The Devil's Dozen

One

Have you ever seen an ant trapped in a sand pit? The pit is built by a ant lion, an insect that sits on the rim of the pit and watches his victim struggle futilely to crawl out. But the pit is constructed with slopes at just the right angle, so that the sand particles lose their cohesion, break, and send the ant tumbling back to the bottom. The ant lion waits until his prey is overcome with exhaustion; then he kills.

I knew what the ant felt like.

I was rolling, then flattened out on my stomach, trying to find a handhold with my fingers. But volcanic ash is worse than sand. There is no cohesion. Your fingers slide through as if the ash were water.

The .44 Magnum clapped again, the slugs digging deep into ash. One bullet sent a geyser of dust into my eyes, blinding me. I choked, sucking more ash into my lungs. At 17,000 feet I was having enough trouble breathing as it was. But all my troubles seemed to be coming to an end.

I was really falling now. The whole slope of ash disintegrated. Rocks started falling, little ones first, building up to boulders. Suddenly I was tossed up in a cartwheel, trying to protect my head with my arms. The sound of tons of ash and rock breaking loose was deafening. I fell through air, landing on my back. I groped up until I felt solid stone and wedged myself into it. I had bounced off a stone shelf. I knew then that I had a chance for survival if I could only cling to the overhang of the shelf. And if the shelf didn’t slip.

The slide continued for another sixty seconds. The silence after it was awesome, broken only by the shrill calls of ravens scared from their perches.

My red eyes teared, washing the dust out. The landscape below me was buried. A rivulet or two of ash still stirred. Even under the protection of the shelf, I was up to my chest in ash.

Carefully, I took out the package I had carried under my shirt. It was my Luger, which I had wrapped in a handkerchief. I unwrapped the big gun and waited.

After thirty minutes I heard them coming — two men, their feet slapping the ash at intervals, so I could tell they were using ropes. When they paused, I heard them poking the ash with rifle butts. Finally, they moved below me about fifty yards on the left.

The men wore ash-covered mountaineering clothes and each grasped a nylon rope with one hand and a semiautomatic .44 in the other. But there the similarity ended. One was young and robust, a gold-colored Chicano. The second was old and pale, as thin as an ironwood tree, and he carried a cold cigar clamped in his teeth.

I set the Luger’s sights first on one man, then on the other. A Luger shoots very flat out, so there was little correction for the downslope. Most Lugers also have a long trigger pull, but mine doesn’t. The hammer came forward the instant I squeezed.

The Chicano’s head snapped back as my bullet sang an inch from his chin, right where I wanted it. The old man, Hawk, clamped his foul cigar in a face-splitting grin. Hawk is my chief, and he has a strange sense of humor.

“Now don’t tell me you’re angry, Number Three?” he laughed. “This was your idea of a training exercise.”

I got shakily to my feet and couldn’t help glancing upslope in case a secondary slide was starting. There was nothing but black ash and volcanic rock, all very still, and far above like a postcard backdrop the white glacial cap of Mount Popocatapetl. Some ravens and vultures circled in frustrated swoops.

“All right,” I answered. “Now it’s your turn to train.”

Jaime is a Mexican-American who joined AXE the previous year, which meant he was something like Number 200. All of a sudden he had a real interest in the volcanic ash, shuffling it with his boots and whistling a Latin tune. Hawk turned ornithologist, studying the wheeling birds. After a minute of their rank cowardice, my anger subsided and I put the gun away, then carefully made my way over to my colleagues.

“That’s a good shot with a handgun,” Jaime remarked and rubbed his chin.

“I knew you weren’t dead, Nick,” Hawk jabbed his finger into my sore chest. “You’re the only agent I know who’s sure to die in bed, and I don’t mean sleeping. You’re only irritated at us because it would have been embarrassing for you to get killed doing a stunt you thought up yourself. Damn match.”

The thin air was windy, and he couldn’t get his cigar relit.

“Besides,” Jaime put in, “I don’t see how you climbed as high as you did. Scientifically, it is impossible to climb volcanic ash.”

“In other words,” I put in, “if I hadn’t climbed so high I wouldn’t have fallen so far. Another bright thought like that, Jaime, and you’ll be back in the CIA.”

“Don’t take it out on the boy,” Hawk huffed at me. His inability to get his cigar going was upsetting him more than my near death. At least, that was the impression he enjoyed conveying. He really thinks I’m indestructible. Someday, I’m going to surprise him. “What land of air is this?” he muttered. “No wonder nothing grows up here.”

“If you got yourself decent Havanas you wouldn’t have this problem.”

Hawk frowned. He loves his cheap cigars and off-the-rack suits the way another man might love a homely wife.

“Cuban goods are embargoed,” he took a patriotic tack. “Anyway, about this exercise, N3, I think it has definite possibilities.”

“I knew the sadistic element would appeal to you.”

“However,” Hawk went on quickly, “with ropes and without firearms. We can use a time incentive.”

“And one thing,” Jaime added hesitantly to me. “If I might speak.”

“Please, go ahead. Sorry I seemed edgy. Landslides do that to me.”

“It’s about that,” Jaime said. “My family have always been mountain climbers, first in the Pyrenees and then in the Sierra Madre. If you’re caught in a slide, curl up. It protects you when you fall, but it’s even more important when you’re buried. Curled in a ball you will have less weight on you, and you may be able to create an air space between your arms and chest. Another thing, if you are buried for a long time you will conserve your body heat better if you’re curled up.”

“Thanks, Jaime,” I replied after digesting his suggestion.

I could not know then how important that advice would be for me, but I respected him for saying it and for the way he said it. He was a good man. That was the last I ever thought about Jaime Montenegro, at least until he died.