The Demolishers

WARNING SHOT!

Sandra started to raise her head. “I guess I did overreact. Sorry to be so chicken . . .”

I pushed her down again, as the room she’d just left exploded with a flat, hard bang that blew the connecting door open again and shook a picture off the common wall. A little whitish smoke drifted in through the open doorway. I held Sandra long enough to make sure she wasn’t going to break down; but Matthew had picked a good unhysterical type.

“We’d better find you a shirt,” I said. “It looks as if we might have company. . . .”

Fawcett Gold Medal Books by Donald Hamilton:

THE MONA INTERCEPT

Matt Helm Series:

THE AMBUSHERS THE ANNIHILATORS THE BETRAYERS DEATH OF A CITIZEN THE DEMOLISHERS THE DETONATORS THE INFILTRATORS THE INTERLOPERS THE INTIMIDATORS THE INTRIGUERS MURDERERS’ ROW THE POISONERS THE REMOVERS THE RETALIATORS THE REVENGERS THE SHADOWERS THE TERRORIZERS THE VANISHERS

FAWCETT GOLD MEDAL • NEW YORK

A Fawcett Gold Medal Book Published by Baliantine Books Copyright © 1987 by Donald Hamilton

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Baliantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 87-90865 ISBN 0-449-13233-1

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition: November 1987

Mac was sitting at his desk as usual, with the bright window behind him. This made his expression difficult to read, which was the idea; but I gathered he didn’t feel that the instructions he’d just given me were open to question, although, of course, we were both aware that most instructions given in that office are pretty questionable by ordinary standards.

I said, “No, sir.”

He frowned quickly. “What?”

I said, “No, sir, I won’t go after Herman Heinrich Bultman. If he must be handled, let the CIA handle him; he’s their boy. Or was once; and they still wake up nights sweating, wondering if he’s told anybody who hired him for that Cuba mission that cost him his left foot.” I grimaced. “Bultman was a fool to get sucked into that one; but they do get proud. He’s not the first character in that line of work who’s let himself be conned into trying for The Beard in order to show that he was the best; that he could succeed where everyone else had failed. Of course the money was a consideration, too. But he should have known that, whether he made it or not, and particularly if, as it turned out, he didn’t, those publicity-shy folks down at Langley would figure on silencing him afterwards. Only it turned out they weren’t quite up to the job, so they wished it off on us.”

Mac made an impatient gesture. “That is ancient history, Eric.” In that office, and while engaged in the exercise of my profession, I’m Eric, although I use other names as well. In my normal civilian life, what little there is of it, I’m known as Matthew Helm. Mac went on: “The misguided attempt on Castro’s life is past and forgotten; it has no bearing on our present ...”

I shook my head quickly. “The boys and girls down in Virginia don’t forget much, sir. Bultman’s still on their shit list and they want him off, permanently. Well, I went after him once for them down in Costa Verde, and got lucky. I outshuffled him and outnumbered him and got the drop on him. I made him swear that he’d never, ever open his mouth on the subject of Cuba. They’d told me to silence him, hadn’t they?” I grinned. “That wasn’t exactly what they’d had in mind, I guess, but I needed Bultman’s cooperation on another project, as you’ll recall. As a matter of fact, whatever else he may be, the Kraut seems to be a man of his word; his promise has turned out to be as good as a bullet in the brain. Now they’ve come up with another important reason for us to eliminate Herr Bultman. Personally, I think they’ll keep finding new reasons to wipe him out until they get the job done. Correction: until they get somebody else to get it done for them. Like us. But not me, sir. The reason they’ve come up with this time isn’t good enough. I want no part of it, thanks.”

Theoretically, our wants and don’t-wants are quite irrelevant in that office, but I’ve worked for him a long time and have earned a certain amount of latitude.

Mac said, “You are showing great consideration for a man who’s an assassin for sale, a hired gun.”

I said, “I’ve killed upon occasion.-You should know; you sent me out to do it. Hell, you’re trying to send me out to do it now. And for doing it, when I do it, I’m paid a pretty good salary by the U.S. government. Not what I’m worth, of course, but pretty good. What does that make me? Let’s not have any loose talk in here about hired guns, sir. Anyway, Bultman has retired from the hitman wars.”

“Had retired.”

“Well, this isn’t really his old line of work. And who turned him active again, if you want to call it that? And how did they do it? If people are going to be that stupidly, arrogantly vicious, they deserve what they get, even if what they get is a professional killer on the prowl.”

Mac spoke without expression: “You are the only one of our people who’s had an opportunity to study the subject in action and at close range. Another agent’s chances of success, even of survival, would be considerably smaller than yours.”

I said, “You don’t have to send anybody, sir. Tell them to take their lousy job and shove it back across the Potomac where it belongs.”

“We are not here to tell people to take their lousy jobs and shove them, Eric. The lousy jobs are exactly what this organization was created to handle. The ones too lousy for anybody else.”

Our business is classified as counterassassination by the people who know what we do, but there aren’t many of those. In other words, when the knifers, snipers', and bombers get too rough for other agencies to handle, they call on us.

I said, “What you said works both ways. I’ve had a chance to study Herman, but he’s also had a chance to study me. It cancels out. The man only has one ftesh-and-blood foot, but he was getting along all right with the tin one when I saw him last. I have a hunch he suffered some other injuries on that ill-fated expedition that we don’t know about, or he wouldn’t have gone out of business later the way he did. But regardless, crippled or whole, sick or well, he’s the old lobo from the top of the mountain, as the CIA found out the hard way. And I’m not going to tackle him again for them and a bunch of Caribbean islanders who haven’t got any more sense than to make a deadly enemy of a basically nonpolitical character like Bultman by doing the one thing that would make him blow his stack, stolid Kraut though he is. Those uniformed Latin characters with their casual submachine guns are always a bit trigger-happy, but this time they outdid themselves and really played hell.”

“There were sound medical reasons for the regulations that were enforced in Bultman’s case; although the enforcement may have been a bit arbitrary.” Mac frowned at me across the desk. “So it’s the dog.”

I said, “You’re damned right it’s the dog, sir.”

Mac spoke carefully: “The island of Gobemador— these days the sovereign nation of Gobemador—is an important link in our Caribbean defense system. Whatever your opinion may be, the government of the United States of America considers it more important than one elderly German shepherd dog.” When I didn’t say anything, Mac went on without expression. “Are you aware that the German shepherd is not German and has never been known to herd a sheep? Originally, it came to this country as the Alsatian wolf dog. It found few buyers under that label, so the name was changed quite arbitrarily and inaccurately to make the product sound more attractive. It still, in many specimens, retains its savage propensities.”

I said, “Sure. There’s always a fashionable devil dog. For a while it was the Doberman pinscher. Then the pit bull became the Monster Canine of the Year. Currently,

I believe, the Rottweiler is the beast at the head of the eat-you-up list. I’m just waiting for the day they discover the Homicidal Pekingese. Anyway, the temperament of Bultman’s mutt is irrevelant here. It didn’t bite anybody, it was just there, an elderly German shepherd bitch named Marlene for Marlene Dietrich. It throws an interesting
light on Tough-Guy Bultman, his naming his pet for a long-ago movie star. And whatever the U.S. government may think, Herman Bultman considers the lousy island strictly expendable and I don’t blame him. Under similar circumstances, I’d be looking for help to sink it into the sea, myself. Apparently, he’s found his help in the antigovernment movement; and more power to him.”

“You’re being dangerously sentimental, Eric.” Mac cleared his throat and controlled his irritation. He went on with his briefing remorselessly, as if there had been no objection from me. “Gobemador consists of two islands. Isla del Norte is a fairly barren rock, sparsely settled. It contains important U.S. installations of a fairly secret nature—secret enough that we don’t need to know what they are, or so we’re told, as usual. The government of the newly independent nation has given us long-term leases; but if it should be overthrown, those leases could be, and probably would be, abrogated by those who would come to power next, who’d be at least anti-American if not actively pro-communist.” He paused. When I made no comment, he continued: “Isla del Sur is fertile and quite densely populated. It contains the capital city up in the mountains, Santa Isabella; and down on the coast, the principal harbor, Puerto del Sol, where your friend had his trouble.”

“Hell, he’s no friend of mine,” I said. “Just because I sympathize with his current motives doesn’t mean I like him. That’s one cold, ruthless sonofabitch, and anybody idiot enough to hit him in his one soft spot ...”

“I am certain that, if they had known with whom they were dealing, the port officials would have treated him more tenderly, Eric.” Mac’s voice was tart. “Unfortunately the name Bultman is not a household word in the Caribbean.”

“If the rumors I’ve heard are correct, it soon will be,” I said.

Mac winced. “Yes, that is the problem with which we are trying to deal.”

I went on: “Certain people never learn that if they push enough folks around long enough, sooner or later they’ll start shoving somebody who won’t take it. He’ll blow right up in their faces and demolish them and the surrounding landscape; and they—those who are left-will scream about how misunderstood and abused they are, and why didn’t somebody
tell
them the guy was dangerous so they could be nice to him? It never seems to occur to them that there’s a very simple answer: just be nice to everybody.” I grimaced. “In Bultman they hit a prime specimen of demolisher; and now that they’ve triggered him they want us to abort the explosion? How optimistic can you get?”

Mac ignored this foray into philosophy, if you want to call it that. He went on stiffly: “What I am trying to point out is that we have a vested interest in the current government of Islas Gobemador. We do not want it replaced by a less friendly regime, or a steaming hole in the ocean. Apparently Bultman is now busily whipping into shape a motley collection of terrorists and revolutionaries that could never have accomplished anything on their own except the usual kind of protest assassinations and abductions and random bombings. But the man has considerable military experience, as you know, and he’s being allowed to carry out his recruiting and training on a neighboring island that has an interest in fomenting disturbances on Gobemador. Under this protection, Bultman is forming a disciplined strike force that may become a real threat to the stability'of the region.”

“He’s just the boy to do it,” I said. “He’s not a lone-wolf type like me; that time I outmaneuvered him with paramilitary help was strictly an exception. But Bultman always did run his operations like clockwork commando raids, using plenty of manpower, even when his target was a single individual.” I drew a long breath. “Look, sir, it’s no use pulling that anti-commie stuff on me. I’ve had too many missions sold me as the last faint hope of democracy. I think I’ve proved a number of times that I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but you can’t tell me that a few antennas or whatever, on a Caribbean rock, are going to make the difference between our national existence and nonexistence.”

Mac studied me coldly. “I won’t insult you by suggesting that you are afraid of taking on this mission; but I find your reason for refusing quite unconvincing.”