single file up the steep slope behind the village. On the far side of
the slope lay country with pitching valleys whose walls were too sharply angled to hold snow. The international set did not
come here to ski. The army officer came down the line of men and spoke to Mike in slow, straightforward French.

“What would you like to see?”

Mike grinned. He knew that Switzerland had only a tiny regular army and that all these men were civilians putting in their
three weeks of annual compulsory training. So far this morning he had not seen two men walk in step. There was something about
the way the men slouched unwillingly along the mountain that reminded him of kids on a school trip. He would not be too hard
on them. He’d ask for something vague and let the officer order what he thought the men could deliver.

Mike pointed across a shallow basin to a sharp ridge. “I see enemy helicopters make a surprise sweep over that ridge and land
combat troops.”

The words were hardly out of Mike’s mouth when the officer shouted, “Helicopters landing enemy troops!” He pointed at rock
outcrops. “There! There! There! And there!”

Rifles rattled. Mike could see rock being chipped by the live ammunition. A three-man team ran beneath the hail of automatic
fire toward one rock outcrop. All three threw grenades and blasted chunks out of the rock outcrop. If it had been a chopper,
it would now be twisted metal.

Another chopper was taken out seconds later with more grenades, but Mike’s attention was caught by a two-man team attacking
an outcrop to his left. One man carried a rocket tube strapped to his back. He threw himself flat on
the ground so that the rocket tube was aimed at the chopper, and his partner fired the projectile.

The outcrop exploded in a great orange ball of flame and showered down in fragments on all their heads.

“How was that?” the officer yelled at Mike.

Both were half-deafened by the gunfire and explosions.

“Very impressive,” Mike yelled back. “It would be a credit to an elite squad of full-time professionals.”

The officer nodded, pleased. He said, “I’m a chef in a hotel kitchen.”

Dwight Quincy Poynings left his office on Federal Street, in downtown Boston’s business district, punctually at seven minutes
to five. He liked to give his executive secretary, through his absence, a few minutes for personal things before she left
for the day at five. He strode briskly along Franklin Street, following his accustomed route into Bromfield Street, rounded
the Park Street Church to continue along the edge of the Common to reach Beacon Street and then Walnut Street; and from Walnut
it was only a matter of a few hundred yards to his house on Chestnut Street and the relative privacy and peace of Beacon Hill
before the tourist season.

He had just entered Park Street, by the Common, when a short, dark person of foreign appearance accosted him.

“I don’t think I know you, sir,” Dwight Quincy Poynings informed him and hastened onward. One of the amazing things about
some foreigners. Dwight reflected, was that they seemed to have no qualms about approaching a perfect stranger. Since Poynings
was six-two and the stranger about five-eight and half his weight, the Bostonian was reasonably assured that robbery or assault
was not the motive.

“Mr. Poynings, I have a message for you.”

The damn fellow spoke English with an abominable accent, Poynings thought, but it was undeniable he knew who Dwight was. It
could be an urgent business matter.
The man sounded Spanish. Perhaps he was related in some way to one of the Hispanic players on his pro baseball team, although
they all had agents and managers, as he knew to his cost. He slowed just enough to allow the little foreigner to trot along
beside his great strides.

“I’m from the Nicaraguan embassy in Washington,” the man explained.

Poynings was amazed. “I didn’t know they let your sort into Washington. Nicaragua, you say. Whereabouts is it?”

“Central America—”

“Dammit, man, I meant your embassy in Washington.”

“Sixteen twenty-seven New Hampshire Avenue,” the man said.

“I’ll look into it. The fact that you people frolic on the diplomatic cocktail circuit here in America might make a nice news
item.”

Poynings noted that the foreigner had the insolence to smile at this. at was Boston coming to? Here he was being harassed
by a smiling communist on a spring evening next to the Common!

“I wish to speak to you about the treatment of Marxist countries on news programs aired by your chain of television stations.
Your extreme antileftist views”

“I have heard enough, sir!”

“—your extreme views may have to be modified now that your daughter Sally has joined the brave fighters in El Salvador’s glorious
struggle for freedom.”

Dwight Quincy Poynings stood absolutely still for a long time. Then he started breathing again.

“I didn’t know…” Poynings’ voice trailed off.

“Your State Department hasn’t told you?” The foreigner clucked his tongue as an adult might over the behavior of a naughty
child. “Those people can be so unreliable.”

“I don’t even know if this is true.” Poynings came back on the attack again. “Why should I accept your word for it?”

“You already have, W. Poynings.”

Dwight did not try to deny it. “And what’s this? Extortion? You want something in exchange for her freedom?”

“I am not here to bargain with you, Mr. Poynings, nor have I the power to do so. Your daughter has joined the leftist guerrillas
in El Salvador. She is not in Nicaragua, and has never been, so far as we know. Aware of the family bonds that must bind you
together, the Nicaraguan government, out of simple humanity, is bringing you news of your daughter’s whereabouts—which is
more than your own government is apparently willing to do. We have nothing to trade with you. This matter will remain confidential
until you or your government chooses to publicize it, even though news of a nationally known conservative’s daughter joining
the worldwide struggle for workers’ freedom would be, as you might put it yourself, a feather in our cap.”

“What is it you want?” Poynings insisted.

“Nothing more than a somewhat more favorable presentation of TV news on Nicaragua and Cuba, and less favorable treatment of
the rightist Salvadoran and Honduran governments.”

“You and I become pals, right?” Poynings asked sarcastically.

“Sally is such a pretty young girl, Mr. Poynings.”

The little bastard turned out to have a better grasp of English than he had first thought, Dwight decided as he watched the
foreigner hurry away. Dwight wondered if what the Nicaraguan had said about family bonds between him and his daughter was
a deliberate insult. He hadn’t seen or heard from Sally in more than six months. Or was it a year?

H
ARVEY
Waller couldn’t go home to Remington, New Jersey, anymore. Some nights when he couldn’t bear the loneliness, he’d drive there
and just slowly move about the streets he had grown up on, keeping the car windows rolled up in case someone recognized him.
The FBI had made his life a nightmare: questioning people in the town who had known him, coming back again and again with
more questions and blurred photos that might and might not be of him—no one could tell—giving them emergency phone numbers
to call if they should ever see him again, in Flemington or anyplace else in the world. Some of his friends had told him what
was going on. He had thanked them and ordered them to do their duty as good Americans—phone the FBI and say they had seen
him.

Harvey still had friends here. He knew what they said about him—that he had come home from Vietnam funny in the head. He could
agree with them that he was now a different man than he would have become if he had stayed put in Remington, New Jersey. He
had left as an innocent small-town kid and come back a hardened veteran with his eyes opened to what was really happening
in the world.
Harvey could see how ridiculous it must seem to someone who knew nothing but small-town life (although Remington was hardly
the boondocks, being close to both Philadelphia and New York City); he could readily see how ridiculous it must seem in the
eyes of such a person that the Soviet Union had agents and sympathizers in key positions at every level of American life.

His certain knowledge that the Soviets were on the verge of subverting America through their cunningly planted agents was
what distinguished Harvey, in his own view, from the common herd. He might be one of the sheep, but he at least knew he was
being driven and who was driving the herd or flock or whatever. Almost every day, he saw some other subtle thing that added
to the evidence against the Russians.—

The patriotism of the vast majority of his fellow Americans was something Harvey did not doubt. They just did not see what
was being done to them, and would not see what was happening till it was too late. Thus it became the sacred duty of the farseeing
few to protect the many—and not by words alone but by action.

This was where Harvey Waller stood up to be counted. Where others hesitated and were lost, he strode forward bravely and took
up arms against the enemy.

Chips Stadnick glanced at the photo in his hand and knew he had his man, Tuesday morning, coming off the New York shuttle
at Boston’s Logan airport. Chips was big, had a flat face and a broken nose, knew he stood out in a crowd, so he hung well
back and gave the man a very loose rein. The man took a taxi, and Chips followed in a hired Dodge Dart with a missing cigarette
lighter, which meant he had to light one Marlboro off another since he had no matches. The taxi came out of the tunnel and
headed toward the harbor along the Fitzgerald Expressway. It pulled up outside the McDonald’s near
the Tea Party ship. Stadnick stayed in his car and waited.

He had found himself a nice source of work, a constant trickle at high fees that paid the rent and the child-support payments.
And the liquor store. He could charge his expenses and no one gave a fuck, because this was TV and nothing was real anyway.
Like they have these big show-biz lawyers, he was now a show-biz private investigator. He even had an appointment to meet
the big boss at three that afternoon—the great Dwight Quincy Poynings himself. Chips had shaved and put on a tie for the occasion.
He hoped he’d be done with this creep by then, otherwise Poynings would have to wait.