Jim Phelps and Barney Collier had spent several hours of waiting at the vantage point of Misión Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia overlooking Balgas. From here they had a long, unrestricted view of the village and all road approaches.
Jim had devised a simple plan. If Cidd Menendez moved as Jim predicted, he wouldn't know his departure from his sumptuous villa had been noted by Paris and Molly. Menendez wouldn't suspect he was under surveillance by two American tourists preceding him on the south road.
Not knowing the precise moment when Menendez would decide if it was safe to move, Jim and Barney had arrived at the mission during the morning, long before the convertible, the black Porsche, or the President's gray Dart had departed from La Junares.
Dressed in poplin slacks, bush jackets, jump boots and safety helmets, Jim and Barney had appeared at the mission on a pair of growling secondhand Hondas purchased at La Junares.
They were accepted as two friendly Americans on a carefree ramble through South America.
Padre Vega had given them a run-of-the-place welcome. They'd seen the busy clinic, heard singing recitations in the mud brick school, looked at beautiful frescoes and life-sized wooden statues in the quiet chapel. Their stakeout was subtle, one of them always managing to drift about and watch the village and roads below.
As time wore on, Jim began to feel the strain. Would the expected cars never arrive?"
Others thought of his power to arrange events as nothing short of uncanny. He did have marvelous inductive and deductive powers, developed and sharpened by experience. He could ferret out multiple details and rub them together until the sparks shed light on the portable short-term future. But he didn't own a magic crystal ball, and he wasn't immune to human doubts.
He reviewed the chain of elementary thinking that had called the shots on Cidd Martinez's movements of this day.
The arrival of the Haigui with the counterfeit millions had to frigger Menendez into action. Period. Basic premise.
Deductions from basic premise:
1.) Menendez would have to contact his people without delay.
2.) As a cover, Menendez must have an innocent excuse for leaving the capital.
3.) Menendez had no legitimate reason for a trip to the interior---unless sudden business came up at his plantation.
The plantation was connected with Chiguanada only by way of the south road. Therefore....
4.) Menendez must leave Chiguanada on the south road.
5.) If he suspected he was being followed, Menendez would continue, innocently, to his plantation.
6.) If not, Menendez would leave the north road and double back to the guerilla camp hidden in the rugged, scrub-grown hills.
Detailed maps suggested that Balgas was the logical departure point for Menendez.
Last night Jim and Barney had stood at the big chart room of the Seaview, staring down at the San Gonzalan maps to jell them in memory. Jim had spoken last-minute instructions.
"The pinpointing of the guerilla camp is vital to our entire operation. Menendez has got to reveal it to us. Our primary lookout post will be the mission overlooking Balgas. If Menendez should continue to an unlikely turnoff further south, we'll be set to alter the details accordingly."
Jim had straightened. "Now, let's get a move on. We've got to melt into La Junares and pick up two motorcycles for a breeze south tomorrow morning."
Willy Armitage's rugged, sweating face had hovered over a control panel in the Seaview's main bridge. "Wow! You guys get to have all the fun, while I'm stuck helping Crane and Nelson run this tub."
"Just do your part to help keep the tub safe and out of sight," Barney had said, grinning.
"You're better off than Mike Collins," Lee Crane had put in. "He was stuck in orbit, all alone, while his two pals went bunny-hopping on the moon. You got at least 200 men to back you up."
"And remember that Armstrong and Aldrin couldn't have hopped off without him," Admiral Nelson finished.
"I know." Banter had faded from Willy's voice and eyes. "Take care, you guys."
"Better believe it," Jim had said. "If we've misread Menendez, we'll have to fall back on a secondary plan. Either you or Captain Crane, in the guise of a servant, will have to get inside Menendez's villa, search his study, his papers. It would be a risky way of gleaning clues to the location of the guerilla base and might throw us badly off schedule."
"You've read Menendez, Jim," Willy had said. "You always read well."
Now, lunching on sandwiches from the bag of sandwiches from Barney's Honda, Jim found himself borrowing from the memory of Willy's confidence.
He and Barney were no longer objects of interest. The mistaken routine continued as they lazed in the apparent siesta mood under the giant banyan tree where they'd eaten.
"Paris and Molly," Barney spotted the convertible 1 second before Jim did.
Jim sat up, rigid, watching. The action in the village was puppet pantomime from the height and distance of the banyan. Paris stopped at a weathered clapboard garage with a single hand-operated gas pump. While a lanky San Gonzalan filled the gas tank, Molly got out of the car and strolled to a soft-drink cooler. Soon the three were having drinks together, and the San Gonzalan was no doubt answering typical tourist questions about sights to see and places of local interest.
A black Porsche came out of th mouth of the square. It made a U-turn and stopped. The engine killed as the occupant sat and watched the direction from which he'd come.
"Menendez," Barney muttered at Jim's elbow. Both men were standing now.
"Must be," Jim agreed. "He doesn't have a twin."
Seeing nothing coming south, Menedez's decision resulted in a spurt of dust from the Porsche's rear wheels.
The car swung quickly around the northern end of the square, then squirted at an angle up a side road between the two buildings. A moment later the car flashed out of the shadows, driving its new route.
The Great Paris had paid for the gas and drinks. He and Molly got back into the convertible. Molly gave the attendant a friendly goodbye wave as Paris drove off, circling the square.
The convertible left Balgas just far enough behind the Porsche to stay out of sight. Jim watched the car curve below the mission almost within shouting distance. Nibbling at the dust smudge lingering from the Porsche's passage, the convertible dropped down a short grade, climbed up again, then wound out of sight.
Barney tapped Jim's bicep. Phelps swung his gaze to the village. A gray Dart swept across the square. It continued south. A few moments later it reappeared, looking as if it was angrily gnashing its gears.
"The President seems to have missed the scent," Barney mentioned.
"He's decided on the right road---where the scent went, to coin a phrase," said Jim.
They waited under the banyan tree until the gray sedan became the third car traveling the side road.
"Okay," Jim said. "It shouldn't be long now."
Stretching their arms and yawning, they strolled across a sunlit patch of wire grass to the shadows of a scraggly pine, where they'd parked the motorcycles.
"One last chore to do here," Jim reminded.
"How could I forget?" Barney held out his hand. Jim slid a white envelope from his jacket and thrust it into Barney's waiting fingers.
Inside the envelope was a sheaf of American currency. Across it was written (Translated from Spanish): Perhaps you could buy some antibiotics for the clinic on behalf of two touring Americans who enjoyed your hospitality.
Barney vanished through the shadowy doorway of the chapel to place the envelope on the lectern, where Padre Vega would find it.
Jim straddled his Honda, watching the road below. Barney came hurrying back and mounted his own machine. They waited, muscles taut, until they saw the President's Dart, a gray projectile, rounding a hillside curve. It was chewing up a billow of dust.
Barney whistled softly. "Man, he's sure bombing it back the way he came!"
"Means our schedules are clicking," Jim said. "Paris and Molly have made with the roadblock just fine, cutting Menendez loose. Now, Menendez is taking Paris and Tracey back to the capital."
"I hope he doesn't know anything about refined tortures!"
"He's suffered a few," Jim said. "But I doubt he's the man to use them."
Poised in readiness to start the Hondas, Jim and Barney watched the speeding Dart. From their height and angle, it was difficult to tell how many passengers were in the car. But just before the Dart hurtled from sight on the road below, Jim saw a man's hand and forearm dangle with apparent carelessness from the rear window. It was Paris's signal.
"Okay," Jim said. "We're next up to bat. It won't take Rodriguez long to pause in the village and send the local gendarmes hopping to two in and impound that convertible.
He and Barney kicked the motors into life. With Jim in the lead, they dropped down to the narrow service road, streaking past the vegetable gardens and sheep pastures that served the mission. They paused where the service road ended at the crude highway. A lingering fog of dust still marked the passage of the President's car, but nothing else was moving.
Jim and Barney revved their engines, turning away from Balgas in the direction Menendez had taken. The Hondas were imbued with life, straining eagerly towards the grades and curves. In a few minutes Jim and Barney rounded a bend, and the stalled convertible was suddenly there, a barricade angled across the road.
The bikes skidded a little under the impact of their brakes. They slued to a side-by-side stop a dozen yards short of the convertible.
Barney looked the car over with a swift glance. "He sure did it up brown. Hardly left room for a two-wheeler to squeak past."
Jim angled off and inched around the convertible's front bumper. Barney followed closely, the engine under him grumbling against the restrained throttle. Little spills of gravel from the precipitous lip of the ditch marked the passage of narrow, deep-treaded tires.
Once around the barrier, Jim and Barney fed the Hondas a heavier dose of gas. The machines leaped ahead. Jim and Barney rode with an easy sense of balance, wind whipping at their amber goggles and pulling at the corners of their mouths.
The road rushed at them, a coiling ribbon of gravel straining steadily higher. They leaned into curves that whipped to and fro. Stony cutbanks flushed past, with sheer drops hugging the road on the other side.
The landscape steadily grew more primitive and forbidding. Jumbled masses of rock thrust from barren hilltops. Dark streaks showed where the rains of ages hadn't yet washed down the roadside of one fiery ash. The higher mountains rose like black shark's teeth cutting the firmament blue.
To Jim and barney the rugged terrain had a grand, savage beauty all its own. And it wasn't wholly inhospitable. Stunted, gnarled clumps of vegetation fought for life in the heights, with wiry roots snaking through stone. Butt he valleys and meadows were a treat for the color-hungry eyes. They were lush, green oases fed by a tropical sun and the wash from the upper reaches. Here and there, brown patchwork revealed a farmer's clearing. Sheep browsed slowly across a pasture, oblivious to the zip of Hondas in the distant heights.
Jim spotted the Porsche as he created a long, steep slope. He called out Barney's name above the roar of engines and rushing wind. They halted quickly.
As dust settled at their feet, they looked out over the panorama of crags and valleys spread out before them. They could see for miles. The road was a gray snake, its hairpin curves writhing around and about the heights.
Jim pointed across a valley. "The car just vanished around that peak over there. We should be seeing it again right about----now!"
And the Porsche came flashing into the view, roaring at top speed out of the distant gash in the hillside, threading its way with care.
Barney broke off his quick study of the Porsche, clearing his throat thoughtfully. He scanned the ridges humped against the sky like a grotesque moonscape. "Man, it's going to be a real cool ride."
"So to speak," Jim agreed.
They slipped miniature, transistorized walkie-talkies from their saddlebags and strapped them around their necks.
"I'm off," Barney grinned. "Bring money----not flowers---to the hospital."
"Good luck," Jim said.
His words were lost in the snarl of the Honda's motor.
Barney raced a hundred yards farther on the road. Then he turned and coaxed the Honda up and away, slithering and backing toward the sky on a steep tilt of shale.
Watching, Jim flinched as the front wheel flipped up and seemed to hang against a distant white cloud. Barney dropped his shoulders forward, shifting his weight with an easy flow of motion. The Honda steadied like a stallion obeying a master's touch on the bit. With a last shower of gravel from its rear wheel, it flew from Jim's sight beyond a jagged mass of basalt.
Jim settled on the saddle and gave his bike gas. Swinging into the next curve, he mentally pictured Barney's progress. It would demand the utmost of Barney's nerves and reflexes. But the direct route would cut miles from the twistings and turnings of the road.
If Barney didn't break his neck, he would be well ahead of the Porsche in a short time. He and Jim would be the tips of a pincer, with Cidd Menendez dangling unknowingly between them. Senor Menendez wouldn't be able to stop for a drink of water and keep the matter to himself.
Jim broke off his inner sharing of Barney's bone-jarring ordeal and began concentrating on his own job.
He flatted out the next long curve. When he came out of it, he spotted the Porsche again. It was a dust cloud slipping around a rocky shoulder directly across a green-carpeted valley 500 feet below.
Menendez was driving as if his nervous stomach had a marked distaste for narrow curves that snaked through the heights without guardrails.
Good. Jim nodded to himself. Menendez's overly anxious driving would simplify things for Barney.
Jim throttled back. The trick was to give the Porsche enough leeway to avoid arousing Menendez's suspicions, without losing contact.
Jim paced Menendez's one slow mile after another. Far ridges were even cloaked with an ancient silence. The shadow of a soaring hawk rippled across the road. A thin finger of smoke wandered up from a thatched hut below.
Twice Jim passed narrow, rutted turnoffs, primitive trails leading tortuously down to farmlands. Neither showed the telltale settling of dust that would've marked a new direction for the Porsche.
The small, powerful radio riding on Jim's chest emitted a sudden vibration. Jim halted the Honda in the shadow of a stone outcropping and lifted the radio to mouth level. Barney's voice questioned matter-of-factly: "Bass to Tadpole. Do you read me? Over."
"Loud and clear, Bass," said Jim. "What's cooking? Over."
"I'm shipshape---except for a mouthful of teeth that got rattled loose," Barney reported. "I'm among some rocks on a high crest with a long view. Our friend has just tippy-toed around a curve. I've got him in the field glasses. I'm more than ten minutes ahead of him, as the road goes and the way he's driving. Over."
"Acknowledged. If he continues route, move on in 5 minutes to a new position...."
"Wait a minute, Jim!" Barney's voice rattled the speaker. "He's slowing---turning off!"
Jim held a breath, waiting.
"He's two miles ahead of you," Barney resumed. "I don't locate another side road with the binoculars. You can't miss it! Over."
"See you soon," Jim said. "Over and out."
Jim gunned the engine. But, anxious though he was, he kept his speed geared to conditions. Both he and Barney had a healthy respect for 2-wheelers and a great contempt for carelessness and showoffs.
A curve resolved into a squiggle that meandered the line of least resistance along the rocky ridge for 3 or 4 miles.
Jim's pulse picked up a beat. 1/2 a mile ahead, a settling balloon of dust betrayed Cidd Menendez's turn-off. Beyond that, the road was deserted.
Jim coasted to a halt. Under different circumstances, the vista would've caught his breath.
He could see for miles. The mountain eased away in a series of gradual rolls and folds. Below lay blue-misted stretches that appeared untouched by man. Brown, weedy noses of broken hills poked from the tropical hues that choked the vales, draws, and lower tablelands. A river glinted in the far distance. Beyond that, the highest peaks on the island were stamped harshly against the sky. Those spongy heights collected the rains that leaked in springs and rivulets to form the river.
Jim pulled in his gaze, studying the side road Menendez had taken. It was a trail more suited to goats than to modern transport. With tough clumps of brown grass knotted between the ruts, it inched downward as if made by a tired peon driving a morose burro. It clove through sagebrush and spiny brush, dipping to disappear into gnarled, brown-needed pines at the timberline.
Jim shaded his eyes with his forearm. He didn't spot the Porsche right away, but a flock of raucously cawing birds flurried from the mottle greenery below the drab pines.
The hum of Barney's Honda brought Jim's head around.
Barney rode up and stopped. He was rumpled and wrong out from the ride across the wild ridges. Streaks of sweat cut the grime on his lean, brown face. A thorny bush had grabbed and ripped the right shoulder of his jacket. But there was a glint in the dark eyes behind the bulbous, amber glasses.
He and Jim communicated with a look. Tricky minutes lay ahead. How far out did the guerillas have observation posts? Had lulling inactivity released their security measures? Would Pau Saldana take the precaution of sending a scouting party back along Menendez's route?
Jim and Barney babied the bikes down the mountainside. Spangles of piney shadow closed over them. The rutted road was slippery where the pine needles had fallen and collected.
The surroundings changed rapidly, as if nature had vowed to make up for the barrenness of the heights. Tall, tropical hardwood trees towered above their lesser cousins. Brightly plumaged wings flitted in the trellised heights, while small furry creatures scurried through ground shadows. Wild palms began to blaze with the reddish purple of parasite orchids. The smell and taste of the air took on a steamy jungle warmth.
Menendez's slow progress was a big help. They didn't have the worry of his racing off and disappearing.
Every 100 yards or more, Jim and Barney rolled the bikes off the road and dismounted. They separated for quick observation forays.
On the 4th sortie, Jim shouldered through a thicket and wriggled out on a mossy stone slab. The view was good from the promontory. Belly-flat, he slid his binoculars to his eyes and a pleasant jolt went through him.
No mistaking it. From a flat clearing 1 miles away, the swaying tip of a shortwave antenna peeped over the treetops.
Jim held back an exultant laugh. Vegetation clogged his line of sight, but as he inched the glasses around, he picked out additional clues to the setup.
A weathered, flat-topped stone pyramid held him for a moment. It reminded him of the ancient pyramids of Peru, although it was much smaller.
He made out portions of thatched roofs and slab-sided buildings---and movement. Tiny figures were hurrying across the naked, hard-packed compound to meet the Porsche. Jim saw the car as a flash of sunlight on black paint nosing into the clearing.
Jim lowered the glasses and spoke into the walkie-talkie. "Okay, Tadpole, we've nailed down the location. They've reclaimed an ancient Indian ruin, probably Incan."
Despite their circumstance, Barney's never flagging scientific interest was whetted. "Wow! I'd swap an eyetooth for a chance to study the site."
Jim grinned. "Maybe you can make it into a vacation project sometime---if we help San Gonzalo to a happier future. Time now to blow and return to base. Move out. I'll cover. Menendez may post a detail up the road a way to double check his security."
The walkie-talkie hummed for an empty moment. Jim knew Barney was thinking of arguing about which of them should provide cover.
"It's routine, Tadpole. No sweat. Menendez will cut the road while he's in camp, but I'm sure he won't order a full-scale sweep. He's got no reason to."
"Then you won't object, Jim , if I...."
"Need to be reminded?" Jim's usually placid tone was a bit clipped as he spoke against the walkie-talkie. "You're the cornerstone in future operations. Start swimming, Tadpole!"
"Roger."
"I'll catch up before you're 5 miles closer to Balgas. Over and out."
Jim clicked off the radio and dropped it against his chest. He turned and slithered across the outcropping. Parting the underbrush, he worked his way through. Upon reaching the trail, he noted that Barney had already departed.
He left his own bike in its screen of bushes and settled himself in a fern-grown hollow to observe the road below.
Minutes passed. Insects hummed incessantly. Birds flitted, fed and orchestrated sound in the trees. An armadillo trundled across the ruts 50 yards away.
Satisfied at last, Jim pushed up, rescued his Honda from the tangle, and noiselessly walked it out of sight beyond a bend high in the hillside.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
