The Annihilators Read Free

disheveled from being captured and gagged and perhaps bound; and she would hate that. She had the idea that she was a very ugly little girl, with her mobile monkey-face and straight brown hair; and that the only way to deal with this dreadful handicap was to take special pains with her appearance.
    We’d happily overcome, in the past months, some of the inferiority feelings that had been hammered into her by, I gathered, a lovely and unloving mother who’d wanted a pretty doll to play with, not a bright but somewhat less than beautiful child to bring up. But she still had some distance to go; and it was unbearable to think that she might not be allowed to make it all the way now and become the person she was meant to be, the person she would have enjoyed being, just because of some hot-blooded political screwballs and a cold-blooded fish of a so-called lover who couldn’t forget his idiot notions of duty and discipline, or could he? I listened to her telling me how they had grabbed her and how dumb she’d been to let them…
    “Are you all right?” I asked when she stopped.
    “Yes, so far, but… Matt.”
    “Yes?”
    There was sudden, breathless urgency in her voice: “Matt, I couldn’t stand it if you… It would never be any good again. Nothing would ever be any good again. Please don’t let them make you do anything because of me…” Her voice was cut off abruptly, presumably by a hand over her mouth.
    “Enough.” It was a man’s voice, a young man’s voice, presumably the voice of the man called Lobo, the Wolf, who seemed to be running the show. At least the girl had shown him a certain deference. He continued: “You heard her say she was all right, señor. It is up to you whether or not she will continue to be all right. Consider it very carefully. For our cause, we will kill if we must, even a pretty lady like her.”
    The phone went dead, leaving Elly alone somewhere with Lobo the Wolf and Oso the Bear, while I got Leona the Lioness for company. Kid stuff. But they all have causes. It’s getting to the point, I reflected, where it’s like a ray of sunshine after a long dark winter to meet some splendid mercenary creep who simply murders for money, or a fine sadistic jerk who merely likes to see the agonized wiggles and hear the tormented screams and smell the blood. Those are natural impulses I can understand; but I’m getting pretty damn sick of these incomprehensible high-minded ladies and gentlemen who kidnap and slaughter innocent people with the purest and most idealistic motives in the world.
    I started to give the phone back to Dolores Anaya and caught myself and glanced at her questioningly. She made a gesture of rejecting the instrument, nodding.
    “Make your call, señor.”
    I dialed the Washington number and identified myself. “Condition Blue,” I said. When the girl looked disturbed and made a move to break the connection, I said, “That means there’s a gun at my head, or somebody’s head. Is it supposed to be a secret?” The outstretched hand was withdrawn.
    “I’ll put you through,” said the girl in Washington. Almost immediately, Mac’s voice came on the line.
    “Matt here, sir,” I said. “Condition Blue.”
    The fact that I used my real name instead of my code name—which happens to be Eric—warned my superior that the conversation was being overheard at my end.
    “Yes, Matt,” he said, acknowledging the signal. “What’s the problem?”
    At this hour of the night he wouldn’t be sitting at the familiar beat-up office desk in front of the bright window he liked to make us squint at. It was well past midnight in Washington, and I’d never entered his home, so I couldn’t visualize him at the phone in pajamas and dressing gown. To me he was always the lean, ageless gray-haired man in a gray suit with whom I’d worked longer than I cared to remember.
    I looked at Dolores Anaya. “The name,” I said. She hesitated but gave it to me. I said into the phone: