The Ambushers

XXII

THE JAIL, brig, detention cell, or what have you, was a pigeonhole twenty feet up the face of the canyon wall, reached by a rickety ladder. The sergeant made me climb up, covered by his ugly little weapon; then he sent a man up to tie me securely. The knot-man was good, and I'm no Houdini. I tried to get some slack the way it says in the manual, but if I'd thought the man could read at all, let alone read English, I'd have said he'd been at the same book. When he left me it was fairly obvious that I wasn't going to be climbing down any ladders without help. Then they took the ladder away, and that was that.

Down below, the fire was blazing cheerfully and the boys around it were passing the tequila, mescal, pulque, tiswin, or whatever kind of cactus juice it was they had in the jug. Pretty soon one of them broke out a guitar and began to sing, just like in a movie. I wiggled forward to where I could look at the happy group below. Off to one side sat a lone, anti-social character with his back to a rock and a rifle across his knees, watching my cave. The light was still burning in the tent, I noticed, and the sentry still stood in front.

The guard with the rifle waved me back. When I didn't move at once he aimed his weapon my way. I took the hint and squirmed back into the darkness of the cave and tried the other end. Ten feet back from the entrance I hit solid rock. Well, I hadn't been about to explore any tunnels or crevices tied hand and foot. It was up to Catherine now.

Her next move was obvious, and soon I could hear her working on it. Her laughter and von Sachs' began to come from the tent more loudly and drunkenly as the night progressed. Presently they started singing the Horst Wessel off key. After that there was more laughter, and some horseplay that shook the tent canvas, and a male voice demanding and a female voice protesting, not very convincingly, and some more activity, and silence.

I lay in my pigeonhole above and wondered why I didn't like myself very much. I mean, it wasn't as if the woman were anything to me; and she'd merely done just what I would have told her to do if she'd asked for instructions.

The guitarist was long silent, and the fire was dying. When it no longer cast a glow on the ceiling of the cave, she came. I heard her down there, speaking to the guard in a slurred voice and giggling in an inebriated way at his answer; then there was a solid, whacking sound like an axe going into soft pine.

I heard the ladder being moved back into place. Something metallic was tossed into the cave. A moment later she followed it, sat for a moment panting, and crawled over to cut me free with the machete she'd sent ahead, presumably taken from the guard below.

"So!" she breathed, helping me sit up. "Now we must get down, before someone notices the ladder."

"Give me a chance to get some circulation back. What about the sentry by the tent?"

"Asleep. I was friendly. I gave him a beer. With something in it I happened to have along. Like von Sachs. They will sleep until morning, both of them. Your guard would not take a beer, a dutiful man. So he is dead. When they find him, we are betrayed. Now come. I will go first and hold you if you slip. Never mind the big knife."

"I want it," I said. "I have an idea about it."

"All right. Give me your belt."

She hung the machete about her neck and shoved it around to dangle down her back; then she moved onto the ladder and leaned back so that I could make my way clumsily into the space in front of her, with her arms around me. It felt ridiculous, and embarrassing in more ways than one, being held there by a woman, but my hands and feet still weren't much use to me. I would have fallen half a dozen times without her support.

At the bottom, I fumbled my belt back on with tingling fingers, and helped her move the ladder back where it had been. We passed the guard sitting against his rock with his rifle across his knees and his hat over his eyes, motionless, dead. I reminded myself not to underestimate my sexy ally; she wasn't anybody you wanted to turn your back on. We stopped in a sheltered place among the rocks.

She bent over to do something to her feet. "These damn sandals!" she whispered. "I might as well be barefoot."

She straightened up, and we faced each other briefly in silence. The sky gave enough light that I could see her fairly well. With her blonde hair loose and untidy about her face instead of piled elegantly on her head, without the flashy lipstick and iridescent eye make-up, she was a different person. I was surprised to realize that she was really rather a plain girl.

"Your little friend," Catherine murmured. "She is on top of the cliff with the rifle?"

"Yes."

"Can she really shoot?"

"Don't worry about Sheila," I said. "She'll do her part."

"I'm sure she will. For your sake. Because she loves you. it is very touching."

"Yeah, touching," I said. If women knew how they sounded, sniping at each other, we might have to put up with less static of this kind. "I'll make a deal with you,"

I said. "The job has developed ramifications. I'll fix von Sachs-Sheila and I-if you'll fix the bird."

"Bird? Oh, the missile." She glanced upstream at the blackness of the cottonwoods. Then she looked at me and smiled. "So that is it. I was wondering if you would really come, when I saw how easily you could shoot him from above. That is why you came?'

"That's it," I said.

"It is nothing to me," she said. "It has nothing to do with my job."

I said, "I've got to sabotage that gadget somehow. Of course Washington would love me to deliver it intact, but they'd rather have it busted than take a chance of losing it again. You take care of it for me and I'll guarantee von Sachs. You get stubborn and I'll go for the missile and you can die heroically doing your goddamn job alone."

She hesitated; then she moved her shoulders in a resigned way. "All right, but how do you expect me to do it? It is such a big thing-"

"The truck," I said. It had taken me a long time to come up with the obvious solution. "I wouldn't know how to gimmick the bird itself, but the control truck is easy. All you have to do is shoot a hole in the gas tank and light a match. I doubt if they have enough electronic talent in this hole to rig up anything that'll fire the missile once that console is a mess of melted wire and plastic." I frowned. "What about the Volkswagen? Who's got the key?"

"It's still in the lock."

"Good. Whichever of us is closest makes for it afterward and picks up the other. Sheila'll be covering us from above, with the rifle. Anything else?"

She hesitated. "Yes. One thing. We are partners here, Henry Evans. But afterward, one day, you will pay for Max. I do not pretend to forgive you."

She turned and went silently back to the tent and slipped inside. I glanced towards the north rim of the canyon. It made me uneasy to know that Sheila's life, as well as mine, was at the mercy of a woman I had no reason to trust, a woman who'd just made a point of reminding me that she owed me something. But there was nothing to be done about it now.

I looked at the machete in my hand and felt the edge. It was a bastard weapon really, too long for a knife, too short for a sword. Well, it would do for what I had in mind. I glanced at my watch. The luminous dial read three thirty-five. I sat down to wait.

At four-thirty it was light enough to start the action. I got up and walked openly towards the tent. A man was building up the fire for breakfast. I saw him stop his work, stare at me, glance up at the cave where I was supposed to be, and reach for a rifle leaning against a nearby tree. I stalked up to the front of the tent, kicked the drugged sentry out of the way, and slashed away the canvas door with a stroke of the machete. I then proceeded to say one of the silliest things I ever said.

"Come on out, Quintana!" I yelled in the quiet dawn. "Come on out and fight like a man!"