Mendez himself had come out of the closet and was legally running for office in the northern Basque provinces.
It was a tricky proposition. A lot of Mendez's people were behind him, but his rivals in the Basque movement wanted him dead. It was also no secret that several high-ranking officers in the Spanish military did not trust him and would also have liked him dead.
Carter lit his tenth cigarette of the day and cast an eye up over his left shoulder toward the second story of the building behind him.
For backup, Cubanez was directly above him in one of the hotel's front comer rooms.
With a second Beretta sub, he could cover the square itself and the main drag and alleys to his left all the way to the end of the village.
They were ready. Carter and Cubanez, even if the Madrid military and the regional Guardia Civil were not.
Through State, Hawk had warned the officials in Madrid that something might be coming down that day in Pakolo.
Beyond giving Mendez two bodyguards, the military had chosen to ignore the warning.
It was as if they truly did want him dead.
Maybe they did.
Latin politics is a strange creature.
But the local version of law and order had listened a little better. His name was Hubanyo, and he had listened to every word Cubanez had said.
This end of Basque country around the Manzanal Mountains was Mendez country, and Hubanyo did not want the people's choice wasted on his turf.
He agreed to every suggestion Cubanez rattled off in the local dialect, including the one Carter was most worried about.
The word went out to every man, woman, and child in the village. When the church bells rang noon to herald Señor Mendez's arrival in Pakolo… stay home!
Now, other than a few stray, yipping dogs, and Hubanyo's two undersheriffs lounging near the speaker's platform, the street was deserted.
Carter breathed a sigh of relief. He did not like including civilians in a war. If the small square in front of him was soon to become a battleground, it was no place for innocent bystanders.
Carter tensed.
From the hills to his right an old, long-bed pickup with high stake sides wheezed around a sloping curve and made its way up the dusty main street.
Just short of the bar it turned left and rumbled its nose into an alley, leaving half the bed sticking into the street. The truck was crated high with fresh produce.
The driver, a swarthy youth of about twenty with long black hair and a sorry excuse for a Pancho Villa mustache, slid from the cab. He moved to the truck's rear and, after lowering the tailgate, began stacking crates of produce on it.
Market day? To take advantage of the crowd coming to hear Mendez speak?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Carter relaxed back in his chair, but he kept the driver and the truck in his peripheral vision.
The church bell began a steady hollow clang from its hillside steeple.
The pupils of Carter's gray eyes played pendulum up and down the street.
Would the villagers do as they had been told?
Had all of them gotten the word?
Evidently so.
Nothing moved in the heat-hazed air.
Except the driver of the pickup loaded with produce. He was probably a truck farmer from somewhere deep back in the hills. He would not have gotten the word.
Should Carter tell him?
He was about to push himself out of the chair, when the driver stepped onto the porch and headed his way.
He wore faded and worn blue jeans, a plaid shirt, its tail out and flapping, and a white, wide-brimmed straw hat.
His feet made an odd, thumping sound on the porch boards. Carter saw why. He wore huaraches — woven leather sandals with the soles fashioned from old rubber tire casings.
He was halfway to the door when he stopped, eying Carter.
"Buenos dias."
"Buenos dias," came the reply.
He removed his hat in the peasant manner, reaching behind his head and lifting it from the rear. By so doing, it covered his face for a moment as a sign of respect. Then he dropped the straw to waist level. This was also a sign of respect, as well as showing that he was unarmed.
"Americano?"
"Si," Carter replied, feeling the familiar itch of caution crawl up his spine as the man rattled off several sentences of garbled Spanish that Carter did not completely understand.
Something was wrong, but Carter could not put his finger on it.
"No comprendo."
The man shrugged. He made a single step toward the bar door and paused again.
"Uno cigarrillo… por favor?"
Carter pulled a pack from his pocket with his left hand and shook one out.
"Gracias, señor,"
Carter nodded and watched the back of the plaid shirt retreat into the bar.
The man looked like a peasant, but something about him was wrong. He had spoken Spanish, not Basque, and yet his Spanish had been oddly accented.
And there was something else, something different that didn't fit.
Before Carter could finger it, the sudden backfire of a car returned his attention to the street. A bent-fendered, barely running 1950 Ford, its black paint gray with dust, lurched and bolted toward the square.
The church bell seemed to peal louder the closer the old car came. This drew Carter's eye for a brief second.
What he saw sent a quick whispered curse from his lips.
A line of eight monks, all in traditional long brown robes, was moving down the hill from the monastery. They trudged, single file, their heads bent, their hands folded over their bellies, directly toward the square.
Damnit, Carter thought. Hubanyo had screwed up. The monks on the hill had not been told!
He sat upright in the chair as the old Ford reached the edge of the square and rattled to a halt. The two deputies who had been lounging against the speaker's platform moved toward it. At the same time, the huge, potbellied bulk of Hubanyo himself emerged from one of the false-fronted stores on the other side of the Ford. He toted a shotgun cradled in his fat arms, and his black eyes leaped up and down the empty streets.
But he did not see the monks descending the hill behind him.
The bottom half of Carter's right trouser leg had been split and then Velcroed together for easy access to his ever faithful Luger, Wilhelmina. As the two rear doors of the Ford opened, he slid a finger into the Velcro at the top of the slit.
A tall, reed-thin man with angular features and receding gray hair unwound from the back of the sedan on Hubanyo's side.
A small, uniformed man with sleepy eyes and lethargic movements stepped from the Ford on Carter's side.
Carter mentally cursed.
This sorry excuse for a soldier was obviously the bodyguard Madrid had provided Mendez. He looked like a leftover from Franco's era and, as such, probably hated Julio Mendez and everything the man stood for, then and now.
The driver was pushing seventy, also no help. He was already leaning his head back against the seat as if he were headed directly for siesta.
The two deputies had reached Mendez's "bodyguard." Hubanyo was talking to Mendez, gesturing toward the small building behind him and shaking his head from side to side.
If it was going down, it would be soon now.
There was a tiny ripping sound as Carter's finger began opening the Velcro.
Call it déjà vu or call it the sixth sense of the trained operative, the survival instinct that had kept Killmaster N3 alive through many missions.
Or call it the reality of what was: a slight rocking of the old pickup, the monks shifting from single file to fan out in their movement.
And the thump of a rubber-soled footstep on the porch behind him.