It was a sliver of wood, or reed, with a hard yellowish surface like bamboo. Maybe it was bamboo. I'm not an expert on the flora of the region. On it a pin or tack had scratched a line of shaky capital letters: INVESTIGATE SOMETHING BIG DOWN ROAD PAST VILLAGE SHEILA.
I looked at Jiminez. "What is the condition of the prisoner?"
He shrugged. "What can you expect? It has been over a month, almost six weeks. It is a miracle she is still alive. What about this?"
"I'd like to take a look," I said. "If it's important enough for her to make the effort to tell us, in the shape she's probably in, it's important enough for us to look at."
"We are through here anyway," Jiminez said. "The rest is routine. The corporal has his orders. He will pull back when he is outflanked and lead them away inland. We will go investigate this big thing."
IV
IT WASN'T SO BIG. It wasn't as tall as the Washington Monument by any means. Hell, you could have hidden it in an ordinary farm silo, if you could have figured a way to slip it inside. It wasn't nearly as big as the ones they play with at Cape Canaveral. Still, it wasn't something you'd take home on the Fourth of July and set off in the back yard to amuse the kiddies. Coming on it cold in a well-guarded clearing in the Costa Verde jungle, I found it impressive enough.
It looked a good deal like a gigantic version of my.300 Magnum cartridge, standing there, except that it Wasn't brass. They'd given it a fancy coat of camouflage paint to make it harder to spot from the air. But there was the same fat body necked down to the same slim, pointed, bullet shaped head-the warhead, I suppose. I studied that carefully. Washington would want to know whether it was nuclear or otherwise. I didn't have enough technical knowledge to tell, but maybe I could spot some detail that would tell somebody else.
They had a net suspended over it covered with leaves and stuff. Farther back along the edge of the little jungle opening was the truck, also with camouflage paint and a net. It was a six-wheeled tractor with power to all three axles and a big cab, like the ones the non-stop cross-country truckers sleep in. But I didn't think the extra space housed a bunk in this case. There were a couple of trick antennas, and I could make out the corner of some kind of a console or control board through the open door.
Behind the tractor was the long flat trailer with a cradle to hold the bird and hydraulic equipment to set it up. It was a real little mobile, do-it-yourself missile base. There was painted-over lettering embossed on the truck that I couldn't decipher, neither English nor Spanish. Not only the language but the alphabet was different. Even at the distance, I didn't have much doubt as to what language it was. But the two bearded men squatting beside the truck as if they belonged to it weren't Slavic types.
"May I look?" Jimnez whispered.
I'd taken back my binoculars earlier. I passed them to him again and watched him adjust them to his eyes, lying be-side me in the brush. I couldn't read his expression. I looked around the clearing. They had a couple of heavy machine guns set lip strategically-there had been one nest along the road that we'd bypassed-and there were too many nervous sentries pacing around nursing too many rapid-fire weapons to make an attack seem like more than a forlorn hope. Just to get the two of us this close to the barbed wire undetected had taken all the woodcraft both of us possessed, A fresh burst of firing inland indicated that Jiminez' boys were still leading the paper chase away from us. The men in the clearing looked that way, grimly or uneasily according to temperament. They knew the village had been hit; they were expecting to be next.
"Cubans," Jiminez whispered. "Those two by the truck. With the beards. One supposes they are technicians lent by Castro to his fond amigo, General Santos."
"Along with a nice little Russian toy that somehow got side-tracked when they were all being shipped home as a result of the U.S. blockade of Castro's island. I wonder what Khrushchev said when his inventory added up one whiz-bang short?" I grimaced. "How did 'they get it in here?"
"They could have floated it up the river and landed it well above where you were set ashore. There are little-used roads by which a truck like that, assisted by men with axes and shovels, could have brought it the rest of the way. It would take much work but it could be done. Senor Helm?'
"Yes?"
"I am not well acquainted with such weapons. What would be the range of this one?"
"I'm no expert, either," I said. "But I should think it would shoot at least five hundred miles. Our Polaris goes well over a thousand and it's small enough to fit on 'board a submarine crosswise."
"It would seem, then, that we reached El Fuerte just in time," whispered Jiminez, still studying the missile grimly. "With this, if it is as powerful as one suspects, he could have blackmailed our government into submission. Our capital city is less than three hundred of your miles from here. He could have threatened to destroy it if their demands were refused." After a moment, the Colonel said, "I will have to speak to my informants in the village. They should have learned of this."
I said carefully, "I am thinking, Colonel, that my government would be pleased if something happened to that thing."
He lowered the binoculars and turned his head to look at me. "I know you are thinking that, Senor Helm," he whispered. "I am thinking what my government would wish me to do. Now that El Fuerte is dead and the revolution no longer has a leader, I am not certain they would wish it damaged. A thing like that has many uses, in the proper hands." He moved his shoulders. "But we speak of what is impossible. Those men are alerted. We cannot take them by surprise, and we have not enough force to overwhelm them. No. It is my duty to report this. That is all I can do. Come."
It was no place to argue; and even after we'd extricated ourselves from there, I wasn't in a very good position for argument, deep in an officially friendly country surrounded by well-equipped representatives of its armed forces. Anyway, stray missiles weren't really in my line. I'd done my work and, like Jiminez, I'd make my report. Washington could take it from there.
We rejoined the rest of our group and reached the hiding place while the light still held, though it was fading fast. Two of the men of the special contingent that had entered the village, and the older woman-the younger one, wounded, had remained with us after delivering the message- were awaiting us in a grove of trees that seemed too dense for a snake to penetrate. But there was a way in, and in the center was a space like a good-sized room, a kind of arboreal cave.
I left Jiminez posting sentries and went over to the woman who sat at the side of the space watching over a strange girl lying on the 'ground. I knew it was a girl because that's what we'd been supposed to rescue; otherwise I might have hesitated before forming an opinion. There is a point in abuse and starvation beyond which the question of sex becomes meaningless. The woman looked up.
"She took a little food," she said in English. "Now she is asleep. Do not wake her unless it is necessary."
I didn't comment on her knowledge of the language. "Can she walk?" I asked.
"I do not know. We carried her. She would have cut her feet to pieces, since we could find no shoes in the kennel where they had her. She was lying in filth, with only the rags you see. She only became truly conscious long enough to give us the message on the piece of wood. Even then she would not speak. Too much had been done to her, for her to speak." Anger stirred in the woman's face. "El Fuerte and his men are beasts, senor."
"His men may still be beasts," I said. "El Fuerte is nothing, now. Not with two I 80-grain slugs through the chest."
The thought had not really pleased me before. I mean, there had been nothing personal between me and General Jorge Santos when I shot him. But as I knelt beside the Unconscious figure on the ground, I took some pleasure in the fact that I hadn't missed.