El Generale Hernan Portola, Liberator of the South, or Butcher of Leon, depending on whom one asked, stood in uffish thought atop a pile of coral block rubble as he regarded a scene of almost total devastation.

According to the ordnance map of Nicaragua, there was supposed to be an old Spanish fort here. According to one’s own senses, there was only a flat plain of shattered masonry and glass that smelled just awful. The sea-scented trade winds from the Mosquito Coast to the east helped a little. But the sickly sweet stench of death and the acrid reek of detonated high explosives still clung to the razed fortifications.

El Generale’s men poked here and there amid the chalky rubble in hopes of salvageable weaponry. An army on the march needed all the spare parts it could find. As they moved about, wispy clouds of buzzing blowflies rose like smoke from where they’d been feeding—on charred lumps of human flesh, embedded like raisins in the debris. The soldados wore damp kerchiefs over their faces. It didn’t really help. But orders were orders, and when one marched with El Generale Portola, one expected to smell death.

A pair of junior officers approached El Generale across the razed ruins. They marched in step, waist-high in flies, until they stopped, within easy conversational distance, saluted, and hit a brace as one.

El Generale stared down at them without expression as he asked, “Well?”

His senior aide answered, “We have spoken to the Indios in the village to the south, as you commanded, El Generale. As we suspected, it was the work of that Yanqui maniac, Captain Gringo. Los Indios say they were most grateful he warned them in time to escape the explosion here. They say they all ran well clear in time, and it only took them a day or so to put new thatch roofing on their miserable shacks.”

El Generale stared pensively out across the ruins for a moment before he observed, “It’s a waste of time for our muchachos to poke through the ruins for salvage, if those miserable Mosquito Indians have had all this time to pick over the rubble. On the other hand, it keeps the troops from plotting mischief if one keeps them busy.”

He turned back to his aides with a slight frown and added, “So, the renegade, Ricardo Walker, is responsible for this mess as well as the carnage a good day’s march to the west, eh?”

The senior aide said, “Si, my generale. As we figured his latest rampage, Captain Gringo and that loco little Frenchman he rampages with wiped out a whole column of guerrillas on our side, another column of guerrillas fighting for the other side, then shot up a river steamer before marching over here and blowing up all these European gunrunners.”

The other aide pointed out across the ruins and said, “The Indios say he did this all by himself, without the help of even the loco little Frenchman! In God’s truth, I have heard of homicidal lunatics in my time, but this one seems a one-man Horde of Attila!”

El Generale nodded thoughtfully and said, “He certainly did a job on this place, and you say he did it all by himself? Madre de Dios, what manner of man can this Captain Gringo be?”

The less excitable aide shrugged and said, “He is supposed to be a dead man, my generale. They keep trying to kill him. Yet he lives. It is said he became a Yanqui renegade when the Yanqui army court-martialed him and sentenced him for to hang. It is said the Mexican Rurales tried to execute him too, when he escaped across the border from los Yanquis. Since then he has bounced all over Latin America as a soldado of fortune and most hot potato. Naturally, responsible people like ourselves wish to see him dead. But, the lousy pobrecitos who do not see the advantages of sensible government tend to lie to us about his whereabouts and—”

“Silencio!” El Generale cut in with an imperious gesture, adding, “I am not interested in the soldado of fortune’s biography. I wish for to know his whereabouts at this moment. Did any of those Indios say they knew which way the Yanqui and his French associate went after blowing up this place, or do we have to beat it out of them the hard way?”

The senior aide shook his head with a smile and replied, “We already pointed out the advantages of behaving as public-spirited citizens of Nicaragua, my generale. In truth, more than one seemed somewhat displeased at the ringing Captain Gringo left in everyone’s ears as he left. They say Captain Gringo, the Frenchman, and their harem of adelitas left for that British navy base at Greytown, just down the coast.”

The other aide shrugged and said, “By now they will have made it. It’s been several days since they destroyed this gunrunners’ nest. I don’t know why, but our central government won’t let us invade that damned British colony squatting on Nicaraguan soil.”

El Generale said, “We’re working with Washington on that. Meanwhile, there are many ways to skin the cat, no? Captain Gringo and his friends could not have been invited to Greytown by Queen Victoria. So if he is in Greytown, it is as an illegal visitor the British do not know they have. I see no reason why two or more can’t play the same game, do you? I need a couple of volunteers, muchachos. You, and you, will don civilian clothing and pay a visit on this Captain Gringo for me, no?”

The two aides exchanged glances. The more sensible one said, “We shall arrange the matter at once, my generale. I see no difficulty in slipping into Greytown disguised as what the British tend to dismiss as mere natives. Finding a fellow tourist in Greytown may be more difficult. But rest assured, my generale, if he is there, we shall track him down and kill him for you as you wish!”

El Generale rolled his eyes heavenward and groaned, “Listen to them, God! Am I really the only officer in this army you created with enough sense to unbutton his pants before he takes a piss?”

He glared down at his subordinates and roared, “Idiots! Captain Gringo has left Nicaraguan soil after proving to everyone with the brains of a mosquito that it’s suicide to tangle with him! He’s obviously trying to get back to his hideout in Costa Rica, where he presents no danger to either side in our civil war. Yet you think I’m about to throw away even your miserable lives in an almost certainly futile assassination attempt?”

They stared, bemused, afraid to speak, since El Generale had obviously gone loca en la cabeza at the mere mention of the renegade’s name. Finally one of the aides screwed up the courage to ask, “If you do not wish the Yanqui dead, my generale, for why you are sending us to look for him?”

El Generale waved an expansive hand out across the rubble as he replied, “To proposition him, of course. Look at the mess he made of this place all by his little self! Madre de Dios, I couldn’t have done a better job with my whole army! I don’t want to kill Captain Gringo, muchachos, I want to hire the crazy bastard!”

The British protectorate of Greytown looked like someone had built a little bit of England, cheap, and marooned it on the Mosquito Coast.

The hotel Captain Gringo and his sidekick, Gaston, had checked into under false pretenses was pretending to be an English coaching inn that had somehow wandered into a mangrove swamp. The roofing was corrugated tin instead of thatch, and any paint they’d ever applied to the outside had been stripped by the muggy heat and constant trade winds. But at least the outside had weathered to a reasonably dry shade of silvery gray. It was more quaint inside. The wallpaper in Captain Gringo’s corner room was fuzzy green with mold, and mushrooms sprouting from the rug in one corner. The brass bedstead, despite the smell of polish, was cheap-wedding-ring green in the cracks, and the room had cross-ventilation.

Gaston had said it was one of the better hotels in town. Captain Gringo didn’t want to think what conditions in the native quarter could be like. As old hands at the knock-around life, the two adventurers had ditched the native girls they’d started out with and checked in here as a pair of traveling banana brokers from New Orleans. It didn’t really matter if the management believed that, as long as their money held out. Gaston was out trying to scout up passage down the coast in his usual furtive gray way. So the tall blond American lay, hot, sticky, nude, and bored, across the fresh but already wilting linens on the bed, smoking a claro as he studied the ceiling. He was trying to decide whether the cracks in the plaster looked more like a map of Africa or of South America. He had decided it didn’t really matter by the time he heard a discreet rap on the door across the room. It wasn’t Gaston’s rap. It was too polite to be a cop out there in the hall. So he guessed it was the maid. He got up, wrapped a towel around his middle, pulled his double-action .38 from its shoulder rig draped over a chair near the bed, and moved over to ask, “Yeah?”

A feminine voice replied from the other side, “I have to speak with you, Captain Gringo.”

He didn’t answer as he thought about that. The hotel help hadn’t gotten his professional title from anything he’d signed downstairs.

He moved to one side and unlatched the door as he said, “Come right in.” So she did, as he shoved the muzzle of his .38 against her ribs and slammed the door shut behind her with his bare heel, saying, “Don’t turn around. Walk over to the bed and put both your hands on the brass. If you know who I am, you must know the form, toots.”

His feminine visitor protested, “This is silly!” but did as anyone else with a .38 poking them in the ribs would do. As she moved to the foot of the bed and clasped the rail with both hands, he saw that she was a strawberry blonde with a silly little straw boater perched atop her pinned-up hair. She filled her Gibson Girl summer outfit—a thin white blouse and khaki whipcord skirt—rather nicely. She wore her skirt “Rainy Susie”—an inch or so higher around the ankles of her high-button buff kid shoes than Queen Victoria might have approved. He said, “Okay, move your feet back and spread ’em.

She did, but protested. “I’m off balance, you mean thing.”

He said, “That’s the general idea,” as he started patting her down with his free hand. Up until then, he’d been using said hand to hold the towel around his waist. But modesty was less important to a man with a price on his head than making sure nobody figured to collect it. So as he searched her, standing behind her, he was nude. As he made sure she wasn’t packing a rod between her thighs, she gasped, “My God, that’s me you’re grabbing there, Captain Gringo!”

He grinned and stepped back, saying, “Okay, only one of us has a gun. Just let me get my towel back and ...”

She turned before he bent to pick up the towel. She was pretty as hell, considering the startled expression on her face when she saw what else he was pointing at her.

He laughed, picked up the towel, and said, “Sorry about that. Feeling pretty ladies up always does that to the little basser. Sit down, if you like, and tell me what the pitch is, miss, ah ...?”

“I’m Gloria. Last names don’t matter, in my line of work.”

“Oh? What kind of work are you in, Gloria? It’s only fair to warn you I’m too romantic-natured to pay, no matter what you just noticed before I got this towel back in place.”

She lowered her lashes with a becoming blush and said, “I know all about your reputation as a lover, Captain Gringo. That’s not what I came to see you about.”

“Oh, hell, it’s starting to cool off a little, too. Okay, you’re not a hooker and you’re too pretty to be a house detective. But you keep using my name in vain. Who sent you, Gloria?”

“I’m, ah, not at liberty to tell you just yet. Do you have anything to drink? It’s true that the trades are picking up now that the sun’s moved to a less beastly angle, but it’s still bloody hot and I’m perishing with thirst.”

He nodded and moved to the dresser where he’d left the water olla, rum, and hotel tumblers. He could see her in the mirror, so he put the gun down. And still needed two hands to mix drinks, so he let go of the towel again. As it fell, exposing his bare buttocks, she repressed a smile and asked, “Do you often pose for sculptures, Captain Gringo? I mean, you do have a nice body, as well you know, but really—”

“What can I tell you, Gloria? I can see by your outfit that you’re an old tropic hand, so don’t try to tell me you don’t lay around in the buff during la siesta, too.”

She fluttered her lashes at his bare ass and replied, “Of course, but I almost always dress for company!”

“I wasn’t expecting company. You want water with a little rum or rum with a little water, Gloria? I used to have some ice, but not since I found myself south of Mexico.”

“We British don’t share your Yankee madness for ice. Make mind half and half, please.”

He did. It was a point in her favor that she admitted being a Brit. He’d picked up on her educated English accent already, of course, but some dames lied even when the truth was in their favor. She was dressed sort of Yank, or at any rate more like American girls dressed in hot weather. He picked up the tumblers, thought about the towel on the rug at his feet, and wondered what the hell he had to hide that she hadn’t already seen. So he just turned around and walked over to the bed with the booze.

She politely avoided looking down as she accepted her drink with a nod of thanks. He decided he’d look less naked sitting beside her than on the chair across from her. She repressed a flinch as he sat beside her, raised his own tumbler, and said, “Mud in your eye.”

He let her take a good belt before he said, “Okay, are we going to get drunk or did you have a tale to tell me, Gloria?”

She took another sip of her drink and said, “Let’s start by telling about you, Captain Gringo, alias Dick Walker. We know about the naughty things you just did up the coast, and we heartily approve. Both sides in that silly civil war are a bore.”

“I found them sort of tedious. Who’s we?”

“I’m not finished, Dick. At the moment your little French friend, Gaston Verrier, is under observation. Don’t get excited. He’s in no danger. I only mention him because you ought to know he’s not going to be able to book passage out in the near future. It’s the hurricane season and only the bigger steamers will be putting out to sea, for important reasons.”

As if to prove her point, something tapped on the tin roof above like a ball-peen hammer. She blinked and asked, “Good Lord, what’s that?”

He got to his feet and walked naked to the window to hold his glass of tepid rum and water outside as he said, “Hail. Looks like we’re in for a real thunder-buster. Sure you don’t want some ice in your glass?”

She sniffed primly and said, “No, thank you. Do you have to expose yourself like that?”

He let a few hailstones plop into his drink as he replied, “I’m not exposed to anyone outside. If you don’t like the way I dress in the privacy of my own digs, you can always leave. It’s too hot to argue about formal attire, dammit.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, sit down again and stop waving that ... you know, around. Be serious, Dick. I have important business to discuss with you.”

He sat back down beside her, tasted the drink, and said, “Not bad. Okay, let’s get to the good parts. Who sent you and who do they want Gaston and me to shoot up?”

The hail was really coming down now. It sounded like a couple of skeletons were making mad gypsy love on the roof, using a tin can for a rubber. Gloria raised her voice and almost shouted, “Lean closer, dammit. I don’t want the whole hotel to hear this.”

He moved until his bare hip was against her skirt, but said, “Don’t worry, doll. The way it’s hailing, we couldn’t be overheard if your husband was under the bed.”

She laughed, unbuttoned her collar, and said, “I can’t understand how it can be so bloody hot with ice bouncing off the roof! Would you mind if I, ah, got a bit more comfortable?”

He reached up, unpinned her straw boater, and said, “Hey, you can strip to the buff for all I care. When in Rome and all that rot, right?”

“Down, boy! I only mean to, ah, loosen up a bit,” she warned, as she took another healthy swig of rum and water. He went on unbuttoning her blouse. The rum seemed to be loosening her up pretty good, but it was still hot and muggy in the room. She either didn’t notice or didn’t care as she said, “The people I work for don’t want you to do anything particularly violent, Dick. It’s a straight security job for an, ah, international trust; and speaking of trust, that’s all the buttons I think we’d best unbutton until we know each other a lot better, dear.”

He’d already known from having patted her down that she was too smart to wear underwear on a tropical afternoon. So he stopped undressing her and didn’t comment on the perky pink nipple peeking out at him from her open blouse as he asked, “Where is the job, and, again, who’s paying to have it done?”

“The engineering works you’ll be guarding is up the San Juan, about halfway to Lake Nicaragua, Dick. There’s been a little, ah, trouble with the natives. But if you were there with a machine gun or two —”

“Stop right there!” he cut in with a frown. The hail pounded hard enough almost to drown him out when he continued, “Trouble is all they grow in Nicaragua, and we’re not about to go back for more, doll!”

She had to lean closer to be heard as she insisted, “It’s not in the war zone, Dick. My company has paid off both Granada and Leon, so no regular troops from either side will bother you!”

“Screw the regular troops. Have you heard about the guerrillas? Half the idiots running around with guns in Nicaragua these days don’t know or care which side they’re supposed to be on! But let’s talk some more about your so-called natives. Are you talking about Indians or just old-fashioned peones? I don’t like fighting either, Gloria. So far, the only good guys I’ve met in these parts have been poor barefoot boys trying to survive.”

She took another drink from her tumbler, held it out empty, and, as he rose to refill it, shouted, “You’re not listening, Dick! Nobody wants you and Gaston to fight anybody! Your job will be simply to guard the dam site. The workers you’ll be protecting are as poor and doubtless as noble as Don Quixote might wish.”

He rejoined her, handed her the stronger drink he’d mixed, and said, “Let me help you out of that blouse. The only things you have to hide under it are sticking out anyway, so why should the rest of you be hot and sweaty?”

She didn’t resist as he peeled her to the waist, but lowered her drink to blink owlishly at him and observe, “You must be trying to get me drunk. I’m sure the queen would never approve of this, but, God, that does feel ever so much better!”

“Told you it would. Why don’t we slip off that heavy skirt while we’re at it, doll?”

“Oh, I couldn’t. I’m not wearing anything under it, Dick!”

“That’s a lie. You’re wearing shoes and socks, right?”

She started to laugh. She couldn’t stop, even when he kissed her. So he took her now half-empty glass, set it aside, and lowered her to her back across the mattress as he went on kissing her while he unbuttoned the waistband of her skirt. She kissed back with considerable enthusiasm, but when they came up for air the blonde protested, “Stop it, you naughty thing! Are you trying to seduce me, Dick?”

He slipped his free hand inside the loose waistband of her skirt, slid it down her bare belly to home plate, and, as he started massaging her clit, explained, “No, I think you came in here to seduce me. But what the hell, I can be a good sport if they send a really pretty dame.”

She gasped, grabbed his wrist, and made a gesture of trying to remove his hand from her privates. But she didn’t really put her back into the effort as she sobbed, “This isn’t fair! You’re asking advantage of the heat and humidity to … Oh, God, let me get this perishing skirt out of the way so we can do it right!”

They did. He saw she was blond all over as he stripped her to only her high-buttons and gartered silk stockings. Of course he’d had to let go his advantage long enough to slip the whipcord out of the way, so the dumb dame went through the motions of trying to cross her legs, and would have doubtless said something as dumb if he hadn’t kissed her, hard, and massaged her pale thighs open in welcome. As he rolled into the saddle she smiled up at him and said weakly, “They warned me something like this would probably happen.”

Then, as he entered her, her eyes opened wider. So did her thighs, as she added, “Oh, I’m so happy it did!”

They went deliciously crazy for a while as the hail beat on the tin roof above them and heat lightning commented on her hot love box when it contracted in orgasm on his thrusting shaft. The storm cooled the air a little, but not enough to keep them from getting pretty moist. When she said she was all sweaty and icky, he withdrew, rolled her over on her hands and knees, and proceeded to pound her from behind with his bare feet on the gluggy carpet, asking her if that felt better.

She giggled, arching her back to aim her pale rump up at him as he slid in and out of her blond thatch. She said it felt ever so much cooler that way, which was a lie, because she was taking him hot and deep. He came in her, hard, and she slid off weakly to roll onto her back, holding up one hand to grasp, “Enough! I surrender, dear. But can we dry off and get out breathing back to normal before we do it again?”

He said that sounded fair, and fumbled out a cigar and matches from his shirt before sitting beside her on the bed. The match didn’t want to light at first, but he finally got it going, lit up, and leaned on one elbow next to her, saying, “Thank you, Lord. I was expecting a much duller afternoon. Now could we just have some evening breeze, for chrissake?”

She smiled wanly up at him and said, “I never thought it would be too hot to fuck, once I saw your lovely dong, Dick. But now that we’re back to earth again, you were about to tell me you’d take the job, weren’t you?”

He blew a smoke ring at her breast, neatly ringing the nipple, and said, “You were going to tell me who we’d be working for, Gloria.”

She shrugged and answered, “The company’s called Consolidated Construction, Limited. As I said, it’s an engineering firm.”

“Okay, so who are they working for?”

She frowned up at him in apparent confusion and replied, “What do you mean, who are they working for, dear? They’re working for themselves, of course.”

“Honey, nobody works for themselves. You say they want to build a dam somewhere. Okay, who are they building a dam for? You don’t just send a mess of men and gear up a jungle river and pretend you’re a beaver, you know. The jungle on either side of the San Juan belongs to some damn body! Are we talking about the Nicaraguan bank or the Costa Rican bank of the San Juan, Gloria?”

She started to fondle his sated shaft as she said, “Who cares? I think it must be on the Nicaraguan side of the border, since that’s who they bribed for permission to start work. The dam’s not to be built on the main channel of the San Juan. I think they’re damming a tributary. Some rapid little stream running down from the hills just to the north. Speaking of rapid streams, darling, why don’t you put out that silly cigar and fill my main channel some more?”

He laughed but went on smoking as he said, “We’ve got plenty of time for that, doll box. Business before pleasure, if your outfit’s really serious about hiring a professional machine-gun team. You were about to tell me who they were building this dam for, remember?”

She stroked him harder, and with hardening results, as she replied, “I was? Honestly, darling, I have no idea how the small print of that construction contract might read. I only work for C.C., Limited. I’m what you might call a personnel manager.”

“You’re managing my person swell, babe. But you’re still trying to sell me a pig in a poke.”

“Oh, poke it in me and we’ll talk about pigs later!”

She was taking an unfair advantage of him, he knew. But since she was hot as a two-dollar pistol, two could play at the same game. He deliberately took a deep drag of smoke, blew it down across her heaving torso, and insisted, “Business is business. Before I give you the business again, let’s nail down a few lines of that fine print, doll box. I’ll take your word that you don’t know who your outfit’s working for. But since you work for them, you ought to at least know who the fuck they are, right?”

“Oh, yes, fuck me right! It’s a London firm. You can look it up. For God’s sake, Dick you’ve hired out as a machine gunner for people who can’t read or write! What’s so bloody important about my company’s mailing address? I’ll give you one of their bloody business cards if you want to cable them about my credentials. But could we please make love again first? I’m ever so hot, now that it’s beginning to cool off a bit in here!”

Despite what she was doing to his dong, he shook his head and said, “I hate to relight a good cigar once it’s been snubbed out in a dank ashtray. What’s your hurry, doll box? It’s still broad daylight, or it would be if that fucking storm would only let up.”

She started playing with herself as well as him as she replied, “I can’t stay much longer. But I have to come again before I go! Let me get on top if the rest of you isn’t up to it. I see this part of you has risen for a lady like a proper little gent!”

She jerked it to full attention and added, with a giggle, “Heavens, did I say little! Go on and smoke your old cigar, dear. I’ll just huff and puff at this end.”

He lay back to blow smoke rings at the ceiling as Gloria forked a silk-sheathed leg over his pelvis and settled onto his shaft with a moan of pleasure. It felt great to him, too. But as she threw her head back, eyes closed, and proceeded to play pony boy on his naked lap, Captain Gringo asked conversationally, “Where are you going from here? Back to tell on me to teacher?”

She murmured, “Yes; I’m meeting my superiors for dinner at my own hotel. Oh, that feels so loverly! Ah, you did say you were coming with us, didn’t you, darling?”

He grinned and said, “You keep that up and I’m coming for sure! But I have to think about the rest of the deal. I never sign a contract in the dark. I used to, but I got screwed that way a few times, and I don’t mean this kind of screwing! Maybe if I met the guys you’re fronting for. What hotel did you say you were staying at, honey?”

She didn’t answer. With a wild, wicked laugh she slid off his erection and dropped to her knees on the carpet, spreading his thighs as she lowered her blond head to envelop his trembling love tool in her lush pursed lips. He blinked in surprise but hissed in pleasure as she started to give him a fantastic French lesson, taking it beyond her gagging point to grip the head between her tonsils, with the warm wet tip of her tongue teasing him at the root.

He did what any man would have done, and doubtless what she wanted him to. He lay back and enjoyed it. But even as he watched the part of her strawberry-blond hair bobbing up and down, and, in the mirror beyond, saw she was fingering herself to orgasm at the same time, Captain Gringo was man of the world enough to know why she was doing it. A lady could hardly answer questions with her mouth full. Ergo, she didn’t want to tell him whom she’d be meeting at what hotel.

But what the hell, that was fair, since he had no intention of romping through the Nicaraguan jungles with her or anybody else in the near future. He and Gaston had left with both sides in the current civil war mad at them. To top things off, they’d wiped out a gang of international gunrunners before making their graceful but somewhat noisy exit. Nobody she could be working for could possibly pay enough to make it worth his while to visit Nicaragua for a while.

He came deep in her throat. She gulped and kept swallowing his hard-on, hard, keeping it that way as she strummed her old banjo with the wet fingers of her free hand. As he watched her in the mirror behind her, it inspired him for a rematch, despite the fact that he’d have been running low on ammo by now with a less athletic and/or attractive partner. He wanted more, but he was sated enough to think clearly, and so he couldn’t help wondering whether British intelligence or his old pal Sir Basil Hakim, of Woodbine Arms, Ltd., had sic’ed her on him. Gloria was too pretty and too skilled to be merely an enthusiastic secretary for some bush-league construction company.

But obviously she wasn’t going to tell him, and meanwhile he was about to fire again in her pretty bobbing head, so he thought it only polite to mention it.

She slid her lips down the full length of his erection, tightly pursed, then rose to leap aboard him right, doing a cancan-girl’s split with her long silk-sheathed legs on either side as she took him to the base of his shaft in a now impossibly tight opening.

She fell forward, pressing her aroused nipples to his chest as he tried to move and found, since they were both almost there and she was literally milking him with her fantastic internal muscles, that he didn’t have to. They came together. It felt so good they both nearly fainted. It was quite some time before he remembered he had been smoking in this bed and weakly looked around for his cigar.

It was burning where he’d let it fall on the sheets. Thanks to the damp, it had only burned a dime-size hole before he picked it up and tossed it out the window across her lovely naked derriere. He said, “To hell with smoking and enough of this foreplay. Let me get on top so we can do some serious fucking!”

She laughed and rolled off him. But then she sat up and said, “I have to go now. Save me some for later, darling. I’ll try to get back before midnight, if you promise.”

“What’s to promise? You see any other strawberry blondes around here? Let’s make it midnight for sure. By then I’ll have had time to check with Gaston and eat something to regain my strength. Drink plenty of coffee with your dinner, doll box. You won’t be getting much sleep tonight.”

She started reaching for her clothes as she shook her head and said, “That’s not what I meant, dear. If I’m to come back and be your tootsie-wootsie, you must promise me you’ll take the other job I came to offer as well.”

He frowned and said, “I didn’t know we were discussing prices, Gloria. Okay, it’s against my principles, but I guess you’re worth a hundred a night if you throw in another blow-job.”

She gasped in indignation and snapped, “Are you calling me a whore, you renegade hired gun-slick?”

He smiled thinly and replied, “We don’t have to establish what we are, babe. We just have to agree on our prices! Gaston and me expect five hundred to a thousand Yankee dollars a month, depending on the risk, with expenses and fringe benefits like blond pussy thrown in.”

She rose to her feet, tugging up her skirt and fastening it as she said, “This blond pussy has no intention of trekking into any jungle. But I’ll tell my employers your asking price.”

She was still steamed, but managed a smile as she pinned on her hat and added, “If we have a deal, I may forgive you when I come back tonight with their counter-offer. I suppose I may have approached you in a manner that could lead a gentleman to entertain evil thoughts about a lady’s, ah, natural feelings, but ...”

Then, before she could finish, or he had to come up with a sensible reply, all hell broke loose outside.

For a dame who looked so lady-like with clothes on, Gloria ducked pretty good. He didn’t have to tell her that was no hail on the roof they were listening to now, as he rolled out of bed, dashed to the dresser, and got his .38. She crawled under the bed as Captain Gringo rolled across it, topside, to get to the window, gun in hand, for a cautious look to see what all that gunfire outside was about.

He saw nothing but an empty street with hailstones bouncing like popcorn on the wet brick pavement. The storm was letting up. The clouds above were thinning, but since it was late in the day the light tended to even out. Everything was the same shade of fuzzy gray. Another pistol shot echoed in the distance, and in some other unseen corner of the universe a tinny English police whistle tweeted like an enraged sparrow.

Behind him, Gloria stuck her head out from under the bed and asked what was going on. He said, “Gunfight. But not close enough for us to worry about. Gaston said this was a tough little seaport. The storm’s letting up. Let me get some duds on and I’ll escort you wherever.”

Again the strawberry blonde proved she was a quick-thinking little broad. She slithered out from under the bed and ran for the door, saying, “I can make it, dear. I’d better do so before the streets are crawling with perishing constabulary.”

He said, “Hey, wait.” But she had the door open and was saying, “Wait for me by midnight. I’ll come to you at midnight, though hell should bar the way!” Then she blew him a kiss and was gone.

He laughed and locked the door after her. Then he got dressed. Her point about cops responding in droves to those gunshots in the neighborhood had been well taken, and, aside from feeling dumb talking to cops in the altogether, he couldn’t hide his shoulder rig under his jacket unless he had his pants on as well.

He’d just put himself together, noting that it felt better in dank linen now that it was cooling off, when he heard Gaston’s familiar knock on the door. He opened up. Gaston came in, soaking wet, to pull his own .38 and start reloading it as he muttered, “Merde alors, Greytown used to be such a civilized little village, too.”

“Was that you I just heard smoking it up?” Captain Gringo asked as he stared down at the smaller, older, dapper little Legion deserter.

Gaston Verrier was one of those nondescript, gray little men who tended to get lost in a crowd. When one studied him more closely, one could see why women still found him attractive. Which was just as well, since Gaston was the original dirty old man. Despite his size, the wiry little Frenchman was a deadly fighter and a damned professional soldier of fortune, too.

Gaston peeled off his wet jacket, reholstered his reloaded .38, and moved over to the dresser to build himself a heroic drink as he explained, “I was jumped by rogues as I was wending my weary way home to you, my child. I don’t think they could have been business associates of any of the people I contacted earlier this afternoon. Who but rank novices in the art would approach a total stranger in an alley, armed only with clubs and knives, hein?”

Captain Gringo said, “Mix me one, too. Who was doing all the shooting I just heard, if you were jumped by a gang of bully boys without guns?”

“Sacre bleu, I had to defend myself, non?”

“That was all you? I counted at least a dozen rounds, Gaston.”

“Oui. After I put all five of them on the bricks with my first improvised fusillade, I of course reloaded to finish the cochons off properly.”

“Jesus, you just gunned five wounded guys in cold blood, Gaston?”

“Mais non, I was trés how you say pissed off at them, my idealistic youth. I learned as a boy on the streets of Paris to be neat. Les police can be so tedious when one leaves behind a messy scene, with total strangers moaning and groaning and saying who knows what about one’s description and probably whereabouts, hein?”

As Gaston handed the taller American his drink, Captain Gringo sighed and said, “Well, nobody can say you ain’t neat, Gaston. But for chrissake, we’re hot as hell and this is a well-policed small town.”

“My point exactly. I shall give you the bad news first. The more-professional rogues I spoke to along the waterfront this afternoon told me none of the usual coastal traders will be putting out to sea soon. The species of insects are trés nervous about hurricane weather.”

“I heard the same story. What’s the good news?”

“Perhaps I spoke in haste. You may not like the deal, my old and rare picker of nits. But this afternoon as I was sipping cerveza with a lass of forty-odd summers at a discreet cantina I remembered of old, we were approached by a dealer of deals. A junior officer of the Nicaraguan army said to be winning, this season. I of course sent away my plans for the evening, since she was in truth not that good-looking and you know how women gossip.”

Captain Gringo took a swallow of rum and said, “Get to the point, dammit. I swear to God, Gaston, if somebody asks you what time it is you tell them how to build a grandfather clock!”

Gaston sat down on a hardwood chair his wet pants couldn’t hurt and sipped his own drink before answering, “One never knows when one may wish he knew how to build a grandfather clock, my hasty child. But to hold your short attention span, I shall sum it up à la brass tacks. El Generale Hernan Portola wants to hire us, with the usual paid expenses, and a bonus on satisfactory completion of the job. We will naturally be screwed on that point. But I said we wanted our first month’s pay in advance if we took the job.”

Captain Gringo frowned down at the Frenchman and growled, “You did, huh? Who the fuck is General Portola and does he know we once fought on the other side against him?”

“To answer your confusion in order, my old and rare, Hernan Portola is a dedicated cocksucker. He would no doubt prefer to be called the Butcher of Leon. Either description fits as well. And, oui, he knows we once fought for the Granadines or so-called rebels. Apparently he admires the way we sank that government gunboat on Lake Nicaragua for the sons of the bitch who never paid us for doing so.”

Captain Gringo sat on the bed, lit another smoke, and shook his head to marvel, “Boy, you take the cake, old buddy. Can’t you see a trap when it’s drooling at your balls?”

Gaston shrugged and said, “If I had not seen the trés clumsy trap in that alley on my way home, we would not be billing and cooing at one another like this. You must learn to pay attention to your elders, Dick. I said Portola was a dedicated sucker of cocks. He is trés brutal, utterly ruthless, and all in all a man one would not wish to invite to one’s home for dinner. But he is a sincere patriot, or at least sincerely dedicated to his own Nicaraguan faction. For Leon and the so-called liberal party, Portola would butcher any number of babies and bayonet his mother with a rusty blade. But, unlike so many warlords of bananaland, Portola keeps his word and never changes sides.”

Gaston took another sip and reached for his own cigar as he added, “I suppose someone must have dropped Portola on his head when he was an infant. But, whatever the reason, he is known to those in our profession as a man who can be trusted. El Generale never crosses one double unless one tries to do it to him first. After that, of course, one must recall why they dubbed him the Butcher of Leon, hein?”

Captain Gringo thought, shrugged, and said, “Well, we can’t stay here much longer, and we could sure use new ID as well as the bucks. But I don’t like the idea of machine gunning old comrades in arms, even if the other side didn’t pay us in full that time.”

Gaston chuckled fondly and said, “Oui, I got some good screwing in the rebel camp, too. Mais relax, my conscience-stricken child. Portola’s man said they did have a machine gun for you to work with, as well as a cute little field gun for moi, if we can manhandle it into the rough country involved. We are not, however, being sent to fight our old friends of the Granada faction.”

“Jesus, two sides ain’t enough in a civil war?”

“Mais non, that would be barely interesting. By now the war would be over if it was only between Granada and Leon. Leon, as you know to your sorrow, has been backed by recognition, loans, and other good things, like guns, from your doubtless confused President Cleveland.”

“Never mind why Washington keeps backing piss-pot dictatorships down here. I’ve given up trying to figure that one out. Who, aside from their official enemies, does the so-called Nicaraguan government want bumped off, and how come they have to send out for help? Doesn’t El Generale Portola have an army of his own?”

Gaston nodded and said, “Oui, armed, as we know to our cost, by Washington. That is where the wheels within the wheels of the clock you don’t wish to hear about get trés sneaky. Queen Victoria as well as President Cleveland expect Portola and his government to make la nice-nice. So Portola would be trés embarrassed if either caught him with his bloody hands in the cookies, non?”

“Dammit, Gaston.”

“Mon Dieu, I am speaking as swiftly as one can with rum and tobacco in one’s mouth, Dick! Eh bien, Portola wants us to take out an engineering project, started by outside international interests with the approval of both Washington and London.”

“Oh boy! Consolidated Construction, Limited, and a dam site in the jungles north of the San Juan?”

It was Gaston’s turn to look surprised. He asked, “Have you unsuspected psychic powers, Dick? The officer I spoke to said the project was supposed to be a deep dark secret!”

“A little pussy told me. You finish your story first.”

“Eh bien. As you know, various international trusts like the Vanderbilt transport complex and the banana barons of New Orleans do business in these parts with little regard for the local governments, since who can say who the local government may be from one day to the next? The Panama project Washington is interested in to the south has bogged down in trés fatigue negotiations and gunplay. Meanwhile, weather and revolutions permitting, the easiest way to move freight between the Atlantic and Pacific is across Nicaragua near the Costa Rican border, which is also a somewhat hazy matter from one war to the next. Shallow-draft steamboats and cross-country railroads, while doubtless profitable to the heirs of Commodore Vanderbilt, involve much loading and unloading even when one considers how little one pays a stevedore down here. The British engineering firm has contracted to improve navigation on the San Juan, and supply hydroelectric power as well, by damming one or more tributaries to ensure high water at all seasons, and so on. I confess, the details of vast hydraulic projects interest me as little as my grandfather clock interests you. Suffice it to say, El Generale Portola does not wish to see the project brought to fruition. Ergo, he wants the works destroyed and the foreigners driven out of his country. He can’t do it openly with his army regulars, because their pay and ammunition is supplied by the very powers he wishes to drive out of his country, hein?”

Captain Gringo whistled softly and said, “You say he never deals from the bottom of the deck, Gaston?”

Gaston nodded and said, “The triple-titted baby raper is as honest as your Abe Lincoln, when it comes to his given word. But you see, neither the junta in Leon nor El Generale ever agreed to the big construction project on what they regard, with some logique, as their own soil. Nobody ever asked them. Polite notes to Washington and London have been ignored, since, after all, who reads Spanish in either case? So, voila, the simple solution, as Portola sees it, is to have the project destroyed, no doubt by guerrillas, disgruntled natives, or who can say, when anyone asks, hein?”

Captain Gringo took a drag on his claro, exhaled wearily, and said, “The construction outfit knows something’s up. Pour yourself another while I tell you my tale. You’ll need it.”

He filled Gaston in on Gloria’s visit, leaving out some of the dirty parts and keeping it short and sweet. When he’d finished and rose to build himself another drink, Gaston nodded and said, “Eh bien, someone has been fibbing to us. Probably both sides.”

Captain Gringo asked him what else was new, adding, “There’s more to this than a dam in the middle of nowhere. The Nicaraguans shouldn’t give a shit if all the outsiders want to do is improve navigation and make some electricity the country could use. The blonde refused to say who Consolidated Construction was building said dam for, and it sure can’t be the Nicaraguan government we all know and love. Could it be a ploy of the Granada side?”

Gaston studied his glass thoughtfully as he mused aloud, “Merde alors, that makes even less sense, Dick. As we learned the hard way, fighting for them, the Granadines are trés flat broke. They would not be, if any outside powers were willing to loan them the time of the day. So Granada could not afford a big engineering project even if they had any use for one. And they have no use for one. Leon controls all the main water and land routes now. The Granadines have been reduced to guerrillas in the hills here and there. Besides the obvious, Portola would have a good excuse to publicly oppose the engineering project if Granada had a finger in the pie, non?”

The storm had faded to an occasional distant rumble of thunder now, but it was starting to get darker. Captain Gringo walked over to switch on the overhead Edison bulb as he said, “Okay, let’s write off all six or eight sides as just plain nuts and forget it. Are you sure you checked out every cotton-picking tramp schooner, Gaston? If someone like old Esperanza were to come tooling down the coast in her Nombre Nada—”

“Mon Dieu, to be so young and sure of his luck once more!” Gaston cut in, adding, “Your big gunrunning girl friend is up the coast giving aid and comfort to Mexican rebels at the moment. I asked. But don’t jerk off in frustration just yet. Did not the blonde say she was coming back for a second helping?”

Captain Gringo consulted his pocket watch and said, “That’s hours from now. Besides, I don’t like her deal as well as I like Portola’s, and his stinks! I think it’s time to pack our bags and scoot, old buddy. Too many people know where we are right now, and if only one of them goes to the local law and mentions those reward posters out on us—”

“Oui, even though we don’t have bags,” Gaston cut in with a laugh, then added, “Even traveling light, we would travel trés wet if we ran for the trees in this adorable wet season. Since you read maps as well as I, I shall not fatigue you by pointing out that no matter which way we leave Greytown by land, we shall be crossing into Nicaraguan territory, non?”

“Okay, so most of it’s uninhabited jungle, but how the hell far can we be from the Costa Rican border?”

“About thirty Yankee miles, as a crow might fly. Needless to say, we are not crows. So one must allow for mangrove swamps and other trés fatigué detours through the dripping annoyances of the Mosquito Coast.”

“Hell, let’s do it, then! Legged-up soldados can easily make thirty miles in a night’s forced march, right?”

“Wrong. I just said there were endless swamps and trackless jungles in the way, Dick. And once we get to the San Juan, how do we cross the thrice-accursed estuary? It’s almost as wide as the Mississippi at the mouth!”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We can’t stay here now. Either side figures to turn us in if we say no, and nobody but an asshole would say yes to working for either a mysterious bunch of sneaks or a piss-pot dictatorship out to double-cross its own backers! The dame will expect an answer by midnight. How long did Portola’s guy give you?”

“I said I’d meet him later this evening at the same cantina, after talking it over with you. Why?”

Captain Gringo started checking out his money and ammo as he muttered, “Shit, that means we should have started at least an hour ago! I don’t have to worry about bullshitting Gloria and her pals. Portola’s man will figure the answer’s no if we don’t get back to him muy pronto!”

Gaston shrugged and said, “Try it this way. I return to the cantina. Maybe that same mujer of forty summers will be there, so I may kill two birds with the stone as I assure El Generale of our undying devotion and send the disguised officer back to him, hein?”

“What if he insists on us going back with him? What excuse could we give him for saying no?”

“Your blonde and my somewhat-gray-around-the-edges lass of forty-odd summers? I don’t think he would but it, now that I ponder the sense of two wanted men lingering in a British police station when safety lies just at the end of a hand-in-hand stroll to El Generale’s camp just over the border.”

Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Okay, I’ve the wherewithal for a couple of not-too-serious gunfights and maybe enough to bribe a ferryman or so and still get us up to San José, once we make Costa Rica. How are you for rent money, once we get there?”

Gaston shrugged and said, “Minor expenses are no problem to one who learned at his mother’s knee to say ‘hands up.’ But let us further consider your droll comments on gunfighting! That officer neglected to inform me just where in the jungle one might expect to meet El Generale, and the sucker of cocks travels with an army, Dick!”

“They usually do. Meanwhile, the storm’s letting up. The streetlamps are going on. In a little while the locals will be out strolling the plaza to see if they can get laid tonight, and the more proper lime juicers will be waving dinner. So who’s going to notice if we leave this light burning and sort of slip out the service entrance downstairs? You know the area better than me, so we’ll leave the best route out of town up to you.”

“Oh, merci beaucoup, since there is no best way to anywhere I’d like to go! Portola would doubtless be waiting astride the one main trade route inland. The path we came in by from the north only leads back to the trés disgusting chaos we came here to escape. The south road leads only to a pleasant stroll among the banana groves before it peters out in a mangrove swamp.”

Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Good. That’s the one nobody should be expecting us to take.”

“But, Dick, the damned south road does not lead anywhere!”

“That’s what I just said. Let’s go.”

They never found out just where the south road ended. More police whistles were tweeting somewhere in the night as they moved down the alley behind the hotel. Gaston observed that Captain Gringo’s blonde had most surely ratted on him to the constabulary as they dog-legged across a side street and into yet another north-south alley. Captain Gringo had just said that didn’t make much sense when they heard the distant sound of pistols shots, and he added, “See what I mean? Don’t be so egotistical, Gaston. We’re not the only knock-around guys on the Mosquito Coast. Her Majesty’s constabulary are sort of stuffy bastards, and the civil war has all sorts of people ducking into Greytown these days. Where does this alley lead?”

“Merde alors, how should I know? Before I met you, I used to walk the streets like a gentleman. I see no light at the end of this particular tunnel, ergo we are approaching a part of town that the powers that be do not find worthy of streetlamps.”

They moved out the far end and found themselves on a crunchy cinder path with barely a sliver of light showing here and there from the ramshackle houses on either side. Gaston said, “Now this is my kind of town. I smell West Indian cooking. The neighborhood is dark in more than one way. Let me get my bearings and ... Ah, oui, the wagon trace out to the soggy farmlands to the south is around that corner to our right.”

A few minutes later, as they moved along a rutted cinder path little wider than an alley would have been in the lighter-complected parts of Greytown, Captain Gringo narrowly missed stepping in a deep puddle and asked, “Are you sure this is the main drag south?”

Gaston cursed in French. Then the moon broke through a patch of thinning storm clouds, and as Captain Gringo could see farther, he nodded and said, “Okay, it has to go someplace if it’s lined with shade trees.”

Gaston said, “Those are not trees planted for shade, my pampered child. The wagon trace was hacked through the usual jungle that grows all by its adorable self around here. I told you Greytown was small. Regard how we are already leaving the last native shacks in our wake. You may walk ahead of me to step on crocodiles with those big feet of yours. We should be wading in a swamp any moment now!”

That wasn’t quite true. The wagon trace ran straight and more or less dry to the southwest, in line with the coast to their left. The moonlight was okay, and as they crossed an open patch with pepper fields on either side the visibility got even better. Gaston started to light a smoke. But Captain Gringo warned, “Not yet,” as he gazed back toward Greytown to see if anyone was trailing them. Nobody was. Gaston snorted in disgust but put his cigar away again as he observed, “If anyone was trying to keep us from leaving town, we’d have walked into their ambush by now, non?”

Captain Gringo started to agree. Then he frowned and said, “Stand right where you are and hold the pose. I want to see something.”

Gaston snorted again, removed his planter’s hat, and held it across his chest in a respectful attitude as Captain Gringo moved fifty or sixty feet back the way they’d just come. Then he nodded and rejoined Gaston to explain, “You were just a blur from point-blank range. So we should still be invisible from that tree line to the southwest.”

“So what, Dick? Were we expecting to meet a pair of lovely ladies of the evening in the woods?”

“I don’t want to meet anybody in the woods. I think it’s scouting time. If I was going to set up for anyone taking this trail out of town, that tree line ahead would be my first choice.”

He cut due west through the pepper field, crunching pungent peppers and reasonably dry soil under his mosquito boots as Gaston tagged along, muttering, “Such a suspicious nature. Who would want to harm a pair of sweet kids like us, hein?”

“If I knew how many players were in the game, I might have chosen sides back there. Keep it down to a roar. We’ll hit the tree line a hundred yards from the road and work back tippy-toe, okay?”

“Merde alors, teach your grandmother how to knit. I was trés tippy-toe before you were born, you overgrown sneak!”

It worked pretty good. They made the trees, which turned out to be coffee, with the red earth well cleared between the close-spaced trunks, and were able to drift silently as ghosts toward the road until they both spotted the back of someone dressed in peon white cotton and a big straw sombrero. Captain Gringo stopped and nudged Gaston. The Frenchman whispered, “I see him. That rifle across his knees would indicate he has not squatted there to take la crappe. Ah, over to his right, resting his derriere against a tree trunk ... he has a gun, too.”

Captain Gringo drew his .38. Gaston frowned and asked, “Have you thought the matter out, Dick? Such gentlemen of the road tend to grow in bunches. There will be more on the far side of the wagon trace, non?”

“Yeah. I only want those two. Don’t use that fucking knife of yours. I want to talk to them first.”

“Merde alors, about what? I can tell you what they are doing there. They are waiting for someone less prudent than us to wander across those open pepper fields into their most ordinaire ambush, non?”

“Maybe. They could be mere banditos. They could be working for someone with more on his or her mind. You take the one on the right and I’ll pistol whip the other. Let’s go.”

That should have worked, but it didn’t. The two soldiers of fortune fanned out to move in on their intended victims. Then a third ladrón, whom neither had spotted behind a tree, stepped into view, facing them, and started to say something about it getting late before he gasped, “¡Ay caramba!” and raised the pistol in his right hand to shoot Gaston.

So Captain Gringo shot him, then blew away the squatting ladrón as he was turning his way, rifle and all. While all this had been going on, Gaston had of course blown the sombrero and half the head off his own victim.

After that it got even noisier. The two soldiers of fortune had crabbed away from their own muzzle flashes and taken cover behind coffee-tree trunks as bullets hummed like angry hornets through spaces they’d once occupied. A long ragged row of white-clad figures flashed on and off by dappled moonlight shining down between the treetops as they charged more or less blindly, which would have been dumb against almost any two men firing from cover. It had even grimmer results against two of the deadliest gunslicks in Latin America. The only thing that saved the ones still on their feet after ten white-clad figures lay stark in the moonlight was that they’d fallen back in panic by the time the two adventurers had to stop and hastily reload.

Gaston whistled and started running the other way. Captain Gringo hesitated, muttered, “When he’s right he’s right,” and followed, catching up on his longer legs to snap, “Cut right, back across the peppers. If they’re up to another charge they’ll move due west through the coffee.”

“Must you explain the facts of life to a man old enough to be your proud papa?” Gaston snorted, suiting his deeds to his words as they broke cover together to dash out across open but dark distance. Neither spoke as they ran across the crunchy pepper plants. They were slightly winded and very sweaty by the time they made it to the hedgerow on the far side and hunkered down by unspoken accord to see how many guys were chasing them.

Nobody was. Gaston gasped for air and spat before he said, “Eh, bien, those were not the usual highwaymen. They fought too seriously. Have you ever had the feeling that someone does not like you, and you can’t say why, Dick?”

“Yeah, ever since I crossed the Mexican border a million years ago. Does General Portola lead uniformed guys or guerrillas?”

“Those were not Nicaraguan army troops, Dick. Besides, why would Portola send an officer to alert us to his interest in us if all he wanted was our adorable asses?”

Captain Gringo rose and said, “You’re right. The guy you met at the cantina could have just tailed you back to me and made boom-boom, or, hell, just turned us in to the British authorities. The constabulary would have turned us over to the Nicaraguan government they recognize. Let’s move sort of northwest and see if we can pick up another trail before we fall in a ditch. Thank God the moon’s out and almost full.”

They started working around the hedge-in whatever, as Gaston observed, “If we assume Portola didn’t set that ambush for us back there, how do you like your strawberry blonde, Dick?”

“I liked her a lot, in bed. But she won’t work either. Same reasoning. Why should the guys who sent her set me up for a great lay and a lot of bullshit about meeting me at midnight?”

“True, neither of us would have been alerted had neither of us been approached by anyone. At the moment, we would both have been asleep, or at least in bed, back at that untidy little hotel.”

They walked on for a time. Then Captain Gringo said, “Shit, it doesn’t make sense even if you assume a third side!”

“There is a third side, Dick?”

“At least a third. Maybe more. All sorts of people could be interested in whether that engineering firm does its job or not. But, assuming a third party doesn’t want us working for either Portola or Consolidated Construction, what was that bullshit back there all about? We were holed up in that firetrap hotel, as you just said. If they’d caught us off guard, about now, with all exits covered and a match applied most anywhere.”

Gaston cut in to say, “That is how I would have done it. But we just proved they were rather bushy of the league. They may have known we were not off guard. Guessing which route we would take out of town would not call for genius, hein?”

“Not if the guys doing the planning knew we’d been alerted. But if we assume they weren’t the ones who tipped us off that it was moving time—”

“Oui, they have a spy in one or more of the other camps. I am betting on the construction company being indiscreet. El Generale Portola follows the standard practice of shooting any suspicious characters within his greasy grasp. But your adorable strawberry blonde has been trying to recruit hired guns, and who can say how many, aside from you, she screwed and chewed the fat with, hein?”

Captain Gringo chuckled and said, “She chews pretty good. That’s probably the answer. Let’s not worry about it. Let’s just get the fuck out of here and let all the little wheels spin within all the little wheels while we line up something safer in good old San José.”

They found a goat path and followed it until it joined a more substantial east-west wagon trace. Captain Gringo swung onto it and headed west. Gaston asked him what the fuck he thought he was doing. The tall American said, “We can’t go the other way, dammit! It leads back to town, and by now Greytown’s hot as a whore’s pillow on payday, as far as we’re concerned!”

“True, alas, but you are walking us into even hotter territory, Dick. This is the road to Nicaragua’s current war zone!”

“Tell me something I don’t already know. We gotta go some damned where, and I don’t walk through mud too good. Remember that cuesta of high sandy ground running north and south in line with the coast, a few miles inland? Well, we can follow this trail until it tops the cuesta, then swing left and whoopy-skippy through the reasonably dry and thin palmetto growth along said cuesta.”

“You’re going to get us killed. Any bandits or wild Indians who avoid regular roads tend to stroll the high ground, too!”

“Okay, have you got any better way south in mind?”

“Mais non. But you’re still going to get us killed.”

The moon played peek-a-boo as the two soldiers of fortune followed the trade route west. Fortunately, this stretch had been surveyed by British road builders and ran straight across the treacherous swampy areas. They passed a lagoon of scummy fresh water, infested with mosquitoes being snapped at by giant frogs being snapped at by even bigger alligators. Then Captain Gringo spotted palm fronds against the moonlit sky ahead and said, “Palmetto, front and center. Looks like we made it.”

He spoke too soon. As they followed the road up a barely noticeable grade and moved into thicker, drier growth, a bull’s-eye lantern opened its shutter to shine its beam in their faces as, all around, they heard the dulcet tones of rifle bolts, latching lots of rounds in lots of chambers.

They froze in place, hands polite, as Gaston muttered, “I said you were going to get us killed, Dick.”

A voice from somewhere near the spotlight covering them said, in the polite casual tone of a guy who knew he had the drop on you, “We have been expecting you, Señores Walker and Verrier. You will come with us, por favor. El Generale is waiting for you in his command tent.”

“So you are the notorious Captain Gringo,” said the fat man behind the combined field desk and map table as the two soldiers of fortune took their places across from him in the sling chairs indicated. So far, they still had their side arms, but that didn’t mean much with Krag rifles trained on their backs. It was hot as hell in the kerosene-illuminated command tent of heavy doped canvas, so the Butcher of Leon looked more like a baker who’d put in a hard day at his ovens as he regarded them with no expression on his dark greasy face. The soldiers of fortune were sweating too, and only partly because of the heat. El Generale Hernan Portola was not a friendly-looking guy as he sat there wearing class-A khaki officer’s uniform despite the steam room atmosphere. He nodded curtly at Gaston and added, “The mountain artillery in my train is impractical, if the contours of this map mean anything.”

The two involuntary guests leaned forward to stare down with assumed interest at the ordnance map on the plywood between them and the spider whose web they’d blundered into. It was upside down to them, and neither gave a shit anyway, but El Generale’s eyes were starting to look even more suspicious as he mused aloud, “I must say I was not sure I’d have the pleasure of your company, señores. You know, of course, what happened to the agents I sent to contact you in Greytown?”

They didn’t. So it was easy enough to look up at him again with expressions of puzzled innocence. El Generale still looked unconvinced as he explained, “When the men I sent to get you failed to contact me this evening as planned, I sent others to make discreet inquiries. They were unable to find you. They found out my original agents lay dead in the Greytown morgue. The British constabulary had just found them in an alley. Both had been shot in the back. So forgive me, I don’t mean to pry, but how is a man in my position to be convinced of your, ah, sincerity?”

Captain Gringo smiled thinly and said, “Easy. We’re here, aren’t we?”

“True, but alone. The officers I sent to recruit you were to escort you here. But they lie dead in Greytown, while you two, forgive me, could have been going almost anywhere when my men intercepted you, no?”

Gaston laughed easily and said, “You would have to forgive me indeed, mon general, if I told you in detail what I think of your logique! Dick, here, never met either of your agents. I met one, it is true. I did not know he came in pairs. Like yourself, we wondered why he was not at the meeting place I’d arranged with him this afternoon. We heard some gunshots earlier. Until now we did not, I give you my word, connect them to anyone important to us. But with the police running about blowing whistles and no guides to show us the way, voila, we came looking for you, and so here we are.”

“If you were searching for this camp and not just trying to escape.” Portola said flatly.

Captain Gringo made a mental note that he was smarter than he looked before he told the officer, “There are three or four ways out of Greytown. Anyone with half a brain could guess you’d be camped here on this dry cuesta, for Pete’s sake.”

Gaston added, “Mon Dieu, do we look stupid enough to assassinate two Nicaraguan officers and then charge blindly into their camp?”

Before Portola could think about that, Captain Gringo said, “We had trouble in Greytown too. Some guys jumped Gaston, here, in an alley near our hotel. You can read about it in the papers, and your two officers were still alive at the time.”

Portola looked relieved and asked, “Oh, were you the señores who left those bodies in that alley? That, at least, rings true. But who in the devil could they be working for?”

Captain Gringo said, “Easy again. An outfit calling itself Consolidated Construction, Limited, sent a female agent to recruit us. You can see what our answer was. The mujer said she didn’t want us working for you. She said they had us under observation. Obviously someone working for them was trailing Gaston when he met your agent in that cantina. What else do you need, a diagram on the blackboard, for chrissake?”

Apparently Portola did, but he drew the pattern in his own head as he let them sweat some more. After a while he nodded, slid a box of Havana perfectos across the map at them, and said, “Bueno. I’m glad you chose the right side. We have Browning, Maxim, and Spandau machine guns, all chambered for the same .30-30 rounds as our Krags. Which make do you prefer, Captain Gringo?”

“I’ll stick with Maxim’s original patent, since I trained on it. The Browning fires a little smoother, but it’s sort of delicate for the local climate. The Spandau needs more work if the young Kaiser expects to ever do anything important with all those Spandaus he’s pirated from Maxim’s original design.”

Gaston snorted in annoyance and cut in to ask, “Is there some point to all this discussion of machine-gun patents, or does M’sieur le General have some particular target in mind for les rat-a-tats?”

Portola stabbed a stubby finger down on the map, marking the target area with another grease spot as he said, “The British firm wishes for to dam this stream and flood this jungle valley. I do not wish for them to do so. For political reasons, I cannot make my displeasure publicly known. I am therefore obliged to send a guerrilla band, led by you professionals, to take out the damned foreigners.”

Captain Gringo said, “We heard all that from your agent and the dame from the other side, general. What’s the bottom line?”

Portola shrugged and said, “I shall pay you a flat fee. Five thousand Yanqui, to share as you see fit, up front. You will get another five when I hear you have wiped the project out in a satisfactory manner.”

The two professionals exchanged thoughtful glances. Captain Gringo asked, “What do you call a satisfactory wipe-out, general? No offense, but I’m not a butcher. So women, children, and unarmed peones are out.”

The Butcher of Leon shrugged and said, “I don’t care what you do to the work force, as long as I can rest assured that cursed dam will not be built in the near future. Do it neatly, or do it sloppy, but do it, and the bonus is yours. Agreed?”

Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Let’s go over the fine print. If we’re to stop the project to your satisfaction, we need some facts.”

“Let’s talk about the money first!” Gaston cut in.

Portola shrugged, reached in a drawer, and handed Gaston a check, saying, “As you see, it’s a cashier’s check made out to bearer on a Costa Rican bank in San José. When you take out the dam site, you won’t have to come back to me. In fact, I’d rather be able to say I didn’t know either one of you, should anyone ever ask. There will be another check like that one waiting for you in San José if I am pleased with the results of your mission. If I am not you will die before you can cash either.”

Captain Gringo said, “Let’s stop trying to scare each other and get back to the brass tacks, general. Numero uno, who the fuck’s paying to have all that construction work done in the first place? I asked the dame they sent to recruit us, but she either didn’t know or wouldn’t say.”

Portola shrugged and replied, “Nobody ever saw fit to tell us why they needed a flood-control and hydroelectric project on that tributary, either. The official word they sold Washington and London was the usual tripe about improving living conditions for the pobrecitos. They say they can improve navigation on the San Juan and set up a model village and industrial park on the riverbank as well.”

“Do you think it’s a cover for something more sinister?”

“Quien sabe? I don’t care what they really intend. It’s the Mosquitoes I’m worried about.”

They both looked up. Gaston said, “The insects are trés formidable at this time of the year, mon General, but one would assume in time one could learn to live with a few mosquitoes, non?”

Portola shot him a disgusted look and said, “I am referring to the Mosquito Indians, dammit. We’re already having enough trouble with the wilder tribes of our Mosquito Coast. And every time we have to shoot a few of the cabrónes, the triple-titted missionaries write more silly letters to the international press, accusing us of being uncivilized to our uncivilized minorities.”

Gaston grinned and said, “Mon Dieu, how uncivilized of them! Everyone knows Leon is of the liberal party, non?”

Fortunately, Portola didn’t understand Gaston’s sardonic wit. He nodded soberly and replied, “Public opinion is a pain in the ass. But what are we to do? We depend on the fucking Protestants in Washington and London to back us against the fucking Pope and the Granadines. Everyone knows the only good Indian is a dead Indian, but the damned Calvinist missionaries and the even worse Dominicans on the damned Granada conservatives’ side weep and wail as one, every time we have to shoot a damned Mosquito. You know, of course, how England used protecting the so-called oppressed Indians as an excuse to shove that base at Greytown down our throats. We don’t want anything like that to happen again. So I’m sending you two cutthroats to take out that dam and make sure it doesn’t see?”

Captain Gringo lit the perfecto he’d accepted while he tried to make some sense out of what the fat man had just said. It didn’t work. He shook out the match and said, “General, I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about. What has building a dam in the middle of nowhere got to do with Mosquito Indians?”

“Where did you think wild Indians lived, in the middle of Granada or Leon? The foreigners building that dam against our wishes in the name of so-called progress take the same position about the jungle valley they intend to flood being worthless and uninhabited, but—”

“Gotcha!” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “I must be asleep at the switch tonight. God knows I’ve met enough Indians out in the middle of nowhere. The dam project figures to flood their happy hunting ground, huh?”

“A couple of Mosquito villages and a thousand or more corn milpas too! You probably know los Mosquitoes are a slash-and-burn semi-agricultural tribe. If they’re flooded out, they’ll move into the happy hunting grounds of other bands. That will mean intertribal warfare, and you may have noticed we Creoles have our own intertribal warfare to worry about right now! It gets even worse if the Indians attack the construction workers instead of other Indians, or us. Let Consolidated Constructions, Limited, send out a call for help to the Royal or American Marines and—”

“I said we understood your problem,” Captain Gringo cut in, as Gaston just sat there bemused. The tall American went on, “Smoking up the construction site with machine-gun fire would be the best way to call in outside help, general. What you want is a demolition job. The French canal builders down Panama way didn’t give up because half their workers died of yellow jack. They went bust when they couldn’t replace the heavy construction gear they were losing to flash floods and landslides.”

Portola nodded and said, “We do think the same way, I see! Bueno. I shall see you have all the dynamite your porters can carry.”

“We get porters? How about some fighting men, general?”

Portola frowned and said, “If I wished any of my soldados seen anywhere near the dam site, we would not be having this conversation. You have my permission to arm your peones and give them some basic training as you lead them through the jungle, of course. I have a dozen more or less reliable pobrecitos I can volunteer for your mission. They, of course, will insist on bringing along their women. If the women carry most of the load and I issue your porters a few guns to go with their machetes—”

Gaston cut in to ask, “Why can’t we find a couple of stout m’selles to haul a Mountain 75 at least? Shoving la boom-boom under someone’s derriere can be trés fatigue. While lobbing H.E. from a safe distance can become the soup of a duck, hein?”

El Generale just looked disgusted. Captain Gringo pointed at the map with the tip of his perfecto and explained, “When the contour lines get this close together, they’re trying to tell you the slopes are damned near cliffs. I see ... four, make it five really nasty ravines between here and there that I’m not sure we’re going to get across, even with only our own bare asses to pack. Could I turn this thing around for a better look, general?”

Portola swung the plywood map table around on its lazy-Susan mount as an aide-de-camp ducked in, scowling. The tall American ignored him as he told Gaston, “Okay, I can see where they’d put the dam between these two peaks. Assume the crest meets this twenty-meter contour line if they’re talking about enough hydroelectric power to matter and ... Boy, that’s going to be one big lake where this valley full of Indians is supposed to be!”

The junior officer had been putting a bug in the general’s ear while the soldiers of fortune were studying the layout. Portola’s voice dropped sharply as he cut in, “We have just learned that a patrol I sent out has been badly mauled. One squad wiped out. The others just made it back, carrying some wounded. I don’t suppose you could tell us anything about that, either?”

Again, caught by surprise, Captain Gringo was able to meet Portola’s cold suspicious eyes with an innocent stare as he replied, “Don’t look at us, general. The only patrol of yours that we ran into had the drop on us before we spotted them.”

Gaston had to ask, “Where and when did the outrage occur, mon general?”

So Portola explained, “When I heard the men I’d sent to contact you had been murdered, I naturally sent some men, in peon costume, to cover the escape route south of Greytown. I confess, at the time, I entertained doubtless groundless suspicions about your sincerity.”

The two soldiers of fortune exchanged glances. For once Gaston was smart enough to keep his trap shut as Portola added, “Si, they had set up an ambush south of Greytown. Fortunately for yourselves, you did not walk into it. Unfortunately for my muchachos, someone jumped them from behind and shot them up most severely.”

Captain Gringo smiled thinly, as Gaston studied the tip of his own cigar with sudden interest, and then, since someone had to say something, Captain Gringo said, “No shit? Did your boys get a good look at the sons of bitches?”

Portola looked up at his aide, who shook his head and growled, “The counter-patrol hit them from the dark in a coffee plantation. From the rapid fire they were subjected to, they feel sure they were jumped by at least a dozen hombres, armed with repeating weapons. Probably light carbines, judging from the flashes and reports.”

“Or one machine gun?” asked Portola, staring hard at Captain Gringo.

That was so silly that the tall American was able to laugh sincerely before he replied, “Feel free to search us for concealed machine guns, general. I can’t prove we didn’t check into that hotel in Greytown with no luggage, but you ought to have no trouble checking that out if you have pals in town. I like the lieutenant’s theory about carbines better.”

Gaston snorted in dramatic disgust and chimed in, “Merde alors, why are we having such a silly discussion? All of us are professional military geniuses. Any corporal would be able to tell us that one does not shoot up patrols with anything, unless one has a reason, hein? Let us assume for the sake of insane suspicion that two rude youths such as we jumped one of your patrols with our own squad of infantry, a mysterious machine gun, or, sacre bleu, our own two little pistols.”

“Did you?” El Generale asked flatly.

Gaston grinned and said, “Mais oui! We did it to clear our escape route south, as you suggest. Then, having done so, we came right out here to you to ask if you approved, non?”

Portola looked relieved and said, “Bueno. Not even the mad and most unpredictable two of you have the reputation for total insanity. But somebody shot the pants off my muchachos and if I ever find out who it was ...”

“How soon do you want us to leave for that dam site, general?” Captain Gringo asked to change the subject.

Portola said, “You shall leave at first light. My men will show you to your tent, and I suggest you get plenty of rest before morning. The target area is a good sixty kilometers cross-country, and the country, as you just noted, is muy rudo. We can discuss your porters and the gear you will require in the morning. Forgive me, señores, but I have other matters to deal with here. The mission I am sending you on is but a side issue of our more important civil war.”

They rose, but Gaston said, “Forgive me, M’sieur le General, but we did not eat dinner this evening.”

Portola waved a hand in dismissal as he muttered something about the officer leading them out getting them some grub as well. Captain Gringo nudged his small hungry comrade and they followed the aide out into the darkness. Gaston protested softly, “Merde alors, I am hungry, Dick!”

Captain Gringo didn’t answer. He was hungry too, but they still had their guns, extra smokes, and their lives. So what the hell.

The aide led them silently to a tent down the line and ushered them inside rather sullenly. They saw that the tent was illuminated by a kerosene lamp and furnished with pallets on the ground canvas instead of folding cots. Then-guide ducked back out with no further comment. They each flopped down on the bedding with the central tent pole between them, and when Gaston started to say something, Captain Gringo snapped his fingers and pointed at the thin canvas wall rising above him. Gaston nodded, blew a cloud of perfecto smoke, and said, “I told you what a nice man the great Portola was, Dick. Wasn’t it nice of him to give us these formidable cigars?”

Captain Gringo shot him a disgusted look and said, “Yeah,” in English, to make anyone listen work at it as he added, “I noticed that one of those hills they mean to plant one wing of the dam against is contoured like a Cheyenne lodge. Think it could be a volcano?”

“Hardly an active one, if they are professional engineers. But old cinder cones dot the landscape of Nicaragua trés fatigue. It must have been a trés smoky neighborhood when the world was younger, non?”

“Yeah. Negative on a cinder cone for a dam-foundation wing, though. The old volcano has to be solid basalt lava or the dam wouldn’t hold. I noticed on the map that there’s a good-sized crater topside.”

“So what? That blonde they sent to tempt you from the straight and narrow Cause of Leon said her side was hiring guns too, non?”

Captain Gringo stubbed out his cigar in a tin ashtray provided by the management and mused aloud, “Right, that’s where I’d have a lookout posted if I worked for C.C., Limited. That one fucking peak dominates the whole area, and we’ll have to work close!”

“Eh bien, it’s the rainy season and forest canopy covers everything even when the view from a mountaintop is more reasonable down here. Damn, I wish I had something to eat. Next to going to bed alone, there is nothing that keeps me awake like going to bed on an empty stomach.”

Captain Gringo started to undress as he said, “Quit reminding me, dammit. Get some sleep while you can. Want the light out?”

“Mais non. I am not afraid of the dark, but some few species of insects are afraid of the light. I am not quite hungry enough to eat rat-sized tropical roaches, and I no longer find it amusing to wake up with a scorpion in my ear.”

Captain Gringo nodded and finished stripping. He made a pillow of his shirt and jacket and slipped the .38 under it before stretching out nude under one thin sheet.

Gaston had just done the same when the tent flap opened and two adelitas ducked in, giggling. Neither of the camp-following dames looked bad, but the really beautiful sight was the trays of refreshments they carried.

The one who’d seen Captain Gringo first dropped to her knees beside him, presenting the corn bread and chili con carne she’d brought as well as a carafe of red wine for his inspection. He propped himself up on one elbow and told her he loved her. She giggled and said she was called Dulcenita. He said she looked sweet to him, too, and dug into the grub. It was spiced enough to make most Anglos wince, but he was used to Latin cooking and hungry as a bitch wolf, so what the hell. If he washed it down with the dry peon wine, it probably wouldn’t detonate in his guts. Dulcenita seemed to be hanging around for something. He knew you had to be careful about offering tips anywhere but in a cantina. So he asked her if she’d like some wine.

She giggled, took a swallow, and said, “El señor is trying for to get me drunk, no?”

He said she could get as drunk as she liked. Then, catching sight of what Gaston was doing to his own waitress across the tent, he added, “Hey, Gaston, for chrissake, these dames could belong to somebody with a gun!”

Gaston murmured something in the ear of the one he’d been feeling up, and as she rose to snuff the lamp, he said, “I most naturally ask about such things before I slip my hand under any skirt, my prim and prudish schoolboy!”

As the tent was plunged in darkness, Captain Gringo growled, “Jesus H. Christ, if I get any of this chili in my eye it’ll never heal! Couldn’t you have waited until we finished eating, you old fart?”

“Mais non; I eat lightly, when I anticipate a grand dessert. Excuse me, Dick, I can’t talk to you right now. I seem to have a tit in my mouth.”

Captain Gringo laughed, shoved the tray up against the tent wall where the bugs could get at it without crawling over him in the dark, and reached for the wine Dulcenita had been holding when the lights went out. As his hand landed in her lap, he didn’t find himself grabbing a drink. The little adelita had pulled her skirt off over her head, and, like most Indian or half-Indian girls down here, she’d either shaved or plucked the fuzz from around her snatch.

She laughed and climbed on top of him as he held on to his advantage. Dulcenita whipped the sheet from between them and forked a firm, chunky thigh across him to settle on his semi-erection before he’d had time to really get hot. As her warm wet flesh enveloped him he rose to the occasion as any gentleman would, of course. Dulcenita lowered herself gingerly, gasped, and said something in her Indian dialect to her unseen companion across the tent. From the answer she received, one could tell she was forced to speak with her mouth full. So Captain Gringo’s bedmate laughed and started moving up and down, taking it deeper with each stroke as she got used to the unexpected blessings she was receiving.

He reached up to fondle her top-works, noting with mild surprise that she still had her blouse on. It was odd how working-class American and Latin American girls shared the same odd shyness about total nudity in bed, even though they screwed everyone they knew, if asked at all politely. As a Mosquito or at best a backwoods mestiza, he knew she probably didn’t know how to kiss, either. But she sure knew how to move her broad brown ass.

He let her bring him to climax. It was still hot and muggy. But he wasn’t even sweating as she milked his first discharge out of him and kept going. He ran his hands up under her blouse. Her breasts were filmed with her own perspiring efforts and he could tell she was getting there herself. He suggested taking everything off. Dulcenita murmured, “Oh, no, por favor, only wicked girls allow men to see them naked, señor!”

“Call me Dick. I can’t see a fucking thing in this darkness, querida, and, speaking of fucking ...”

He rolled her over on her back without withdrawing and pulled her blouse up to expose her sweat-slicked breasts to his own heaving chest as he proceeded to do it right. She moaned in pleasure and said, “Oh, Deek, you are so thoughtful. This feels so much nicer for me. But are you sure you do not mind my enjoying you so selfishly?”

He shoved her blouse off over her head as she started to protest, then wrapped her soft plump arms around him and sighed, “You are right. It does feel even better this way. But please don’t tell anyone I took all my clothes off. I have my reputation to consider!”

He kissed her to shut her up as he pounded her to glory. She kissed at first like a little girl, or an Indian. Then, as he felt she was starting to climax and parted her pursed lush lips with his tongue, Dulcenita showed she was willing to experiment and a willing pupil. She sucked his tongue almost out by the roots as she locked her strong legs around his waist and tried to pull what she had in that end out by the roots as well.

He was still inspired, very inspired, when she went limp in his arms and lay quietly pulsing in post-climactic contractions until she realized he wasn’t even slowing down. She gasped something in her Indian dialect, and the unseen girl with Gaston giggled and said something back that sounded dirty, even when you couldn’t understand it. Gaston growled in English, “Can’t you two make love without distracting conversation? I am trying to teach this adorable child how we do it in Paris with our, ah, best friends.”

Captain Gringo laughed and said, “Kiss it once for me. I don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. But we both seem to be doing something right.”

The conversation had distracted him as well, so he had to start over to catch up with his own bedmate. She murmured, “Wait. My friend, Rosa, says she has just discovered a new way to please a man. Roll on your back, my toro. I wish for to see what she finds so amusing about this French business.”

That sounded fair. So Captain Gringo rolled off, albeit halfway to the edge and sort of anxious as Dulcenita groped for his erection in the dark, then lowered her head until her long black hair was sweeping his naked belly, and proceeded to act French indeed.

As she started blowing the charge on his bugle, Captain Gringo chuckled and muttered in English, “I’ll be damned. I think they’re playing follow the leader!”

Gaston replied, “Oui; now aren’t you glad you teamed up with a man of my vast experience? What do you suggest I suggest next for Rosa here? She seems the eldest and more willing pupil, and I fear the ruffians they usually service know nothing about the subtle ways to enjoy a woman, hein?”

Captain Gringo didn’t answer. He was coming. He grabbed Dulcenita’s well-lubricated crotch in the dark and encouraged her flute solo by massaging her wet clit with one hand as he ravaged the rest of her goodies with the other. She went nuts on his shaft and took it deep throat while he tickled her, finger-fucked her, and got a pinkie up her winking anus so it wouldn’t feel left out. As he fed her his wad he could tell from her pulsations that she was coming too. She fell limply on her side with a thigh across his chest and proceeded to give a blow-by-blow description of what they’d just done to her pal across the tent. As Rosa responded by following the leader, Gaston sighed, “Oh, thank you, Dick! I’ll never forget what a friend you’ve been tonight!”

Captain Gringo woke up with a start, reached for his .38, and relaxed as he realized he’d been awakened by the distant sounds of pots and pans. He was alone atop his rumpled bedding. He didn’t worry about that, either. He muttered, “Hey, Gaston?” and when the Frenchman answered in a sleepy voice, he added, “I think it’s getting dawnish outside. Someone’s cooking breakfast up the line. Can you see what time it is?”

“Merde alors, you have the watch, and it’s still pitch black in here. Go back to sleep, you species of early bird-life. They shall blow a bugle when El Generale wants everybody up, you idiot!”

That sounded sensible. Captain Gringo lay back down, albeit now wide awake. The chili con carne was repeating on him. He groped out some matches and found the stub of the perfecto he’d stubbed in the tin ashtray before turning in. It only tasted like shit for the first few puffs. Then the good tobacco took over from the overnight mildew.

The tent flap opened, exposing a flash of dismal gray light as the girls came back in with hot coffee and tortillas, bless their little hearts. He sat up and groped for the breakfast Dulcenita had brought him. She sat giggling while he consumed it. Then, feeling better, he groped for Dulcenita for dessert. Only, it wasn’t Dulcenita, as he discovered when he laid her across the bedding to undress her again. Great minds running in the same channels, Gaston observed, “Excuse me, Dick, do you have Rosa over there?”

“I think so. Want to swap?”

“Mais non; but I think they do. Shame on you, Dick, this one is built like a little girl and ... Mon Dieu, who taught her to grab a man’s foundations with such a firm hand?”

Captain Gringo laughed and didn’t answer as he explored the surprise in his own bedding with his own hands. Rosa was built much bigger and softer. He didn’t kiss her lips. None of them had had a bath since the two girls had played follow the leader on everyone’s dongs a few hours ago. But as he explored between her soft fingers, he could feel she’d at least dunked her crotch in a nearby creek, so what the hell. He could tell because her lap, unlike Dulcenita’s, was well thatched with thick moist pubic hair. Everything else about her was a novel challenge too. So he rolled into the saddle of her welcoming raised thighs and said, “Oh, yeah!” as he sank into a totally new experience.

Rosa was softer, looser, warmer, and more experienced than the one he’d had before. She moved great and he forgave her for being built bigger when she contracted with skill on his questing shaft and bounced so good he hardly had to do any work. Their upper torsos fit nicely together. He could lay more weight on her big soft breasts without worrying about her comfort. Considering what the two of them had put him and Gaston through only a little while ago, he was able to come in her fast. He could tell she enjoyed novelty too.

But when she whispered further suggestions, nibbling his ear lobe as they relaxed in each other’s arms, he said, “I think we’d better quit while we’re ahead, querida.”

Somewhere a tinny bugle sounded. He sighed and said, “See what I mean?”

“Put it up my ass at least once,” Rosa pleaded, adding, “You did it to Dulcenita, no?”

He laughed, dismounted, and wiped himself off before groping for his duds and insisting, “Later. There’s a general who might want to screw us, too. Are you girls coming on the expedition with us and the others?”

Rosa pouted and said, “No. We are attached to the mess staff. And they say the odds are against either of you nice boys ever coming back alive. It’s not fair. Dulcenita got to take it in her ass and mouth with you and I’ll probably never see you again.”

“Well, look at it this way, you’re ahead of her with Gaston’s dong, so it ought to even out. Are you getting dressed, Gaston?”

“In a minute. At the moment I am giving this adorable child a Greek lesson.”

“You see?” sobbed Rosa, swiveling around on her knees to shove her broad derriere almost in Captain Gringo’s face. He had his shirt on already. But he wanted to leave her with fond memories of them both. So he laughed, rose to his knees, and rubbed his semi-erection in the moist groove between her buttocks until it was hard enough to go almost anywhere. He said, “Lady’s choice,” and Rosa took the matter firmly in hand to work her tight rectal opening over the head, gasping, “Oh, wait, what am I getting into me?”

“Maybe we’d better settle for doggy-style, eh?”

“No, hold still, and let me get used to this ... Oh, my God, are you sure Dulcenita took you this way, Deek?”

“I never said she did.”

“Well, she did!” Rosa gasped, pushing back with a determined grunt of mingled discomfort and dawning interest until it was well up her rear and she was able to take his first gentle thrusts. He asked how it felt and she said, “Just do it!” before switching to her own dialect to jeer at the giggling girl with Gaston. Then, as the tall American began to get interested enough to move faster, Rosa laughed lewdly and explained, “I caught her in a lie. Bueno. Now I, Rosa, am the only one who can say I took you both in the ass, no?”

Across the tent, Dulcenita protested, “Pooh, I have just taken Señor Gaston so, and I sucked them both besides, so there!”

Captain Gringo let himself go, to satisfy Rosa’s boast and his own horny nature. Then he wiped off carefully and hauled his pants and boots on before either of the adelitas could show off anymore.

He noticed Gaston walking sort of funny too as they went outside to see what else was up. The sky was gray as the belly of a big dirty sheep and the whole world looked fuzzy and damp. They didn’t bitch. They both knew that by noon they’d be either sun-baked or under a cold shower with their clothes on. The only time the temperature was reasonable this far south was when it was dark or overcast but not raining.

They noticed a commotion down the line and drifted that way, ignored by the few soldados moving up and down the tent rows on their own camp chores.

The fuss was taking place just beyond the command tent. The general wasn’t in sight. That made sense, when you thought about it. Nobody fussed at generals. A junior officer and a senior noncom were arguing loudly while others stood around rooting for one side or the other. As the two soldiers of fortune approached, the sergeant was protesting, “For why must I leave my mujer behind in camp? By the beard of Christ, she is no mere adelita. We are married in the eyes of the Church as well as in the eyes of God, lieutenant!”

The officer, the same young sullen guy who’d led Captain Gringo and Gaston to their tent the night before, looked just as snotty as he told the sergeant, “Your wife must stay behind precisely because she is your wife, God damn you both! As a military dependent she is carried on the official records as such, sergeant. El Generale’s orders are that no official records shall ever show that anyone connected with his command went with those foreign thugs he hired off the record!”

The lieutenant spotted Captain Gringo and Gaston about then and added, with a nod, “Good morning. We were just talking about you.”

Before either of them could answer, the sergeant demanded, with a puzzled scowl, “What am I, then, an orphan? I mean no disrespect, lieutenant, but, I have been regular army longer than any cabrón within sound of my voice right now!”

The officer shrugged and said, “That may be true. But I still outrank you and I still say you’re coming with us for to cook for me. You are an army cook and I prefer army food to the beans and rice El Generale has issued those peon porters and their mujers. I am taking along my own rations. I need someone for to cook them. If you are captured, the books will say you were a deserter. If your wife was captured, the paperwork would smell of fish, since it’s well known that army wives do not desert too often.”

The sergeant started to say something else. But the young officer snapped, “I am through discussing the matter, Sergeant Morales. You have your orders. Get your gear together and be ready to move out in half an hour. Oh, I almost forgot. We are moving out disguised as civilians. Find yourself some nondescript clothing and a campesino hat. You can wear your boots, and ponchos are optional.”

Not giving the sergeant time to reply, the lieutenant turned to Captain Gringo and Gaston and said, “You two, come with me. Our peones are assembled along with our gear, down this way.”

As they followed the snooty lieutenant, the sergeant was heard to announce to the world in general, “All right, you cabrónes, a good soldado does as he is commanded. But remember, I am coming back, and he who touches my woman dies!”

As the soldiers of fortune followed the officer out of earshot, Gaston observed, “Eh bien, I admire your sense of strategy, Lieutenant. If the surly enlisted man’s wife remains here as a hostage to his good behavior, he shall no doubt behave trés good, non?”

The officer permitted himself a frosty smile and replied, “They are like children. One has to direct their minds in wholesome channels. As a matter of fact, Sergeant Morales was stretching the truth with that remark about his long military service. It is true he’s been a soldado a long time. But up until a year or so ago he was cooking for the Granada forces.”

Captain Gringo frowned and asked, “Can we trust him? How did he make sergeant for you guys if he started with the other side?”

“Easy. Morales is a very good cook. El Generale only shoots POWs who are of no use to anybody.”

Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Well, I guess you guys know what you’re doing.” But he only said it to be polite. Had it been up to him, they wouldn’t be taking along anybody just to serve the spoiled and pouty young officer. But if wasn’t up to him, and what the hell, Morales probably wouldn’t poison anyone if he really wanted to see his wife again someday.

Gaston asked if any other regulars were going along with them. The lieutenant shook his head and said El Generale had only assigned him to tag along and make sure the mission went according to plan. He said his name was Vallejo and that he wanted to be called Lieutenant Vallejo even out of uniform. Captain Gringo said that was jake with him, as long as everyone remembered to call him Captain. Vallejo didn’t seem to think that was amusing.

At the end of the tent line, a ragged-ass band of mestizo men and women stood as patient as burros around a big mound of canvas-wrapped bales. Captain Gringo counted bales and noses and it came out one hell of a load for the dozen men and eight women. Vallejo indicated a log like object under a tarp and said, “That is your machine gun. The ammo belts are in the pack under it. Now, if you will excuse me, señores, I must go get dressed for the costume party.”

He marched off in step with himself as Captain Gringo and Gaston moved over to the people around the pile. The tall American smiled and said, “Buenos dias, señores y señoras. Who is encargado here?”

The peones looked bewildered. Then an older man took off his sombrero and said softly, “Por favor, nobody is in charge here, señor. None of us, at any rate. El Generale said all of us had to do just what you officers said for to do, or he will burn our village.”

Captain Gringo nodded understanding and said, “Well, generals are like that. All right, my name is Ricardo Walker and I am called Captain Gringo for obvious reasons. This is Lieutenant Gaston Verrier, and if he tells anyone to do anything he’ll have my backing, whether I’m in sight or not. How are you called, viejo?”

The old peon said, “I am called Nogales, Captain Gringo. My real name is Pedro, but everyone calls me Nogales for some reason and—”

“Nogales it is,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “You’ll be in charge of the civilians attached to this expedition . Can you do it?”

Nogales nodded hesitantly. A younger, bigger peon, who had been sulking in the rear of the class until now, protested, “For why are you putting Nogales over us, Captain Gringo? He is old and stupid!”

“How are you called, muchacho?”

“I am called Bruno. I am the toughest cabrón in our village too!”

“You look tough, Bruno. But when I asked who was in charge, nobody answered but Nogales here. So, tough shit. Do you want to fight, Bruno?”

The village bully blanched and stepped back a pace. Captain Gringo nodded curtly and said, “Bueno. Nogales, have you and your people eaten yet this morning?”

The old man shook his head sadly and replied, “We have been waiting here all night for our orders, Captain Gringo.”

“All right. Look through the packs for some rations you can eat cold. We’ll stop for a decent meal once we’re clear of this unfriendly neighborhood. So don’t overdo it.”

As the old man smiled and began to open canvas flaps, Captain Gringo removed the tarp from the machine gun and handed it to Gaston. The weapon was a Maxim. So far so good. He opened the action and cursed. Gaston snorted in mutual disgust and said, “I could have told you. But look on the bright side. If it’s still stuffed with petroleum jelly, none of these fumble-fingered rectal openings have had a chance to fuck up the action since it left the factory in this trés greasy condition, non?”

Captain Gringo snapped the breech closed and muttered, “I’ll have to field strip it total and adjust the head spacing before we dare to fire one round. Oh well, I didn’t bring any heavy reading anyway, and we figure to be on the trail a few nights before we run into anything important enough to use it on.”

“True. I have always wanted to machine gun those damned bugs one meets in the jungle, but the little bastards won’t hold still long enough.”

As they covered the Maxim, the cook, Morales, came to join them, wearing a big floppy sombrero and poncho. He spotted old Nogales handing out hardtack and roared, “What are you lousy mestizos doing in my rations? By the tits of the Virgin, I mean to flay your brown asses for this!”

Captain Gringo said, “Take it easy, sergeant. I told them to chow down.”

“You told them?” Morales roared, adding, “Who in the fuck do you think you are? I, Morales, am in charge of the rations, damn your Anglo eyes!”

Captain Gringo said, “Oh, shit,” and decked Morales with a left-handed sucker punch.

Morales was more surprised than hurt to find himself on his ass with blood running down his chin from a split lip. He rose to one knee, growled deep in his throat, and reached for something hanging at his side under his poncho. Then he froze as he found the muzzle of the tall American’s .38 staring him down. Captain Gringo said calmly, “Go ahead and try it, sergeant. I don’t give a shit either way. You’re not sassing a green junior officer now.”

“You ... you struck me!”

“No shit? I thought you just wanted to play stoop tag, Morales. Let go that pistol and stand at attention when you address an officer, dammit! I’m not going to hit you again. I promise you that the next time you give me any lip, I’ll kill you.”

Morales moved his hands out from under the poncho as he rose, saluted, and hit a brace. Captain Gringo put his .38 away, returned the salute, and said, “At ease Sergeant. The hombre I have distributing the breakfast rations is called Nogales. You tell him what you want him to do with your rations packs and he’ll do it. Carry on, Sergeant.”

He deliberately turned his back on the red-faced and bewildered noncom, partly to test him, as he knew Gaston was covering the son of a bitch in Gaston’s usual sneaky way, and partly because he had had better things to worry about. He called Bruno over and said, “As soon as you finish that hardtack, we’ll see about letting you pack the machine gun for me. We’ll leave the tripod here, and I don’t see any reason for the water jacket to be filled while were lugging it, so ...”

“Can’t my mujer pack the machine gun for you, Captain Gringo? My mujer is very strong and I have an old back injury.”

“Right. We’ll leave the water jacket filled. Water weighs eight pounds a gallon and the exercise will do you good. I have more gear here than all of us put together can carry. So what’s it going to be, Bruno? Do you want to sit down with a split lip too?”

“No, thank you, Captain Gringo. I was only trying to be helpful. My mujer is most surefooted and never drops anything I tell her to carry.”

“Bruno. I don’t want her dropping her pack, either. If you drop the machine gun I’ll blow your head off, and we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?”

Bruno was saved from having to answer by the arrival of Lieutenant Vallejo, at last. He was dressed like a very rich peon under a flashy poncho and a flat-crowned Spanish hat with fly tassels hanging from the stiff black brim. Captain Gringo resisted the impulse to suggest a rose between the lieutenant’s teeth. The jerk-off carried a brace of six-guns under the poncho, and El Generale would probably be a pain if they left him behind, dead or alive.

Captain Gringo nodded at Vallejo and said, “We’ll be moving out in a minute. Just wanted to put something in their guts for breakfast first.”

“For why?” Vallejo asked in apparently sincere bewilderment.

Captain Gringo said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ve tried to get people to work for me by just winding them up. But I can’t seem to find any keys on their backs. Before we get in any more trouble, could we settle on some ground rules, Lieutenant? As I get the picture, the general’s sending you along as an observer. With me in command, right?”

Vallejo shrugged and replied, “My orders are not specific on that. I suppose as long as I think you’re doing your job right, I won’t have to issue you any orders. Why?”

“Just wanted to get it straight. I, ah, had to hang a left on your cook, Sergeant Morales, just now. I think we got his position in the pecking order straightened out. Any objections?”

Vallejo smiled for the first time since they’d met, albeit coldly, and said, “Be my guest. I would have done so earlier, if gentlemen fought with their fists. I don’t have to tell you what will happen if you ever lay a finger on me without my permission, do I?”

“No. I said I liked to see all the cards on the table, and if you don’t cross me I won’t cross you. Shall we get the show on the road?”

“By all means, Captain Gringo. I am looking forward to seeing how a famous military expert does things. I shall just, how you say, watch?”

Captain Gringo nodded curtly and muttered in English, “Watch this, then, shavetail!” as he turned and called out, “Gaston! Front and center! Bring Nogales with you on the double!”

Gaston dragged the confused peon over and asked, “What’s up, Dick?”

“We’re moving out. I’ll take the point. You bring up the rear. Nogales, you and your people will load up and walk in single file between us.”

“Por favor, señor, who carries what and—”

“You were put in charge of that, old man. So do it!” snapped Captain Gringo as he strode over to the pile the machine gun sat atop, calling out, “Bruno! Get your fat ass here on the double!”

As the big peon joined him, the tall American had already opened the petcock on the Maxim’s water jacket and was removing it from its tripod as the water dribbled like piss. He handed it to Bruno, saying, “Here, let this drain, since you’ve been such a good boy. Then wrap it in that tarp and hoist it to your shoulder. Grab that ammo with your free hand and catch up with me poco tiempo. I’ll be at the head of the column, and you’ll be right at my heels if you know what’s good for you.”

Captain Gringo looked around, saw everyone busy as bees, and started walking, not looking back. He spotted the hard rubber hilt of a machete sticking out of a loose bundle and grabbed it on the fly, even though there was nothing important growing in his way as he entered the palmetto scrub. He’d need some guidance once they were out a way, but meanwhile the sun through the overcast threw enough shadows to show which way was west, at least. He wanted to shake out the kinks and rub in his dominance a bit more before he admitted that even he needed occasional advice, when and if he asked for it.

He heard trotting footsteps behind him. He just kept walking at a brisk, but not too brisk, pace until Lieutenant Vallejo fell in at his side to say, in wonder, “I can’t believe it. They’re all lined up behind you and somehow everyone seems to be packing his or her fair share with no further orders from you or Verrier!”

Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “It’s a trick I learned from General Grant. Not Grant himself, of course. They told the story at West Point. Once upon a time General Grant needed a new aide-de-camp. There were three new shavetails fresh from the Point who wanted the job. Old Grant called the first one in and said, ‘Mister, if I told you I wanted a fifty-foot flagstaff erected in front of my tent, how would you go about it?’ How would you go about it, Lieutenant Vallejo?”

Vallejo shrugged and said, “I suppose I would gather a work detail, go out in the forest for to find a proper tree, and—”

“Send in the next applicant,” Captain Gringo cut in, explaining, “That’s what the first shavetail told Grant he’d do. The second one said he’d fill out the proper work orders and vouchers for the engineer corps. So Grant sent him away, too. The third guy got the job. His answer was that if the general wanted a fucking flagstaff he’d step out of the tent, grab the first passing noncom, and tell him the general wanted a fucking flagstaff, in one fucking hour, period!”

Vallejo had to think about that awhile before he got it. He shook his head and asked, “Is that how you got things done in the U.S. Army?”

“It’s the way I did. We had some assholes, too. That’s the main reason I’m down here soldiering the hard way. I led a troop of the Tenth Cav against Apache for a while. It was a black outfit. White officers, of course. Most of us learned pretty quick that life’s too short to stand over a man and give him detailed instructions to brush his teeth and wipe his ass. Tell the average soldier to move around to the left and you don’t really have to tell him to keep his head down and shoot the Apache first, see?”

“Ah, but those pobrecitos following us are not trained soldados.”

“So what? It takes a military genius to pick up a pack and carry it?”

He stopped and turned around, adding, “Speaking of military geniuses, where’s that fucking Bruno with my Maxim and ammo?”

The ragged column in their wake staggered to a confused halt as they saw him stop. That gave the short bandy-legged girl packing the Maxim, ammo, and backpack of rations time to gain on the head of the column. She was breathing sort of funny as she staggered up to them and gasped, “Forgive me, Captain Gringo, but you walk so fast!”

“Give me that machine gun and sit on the ammo a minute, muchacha. Who the hell are you, and where the hell is Bruno?”

She sank down gratefully and gasped, “I am called Florita, señor. Bruno told me to carry for him because of his bad back.”

“Nogales!” Captain Gringo roared.

The old man dropped the pack he’d been carrying on his head and ran forward, removing said hat as Captain Gringo demanded, “Where’s that good-for-nothing Bruno?”

Nogales answered, “Por favor, I do not know, Captain Gringo. He said something about a bad back as I passed him last.”

Captain Gringo whistled between his teeth. Gaston whistled back and dog-trotted up to the head of the column. Gaston took in the scene at a glance and said, “Eh bien, we are discussing young men who complain of fatigued spines, no doubt?”

“Yeah, the prick loaded his mujer, here, with both their loads. He didn’t fall back past you, did he?”

Gaston smiled thinly and said, “He tried to.”

Captain Gringo said, “Oh. All right, everybody, let’s move it out as before. Florita, stay close with that ammo. I’ll pack the Maxim for now.”

He started walking west, allowing them to think for themselves, but not too much, as they fell into place behind him once more.

Lieutenant Vallejo also thought for himself as they made the first hundred yards or so in silence. Then he asked softly, “Did Verrier do what I think he might have done, captain?”

Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “There’s no might about it. When Gaston’s bringing up the rear, it’s not a good idea to straggle.”

“I did not hear a shot.”

Captain Gringo wasn’t sure he wanted the snooty lieutenant to know about the knife Gaston wore under his collar at the nape of his neck, so he just said, “What can I tell you? You know what they say about Frenchmen fucking with their mouth and fighting with their feet.”

“Is he that good? With his feet, I mean? He’s not very big, and he’s rather elderly, no?”

“Bruno might have been counting on that. Forget it. We’re still close enough to camp for someone to smell him in a few hours. Let them worry about it.”

Vallejo shrugged and said, “Nobody but the ants will worry about him now. El Generale is marching up the coast this morning to deal with other problems to the north.”

“Yeah? Let’s not tell your cook, then. I don’t want to lose any more help until we eat these supplies a little lighter.”

Vallejo said, “He already knows. Why did you think he was acting so crazy? His mujer is most attractive and a bit of a flirt. But he knows as long as he behaves, he may someday hope to see her again.”

They walked on a way before Vallejo mused, “I hope she behaves. Buckets of blood will flow if our burly sergeant ever hears of her having anything to do with another hombre. He only married his Dulcenita a short while ago and—”

“Kee-rist!” Captain Gringo cut in. “Is Morales the husband of that little Dulcenita?”

Vallejo shot him a puzzled look, then brightened and said, “Oh, that’s right, you do know Dulcenita. She was one of the girls I sent to your tent with refreshments last night. Did they take care of you all right?”

Less than five miles from the army camp they ran out of palmetto scrub and into a swamp. A big one, studded with cypress knees and covered with a green scum that smelled like frog shit. Captain Gringo turned to Lieutenant Vallejo and asked, “Which way, north or south?”

The young officer answered, “Don’t ask me. I’m only an observer for El Generale.”

The tall American turned and saw that his people were bunching up, and while he didn’t approve of that, this wasn’t the time and place for basic training. So he called out, “All right, which one of you knows the best way around this swamp?”

No answer.

Gaston came over to join him and the lieutenant, musing softly, “Me and my big knife. I was just discussing the late Bruno with the peones at my end of the column. Aside from being a shirker, he was a local nimrod who hunted in the backwaters for frog legs, Spanish moss, and other things he could carry without straining his poor aching back. I fear he was supposed to be the guide El Generale mentioned, non?”

Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Forget it. He didn’t figure to guide us worth a shit once he deserted.” He took out his ordnance map and spread it on the sand as the three squatted for a look at it. The swamp that blocked further easy passage west wasn’t on the map. The cartographers had just put lots of marsh-grass symbols all up and down the Mosquito Coast and you were supposed to work out the details for yourself.

Captain Gringo said, “If we follow the sandy cuesta north, we hit the British trade route and maybe the British. It’s out of our way, anyway. Okay, we trend south-southwest and see what happens. If there’s any old way across to the higher ground on the far side, some Indian will have noticed and blazed a trail. Let’s go.”

Vallejo rose, along with the two soldiers of fortune, but protested, “It is getting hot. When are we going to stop for la siesta?”

Captain Gringo glanced up at the sky and said, “When it’s even hotter. It’s nowhere’s near noon yet, lieutenant. With luck it ought to be raining fire and salt in a little while, anyhow.”

He called out to his lower-ranking followers and pointed southwest with his machete, announcing, “¡Vamanos, muchachas y muchachos!” and started to turn away. Then he saw that little Florita was having trouble getting to her feet with the heavy pack and ammo. So he hauled her up, saying, “I’m sorry I can’t carry the ammo, too. But I need one hand free with this machete.”

“I shall do my best, señor,” she replied, trying not to cry. He looked at Vallejo, who wasn’t packing anything but his six-guns and silly hat, and said, “Lieutenant, you’d better carry the ammo. This girl’s pack must weigh sixty pounds or more.”

Vallejo took out a skinny cheroot and lit it, saying, “I came along as an observer, not as a porter. Do I look like a peon to you?”

“I’d tell you what you look like to me, but there’s a lady present. Good grief, what in the hell are you smoking, lieutenant? It smells like fucking violets!”

Vallejo blew a perfumed cloud his way and replied, “As a matter of fact, there are violet petals mixed with the tobacco. They’re made in Cuba for discriminating customers.”

“Okay, so you buy your smokes from a whorehouse and we’ve still gotta carry that ammo. Be a sport, lieutenant. You’ll still have one hand free to jerk off under your poncho, and whatever this little dame is, she ain’t a burro.”

He’d deliberately phrased it so it looked like Vallejo had a choice. The prissy officer shrugged and said, “Oh, very well,” and relieved the peon girl of the ammo as Captain Gringo turned away and started trudging through the scrub with the Maxim on one shoulder and the machete handy to take care of anything else slowing him down.

Vallejo had been right about it getting hotter. Despite the overcast, or perhaps because of it, by late morning they were staggering through a steam room a lot of sweaty frogs and alligators had obviously used first. They were making lousy time. But Captain Gringo knew that if he pushed his people any harder on the first day out they’d start falling apart by the second. El Generale Portola had recruited too few locals for the heavy loads he’d issued, and, despite all that bullshit about them being swamp-running Indians, they were simply agricultural peones, used to the pace of life visitors to the tropics discounted as lazy. Captain Gringo had been down here long enough to know that Latin Americans worked as hard as anyone could in this climate, if they expected to make it to forty. The perpetual heat offered three crops a year if a campesino rolled with the punches and didn’t try to reap more than a Pennsylvania Dutchman’s one good harvest from his three tropic plantings. While ever warm, the local weather tended to give too much or too little water from month to month, and the weeds were maniacal. So the “lazy” campesino actually put in more work with his hoe and spade in a year than the average Anglo farmer, if you added it all up. The secret lay in spreading out the work. The twelve-hour workday a Yankee boss expected would kill anyone who tried it down here. The Ladino peon worked an hour or so at a time, then took a break. That “lazy” guy leaning against a wall with his sombrero pulled down over his face figured to get up again in a while and go back to work. In the sticky heat, sleep was taken in small doses, too. Unlike people to the north, Ladinos broke the day into two-or three-hour fragments of work, rest, play, or whatever. Hence, the reason visitors were bemused to find a Ladino asleep at noon or plowing a field at midnight.

Captain Gringo moved between two clumps of sea grape and found himself atop a sandy rise surrounded by sea grape, palmetto, and Spanish bayonet. He laid the tarp-wrapped Maxim on the warm sand, stuck the machete in the ground beside it, and called out, “Trail break. Nogales, front and center!”

The old man staggered up to him, under his own load, and Captain Gringo said, “We’ll be here a while. It’s about to start raining again. Hard, judging by the way the wind’s picking up and blowing against the trades. I don’t want anyone chilled. Have your people build lean-tos and start a small Indian fire in front of each. I know it sounds silly right now. But you’ll never get a bed of rain-resistant coals started unless you start with dry fuel.”

The old man dropped his load and got to it. Captain Gringo saw that the girl, Florita, had dropped herself as well as her load to the warm sand and was staring down at it like she was about to puke. He said, “Take off that pack and move over to that palmetto, Florita. Don’t drink any water just yet.”

As she moved to obey, Lieutenant Vallejo shot them a curious look. The tall American said, “Heat stroke, I think. Told you she wasn’t a burro. Where’s your cook? I want him to break out some rations and grub the troops.”

“Sergeant Morales is my personal cook, if you don’t mind, Captain.”

“I do mind. He can cook for you. He can bend over for you. But he’s going to put some strong hot coffee in the rest of the outfit if we’re going to get any fucking where this year. I’m making you mess officer. Before you say anything dumb, lieutenant, I’m not asking you. I’m telling you! You can still catch up with El Generale if you want to pick up your marbles and run home.”

Vallejo’s eyes narrowed. Then he shrugged and said, “I do not have to take orders from you, Yanqui. But since you asked if I wished for to act as mess officer, I shall give the required orders.”

He removed his poncho, dropped it on the sand, and stomped off to do as he’d been told. Gaston joined Captain Gringo, saying, “I heard the last of that exchange, Dick. I don’t think that schoolboy likes his teacher.”

“Fuck what he likes. I don’t care if anyone leaves an apple on my desk or not.”

“Eh, bien, just make sure he doesn’t present you with a stick of dynamite or a bullet in the derriere. We’ve both met officers like Vallejo before, and stupid men make me trés nervous. One can work out deals with devils, but idiots are liable to do anything, even when it is not in their own best interests. Perhaps our perfumed wonder should have an, ah, accident?”

“Not until we cash that certified check. Hold the thought. I seem to have a sick girl on my hands.”

He moved over to where Florita reclined in the dappled palmetto shade and hunkered down beside her. He took out a kerchief, wet it from his belt canteen, and removed her straw sombrero, saying, “Hold still. This ought to help.”

As he wiped her beaded brow he saw, now that she didn’t have her little heart-shaped face shaded, that Florita wasn’t bad-looking. She was far from being a Gibson Girl. Despite the fact she couldn’t have been twenty, hard work and lousy nutrition had put lines on her brown face that few Yankee women expected to see in their mirrors before thirty or so. She’d look even older by the time she had a few kids. He could see by the fullness of her thin cotton blouse that she hadn’t nursed any yet. Her breasts were big, but firm, with perky little nipples showing through the perspiration-soaked cotton. He said, “You’re sweating too much for heat stroke. You’ve already survived vomito negro, of course?”

“Si; what the Anglos in Greytown call yellow jack swept through our village when I was very little. My brothers and sisters died, but I did not, and since then I have never had el vomito negro again.”

“Hmm, it could be malaria. I have some quinine here. I buy it as regular as cigars and ...”

“Por favor, I know what is wrong with me, Señor Deek,” she cut in, blushing slightly as she said, “I ate too many palmetto berries. I have been picking them as we walked down the cuesta and ...”

“Hold it, Florita,” he said with a puzzled frown, adding, “Nobody eats palmetto berries. They’re poisonous, right?”

“They make one sick to one’s stomach if one eats too many,” she nodded.

So he asked, “Why in the hell did you eat them, then? Do you want to go back to your village that badly?”

She shook her head and said, “No, some brute like Bruno would only rape me again. Is it true Bruno is no more? Forgive me, I did not wish for to listen, but I could not help overhearing some of what you and the old Frenchman said.”

He said, “You don’t have to worry about Bruno anymore, Florita. But how come he mistreated you in the first place? Don’t you have an alcalde in your village to protect pretty young muchachas?”

She shook her head and said, “No. Our village is no more than a cluster of huts, since los Anglos came to colonize this part of the world. They sent our padre and officials away. They said we were all subjects of their Queen Victoria now, but none of us speak English and ...”

He stopped her by saying, “I know about Anglo-Saxon colonial policy. I used to be an Anglo-Saxon. Let’s get back to poisoning ourselves with palmetto berries. Why did you do it, Florita?”

She lowered her lashes and blushed beet red as she murmured, “I wished for to be a passionate woman. The brujas say that if one eats a few fruits of the saw palmetto, it acts like Spanish fly Now. I am not sure they know what they are talking about. I have eaten at least a handful, and all I feel is very very seasick!”

“You look better now than you did before. If you can’t throw up, just sit tight and I’ll get some black coffee down you as soon as it’s ready. That should set you free one way or another. Meanwhile, why in the hell were you trying to dose yourself with the local witchcraft aphrodisiac? Who are you so hot for, Florita?”

She sighed and said, “In God’s truth, no one, Señor Deek. I do not know what is wrong with me, but I am a frigid bitch. That is what my husband called me when he left me for another, and what Bruno used to call me before he beat me. I thought perhaps if I ate palmetto berries, like the brujas said—”

“Querida, you’re talking loco en la cabeza,” he cut in gently, before adding, “Bruno’s not with us anymore. So who in hell’s about to call you a frigid anything? You’ve been walking right behind me since we left El Generale and I don’t remember any of the others getting forward with you,”

She said, “Si. They all know you have chosen me for to be your adelita on the trail.”

He blinked and muttered, “Oh boy!” before switching back to Spanish to assure her, “Don’t worry, Florita. I hardly ever rape little girls, and when I do, I never call them names.”

“Don’t you think I am pretty?”

“I think you’re very pretty, and sort of confusing, too. You just said you didn’t enjoy sex with any man, Florita.”

“I don’t. I have tried to, God knows. But nothing happens, and after a time it gets most uncomfortable as you all shove those silly things in and out of me. The brujas say it is just my nature to be as I am. They say some women were just never meant to enjoy it.”

He nodded understandingly and said, “I don’t know much about witchcraft, Florita, but our doctors say much the same, and since I’m neither a doctor nor a witch, let’s not worry about it.”

“You will not be angry tonight when I do not respond to your lovemaking as a woman is supposed to?”

He laughed and said, “I’m not going to get angry because I’m not even going to try, Florita.”

She started to cry. He started to ask her if she was nuts. Then he thought about the way guerrilla bands were usually set up and said, “I see. You want to be head adelita, but you don’t want to get laid. Bueno. I’m not about to post any bans on a palmetto tree, Florita, but stick close to me and let the others think what they wish. Stay here for now, though. I’ve got to see about food and shelter for everyone.”

He took off his canteen and left it with her as he rose to look around and see how the others had been doing while he was enjoying such a weird conversation. The machete-wielding peones had done pretty good, and just in time. A big fat gob of rain plopped down on the brim of Captain Gringo’s hat as he stared in approval at the thatch lean-tos and blue smoke plumes spread across the rise. He turned and called the sick girl to heel before striding over to old Nogales, who stood by his wrapped Maxim and empty lean-to, obviously hoping for approval.

Captain Gringo did approve, and said so, as he saw his bedroll and personal gear already spread out under the thatch, with a little smudge fire close enough to the opening to refuel from the neat pile of palmetto stalks under the overhang without leaving the bedding. Nogales said the sullen cook, out of sight down the line, would soon be serving, and asked, “Has Florita agreed to serve you, Captain Gringo, or do you wish for someone else to bring your food and coffee when it’s ready?”

Captain Gringo said, “Florita’s sick. She’ll be sheltering here with me. Tell Morales to send two rations or bring it over himself, just so we get it.”

The old man shot a knowing look at the little peon girl as Florita joined them. Captain Gringo told her, “Duck under there. If you have to vomit, try to miss the bedding. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He walked toward the center of camp as more gobs of rain plopped down at scattered intervals. Old Nogales said, “As you see, we built your lean-to facing discreetly away. We thought you might wish privacy during your siesta, no?”

Captain Gringo didn’t answer. Anything he could have said would have sounded stupid. He saw Gaston and Lieutenant Vallejo standing near the larger cooking fire of Sergeant Morales, rank having its privileges when the noon mess figures to be served under a thunderstorm at any minute. The tall American asked Vallejo how many carbines they had in the packs for the others. Vallejo asked why the hell El Generale would have issued weapons for mere porters. Captain Gringo growled, “Ask a stupid question and you get a stupid answer. Okay, you, me, Gaston, and Morales are the only armed men here. Morales is busy. I’ve got a sick friend to nurse. That leaves you two to stand the first watch. How do you want to work it, Gaston? Flip a coin?”

Vallejo blanched and said, “I do not stand guard. I am an officer!”

Before Captain Gringo could tell him what he really was, Gaston said, “Eh bien, I’d feel safer if a man was on duty. I’ll take the first two hours, Dick.”

Captain Gringo nodded and said, “I’ll take the second. By then, if it’s still raining, anybody creeping around in the jungle will have drowned. If it’s stopped in four hours, we’ll be moving on. So it evens out.”

He had told Nogales he wanted his rations brought to him. But now that he was here, he picked up a couple of mess kits and told Morales to dish out his coffee and grub. Morales said he wasn’t ready yet. Vallejo told him not to be an idiot. So the surly cook filled Captain Gringo’s kits and the tall American headed back to Florita and his lean-to. He made it just in time. As he got under the thatch with her, the sky popped open like a bursting rubber and rain started coming down in sheets. The fire out front tried, but hissed out like a dying bucket of snakes as the light outside went dark as evening no matter what the clock said.

He saw that Florita was under the cotton flannel top sheet, which seemed a good idea. Then, as she reached for the mess kit and coffee cup he offered her, he saw that she wasn’t wearing her blouse anymore. He noticed her ruffled peon skirts had been wadded into a pillow at the head of the bedroll, too. So he didn’t ask if she was naked under the sheet. He just wondered why.

He sat cross-legged near the opening, eating and drinking with her, as distant thunder rumbled and the rain pattered on the thick thatch above them. It was a little chilly as well as almost dry under the overhang. He said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, querida. But I’m getting under the covers with you. Pneumonia in the tropics feels silly as hell, so I try to avoid it.”

He knew the best way to get a good chill in this tricky climate was to bundle up in wet duds, so he started taking his damp linen off as she sighed in resignation and said she understood.

He wasn’t sure he did. It felt mighty comfy to slide under the flannel with a naked lady who’d already warmed the bedding with her own body heat. But when he automatically started to reach for her, he remembered her female complaint and abstained. Sort of. It was impossible to share the bedroll without their naked flesh touching here and there under the covers. He fished out a cigar and matches and lit up. It felt sort of dumb smoking on his stomach, but what else was a man with a dawning erection to do if he didn’t want to look like a tent pole next to an unwilling bed partner?

He asked if she wanted to smoke. She said she didn’t, explaining that while she was getting over the effects of the palmetto berries, even the idea of smoking anything made her retch. He said he was sorry and put out his cigar. It was a dumb position to smoke in, anyway. She said he was muy simpatico and added, “I think the brujas may have been right about saw-palmetto fruit, after all. I am starting to feel, ah, odd.”

“Oh? You mean sexy?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I am just so dizzy I just don’t care. Usually, when I know a man is about to stick his old thing in me, it makes me feel like I am about to vomit. But since I have been feeling like I was about to vomit all this time, with nobody sticking anything in me ...”

He laughed and said, “You sure have a romantic way with words. Try and get some sleep. We won’t be here long, and once this rain lets up I’ll be pushing you all to make up for lost time.”

She started to cry again. He propped himself up on one elbow, frowned down at her, and asked, “Now what in the hell is the matter?”

“You think I am ugly. I was afraid you would think I was ugly. Nobody finds me desirable as a woman. It is all so unfair!”

He started to tell her she was nuts. But they’d already established that, and, what the hell, it wasn’t as if she were a blushing virgin. She just had something wrong with her plumbing, or maybe with her little brain. It wasn’t his problem. He had all the problems he needed.

One of them, at the moment, seemed to be a raging erection. He muttered, “Jesus, I’m sexually confused, too. This is really nuts.”

“Have I done something to make you angry, Señor Deek?”

“No, I’m angry at this idiotic appendage down here with a mind of its own. If you were a frothing-at-the-mouth sex fiend it would probably go soft on me. I’ve tried talking sense to the damned thing, but does it ever listen?”

She said, “You may abuse me with it, if you must.”

He snorted in disgust and said, “No, thanks. My dong may be an animal, but I’m not. Go to sleep, Florita. Talking about it isn’t about to calm anybody down.”

“Can you go to sleep, with your desires for sex aroused?”

“No. I’m going to clean my machine gun. I’ve been meaning to, anyway, and if there’s one thing a dirty machine gun is, it ain’t sexy.”

He sat up, hauled the wrapped Maxim in its tarp between them, and unwrapped it. Florita watched him fieldstrip it, but as she had no idea how anything more complicated than a hand tool worked, her eyes grew heavy-lidded, and by the time he’d wiped most of the steel reasonably clean and reassembled it, she lay on her side asleep with her bare back to him. He opened the ammo pack, took out a belt of .30-30, armed the Maxim, then put it on safe and placed it atop the folded tarp at the foot of the bedroll. He looked at his pocket watch before he lay back down beside the naked girl. Gaston would be coming for him soon, and he hadn’t come at all, but what the hell, the distraction had gotten rid of his erection, until he thought about it.

Florita’s knees were drawn up as she lay on her side with her brown rump vulnerable to perhaps a sneaky entrance if he lay on his side, sort of moved down, and ... “Forget it,” he told himself. “If the dame’s too goosey to do it with her own husband, awake, she’d come up fighting for sure if she woke up with a strange dong in her!”

He didn’t want to disturb her by smoking. He’d feel silly as hell if she woke up to catch him jerking off. So he just lay there making like a tent pole as he listened to the rain and waited for Gaston. The rain was easing up a bit. Somewhere a bird or howler monkey was making weirder than usual noises and … that was a human voice he was listening to!

As he sat up, groping on his pants and boots, he heard the report of Gaston’s .38, well to the south. He grabbed the Maxim and rose with it, the belt trailing on the sand behind him as he ran east into the dripping brush. Other voices were shouting in confusion and someone was talking back to Gaston’s .38 with a .30-30. Captain Gringo pictured the layout of their improvised camp as he circled well around it through cover, keeping track of Gaston’s occasional .38 reports. Where the hell were Morales and Vallejo with those .45s?

He spotted something broom-straw yellow, moving in the scrub ahead and circled wider. He knew Gaston was firing from cover at the south edge of their camp. He knew where the camp was and had the range on that one straw sombrero he’d spotted. So it was simple enough to work around to the flank of the guys giving Gaston a hard time for some reason. He snapped off the safety switch on the Maxim and eased forward, the heavy but empty jacketed machine gun braced on his hip with the muzzle trained the way he was looking. So when he spotted the guys Gaston was holding at pistol range south of their camp, all he had to do was pull the trigger. The Maxim bellowed like a cross between a woodpecker and an angry bull. Sombreros, palmetto fronds, and what looked like tossed bloody salad filled the air as he dug in his heels and traversed the Maxim back and forth across the band’s right flank.

He couldn’t see how many there were or how many he was really hitting and not just scaring out of a year’s growth. But whoever they were, they wanted no further part of these parts and started moving back poco tiempo, which was an awful mistake on their part. Because Captain Gringo still had half the belt left when they broke cover.

In the end, some of them must have gotten away, because when Gaston moved out to join Captain Gringo over the chopped-up bodies in the chopped-up scrub, they counted fourteen hats and thirteen Krag rifles to go with only a dozen bodies. Gaston said, “It’s about time you got here!”

“I overslept. Who do you figure these guys used to be?”

Gaston finished reloading, put his .38 away, and said, “Ladrónes, from their costume. Guerrillas, from those new rifles. Whoever they were, they were not well trained. I heard them shouting back and forth like schoolchildren as they advanced up the cuesta. I don’t think they knew we were here. When I called a challenge, they responded in a most rude manner. The rest you know.”

Captain Gringo hefted the Maxim to one shoulder as he grunted, “Not quite. I circled the whole camp and the only fire I heard from our side was that little peashooter of yours Gaston. Where the hell were Vallejo and Morales while all this was going on?”

“Merde alors, how should I know? I was aiming the other way. Fortunately, none of those idiots knew I was only shooting in the air from good cover as I moved about to sound like a small army. I knew that sooner or later my adoring child would come to his proud papa’s assistance with that more serious weapon.”

“Don’t explain guerrilla tactics, dammit. Explain where Vallejo and … never mind, here come the assholes now.”

The mufti-clad officer and his cook were frog-marching one of the peon porters ahead of them with drawn pistols. Some of the other men from camp were trailing at a cautious distance. Vallejo called out, “This man was trying to run away. I caught him north of camp.”

Captain Gringo smiled pleasantly and said, “Right. You were running that way to secure our lines of communication. Morales, what’s your story?”

The surly cook shrugged and said, “I have no story. When an old soldier hears shooting he hits the dirt and stays there until someone tells him what to do.”

Captain Gringo nodded, turned to the frightened peon Vallejo had the drop on, and asked, “How are you called, muchacho?”

“Por favor, Captain Gringo, I am called Ernesto, and I am very sorry I lost my head and ran.”

“Not as sorry as you’ll be if you ever do it again. Take this machine gun and don’t go anyplace with it while we police up the area. Nogales! Front and center!”

As the old man gingerly came forward, Lieutenant Vallejo spotted a body in the chopped-up shrubbery ahead and asked, “My God, how many of them did we get?”

Captain Gringo let the “we” pass and replied, “Not as many as we tried to. At least a couple got away. I don’t see packs or adelitas. So these guys were a forward patrol of whatever.” He turned to Nogales and said, “I want you and these guys to gather guns, ammo, and anything else of interest you find on those bodies. But make it fast. We’re moving out in five minutes.”

He headed back for the main camp, calling out, “All right, everybody up? Drop your cocks and grab your socks. La siesta is over for sure!”

 

The swamp water came to their waists to chill their balls as the afternoon heat steamed their brains and filled their eyes with muggy mist and humming insects. Captain Gringo had already explained why he’d ordered his people due west across the swamplands instead of farther south to look for a dry crossing, but as the muck sucked at his boots, Lieutenant Vallejo pestered him once more about the route he’d chosen, saying, “This is madness, captain. We should have searched for a ford to the north if, as you suggest, those guerrillas were waiting for us to the south.”

Captain Gringo growled, “I wasn’t suggesting it. I was saying it. The rifles and ammo we salvaged from that combat patrol are spanking new, and they had too much pocket change for a band of mere ladrónes. They were well-funded irregulars. Probably fighting for Granada. They were headed for the last known address of your general, and they opened up on Gaston when they heard a challenge from Portola’s direction.”

He stumbled over a submerged root, fought to keep from going under with the reloaded Maxim he packed on his shoulder, and added, “Forget ’em. They can’t dog our footsteps if we don’t leave footsteps for ’em to dog. The map says there’s nothing much but blank paper the way we’re headed. Ain’t it fun to play explorer?”

“You’re going to get us lost in the jungle, dammit!”

“I sure hope so. If nobody knows where we are, nobody can shoot us. It’s going to take Gaston at least a couple of days to teach our porters and at least a couple of tough adelitas basic rifle drill. I don’t want to meet anyone important before our guys know which end of a Krag the bullet comes out of, do you?”

Vallejo sniffed and said, “You know what I think of arming peones. Up until now, our only hold on them has been that we have guns and they have not. What if they turn on us?”

“We’ll be in a hell of a mess. So will they, unless they know how to read maps and don’t think El Generale was serious about burning their village if they screwed up. I’m more worried about double-crosses from higher up than lower down, lieutenant. I know why Morales was considered expendable. Why do you suppose Portola figured he could spare you?”

Vallejo gasped in surprise, waded on, and snapped, “Don’t be ridiculous! I was El Generale’s most valuable aide-decamp. He said he was depending on me to see that you two, ah, outside consultants carried out this most important mission properly.”

Captain Gringo hacked a hanging mossy vine out of their way with the machete in his free hand before he grunted, “Yeah, that’s why he sent us out with unarmed peones and no guides. The map he issued us is a peach, too. It’s scaled way too large for cross-country work, with only the gross features of a mighty complicated terrain. How do you get to be an aide-de-camp in the Leon forces, lieutenant? Do you send in a box top with fifty words or less about how much you admire the junta in Leon, or what?”

“My uncle happens to be a member of the ruling junta in Leon!” the junior officer answered smugly. Captain Gringo nodded and muttered, “Out of the mouths of babes. Okay, we’re toilet paper, like I figured. The question now is whether we’ve been flushed and forgotten or whether El Generale really means to burn our little guys out if we fuck up and bring ’em back alive.”

Vallejo said he had no idea what the tall American was talking about. So Captain Gringo stopped talking. The light was getting really lousy and the water they were wading through was haunted by critters that hunted mostly in the dark. He twanged through some glandular celery-looking growth that smelled like rubber cement when the machete bit into it, and, when he stepped through the gap, he found the water shallower and loused up with even more tangled vegetation. He said, “We’re coming to a hammock. What time is it, lieutenant?”

Vallejo consulted his pocket watch and said, “A little after five. Why?”

‘The ‘gators are most dangerous just after sundown, and sundown comes at six pretty regular, in this neck of the tropics. I think we’ve found as good a place to dig in for the night as we’re about to before someone loses a leg.”

It wasn’t that easy. As always, in the jungle, the vegetation grew wildest where there was an edge to compete for. Evolution had gone nuts around the skirts of the dry land encircled by blackwater swamp. Stuff that grew best with wet roots wrestled with stuff that grew best dry but was willing to test the pool with its toes. The machete twanged through solid springy wood as well as mushy pulp, and Captain Gringo was dripping with sweat as well as swamp water by the time he hacked through to dry land, if you wanted to call it that. The ground between the tall timber growing on the hammock was covered with what looked and smelled like rotting banana peels, mossy fallen branches, and a collection of mushrooms that would have confused a botanist considerably.

Captain Gringo braced the Maxim over a fallen log, stuck the point of his machete in said log, and then sat on it, wearily, as he watched the others file through the gap onto more or less dry land. He spotted old Nogales, called him over, and said, “We’re camping here. Fires first, to dry everyone out before sunset turns the tap to cold. Make sure you scrape the forest duff away before building the fires. I don’t like surprises, and that shit can smolder pretty good under the surface, once it warms up some.”

Nogales looked injured and said he’d been building fires on the surface of Nicaragua for some time. He said to leave everything to him. That was the trouble with giving a peon a gun and other authority. Captain Gringo just nodded and said, “Bueno.” With luck, nobody would start to plot against him before they won a few firefights with those Krags and started feeling more important.

Vallejo wandered off to take a leak, smoke a violet cheroot, or something. Little Florita joined him on the log and snuggled close, to warm her chilled hips, to show off for the other mujeres, or both. He absentmindedly put an arm around her waist. It felt better than resting his bare palm on the somewhat gluggy log.

Gaston was last through the gap, of course. The Frenchman now had a rifle slung as well as his pack on his back. He unloaded and sat down on the far side of Florita with a sigh. He said, “Eh bien. Let’s claim this place as a private republic and just stay here. I have been thinking as you led us through that evil-smelling puddle, Dick. I know it’s a nasty habit, but I was thinking anyway. Has it occurred to you this whole trés ridicule expedition is a feint?”

In English, Captain Gringo replied, “What was your first clue? Portola knew Granadine guerrillas were just south of him. He wouldn’t have issued us this Maxim if he wanted them to kill us for sure. But he would have sent us with some decent fighting men and materiel if he was really concerned about our health. I just found out how Vallejo got his so-called commission. It was a political favor. Portola had longer than us to find out that the jerk-off was useless, and it only took us a day.”

“Eh bien, the only question before the house is what are we to do now. I don’t think Portola gives a fart at the moon about that dam and his damned Indians. I find it trés difficult to work up even that much concern. On the other hand, the dam site is right on the Costa Rican border, non?”

Captain Gringo patted Florita’s wet rump and told her to take the machete and build them a nice little house of twigs before it started to rain again. As she scampered off, waving the machete proudly, Captain Gringo said, “Never discuss strategy in front of anyone, even in English. You never know how much of the drift may be getting through.”

“True. I once managed to anticipate a droll incident in a North African alley that way, and I still don’t know enough Arabic to matter. But, now that we are free to plot in any language, and all shit of the bull aside, the certified check I carry next to my heart is probably going to bounce whether its wrapped in rubber or not. If we forgot the carrot on the stick and just scampered on to Costa Rica, we would be no worse off than we were before we met all these sneaky people, non?”

“What about our campesinos?”

Gaston shrugged and asked, “Did either of us give birth to them? The poor bastards will suffer either way. El Generale may not be about to follow through on his threat to their home village. If he sent us this way to make noise and attract attention, he doubtless has plans to march his army somewhere else as we distract the Granadines with machine-gun fire, non?”

Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Yeah, that works. It explains why he’d see fit to issue us a Maxim and plenty of ammo without handing out one lousy rifle.”

“Eh bien, he knew your reputation for sounding like a whole army on occasion. As I said, this expedition is merely a feint. Portola’s not expecting us even to make it to that dam site. Merde alors, for all we know, he could be in league with that British construction company. How much would it take to bribe anyone on either side here?”

Captain Gringo smiled thinly and said, “Not much. But aren’t you sort of curious about the third or fourth side in this charade? C.C., Limited, sent a snazzy blonde to recruit us. She may or may not have offered something as nice to Portola. But somebody else tried to stop you in that alley after you talked to Portola’s man, and somebody killed Portola’s guys in Grey town as well.”

He reached for a smoke as he added, “I wish I knew who the good guys and bad guys were around here. The only way to find out is to find out.”

Gaston said, “Merde alors, me and my big mouth! I might have known I would provoke your catlike curiosity by stating the trés obvious. Let me put it another way, Dick. It does not matter who is fucking whom, with what, for whatever reason! We owe nothing to any side involved, and every side is trés sneaky and trés dangerous!”

Captain Gringo lit his soggy cigar and said, “It’s about to start raining again. Meanwhile, we’re forted up safe and reasonably dry where nobody on any side can possibly jump us. Let’s sleep on the deal.”

“Merde alors, what deal could we possibly have with anyone? Portola sent us out with a rubber check and not enough weaponry to do anything at all important. You told the blonde you did not wish to work for her side, and the third side, whoever they may be, keeps trying to kill us!”

Captain Gringo blew a thoughtful smoke ring and said, “Portola’s a prick, but he’s a pro with a reputation to consider. If we do the job we agreed to do, he has to make good on the check and the bonus. He’d never be able to hire any other knock-around guys like us if we spread the word in San Jose that we’d been stiffed on a contract.”

“True, but to do that, we would have to get back to San Jose alive! The triple-crossing general has loaded the dice so that we can hardly do that if we even try to keep our end of the bargain, hein?”

Something warm and wet hit Captain Gringo between the shoulder blades and ran down his back. He stood up, gripping the cigar between the teeth of a defiant smile, and said, “Yeah, El Generale will probably shit his pants when he has to pay us off. We’d better take cover. A monkey just shit on me or it’s starting to rain some more.”

Gaston rose too, protesting, “It’s impossible, dammit! Even with the guns out pobrecitos weren’t supposed to have, we don’t have the manpower to attack even a modest construction gang, and that blonde was running all over recruiting professional gun-slicks as well!”

“Big deal, I said no, didn’t I? That British outfit’s running scared or they wouldn’t be acting so anxious. I’ll tell you what they’re so worried about when I scout the site and find out. Meanwhile, we’ve got this Maxim, plenty of dynamite, and eleven half-ass fighting men, not counting the worthless shavetail and his cook.”

“Merde alors, you are trés nuts. But you are right about the weather, and at least you can’t get us killed here and now, thank God!”

People stayed up late in the tropics when it wasn’t raining. But after supper on a soggy night there was nothing to do but go to bed early, and Captain Gringo had neither reading nor screwing material handy in his soggy thatched shelter. Florita had built them a pretty neat little hut, so he had to let her share it with him. They had to hang their wet clothes up to dry. So it should have been lot cozier under the flannel top sheet than it really felt. But damp tobacco tasted lousy, and lying there with a hard-on next to a frigid little dame felt even worse. He knew that most of the other good-looking stuff in camp was taken. But at least Gaston got to Jerk off in private in his own shelter. He decided that if Florita made any more dumb remarks about his abusing her, he’d take her up on it. There was no sense in both of them suffering, and even a cold slab remarking on what beasts men were would probably feel better than his hand, so what the hell.

He waited, listening to the rain on the thatch above them. In the dark, he tried to picture her as ugly. It didn’t work. Her warm naked hip was against his thigh and he could smell the musky odor of her femininity. He wondered if she noticed how gamy he was, after a long steam bath with no soap. She must have felt a certain tension in the darkness, because he’d just about decided she must be asleep when she murmured, “Are you very angry with me, Señor Deek?”

“No,” he lied. “I said I understood your, ah, problem.”

She sighed and said, “I wish I did. I am no longer sick from eating palmetto berries, and I wish very much for to have you like me. But when I think about what you wish for to do to me, I feel all sick inside.”

“There went a great idea,” he muttered half to himself. Then he said, “Go to sleep. I don’t want to disgust you. As a matter of fact, the whole thing sounds pretty boring. A bird or a salmon would probably wonder what in the hell we humans got out of acting so silly.”

“Si, I have never understood it myself. When I was little, I used to watch my mamacita do naughty things in her hammock when she thought I was asleep. I could never understand why she did it. She moaned and groaned and said the men were killing her, but the next night—”

“Hold it,” he cut in with a frown. “Did you say men, plural? How many lovers did your mama have, Florita?”

“Oh, many. Mamacita was most popular. You see, my papacito was a charcoal burner who was away a lot and had a drinking problem when he was at home. But I still worried about my poor momacita when she sobbed and gasped under all those brutal men who came for to visit her at night.”

“Hmm, how old were you when mamacita was undergoing all this torture, kitten?”

“I don’t know. Very little. Mamacita was only thirty or so when she died. The padre said she died of sin. I always thought one of those men she entertained in her hammock at night must have done something bad to her with his … you know.”

He put a comforting arm around her bare shoulders, snuggled her head against his chest, and said, “I can see how your wedding night could have been a bust for all concerned. How old was the guy you married?”

She thought and said, “Seventeen, I think. I was fourteen and most afraid, even though my relatives said I had to marry someone lest I become an old maid. I tried to be brave, Señor Deek, but he hurt me and made me cry. We were not married long. As I told you, he called me bad names and left me for a wicked older woman of sixteen.”

He chuckled and said, “He sounds like a real Don Juan.”

He felt a tear on his bare chest. He patted her shoulder and said, “Hey, I was only teasing, Florita. I really feel sorry for the both of you. You must have been desirable as hell to him, and he was just a kid who probably didn’t know how to warm a woman up first.”

“Well, in fairness, my husband did not know about eating palmetto berries first. Do you think that was what we should have done, Señor Deek?”

“No. Getting poisoned or even drunk isn’t the answer, querida. You’d have been a problem for an experienced lover, once you’d been scared that way by things you were too young to understand.”

“Si, I was most uneasy when my husband tore my clothes off and threw me on the bedding. What would this experienced man have done, Señor Deek?”

He ran an exploratory hand over her breasts, gently, as he explained, “Well, he’d have let you get used to the idea first. Does this feel very frightening?”

She said, “Si, it makes my heart pound very hard. Are you going to attack me now?”

He said, “No,” as he started gently massaging her slightly smaller left breast. He didn’t know why the smallest one was usually the most sensitive, but why fight nature? He moved into a better position and as he played with her now turgid nipple he kissed her cheek, moved his lips to her ear, and tongued it teasingly. She giggled and said, “Oh, that makes me feel so funny! For why are you kissing me there?”

He moved farther aboard to kiss her lush lips. She kissed back lousy. He kissed down her chin and throat as she protested that he was tickling her, and as he took her breast in his open mouth he slid the hand he’d aroused it with down her smooth belly to home plate.

She stiffened and crossed her thighs on his wrist as he soothed, “Easy, easy, just seeing if you’re all there.”

She opened her thighs with a resigned sigh and said, “Now you are going to have your way with me, no?”

He kissed his way back up to her mouth as he began massaging her between her trembling thighs. He kept his lips touching hers as he murmured, “No, You’re not ready for that. Relax, Florida. I’m not going to do anything yet.”

She giggled and unconsciously moved her pelvis to a more welcoming angle as she asked, “What do you call what you are doing to me, if it is not anything?”

“It’s called foreplay. Old exotic custom I learned from Yanqui brujas in mysterious porch swings. You can yell if I’m hurting you.”

She said, “It does not hurt. It just feels silly. What are you getting out of playing with me so? Don’t you wish for to shove more important matters in and out of me? I told you I did not really mind anymore.”

He kissed her some more to shut her up. He noticed her kisses, while still unskilled, were improving as she relaxed and warmed to the occasion. He had her clit standing at attention as he rocked it in the boat, too, and she was starting to lubricate pretty good down there as she started to squirm in his arms, still more confused than passionate.

They came up for air and she murmured, “I don’t think I would mind very much if you went all the way now. Your gentle hand has made me feel, ah, less frightened.”

A boor would have mounted her now. He knew better. This wasn’t really what you could call breaking in a virgin, even though the poor little dope had no idea what it was supposed to feel like. In a way, she was a tougher challenge than a willing virgin would have been. He knew he had to overcome more than inexperience. The poor little dame knew sex only as a frightening duty to which women were required to submit.

So he finger-fucked her all the way to climax as she squirmed, moaned, and acted a lot like her mamacita must have in times gone by. He kept his frightening parts clear of her writhing flesh as he kissed her and tongued her at her moment of orgasm. Then, as she went limp with a shuddering sigh of astounded contentment, he murmured, “Now I’m going to do it some more, with just a little of me helping my fingers, all right?”

She agreed, but started to stiffen up as he eased into the saddle. He said, “Easy now. I’m not going in until you want me to,” as he rubbed the tip up and down in her love-slicked opening. She gasped and asked, “Is that your … you know? It feels even better than your fingers and your fingers felt ever so nicer than anything else I have ever felt down there. Was that what the other women call coming, Señor Deek?”

“Yeah. Did you like it?”

“It felt better than anything I have ever felt in my life. I can see, now, that mamacita was not really in pain after all! But why did I moan so when it felt so good, Señor Deek?”

“Beats me. Some dames laugh. I guess you’re just supposed to make some damn sound at such times, and you’d sound even dumber reciting a poem.”

She started moving her hips as he toyed with them both until he was hurting bad, too. Then, as he started moving it in a fraction of an inch with each of her responding thrusts, Florita suddenly sobbed, “Oh, stop teasing me and do it, Señor Deek!”

So he did. She hissed in mingled fear and passion as she felt him fill her to the brim. And then she raised her knees, locked her ankles atop his naked buttocks, and gasped, “I am getting that marvelous feeling again. I do not feel disgusted. I feel wonderful! Is this what fucking is supposed to feel like, Señor Deek?”

That was too dumb a question to answer orally. So he replied by coming with her. As they went limp in each other’s arms, Florita said, “You have made me so happy. That felt lovely and I am so glad you have made a real woman out of me at last. I only wish it did not have to end so soon.”

He kissed her and asked, “What’s this soon crap? It’s not eight o’clock yet and we’ve got all night ahead of us.”

“My God, is it possible to do it more than once?”

“Why not? You’ve already come twice and I’m just getting started. Let’s stop for a smoke and then we’ll try some other positions.”

They did. They didn’t run out of positions until well after midnight, and she would have tried it flying, if they’d had wings. But he knew the sun would rise at six o’clock, and a guy needed at least six hours’ sleep if he meant to carry a machine gun far enough to matter through a hot sticky jungle. So he told her they’d get to do it all over again the following night, and, once she stopped, Florita fell right to sleep, limp and puny as a well-stroked pussy cat.

He had a little more trouble falling asleep. She hadn’t been bad, but it was beginning to look like he’d created a monster. He wondered what would become of Florita when the time came to ditch her. It was hard to fall asleep with a guilty conscience. And the poor little creature was going to feel betrayed, now that she’d told him more than once how much she loved him and how she meant to be his adelita forever.

Of course, a lot of people said dumb things when they were coming. He didn’t remember making any promises in return. But, on the other hand, he sure hadn’t told her he hated her while she’d been giving him her all and then some.

He told himself to forget it as the rain pattered down around them in the warm darkness. He tried to tell himself Florita was at best as deep a thinker as a friendly dog, and that none of the other pobrecitos El Generale had issued them to lose in the jungle expected to be treated as well as a valuable horse. But it wouldn’t work. He couldn’t help thinking of them all as human beings who trusted and depended on him.

He growled up into the unfeeling darkness, “Okay, God. You’ve stuck me with a bunch of poor dumb kids and I have to do my damnedest for them. But, no shit, God, I sure could use some inspiration about now! Just between You and me, old buddy, I haven’t any fucking idea how I’m going to get us out of this mess!”

Captain Gringo got a little restless sleep and woke at dawn to see that the sunrise had been canceled until further notice. The rain had been replaced by a gray flannel fog. It didn’t look like it planned to go anyplace in the near future. The trade winds had either died completely or decided to skip over the low swamplands west of the coastal cuestas. Visibility was maybe ten feet, if one squinted.

He could see Florita sleeping next to him. He didn’t wake her up. He couldn’t think of any positions they hadn’t already tried, and between the sex and the restlessness of the night just past, he wasn’t looking forward to a day’s march, given the strength he still felt.

He hauled on his clammy duds. It was amazing how cold one could feel in a tropical jungle when one wasn’t streaming sweat from every pore. That was one of the reasons people died a lot down here. Next to yellow jack, pneumonia was the bug you had to worry about most in this grotesque clime.

He strapped on his shoulder rig, put his jacket on over it, and rolled out of the hut quietly to avoid the morning quickie Florita would doubtless demand. He found his way by homing instinct and feel to where Morales should have started the morning grub fire. All he found was a big black puddle of damp ash and char. He hunkered down and started to build a fire. It wasn’t easy. There was plenty of fuel piled nearby. But the palmetto fronds were damp and the windfall faggots the peones had gathered for the cook were punky and even wetter.

But, thanks to blundering into those guerrillas, they now had more ammo to spare than matches. So he wiped a palmetto blade more or less dry on his pants, roughed out a splintery depression with his pocketknife, and pulled the slugs from a couple of rifle rounds with his teeth. He poured the powder on the palmetto blade, covered it with punk rubbed to powder between his palms, covered that with grass stems and twigs, and struck a match to see what would happen.

It worked. It took some praying and blowing, but in the end he got enough of a fire going to pile on more substantial stuff. He rose and groped his way to the tarp-covered supplies. Gaston joined him as he’d just found some coffee and was wondering what the hell to perk it in. Gaston said, “Morales will be here to do that in a moment. I just kicked the species of slugabed awake. I was about to do the same for you when I smelled the fire. I have been up for hours. Minutes, at any rate. I find it disturbing to sleep with only my hand for company.”

Captain Gringo didn’t comment on Gaston’s sex life as they sat on the sand near the fire, letting it bake at least their fronts dry. They lit smokes. Gaston said, “I might have known you wouldn’t tell me how Florita is in the feathers. I don’t suppose you’d like to loan her out for a while? We are obviously not going to be able to leave this soggy hammock until this fog lets up, hein?”

Captain Gringo said, “We have to. We’re already behind schedule. I want to finish the damn job and enjoy that bonus up in the high country with dry socks on for a change.”

Gaston snorted in disgust and said, “I wish you would not say such silly things, my stubborn child. I have been thinking about El Generale’s threats. They probably carry as much weight in Costa Rica as this rubber check I carry in a rubber for some reason.”

Captain Gringo said, “I don’t think it’ll bounce. I’ve been thinking about how the hell Portola could have managed a cashier’s check in the field. He must have had it made out, with the name blank, when he left Leon. Someone higher up gave him orders to use it as a bribe, hire guys like us, or whatever. He was telling the truth about Leon wanting that dam taken out.”

‘Perhaps. El Generale himself could not care less. He is merely going through the motions for his superiors. If he was sincere, he would have given us real guides and not saddled us with a useless aide and other bad odds. Try it this way. El Generale is secretly opposed to taking out the dam his superiors told him to do something about?”

Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “I think he just doesn’t give a shit, despite his speech about the poor Indians. George Armstrong Custer was always making speeches back east about some guy called Lo, the poor Indian. The junta’s orders struck him as a pain-in-the-ass distraction, and mean-while he has the Granada army to worry about. So he threw us at the problem, not caring one way or the other, and hoping that whatever we did would distract the Granadines, since they ought to be between us and him about now.”

Gaston grimaced and said, “I wish you hadn’t said that. If Portola drives the other side back, where does that leave us?”

“Moving south a lot. Fast. Look at the bright side. The Costa Rican border patrols will be having too much trouble preventing a beaten army from crossing the border to worry about us and a handful of peones, right?”

“You intend to take these pobrecitos with us, Dick?”

“If we have to. We sure as shit can’t leave them lose in the jungle. We have to either do the job and let them go back to their village with El Generale’s approval, or we have to add them to the population of Costa Rica without Costa Rica noticing.”

Gaston thought. Then said, “Eh bien. Let’s save ourselves a lot of trouble and just start running for the border as soon as this fog lifts. We most obviously can’t lead anyone anywhere in a waist-high swamp full of soup of the pea.”

“You’re right about the fog. Wrong about the direction. Don’t you have any sense of curiosity, Gaston?”

“Merde alors, if I even had a sense of direction I’d know which way Costa Rica is. What is there to be curious about? We agreed this expedition is just a side issue to El Generale and a great pain in the ass to you and me, non?”

“I want to find out what the stinger is. At least somebody on the ruling junta doesn’t want that dam built. Somebody important in Greytown wants it built bad enough to send blondes to seduce hired guns to ride shotgun on the project. Somebody else is murdering people on both sides. That’s the part I’m really curious about. I never did say no to the strawberry blonde. So it couldn’t have been her people who tried to take you in that alley while she was, ah, recruiting me. It couldn’t have been Portola’s guys either. You hadn’t said no to them.”

“True. But were our mysterious thugs trying to prevent us from going to work for the British construction company or from going to work for El Generale?”

“I don’t know. That’s why it’s such an interesting puzzle. Meanwhile, we’re not going to solve it sitting here smoking cigars. I’m going to scout to the west and see how much farther it is to dry ground. Feel like a morning stroll, Gaston?”

“Mais non; I feel like breakfast. Morales should be here any minute. Join us for breakfast, and with luck the fog will lift as well, hein? I am not sure a boy your age should be playing in the puddles out of my sight. That swamp is trés dangerous even when one can see one’s hand before one’s eyes, Dick. No shit of the bull, don’t try it in this fog.”

Captain Gringo got to his feet, saying, “The poor visibility makes it safer in some ways. I don’t have to lug the Maxim or even a rifle, if nobody can see far enough to hit anything at pistol range. I’ll just go out a little ways. If all I meet is more of the same, I’ll come back and we’ll stay here until the fog lifts. If there’s dry land within a mile, I’ll come back and herd you all across.”

As he moved away, Gaston called after him, “Wait until I have at least some coffee and I’ll go with you, dammit!”

But Captain Gringo just kept walking. He could have used that coffee, too. But he was wide awake and restless now. He wanted to know what his plans for the day were before he settled down for grub.

The swamp was spookier than ever, now that you couldn’t see much either on or below the scummy surface. The sun wasn’t casting shadows in any particular direction to navigate by. Captain Gringo had a good sense of direction, but this was a little much. He fumbled in his jacket pocket and took out the little tin compass he’d hoped he still had. It was little more than a toy he’d picked up a while back to cheer the pretty lady selling junk in the Greytown market. But at least the needle pointed north. He was sort of surprised about that. He’d thought north was over that way. ,

Palming the little compass, he took a bearing on the farthest bole he could make out to the west and headed for it. The water seemed to shallow a little by the time he reached it, took a bearing on yet another tree in the middle distance, and headed for it. He grinned as he noticed the water was indeed now swishing around his knees. Dry land seemed to be nearer than he’d figured. He repeated the process with compass and trees until the black water gave way to scummy black muck. He growled, “Come on, swamp, make up your mind.” The mud flat he was crossing, or trying to, was harder going than the swamp itself. The humic acid in the slime kept anything more advanced than vomit-green algae from growing on the slippery surface. His mosquito boots sank ankle-deep in the muck, and when he pulled a foot out of the goo it sounded and smelled like a farting elephant.

He bulled on. At least he didn’t have to worry about alligators and snakes on this mud flat. He saw a wall of reeds ahead, looming in the fog. That meant more water or the edge of the swamp. He’d left his machete in camp. But if the reeds were just a hedge, a football block ought to punch him on through.

He charged into the reeds, busted through to the other side, and staggered out across more slimy muck a good six paces before he got stuck. Then, as the slimy muck reached his knees, he froze in place, looked down, and muttered, “Oh boy, now you’ve done it, you silly son of a bitch!”

Even standing still, he was slowly sinking. He couldn’t tell if he’d blundered into muck over quicksand or just unusually soft goo. It didn’t matter about the geology. He was up to his thighs now!

He twisted to look wistfully back at the reeds he’d pushed through. They were too far. He tried moving that way anyway. It made the scummy goo rise faster. By the time he gave up, his crotch was buried. A wave of panic swept over him and he yelled out in mindless fear. Then he shuddered, got a grip on himself, and growled, “Easy now. You got into this alone and you have to get out of it alone. You’re too far from camp for anyone to hear and … hey!”

He drew his .38 and fired three shots in the air. He waited, counting to ten, then fired twice more. Three shots were the recognized distress call, but Gaston would know, too, that men who lived active lives didn’t pack a six-gun against their chests with a live round under the hammer of a double-action.

He reloaded. He kept the gun out but didn’t fire again just yet. The muck was up to his waist now. How fast was it inching up him? Too fast, if anyone expected to find more than his hat floating on a big bubbly puddle of black goo!

The muck was to his rib cage when he heard the sound of farting elephants coming his way and shouted, “Over here! Watch your step! I’m stuck in quicksand!”

Somewhere in the fog a gun roared three times, and three slugs ticked through the reeds to send up inky gobs of muck too close to Captain Gringo for comfort!

He snapped, “Bastard!” and fired back blindly.

The unknown on the far side of the reeds sent two more shots his way as Captain Gringo replied in kind. Then it got very quiet in the foggy swamp as both of them had to stop and reload. The muck was almost to Captain Gringo’s armpits now. He remembered hearing somewhere that a guy could sort of swim in quicksand if he bit the bullet and forced himself to lie flat in the shit. But if he did that he wouldn’t be able to fire back. So if the bastard trying to nail him poked a head through the reeds to see him floundering in the mud like a pig …

A distant voice called out, “Dick? Where are you?” and Captain Gringo called back, “Over here! Watch it! Aside from quicksand, there’s some son of a bitch with a gun in the neighborhood!”

He braced himself for more slugs aimed in the direction of his voice. But all he heard was another series of elephant farts, either coming or going. It was hard to tell, the way sound echoed in the trees and fog.

He’d either hit bottom or the muck didn’t want what was still floating above his outspread upper arms. So he was still head and shoulders above the surface when Gaston poked his own head through the reeds, grinned, and said, “I told you not to play in the puddles without me.”

“Watch your ass, dammit. I was only doing half the shooting you heard.”

“Oui, I can tell a .38 from a .45. There is nobody about but we trés adorable chickens at the moment. Don’t go away. I’ll find a pole, hein?”

A few minutes later Gaston had. As he braced himself at one end of the gumbo-limbo sapling he’d pulled from the mud, roots and all, Captain Gringo hauled himself out of the trap hand over hand. As he joined Gaston on the relatively dry land, which was still ankle-deep slime, he sniffed and asked, “Do you smell what I smell, Gaston?”

“Aside from frog shit? Oui, when one follows people to assassinate them it is not a good idea to do so smoking violet tobacco, non? May I have him, or do you wish to flip a coin for the lieutenant?”

“Hold the thought for now. El Generale could consider knocking off his observer a breach of contract, you know.”

“Merde alors, Dick! The depraved species of a stinkard just tried to murder you!”

“Well, he doesn’t know that we know it. By now he’ll be back in camp, looking innocent. Let’s play along with him until we figure out why he just pegged those rounds at me.”

“Sacre bleu, I have heard women were curious. I have heard cats were curious. But you, my curious child, are a species of too much! Who cares why a man is trying to kill one, once one knows he wants one dead?”

“Come on. We can’t ask anyone to pack heavy loads through this fog and quicksand too. We’re stuck until the fog lifts. Mum’s the word on the pistol play for now. Ought to be interesting to watch bugs squirm on the pin while we enjoy a leisurely breakfast, right?”

There wasn’t any breakfast to enjoy and everybody was acting more like chickens with their heads cut off than bugs on pins when they got back to the hammock. The gunfire had aroused the camp, of course. But it didn’t look like anyone in sight had followed Gaston out into the swamp to see what was going on. Everybody’s pants were dry.

Lieutenant Vallejo’s boots were even dry as he sat on a pile of supplies by the cook’s fire, smoking one of his perfumed cigars and pouting. As Captain Gringo and Gaston joined him, Vallejo said, “I can’t find Sergeant Morales anywhere. Was he out in the swamp with you two?”

The two soldiers of fortune exchanged glances. Captain Gringo said, “He might have been. Are you missing a box of cigars as well as your private cook?”

Vallejo looked up blankly. Captain Gringo had naturally rinsed the crud off in the deeper swamp water on the way back, but he still squished when he moved. He added, “Do you have an extra pair of dry boots, lieutenant?”

Vallejo shook his head and said, “Even if I did, your feet are much bigger than mine. What’s going on? What’s all this about Morales and my cigars? I mean no disrespect, captain, but you are not making much sense this morning.”

The tall American called Nogales over and said, “Put a couple of the adelitas to work preparing breakfast. Tell them to make the coffee strong and black. I want everyone awake and on their toes when this fog lifts.”

Nogales saluted self-consciously and trotted away to round up a kitchen detail. Gaston chuckled and said, “Give them a little rifle drill during trail breaks and, voila, soldiers of the half-ass species, non?”

Vallejo pouted, “I don’t want to eat peon cooking. Where’s my regular army cook?”

Captain Gringo said, “Over the hill. Through the swamp, at any rate. He probably had a lot on his mind.”

Vallejo swore and said, “I told him to forget that cheating wife of his, dammit!”

“Oh boy, you told him she was a cheat?”

“Why not? It was a matter of common knowledge. Man to man, didn’t you enjoy her favors the night I sent her to your tent? Half the staff of El Generale must have had Dulcenita by now. I don’t know why Morales couldn’t see she was a puta.”

Florita and a girl called Luisa came over to the fire and started breakfast. Luisa was a dog. Florita looked prettier with that secretive little Mona Lisa smile she had on this morning.

The two soldiers of fortune took a walk to have a private talk as the adelitas worked and Vallejo went on pouting. Gaston said, “Eh bien, one down and one to go. I wish it had been the lieutenant. He eats as much as any three of the others and refuses to either work or carry his own load.”

“Forget El Generale’s pet for now. Do you think Morales is gone for good?”

Gaston shrugged and replied, “Unless you hit him. In the fog, I could see nothing four or five meters away as I floundered toward the sounds of your dramatiques. If he caught a lucky round, he is under the mud by this time. If not, he would be miles from here by now, non?”

“I hope he’s either down or trying to get back to his wife. I don’t really need a pissed-off husband laying for me out there in the shrubbery wearing horns and a gun!”

“Relax. I laid his wife too. He knows he has other targets back with the main column, and his woman is there as well. I think that would be his main destination, thanks to the lieutenant’s big mouth. You were just a target of opportunity when he found you stuck in quicksand so trés tempting, hein?”

“Maybe. We’re going to have to keep a sharp lookout for more than snakes and ‘gators now. Let’s go back for coffee and grub.”

They did. The coffee was good. The Moors and Christians the peon girls had whipped up with beans and rice, while predictable and boring, stuck to the ribs. When they’d eaten, the fog was still haunting them. So Gaston spent the morning drilling the troops, if that was what one wanted to call eleven bewildered-looking guys who had trouble telling their left feet from their right feet and referred to rifle rounds as ‘brass Cigarillos’. Gaston already had them more or less convinced that .30-30s worked best if one loaded them in the clip all facing the same way. There was no way to tell if they had any idea what he meant by lining up the sights on a distant target. There were no distant targets, and if there had been they couldn’t spare the ammo and risk the noise of even modest target practice. Half the men had at least fired muzzle-loading hunting muskets in their time. So, if push came to shove, they could probably figure on at least one ragged volley before they got too confused.

The fog burned off around noon. So Captain Gringo loaded them up and moved them out. The improved visibility was purchased at the cost of hot-as-hell, naturally. But they were behind schedule and he knew that when it was cool enough to breathe in this swamp, you couldn’t see where you were going.

They swung south, well clear of the quicksand trap, of course, so they couldn’t check to see if Morales or any visible parts of him lay in the muck up that way. It was about three in the afternoon when they hit the wall of tangled underbrush marking the edge between mud flats and higher ground. It took an hour’s machete work, taking turns in the lead, before they’d hacked their way into more open rain forest. The going was much easier after that. The shaded surface between the mossy buttress roots of the jungle giants was covered with a carpet of rotten leaves and mushrooms, which made for easier walking, if you allowed for what felt like slipping on a banana peel from time to time.

Vallejo wanted to stop and rest as soon as they were out of the swamp. Captain Gringo said his balls were sweating too, and added that they would stop when they couldn’t see anymore. Whatever the moon would be up to after sundown, it would be too dark to move under the heavy rain-forest canopy. Even in broad daylight they were marching through a cathedral like gloom. The temperature was still way to warm for comfort, but they could already feel an improvement as they marched farther from the sticky swamp in the still damp but much drier shade of the gently rising jungle.

Captain Gringo was packing the Maxim on one shoulder. So, although he was stronger than most men, he could judge when it was getting tedious to pack supplies. He allowed short trail breaks once an hour. Nobody but the self-indulgent young officer, who’d yet to carry much more than his side arms and that silly tasseled hat, bitched much when he whistled everybody upward and onward. Vallejo made up for it by bitching like a spoiled debutante with a stone in her glass slipper. Gaston, bringing up the rear guard, got to miss most of it, the lucky bastard.

Vallejo was complaining that the slope was getting steeper when Captain Gringo hissed, “Shut up and hit the dirt!” As the lieutenant just stood there looking dumb, the tall American kicked his feet out from under him and, as the lieutenant fell on his ass, waved at the men behind him to take cover. They did so, silently, bless them, as Captain Gringo moved forward, leaned the machine gun over a fallen log, then vaulted the log to move on, drawing his .38 as he strained his ears.

He heard the familiar whip crack again. He zeroed in on the direction. It was coming from his left. He moved that way in a running crouch. He could hear the bawl of cattle and an occasional shout now. He spotted a wall of underbrush on a rise ahead. He nodded and ran up to it. Then he stopped and dropped to his knees to burrow cautiously through.

As he’d expected, he found himself gazing down at a cattle drive. The vaqueros were using a sunken but open trail that wasn’t supposed to be around here, according to the map. He watched long enough to see that the riders with the popping drovers’ whips were obviously driving the herd to the coast to the east. Then, as he spotted a yellow mongrel trotting beside a rider on a pinto, Captain Gringo crawfished back through the brush, sprang to his feet, and made tracks. He leaped back over the log he’d leaned the Maxim against, hoisted the machine gun into position atop the log, and armed it as Vallejo asked what the hell was going on.

The tall American said, “Nothing, if their dogs don’t pick out the smell of my socks. Hopefully there’s enough cow in the air to keep their noses busy. There’s a herd on its way to market. Maybe to Grey town by way of the crossing to the south we couldn’t use. Less hopefully, they could be driving the beef to a guerrilla army over that way. It all depends on whether that bunch we shot up the other day was part of a small band or a big one.”

Florita crawled up to them, dragging the extra ammo. She asked if there was anything else she could do. He smiled at her and said, “Yeah, get your pretty ass back the way it came. Get behind the biggest tree you can find. Tell anyone you run into to do the same.”

“I shall stay and fight beside my soldado. That is the duty of a good adelita, no?”

“Florita, will you haul ass? Adelitas are supposed to do as they’re told, too, goddammit!”

She looked hurt and started crawling away. Lieutenant Vallejo followed her. Captain Gringo shrugged. He wasn’t surprised, and what the hell did he need with a pretty hat right now anyway?

Captain Gringo was sighting upslope, covering them, when Gaston flopped down beside him and said, “You seem in a pensive mood, my child. Vallejo just passed me, at considerable speed for a man moving on hands and knees. He said something about cowboys, or was it Indians?”

“Light me a smoke and break open that ammo, just in case,” said Captain Gringo, going on to fill Gaston in on the situation as they set up for action.

There didn’t seem to be any action. It got very quiet. That didn’t always mean anything. Captain Gringo moved in on people he’d spotted as quietly as he could, too. After a while a howler monkey commented from the trees ahead and a parrot answered, not sounding too excited. Captain Gringo said, “Man this weapon. I’m moving up for another look-see.”

He did. When he came back he was smiling. He said, “The trail’s clear. They must have been simple vaqueros after all. Better yet, the cattle trail leads due east and west. It’s broad, hard-packed, and has plenty of cover on either side. Need one say more?”

Gaston sighed and said, “I knew you’d run my poor derriere off before sunset.” And got to his feet.

Captain Gringo said, “Hold it. You’re right about how late it is. I want to make sure no chuck-wagon crew is following that herd well behind the dust. We’ll camp right here for the night and hit the trail at dawn. No fires after dark, of course. So let’s get supper and some shelters built poco tiempo.”

The night passed uneventfully except for Florita trying to screw him to death. The next day went well for a change, too. As Captain Gringo had hoped, the cattle trail led to cattle country. They followed it up to windswept savanna, dissected by jungle-choked canyons that the packed red earth of the cattle trail avoided in a series of ever-climbing clever hairpin turns. The sky was overcast, but the trade winds were dry and cool. It was easy to keep the expedition moving and out of trouble. Gaston had a couple of promising would-be soldados who enjoyed playing scout, and, as it was not good ambush country, he and Captain Gringo let them play at scouting the draws ahead while they checked them out for obvious idiocy.

Captain Gringo called short trail breaks from time to time and let them break long enough to enjoy a cold noon meal. But when Lieutenant Vallejo asked when they were going to siesta, Captain Gringo said they weren’t, explaining, “There’s not much point in napping through the hottest time of the day when it’s not really hot. I want to take advantage of this open high ground to make up for the time we’ve lost. The map says we’ll probably run into rougher going mañana.”

Vallejo said, “I’m not used to hiking so far without my afternoon nap, dammit.”

Captain Gringo shifted the heavy machine gun to his other shoulder and said, “My heart bleeds for you. How did you ever get that soldier suit you were wearing when we first met? Did your mommy buy it for you?”

He turned away and moved on before Vallejo could come up with the answer. Florita scampered along beside him, lugging her pack and the ammo. Considering how much of the night her legs had been spread apart, she was still legged up better than the so-called infantry officer staggering and bitching behind her.

From time to time as the trail hair pinned higher Captain Gringo had a good look at the others, with Gaston bringing up the rear. They were all soldiering well, despite the heavy loads some of them were packing. By the time the darkening overcast above them warned that the sun was setting, wherever the hell it was, they’d crested the long slope. Captain Gringo saw miles of much the same kind of country ahead, leading downward out of sight in the dark mists. He stepped off the trail, braced the Maxim in the fork of a wind-twisted thorn tree, and called out, “This is where we camp for the night, muchachas y muchachos.”

They didn’t have to be told twice. But he noted with approval that his porters gathered all the supplies close in before the men flopped to the grass and the women started setting up camp.

Gaston joined Captain Gringo, muttering, “Merde alors, my legs are getting old for this sort of business.” He looked around and added, “Eh bien. There’s no water, running or otherwise. There’s firewood, but not enough thatch for lean-tos. If we spread our bedding on the grass and it decides to rain again.

Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “We’ll get wet. But what the hell, the trades are sweeping across this ridge pretty good, so we’ll dry out.”

He saw some women building a fire and called out, “Hey, muchachas, make it bigger. After dark I don’t want open flames up here atop this ridge. So let’s get plenty of coals going for bedtime coffee, eh?”

He stared out across the open slopes all around them, nodded, and said, “We’ll pile the supplies in a circle around us and bed down close together. There’s nobody in sight for a good five miles, and it’ll be dark soon. But why take chances? You want to take the first guard mount, Gaston?”

Gaston nodded. Then, noticing that Lieutenant Vallejo had wandered off to get his own roll from the porter packing it, Gaston asked, “Doesn’t that species of young squirt get to pull guard at all, Dick?”

“Would you like to trust him with your ass while both of us were in the sack?”

“Forget what I just said. I’ll put four reasonably bright-looking pickets out and hold the fort until midnight. Do you think you can get all the screwing you need by then?”

Captain Gringo chuckled and said, “I may even get an hour’s sleep. Don’t forget to whistle, cough, or something as you approach my trundle bed.”

“Oh, dear, I wanted to watch. I don’t suppose you’d like to, ah, fix me up with that precocious child you’ll be leaving in that warm bedroll?”

“I would if I thought she’d go for it, old buddy. I don’t think she would. She’s, ah, sort of romantic.”

“How droll. But far be it from me to come between happy honeymooners. At least my fist still loves me.”

By the time they’d seen to setting up camp and had eaten supper, the lights had gone out as if someone had pulled a switch in the sky. Thanks to the overcast, it was black as a bitch away from the ruby glow of the cook-fire coals. Knowing he’d be up from midnight to dawn, Captain Gringo turned in with no further bullshit. Florita beat him into the bedroll and out of her clothes. She pleaded with him to hurry as he made sure the Maxim was comfy in its tarp at the head of the bedroll. He draped his clothes and shoulder rig over it. Then he draped himself over Florita and they went deliciously nuts together for a while. Their bedroll was inside the ring of supplies, but far enough from any other for them to get away with a modest amount of acrobatics in private. He asked her to keep her orgasmic groans down to a roar and she tried. By now the others all knew they were an item anyway.

They made love for an hour or more and then Captain Gringo actually managed to catch some sleep. It didn’t feel like he’d had much when Gaston approached, singing the Marseillaise in a sardonic tone. Captain Gringo sat up, told him to shove a sock in it, and started dressing as Gaston explained that he’d already rousted out and positioned the four pickets for the last watch. He added, “I did not feel it wise to strain their brains with nonsense about pass words and countersigns, hein? I told them not to shoot at anyone approaching from inside our lines and vice versa. It should be good practice for them. Anyone approaching a barricaded camp across open ground is obviously going to be an idiot, or a cow.”

The little Frenchman’s prattle had Florita half-awake and begging to be abused some more. So Captain Gringo told Gaston to shut up and told the girl to go back to sleep. They both obeyed him. He got up, stamped his feet solidly in his boots, and checked his .38 as he started his rounds. Gaston didn’t go with him.

Captain Gringo found the four still-sleepy peones where Gaston had posted them to cover the camp north, south, east, and west. He warned each man to stay awake and listen to the crickets. As long as the crickets sang in the grass all around, nothing important was moving out there. If they heard the crickets switch off, they were to shoot first and ask questions later. The dramatic orders seemed to jar them a bit more awake. That had been the general idea.

Like all old soldiers, good or bad, Captain Gringo found guard duty second only to K.P. as one big pain in the ass. Officers didn’t have to pull K.P. but they still got to stand guard, so that made guard duty their biggest pain in the ass. But, unlike scrubbing pots and pans, guard duty was not a duty one could safely dope off on. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, standing guard was just boring as hell. But doping off that one time in a thousand could kill you. He tried to remember that as he walked up and down in the clammy darkness, smoking and trying to stay alert. It wasn’t easy, even for a good soldier.

He was uncomfortably cool in his tropic linen jacket, this late at night on a windswept ridge. He couldn’t help remembering how cozy and warm it was in that bedroll with Florita. He couldn’t help wondering if anyone would know, and if it would really hurt, if he sort of posted himself under the covers with her. He’d still be awake, after all, and the four pickets on guard would spot anything he was liable to see in this blackness.

He didn’t give in to temptation. Rank had its privileges. But rank had its responsibilities too. He found a tree, got on the lee side of the trunk, out of the trades, and hunkered down to smoke a little more comfortably before it was time to walk the line again. He was between the south and west pickets, staring out into the darkness of the unknown land ahead of them, should morning ever come. The crickets were serenading him. A mosquito took advantage of the still air behind the tree near the ground to sting his cheek. He slapped it absently. The slap knocked the cigar from his mouth. He blinked in mild surprise at his own sleepy reflexes and leaned over to grope for the smoke glowing in the grass. At that moment a burst of machine-gun fire swept the area, including the area his head had just occupied!

Captain Gringo rolled away from the chopped-up tree, whipping out his .38 and cursing as all hell broke loose around him in the dark. People were screaming, the machine gun was chattering like an insane metallic woodpecker, and the tall American flat in the grass was disoriented for the moment as he had to adjust his thinking. Enemies were supposed to attack from that way, not that way, dammit!

Then he located the source of all the automatic fire by the stuttering orange glow and pegged a shot at it. He saw what a lousy notion that had been when the machine gun traversed his way and spewed a humming horde of angry metal bees over him as he hugged the dirt.

But two or more could play at the same game, and he could tell by the cough of another .38 that Gaston was still alive and hadn’t forgotten to write.

The machine gun groped for Gaston in the dark as the Frenchman ducked and rolled away from his own muzzle flash. So Captain Gringo rose like a flipper on its fins and pegged another three rounds of rapid pistol fire before rolling over three times and pressing his cheek bone into the dirt as he reloaded by feel. The machine gun, meanwhile, fell silent. The darkness still seemed to tingle to its chatter and the air reeked with the acrid scent of cordite, although, when he really listened, all he heard was someone moaning something dumb about his mother.

Gaston’s voice called out from the distance, “Dick?” and when Captain Gringo called back, “Yo?” the Frenchman replied, “I think they left by the north door. There’s a picket here who doesn’t seem to be breathing anymore.”

Captain Gringo leaped to his feet and ran that way in a low crouch. He joined Gaston by the guard, who lay face down and bloody in the grass. Gaston said, “They went thataway as you Yanks put it so crudely. From the dulcet tones of their running footsteps, I make it two men. The question before the house now is whether they brought their own machine gun or used ours, non?”

Captain Gringo swore and tore for his own bedroll, tripping over someone’s corpse in the dark, but managing to stay on his feet until he dropped to his knees by Florita and reached to shake her to her senses. She didn’t answer. He got a palm slicked with blood. When he struck a match, he saw why. Florita was staring owlishly up at him with three wide eyes. Her own and the big fried egg of blood and brains in the middle of her forehead.

The Maxim that should have been in its tarp beyond her shattered head was gone. He stared at the flat expanse of canvas tarp, covered with spent shells, and cursed as the match burned down to his fingers. Gaston had joined him just in time to take in the messy scene. Gaston said, “Eh bien, we shall call the roll and see who is dead or missing, non?”

Captain Gringo had noticed a Krag rifle in the grass nearby before the match went out. He groped for it as he told Gaston, “Haven’t time. You stay here and mind the store. If they headed north they’ll make for that tree-filled canyon over that way.”

He checked the action of the rifle. There was a full clip of .30-30, and, what the hell, he was only after two guys. He started jogging out into the darkness as, behind him, he heard Gaston wail, “Dick, have you gone mad? It’s two to one, and they have a machine gun!”

Gaston was like that, thought Captain Gringo as he cleared the tangled confusion of the shot-up camp and began to run faster. The old Frog meant well, but he was always telling a guy something he already knew.