I dragged him behind the base of the palm tree where Dickson, Alicia, and I were huddled. He’d pulled a really bad one. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to last very long.
“The sonsofbitches betrayed us!” the Generalissirno gasped.
“Who?” I asked, trying in vain to stop the flow of his blood with my handkerchief.
“‘ ‘Insecticide!’ ” he told me. “That’s who set it up for us to grab the girl.”
“I thought she was in on it with you.”
“No. She only decided to come in with us after we snatched her.” He laughed and blood bubbled to his lips. “We convinced her of the righteousness of our cause. Funny . . .”
The bullets were flying thick around us. I dug a hole for myself in the sand beside the dying midget. “Why funny?” I wanted to know.
“Because it was a setup. Midget rights didn’t mean shit.”
“I don’t understand. You mean all those little people out there”— I gestured toward where his “soldiers” were pinned down by whoever was attacking us -- “Weren’t really fighting for equal treatment and all that?”
“Oh, they thought they were. But actually we were being backed by this right-wing outfit to grab the girl.”
I had a sudden realization. “This right-wing out-fit—did they provide the tape you sent us in Paris?”
“The blank tape, yes. Why?”
“Because it wasn’t blank.” I explained to the Generalissimo about “The Aryans” being on the flip side of the tape. “Who was this right-wing outfit anyway?” I Wanted to know then.
“They call themselves ‘D.O.P.E.’ ”
D.O.P.E.! The organization to Destroy Obscenity! Pornography! Erotica!
“Why did you do it?” I asked Generalissimo Petit.
“They showed me how I could lay my hands on one million bucks. That’s why.”
“And that’s why you betrayed your fellow midgets?”
“Contrary to popular opinion, being downtrodden doesn’t make you any more noble than the next guy. I was a small man with big appetites.” He laughed. The blood gushed from his mouth. He died.
He left a helluva lot of unanswered questions behind him. Why had D.O.P.E. set up the kidnapping? Who was “Insecticide”? Why had the Lilliputian Liberation Army been double-crossed?
This was no time to ponder these puzzlers. The bullets were still kicking up the sand around us. They were still pinging off the trunk of the palm tree. Still, we weren’t as badly off as the Lilliputians.
The little people had been pinned down in what was strategically a very bad spot. The cover of the sparse shrubbery of the sand dunes where they had sought refuge was insufficient to protect them from the blizzard of bullets descending on them from the attackers on the higher ground. Also, the attackers still hadn’t shown themselves. They were intermingled with a rather thick copse of trees. So it was almost impossible for the Lilliputians to return the fire with any effectiveness.
Finally the Lilliputians took the only course open to them. They bolted. Three of them, small, childlike corpses, remained behind.
The attackers cautiously emerged from their cover. I was reluctant to shoot at them for fear of drawing their fire in return. They evidently hadn’t pinpointed where we were yet. When they did, we’d be at a big disadvantage. They could fire down on us from cover and we’d have the same problem the Lilliputians had in trying to return their fire effectively.
The moon came up to reveal that there were at least a dozen in the attacking party moving down to the clearing. It revealed something else even more interesting as well. The three men who seemed to be in charge of the others were familiar old-well, I can't exactly call them “friends”-— acquaintances of mine.
I recognized the black Bahamian, the Irishman, and the Cuban I’d first met on the boat when they’d snatched me by mistake, thinking they’d grabbed Alicia. A second later I remembered that these three worked for PeePee Rococco. And they'd vanished at the same time the LLA kidnapped Alicia.
Very—-like they say—interesting! But there was no time to sort out the ramifications in my mind. My hostile Bahamian buddy had spotted us.
“First the dwarfs, and now Snow White!” was his greeting. “Drop your wand, Princess. And tell your cohorts to do the same.”
We had no choice. It would have been suicide to resist. Dickson, Alicia, and I all came out from behind the palm tree with our hands over our heads as per instructions. We left our weapons behind.
“Hello there, me bucko.” The Irishman renewed old acquaintance by shoving his rifle butt into the pit of my stomach.
“Mucho gusto en verle otra vez.” The Cuban goosed me with the machete he was wielding. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”
“Good night, sweet Princess!” The Bahamian brought the butt of his pistol down solidly on the top of my skull.
I went out like an overworked Con Ed generator at the height of the air-conditioner season. The inside of my head was as black as Forest Hills on a hundred-degree evening in mid-August. It was still that way when the ache inside my cranium woke me up an intermediate time lapse or so later.
I tried fluttering open my baby-blues. It didn’t help much. It was just as dark with my eyes open as with them closed.
You guessed it. I was playing cat-in-the-sack again. It was my three friends’ favorite game—-konking me on the konk and keeping me in the bag.
Like before, Silly Milly, it was very dark in there. Also like before, there was the sound of a marine engine throbbing under me. Unlike before, this time my captors didn’t see fit to open the sack for a look-see at the prize they’d snatched.
That didn’t happen until after the engine had stopped and I’d heard the unmistakable sound of an anchor plopping into shallow water. Even then, it didn’t happen right away. First I was carried ashore by two men, loaded into what I think was a jeep, and transported some place inland.
Finally the sack was opened and I was allowed to pop out of it. The first thing I saw was the blinding light. When it cleared, I made out the faces of the Cuban, the Irishman, and the Bahamian.
I was dizzy, and that went away more slowly. As it did, I was able to recognize my surroundings. I was in one of the sitting rooms of PeePee Rococco’s house on PeePee Rococco’s island.
Besides my captors, Nick Dickson and Alicia were present. Like myself, they were standing with the sacks that had encompassed them now down around their feet. They looked as dazed as I was.
But Nicholas Swillhouse Dickson got himself together nicely when PeePee Rococco entered the room. “What the [expletive removed] is the meaning of this?” he demanded to know of his oldest and supposedly closest friend.
Rococco smiled the smile of one who no longer has any reason to hide anything.
“He’s ‘Insecticide!’ ” I guessed. None too brilliantly to be sure, for by now it was obvious. But there were other surprises which I still hadn’t even come close to dreaming were in store.
“Is that true, PeePee?” Dickson’s voice was calm, just putting together the facts.
“There’s no reason to deny it anymore.” Rococco owned up.
“You’re behind these [expletive deleted] attempts to assassinate me!” It was an unemotional statement, right down to the deleted expletive.
“No,” Rococco told him. “Our aim isn’t to kill you, just to control you.”
“You speak in the plural,” I noticed. “Who’s behind ‘Insecticide’?”
“I am.”
From the shadows behind Rococco a figure emerged. We all—Alicia, myself, Dickson—did a double-take. It was Heinrich Bussinger!
Dickson was the first to speak. Surprisingly, his remark wasn’t addressed to Bussinger, but to Rococco. “Et tu, PeePee,” he said fatalistically.