Panama Gold (A Neal Fargo Adventure #2) Page 6

  ‘This way, Fargo. Buckner don’t take no rest at midday. He’s up and around all the time.” And they rode toward the headquarters.

  Fargo went with docility, reviewing as the horses walked across the parade ground, what he knew of Buckner. The man had been, like his red-mustached captor, a soldier in the Philippines. He had been in that honored detachment that served on Samar in the Southern Islands, one that had endured such incredible hardships and fought against such long odds that, to this day, when even the lowest private soldier of the patrol entered a room full of Generals, they were bound by tradition to rise in tribute to him: “Rise, gentlemen,” the command always went. “He served on Samar.”

  But that honor had not kept Buckner from turning renegade. The very toughness that had carried him through the ordeal had made it impossible for him to settle down or stay out of trouble. He’d been caught in bed with a Colonel’s wife and had shot the Colonel neatly between the eyes, and, an outlaw, had deserted. Since then, much like Fargo, he’d roamed the trouble spots of the world, his fighting ability and military knowledge for hire. At the moment, Fargo was wondering who had bought it this time. Whoever it was, he was serious about ruining the Canal; so much money and effort would not have been otherwise invested.

  It was something he had to find out, Fargo told himself. Even after Buckner was dealt with, the Colonel, the United States Government, had to know who was behind this. Germany, Japan, Colombia— It would take more weight than one soldier of fortune named Fargo could throw around to settle this matter

  Then, with a jingle of gear, they reined in before the headquarters. Jerry jerked the muzzle of the Krag. “Okay, Fargo. Down.”

  Fargo swung off the horse, kept his hands lifted high. Jerry let Blackbeard (his name was Mac) see to the mounts as he herded Fargo up split log steps. Then they were in a small front room that contained a table made out of rough-hewn boards. A man in sweat soaked khakis sat behind it, reading a cheap novel. He wore Captain’s tabs, and, to Fargo’s surprise, Jerry saluted. “Sergeant Wilson requests permission to see the General. I caught this booger out on the trail. He says his name’s Fargo and that he’s known General Buckner for a long time—fought against him once.”

  The Captain, lean and cadaverous and evil-faced, got up and stared at Fargo. He said, “Hold on,” and turned toward a doorway blocked off with a curtain of matting. But before he could take a step, the matting was pushed aside. Then Buckner came out.

  “Hello, Fargo,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Buckner was about Fargo’s own age and height. He had thick black hair that grew down to a point over his eyes, and his eyebrows were heavy and the color of jet. His face was sunburned to the texture of leather, his nose a big blade, his mouth thin, full of bad teeth. He looked, Fargo thought, like the popular conception of the Devil himself; all he lacked was the horns and the black mustache.

  “Hello, Cleve,” Fargo said easily. “I sort of thought you would be.”

  Buckner grinned. It was not much of a grin, revealing as it did, yellow, rotted stumps. A crocodile might have grinned that way, or a piranha.

  “Yeah. I know everything that goes on in the Zone.” He wore khakis, with four-star tabs on them, and cinched around his waist were crisscrossed gun-belts. Each belt sagged under the weight of a buscadero holster tied to Buckner’s thigh, and in each holster was an ivory-handled single-action Colt .45 Frontier Model. He took out a pack of the same vile brown paper cigarettes that Jerry had been smoking and thrust one between his pale lips. It dangled as he went on. “I know that you slugged Captain Kane in the Washington Hotel. I know the real reason, too. You’d been screwing that wife of his. I hear she’s a real ball of fire. I know, too, that you had a crooked poker game going at the Hotel San Leon, and that you got run out of town for cheating the working stiffs.”

  “You know a hell of a lot, don’t you?” said Fargo.

  “It’s my business.” Buckner rested one lean hip on the Captain’s desk. “Now you’ve come to San Fernando. Why?”

  “I had to go somewhere,” Fargo said. “They were after my hide.”

  Buckner’s grin was still ghastly. “But it’s funny. You know? Even when I first heard of it, I thought it was funny. Fargo running a crooked game. I always thought you were a good enough player to win straight.”

  “I needed some money.”

  “Did you now? You shelled out a bundle to the Police Chief and the Commandant. It didn’t look like you were hurting for cash. Especially with that little whore you took away from Romero bringing her earnings to you for a month.”

  “I wanted some big money. I overreached myself.”

  Suddenly, totally without warning, Buckner hit him. It was a hard, backhanded slap that knocked Fargo’s head around. “Don’t hand me that crap! You never overreached yourself in your life!”

  Fargo’s eyes watered with pain. He stroked his jaw. “Cleve, that was a goddamned mistake and you know it. You shouldn’t have hit me.”

  “I don’t make mistakes,” Buckner said thinly. “And I can hit anybody I take a notion to. I command here.”

  “You don’t hit me like that,” Fargo said. His eyes were cold, gray chips. “I came here to hire out to you. You and I will have to settle that first, though.”

  “Yeah,” Buckner said. “Yeah, we’ve got a lot of things to settle. Like San Salvador.”

  “I wrote that off,” Fargo said. “I figured you had, too. You hire out to fight, one side wins or the other. Nothing personal.”

  “Personal? You tried to catch me. If you had, you’d have ’dobe-walled me!”

  “You know well as I do, that’s all in the game. Other way around, you’d have put me in front of a firing squad, too.”

  Buckner laughed hoarsely. “Yeah. Yeah, I sure would have. And, you know what, Fargo? It’s the other way around, now.”

  Fargo looked at him. “Don’t be a damn fool. You need me.”

  “I’ve got along all right without you up ’til now.” Buckner drew one of the big .45’s and laid it across his thigh, his hand caressing the hammer. “Fargo, it stinks. It stinks to high heaven. Why’d you really come here? Who sent you?”

  “I told you,” Fargo said. “They were after my tail in Colon. I picked up word of your outfit here. When I got in trouble, this was the natural place to head.”

  Buckner’s thin lips formed an obscenity. Then, again without warning, he hit Fargo. This time it was with the pistol barrel, and the impact of the blow knocked Fargo backward, slammed him against the matted wall of thatch. He felt blood trickling down his face from the cut the gun sight had laid open. Before he could recover, Buckner had moved in, like a big cat, slammed him on the other side of the head. “All right, dammit, I want the truth!”

  Dazed, skull full of ringing gongs, Fargo sank to the bamboo floor. Buckner hit him once more, driving him down. Blood poured past Fargo’s right eye, obscuring that much of his vision. “Give me the truth, damn you!”

  Fargo put up hands to shield himself; Buckner battered them down. Then coldly, methodically, without mercy, he continued to pistol-whip Fargo, while Jerry with the red-mustache held the Krag trained on him. At last everything swam, began to recede. Fargo saw the gun barrel raised high, heard Buckner’s inchoate snarl. Then the Colt slammed into the side of his head again and he knew no more.

  Fargo swam back to consciousness painfully, head full of agony. He still lay on the bamboo floor of the headquarters building. Then hands were jerking him erect; somebody sloshed cool water over him. With great effort, he opened his eyes.

  What swam into his blood-smeared gaze was Buckner’s face again, lips peeled back from those rotting teeth. “All right,” Buckner rasped. “.45’s barrel ain’t enough, eh? We’ll arrange somethin’ else. I’d like to lay you on the anthill. But they drive you so crazy you can’t make sense even when you’re tryin’ to.” He swam in Fargo’s vision. “You were gonna have me dobe-walled in San Salvador. Now I’ll stand you up
in front of a firing squad! And you’ll either tell me the truth or you’ll be dead by nightfall! Who sent you, dammit?” And he slapped Fargo again with his hand. Then he snapped an order. “Throw some more water on him. Give him a drink of booze. Make sure he’s wide awake so he knows what’s happenin’ to him. Then take him out.”

  They did that. Another bucket of cold water hit him, and he revived more. Then a bottle was forced between his battered lips; he gagged at the raw trickle of whiskey straight down his throat. But it did bring him back to life; he felt its slow burn in his belly.

  “Now,” Buckner said. Hands seized Fargo, wrestled him out of the building into the scalding sunlight of the shadeless parade. “Take him over yonder,” Buckner ordered. “Tie him to the flagpole, hands behind his back. Don’t give the sonofabitch an inch of leeway, he’s mean and sneaky as a snake.”

  They hustled Fargo across the parade. He was fully awake now, completely alert and conscious, though his head hurt terribly. He had no doubt in his mind that, if he did not talk, Buckner would shoot him. The man owed him that, anyhow, as he’d said. It was an ancient grudge and Fargo’d made a mistake, misjudged how deeply it ran, how virulently it had festered while Buckner’d harbored it.

  It was a mistake, he realized now, that would cost him his life. For he could not talk. If he did, Buckner would lash him out on the anthill, as he had done the last detective. If he did not, he would be shot. Better to be shot than have the living flesh stripped from his bones agonizingly bite by bite.

  He was slammed up against the pole. Over him, the black flag whipped slightly as the breeze freshened. Ropes cut his wrists, as they were lashed behind the pole. Then he heard barked commands; swiveling his head, he saw five men march out of one of the barracks. They wore sweat stained khakis, carried Krags by the balance. It was Buckner’s harsh voice that gave them orders.

  Then they were ranked in front of Fargo, ten yards away, rifles at order arms. Buckner’s black-browed face confronted Fargo once again. “Within another three minutes, you’ll be dead. You can talk any time I give the order up to fire.” His lips twisted. “After that, you won’t be in much shape to.”

  Fargo shook his head. “You know the truth, Buckner.”

  The other stared at him. “You know, Fargo, I almost wish I believed that. If it was the truth, you’d be worth a damn regiment. But I got too much involved here. I can’t take any chances...” Suddenly, abruptly, he wheeled away. He had given the detail parade rest. Now he bellowed, in a voice of command: “Detail, ‘Tenshun!” They snapped to, sharply; he had drilled them well.

  Fargo looked beyond Buckner’s tall, muscular khaki-clad figure to the line of the jungle, the bright blue sky, the dazzle of the sun above. It seemed strange to realize that he would actually die now, that he was seeing all this for the last time. Then Buckner barked another command: “Detail. Prepare for execution. Ready!”

  Five Krags came to high port. Buckner looked from the guns to Fargo. “Well? You wanta sing?”

  Fargo shook his head.

  Buckner shrugged. “Aim!”

  Now the rifles were up. Five muzzles, lined on Fargo. None of these, he knew, would carry blanks. They would all be loaded with ball ammunition. In a moment, his body would be ripped by five copper-jacketed slugs.

  He braced himself, straightened his body against the pole. Buckner’s hand was upraised. His dark eyes lanced at Fargo. “You have five seconds,” he rasped. “Anything you want to say?”

  Fargo shook his head, eyes riveted to that upraised hand. He could feel his heart beating away the seconds. So, after all these years, this was how it ended. He had lived by the gun, now he would die by it. Oddly, he felt no real fear, only curiosity as to what it would be like ...

  Buckner’s hand trembled against the brassy blue of the sky.

  Buckner’s mouth opened.

  Then he snapped, disgustedly: “Detail! Order Arms!” Fargo’s body, braced for the shock of lead, twitched instinctively. “Goddammit,” Buckner snapped, as the men looked at him in bafflement. “Ground your pieces!”

  Buckner strode forward. He wore a campaign hat like Fargo’s, and now he pushed it back on his head. He thrust his contorted face close to Fargo’s, stared into Fargo’s eyes, black eyes into slate gray. Then he let out a long, rasping breath; it was foul in Fargo’s nostrils.

  “I should have known,” he grunted. “You’d have been out of your head to come to me unless you were on the level ... ” He whirled to the detail. “Dismissed!” he bawled. The men of the firing squad blinked at him, then shrugged and hastened back to the barracks.

  Buckner whipped out a knife. With deft motions, he cut Fargo’s bonds.

  “All right,” he said. “You were a second away from the hereafter and you still didn’t blink.” He sheathed the knife, drew his Colt. “Not that I trust you entirely. But maybe I’m ready to talk to you now. I had to push you right up to the edge!”

  Fargo leaned against the pole a moment more, waiting for strength to come back into his legs. He was not going to sway, lurch, in front of Buckner. You never displayed any sign of weakness before such a man. When he was sure he was steady, he straightened up. “I told you the truth,” he lied in a voice surprisingly steady.

  “We’ll see.” Buckner jerked the gun barrel. “Come on in the office. We’ll do some talking.”

  Fargo downed the second drink as greedily as he had the first. He was trying to avoid showing any reaction, and he needed the alcohol. In Buckner’s office, the other looked at him across a roughly made desk on which the Colt still lay, its muzzle pointed at Fargo, Buckner’s big hand covering it.

  “The gun whipping you’ll have to take,” Buckner said. “It’s part of the game. You’d have done it to me.”

  Fargo touched the scabbed, dried blood on his face with his fingers. Slowly, he nodded.

  “All right,” he said. “You’re right about that. I would have done it if I’d had to.” And that was, he thought, no lie at all.

  “I’m gonna give you another couple of days or so,” Buckner said. “You’ll have no arms, you’ll be locked in the jail. Within two days, I’ll have checked you out all across the Zone. If you’ve told me a single falsehood, I’ll know about it. Then I’ll give you to the ants. So if there’s anything you want to own up to, you’d better do it now.”

  “I told you,” Fargo said. “I checked out of there just ahead of the military police. You can dig into it all you want, it’s the truth and there’s no trick to it.”

  “We’ll see,” Buckner grunted. Then his attitude changed. “Dammit, I hope it is.”

  Fargo looked at him, eyes narrowed.

  “I’ve got three hundred men here,” Buckner said. “They’re all mean as hell and tough as a boot. But I’m short of real professionals. I mean soldiers. There’s a lot of difference between a plug-ugly and a soldier.”

  “Yes,” Fargo said through swollen lips.

  “I need a second-in-command. One who knows the score, knows his business. One I could trust. If it wasn’t for the fact that we hate each other’s guts, you’d be the ideal man.”

  Fargo said, “Gimme one of your cigarettes.”

  Buckner threw one toward him, followed it with a match. Fargo drew in smoke after the thing was lit. He said, “There’s a lot of money here.”

  “Not a patch to what there will be before long,” Buckner said.

  “You’ve known me for years,” Fargo said. “You ever know me to fight for anything but money?”

  “No,” said Buckner.

  “All right. You can trust me just as far as you can pay me.”

  Buckner was silent.

  Then he said, “I could pay you real good. How does thirty thousand dollars sound?”

  “It sounds like a lot of money.”

  “Enough so I could trust you?”

  Fargo blew smoke through his nostrils. “I’d work with the devil himself for that sort of dough.”

  Buckner appraised him coldly,
then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “By damn, you would.”

  “You hold me,” Fargo said. “You hold me for two days, check everything out. If it’s in order, cut me in. Thirty thousand dollars worth.”

  Buckner’s thin lips curled around his cigarette butt.

  “If it ain’t,” he said, “the ants eat you.”

  The jail was made of solid mud walls, each three feet thick. There were no windows, and the roof was heavy mahogany timbers, impenetrable as iron. It was, in this weather, like being in a Turkish bath, day and night; moreover, there were fleas and lice. By the end of the first day, Fargo had scratched himself raw and had sweated until he felt like a piece of jerky hanging on a Sioux drying frame.

  The second day was no better. He got water, he got food that was edible; he had a slop bucket. The fleas were absolutely unbearable now, but he had been in Spanish-American prisons before, and that was the way the fleas always were. So he managed to keep from going insane. It could be worse. At the end of a few more hours, he’d either be out or the ants would make the fleas feel like gentle caresses. Buckner had given him a pack of cigarettes; he smoked and waited.

  The second day ended. Nobody came, except the guard who shoved in the food and water. Fargo began to worry. He had hidden his tracks well, he could think of no chink in the cover he had so painstakingly prepared for himself. They could ask Vargas, they could ask Consuelo, they could ask Hackett or the MPs, everything would check out, because everything was true ... almost.

  Nevertheless, he did not sleep much that night

  The clink of a key in the lock awakened him, just at dawn. The heavy door of the place swung open on its iron hinges. Sunlight shone through, and a breath of blessedly cooler air washed over Fargo. Buckner stood spraddled-legged in the doorway.

  “All right, Fargo,” he said. “On your feet.”