The Marchand Woman

There was no heat in it; it was only a touching of lips, very light, but she needed his touch, needed to draw strength from him. They sat down on the earth with their backs against the same tree and leaned against each other, shoulder to shoulder. Harry crooked his good leg and looked at the bottom of his shoe. “These are the times that try men’s bootsoles.” There was muck smeared on it.

She took off her sunglasses and swung them back and forth by one earpiece. “What’s the program?”

“We’ll backpack a few gas grenades. If it looks promising we’ll try to knock them out. Otherwise we’ll pull back to the farm and think about raising reinforcements.”

“From whom?”

“I can maybe call in a few friends and acquaintances from various ports. It’d cost you some money.”

“Wouldn’t it be safer to do that first?”

“Ducks, we don’t know how long Rodriguez is going to sit up there on the mountain. He could bug out any time.”

“Don’t be too heroic, Harry. I can only take nobility in small doses. You were the one who used to keep insisting the wages didn’t include walking into the jaws of death.”

“There won’t be any trouble.”

“You’re lying and I love you for it but I don’t believe it.”

“Then I’ll lay it out for you. There’s a good chance they’ve got some central gathering place up there. A tent, a cave, a hut, whatever. There’ll be one or two men on guard and we’ll have to take them out. Then we find the camp and we wait for all of them to congregate. If it’s an enclosed space we’re all right. We hit ’em with tear-gas grenades and exploding canisters of chemical Mace. In less than ten seconds that stuff disables a man completely. It takes him quite a while to function again and by that time we’ll have handcuffs on them. It’ll work if they eat together or have a pep-talk meeting or sleep in the same hut or otherwise have some reason to reassemble inside. It’ll work if we can take out the guards without alerting the camp, and it’ll work if Draga’s told us the truth and there’s only a dozen or fourteen men up there.”

“Have you counted the ifs in that?”

“If it doesn’t work out that way we’ll pull back.”

“Promise me.”

“I’m not a fool, ducks. Sure.”

“How far is it? To the camp.”

“Not too far as the buzzard flies but we may waste a while chasing false leads. I’ve tracked VC through country thicker than this—if they’re up there I’ll find them but I don’t want you to come apart at the seams if I’m not back right away. Give it a couple of days before you start to panic. On the morning of the third day you’re on your own. How do you feel about this?”

“Scared.”

Harry nodded. “That’s the right answer.”

“Maybe it’s like what Mark Twain said about Wagner: It isn’t as bad as it sounds.”

“You just need to worry about two things, ducks. Keep an eye on the mountain because if anyone besides Gle

The unspoken addendum was that if the terrorists came down the mountain it would mean Harry and Anders were dead because that was the only way Rodriguez was going to get through them.

He said, “And the other thing’s your charges there. You’ve got two prisoners to look after and they’ll try every trick they can think of to get loose, especially when they realize they’re being held by a woman alone. Keep them ankle-shackled to water pipes in separate rooms. Spoon-feed them but never undo the handcuffs behind their backs. You listening to me? Keep the revolver cQcked and if you’re even a little bit uncertain of their intentions start shooting. You’ve got five loads and you may as well burn them all up because one of them’s bound to knock the man down if you keep plugging in his direction. Are you going to get gun-shy and not pull the trigger?”

“No.”

“Remember this: If you get humane and one of them gets away, all three of us are dead. There’s not a chance in a thousand that Rodriguez hasn’t got a radio receiver up there on the mountain. If Emil Draga or the watchman gets away from you they’ll head for the nearest phone and we’ll be finished.”

“I understand.”

In a different voice he said, “Do you regret it, ducks?”

“Doing this? No, I don’t think so. I regret that it has to be done.”

“You’re not wrought up anymore. Not the way Gle

“I haven’t forgotten my son if that’s what you mean.”

He said bluntly, “Your son’s dead whether or not we go through with this.”

“But Rodriguez is free. Until we do it.”

“Which is it then—revenge or justice?”

She shook her head. “God knows. It’s not an obsession—but it’s a compulsion. Does that make any sense?”

“Bet your bottom,” he agreed.

“Harry, tell me something.”

“All right.”

“After this—after it’s done—are we going to be able to make it together?”

“Why, ducks,” he said, “do you know, I expect we will.”

Harry swung the Bronco into the caved-in barn and they got Emil Draga out and took him across to the house and at the door Harry could not resist his moment of wistful comedy: He took a step backward and bowed over his extended leg with a minuet flourish. Then he kicked Emil Draga in the rump and sent him inside asprawl.

Anders, holding the door open, made a face. Glancing at him as she came past into the house, Carole suppressed a shiver. Anders’ eyes had gone peculiar and she was disturbed by it: She said, “Harry, you’d better show me around,” using it as an excuse to get him away from Anders.

Harry took her through the house. It was ramshackle—a bigger and more substantial place than Santana’s but it had the same smell, the same taste. In the kitchen—she was relieved to see ru

“I’m keeping an eye on him. But I want him with me, not with you.”

She clutched him then, squeezed until her arms gave out. “Promise me you’ll come back.”

“I promise, ducks.”

PART

FIVE

Chapter 17

There was rain. In the cave Cielo sat on a crate chewing on a pencil and watching it flood down like a beaded string-curtain. The radio stuttered at him—a lightning bolt not too far away interrupted the message entirely with a burst of static and then the thunder deafened him to another few words but he had the gist of the message and Julio, switching it off at the end of the transmission, sat back against the wheel of the howitzer and said, “I wonder what drew them off?” According to the wireless message “Butch and Sundance and Etta” had vanished. But Butch hadn’t checked out of his hotel. Did that mean Gle

It was u

Julio sat absorbed in something on the jacket of which was painted a lurid creature that looked a bit like a feathered octopus with the head of a vulture, its hues ru

Cielo was getting hungry but he wasn’t quite ready to brave the downpour across the distance to the chow tent. It would require a change of boots afterward and he wasn’t sure the others had dried out from the morning’s storm. Fifteen years ago he’d have taken such discomforts as a matter of course but the passage of years had taught him that there were all kinds of ways to prove one’s manhood and that in the end nobody cared much anyway. By now dry feet were more important than demonstrating he was unafraid of the squall.