Over the Andes to Hell (A Captain Gringo Western Book 8) Read online

  There’s no rest for Captain Gringo in Bogotá. Between the seduction in the eyes of certain señoritas and the murder in the minds of the Kaiser’s spies, a man has to keep moving to keep alive. From the hot Amazon jungle thick with headhunters to the chilling Andes rife with rebels, the Captain is on a trek to trouble. But Captain Gringo has his mighty Maxim to defend him by day and a proud guerilla beauty to satisfy him by night. He needs all that protection and all that comforting in this brutal battleground of raw rubber, revolution and international rivalry.

  OVER THE ANDES TO HELL

  RENEGADE 8

  By Lou Cameron, writing as Ramsay Thorne

  First Published by Warner Books in 1981

  Copyright © 1981, 2016 by Lou Cameron

  First Smashwords Edition: February 2016

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Cover image © 2016 by Tony Masero

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Mike Stotter *Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

  Chapter One

  It was raining in Buenaventura and General Reyes had won this year’s revolution. So Captain Gringo was both wet and unemployed as he stood across from the railroad depot, trying to make up his mind. He was undecided, as well as on the dodge.

  It didn’t size up as an ambush. The tropic downpour had cleared the normally busy streets of the seaport. A couple of peons were sheltering in the arcade of the depot across the plaza. He didn’t see the navy blue of the Colombian Military Police anywhere. A setup seemed pointless in any case. The old geezer who’d approached him that morning at the cantina had known who he was. They could have blown him away at his table if that had been the game. So the old man’s yarn had at least a fifty-fifty chance of being on the level. It had sounded reasonable enough.

  “You are waiting here, señor, for your friend Gaston Verrier? I come for to warn you that you wait in vain. They are holding him at the presidio in the capital. They caught him right after the two of you split up during the fighting around Bogotá last month. If you do not leave Colombia muy pronto, they will catch you, too!”

  And that had been it. The old geezer had lit out like spit on a hot stove before the surprised American soldier of fortune had been able to ask any questions. He still had no idea who’d sent the message. If it had been Gaston himself, there’d been no time, and no way, to send a message back.

  Captain Gringo grimaced as smoke from his cigar curled up into the rain from under the wet brim of his straw planter’s sombrero. He had to make up his mind. The afternoon train would be leaving soon for the high country.

  The message had told him to look out for his own ass. That part had made sense. Gaston would hardly expect him to be fool enough to break all the rules of the professional revolutionary. Gaston had taught them to him when they’d first met, as prisoners in a Mexican jail a while back. Old Gaston had been at this game a long time, and if there was any way to get him out of this latest mess, Gaston had already spotted it and was doubtless making plans of his own.

  Like Captain Gringo, Gaston Verrier had accumulated a lot of wanted posters in his travels. If the victorious Colombian junta hadn’t shot him by now, they were almost certainly planning to turn him over to the French for that longstanding reward. Hell, by the time anyone could get from here up to Bogotá, the dapper little Frenchman figured to be well on his way down the far slope to Devil’s Island on the east coast of South America!

  “Dumb,” Captain Gringo told himself again. He and Gaston had taken the money and run, or just run, in more than one revolution since they’d teamed up. This would be the very first time he ever turned around and walked right back into the jaws of the winners.

  Gaston was a friend and comrade in arms, sort of, but loyalty stops short of suicide, and he knew damned well that if the shoe was on the other foot, Gaston would not, repeat not charge head down into any goddamned military presidio in the heart of enemy territory for his own mother!

  Captain Gringo knew he’d be completely on his own. Those young rebels he’d been with a few weeks back wouldn’t be there when he arrived in Bogotá for a rematch. If the winning side hadn’t wiped them out, they’d have gone deep underground by now. So there was nobody in the highlands he could hide out with. They’d know him at any of the places he’d been before. And a tall blond Yanqui attracted attention down here, even when nobody was looking for him. He’d chanced staying in Buenaventura to wait for Gaston long past what common sense dictated. Moving one step closer to General Reyes’s headquarters was just offering the other side two rebels for the price of one. The only smart move even Gaston would expect from him would be a sudden departure aboard the next boat out to anywhere.

  Captain Gringo felt in his pocket for a coin. He decided that if he flipped it heads he’d go over there and board that train like an idiot. If it came up tails, he’d save his own ass.

  He took out the fifty pesos piece and flipped it. It came up tails. He sighed and said, “Sorry, Gaston. I guess you’re on your own.”

  Then he put the coin away, patted the holstered gun under the damp linen of his tropic jacket, and glanced each way to see if anyone seemed interested in him.

  Nobody was. He took a drag of smoke, threw the cigar in a nearby puddle, and headed for the depot. As he squished across the plaza a little voice inside asked, “Why are you doing this, you maniac? We won! It came up tails!”

  Captain Gringo didn’t answer his common sense. As Gaston Verrier and others who’d fought beside him had observed in the past, Captain Gringo seldom listened to his common sense. That was one of the things that made him Captain Gringo.

  Chapter Two

  It didn’t really take a million years to reach Bogotá. It just seemed like it did to a man who spent the whole trip sweating bullets. General Reyes was a man who knew his business, and his business, these days, was putting the country back together after the egg had hit the fan. Reyes was neither a Conservative nor a Liberal, as the two sides who’d been fighting for control of Colombia had laughingly called themselves. General Reyes was the Man on a White Horse who’d waited until the fire-eating idealists had whittled themselves down like the Gingham Dog and Calico Cat. Then, with everybody very tired of the noise and wondering when in the hell it would be safe to walk the streets again, Reyes had simply moved in to “restore order” with plenty of machine guns and the usual firing squads.

  Captain Gringo got to tense up every time he passed through another checkpoint, but apparently the forged passport and I.D. he carried wasn’t on any of the lists they had. At one mountain station where they changed trains, a fellow passenger didn’t make it. The sleepy-looking sergeant checking papers yawned at the guy, a middle-aged fat man, and said something to the soldados with him. They frog-marched the fat man down the track, around a bend, and one of the women passengers screamed when they heard the fusillade of shots. Then the sergeant smiled pleasantly and told the rest of them they were free to go on. Captain Gringo was glad he hadn’t been seated near the guy they’d caught.

  At another stop, some other soldiers took a woman from among them. It wasn’t clear to anyone he was with whe
ther the woman was a suspected rebel or just pretty. Considering his size and Anglo features, they seemed even less interested in Captain Gringo than he’d expected them to be. He didn’t get to use his cover story once on the trip. Apparently anyone on the ruling junta who remembered a tall blond soldier of fortune had assumed he’d be out of the country by this time. The suspects they were really worried about would of course be native Colombians who might be planning the next round.

  So, as the last leg of his journey approached, Captain Gringo began to relax, as he was supposed to.

  At military headquarters in Bogotá a certain Colonel Maldonado, alias El Arano, was watching his progress on an office map. Captain Gringo’s pins were blue. There were others. Many others. The cool head of Colombian Military Intelligence was notorious for the webs he spun with those coded pins.

  They didn’t call Maldonado El Arano because he looked like a spider. He was a rather handsome man who didn’t wear his military decorations or an expression anyone could read. He was coldly correct to other officers and as kind to enlisted men as military discipline allowed. His wife and kids adored him. Few newspaper reporters were aware he existed. He was the most dangerous man in the junta now ruling the country under General Reyes. Some of the wise money sometimes wondered whether General Reyes or Colonel Maldonado was really running the country. But, in truth, there was no rivalry. General Reyes needed El Arano’s talents to keep him on his white horse, and Maldonado didn’t care who rode the white horse, as long as they let him do his own job, his own way.

  This wasn’t always easy. Nobody in his right mind would knowingly cross El Arano, for the same reasons prudent men don’t shove a finger into a hornet’s nest But the sardonic Maldonado’s methods were often more subtle than anything a junior officer might have read in Machiavelli, so it was a good idea to check with the boss before you pulled anything as bush league as a triple cross. El Arano didn’t set up double or triple crosses. He set up rows of domino treacheries.

  And so an aide was cautious when he entered the colonel’s office with a telegram to say, “That Americano, Captain Gringo, will arrive this evening at six-fifteen, my Colonel. I assume you do not wish for him to see any military police around the depot?”

  El Arano turned away to stare at his map-web as he tried to remember the boy was young. When he spoke, his voice was controlled and polite as he said, “On the contrary, Lieutenant. I have crossed blades with this Richard Walker before. He is good. Very good. A bit dramatic for my taste, but a man who thinks well on his feet. He will be expecting a police check at the main depot. Ergo, there should be one! Make certain the men understand they are to act reasonably suspicious, but that they are to let him through.”

  “Ah, I understand, my Colonel. We let him through so that our agents may follow him, eh?”

  Maldonado sighed and murmured, “God give me strength.” Then he said, “No. That big Yanqui will spot any tail we can put on him. I keep saying this over and over. I wish someone would listen. I want Richard Walker, alias Captain Gringo, to pass through our checkpoints unmolested. I want him to take the usual countermeasures and make certain he is not being followed. I want him to move about the city in complete freedom. I don’t want any of our agents going anywhere near him! That big bastard is dangerous and I see no need to risk one of our people when we don’t have to.”

  “Very well, my Colonel. Your orders shall be carried out to the letter.”

  The colonel turned from his map with a pleasant smile. He saw his junior was totally confused, despite his willingness. Maldonado said, “I know where Walker is going. I know what he is going to do. He is going to do exactly what I want him to do. Frankly, I find it rather amusing to be using the notorious Captain Gringo for my own pawn this time.”

  “A most dangerous pawn, if I may be allowed an opinion, my Colonel.”

  Maldonado’s eyes flickered slightly, the way a shark turning in deep water roils the surface. Then he shrugged and said, “I seldom allow a junior officer to have an opinion, but I am in an indulgent mood and your father is an old friend of mine. I shall tell you something of this Yanqui, Captain Gringo. I want you to know he is good. I don’t want you to think he’s as good as they say he is. Nobody could be.”

  “My Colonel has had dealing with him before, no?”

  “Yes, and I confess he made me look bad. I thought at first I was dealing with the usual soldier of fortune. Since then I have had time to study the man’s background. He is not the usual lazy bully with a zest for violence. Until about a year ago he was a U.S. Army officer, a graduate of West Point with a good record in the Yanqui’s Indian Fighting Army. Before he started giving people down here a hard time, he was learning tricks from Apache and Mexican border raiders. Unfortunately, he has a very good memory. So what we are dealing with is a trained professional soldier with a rather alarming grasp of guerrilla tactics.”

  “They say he is very good with the new machine gun, too.”

  “That is unfortunately all too true. Walker is more than a good shot. He’s an ordinance expert. The woods are filled with soldiers of fortune who know how to shoot. Captain Gringo, in a pinch, can repair or even make a gun. He can run almost any kind of machinery and seems to understand that new Marconi wireless business. He can navigate a vessel on the high seas. He once surprised some people alarmingly with a lighter-than-air balloon. I would not be at all surprised to see him at the tiller of one of those new horseless carriages, if there was one around here for him to steal. But, fortunately, there aren’t many in Bogotá at the moment. One must think about things like that when Captain Gringo is in town!”

  The aide blinked in surprise and blurted, “For why would he steal a horseless carriage in any case, my Colonel?” and Maldonado chuckled almost fondly before he replied, “To get away, of course. I assume he’ll begin to suspect a trap as soon as he’s been in town a few hours. We shall, of course, have a highly visible roadblock set up near the railway depot as soon as he leaves the vicinity. My plan won’t work if he tries to backtrack for Buenaventura.”

  “He won’t be able to get to the train again, my Colonel. May one ask just where you want for him to go? Forgive me, I do not understand your plan at all.”

  Maldonado said, “You’re not supposed to. I forget who it was who said that two can keep a secret if one of them is dead, but he was right. Are there any new developments on Captain Gringo’s little friend Gaston?”

  The aide shook his head and said, “No, my Colonel. Frankly, I was afraid the Frenchman could have sent another message to his big friend after we intercepted the first one he put on the rebel underground telegraph.”

  Maldonado shrugged and said, “Impossible. Once we’d, ah, amended the original message and sent it via our own agent, Captain Gringo never went back to his old haunts. Ergo, even if Gaston somehow got another through, Captain Gringo’s had no chance to get it. He has been in my maze since he left the cantina down in Buenaventura. Now, all we have to do is keep him headed in the right direction with a minimum of danger to our own people. So this discussion is over, Lieutenant. I want you out on the street, keeping it cleared. I’m going to be very cross with you if there’s a firefight I hadn’t mapped out ahead of time.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir. But what if he starts a fight with us?”

  “Damnit, Lieutenant, Captain Gringo won’t shoot our agents if they don’t get near him. Get out there and make sure they don’t!”

  Chapter Three

  It wasn’t raining in Bogotá that evening. It seldom did. The interior capital stood high and dry at 8,500 feet on an intermontane plain of the Andes. So, despite the latitude, it always seemed to be springtime there. That was why it was the capital.

  But despite the benign atmosphere, Captain Gringo smelled a rat as he strolled out of the railroad depot. The police check inside had been a lark and the people on the street outside seemed relaxed, considering. There were still fresh bullet pocks on the walls up and down the street and you c
ould see where they’d thrown a barricade across the pavement near the corner. But the more obvious signs of a recent revolution had been cleaned up and nobody seemed excited about anything. So what in the hell was wrong? Why were the hairs on the back of his neck tingling?

  Returning to the scene of one’s recent crimes against the state, while dumb, offered at least some advantages to a man on the dodge. Unlike most of the places he’d hit since jumping the Mexican border one jump ahead of the law, Bogotá was a place he knew his way around.

  Captain Gringo hailed a horse drawn cab and ordered the driver to take him to the hotel he and Gaston had stayed in the last time they were here. He had no intention of staying there, of course. A man trying to throw folks off his tail makes certain basic moves.

  Any police informer around the station would have heard his shouted destination as he climbed in the back of the cab. As the vehicle left the neighborhood of the depot, Captain Gringo watched to see if they were being followed.

  He couldn’t spot any tail. So far, so good. It sure was beginning to look like nobody was expecting him in Bogotá.

  “Bullshit,” he muttered darkly to himself as he lit a cigar with a frown. If they had Gaston locked up in the Presidio, they had to be expecting somebody to try and spring him. He and the little Frenchman were unfortunately well known in military mercenary circles and it wasn’t as if a tall blond Anglo was hard to describe or keep an eye out for in this neck of the woods. Gaston tended to blend in. Captain Gringo knew he didn’t.

  The tall American studied the passing scenery, getting his bearings. It was early evening but, as always in the tropics, darkness fell fast with none of the gloaming afterglow he remembered from back home in the States. He took out a bill and placed it on the leather seat beside him. It was three times as much as the regular fare from the station to the hotel. He didn’t want the driver bitching loudly later.

  Captain Gringo waited until they were passing through a tunnel of shade trees he’d noticed the last time he’d made this trip. Then he cupped the smoke in his palm to hide the glow, silently opened the side door, and slid out to land, running in a catlike crouch that carried him silently away from the rumbling cab as the driver drove on, oblivious to the sneaky change of destination. Captain Gringo flattened out against the shaded bole of a massive pepper tree and waited until the cab rattled on out of sight. Then he grinned and started walking with the cigar at a jaunty angle. There wasn’t another soul in sight. He was well clear of the depot and nowhere near the hotel where his face would be known. The driver would be puzzled, even annoyed, when he pulled up at the hotel entrance to find his passenger missing. But he wouldn’t search too hard once he found the money in the back. If he ever saw the son of a bitch again, Captain Gringo intended to ask for his change.