“Si, I will light a fire,” Romo said. “I will make them burn for what they did to us.”
“You know we’re probably going down into a bunker,” Donovan said.
Romo just stared at the man.
“Fire gobbles oxygen,” Donovan said. “We won’t be able to breathe if you start smoking them with that thing down there.”
“We will breathe fine,” Romo said.
“I ain’t a dragon.”
Romo raised the cards to his chest, turning back to Paul.
“Am I missing something?” Donovan asked.
“Our helmets have filters,” Paul said. “We’ll breathe okay.”
Sergeant Donovan continued to stare at the flamethrower. “It’s too heavy, too cumbersome and it’s not something you want to take down with you into a bunker. It’s crazy.”
“Si,” Romo said, still studying his cards.
“You’re both crazy is what I think,” Donovan said.
“Is that why General Ochoa sent you with us?” Paul asked.
“No. I’m along to make sure Colonel Valdez’s men understand a few realities about life and about you. You’re golden, Kavanagh, at least until this mission is completed.”
“Sounds good,” Paul said. “I hope you’ve told the Chinese how golden I am.”
“Nope,” Donovan said. “You and me, we’re going to have to show them ourselves.”
On his lunch break, Old Daniel Cruz with the bad knees sat on a bench in Santa Anna Park. He watched a red-colored roller strutting across the bricks.
The roller was a pigeon, but not one of the regular wild ones that infested the park near the city’s main business district. Daniel used to raise pigeons as a young boy. His rollers flew in the air like homing pigeons, but they were the acrobats of the bird world. As they flew, sometimes, they flipped backward. A good roller would flip backward twenty, maybe even fifty times in the air before it recovered and kept winging around. This roller here in Santa Anna Park, it must belong to a pigeon fancier, a pigeon breeder. This roller must have escaped from its loft, the name pigeon breeders called the bird cages.
“Are you free, my friend?” Daniel asked softly.
For an answer, the roller cooed and strutted a little nearer. There was a red band on the bird’s left leg, with lettering on it.
Daniel liked to come to the park for lunch. He had a cheese sandwich wrapped in wax paper. It wasn’t much. Donna had brought the cheese home, a gift from Colonel Peng. The man had impregnated his daughter and then he had forced her to abort the child. Donna wept at night over it, but she still went to visit the Chinese supply officer. She claimed to love him.
Daniel breathed harder. He detested the occupiers and he despised how Colonel Peng used his daughter. Now, with this forced abortion, he had yet another reason to pile hate on top of hate. Unfortunately, he could do nothing about his animosity. He was an old man trapped—
A compact man in a business suit sat down beside him on the bench. The man wore sunglasses and carried a lunch pail. He set the box on his knees, opened it and pulled out a hot corned beef sandwich. It smelled delicious and it made Daniel’s mouth water.
It had been a long time since Daniel had eaten meat. Cheese—he should be grateful for what he had, not wish for something impossible like meat.
“Daniel Cruz,” the man said before taking a bite of his corned beef.
Daniel froze, but he was wary enough, old and wise enough, to keep from whipping about to stare at the man.
“We have done business before,” the man said softly while chewing.
Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel studied the stranger. He was white, compact, probably running to fat and looked to be a youthful forty-five.
Daniel would have loved to be forty-five again. Ah, the things he would do.
“I am from the Swiss Embassy,” the man said.
Daniel’s heart began to pound. And now, he could not help himself. He looked at the man. He had freckles on his cheeks. Yes, he could be Swiss but more likely, this was a CIA agent.
“You’ve never seen me before,” the man said.
“You work for the SNP?” By that, Daniel meant the present Mexican government and the inference therefore was the secret police. They were a nasty, evil lot, who loved entrapping their own people.
“We would not be talking if I belonged to the secret police,” the man said. “Instead, they would be marching you away for torture.”
“Why are you here?”
“Eat your sandwich,” the man said. “Watch your pigeon. It is what you always do, and you should not deviate from that.”
With leaden, numb fingers, Daniel opened the wrapper and took out his sandwich. The bread was limp compared to the man’s and the cheese inside a poor substitute for corned beef. A flash of hatred surged through Daniel for this well-fed American agent, but he suppressed it.
“You are CIA,” Daniel said quietly.
The man stiffened slightly, but hid it well.
Secretly, Daniel smiled inside. Rich foreigners—Americans or Chinese—coming to his country and eating better than he did, it was not right.
“Do not,” the man whispered. “say such things.”
“What do you want?”
The man took another bite of corned beef, chewed for a time but couldn’t swallow.
I have scared him. Maybe he is CIA. I don’t know. He cannot help me, so what does it matter?
The man opened his suit and took out a silver-colored flask from an inner pocket. He twisted the cap and took a swallow. By the odor, it was whiskey. The man’s hand didn’t shake as much now as he slipped the flask back into the suit.
Finally swallowing his corned beef, the man whispered, “We need a vital piece of information. If you give it to us, it might go a long way toward defeating the enemy’s California thrust.”
Daniel shrugged. What did he care about that?
“We have never come to you before,” the man said. “That should show you how critical this is to the war effort.”
Daniel could see that. He could also see that the man—the CIA—jeopardized his life by doing this. That jeopardized his daughter’s life. That—ah. The man could do something for him after all.
Feeling calmer, feeling much better about the rich man with his meat sandwich, Daniel said, “You will have to pay me for this information.”
“Yes. I’m prepared to do that.”
“I want a gun.”
“A gun?” The CIA agent actually looked at him, before turning away and blinking thoughtfully.
“I want a .38 revolver,” Daniel said, “with each chamber loaded with a bullet. Can you get that for me?”
“What do you need a gun for?”
Daniel smiled. It was good to control a situation, to show the foreigner that this was his land and his country. “What do you need my information for?” he asked the agent.
The man squeezed his eyes shut as if analyzing the situation. He opened his eyes almost right away and nodded. “Done. One .38 with bullets, I can do that.”
“Excellent.”
“In return, you need to give me a way into Marshal Nung’s Headquarters. We believe it is in San Ysidro, California.”
“Ah,” Daniel said, “such a small thing as that? You do not want the moon as well?”
“Can you do it?”
Daniel took a bite of his sad sandwich. The cheese would upset his stomach tonight. Donna knew that, but she fed him Colonel Peng’s gift anyway. Could he do this thing for the American? He had seen the First Front Headquarters many times on the scheduled traffic routes. Pedro’s computer had more detailed information. Yes, it should be possible for him to find a way. No one bothered with truck drivers bringing needed supplies.
“I believe I can do as you want,” Daniel said. “I will find a special shipment order. Provided you have the needed vehicles and uniforms…”