The Ambushers Read online

  Also by Donald Hamilton and available from Titan Books

  Death of a Citizen

  The Wrecking Crew

  The Removers

  The Silencers

  Murderers’ Row

  The Shadowers (December 2013)

  The Ravagers (February 2014)

  DONALD HAMILTON

  A MATT HELM NOVEL

  THE AMBUSHERS

  TITAN BOOKS

  The Ambushers

  Print edition ISBN: 9780857683359

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781781162354

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: October 2013

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 1963, 2013 by Donald Hamilton. All rights reserved.

  Matt Helm® is the registered trademark of Integute AB.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  Did you enjoy this book? We love to hear from our readers.

  Please email us at [email protected] or write to us at Reader Feedback at the above address.

  To receive advance information, news, competitions, and exclusive offers online, please sign up for the Titan newsletter on our website:

  www.titanbooks.com

  THE AMBUSHERS

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  About the Author

  1

  The natives call it the River of Goats, the Rio de las Cabras. In the time I was there I saw no goats, but that means nothing. I wasn’t hunting goats, I was hunting a man. Anyway, we only ran up the stream a few miles, until the jungle started closing in on either side, overhanging the water blackly.

  Then the Navy coxswain, who seemed to know where he was in spite of the darkness, put the junior-grade landing craft, if that’s what you call it, in to the bank, and that was as far as I got to travel sitting down. I had the gun case between my knees so it wouldn’t get knocked around or stepped on. The little pack, less sensitive, was down on the floorboards somewhere. I rose, kicked around, found it, struggled into it, and slung the long, heavy plastic case over my shoulder by its strap. I stepped ashore in the dark, hoping there wouldn’t be any snakes or alligators to greet me.

  Somebody said, “Good luck, sir. We’ll be back the day after tomorrow.”

  The ugly little boat backed off silently—they’ve done some good work on mufflers since World War II—and turned sharply and hissed and burbled away into the night, heading for open water and the ship waiting offshore. There’d be coffee ready when they got aboard, I reflected. There’s always coffee when you’re with the Navy, but I wasn’t with the Navy any longer.

  There was nothing for me to do but stand and wait, so I stood and waited. I couldn’t help thinking that there was a certain resemblance in names between the River of Goats, here in Costa Verde—well, let’s call it Costa Verde—and the Bay of Pigs over in Cuba, where some other men had been put ashore not too long ago under somewhat similar circumstances. They’d been trying to start a revolution and I was supposed to stop one, but the basic situation was about the same. I couldn’t help remembering that they hadn’t had much luck at the Bay of Pigs.

  Something rustled in the jungle behind me, but I didn’t turn. I stood quite still on the river bank, letting whoever was there see me motionless against the dully gleaming water, with my hands empty. I didn’t know how nervous he’d be.

  “Señor Hernandez?” It was a soft whisper.

  “I’m Miguel Hernandez,” I said.

  This was a lie. The blood of the Conquistadores does not flow in my veins. I was born in Minnesota, and while I moved to the state of New Mexico at an early age, and picked up a little Spanish there, I still get along better in some Nordic tongues, not to mention English. However, for this occasion, I’d had my face and hands stained and my hair dyed. I wasn’t supposed to have to fool anybody up close. On the other hand, it was considered inadvisable to advertise too widely the fact that I was a foreigner. Besides, a dark face shows up less conspicuously in the forest.

  “This way, señor,” said the voice. “Follow me, por favor.”

  I turned deliberately and moved towards the sound. I saw a dim shape in the brush. There was a big hat and some more or less white clothing. The man moved off silently, and I followed the gleam of dirty white through the blackness, tripping over vines and getting the gun case hung up in tangled branches. Some people can take their jungles or leave them alone. I prefer to leave them, but I hadn’t been asked.

  We came into a clearing where a small fire burned. There were a lot of ragged, tough-looking, dark-faced men—about twenty, I judged—and a couple of ragged, full-bodied, dark-faced women dressed pretty much like the men, but you could tell the difference. I wondered briefly about the women; I hadn’t expected any. I decided they’d been brought to make this bandit-looking crew look authentic. There were also a lot of firearms being treated in a very casual manner, including some nasty-looking little automatic weapons that caught the red of the firelight.

  It used to be that a pelado with a machete was considered well-equipped, and if he had a rifle he was a great man. Now he’s but nothing unless he’s got a machine pistol that’ll rip them off at the rate of several hundred rounds per minute. Well, the Latin temperament has never lent itself to careful, one-shot marksmanship. That’s why I was there.

  Of course, these weren’t pelados. They had a trained, un-peasantlike look, and despite the presence of women, despite the nondescript clothes and casual manner, you could detect a military air about the encampment. My guide led me past the fire to where a man was sitting in a folding camp chair, smoking a cigar. He was a small, swarthy, mustached man in a big straw hat and soiled khakis. He needed a shave, and he was the type that misses the razor badly. Still, in some indefinable way, he managed to look quite jaunty and dapper in the flickering light. Perhaps it was the angle of the cigar that did it.

  He was wearing a .45 automatic at his hip, in a military holster with a snap-down flap. If he’d locked it in his safe at headquarters, back in the capital city of Costa Verde—the saintly name of which escapes me momentarily—the weapon might have been a little harder to get at, but not much.

  “The boat came, mi coronel,’ said my guide. “Here is the man.”

  The occupant of the chair dismissed him with a wave of the hand, watching me.

  “You call yourself Hernandez?”

  He hadn’t risen to greet me, he didn’t remove the cigar to talk, and his vo
ice was curt. So it was going to be that kind of a job. I felt a surge of sympathy for the military gent, whoever he was, who said that he could deal with his enemies, but God would have to protect him from his allies.

  “Who asks?” I demanded.

  “I am Colonel Hector Jiminez.” He pronounced it Himayness, Spanish fashion, with the accent on the second syllable.

  “Then if you are Jiminez, I call myself Hernandez,” I said.

  “What is your true name?”

  This wasn’t really a state secret. The cover was primarily for his benefit, not mine. If he wanted me to break it, that was his business. It was his country and he’d have to live in it afterward. I wouldn’t. Assuming, of course, that both of us survived the mission.

  “My name is Helm,” I said. “Matthew Helm.”

  He took the cigar out at last, looked at it, and threw it aside. He looked me up and down carefully.

  “All this,” he said, gesturing towards the fire and the group around it, “all this for just one man. All this merely to assist one long, clever gringo with a gun. Is that the gun?”

  “Yes,” I said. It didn’t seem like the proper time to resent being called gringo.

  “Show it to me.”

  “You’ll see it when the time comes, Colonel,” I said. “Not now.”

  His eyes narrowed. “It was an order, Señor Helm.”

  “And it was refused. With all due respect,” I said. “The gun was prepared in a climate much dryer than this. It was enclosed in an airtight case with silica gel to maintain it at the proper humidity. To show it now would be to expose it to moisture prematurely.”

  He stared at me hard for almost a minute. Then he dropped his hand abruptly to the holster at his hip. If he wanted to get rough, I didn’t have a chance, but I couldn’t help putting my left hand—the right was grasping the rifle-case strap—on the butt of the little .38 on my belt, ready to twist it out of its trick spring holster. I guess I could have sold my life dearly, as the saying goes, but it wasn’t exactly what I’d been sent there for.

  Jiminez glanced at my hand, smiled faintly, and undid the flap of his big military holster with careful deliberation. He pulled out a fresh cigar. From another compartment inside the holster, he produced a tool with which to trim it and a lighter with which to light it. Then he returned the instruments to the holster and buttoned the flap down neatly.

  “If I had been able to shoot as a junior officer,” he said, blowing smoke at the nearby trees, “I would be a general now, Señor Helm. It is a great handicap to a military career, being a poor marksman. Since I cannot shoot, why should I burden myself with a big pistol?” He smiled a little. “Besides, if one has the firearms, one can always find men to use them. And even if one does not have them, generous friends will often supply them.” He looked at the gun case significantly.

  I drew a long breath. “I will open the case if you repeat the order, Colonel. But afterward I won’t guarantee the results.”

  He nodded. “Very well. Get some sleep. It is not very practical to travel the jungle at night. In the morning we move.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and started to turn away.

  “Señor Helm.”

  I looked back. “Yes?”

  “This silica of which you speak,” he said curiously. “What is it?”

  “It’s a dessicant,” I said. “Silica gel. It takes moisture out of the air. When it has absorbed all it can hold, you have to heat it in an oven to restore its efficiency. But we’re not apt to be here long enough to make this necessary.”

  “No. We should reach the village of El Fuerte by tomorrow afternoon.” He took the new cigar from his mouth and regarded it thoughtfully. “Silica gel. The wonders of North American science applied to the problems of Central American rebellion. Good night, Señor Helm.”

  2

  Fuerte means strong in Spanish, and it would make an interesting project for some statistically minded graduate student to determine just how many lawless gents have come out of those monkey-and-orchid jungles calling themselves El Fuerte, The Strong One. This particular contender for the strong-man title of Costa Verde was named Jorge Santos, pronounced Horgay. He was apparently doing well enough in a military way to worry the government of the country, not to mention some people in Washington.

  “He’s already got about a quarter of the country under his control,” Mac had told me, briefing me on the assignment in his second-floor office in a shabby old building that isn’t pointed out to visitors taking the standard rubberneck tour of the nation’s capital. “Except for a few coastal plantations, it’s the quarter nobody wants, but still it’s real estate, and General Santos rules it in the name of the revolution. President Avila has asked the United States for help. For one reason and another, military intervention isn’t feasible right now. We’ve been asked to do what we can.”

  I said, “Avila? Haven’t I read something about President Avila of Costa Verde?”

  “Probably,” Mac said. The bright window behind him highlighted his clipped gray hair, but made his expression hard to read. “He is not the nicest friend we have down there. But his morals aren’t the concern of this department, Eric, nor is the character of his government.”

  It was an official rebuke, emphasized by his use of my code name. He was reminding me that this wasn’t the bureau of bleeding hearts. That was over in the State Department somewhere.

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “The fact is, this Santos gentleman with the boastful nickname seems to have grown himself a beard like Castro and acquired the same kind of friends. The Fidelista movement seems to be quite contagious. Your contact will be a colonel in the Federal army named Jiminez. He’ll arrange to get you in and out.”

  “Cheerfully?” I asked.

  “Well,” said Mac dryly, “they were apparently hoping for a couple of divisions of Marines. They may be a trifle disappointed. Furthermore, we have already made one attempt that failed. This will complicate your mission in several ways...”

  I thought of these complications now, lying with my eyes closed at the side of the jungle clearing. It was going to be a pleasant assignment, I reflected, with my target alerted and my allies disappointed and disillusioned, having already seen the job loused up once by an Americano miracle worker sent to take the place of the troops they’d requested. You could hardly blame Colonel Jiminez for being, let’s say, a trifle reserved in his greeting.

  It was getting towards morning, and the camp was starting to come awake after some hours of quiet, but I saw no reason to jump up and start functioning. There was nothing for me to do, and somebody might think I was too jittery to sleep. I lay there breathing evenly with my arm through the sling of the rifle case, until a man came to wake me and tell me that there was food by the fire and the colonel wished to inform me that we would march in ten minutes.

  South of the Rio Grande—and we were a long way south—ten minutes usually means half an hour, but apparently our diminutive C.O. wasn’t one of the standard mañana boys. In ten minutes we were on the trail, if you could call it that, with daylight showing gray through the tangled jungle. In fifteen minutes I was sweating copiously, although the heat of the day was still to come. The little man set a fast pace. I was in fair condition, but it wasn’t my kind of country, and the pathfinders out ahead were picking holes for people their own size. Long-legged gringos six feet four could damn well look out for themselves.

  I stuck behind Jiminez, near the head of the column. He never looked back. His faded shirt remained dry across the shoulders. Behind me came the men who weren’t swinging machetes out front, and the two women. I heard good-natured grumbling in Spanish and deciphered some of it. It was all very well for their coronelcito to amuse himself by running the legs off the tall Americano, they were saying, but he should take some thought to his own people, who had marched hard yesterday and the day before. It was not a joke worth killing oneself for.

  If their little colonel heard them, you couldn
’t tell it from his stride. He kept us as close to a lope as conditions permitted, with only an occasional pause for breath and food, and brought us to the outskirts of the village about five in the afternoon, after circling wide to make the final approach from inland.

  At last I was told that our destination was just over the ridge when we finally came to a halt in a wooded ravine. We’d climbed all day, and this was a different, higher, and dryer kind of forest from the jungle in which we’d started, but it still wasn’t likely to be mistaken for the arid New Mexico country I’d hunted as a boy. The ravine was apparently a prearranged rendezvous. A man was awaiting us among the trees, a barefoot peasant type in dirty white pajamas and a big hat. Jiminez spoke to him briefly in Spanish that was so different from my border lingo that I couldn’t really follow it. I gathered only that the man came from the village, and that the situation there was favorable in some respects, unfavorable in others.

  The man slipped away. Jiminez got the two women and three of the men off to one side and gave them instructions I couldn’t hear. The older of the women carried a machine pistol in a negligent manner. The younger packed a rifle as if she knew what it was for. In pants, both looked as tough as their male companions or tougher. I wondered where all the gentle, shy, beautiful little Latin heroines were hiding, the ones who share the hero’s bed, or bedroll, in every jungle epic ever written or filmed. Then I wondered what the hell I’d do with one if I had her. I wasn’t exactly in the mood. I sat down on a log and rubbed my right thigh, from which a bullet had been extracted some months before.

  “You have trouble with the leg, Señor Helm?” Jiminez asked, coming up to seat himself beside me.

  “No trouble,” I said. I couldn’t have him thinking he had a cripple on his hands, on top of everything else, so I lied a little. “An old injury. It just stiffens up sometimes.”

  The mixed quintet, male and female, was moving off up the ravine. The older woman seemed to be in command. I assumed they’d been assigned to deal with one of the complications Mac had told me about. Jiminez caught the direction of my look and confirmed my thought.