The Death Hunter Read online

  No man can handle Captain Gringo in Costa Rica!

  In these cool, quiet nights Captain Gringo trails the highlands with his profile low and his Maxim ready. It’s been a year of hell fighting his way through three revolutions and a U.S. court-martial. He’s wanted by the U.S. Cavalry and even more by certain ladies. For now, all the Captain wants is some drinkable beer and serviceable women.

  There’s a funny tingling, though, at the back of his neck that warns him his vacation’s over. He’s right. Before this little trip to Costa Rica ends, Captain Gringo will have a job – masterminding an attack on three of the world’s major powers.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Copyright

  Books in the Series

  About Piccadilly Publishing

  Chapter One

  There was said to be a serpent in every paradise, but all they’d found, so far, were little green worms. The worms bothered Captain Gringo more than they did his sardonic fellow soldier of fortune, Gaston, as they watched the sun go down from a sidewalk cafe on the main plaza of San Jose, the highland capital of Costa Rica. Gaston had promised his younger American friend that the evening paseo would begin just after sunset, and that the girls of Costa Rica were the prettiest in all of Central America. Captain Gringo had to admit he’d been right about Costa Rica, so far. The climate was pleasant; the government seemed stable, at least for the 1890’s. And best of all nobody had tried to kill them since they’d arrived. But the worms were a pain in the ass.

  The worms were in the peanuts they’d been served with their cervesa in the otherwise clean cafe. They were little crawly green caterpillars and Captain Gringo found at least one in every other peanut shell he opened. Across the table, Gaston seemed to be having better luck. The American noticed his French sidekick hadn’t discarded a single nut. Captain Gringo cracked open another peanut, swore, and said, “They must have seen me coming. How come I got the bowl with all the wormy peanuts?”

  Gaston shrugged and answered, “You Yanquis are so tedious about sanitation. Merde alors, was not the late Louis Pasteur a Frenchman? There are, how you say, germs and germs. One must not be a fanatic about such matters, hein?”

  As Gaston popped another peanut in his mouth with obvious relish, Captain Gringo gagged and muttered, “Jesus Christ, you’re not even looking! How do you know you didn’t just eat a worm?”

  Gaston shrugged again and said, “If one does not look, one has no way of knowing, hein?”

  “For God’s sake, Gaston, those fucking worms are alive!”

  “Mais non, not if one chews one’s food most carefully. Personally, I find more complaint with the cervesa. Beer at its best is a poor substitute for wine, but the local brewmasters have surpassed you Americans in the making of flat and tasteless liquids.”

  A waitress passed in view as Gaston passed judgment on their cervesa and the Frenchman held up two fingers to her as he nodded at their half-empty glasses. As she went to get more, Captain Gringo asked, “If you don’t like the stuff, why are you calling for more?”

  Gaston smiled crookedly and replied, “When one is thirsty, one drinks what is available. I see they just lit a street lamp across the way, the girls will soon be promenading for our approval, and, as I have promised you, the girls of San Jose are tres chic. You must promise me not to go off, as you say, half-cocked. The first girls coming out to stroll the plaza will be the more desperate ones. We must remain most calm and make no advances until well after dark. I did not drag you all this way to see you waste your youth on a cow.”

  As if to prove his point, two women in flounced skirts and lace mantillas passed the cafe, arm in arm, and Captain Gringo smiled. He said, “I’d hardly call the one on the left a cow.” But Gaston snorted and said, “Merde, I’ll take the one in the middle. Neither of them will ever see twenty again and, while the one you admire has a nice derriere, she has a most distressing walk. I have never known a woman who is awkward in an upright position to be any better, reclined. As for the fatter one you obviously meant for me, she had a moustache.”

  The taller and younger Captain Gringo laughed and popped a peanut in his mouth without thinking. He hastily washed it down with cervesa as he remembered the worms and, if he’d swallowed one, he’d swallowed one. It was getting too dark to be sure and, what the hell, when in Rome and all that.

  Two other girls passed, not looking at them, and Gaston pursed his lips to say, “Better, but not perfect, hein? How do you like Costa Rica, so far?”

  Captain Gringo sighed and said, “Wormy peanuts aside, it’s the best I’ve seen since they ran me out of the States. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but you were right. It’s cool and clean up here in the highlands and nobody’s pointed a gun at us since we sneaked across the border. Are you sure they’re not having at least a little revolution here in Costa Rica?”

  Gaston smiled sardonically and replied, “Mais non, they are tres civilized, here, as I warned you. I know you feel uncomfortable unless someone wants to fight with you, but I, personally, have had my fill of action since meeting up with you in Mexico. I was beginning to fear you traveled under some family curse, but, as I told you on the way, the people here are mostly of pure Spanish blood and that, along with the more reasonable climate; makes for a less dramatic view of life than we encountered last month in the swamps of Nicaragua.’’

  Two more girls passed and Gaston added, “Ah, that’s more like it! What do you think of the blonde on the outside, Dick?”

  Captain Gringo said, “Not bad. How come so many of the locals look like American girls?”

  “I just told you. They are pure Spanish and despite what you may have heard, Spain is a European country. The Visigoths were blondes. The Celtiberians were redheads. Costa Rica was settled by Spanish soldiers who sent home for their wives when they failed to find the usual Indian women up here on the mesa lands. One must assume they were small holders for the most part. They didn’t have the money to send for slaves and so the local peasants remained white. The name of the country was a cruel Spanish joke.”

  “I don’t get it? Doesn’t Costa Rica mean Rich Coast?”

  “Mais oui. It was given to this part of Central America in disgust when the Spanish failed to find anything worth stealing. There was no gold. There were no Indians to enslave. There was only the land, to be settled by less fortunate Spanish soldiers to be pensioned off.”

  Captain Gringo swept his eyes across the plaza in the purple light of gloaming as he sipped more cervesa and digested Gaston’s history lecture. San Jose was a clean well-built little town. The tile roofs were all the same terra-cotta red, but the stucco walls were every shade of pastel from mint green to lavender. The tree-shaded plaza had been paved with brick and seemed clean enough to eat off. He nodded and said, “Those old Spanish soldiers seem to have done all right for themselves. Their grandchildren can’t be poverty stricken.”

  Gaston nodded and said, “They were fortunate not to have been saddled with the mines and vast haciendas of Mexico. It makes for
a peaceful country when everyone tends his own modest farm and has no rich neighbor to envy, hein! Wait and see, my old and rare. As I promised, you will find nothing here, but serviceable beer and the best screwing in all of Latin America!”

  Two more girls walked by and the American whistled softly and said, “I see what you mean.”

  “Bah, the show has not really started. It is considered tres anxious to make the pass before ten or eleven. Notice how few men are out on the plaza at the moment.”

  “I have. Aren’t we likely to have trouble with jealous Latin types if we wait to cut a pair of putas from the herd?”

  Gaston shook his head and said, “You must forget about the more primitive customs of Mexico, my young friend. Any unescorted woman on the plaza during paseo is, how you say, fair game. These Costa Ricans are out for the good time, not the fight. Why do you think I brought you here? Didn’t we have enough fighting in the last few countries you dragged me through?”

  Captain Gringo frowned and said, “Hey, that’s not fair. It was your idea to mix me up in that revolution in Nicaragua. Come to think of it, it was your idea to visit Panama, too.”

  Gaston chuckled and said, “Well, that was before we had any money. As you can see, a soldier of fortune would starve in Costa Rica, but since our recent adventures were not without profit—”

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “We left Nicaragua with a couple of thousand, which was way less than we were supposed to get for that gunrunning caper that went sour. How long do you figure our funds will last, here?”

  Gaston shrugged and said, “Six months, perhaps. Prices are a bit higher than I remembered from my last visit.”

  “Right. So, what do we do then?”

  Gaston shot him a hurt look and asked. “In six months? Merde alors! How am I to know what we shall be doing in six months? Is it not enough that we sit here, alive and well, with triple-titted reward posters out on both of us?”

  The tall American nodded, but said, “I guess you’re right. But I still feel edgy as hell, tonight. I keep feeling the hairs on the back of my neck sort of tingling. I know I should relax, but I can’t.”

  Gaston nodded and said, “Oui, it is all too good to be true, hein?”

  “Right. I keep telling myself nobody’s looking for us, here. I’ve only seen a couple of cops since we arrived and none of them seemed interested in us. But I don’t know, I still keep expecting trouble.”

  Gaston chuckled and said, “I felt the same way when I first deserted the Legion, long ago. When a man has been fighting for his life, on the run, the sudden letdown is rather uncomfortable. Would it make you feel better if I started a fight with someone, here in San Jose? I warned you the people were peaceful, but perhaps if I were to throw a bottle through a window—”

  Captain Gringo laughed and said, “I’ll pass on that idea. You’re right. I’m just nervous about the sudden silence.”

  Gaston nodded but didn’t answer as the two of them lounged there, watching all the girls go by. Captain Gringo leaned back and lit a smoke as he tried to force himself to relax. It seemed a million years since he’d been able to. Yet he knew it was less than a year since he’d been the safe and perhaps somewhat smug Lieutenant Dick Walker of the U.S. Tenth Cav, free to enjoy a beer and a smoke in the officers’ club back home. How could so much have happened in the past few months? It couldn’t have been such a short time ago that he’d escaped from an Army guardhouse after being court-martialed and condemned to death. Yet a year had not gone by since then and, since jumping the border with a price on his head, he’d been mixed up in three revolutions and acquired his new name and reputation as a machine gunner for hire. Perhaps, he thought, a few months here in peaceful Costa Rica would allow the world to forget him and the murder charges Uncle Sam had saddled him with. Hell, in a year or so, it might be safe to sneak back to the States. They might think he was dead if he could stay out of trouble for a while. He knew that anyone tracing him and Gaston as far as their last adventure would lose the trail in the lowland .jungles of Nicaragua, where they’d last been seen wading through a reptilian swamp under an artillery barrage. Sure, what the hell, no lawman would expect anyone to live through a mess like that. If he and Gaston didn’t turn up on any more wanted posters for a while, they’d be written off as dead.

  Gaston broke in on his thoughts to say, “Sacre! That one is yours, my old and rare!”

  The tall American blinked himself from the past and frowned after the dark willowy form that had just passed. Gaston said, “She walks alone, and she smiled right at you. What are you waiting for?”

  “For God’s sake, I didn’t even notice the dame!”

  “You must be blind. She’s beautiful beyond endurance and, as I said, she was giving you the eye. Observe, she is walking tres slowly. Are you going to disgrace your nation by letting a thing like that get away?”

  “Come on, I thought you said it was too early to make a play for any of them.”

  “Merde alors, such rules were not meant to include a goddess! Go after her, you species of an imbecile! You could sit here all night without seeing anything as good!”

  “Hell, Gaston, I don’t even know what she looks like. Maybe when she circles back around the plaza...”

  “Bah, do you think anything that nice will have to circle twice? On your feet, mon brave! Take your beating like a man! Look! She has paused under that street lamp to wait for you! Do you want her to think you like boys?”

  Captain Gringo grinned crookedly and got to his feet as he asked his older companion, “What’s the form? Do I speak to her or do I wait for her to ask me for a light or something?”

  “Just march on and play it, as you say, by the ear. Few Latin girls are as bold as that one. She smiled at you with dripping fangs. I am sure she is a tigress who needs little in the way of introductions. “

  The American hitched his gunbelt under his linen jacket and said, “Well, it beats just sitting here waiting for them to wake me up and tell me I’m still m jail.

  He strode after the girl who’d given him the eye. She strolled away from the street lamp as she saw he was heading her way. But she wasn’t walking fast. Captain Gringo wondered if she was going to ask for money. He hadn’t been down here as long as Gaston, but he knew few Latin women acted eager unless they were out-and-out whores. Gaston considered him a romantic, but the big Yank didn’t like to pay for it. If she was a business woman, all bets were off.

  The willowy girl stopped to look in a shop window and as the soft candlelight illuminated her profile, Captain Gringo started to revise his code a bit. Her perfect cameo features topped a breathtaking figure under that too-tight maroon silk dress. She wore the flouncy skirt in a Dolly Varden gathered over her rump, but a pair of trim ankles promised that the legs concealed by the draped silk went with the wasp waist and proud breasts under the tight bodice.

  He joined her at the window, to stare soberly at the silly looking hats on the other side of the glass as he wondered how to start. She glanced sideways at him and said, “My, they are showing last year’s styles, aren’t they?”

  He blinked in surprise and replied, “Your English is perfect. Are you American, too?”

  “Australian, actually, but I went to school in San Francisco. My name is Patricia Nolan, but my friends call me Pattycake.”

  “I’m Dick Walker. What’s this all about, uh, Pattycake?”

  The Australian girl looked puzzled and he insisted, “Come on, you know the paseo is a local Hispanic custom.”

  “Of course I do. Don’t you?”

  He grinned, sheepishly, and said, “All right, I thought you were a señorita and I was about to try and pick you up.”

  “I was hoping you would. The local Don Juans seem a bit bashful when they hear my Aussie version of Spanish. I’ve been here almost two weeks and I must say this paseo business has been overrated.”

  Captain Gringo studied her as she met his eyes w
ithout a hint of shyness. She was too good to be true. He could see, now, that her eyes were hell-fire green and the dark hair under her mantilla was tinged with red highlights where the candlelight hit it. She said, “My place is just off the plaza, shall we

  “Just like that? What’s your story, Pattycake? Are you stranded here or what?”

  She laughed and took his arm to answer, “I didn’t ask your story, did I? Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you for money.”

  He allowed her to lead him from the window, but he was still puzzled and he said so. He said, “I’d heard you English girls were sort of bashful, Pattycake.”

  She said, “Bite your tongue! I told you I was Aussie. I don’t think I’d like to visit England. That’s where all those criminals came from.”

  He laughed and asked, “How do you know I’m not a criminal, too?”

  “Pooh, I’ve nothing for you to take but my fair white body, and I assure you that you won’t have to fight me for it.”

  “This is weird.” He muttered, walking a bit faster. Pattycake laughed and said, “I know. I have this conversation all the time. I thought you men were expecting to get laid when you ogled us.”

  “Yeah, well, most girls make us work a little harder. You’re sure we’re talking about true love instead of business, aren’t you? It’s not that I don’t think you’re the bee’s knees, but I haven’t much on me.

  “I assure you I’m just wicked,” She soothed, adding, “Around this next corner. I rented a house for the month.”

  As they strolled arm in arm down the darker side street, Pattycake slowed and said, “Uh, there’s just one thing I left out.”

  He stopped and sighed, “There usually is. What’s the catch, Honey?”

  “Well, if you must know, I’m married. My husband will be joining me here in a week.”

  “But he’s not here now?”

  “Of course not, and I’ve been going crazy. You see, it’s all very well for Queen Victoria to suggest we close our eyes and think of the Empire, but I like to screw!”