All three jeeps had jammed to a halt. Tonton Macoute were running all over the place, angry and confused and staring and pointing up at the mountain side. That gunner had better be well on his way.
A little knot of Tonton Macoute gathered around the middle jeep. They were looking at something on the ground. A couple of them were kneeling and working on the man. I saw a white Panama hat lying in the dirt off to one side. My guess was a telescopic sight and a head shot. An expert marksman. I moved a little closer to the wooden stairs leading down the palm tree.
I had to crane to see now. One of the Tonton Macoute, obviously an officer, straightened up and made a gesture of disgust. Shook his head and flung his arms wide and I could almost hear the word: “Mort!”
Duppy said, “They kill him, Swan. Some dirty bastard kill your Dr. Valdez.”
Lyda was in shock. She had forgotten me. She clung to Duppy’s massive bicep and stared and said over and over again, “Why? But why? Why would they want to kill him?”
Time to go. I started down the tree, making no sound. As I went I heard Duppy saying: “Depend who they is, Swan. Not P.P. or Papa Doc — they never kill valuable man like Valdez. But I know who do want him dead, Swan. CIA want him dead. Them miserable American bastards want Valdez good and dead, you bet. They do it, Swan. CIA do it!”
I smiled as I reached the ground. Another piece of the puzzle in place.
I heard Lyda give a muted little scream of rage and anguish. I picked up my musette bag, already packed, and kicked the dozing Hank Willard in the ribs. He came up swearing, and I clamped a hand over his mouth and whispered for thirty seconds.
Willard’s eyes widened and his mouth opened, and he began to spit out protests.
“What the screwing hell, Sam? You’re looking to get me killed. I’m an airplane driver, not a screwing—”
Time was precious. Every second was uranium. I put my hand in his ginger beard and twisted. “You do it,” I hissed. “You do it right. You ever expect to see the States again, or your girl in Hong Kong, you do it! Fail me and I’ll kill you.”
He gasped and nodded and clawed at my hand. “Okay— okay. But Jesus — I—”
I shoved him away. “Do it! Right! I’ll see you. Whether you get dead or rewarded is up to you.”
Time to go. I dove into the thick brush and started working my way down the slope. It would be dark soon, and I didn’t think Duppy would come after me. He would have his hands full with Lyda for a time.
Duppy’s dream world was beginning to come apart, and I was the demolition expert.
Chapter 11
Time, like the man said, was of the essence. And silence was golden. I thought of a few more cliches as I crawled down the 45-degree slant of the spur to the talus slope that footed it. The brush was thick and made the going hard; on the other hand it covered me from above and below and kept me from sliding and making noise. When the time came for noise I would make plenty of it. But not yet.
Where the brush faded away and the talus started I stopped and blended myself into a last thick growth of bush Below me the terrain began to flatten out, about two hundred yards of loose rock and pebbles and sandy clay. No cover. I wondered briefly if the area was mined, then forgot it. Mined or not I had to cross it.
In ten minutes it would be dark enough to try it. 1 spent the time in making the grenades ready. I had twine and tape and all the makings and it took me five minutes I didn’t have any H.E. grenades, only fragmentation, and I had to trust them to do the job. I checked the Tommy gun and the .45 and the Luger and the stiletto in the chamois spring sheath Then it was dark and I had not an excuse left for lingering. 1 started worming my way down the talus slope to the fence beyond. I was halfway over when the lights went on I had been afraid of that. There was already a blaze of light at the gate, but now powerful searchlights — hidden in trees where 1 hadn’t spotted them — began to play up and down the fence. 1 froze and cursed and made like an ostrich. Duppy must have known about the hidden lights. Duppy hadn’t mentioned them. It figured.
They were just horsing around with the lights, feeling secure and not expecting any trouble, and they missed me and after a couple of minutes the lights flicked off. I crawled to the fence, alert now for walking guards and dogs, and started planting my grenades.
I had pulled the pins and taped the spring levers down, with an end of twine knotted under and around each strip of tape. I taped a grenade to a fence post, near the base, then a grenade in the middle of the wire between two posts, then another grenade at the base of the second post. The three twine leads came back to tie into a single line of heavy cord that I payed out cautiously as I crawled backward from the fence.
A guard passed, walking the inside of the fence. He had a dog on a leash and he was using a flashlight now and then, throwing the beam around carelessly. I shoved my face into rock shards and waited. If he spotted the grenades, I would have to go off half-cocked and risk killing myself as well as him.
He didn’t spot the grenades. I waited until his steps faded away, then I back-tracked some more. When I had seventy-five yards of margin I stopped and got my head behind a foot-high boulder and got ready to go for broke.
I took a minute to wonder what was happening back up on the spur, between Duppy and Lyda and Hank Willard. It was chancy and anybody’s guess. I had given Hank instructions to be passed to the girl and Duppy. Duppy was bound to be in a rage because I had tricked him and jumped the gun and might even have loused up his plans for my death. It was bound to worry him. So was the fact that I was forcing his hand — he had to march to my tune now, instead of his — and that I had tossed the crap into the fan before he was ready for it.
I yanked hard on the cord. The idea was that the cord jerked the three twine leads, and the twine ripped off the tape binding the spring levers on the grenades.
The cord went limp in my hand, all tension gone. I waited, counting, trying to squeeze myself into the good earth of Haiti. Five… six… seven… e—
They were all short fused. The grenades slammed the night open with a great dull roar and a spreading blossom of red and yellow and shivering concussion. Shrapnel hissed off the talus near me. I was up and running.
Both fence posts were bent and sagging like over-cooked spaghetti. The segment of wire between them drooped. The middle grenade had opened a six-foot rent in the steel mesh. I wormed through it, got caught in a porcupine of barbed wire, kicked and ripped my way out of that and took off like a big-assed bird for tree cover. That was fifty yards away and I knew I was running through mines and I was cold and sweating at the same time. I tried to run without touching the ground, knowing it couldn’t be done.
The Carter luck held and I was still O.K. when I broke into the trees and flopped down just in time for the first searchlight to miss me. I lay and panted and checked rapidly to see if I still had all my gear. I did. I waited ten seconds, all I could afford, to see if the three back on the spur were going to come through. That depended on Duppy, who by this time would be gnashing his big white teeth in rage.
They began firing down at the gate and I let out a deep sigh of relief. Lyda must have talked him around. I listened to” the light stutter of the Sten gun and the deeper roar of the .45 Tommy guns as they cut in and out in nasty spastic bursts. It sounded like an army on that ridge, and that was the way I wanted it, just as I wanted a diversion, wanted the black uniforms and the Tonton Macoute to think it was all coming from outside. While I was inside.