Wild Country tq-3 Read online

  But Sandy's corn stood high and golden, now with a deeper glow from the saffron sun far to the west. Over the years, sunsets were beginning to lose the psychedelic glows brought on by thousands of nuclear blasts during the war years. Atmospheric dust and smoke had brought depressed temperatures and poor crop yields until recently. Quantrill tried once more with his VHP unit, and this time Sandy heard the beeper, complaining that she would not have time to freshen up before he arrived. He thought it better to avoid mentioning his cargo; Sandy tended to get squeamish about such things.

  Chapter Four

  Between two and three hundred klicks southwest of Rocksprings, Texas, lay La Mariposa — the butterfly — a sun-splashed village in the state of Coahuila. In the same way that Kerrville and Junction, Texas, marked the northern boundaries of Wild Country, La Mariposa marked its southern reach. North of La Mariposa lay a parched wilderness of jumbled mountains, Serranias del Burro. Beyond that ran El Rio Bravo, which yanquis called the Rio Grande. Contraband flowed between Mexico and Reconstruction America by the routes least likely to be discovered; and if you didn't have guaranteed passage through the Serranias, your most likely discovery was death. You would probably not discover the ruined dude ranch from which the contraband flowed.

  The man who could guarantee passage, or oblivion, dismounted at almost the same moment when Ted Quantrill stepped from his hovercycle. In well-bred Spanish he said to his wrangler, "Let him cool off slowly," and bestowed a pat on the neck of his lathered polo pony. The little stallion was an unmarked golden brown; a sorrel. His owner took great pleasure in surrounding himself with variations on the sorrel theme, for he, Felix Sorel, enjoyed a golden lifestyle. When Anglos called him Sorrel, he enjoyed that as well.

  Born to wealthy Marxists in Guadalajara, Felix Sorel grew from a handsome athletic child into a golden opportunity for Mexico's soccer hopes — an opportunity that country lost when Sorel's father arranged his education in Cuba. Felix Sorel put Cuba in the World Cup semifinals in 1996, then toured several countries as an honored guest. No one doubted that Sorel would become a millionaire forward on whatever team he chose, until the Sinolnd War flared. World War IV embittered young Sorel chiefly because it interfered with his career. Naturally, he blamed the US/RUS allies for the war.

  Sorel vanished during the Cuban-based invasion of Florida; was reported dead twice; then reappeared in Cartagena at the war's end as the guest of a Frenchman from Marseilles. Sorel could not have been an honored guest in that context: it is hard to honor a man by entertaining him on the profits from heroin sales.

  Yet Mexico, little damaged by the war and enriched by its oil sales to desperate North America, was anxious to honor Sorel. The media reported that he had put on too much weight, and Sorel proved critically sensitive about it when giving interviews. Felix Sorel returned to Mexico and his adoring fans by executive jet, and promised that he would'be down to a decent weight in the near future. He shed ten kilos of that weight soon after he breezed through Mexican customs, simply by removing the bags of pure heroin, twenty million pesos' worth of it, from around his waist. His gut pads, and the media hype surrounding them, had provided the perfect cover.

  Felix Sorel moved in very fast company. Sorel, in fact, was fast company, still in his physical prime at thirty-two. He took good care of his yellow hair, golden tan, blue eyes, and a grin that could scarcely be viewed without sunglasses. Sorel had every reason to grin a lot; his father had taught him that it was eminently proper to grow rich and powerful through flooding the yanqui domains with hard drugs — so long as he did not become a user of his own shit.

  A dutiful son, Felix Sorel kept his body finely tuned and free of drugs. His addictions could be guessed from his medical records. Urethritis from his gonorrhea; gonococcal pharyngitis; herpes simplex II; and trichomoniasis. The first two of these diseases Sorel got from male friends; the last two from female friends. In the celebration of self, Sorel was willing to share, and as a world-class soccer player he scored as often as he liked in sexual games.

  Today, Sorel's exercise on the polo pony was chiefly for show in a Latin culture that valued horsemanship. His private exercises featured loose clothing, mats, and sharp implements; skills he had learned in Cuban commando training and honed with his own lively intelligence. Ambushed once by Corsican rivals in the drug trade and once by kidnappers, Sorel had yet to be taken.

  Cat-sleek, careful in his habits, Sorel ate well, slept well, and split his time prosperously. He spent ten percent of his time among celebrities and ninety percent of it among his own picked staff, who shunned public places.

  At the moment he was baring those famous teeth of his, waving to the Brazilian nymph who sunned herself beside the natural-seeming, artificial sweep of his pool. Even from a satellite camera, the old spa appeared far gone in romantic shambles. Sorel's excellent comm set was line-of-sight laser, which defied intercept and was relayed through an automatic translator station near La Mariposa. Sorel's staff was kept small, composed of men who would rather be dead than imprisoned, and who used nothing more mind-sapping than mezcal and an occasional joint. Sorel abandoned his smile as he saw the lounge shutters thrown open. It was a signal that demanded his attention.

  "Wait there," he called to the girl in too perfect English. "I shall obtain something to tempt you." He took the ramshackle steps in a springing lope, removed the neckerchief of bronze silk from his throat, dabbed perspiration away as the heels of his polished riding boots echoed down the parquetry of an inner corridor.

  He continued past the lounge to a door the girl had always found locked, waited for the voiceprinter to unlock the carved oak door, strode in. In Spanish, he said with deceptive mildness to the two waiting men, "I assume this is worth interrupting me."

  One of the men was trained to operate the laser comm set; the other to encode and decode messages. Both had the straight hair and liquid obsidian eyes of Indios, and the look of men in the presence of their demigod.

  The tall man with the coder key around his neck ducked his head in respect. "Such is my belief," he said formally, and handed Sorel a folded scrap of paper. The other man, thick and silent, sat waiting for orders. A Yucatecan whose primary language was Maya, he sat as though prepared to wait through a geologic era.

  Sorel glanced at the scrap, let his hand drop in disgust, scanned it again, then glanced toward the ceiling as if instructions were printed there. For an instant he stood still, the blue eyes staring at nothing. Then he said to the seated man, "Please go to the kitchen, Kaiyi, and prepare sangarees for me and the woman. Serve them by the pool. Tell her I shall be with her presently."

  Kaiyi — a Maya nickname, for the sturdy fellow swam like a fish — arose without comment and left the room.

  "Give thanks, Cipriano." Sorel growled then. "You will share no more bad blood with Rawson."

  "I never thought you could trust him, senor."

  "And I never did; except where his own interests were served. Now it seems the trigger-happy fool has finally caught a fatal case of lead poisoning, if San Antonio Rose is right. He has not misinformed us yet."

  "Not that you know of," Cipriano replied impassively.

  Sorel studied the mestizo while abrading the scrap of polypaper under his thumb. He peeled its two layers apart; watched them degrade into loose fibers as he spoke: "You have kept something from me?"

  "Only my disquiet, senor. Your San Antonio Rose has too much of the gringo in him."

  The ghost of a smile: "Not as much as I, you buffoon. If he has arranged bail for Longo and Slaughter, he is still dependable."

  "Perhaps so that they can lead the yanquis back here?"

  "They know better than that. And if they do not, a sniper laser will teach them quickly enough." Now the smile was a grin: "That would please you, I am sure."

  A blink and a smile, where a yanqui would have nodded.

  One elegant finger, backed with sorrel hairs, wagged before the mestizo. "You are a deeply prejudiced man, Cipriano. W
ere it not for those renegade Texans of mine, it might be you and Kaiyi who would cross Wild Country with our shipments. And you would never pass for TexMex, my friend. You never learned to lower your chin when facing armed Anglos."

  "Gracias a Dios for that," Cipriano muttered. "Even here in Mexico they cheat at cards. They eye our women too openly. They need humility."

  "They need a cold-steel education, you mean," Sorel furnished with a thumb-flick that mimed a switchblade. "Perhaps you are right, but now we need them. For one thing, the two yanquis know where the shipment is hidden, and I cannot afford any more losses to the border patrol."

  His Indio eyes slitted, Cipriano asked, "And how do we know the yanqui patrols did not confiscate your demon-powder?"

  "Because," Sorel said as if to an idiot, "if they had, they would be holding Clyde Longo and Harley Slaughter without bail. One can learn much merely by understanding how the yanqui system works. Now then: since Slaughter is a cautious man, we can expect him to stay in contact with our San Antonio contact. I wish you to encode a reply."

  Cipriano was cautious, too; he handed Sorel a small polypaper pad so that the encoded message would be, letter for letter, Sorel's own. The message was longer than most. Cipriano read it through, understanding most of it.

  It was always possible that a transmission could be monitored. That explained why Sorel did not want that shipment's location radioed from Texas. The shrewd Slaughter had no doubt cached the stuff secretly, and well. Cipriano would have bet that Felix Sorel intended to meet Longo and Slaughter personally somewhere near Junction, Texas. But Cipriano would have lost.

  The Indio scanned the message again; shrugged. "Your man, San Antonio Rose: he knows this Cielita Linda?"

  "That is not your worry," Sorel said curtly. "Be at ease, Cipriano; I would not entrust such a crucial operation to anyone who has less to lose than I do."

  "But — a woman," Cipriano said, fingering his encoder key.

  Sorel replied first with silent amusement, striding to the door. Then, "If San Antonio Rose is a man, why not Cielita Linda? I shall send Kaiyi to operate the comm set," he added aloud, stepping through, making certain the door latched. He hurried to change into swim trunks, only half-amused at Cipriano's complaint. The trouble was, Cielita Linda was a woman; and while she had much to lose, she also had powerful connections north of Wild Country. It was her infatuation with Felix Sorel, more than anything else, that compelled her to take heavy risks. Sorel would have preferred to rule her through fear for, as he had been taught, in his business fear was by far the most dependable motive.

  Chapter Five

  As always after a month's absence from Sandy, Ted Quantrill felt buoyed by a sense of coming home. He always found changes — the corn stood in rosy golden rows, now, ready for picking, and the pumpkins would be turning color soon. Sandy's old windmill generator was gone, too, replaced by new vertical foils with a capstan drive. The new rig made more efficient use of ground winds and did not need to stand on a high tower, so it was not so conspicuous. Also, a secondhand hovercycle had been added since his last visit. Otherwise it was the same familiar little spread, he thought, strolling in the dusk with Sandra Grange.

  Time was when Sandy would have crowded near him, even in weather hot as this. Yet her independence had grown with her body. Sandy was no longer a grubby eleven-year-old, staring worshipfully up at him; nor an ardent, full-breasted seventeen, anxious to discover whether love and sexuality could coexist in a world as hard as the one she'd chosen. Now she was within a few inches of Quantrill's height, her arms tan as his, her hands roughened by farm chores. He knew she had changed to the bodiced dress and open sandals for him on short notice, but she walked beside him as an equal, the queen of her small domain.

  Pleased at thoughts of her self-sufficiency, Quantrill eased his arm around Sandy's waist, urged her to face him. "I've thought about you every day," he said, kissing her gently, one hand massaging her shoulder.

  "Have you thought about changing your line of work every day, too?" Her soft South Texas drawl was like her responding kiss: warm, vibrant, but with a reserve born of longstanding arguments.

  "That, too," he said, guiltily because he had done nothing of the sort. He let the massaging hand shift a bit. "You sure we won't have an hour before Childe gets home? I've missed you. Sandy."

  "I know what you've missed," she said, accusing, her full lower lip pursed as though scorning what they both enjoyed. She eased herself away, put fingers to her lips, blew a piercing four-toned blast that echoed from a nearby arroyo. "Now I'm sure. She'll be here in five minutes or I'll tan her hide."

  His smile was wry, his hands-out gesture full of defeat. "Umm, let's see; those first two notes say, 'Come in, all clear,' right? But I didn't get the others."

  "The third said, 'Ba'al, too,' and the last note stands for your name. That's why she'll bust her buns to get home, poor darlin'. She doesn't know what a nasty old man you really are."

  "Damn" little chance I get to prove it."

  "We've been all over that, and I still say the older Childe gets, the more she understands. If you want to play house with me, Mister Deputy, we do it on neutral territory." Realizing how snappish that sounded, she took his ear gently, circled her forefinger in it. "I'm surprised you're still so randy after the last time, Ted."

  "Last time?" It was nearly a yelp. "That was August, you blowsy wench! When do I fit into your bloody schedule again?"

  She giggled, raised her face in bogus sweetness, and began to croon: "On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me-e-e…"

  "Christmas your ass."

  She snapped her fingers. "Couldn't phrase it better myself," and then dissolved in laughter at the look on his face. "Ted. I have to get the corn in. Then I'll see about letting Childe stay with friends in Rocksprings, and I'll give you a call. Soon, love."

  "That's a promise," he insisted, half in frustration, half-amused.

  "No. That's a threat," she replied, raking his stalwart body with her glance, mouth parted. The cool competence in her eyes had the effect she intended. She laughed again as he wheeled away and swore to herself that she would not be so cruel again. Not this trip, anyway.

  He was muttering, "Jesus Christ, there must be a law against teasers," when Childe rode out of the scrub cedars, waving happily from her mount. Ted Quantrill wondered if he would ever grow accustomed to the sight, one that few others had ever seen and those few scarcely believed.

  Childe sat at ease, gangly bare legs astride the great boar, Ba'al, one hand entwined in the grizzled neck ruff while she waved with the other. Quantrill waved back, wondering whether her grip might be painful to the boar. He had never seen the great insolent-eyed Ba'al hesitate from wariness of pain. The significance of Childe's method of sitting her mount was not that it hurt, but that it worked. It seemed that the boar had an Apache's outlook on life. For Ba'al, pain was overrated.

  The way Childe communicated with the boar, it was no wonder the kid behaved so much like a white Indian. On the one hand, Childe had been taught the languages of Wild Country by her companion: tracking, weather signs, what you could eat, what might eat you — for bear, puma, and wolf had always lurked in these parts. On the other hand, Childe liked listening to Sandy talk, and Sandy usually had no one else to talk to. In this way, Childe learned a little about the books Sandy read. Dickens and McMurtry, Renault and Buck, Gibbon and Gibbons, Anger and Angier.

  The truth is that Childe considered her grown sister slightly dotty about words, ‘specially the printed kind. Why, she and Ba'al got along day in, year out without a jotted note or a printed sign, theirs a world of genuine sign and not arbitrary symbols. It was a plain puzzlement the way Sandy filled two composition books a year, writing in a journal that nobody else had ever read.

  Childe dismounted with a leap; ran pell-mell toward Quantrill, arms outstretched for one of the few dizzy delights that Ba'al could not provide. Quantrill braced himself, caught her, whirled Childe in a circ
le once, twice; heard the boar cough his concern. Then he let the girl regain her feet and hugged her briefly without speaking.

  "Bring me somethin'?"

  "No time, sis — but hold on! I have something for him." Quantrill recalled suddenly. He saw her big eyes ask the question. "Come and see," he chuckled. "For all I know he might not like it."

  The leviathan boar had not moved a hoof, only switching his flywhisk tail now and then, the yellow eyes missing nothing. Sandy ambled over to her old protector, watched in silence, and scratched Ba'al under the jaw.

  Another girlchild might have squealed in alarm when Quantrill hauled the headless rattler from stowage in the hovercycle. Childe squealed in delight. "Couldn't find a big one?"

  "Gimme a break," he joked, holding the massive varmint up for display to show that it was longer than the girl.

  She whistled, a quick two-note warble, and Quantrill turned to see Ba'al advance in a bouncing trot, the murderous hooves spurting dust, Then, as he had learned through harrowing experience, Quantrill bent his knees and waited. Ba'al took offense whenever Quantrill stood erect nearby, for then the man's eyes were a handsbreadth higher than the boar's. With bent knees. Quantrill would eye the boar on even terms.

  Ba'al planted his forelegs like a cutting horse as he noted the offering; then advanced again, snuffling. Quantrill held the snake out in both hands, nodding, Childe moving to Ba'al's side with odd snortings and head motions. Then — perhaps it was only his imagination — Quantrill could have sworn the great jaws opened in a smile. Ba'al moved his snout across the snake, his enormous tusks long as a man's forearm, curving up and back. Now nearing middle age, Ba'al had to lower his snout even farther to impale an enemy. A product of Texas Aggie geneticists, Ba'al was beyond prediction. It was Sandy's hope that he would live until both tusks formed complete circles, which might take another twenty years.