Renegade 30

  Captain Gringo – caught in a deathtrap on the Mosquito Coast!

  On the run from the law, Captain Gringo seeks refuge in soggy, snake-infested Nicaragua. But while still in port, the Renegade is trapped in the crossfire of an explosive civil war. The rebels, led by a wily old guerrilla named El Chino, lay siege to the town. Before he can even choose sides, Gringo is besieged by a beautiful British missionary’s wife and a very eager mestiza virgin who wants Gringo to teach her about love. Now Gringo’s dodging the bullets, pleasing the women, and fighting to come out on the winning side!

  CONTENTS

  Publisher’s Note

  Mayhem at Mission Bay

  Copyright

  About the Author

  The Renegade Series

  Publisher’s Note:

  As with other books in this series, the author uses characters’ native dialect to bring that person to life. Whether they speak French, Irish or Spanish, he uses the vernacular language to impart this. Therefore words such as “toim” appears for “time” or “lave” for “leave” or “moils” for “miles” and others are not spelling/OCR mistakes.

  When Captain Gringo said persistent pansies gave him a pain in the ass, he was speaking metaphorically. He’d been in some odd positions indeed since he’d been on the run with a price on his ass. But so far he’d never been either the bugger or buggee in a man-to-man situation, and he wasn’t at all interested in learning what either felt like. So when Señorito Romero minced into the main salon of the SS Trinidad just after sunset, Captain Gringo slipped out the far door to the promenade deck.

  This wasn’t saying much. Trinidad was only a passenger vessel amidships, between her two big side paddles. Fore and aft of the center island, she was a tramp steamer who poked in and out of many a port of call up and down the Mosquito Coast to take on or drop off more serious cargo. The passenger accommodations above her engine room and bunkers probably helped her owners with the fuel bills and payroll. They didn’t seem to care whether their passengers were in a hurry, and should anyone want to get off at a port offering nothing in the way of cargo business, tough shit. But when a knockaround guy needed transportation in a hurry, he took what he could get; and the purser had said they’d be putting in at Limón or, if not Limón, some damned Costa Rican port of call, so what the hell.

  The tall blond soldier of fortune moved along the port deck as far as it went. Then, cornered between the paddlewheel box and the rail overlooking the forward well deck, he cupped his hands around a match and lit a claro. Above the chunking of the paddles he heard a girlish voice observe, “Oh, so here you are, Ricardo! Have you been avoiding me, or … did you want to meet me out here discreetly?”

  Romero’s English was almost perfect. From there it was all downhill. Captain Gringo turned his back to the rail to face his gay caballero. Not because he wanted to look at the little creep, but because it made him goosey to have his rump exposed to Romero. The mariposa had first made his desires obvious by grabbing for the much bigger Yank’s dong under the captain’s table at dinner earlier in the voyage and hadn’t kept his hands to himself enough to matter since.

  Señorito Hector Romero was a plump, perfumed little guy who would have made a short woman had he been built more in accord with his obvious sexual preferences. He wore a white linen suit, and his hatless head was pomaded with Macassar oil so that his slicked-down hair shone like patent leather. It was too dark out on deck to tell if he was wearing makeup, but he probably was. Captain Gringo said, “I came out here to be alone, if it’s all the same to you, Pal.”

  Romero giggled like a schoolgirl and said, “Oh, I do want to be your pal, Ricardo! Why do you insist on fighting it? Can’t you see it’s bigger than both of us?”

  Captain Gringo laughed despite himself and said, “Flattery will get you nowhere. Look, Romero, I don’t know how else to put it, but I’m just not your kind of guy.”

  “Why don’t we let me be the judge of that?” lisped the mariposa, adding in a huskier tone: “My stateroom is just down the deck, and I assure you none of the others will know. You’re afraid your little French sweetheart will be jealous? Pooh, how is he to find out? Who is going to tell him?”

  Captain Gringo laughed again and said, “You, for one, if you had anything to brag about. But before you and my sidekick, Gaston, get into a hair-pulling contest over my fair white body, it’s only fair to warn you he likes girls, which is just as lucky for you. Old Gaston fights dirty.”

  Romero sighed impatiently and insisted, “Pooh, I don’t see why you two are so insistent on this butch act you’ve been putting on. Don’t you think I’ve noticed the jealous looks he’s been casting our way every time I try to get next to you, Ricardo?”

  “You know what you are, Romero? You’re nuts! Old Gaston has a wry sense of humor, and it’s pretty obvious what you are. So, if it’s any comfort to you, he’s been kidding me about you. He seems to think it would settle your nerves if somebody shoved an umbrella up your ass and opened it. But I don’t have an umbrella or anything else I want to shove up your ass, so why don’t you go bother someone else? There has to be at least one hard-up guy who’s not so particular on a vessel this size, right?”

  The pansy pouted and said, “Pooh, I don’t want a sordid affair with some mestizo crewman. I want you, Ricardo! Can’t you see I am crazy about you?”

  “Crazy is the word I’ve been groping for. Can’t you see I’m just not interested in your brand of slap and tickle, damn it?”

  “I can see you’re shy. But if you’re not at least bisexual, why did you react so calmly to my first discreet advances, Ricardo?”

  The big Yank snorted smoke out his nostrils in disgust and replied, “Tactical error, I guess. Beating up a fellow passenger forty miles out to sea could be indiscreet indeed, and what the hell, I’ve never needed to punch out pansies to prove my manhood to myself. But while we’re on the subject, you really are starting to steam me, Romero. So why don’t you take a hike before this dumb situation starts getting uncivilized?”

  Romero paid no attention to the not-too-friendly warning and insisted, “We won’t be putting in to Limón for at least seventy-two hours, Darling. Just give me two or three nights in your big strong arms, and I promise, when we get off in Costa Rican jurisdiction I shall let you go your way if you no longer want me. On the other hand, if you and Verrier need a hideout, my hacienda near San José—”

  “Get back to that part about jurisdiction!” Captain Gringo cut in, narrow-eyed indeed. For Gaston Verrier had not signed his right name to the purser’s list, and a knockaround guy got good at spotting veiled threats or even, hell, slips of the tongue.

  Romero smiled up at him knowingly and said, “Don’t worry, Darling. Your secret is safe with me. Heavens, why should I want to turn a hunk like you over to La Policia? I assure you I’d rather have you in me than in any old jail, eh?”

  Captain Gringo kept his voice desperately calm as he asked the mariposa what on earth he was talking about, adding, “My friend, M’sieu Fontleroy, and I are not in any trouble with the police, Chum. We’re both freelance banana brokers, see?”

  “Oh, let’s go to my stateroom and let me peel your banana right, Ricardo mio, or should I call you ‘Captain Gringo,’ as some of your other admirers do?”

  So there it was, out in the open like a wad of warm spit. The taller American stared soberly down at the Costa Rican catamite and said thoughtfully, “You sure must like to swim a lot, Friend.”

  Romero didn’t even glance over the side as he replied in his prissy self-confident way, “Pooh, I know you too well to worry about you raising a hand to me, Ricardo Walker, alias Captain Gringo! You are, it may be true, a man who had killed in his time. But never at a time that would be foolish, eh?”
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  “I’ll have to study on that, Chum. Tell me more about this guy you seem to think I might be. I don’t remember signing any name like Walker when we came aboard.”

  Romero snickered and said, “How could you have, when there are Reward posters out on you and your French lover all the way from Los Estados Unidos to Brazil? I was in Belize when you two came in aboard that schooner, La Nombre Nada. I recognized you at once, but who was I to inform the local British constabulary. Do I look British?”

  “You look like a sissy, and you’re still full of shit.”

  “No, I’m not. I take regular enemas, and I assure you I’m cleaner down there than the pussy of that notorious female gunrunner you were aboard that schooner with, you mean thing! I know why you have to get off at Belize. I asked around the waterfront. The schooner had salt in her condenser and a cracked mainmast. So your gunrunning chums had to lay up in Belize for repairs longer than you and your little Frenchy thought safe. You boarded this steamer to get back to Costa Rica where the police aren’t interested in you—or won’t be unless a Costa Rican landowner makes a formal complaint, eh?”

  Captain Gringo sighed and said, “Right, you really must be a good swimmer! What charge did you have in mind, rape?”

  Romero giggled and said, “Ooh, that sounds heavenly! I can’t wait to feel the thrill of you raping me with your big Yanqui love tool!”

  “Glugh!” Captain Gringo grimaced, shaking his head wearily as he added, “Look, Romero, even to save my ass I just couldn’t get it stiff enough to shove in yours! I’m not trying to brag. I’m just not the kind of guy who goes in for that kind of stuff.”

  “You’re a professional soldier, aren’t you?”

  “Sort of. The wars down here aren’t run too professionally. But what’s that got to do with my being queer for women?”

  “Pooh, everyone knows all the great military leaders in history were homosexual, Ricardo. Take Alexander, take Caesar, take Lord Nelson, take—”

  “No thanks,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “I’ll stick with Washington, Lee and U.S. Grant if you don’t mind, and come to think of it, Nelson’s Lady Hamilton was some shemale dish!”

  “Oh well, some of you are bisexual, except when out at sea, as you may have noticed you happen to be right now, darling. Come on, let me show you how Lady Hamilton took care of Nelson. We’re both a lot prettier than they were!”

  Captain Gringo knew it would be a waste of time to point out Nelson had fathered a daughter with Lady Hamilton, whatever else he’d gone in for on the side. Guys like Romero just couldn’t believe other guys weren’t like them no matter how often they got beat up, and, unfortunately, that didn’t happen so often as it might because there were simply times when punching out a pansy was more trouble than it was worth.

  This was one of them. He knew, and Romero knew he knew, that if a well-known landowner who’d no doubt cabled his expected time of arrival ahead of him down the coast didn’t arrive on time, all sorts of people in Costa Rica were going to ask all sorts of questions. Questions a knockaround guy holing up between jobs in one of the few banana republics that didn’t have an extradition treaty with Uncle Sam was in no mood to have to answer.

  But if he couldn’t smack Romero at the moment, he didn’t have to listen to any more of this bullshit. So he blew smoke in the little twit’s face and said, or growled, “I’m going to my own stateroom. You’re not invited. You want to get out of my way?”

  But Romero pressed closer, cornering Captain Gringo between the rail and paddle box as he insisted urgently, “Just one time! If you don’t like it, I’ll let you go, Darling!”

  “Hey, I know I wouldn’t like it; and if you don’t let me go right now you’re fixing to get splinters in your rump, Chump!”

  “Oh, don’t tease me about my rump, Ricardo! You know what I want in it! I want your big hard penis sliding in and out of my throbbing rectum!”

  Captain Gringo decided the best way to handle the lovesick lunatic would be to simply pick him up and stand him to one side out of the way. But as he grabbed the front of Romero’s linen jacket by both lapels, another pale form materialized from the shadows behind the mariposa and Captain Gringo just had time to gasp, “No, Gaston, don’t do it!” before Gaston did

  Romero gave a funny little sigh and stared up more blankly than adoringly now, as Captain Gringo held him erect by the front of his clothes. Behind the still-warm and upright corpse, Gaston Verrier, late of the French Foreign Legion, Mexican Field Artillery and too many other outfits to mention, wiped his blade clean on the tails of Romero’s jacket as he observed, “Eh bien, it is not easy to hit that nerve on the first thrust, but I am most expert in such matters, non?”

  Captain Gringo groaned, “Goddamn it, Gaston, you know I don’t go in for cold blooded murder!” So the smaller, older and often as deadly Frenchman replied, “Oui, that is why I did it, Dick. Obviously one of us had to shut him up, and I was becoming trés bored with waiting for you to do it as I listened from the other side of the paddle wheel box.”

  Gaston put the stiletto back in its sheath under the back of his collar as he added, “Why are you clinging to him so possessively, mon old and rare? Don’t you know how to get rid of garbage at sea?”

  “You crazy little bastard! He’s supposed to be getting off with us at Limón in a couple of days! Worse yet, he’s supposed to be eating at the skipper’s table all the way there! How the fuck are we supposed to explain when he doesn’t show up for breakfast in the cold gray dawn?”

  Gaston put something in his pocket, reached for the back of Romero’s jacket and the seat of his pants and replied, “First things first, mon ami. Let go, damn it.”

  Captain Gringo did so. Gaston shifted the upright corpse like a barroom bouncer ejecting a drunk from the premises and ejected it over the side. The splash was lost amid the churning of the paddle wheel that it landed just ahead of. Once the big wheel had sucked it under, Captain Gringo thought Gaston was over explaining as he observed, “Trés bien, once the blades have left him bobbing in the wake, pre-chewed for the sharks who always follow ships in these waters, the trés ridicule pest will have vanished from this earth as a soap bubble from a child’s bubble pipe, non?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I just said about his friends and relations in Costa Rica, or worse yet, the officers aboard this tub who’ll be missing him even sooner?”

  “Oui. I heard what he was saying, too. Hell hath no fury like a sodomist scorned, and he might well have turned you in at breakfast in any case, Dick. Did I fail to mention we did not fix the purser as we came aboard in Belize?”

  “Okay, if he’d snitched on us to underpaid ship’s officers, they might have figured the reward money out of their own, but, Jesus, Gaston, we’re aboard with no papers that’ll really stand up to a close examination, and once the skipper starts to ask questions—”

  “We may be safe through breakfast,” Gaston cut in, explaining: “I was discussing the late Señorito Romero’s perfume with the bartender inside just now. Everyone aboard knows he is, or was, a species of swish. So let us arrange his stateroom in a more convincing manner, non? Come, I took the liberty of helping myself to his key as well as his wallet just now.”

  Still a lot more worried than the dapper little Frenchman sounded, Captain Gringo followed Gaston along the short promenade to the dead man’s locked door. He sweated some more until Gaston had it open without anyone else, so far, having come out on deck. Inside, Gaston switched on the overhead Edison lamp. The both grimaced in disgust as they spotted what was making the place smell so weird. An enema bag hung above the commode and Romero hadn’t bothered to flush—in his eagerness to cruise the ship for carnal conquest. As Captain Gringo reached for the flush chain, Gaston snapped, “Mais non! Let the sweet scent of merde mingled with perfume linger as long as possible, Dick! If you were a nosy crewman, would you stick your adorable nose in such an obvious den of perverse desires? Ah, here is what we are looking for, non?”


  As he held up the little cardboard sign, “¡No incomadar, por favor!” Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Yeah, a Don’t Disturb sign on a known pansy-boy’s door ought to keep them out for a while. But even a fruitcake has to eat once in a while, and we’re two or three days out of Limón, damn it!”

  Gaston handed him the Don’t Disturb sign as he began to rummage through Romero’s luggage, saying, “Oui, but we only need until noon tomorrow. I heard one of the mates observe we shall be putting in to a place called Mission Bay before then. Naturally, we shall go ashore to stretch our legs, and should the ship leave without us—”

  “Damn it, Gaston, they’re going to notice if you rifle the guy’s luggage!”

  “Merde alors, what of it? By the time they get around to breaking in on him and his trés mysterious lover, they will have noticed we seem to be missing too, non?”

  “Non. I mean it. Leave the guy’s stuff alone. You’re not the only sneak who thinks ahead in this outfit. There’s always an outside chance they’ll buy his falling overboard on his own. But not if it’s obvious someone robbed him, see?”

  “Spoilsport.” Gaston sighed, closing a Gladstone grip and shoving it back under the bunk as he agreed, “Eh bien, he probably had all his money in his adorable wallet in any case; and should they suspect he got fresh with a crew member, they may wish to feel he simply fell overboard. Let us make our way back to the salon and establish it firmly to one and all that neither of us seem to be in the habit of strolling the deck by moonlight with a mariposa!”

  They did. They switched off the light, made sure the coast was clear and left the door locked behind them with the Don’t Disturb sign hanging on the knob. Then Gaston tossed the key over the rail as they headed along the deck for the salon again.

  It was less crowded inside, now. The steamer was rolling a bit in the ground swells of an otherwise calm tropic night; and anyone who had anyone to sleep with, or even a good book to read, had retired to their own staterooms. There were some men playing cards at a corner table, and a couple of mousy-looking women sat together at another, not looking up as the two soldiers of fortune came in. As they bellied up to the bar together, the Jamaican bartender looked mildly surprised to see them. Before he could ask any questions a guy with hair on his chest might not want to answer, Gaston said, “We both require trés tall gins avec tonic, mon ami. When there is no other action on a ship, there is nothing for men of the world to do at this hour but drink, non?”