Lessing finished and asked, “Anybody spot tracks in the snow?” He found himself hoping that there were none — or that they led off to the south or west.
“Auto,” Teen answered laconically. He pointed off toward the northeast. “Small — Army, maybe. Or one of them new all-terrain Vipers.” He spat into the mud-splattered snow at the bottom of the front-porch steps. Lessing was amused. The man was a chameleon: he had subtly shifted his stance, his posture, and his accent so that he now looked and sounded much like an American from the rural Southwest. A hick from the cow country! If there had been a grass stalk handy, the bastard would be sucking on it! What a fraud! Any real native would pick him out at once.
The automobile held four of them: Lessing, Teen, Char, and Cheh. Doe remained sullen. He tramped off to stand lonely sentry duty atop the hill behind the dilapidated base. Panch stayed behind to prowl around the house and the snow-covered foundations of the destroyed barracks and other buildings within the complex. Lessing knew this type of mercenary all too well; he ordered Panch to steal nothing that might be missed and not to tear the place apart like some adolescent ghetto burglar. Let the authorities guess who had come visiting and why.
The fuel gauge showed about a quarter full, enough for a quick search. Twelve miles out and twelve back, Lessing decided, to be on the safe side. If they didn’t catch up with the weasel within that range then so be it Gomez could send somebody else.
They drove in silence, the Viper’s track a double line winding off ahead of them across the snow, a railway to Hell. Lessing was tired. He rubbed the bridge of his nose again. Cheh, in the front passenger seat beside him, glanced over at him with concern. He hoped she would keep any erotic fantasies to herself. She was an excellent comrade — and might, in time, become a good friend — but she had almost as much sexual appeal for Lessing as the ice-shrouded cacti that loomed up like pallid bogeymen outside the car window.
He hated to remember, but memories came anyway. The last time a woman mercenary had got her panties wet over him had been in Jerusalem during the Baalbek War. She had died somewhere near Damascus, in a nameless ditch full of mud bricks that were as old as Babylon.
Get the job done. Do the needful, as Gomez said in his impeccably British-Indian accent. Do the needful and get out.
Whoever had driven the Viper knew the way. There was a road of sorts under the drifted snow, twin ruts that had once known asphalt but were now no more than a frozen, dirt track. More silent cacti lurched up out of the grey desolation, mesquite, sagebrush, rocks and boulders and twisted monoliths of stone. It looked like the empty quarter of Hell.
“There!” said Teen sharply. Lessing, in the driver’s seat in front of him, jumped and swore under his breath.
“Goddamn it!”
“Right there.” The man leaned past him to point. The Viper’s tracks swerved, turned almost a half circle, then dived off behind a tumbled stand of white-hoared brush. The odometer showed that they had travelled eleven miles.
Lessing slewed their car to a slush-spraying stop. They piled out, took cover behind the vehicle, and looked around. Nothing moved. He signalled for them to draw up in tactical squad formation. Canvas rustled; weapons clicked; Teen’s asthmatic breathing wheezed in the frigid air. Then they were ready. It was about fifty meters around the brush pile.
Lessing squinted, then waved an arm for a rapid advance. They began to jog, then to trot. Bushes, rocks, snow, a set of tiny tracks — Lessing had time to wonder if they were rabbit or squirrel or something else — then they reached the tangle of black branches and debris around which the Viper had gone. There was no road here. The driver must have lost control. The spoiled-meat features of Arthur L. Kopper leaped up unbidden before his eyes, then the chalk-limned face of the dead boy in the subterranean office.
Icy daggers began to stab at Lessing’s lungs. His breath plumed out in white banners. Blood surged against his temples, and he felt the jarring crunch of each footstep upon the slippery roots and stones buried beneath the snow. His rifle banged against his side. He heard Cheh just behind him to his left, Teen’s heavy, gasping breathing to his right. Char was invisible behind them, guarding their rear.
There was snow in his eyes, and he blinked. Snow? He tried to bring up a hand to brush his face but found it pinned beneath him. He was lying prone behind a log. He realized that he had fallen flat, a reflex action so automatic that he had done it without being aware of it God, if he got out of here he’d have to take a rest. Otherwise he might find himself waking up with a scream on his lips and a gun in his hand He was minded of Colfax, who had stabbed his wife three times one night before he realized he wasn’t in Angola any more. The Paraguayan police hadn’t taken to that excuse well at all, and poor Colfax was still languishing in some hole of a prison down there.
Lessing shook his head once, hard, then peered through the dead leaves and twigs in front of him.
A bright-blue Viper lay upside down amidst the ghost-grey saplings.
Lessing motioned Teen and Cheh to stay put and provide covering fire; he and Char got to their feet and moved in. Except for their breathing and the crackling of their footsteps in the snow-swathed weeds, there was no sound. Char took the left, toward the front of the Viper. Lessing headed for the rear and got there first. He paused, panting, beside the rear wheel. It took him a long moment to remember that American automobiles had a left-handed drive; goddamn it, he had been away too long! In an American car this was the passenger side — the right side when it was upright.
No sound came. He squinted down the Viper’s mirror-polished flank and noted that the passenger doors were closed, the car tilted so that snow obscured the side windows. The rear window was dark as well. He gathered strength, lurched up, and floundered through an unexpected, waist-deep drift to reach the driver’s side. The front door was unlatched, though still shut. To get out, one would have had to crawl up at a fairly steep angle. He could not see any tracks in the snow below the door.
The driver — and any other occupants — were still inside.
A movement beneath the front bumper caught his eye: Char. He waved to show he was all right, ready for the final advance. The other wiggled a Finger in return.
The driver’s window was still closed, rimed and blotched with frost He rubbed it with his glove but could make out only shadows within. The door, then: this gave easily, lifting up without so much as a creak. He steeled himself for whatever lay inside.
He expelled breath in a rasping cough.
So, the weasel was a woman! A Black woman, in fact, although her wavy hair and fair skin hinted at an admixture of Spanish or Indian blood. Caribbean?
She wore a tight and stylish blouse of some fancy, crushed-looking, maroon fabric; a short polo coat; elegant, grey slacks tight enough to have been painted upon her rounded thighs; and soft desert boots. Bronze-hued sunglasses hid her eyes.
Which was just as well. She had died at least a day ago, maybe two.
The smell wasn’t really bad yet — the weather had been cold — but Lessing’s nose told him that she had soiled herself in her dying.
“Jee… zuss!” That was Char, just behind him.
Lessing could see nothing of any size under the body. He opened the rear door. The Viper lay mostly on its back, tilted so that the driver’s side was higher than the other; its rear seal was now a narrow tunnel full of upholstery and litter. At least he didn’t have to crawl down on top of the dead woman.
A wad of white plastic caught his eye, something much like a kitchen garbage bag. He sighed gulped cold, fresh air, and dived down to retrieve it.
It was heavy and lumpy. A glance told him this was what they had come for. inside he could see oval capsules of silvery metal, about the size of small hand grenades. There were also tubes of some dull, black materiaclass="underline" stoppered vials like overgrown deodorant bottles. The globes were stamped “PCV-1,” the black cylinders “PCV-2.” He knew without counting that there would be thirty of each.