Gaston wasn’t there when he got back to the hotel after seeing Theresa safely off. Gaston was either spending a nostalgic evening with the grandmother he’d mentioned or he’d been picked up. There was nothing to do but wait until he heard about it one way or the other. None of the actors had come back from the embassy party, either. Captain Gringo found a rubber plant in the lobby to sit under while he waited. There was a local newspaper on a nearby chair. He lit a smoke and picked up the paper to catch up on the latest in Bogotá. But nothing seemed to be happening in Bogotá. The paper was filled with social shit about weddings and coming-out parties. Apparently nobody who didn’t own at least ten square miles of the country ever did anything worth reporting.
A dark well-dressed mestizo had been seated across the way, watching every passersby from behind his own paper. Captain Gringo assumed he was a house detective until he stood up, folded his paper, and came over. He said, “Come with me, Captain Gringo. La Paloma wishes for to see you.”
The American stared up poker-faced as he considered how to answer. If the guy had been a cop or enemy agent he’d have been shot coming in the door. Why screw around making up stories when you control the situation? If the guy knew who he was and about La Paloma, and didn’t want to fight about it, he was probably – repeat probably – legit.
The American said, “Can it wait a minute? My friend isn’t back yet.”
“Leave a message for him at the desk. We must not keep La Paloma waiting. She says to tell you that if you do not wish for to come with me right now, the deal is off.”
Captain Gringo shrugged, put the paper aside, and said, “Let’s go,” as he got to his feet. The guide asked, “Don’t you wish for to leave your friend, Gaston Verrier, a message?”
“No. He’ll figure out I’m not here when he doesn’t see me. You guys haven’t been at this long, have you? Leaving unnecessary messages can get you killed.”
The mestizo sighed and said, “El Señor is most accurate. I confess I was an electrician last year at this time. I am called El Chisparo. Follow me, por favor.”
They went outside where a one-horse surrey was waiting across the street under a pepper tree. El Chisparo untethered the horse and they got in. It seemed like a hell of a long drive, until Captain Gringo realized his guide was driving a zigzag course through the back streets of the town. He asked, “Are we trying to confuse me or them?”
El Chisparo chuckled and said, “Them, of course. They told us you never get confused. It is not far now.”
Captain Gringo noticed they were in a crummy part of town now. It got crummier after they passed a vast garbage dump and took a rutted dirt path through the shanty town favela you found ringing most large Latin American cities. The slums of Bogotá were no exception to the rule that tropical Hispanics tended to be night people. It was well after midnight, but ragged kids were playing in the street, guitars throbbed all around, and some fairly nice-looking whores lounged in doorways, eyeing them sullenly as they drove past.
Streetlamps of course were not provided for la favela, so the drive ran light and dark, depending on whether a block party was going on or not. El Chisparo drove through a stretch illuminated by torchlight in a noisy backyard and reined in under the ink black shadows of a clump of pepper. He stared back the way they’d come for a time. Then he nodded and clucked the horse down a side alley. They came to a board fence, apparently the dead end of the narrow alley. The fence slid aside like a Japanese screen and they entered a dark, tree-shaded yard. Some invisible force took the reins from El Chisparo and let the horse and surrey into limbo as the mestizo took Captain Gringo’s elbow and said, “This way. Careful, it’s dark.”
The American grunted, “No shit? I never would have noticed,” as his boot crunched on a tin can. El Chisparo led him to the rear of a house and down some cellar steps. He parted some heavy drapes and Captain Gringo found himself in a cellar with what looked like the cast of Carmen. The guys all wore Charro suits with bandoliers of ammo crisscrossing their chests and red armbands around their left sleeves. A couple wore the peaked caps of the Colombian military, with the emblems removed. They’d stacked their rifles against the plaster walls, but most had at least one pistol tucked in the sashes around their waists. Not one of them was over thirty.
The dames in the crowd looked even younger and some of them weren’t bad if you liked dark meat. The lightest one had Indian cheekbones and big sad Spanish eyes. Like the other girls, she was dressed in the peasant blouse and gathered skirts of the peona, but she had ammo belts across her rather nice chest and a buscadero gun belt around her hips, which weren’t bad either.
She rose from the barrel she’d been seated on and held out her hand like a man, saying, “It was good of you to come, Captain Gringo. I am La Paloma. These are my people. We are ready for to follow you anywhere.”
He smiled and shook hands with her, saying, “Uh, swell, but let’s slow down. How much have the people we’re working for told you about my mission?”
La Paloma shrugged and said, “Something about destroying a mine for to strike a blow for libertad. The details are unimportant to us which government property we attack. As long as it belongs to the government. Once the fighting begins, there are other bands who will rise. Like many of the others, we have only been waiting for a leader who knows how these things are done. They must have told you this is our first revolution, no?”
“Not really, but it figures. Are you kids in contact with some central party or is this a game any number can play?”
The girl looked blank.
“Look, I know this is going to come as a great shock, but I’m not the Messiah, and the last time I tried to walk on water I got wet.”
“Captain Gringo makes the joke, no? We have heard of the many battles you have won, señor. As you see, we have the guns and the spirit, but I confess we are not, how you say, tacticians? Your friends, the ones who have been funding my modest efforts, said you would show us how these things are done.”
“Gee, that was swell of them. Let me get this straight. This so-called impending revolution is really a mess of scattered street gangs, waiting for somebody to fire the first shot?”
La Paloma nodded, in eager innocence, and said, “Si, nobody likes the government, except for some rich people. Almost everybody in Colombia is poor. So everybody but the Ricos will wish for us to win, no?”
He didn’t answer. He saw how the chess masters intended it to work out in the end. They didn’t care if he knocked out the CCC holdings or not: They wanted a lot of noise and street rioting. The badly outnumbered establishment would hole up or skip town while the mobs looted and burned. Every poor man knew he wanted liberty, but he tended to confuse it with license. These abused pobrecitos had a just gripe against the power elite, but they had no more idea how to run a country than that dim-witted Vargas at the embassy party. So after everybody got a lot of bile released and ran out of ammunition, cooler heads were going to start wondering why the garbage wasn’t being picked up or why the water was turned off at the tap. The mobs would live on loot for a time, but nothing lasts forever and nobody was about to deliver food and firewood to a howling mad city. Ergo, somebody, sometime, was going to have to take charge, right?
He wondered where this pretty little kid and her young friends would be standing when the inevitable Napoleon restored order with the inevitable “whiff of grapeshot.” He wondered if they’d listen if he tried to talk them out of it. He decided they wouldn’t. There was only one thing he could do. He had to gain and keep control of these punks before he could think of saving anybody.
He said, “Well, the first thing I have to see is that CCC whatever. Is it far from here?”
La Paloma said, “No, my captain. It is just outside of town to the north. I think they assigned it to my band because we are closest to it.”
“This is your area, eh?”
“Si, not even the police come into La Paloma’s section after dark, unless they come in numbers.”
“Okay, I need a guide to take me there. Is there some vantage point for scouting it from a distance?”
“Si,” the mine is in a canyon surrounded by brushy hills. I will lead you there myself. When do you wish for to go?”
“Just before dawn. I’d like to get into position under cover of darkness, give the place the once over, and figure out what has to be done. Do you kids have any explosives?”
“Well, we have a couple of pipe bombs. Will that help?”
“Not hardly. Without looking, I know I need a couple of cases of dynamite. What about weapons? Have you got anything that fires automatic?”
La Paloma looked at her followers and said, “Hey, line up for to be inspected.”
“Skip it. I know a muzzle-loader when I see it in a corner. You have, let’s see, two, four, six, seven single-shot breech-loaders, a dozen revolvers, and you’d better leave those muzzle-loaders where they are. Do you have other people on tap, or is this it?”
La Paloma smiled proudly and said, “I can call on almost a hundred men, once they know we are ready to start the revolution, Captain Gringo.”
“Oh, peachy. Let’s see, it’s a little after two. The sunrise should be about four hours away. How long does it take to leg it to the mine?”
“Less than an hour, my captain, I told you it was not far.”
He nodded and said, “All right. Let’s break this up before somebody calls the law. I want all of you to go home and hide your dramatic stuff. La Paloma, here, will get word to you when you’re needed. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. Everybody in town but the guys who think they own it seems to know trouble’s brewing, so the police will be on the prod and this would be a dumb time to make a speech about libertad. Just sit and spit and whittle until we have a plan, all right?”
El Chisparo said, “I thought we were going to attack right away.”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Forget it. Attacking at once is for suicides. Look, kids, you said you wanted me to lead you, right? Okay, I’m not going to brag about a couple of other brawls like this I’ve been in, but I’m a professional. I like to get my people out alive.”
A youth with the face of a pretty but sullen Indian girl said, “We are not afraid for to die for libertad.”
“You’re not, huh? What’s the point of having liberty if you’re lying face-down full of bullets? The first rule you have to learn is that a good soldier doesn’t die if he can help it. He’s supposed to make the other son of a bitch die, comprende?”
There was a murmur of laughter. Some of it sounded relieved. He knew they were starting to accept him. He said, “Okay, it’s settled. Everybody is dismissed. Try to get some rest. The next time I call on you, you’re liable to be up for a few nights. So let’s start out bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”
There was a murmur of agreement and the crowd began to thin out as they paired off and drifted out, talking rather bravely about things they were too young to really know about. It didn’t surprise him that most of La Paloma’s young followers had mujers. It was the custom in Spanish-speaking armies. Dragging along dependents seemed like an amateur’s way to take the field, but it evened out when both sides did it. Nobody seemed able to organize a quartermaster corps or ambulance service down here, so the camp followers provided services more important than sex when a hero was hungry or wounded.
He wondered which of the guys had teamed with La Paloma. He’d know when it was time for them to scout the objective. Latins were possessive and the guy would tag along as a matter of course.
So he was somewhat surprised when he found himself alone with the girl. She picked up the lantern and said, “Let us go upstairs. We have several hours before it will be time for to leave, and this gives us time to know one another, eh?”
He wondered if she’d meant that in the biblical sense as he followed her up the stairs. Maybe as the self-appointed leader, La Paloma was playing Joan of Arc. It could mess up discipline if a lady general slept around with her troops.
She led him to a room with a beehive cooking hearth in one corner and a bedstead in the other. She put the lantern on a kitchen table and turned, smiling radiantly, to say, “I am so glad you are handsome, my hero. I knew you would be brave, for they told me of your exploits. But I thought you might be older looking. I pictured you like Morgan the Pirate. So I admit I was a bit nervous about being your mujer, but—”
“Wait a minute, don’t you already have a man, Paloma?”
She sighed and said, “I used to. They caught him trying for to blow up a bridge. Does it displease you that I am not a virgin?”
“No, as a matter of fact, that simplifies things.”
She said, “I thought so, too.”
Then she stepped over, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him. It was not a sisterly kiss. So he tongued her back and picked her up to carry her to the bed. She didn’t resist as he put her down. But as he started to undress her, she said, “Wait. We must be correct.”
He let her go and reclined on one elbow, bemused, as La Paloma moved over to a dimly visible shrine in a corner niche and struck a match. She lit a candle at the feet of a cheap plaster Madonna with Indian features. Then she knelt, bowed her head, and made a short prayer.
She finished quickly, got to her feet, and snuffed out the candle. As she turned back toward the bed, she pulled her blouse off over her head. He gasped at the beauty of her perfectly formed tawny torso as she reached behind her head, lifting her firm young breasts, and unpinned her hair. It fell waist-length around her young body and he suddenly sat up and started to remove his own clothes. She beat him, of course. She stepped out of her skirt, kicked off her rope-soled sandals, and lay beside him on the bed. She said, “I prayed to the Mother of God for victory.”
He suddenly felt sort of shitty, but he kept taking his clothes off as he said, “Listen, kid, you know I want you. Hell, I’m a man. But I don’t know how long I’ll be up here on the sábana and, well, I don’t want you to get ideas involving me and your saints.”
She sighed and said, “I am not a child. We live in troubled times and who can say what the future holds for any of us, eh?”
He peeled off his socks and rolled over against her, saying, “Yeah, but I sure like here and now,” as he took her in his arms.
Since she’d been so matter-of-fact about going to bed with him, he saw little need for foreplay. She’d obviously prepared herself with a schoolgirl crush on his reputation. He kissed her and ran his hand over hill and dale of tawny softness until her mons was cupped in his palm and she willingly opened her thighs.
Still keeping his lips to her, he mounted her, got into position, and ran the hand up her flank to cup her small soft breast as he drove home to the root. As his scrotum nestled between her quivering buttocks, she opened her eyes and gasped, “Oh, there is more to you than I expected!”
He started moving gently. She was tighter than he’d expected a non-virgin to be. He asked, “Am I hurting you?” and she replied, “No, you are making me very, very happy, my Captain.”
He laughed and said, “Call me Dick. That’s short for Ricardo.”
She said, “No, I shall call you querido, for you have stolen my heart.” Then she wrapped her brown legs around him, dug her nails gently into his back, and for a sweet mad moment in eternity they both went completely nuts.
He stopped after the third climax, but remained in place as she smiled up at him in the soft light and said, “Oh, I have never been so happy like this before. Do we have time to do it again before we go for to scout the mine?”
He said, “We’ll make time. Let’s rest a minute and get our breath back.”
“Do you like the way I do it, Deek?”
“You’re 100ilometre,” he replied. It wasn’t a lie. Liza had been piquant with her boyish muscular body against his. But La Paloma was all woman. Small and soft in the right places. And despite her matter-of-fact-camp-follower acceptance of a total stranger, she was a more tender lover than the hard tough English girl. There was nothing complicated about La Paloma. She was passive and enthusiastic at the same time. He knew no matter how things turned out and how long this might last, he’d have no trouble with her. She knew she was the girl and that he was the boy. Her simple farm girl mind didn’t make for sophisticated conversation, but she didn’t have the imagination to bitch him and he knew she’d do it anywhere and anyway he wanted her. He made up his mind he’d have to keep her alive somehow. Even if they never met again after the mission was over, he owed that much to the human race. There wasn’t that much really nice stuff around.
She started pulsating around his shaft and he automatically moved gently, building up another head of steam as he thought wryly of the orgy he’d had that afternoon at the hotel. He was surprised he was still so virile, after the way Liza had wrung him out. It wasn’t just the novelty of a new body. It was the sweetness of this kid. Liza was a bedroom athlete who used her snatch as a weapon to confuse as well as pleasure men. He had a sly thought, and said, “Let’s roll you over. I want to try another position.”
As he withdrew she cooperated, but as she got on her hands and knees, she said, “We can try, if you wish, but I don’t think I could take that in my behind, querido. Forgive me, I have never been perverse before.”
He kissed her upthrust derrière and rolled to his feet as he said, “Relax, I’m not going to abuse you. I just want to change the angle.”
Actually, he wanted to compare pictures, but he didn’t think she’d want to hear about a pale boyish rump in a mirrored room. He got it in in the usual place, standing legs apart on the floor as he held her hip bones and enjoyed the view. She lowered her head to the mattress and arched her back to take more as she purred, “Oh, this is lovely.”
He said, “It sure is,” and he meant it. They didn’t need mirrors. Her hourglass form was exciting as hell in the dim lantern light and he found himself getting there fast. He suddenly stopped, rolled her over, and mounted her normally as he said, “Hell, kid, we don’t need any tricks,” and he meant that, too. It felt good to hold a normal woman against him, kissing her tenderly as they came together.