The Annihilators (2 page)

I went over and let her in. She was of medium height and quite young, perhaps in her early twenties. She could have been even younger. They mature early down there. She was wearing high-heeled shoes, very snug black slacks that were a little wider below than current fashion indicated—flamenco-dancer pants—and a crisp white wedding shirt with a lot of elaborate ruffles. Her long black hair flowed down her back smooth and glossy and unadorned, but there were small silver earrings and a silver bracelet or two. She looked very slim in those black trousers, and not a bit boyish. Her face, with its smooth olive skin, was very pretty; it would be beautiful when she’d done a little more living, if she managed that. But she was going about it the wrong way.

There were big dark eyes that could have been irresistible—until she narrowed them slightly, seeing the gun in my waistband, and let me know that she could turn snake-mean, given the provocation.

“The weapon will not be necessary, señor,” she said coldly. It was the voice I’d heard over the phone, of course; she’d been preparing the way for her own appearance. She must have made the call from a nearby booth to get here so fast. “Lay it aside, please.”

I said, “Go out that door, baby, turn around, come back in, and start over. If I’m the man you want, the violent gent you need, I don’t lay aside my gun for the first little girl who asks.”

She did not like being called “baby,” or being told she was a little girl. Her young face hardened. “We have the señorita!”

It was no time for displays of rage, or even concern. I said, “You’re wasting my time and yours, Miss Anaya. Of course you have the señorita, so what else is new? Speak your piece and stop throwing your weight around.” When she didn’t respond at once, I said, “Just give me the name.”

She frowned quickly. “What?”

“You want somebody killed, right?” I said, watching her. Her eyes flickered, letting me know I’d guessed correctly. I went on: “You’ve swung, you and whoever you’re working for, but you’ve struck out. He’s a tough proposition and you haven’t got anybody on your team who’s good enough, so you picked me. I suppose I should be flattered. So tell me: Who are you and who do you want dead?”

She studied me suspiciously. “Who has talked, señor?”

They’re as bad as certain government agencies, these wild-eyed action groups. They never give you credit for having brains enough to figure out their dirty little secrets. If you know something you shouldn’t, there must have been a leak, and somebody must be punished.

I said irritably, “Hell, I’m in a certain line of work. Sometimes I’m called upon to do a little bodyguarding when the subject is important enough. Sometimes I’m called upon to penetrate to a little intelligence material others have been unable to reach because they weren’t willing to get rough enough or didn’t know how. But those aren’t my normal assignments. I won’t ask how you learned, but you know what they are or you wouldn’t be here. So give me the name and I’ll tell you if I’ll do it for you.”

“You will do it! We have—”

I grimaced. “You have the señorita. You have the señorita. So you have the señorita. It’s something, but it’s not a blank check. I need the name. I need to make a telephone call to find out if that name is available or unavailable. If it’s available, I’ll erase it for you.”

This was-pure distilled bullshit, of course. It’s the one game we never play. Technically I was breaking the rules by even pretending to consider the girl’s demands; but I do have a certain amount of seniority in the outfit, and I thought I’d be forgiven if I went along with these creeps a little way, far enough to find out what we had to deal with.

When Dolores Anaya still stood there frowning, I said sharply: “Do you think this has never happened before? Do you think you’re the first bunch of bloodthirsty characters who ever had the idea of employing a government guy like me for your private purposes, using a little pressure? Well, you hold something I value. To preserve it, I’m willing to make a deal if I can. It goes like this, señorita: You pick up that phone and let me talk with her so I know for sure you really have her and didn’t hurt her too badly grabbing her. Then you let me make my call. Then I’ll tell you where we stand. Okay?”

Costa Verde, I thought, waiting. Not everybody knows what we do for Uncle Sam, particularly not everybody down in Latin America. But certain people in Costa Verde knew because we’d done it for them once—I’d done it for them once—upon request.

There had been a bandit or revolutionary patriot, depending upon your point of view, named Jorge Santos, who’d called himself
El Fuerte
, The Strong One. He had not been a very nice man, but his unniceness had been, of course, strictly irrelevant. Political affiliations are seldom based on nice or not-nice.
El Fuerte
’s real mistake was that he’d caused embarrassment to President Avila of Costa Verde and, through President Avila, to certain people in Washington who’d considered Avila to be a stable and friendly influence in the region, although, objectively speaking, he really wasn’t a very nice man, either. So I’d been sent down there with a big rifle to remove this revolutionary annoyance to our good friend President Avila, with the help of a small military detachment commanded by a competent Costa Verde army colonel named Hector Jimenez.

Unfortunately for Washington, it became obvious shortly thereafter that Colonel Jimenez had certain political plans of his own when he used the same accurate rifle, which I had left with him as a token of the friendship between our countries—had it used, actually, since he wasn’t much of a marksman himself—to remove Avila and earn himself a promotion to president, after which he’d shipped the big gun back to me with his thanks…

Dolores Anaya had her connection. She was speaking into the phone. “Oso? Leona here. Let me speak with Lobo.” She waited; then she said, “Lobo? Is it permissible for the man to speak with the woman? He will not proceed without…
Bueno.”
She extended the instrument to me.

“Elly,” I said. Her voice said something in my ear, but it wasn’t clear. “Elly?”

“Matt? I’m sorry, they had me gagged and my lips don’t seem to… Matt, I’m sorry. Stupid me. After you called to say you’d be late I drove out to get some vermouth before the liquor store closed. I saw it was getting low, and they…”

I had a mental picture of her, small and angry and unafraid, but probably a little disheveled from being captured and gagged and perhaps bound; and she would hate that. She had the idea that she was a very ugly little girl, with her mobile monkey-face and straight brown hair; and that the only way to deal with this dreadful handicap was to take special pains with her appearance.

We’d happily overcome, in the past months, some of the inferiority feelings that had been hammered into her by, I gathered, a lovely and unloving mother who’d wanted a pretty doll to play with, not a bright but somewhat less than beautiful child to bring up. But she still had some distance to go; and it was unbearable to think that she might not be allowed to make it all the way now and become the person she was meant to be, the person she would have enjoyed being, just because of some hot-blooded political screwballs and a cold-blooded fish of a so-called lover who couldn’t forget his idiot notions of duty and discipline, or could he? I listened to her telling me how they had grabbed her and how dumb she’d been to let them…

“Are you all right?” I asked when she stopped.

“Yes, so far, but… Matt.”

“Yes?”

There was sudden, breathless urgency in her voice: “Matt, I couldn’t stand it if you… It would never be any good again. Nothing would ever be any good again. Please don’t let them make you do anything because of me…” Her voice was cut off abruptly, presumably by a hand over her mouth.

“Enough.” It was a man’s voice, a young man’s voice, presumably the voice of the man called Lobo, the Wolf, who seemed to be running the show. At least the girl had shown him a certain deference. He continued: “You heard her say she was all right, señor. It is up to you whether or not she will continue to be all right. Consider it very carefully. For our cause, we will kill if we must, even a pretty lady like her.”

The phone went dead, leaving Elly alone somewhere with Lobo the Wolf and Oso the Bear, while I got Leona the Lioness for company. Kid stuff. But they all have causes. It’s getting to the point, I reflected, where it’s like a ray of sunshine after a long dark winter to meet some splendid mercenary creep who simply murders for money, or a fine sadistic jerk who merely likes to see the agonized wiggles and hear the tormented screams and smell the blood. Those are natural impulses I can understand; but I’m getting pretty damn sick of these incomprehensible high-minded ladies and gentlemen who kidnap and slaughter innocent people with the purest and most idealistic motives in the world.

I started to give the phone back to Dolores Anaya and caught myself and glanced at her questioningly. She made a gesture of rejecting the instrument, nodding.

“Make your call, señor.”

I dialed the Washington number and identified myself. “Condition Blue,” I said. When the girl looked disturbed and made a move to break the connection, I said, “That means there’s a gun at my head, or somebody’s head. Is it supposed to be a secret?” The outstretched hand was withdrawn.

“I’ll put you through,” said the girl in Washington. Almost immediately, Mac’s voice came on the line.

“Matt here, sir,” I said. “Condition Blue.”

The fact that I used my real name instead of my code name—which happens to be Eric—warned my superior that the conversation was being overheard at my end.

“Yes, Matt,” he said, acknowledging the signal. “What’s the problem?”

At this hour of the night he wouldn’t be sitting at the familiar beat-up office desk in front of the bright window he liked to make us squint at. It was well past midnight in Washington, and I’d never entered his home, so I couldn’t visualize him at the phone in pajamas and dressing gown. To me he was always the lean, ageless gray-haired man in a gray suit with whom I’d worked longer than I cared to remember.

I looked at Dolores Anaya. “The name,” I said. She hesitated but gave it to me. I said into the phone: “Name check, please. Rael, Armando Rael. Is that name on the available list?”

Well, it was what the kid expected, wasn’t it? She was sitting there obviously impressed by all the undercover nonsense and even more impressed by the thought that we seemed to have the world’s population classified, presumably by computer, into available people we could blow away at will, and those few lucky folks who were unavailable to our grim assassination teams, at least for the moment.

There was a little pause, as Mac digested the request and its implications, and marshaled his facts a thousand miles away. He spoke precisely at last: “Armando Rael is the current president of Costa Verde—dictator, actually—having thrown out the former incumbent a few years ago in a sudden coup. That was Col. Hector Jimenez, whom you may remember, who replaced President Avila rather forcibly. Jimenez, although a military man, was a little too liberal, particularly on the subject of land reform; he was therefore overthrown by a junta of reactionary landowners and conservative army officers headed by Rael. Jimenez was fortunate to escape with his life—and of course some money. They never escape poor, do they? The current president of Costa Verde is not exactly a firm believer in human rights and democracy, I’m told. There have been two known attempts on his life already, both unsuccessful.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “The question is, would anybody besides Rael object to a successful attempt?”

“By whom?”

“By me,” I said. “I repeat, Condition Blue.”

“Yes, I see,” he said, and I thought it very likely that he did by this time. He wasn’t a man for whom you needed to draw detailed pictures. He said, “Very well, I’ll check.”

I spoke to Leona, the young black-maned lioness. “He’s consulting the oracle. Be patient.”

Dolores Anaya did not speak. We waited. I tried not to think of a small, brave, intelligent girl with whom I’d shared some very pleasant experiences and some not so pleasant—we’d met under rather strained and violent circumstances. What she’d gone through then had not been my fault, but this obviously was. I should have remembered that a man in my peculiar line of work draws violence the way a lone tree on a hilltop draws lightning. Well, actually I had remembered, and warned her, and she had laughed and said that she’d long since given up expecting anything good to come to her safely and free of charge…

“Matt?” The phone spoke in my ear.

“Yes, sir.”

“Unavailable,” Mac said, playing the game on my terms, which was nice of him. He could simply have ordered me to cut out the stalling and, for a start, send the pretty messenger—of course I hadn’t told him she was pretty—back to her friends with a neatly-slit throat the way I was supposed to, the way we were all supposed to, in any situation like this. As I said, the hostage game is one we simply do not play. Mac went on: “I checked the classification with State, just to be certain. I was informed that President Armando Rael of Costa Verde is not expendable; and that there must not be the slightest suggestion that we consider him so, since he is a very sensitive person in a very sensitive area and we must not jeopardize this valuable relationship in any way.” When I didn’t respond to this immediately, Mac asked, “You are in Chicago?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think I understand the problem, but that solution must not be used, not even as a feint or distraction. No move whatever must be made in that direction. I am truly sorry.”

He sounded sincere, and I got the impression that under other circumstances he might have been willing to make an exception to the standing orders; but national policy made it impossible for him to free my hands. Check to the tall, skinny gent with the gun in his belt and the stupid look on his face. And to the tough little lady who, with her life at stake, had in effect given me my orders, telling me that nothing would ever be any good again if I allowed her to be used against me in this fashion.