Lyda looked at me, then back at Duppy. Her eyes narrowed and I could see her starting to put it all together. She knew, of course, that Dr. Romera Valdez was a physicist But I gave her a clean slate — she hadn’t known about the missiles until this moment.
She said: “That’s why they’re killing people and clearing them off the land. A missile range.”
Duppy nodded. “That why, Swan. But nothing to worry us, like I say. Papa Doc and P.P. out of their minds, I think. Missiles ain’t no damned good, no good at all. They go all which way, them missiles, and smash themselves up all the time.”
He pointed to the village, smoking in the approaching twilight. “I think maybe they try hit that with missiles — don’t even come close. No mind to us, Swan. We get Valdez away from them they not even be able gonna shoot the missiles no more.”
Lyda sank to the ground, a stunned look in her eyes “Missiles! Oh, my God, Missiles!”
Duppy wouldn’t look at me. He set about getting his gear together. He had been carrying her pack and musette bag and now he began to shrug into the pack harness.
“Be dark soon,” he said. “Better we get ready to move. They be waiting for us in the forest. After we got a lot of miles to cover so we be in position come morning.”
At last he looked squarely at me. “That right, blanc?”
I smiled falsely and nodded. “That’s right, Duppy.”
I was beginning to get it. To understand at least part of what was going on. It was pretty weird, but that is the name of the game.
The drums, silenced for minutes by the screaming missile, took up their muted throbbing again.
Chapter 9
The one thing I hadn’t counted on was that Hank Willard would know Sam Fletcher by sight. Maybe I should have thought of it, because the soldier of fortune types get together at times in bars and clubs all over the world, but I didn’t.
Willard, a skinny guy wearing ruined officer’s pinks and a tattered but clean OD shirt, was quick enough on the uptake. He didn’t give me away. What he did give me was one look from washed out gray eyes that said it all — I wasn’t Sam Fletcher and he knew it. And he wanted me to know that he knew it. I figured that his shut mouth was going to cost me something and I was right.
Lyda, Duppy and I had come down the side of the mountain into the valley as soon as it was dark enough. Duppy found a trail and led us up the next mountain for a way, then we turned into a narrow ravine that led into another ravine and then another. Beyond the last ravine there was a large clearing with one hut and a scattering of palm-thatched lean-tos. A small fire smoldered in a circle of stones. Around the fire were a dozen blacks and Hank Willard.
Duppy and the girl conversed in soft Creole with the blacks, in a dialect not familiar to me, though I caught a word now and then. The blacks were getting ready for a voodoo ceremony, or so I guessed, because there was a vever drawn in ashes and cornmeal near the fire. On each side of the vever a stake had been driven into the ground. On one stake was a skull, on the other was tied a silver crucifix. There is a lot of Christianity in voodoo, though not of the sort approved by the Church.
I stayed in the background and watched. I thought it was all a lot of crap anyway, a waste of time, and said so, but Lyda agreed with Duppy that it was worthwhile. Later we might need help from these blacks.
There was one other woman, a slim black girl in a red calico dress and a blue bandanna on her oiled hair, and red handkerchiefs knotted about both her arms. The local houngan, an old man with hair like gray steel wool, made a mark on the girl’s forehead with oil and ashes and handed her something. The drummer, not far from me, began to tap his F goatskin stretched over a hollow stump. Not so much tapping at first as rubbing it. A muted, sullen, slithering sound that pricked at my nerves.
There was a goblin moon, round and yellow and showing a blue skull in it, shining directly into the clearing. The girl held up the thing the houngan had given her and I saw that it was a doll figure. Very crude. Just a swatch of rags on a stick, with a face drawn on an egg, and a few strands of hair stuck to the egg. Nobody had to tell me who the figurine represented, but someone told me anyway. Hank Willard.
He sidled up to me, limping badly. He had broken a leg when he crashed the B25 and whoever set it for him had bungled it. He cadged a cigarette and puffed and looked at me sideways, speaking softly.
“They’re going to put an obeah on P.P. Trevelyn.”
“I’ll bet,” I said, “that that is going to worry old P.P. a hell of a lot.”
“Skeptic, eh?”
I said nothing. He smoked for a moment and then said, “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not as skeptical as I was, I know that. I’ve seen some damned queer things since I’ve been hiding in this screwing jungle. But that ain’t what I want to talk to you about.”
Here it came. I watched the girl, who I figured was a canzo, an apprentice voodoo priest, as she crooned over the little ragged doll, then spat on it and raised it over her head and shook it furiously. The drumming stepped up.
Hank Willard was whispering. “You’re not Sam Fletcher. I know Sam. I had a letter from him just before I flew that wreck in here — Sam was heading for Umuohiagu in Biafra and he wanted me to join him. Said the pay was damned good. But I had already signed a contract with some crazy bastards to invade this stinking place, and I keep my word I’m not very bright at times. No brains.”
They were passing the doll around among the blacks. Each one spat on it and passed it to the next. Lyda and Duppy were off to one side, watching and whispering.
“My guess is that you’re CIA,” Willard said. “Here to look into those missiles that P.P. and Papa Doc are trying to perfect. Am I right?”
It was a way out and I took it. I already knew that I was stuck with Willard, so I might as well use him as best I could. Maybe it wasn’t so bad at that. Another Indian on my side might come in handy.
So I nodded, playing the mysterious bit, and said, “Okay. So you guessed it. How come you didn’t give me away?”
“You wanta sit down? This leg kills me if I stand on it too long.”
He sank to the ground and I squatted beside him. The doll had almost reached Lyda and Duppy.
“I got to get out of this screwing country,” Willard said. “I been lucky, but it can’t last forever. All the rest of the invasion party are dead, hanged, and Papa Doc has got a hell of a price on my head. I want out of this place and to get back to Hong Kong where Mai Ling is spending all my dough. Mai Ling is my permanent girl. Eurasian and one hell of a dish. All I do here is think about Mai Ling.”
I said I wasn’t much interested in his love life, or lack of it. “What do you want from me, Willard?”
He cadged another cigarette and whispered between cupped hands as he lit it. “I want out of this hole. You help me and I’ll help you. I know that you CIA guys always have ways of getting out. You take me with you, and I’m your man. Anything. I don’t give a damn what it is. I’m a pretty good man with a gun.”
I stared at him. “What makes you think there is going to be any gun play?”
Willard’s pale gray eyes held mine for a moment and he chuckled. “Hell, man! You come in here loaded for bear, with Duppy who I know is a killer, and the Black Swan — I know about her too — and you ask me that! But I could be wrong, I guess. Maybe you come to build a dam for the blacks, huh?”