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  STANDOFF IN THE SKY

  Captain Gringo— courting deadly intrigue and lusty women in the war zones of El Salvador!

  In steamy jungle or on misty mountains, courageous Captain Gringo battles man and beast to make the world a better place for the lowly and oppressed. Of course, all war and no play makes for a dull Renegade. And this time, he discovers just how playful a bevy of man-hungry lady refugees can be! Such delicious distraction is welcome in the Captain’s confrontation with Sir Basil Hakim, the infamous death merchant of perverted tastes and unlimited ambition, who is plotting a coup of globe-shattering proportions that could leave America’s Panama Canal on the ash heap of history!

  RENEGADE 35: STANDOFF IN THE SKY

  By Ramsay Thorne

  First Published in 1985 by Warner Books

  Copyright © 1985, 2018 by Lou Cameron

  First Smashwords Edition: May 2018

  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.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book * Text © Piccadilly publishing

  Series Editor: Mike Stotter

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

  Captain Gringo was more than pleasantly surprised when he awoke from a wet dream involving a naked Gibson Girl to catch himself in flagrante delicto with a real live dusky doll. It scared the hell out of him, for he hardly knew a soul in San Salvador and he’d sincerely hoped that worked both ways when he’d checked into this posada the night before, alone. So he wasn’t discussing what he and a total stranger might be doing by the dawn’s early light when he muttered aloud, “What the fuck?”

  The nude mestiza grinding groins with him hugged him tighter with tawny thighs to reply, “No hablo ingles, querido.” So he switched to Spanish to say, “I hope you won’t think I’m trying to get fresh. But is it possible that we’ve met somewhere before?”

  She giggled, said she was called Pepita, and went into a tale of late-night love and glory as she continued to move her tail. He had more serious things to worry about at the moment. So even as he went on moving his own hips as politely as most men would have in such a situation, he arched his spine for a better view of their surroundings. A knock around guy with a price on his head couldn’t afford to take things like that for granted.

  The solid oak door was securely bolted on the inside. The two windows of his corner room were only guarded by half-closed shutters, but they were three stories up, which was why he’d left them unlocked the night before in the first place. He knew that drunk or sober he was not in the habit of wearing red flamenco outfits. So that had to be her dress draped over the chair next to the bed. His own shoulder rig hung from one bedpost, and he’d apparently tossed his planter’s sombrero over the other. Having checked the door and made sure that his .38 was handy, he could worry later about where his pants and wallet might or might not be.

  Now that it seemed safe to watch what he was doing, he saw that Pepita was pretty, in a hard-boiled way. The guaro on her breath and the cheap perfume in her hair made it tough to tell whether she bathed regularly. When a chica had a body like that, who cared? Her almond eyes were rolling, and she was biting her lower lip and moaning now. That made two of them. He ejaculated in her so hard, it didn’t seem likely that he’d ever climaxed with her before. That made the whole deal even more mysterious when one thought about it. But as he went limp in her arms to think about it, Pepita sighed and said, “Let me up. Between all I drank last night and all you’ve shoved in from the other end, my bladder is about to burst, you brute.”

  He chuckled fondly and rolled off to let her get at the chamber pot under the bed. He now saw that his own duds were what he’d assumed to be handy extra pillows against his bare feet. But tropical-weight linen never held a crease, anyway, and at least it would be simple to get dressed, when and if they got around to it.

  He was surprised to see that his attractive mystery guest seemed to be doing that very thing at the moment. As Pepita pulled her dress on over her head and rose, he asked, “¿Onde va?”

  She turned to blow him a kiss as she headed for the door, saying, “To relieve myself, as I must. I’ll be right back, querido. The retrete is just downstairs, no?”

  There was, in fact, a stinky coeducational shit house three full flights down, which is why there were chamber pots under all the beds to begin with. But before he could argue, she was out the door and closing it again in his face, unlocked, of course.

  That was something else to think about. But Captain Gringo told himself that he was probably just behaving like an old maid as he got up, crossed the small, Spartan room, gun in hand, and shoved the massive iron bolt back in place. When she came back, if she came back, he’d unlock it again. Meanwhile it was better to be safe than sorry.

  As long as he was on the subject he flipped open his double action .38, and sure enough, someone had emptied every chamber on him. He didn’t suspect the tooth fairy. He grimaced and growled, “Perfidy, thy name is Woman, and Chump, thy name is Man!”

  He moved to the nearest window to see what other surprises might be in store this morning. The calle out front was almost deserted. But almost wasn’t good enough. Two sneaky-looking guys dressed a bit expensive for this favela were sharing a doorway across the calle. They had the front entrance covered. He moved to the other window. It opened on a breezeway between the posada and the next building. So he couldn’t see the back alley or who might or might not be staked out in it. But the morning sun against the stucco across the breezeway cast interesting shadows indeed. Someone wearing a big sombrero was stationed on the flat roof, right above his head. So, yeah, the dame had set him up. But how? He was wide-awake now. He’d had one or two drinks in the cantina below before coming up here, he recalled. But he hadn’t been dumb enough to go to bed soused in a strange place. And a guy would have had to be drunk indeed to forget picking up old Pepita!

  He could worry about how she’d gotten in bed with him after he took care of more important details. He went back to the bed, unrolled his duds, and found that either she’d overlooked or hadn’t had time to get at his pockets. His wallet and money belt were still intact. He still had half a box of spare ammo in his jacket. While he was at it he took a Havana claro from another pocket. But he didn’t light up until he’d reloaded his revolver, musing aloud to it, “Try it this way. She was emptying you when I started to wake up. Thinking fast, she just shucked her dress and leapt in the sack to avoid tedious explanations.”

  Dropping to one free hand and his knees, he peered under the bed. As he’d hoped, the .38 rounds she’d gotten rid of in a hurry were within easy reach, this side of the chamber pot. He muttered, “Waste not, want not,” as he regathered the scattered brass, adding, “Let’s see now. She offered her slit instead of a slit throat. Ergo someone wants us alive. That adds up to Uncle Sam. The Mexican reward posters don’t give a shit one way or the other, and nobody else is offering enough to make it worthwhile to go to all this trouble.”

  He moved to a corner washstand to get as much sleep-gum and Pepita off him as one could with cold water and lousy soap. He’d worry about shaving if and when he knew he got to keep his head.

  He pulled on his shirt and pants, strapped on the shoulder rig, and stomped his feet into his mosquito boots. But he saw no reason to put on his hat and jacket before he had somewhere to go. He’d just fi
nished dressing when he heard someone gently fumbling at the door he’d been so smart about. He made his voice deliberately sleepy as he called out, “¿Quien es? Pepita?” with his reloaded weapon trained that way.

  There was no reply. Captain Gringo smiled crookedly and muttered, “How soon they forget, once they’ve had their wicked ways with you.”

  But the situation wasn’t that amusing. Captain Gringo knew he was forted up pretty good at the moment and that people who played such sneaky games could hardly be real cops. But he had to get out some way, and fast, to head off his sidekick, Gaston. His older and sometimes hornier fellow soldier of fortune had agreed to meet him here this morning after spending a night with a lady who took money instead of bullets from her bed partners. It was well after sunrise, and Gaston could be along any minute. The rewards posted on Gaston were even more awesome since the old Frenchman had been wanted by the law in a lot of places before Captain Gringo had been born.

  Someone was screwing around with the door again. Captain Gringo got out of the line of fire as he watched a thin knife blade trying to work the bolt open from the other side. It made the room feel even smaller. He held his own fire for now. He could see that the jerk-off with the blade couldn’t move a bolt that had to be slid instead of lifted, thank God. So how had Pepita done it? He was sure he’d never gotten out of bed to let her in while he was asleep. He knew from having pounded her flesh with his own that she was too solidly built to walk through locked doors or stucco walls. Ergo there had to be another way in and out of this joint. But, in that case, how come some asshole was trying to pick locks with a dagger? If there was a secret way in or out, one would think that the thugs she was working with would know about it too.

  He checked his pocket watch. It was pushing eight a.m. That meant that Gaston should be walking into this lousy setup within two hours tops.

  Captain Gringo caught his own worried eyes in the mirror over the washstand and growled, “What makes you such an optimist this morning, you asshole? Where does it say that they have to give you even one hour?”

  In a much more fashionable part of San Salvador a man who made it his business to know what was going on in every part of town looked up from the desk blotter he’d been staring at as Gaston Verrier, late of the French Foreign Legion, was escorted in at gunpoint. Gaston was a little taller, about the same age, but not as gray as the old rogue bent over the desk. Sir Basil Hakim of Woodbine Arms Ltd. was a satanic-looking Santa Claus of Jewish, Greek, Turkish, or maybe Russian ancestry, depending on whether one asked an anti-Semite, a Turk, a Greek, or someone who hated Russians. At the moment he was a British subject who dealt in arms and/or the bottom of the deck. He was known to his friends as the Merchant of Death. He was bent over the desk because his pants were down and a statuesque blonde in a nursing sister’s uniform was giving him a prostate massage, bare-handed, of course. That was the way Sir Basil liked it.

  As Gaston took a seat across from him Sir Basil said, “It was so good of you to drop by, old chum.”

  Gaston snorted in disgust and replied, “Merde alors, had I known it was you these gun slicks were working for, I’d have put up a better fight. What are you doing in El Salvador, you species of dishonesty?”

  Hakim grimaced and told the lady with her fingers up his anus to watch those flaming nails before he told Gaston, “The same thing you and your young friend Captain Gringo were up to, old bean, albeit I was on the other side. Now that your side’s won, I find myself in a rather embarrassing position.”

  Gaston grinned crookedly and replied, “So I can see, mais she’s not bad-looking.”

  Hakim frowned and said, “Get your hand out of my bum and wait in the next room, Nurse Page. This business is more important than the business of being unable to piss.” The cool but well-stacked English girl shrugged and turned away to leave as Gaston fondly regarded her retreating form. Hakim pulled up his pants and sat down as he asked Gaston, “Would you like some of that, old chum?”

  Gaston shook his head and replied, “Not even if she washed her hands avec naphtha soap. I never go sloppy seconds after anything more disgusting than a mad dog. Let these domesticated apes of yours enjoy her dubious charms, if you are no longer man enough to get it up.”

  Hakim leaned back to regard Gaston fondly as he said, “One of these days I’m going to have you flayed alive, slowly, you cheeky frog. But at the moment I need someone to pull some chestnuts out of the fire for me, and you and Captain Gringo are the best I can get at such short notice.” He glanced up at his gun slicks to add, “You lads won’t be needed now. M’sieu Verrier is an old business associate, despite his mouth, and the proposal I mean to make him is not for the ears of you children.”

  The two goons silently left via another door. Gaston said, “Eh bien, but you are still cheating. They took my gun and stiletto.”

  Hakim said, “You’ll get them back. There’s also a thousand U.S. for each of you, should you agree to my simple proposition. Do I have to tell you what happens should you refuse?”

  Gaston shrugged and said, “Mais non, we have done business before, my old and threatening. Mais, how do you expect to explain my early demise to my younger and more dangerous friend, Dick Walker? For some reason he seems très fond of me, and you don’t have him in your power as yet, hein?”

  Hakim shook his head and replied, “At the moment our Captain Gringo is trapped in that posada you chose for him so unwisely. My man on the scene just phoned in to say that they seem to be moving in closer for a do-or-die any moment now.”

  Gaston started to rise. Hakim snapped, “Don’t be an ass. Even if we let you go, you’d be walking into an ambush. They have every exit and entrance covered.”

  Gaston settled back but asked, “Who could this ‘they’ we seem to be discussing be, and how do you know so much about events on the far side of San Salvador, unless you are in on them, hein?”

  Hakim said, “The gang after your friend are locals working for a Yank bounty hunter. Frankly I didn’t know you lads were here in El Salvador before people began asking about you two in places I’m known better in. As I just told you, I wanted to hire you and Captain Gringo. Not knowing just where you might be, I ordered my agents to keep tabs on the bounty hunters searching for you. Last night we all had you placed at that rather run-down posada. Anyone moving in on such violent types without taking certain precautions is, of course, in danger of considerable discomfort. So I told my own lads to just keep an eye on you until I could work out a more delicate approach.”

  Gaston nodded understanding and said, “Eh bien, that accounts for them knowing where I spent the night and treating me so roughly when I kissed her adios just now. Mais, what of the business around the posada itself?”

  Hakim shrugged and said, “My lads were rather surprised as well, when they saw what was up. When they phoned it in, I told them to sit tight until I’d made this deal with you.”

  “Sacré God damn, what deal are we talking about? I do not recall agreeing to murder anyone for you, you murderous species of monster.”

  “That’s because you never shut up, old bean. My proposition is simple. The bounty hunters surrounding our Captain Gringo are in turn surrounded by my own men, although they don’t know it. I can rescue your friend with one simple phone call. In turn I expect you to do a simple favor for me.”

  Gaston sighed and replied, “I am all ears. Mais, I do not think Dick will go along with raping pigs or shooting women and children. What other species of evil could you have in mind?”

  Hakim helped himself to an expensive perfecto from his desktop humidor as he explained, “Nothing violent this time. I simply want you to nip across the border into the Honduran rain forest to deliver a simple message to a, ah, business associate for me. There are few, if any, natives in the area, and the people you’ll be looking for are on our side. So there’s no blood and slaughter involved, eh what?”

  Gaston raised a dubious eyebrow and asked, “Where is the joker in the deck?
If it is so safe and simple, why can you not deliver the message yourself, hein?”

  Hakim was able to look Gaston right in the eye as he answered without hesitation, “It’s simple, old bean. I value my own arse more than anyone else’s. I said the mission was simple. I didn’t say it was abso-bloody-lutely safe. Poison Indians, wild snakes, and all that. You may have to hunt a bit for the chaps I want you to contact. If I hadn’t lost contact with them a few days ago, we wouldn’t be having this business discussion. But all you two have to do is stumble over them, anywhere on the other side of the border, and simply tell them that the deal fell through and they’re to turn back. That’s all you have to do and all you have to remember. Give them my message and come back here for your just rewards.”

  Gaston still looked dubious. Hakim said, “Oh, come now, you lads have taken on tougher jobs for a lot less. If you hadn’t gone to a great deal of trouble for your last employers, the side I was betting on would have won the recent political struggle here in El Salvador.”

  He lit his cigar before he added, wistfully, “I’d have bet the other way had I known you two were on the other side. But what’s done is done, and now you’re going to help me salvage the situation, aren’t you?”

  Gaston sighed and said, “I must be getting old. On the surface your proposition seems très reasonable. Mais, of course, you have seldom been known to tell the whole truth even when it is in your own favor. Who are these friends of yours we are supposed to cut off in the soggy spinach of a rain forest, gunrunners en route to a revolution that failed?”

  Hakim chuckled and said, “It’s so nice to deal with an old pro who knows the way business is conducted in banana land. It’s no great secret that I’d made an arms deal the current ruling junta might not feel jolly about. But as long as my smugglers don’t stumble over the border with guns and ammo nobody now alive ever ordered, how is anyone ever to know?”