The bullet spanged off the treetrunk against which Harry Crobey had paused. Cielo stepped out into the open jacking another cartridge into the chamber, shouldering the rifle again and training it so that Crobey could see the telescope and measure his chances. Over to one side Julio walked out showing the Uzzi.
Cielo saw Crobey’s eyes move from one to the other. A heavy bleakness hooded Crobey’s lids; he stood up with slow resignation, dropping the submachine gun out to one side.
“Come on up, Harry.”
With Crobey limping between them they went down into camp and ushered him into the radio tent. Since they’d moved the radio up to the cave to protect it from the cloudbursts the tent had fallen into disuse. It was a good place to have a private talk with Crobey.
Some of the others had heard the shot and come outside to have a look. It was starting to rain again — big slow drops; in a few moments it would pour. The men clustered around. Crobey had trained most of them and there were a few hesitant smiles until Cielo said, “Scatter yourselves. Martin, go down the road and see what’s become of Santos, Villasenor — a couple of you scout up through there, find out if he was alone. Look for tracks.”
Vargas loomed. “Harry?”
“Hello, Vargas. Time you went on a diet, innit?” Crobey grinned — or grimaced.
Cielo pushed him into the radio tent. Julio came in after him and held the Uzzi on him while Cielo stripped him of backpack and grenade belt. Looking through the backpack Cielo discovered a dozen pairs of handcuffs. He used two of them on Crobey and when the prisoner was snugged down Cielo said, “I didn’t think you’d turn against us, Harry.”
“I didn’t think you’d take up murdering innocent hostages,” Crobey replied.
Cielo made a face; he’d had a feeling that might come back to haunt them. “An accident,” he said, feeling a need to set the record straight. “It wasn’t our doing. An outsider — a mishap.”
“Emil Draga?”
A shrewd guess, Cielo thought, but only a guess. It didn’t surprise him that Crobey knew the name. Crobey had been born a few minutes ahead of the rest of the world. Cielo fixed a dismal stare on him. “You seem calm about this.”
“Well I might throw a fit and tear my hair if I thought it would help any. Is this all you’ve got? Eleven chaps? Hardly seems enough for an invasion of Havana.”
“How many of you out there?”
Crobey said, “That’s for you to find out.” He was smug.
Cielo poked around in the backpack. Chemical Mace. The grenades on the web belt weren’t fragmentation, they were tear gas. The only thing Crobey had been carrying by way of a deadly weapon had been the submachine gun; there were only two thirty-round spare magazines for it in Crobey’s belt.
So he wasn’t prepared for a firefight.
Cielo brooded at his prisoner. Crobey smiled cheerfully back but Cielo wasn’t ready to be fooled by it. Crobey was clever that way and the smile could mean anything.
“May as well give it up,” Crobey said. “You’ve been found, haven’t you?”
“Who told you to look for us here?”
“I found it in a horoscope.”
Julio was nervous. “What shall we do?”
“Man the radio. If there’s a force after us we’ll be told of it. Post a few men in the forest — give them rain slickers. Spread everyone else out. And stay by the radio. Go on — leave me the Uzzi.”
“Shouldn’t we get out of here?”
Cielo watched Crobey’s face. “I don’t think there’s any need, Julio. I think he came alone — I think he’s on his own. Working for the mother of that dead boy.”
Crobey grinned at him and Cielo had to smile back; Crobey had that sort of infectious way.
“How can you know this?”
“Look how he came armed. He wanted to wait till we all sat down to supper — then pop a few gas canisters into the tent and put handcuffs on us all. Harry always liked to be a one-man air force, remember? Now he’s a one-man army.” Cielo shook his head in mock disappointment. “We’re all much too old for this, Harry. Five or ten years ago you wouldn’t have exposed yourself that way.”
“You’re probably right about that,” Crobey agreed.
“Go on, Julio. I’ll be all right.”
“But—”
“Am I the leader here?” he demanded.
“But what if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not wrong, am I, Harry?”
Crobey only smiled; finally Julio departed.
Cielo said, “You’d like us to panic and clear out, wouldn’t you. Then you could confiscate our little arms dump and put a stop to our intentions quietly, no fuss, no headlines — the proper way to support the détente between Washington and Havana. Where’s Glenn Anders, Harry?”
If the question surprised Crobey he gave no sign of it. “I don’t know,” he said.
“When did you see him last?”
“I don’t rightly recall.”
“I suppose I wouldn’t answer questions either if I were sitting where you’re sitting. It won’t help you to talk, will it — you have to assume we’ll kill you either way.”
“You won’t kill me right away,” Crobey said. “I might come in handy as a hostage.”
Chapter 18
She soaked small wads of cotton in the last of the witch hazel and placed them on her eyes and tried to relax. She’d only slept in fits and starts for the past two nights and it looked as if this one would be no different. At midnight she’d gone around the house checking the restraints on the two prisoners — Emil Draga in the front room and Stefano, who was small and ruddy and middle-aged and not frightening at all, in the bedroom. He had a fuzzy mustache and comical buck teeth and a wart on his lip and he told amusing stories about his family in south Florida. It was Stefano who had told her the sequence of incidents that had climaxed in Robert’s death.
And these, she thought, were the terrorists who had so exercised her.
She had spent a great deal of the past twenty-four hours resisting what Stefano had told her. She did not want to believe any of it and it was quite possible Stefano was lying: He had every reason to coat the truth with opaque paint. He claimed he didn’t know which man had actually shot Robert.
Robert...
Before dark she had made sure all the lights were extinguished. Now, making her hourly rounds, she carried the revolver into the front room and had a look at Emil Draga. The smell of his sweat clouded the room. He seemed asleep. She went back to the kitchen. The waiting had gone far past dragging on her nerves; it had numbed her. She drank coffee and sat with her hands flat on the table, drooping in the humid heat, listening to the rain drum against the roof. It must be two or three in the morning. She had the jitters but attributed that to the coffee; fatigue prevented her from stirring. This afternoon she’d gone into the bathroom and studied herself in the mirror and judged she must have added a minimum of five years to her visible age in the past week’s time. I look older than Harry does.
It didn’t matter. She’d taken three showers today but nothing helped. She felt sticky — the heat perhaps, but a Freudian would have found interesting speculations in that persistent feeling of un-cleanness. You see, Doctor, I feel like Lady Macbeth.
Was it possible that one day — if she lived to be old enough — she would be able to forget this nightmare aberration? The absurdities of it piled up one upon the next and she could not cope with them any longer. She cast a dulled eye at the coffee cup between her hands. Harry, come back here and take me away from all this. I’ll show you Las Vegas and Palm Springs and we’ll never be without Dewar’s and cologne and clean sheets again.