The Demolishers (32 page)

“I don’t understand.”

I said, “I told you, this is an expert we’re talking about. I can give you a long list of dead men: Bultman’s hit parade, if you’ll pardon the pun. So, with that in mind, tell me what’s odd about the performance you just witnessed. What’s the first thing that comes to mind?”

Dana hesitated. “Well . . . well, wasn’t he a little clumsy? First he let you spot his men following us; and then he marched past us himself. To be sure, he was in disguise; but it wasn’t a very good disguise. At least you managed to penetrate it. That doesn’t seem like very expert behavior to me.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “It was very expert behavior. He alerted me by having a few too many of his people tailing us a little too closely. That was so I wouldn’t miss the real show: Herr Bultman himself doing his senior-citizen walk-by act, in costume. How was I supposed to respond to that? I figure I was supposed to react just as you did:
Oh, my God, it’s the sinister Kraut himself and he‘s got us surrounded; if we get on that lousy plane we ’ll be trapped and killed!"

“But why . . . You mean, he doesn’t really want us on the plane?”

“We’ll make an agent of you yet,” I said. “That’s right, he wants us anywhere but on that airliner, if I have him figured correctly. When they closed in on us like that, so obviously herding us toward the gate and the plane, I was supposed to forget all about flying to Puerto Rico and think only of self-preservation. I was supposed to panic and make a run for it like a steer crashing out of the chute that leads to the gent with the big mallet. Remember, Bultman likes
big
operations involving lots of manpower. What probably happened was that the CLL asked him for help; they weren’t getting anywhere with killing Sandra and me. We escaped their ambush in Miami Beach, Angelita’s bomb missed Sandra in her Newport hotel room, the bomb in her Old Say brook house blew up the wrong people, and Dominic Morelos died trying for the two of us in the Connecticut woods nearby, leaving his dead brother unavenged. Meanwhile, other members of the Legion are dying mysteriously elsewhere. Sonny Varek’s people blew away the two men who were Angelita’s partners in the Mariposa caper; and even though we’re really not supposed to figure in this punitive operation—it’s supposed to be strictly private citizens rising up to take vengeance on their own hook— I took a chance on getting Louis’s hit team to take care of the two members of the Council you fingered for us, very discreetly.”

Dana shivered slightly. “Yes, I suppose I did put the finger on them. Well, that’s my job, isn’t it? All right.

The Koenig and Galvez killings came in on the computer and you’ll be pleased* to know that the perpetrators, as the police like to call them, remain unknown and there seem to be no repercussions in our direction.”

“Louis’s perpetrators always do a nice clean job. Of course the cops probably have pretty good information about Arthur Galvez and Howard Koenig—if they didn’t have it before, I’m sure Mac arranged for it to be passed on to them—and they aren’t going to worry too much about how two top terrorists got dead.” I shrugged. “Anyway, as far as we’re concerned here, the way it probably worked was something like this: The CLL top brass started to feel the pressure, so, as I said, they took their problem to Bultman. Although he’d probably have preferred to concentrate on his military business, he couldn’t afford to refuse them because he needs the recruits he’s getting from them and, probably, the information they’re supplying him about conditions in his target area on Gobemador. I’d be surprised if he wasn’t using them as a source of intelligence as well as manpower.”

Dana said, “Yes, that’s correct. But hasn’t there been a change of, well, let’s call it emphasis? The Caribbean Legion started out simply trying to eliminate a certain embarrassing witness, Mrs. Helm. You were endangered only because you were her escort. Now the CLL seems to have instructed Bultman to forget her and concentrate on you. At least he isn’t hanging around her hospital in Connecticut; he’s here at the airport in New York giving you his personal attention.”

I grinned. “That’s Bultman’s change of emphasis, not the Legion’s. It’s a compliment. He knows me. He knows that if I’m around, and there’s homicidal trouble around, it’s not a coincidence; and I should be disposed of, fast. Furthermore, I got the better of him once; and although we wound up working as allies on that operation, he’s not forgetting the defeat. If he’s got to take time out from his invasion project to soothe his panicky associates, he’s not going to waste time on Sandra when he can get a crack at me. He has a personal score to settle. He’ll worry about minor details like girl witnesses after I’m dead.”

Dana said dryly, “Proving he’s the fastest gun east of the Hudson, I suppose.”

I said, “What’s wrong with wanting to be the top expert in your field? Competition is the lifeblood of America, right? You just disapprove because the field happens to be homicide.” I shook my head sadly and went on: “Once he’d agreed to do the job, Bultman presumably rounded up a bunch of his toughest commandos and flew them up here, planning to take care of me and Sandra as fast as possible so he could get back to his real business in Montego and Gobemador. As I said, he goes in for large operations. I’ll bet there’s a gunner or two of some kind covering every exit of this building I’d be likely to use. He stationed them there, warning them to lounge around casually, of course, and not attract the attention of airport security. Then he went inside with his deliberately clumsy surveillance team, and his old-fogy act, to scare me off the plane and flush me out of the building and into the sights of his waiting marksmen. A gangland-style killing on the ground, or even two if you got caught in the cross fire, wouldn’t attract nearly as much attention as something that happened in the air. Then he’d go for Sandra to wind up the job; but I’m gambling that as long as I manage to stay alive he’ll give me top priority, if only for old times’ sake.”

Dana didn’t seem too interested in the question of Sandra’s safety. “So the only way we can get out of here, without shooting our way out, is to take the plane.”

I nodded. “If I have it figured right, there’s only one 250

safe place for us at the moment, and that’s our long-awaited DC-10.”

“And if you have it figured wrong?” She grimaced, rising. “Well, we’ll soon know. Here we go; they’re boarding us now.”

There was the usual delay on the ground; then we were airborne. Dana gripped my arm as the jets rammed us back into our seats; I felt her fingers tighten convulsively at the small rumble and jolt as the wheels came up. Four and a half hours later we were landing in Puerto Rico.

It
wasn’t Kennedy or Heathrow or Orly, or even Stockholm’s Arlanda, but San Juan’s Isla Verde International Airport wasn’t any little boondocks airstrip, either. Inside the sizable modern building, we found immigration no problem since we were American citizens arriving in U.S. territory; but we had to retrieve our luggage and that involved the usual endless wait at the snakelike conveyor belt that wound its way through the baggage-claim area. Even though the room was a large one, a DC-10 load of passengers filled it almost to capacity.

I noted our shadow lounging in a corner of the crowded area. He was now wearing his faded denim jacket instead of carrying it, perhaps to alter his image slightly; he was still, however, lugging the same brown shopping bag. Although of heavy paper, it had got slightly ripped in transit. He was in his late twenties, a tall young man, over six feet, with bony masculine features that contrasted oddly, and rather unpleasantly, with his long feminine hair. I mean, if the pretty boys want to look prettier it’s understandable; but for a gent with a face like Mount Kilimanjaro to go in for greasy golden locks was incomprehensible to me and therefore disturbing.

He wasn’t very good at discreet surveillance. He’d spend long intervals ignoring us; then he’d throw a sudden panicky glance our way to make sure we hadn’t vanished. That figured. Bultman would have had plenty of tough jungle fighters to choose from but few if any trained and experienced undercover operatives, when he’d picked his hit team hastily way down there at his training camp in Montego—well, it wasn’t really so far from where we now were in Puerto Rico.

The baggage conveyor rumbled into action at last, and we moved forward for a better view of the stuff gliding past, as did everybody else in the room.

I said to Dana, “Try to keep an eye on our long-haired friend and see if he’s met by anybody. Also ... Do you know what Modesto looks like or do we have to wait for him to identify himself?”

“I know him.”

“Okay, when you spot him, give him the signal for immediate contact and never mind being cute about it. I want a gun. I’m not one of your fastidious undercover heroes who disdain crude implements like firearms and do it all bare-handed or maybe with silk gloves on. That’s a big guy and chances are he’s just had some intensive combat conditioning, while all the exercise I’ve been getting lately is sitting on my butt behind the wheel of a sports car. He’s working himself up to something. I’d like to be armed when he decides what it is.”

She asked dryly, “What are you going to be doing while I’m watching out for all these people?”

“Looking stupid and unsuspicious,” I said. “So that when I unleash my secret powers it will come as a terrible surprise to him.”

“There’s my bag now. It’s the gray one. . . . Well, you saw it earlier.”

It took a while for mine to arrive; then we were emerging in the concourse after passing through a fairly dense crowd of people waiting to greet arriving friends.

“There he is up ahead. . . . Matt!”

“What?”

“Have you ever heard of a self-healing grocery bag?”

I glanced at her sharply. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure that the paper bag he was carrying, one of those heavy ones with cord handles stapled to it . . .”

“Yes, I saw it.”

“It had a noticeable rip near one of the handles. He had to carry it carefully by the bottom to keep it from splitting open; but I’m almost certain it isn’t tom now. I got a good look at it when he set it down to get into that big backpack he got off the carousel. . . . Now he’s going around the comer. Going. Gone.”

I was busily studying a gaudy tourist map of the island, as if deciding how we should get where we wanted to go. “Modesto?” I asked.

Dana shook her head. “I can’t be absolutely sure, of course; the place is full of short, dark, middle-aged, His-pano-type men; but if he were here he’d have spotted us by this time; he’d be trying to attract our attention inconspicuously.”

“Well, we’ll just have to do without him,” I said. “Blondie’s either got somebody watching me, or he’s sneaked back to keep an eye on me himself; he can’t afford to lose me. I’m going into that john down the way. That’ll give him a chance, if he wants it, to comer me without the whole airport watching. You stand guard over our luggage, right here. I think you’ll be safe alone since
it’s me they want. Keep your eyes open. Somebody might come by carrying a tom paper bag. Of course the guy who brought the undamaged one could already have jettisoned the ripped one he got in exchange; it probably contained nothing but Blondie’s dirty laundry. But maybe not. I’d kind of like to know what their local contact looks like.”

Dana frowned. “Matt, be careful. You said you needed a gun to handle him.”

“Let’s have a little accuracy here. I said I
wanted
a gun to handle him. I want a gun, period. With Modesto missing, I’ll have to get one elsewhere. Wish me luck.”

“Luck, darling.”

I was aware of her watching me in a concerned way as I headed for the men’s room. Well, it’s always nice to have somebody who cares. I found the place empty for the moment. It was fairly new and quite clean. The plumbing seemed to be in good shape. I picked the urinal farthest to the right, taking my time about my business. If I stood back a little, peeing at maximum range, I could see the door out of the corner of my eye, the door through which Blondie had to come.

It was a gamble, of course. He presumably had a gun now or the paper-bag switch made no sense. It was a gun I intended to have since my own source of supply seemed to have dried up, but first I had to keep it from shooting me. It wasn’t going to be easy, in this shiny tiled room without any cover but the booths, which weren’t bulletproof, and the slab of marble beside me separating the urinals from the lavatories„ which might be if it was real stone. They can do some very deceptive things with petroleum nowadays. In my favor, of course, was the fact that he was not a pro. He’d hate me for saying so, protesting what a tough mercenary soldier he was, but this wasn’t soldier business. I was betting that, like any amateur, he’d shuffle his feet a little before he got to work,
instead of simply stepping inside, firing three aimed shots, and stepping out again.

The door opened, but the man who entered was small and dark. He came over to stand beside me. Then the one I was expecting came in and paused by the door. He saw me, but he didn’t have a clear shot because of the marble divider, and he wasn’t ready to take it, anyway, with a witness standing beside me. He just came forward slowly, waiting for the one beside me to finish and go off to the lavatories. There was a nervous moment as Blondie passed behind me, but he wanted us alone, and he just stepped up beside me to claim the vacated urinal.

He was stripped for action, I noted. The backpack and paper bag had been left somewhere, along with the denim jacket. The T-shirt, which had been tucked in all around, now hung loose over his jeans. Standing there beside me, he was slow about opening his pants, presumably for the same reason I was fast about closing mine: it’s embarrassing to go into battle hanging out. The little dark man with the well-washed hands went out, never to know the excitement he was missing.