The Annihilators Read Free Page B

orders, telling me that nothing would ever be any good again if I allowed her to be used against me in this fashion.
    “Sorry,” I said. “Yes, sir. Don’t hang up. Hold the line.” I looked at Dolores Anaya, whose beautiful dark eyes were watching me steadily. It was too bad. You hate to see them waste themselves, the young ones. She was a pretty thing; she could have become a lovely thing; but she’d never make it now. Not unless she had more sense than I thought. I said, “My chief says the name you gave me is unavailable.”
    “It is too bad, señor. Then the señorita must die.”
    I made the expected, reasonable, useless noises: “What’s the point? It won’t get your dictator killed.” I could see that this made absolutely no impression on her—she was locked into her predetermined course of action—and I went on: “And it could get some people killed you’d rather keep living.”
    She bristled fiercely. “Are you threatening me, señor?”
    “Don’t be corny,” I said. “Of course I’m threatening you. But let’s try something else first. Will you let me talk with your daddy?”
    She looked startled; then she frowned suspiciously. “Who has told you? I did not give you my full name.”
    I said. “Hell, I once spent several days in the jungle with Col. Hector Jimenez. I got to know him pretty well; do you think I don’t know a daughter of his when I see her?” This wasn’t quite true, of course. I hadn’t realized who Dolores Anaya must be until I asked myself why Costa Verde had popped into my head like that; then I’d looked again and seen the unmistakable resemblance. I said, “Your male parent was a sensible man when I saw him last. He wouldn’t pull a fool stunt like this; and even if he did let somebody talk him into it, he wouldn’t persist with it after it had gone sour. Get him on the phone and let me talk some sense into him.”
    Dolores Anaya, whose family name was Jimenez—they weight down babies with great long strings of names down there—shook her pretty dark head. “It will do no good, señor. You are wrong, the idea was altogether my father’s. He has always remembered the very expert and professional manner in which you dealt with the bandit
El Fuerte.
He said we must have you now, since others have failed. Two others, one of whom was”—she hesitated—“was my older brother Ricardo. My father said it was too bad, and he regretted the necessity for coercion, but the people of Costa Verde must be saved from the butcher Rael regardless of cost. Their freedom is more important than the respect and friendship he feels for you, and perhaps you for him.”
    Well, it made sense. It’s the old Savior-Of-Your-Country syndrome. And of course no conspirator, particularly no Latin-American conspirator, would ever dream of simply picking up the phone and asking me if I’d shoot somebody for him, please. It has to be done complicated, with kidnaping and intimidation, or it doesn’t count.
    There was, of course, another consideration that the girl hadn’t mentioned, either because she hadn’t been taken wholly into her father’s confidence or because they’d agreed not to call it to my attention, since it might influence my decision unfavorably. It seemed very unlikely that if they did obtain the services of an agent of the U.S. Government against Rael, by whatever means, they’d keep it a secret from Rael, even if it made the job harder.
    Mac had already hinted that the present dictator of Costa Verde was a sensitive person—read: paranoid bastard—who’d blow his stack at any suggestion of treachery on the part of his gringo allies. Even if I should fail, the fact that I had tried could be used to sow a great deal of discord between Rael and his Americano supporters, to Jimenez’s advantage.
    I said, “Aren’t you forgetting something? Isn’t your daddy forgetting something?”
    “What, señor?”
    “He may have Eleanor Brand, but I have you.”
    The girl