Renegade 17 Read online

  He knew he had to do something. Claudette was whimpering with desire as she bobbed her head in time with his thrusts at the other end. He licked his lips as he parted her hairy lips with his fingers. But, hell, he’d come twice in there himself, and he doubted like hell she’d been true to him since the last time he’d flung her across a bed.

  He started massaging her turgid clit with two fingers as he groped with his free hand for the bed table. His questing fingers touched the unlit cigar. But that was silly. Claros were not particularly big cigars. He felt the edge of a cut glass bowl, and, yeah, as he’d remembered, there was some fruit in the bowl. He’d thought she’d left it there to nibble in bed. But as he hefted what he’d thought to be a banana, he realized it was wax.

  He grinned. That was even better. Claudette gasped and almost spit out his shaft as she felt the artificial substitute entering her from the other end. Then, as he kept massaging her clit with one hand while sliding the fat wax banana in and out of her with the other, she gave a contented little sigh and tried to swallow him balls and all.

  She came ahead of him, even though he’d had a head start. As he drove the wax banana in and out of her, feeling the pulsations of her excited vagina with his fingers as he worked, he knew he was almost there, too. He groaned, “Enough! I don’t want to waste it even if you want to taste it!”

  She giggled as he rolled her over on her own back and hurriedly swapped ends. He was afraid he was going to come in midair. So he thrust hard as he remounted her, and, although it seemed a little tight, he got it in before he could come outside her. But as he exploded inside her, Claudette gasped, “You maniac! It’s the wrong hole!”

  He moved experimentally, enjoying the way her rectal muscles rippled, too, as he said, “So it is. Sorry about that. Did I hurt you?”

  “You know you didn’t. Now don’t take it out. I want to try an experiment.”

  Her anal opening was tight enough to keep him hard inside her that way. So he moved teasingly and said, “I’m game for this way if you are.”

  She was. She said, “It feels so huge back there. But put that banana in my other place, dear! It’s starting to feel abandoned and …”

  He laughed, found the wax banana, and rolled half off her to make room as he inserted it where she wanted it, asking, “How’s that?”

  She said, “Heavenly. I’d heard about a famous opera singer who made love to two men at once this way. I’ve always wondered what it would feel like.”

  He was getting hot again. He found that by rolling back atop her, with the end of the wax banana against his lower gut, he could move both real and artificial stuffing in and out of both her entrances. It seemed to drive her nuts. He liked it, too. Her internal contraction kept trying to eject both him and the banana as he worked against them with his thrusting pelvis. She gasped, “Oh, my God! I’m being fucked all over! I’ve never felt so filled with cock!”

  That was only half true for her, while he was only in one of her openings after all. But he was grateful to whoever had thought to cheer up the drab room with artificial fruit. When he came again in her tight, throbbing rear, she came so hard that she shot the wax banana out like a watermelon seed, then pleaded, “Put it in me right! I’m still coming!”

  He did as she asked. But, in truth, by now it was getting past pleasure and into showing off. So when she came yet again, Captain Gringo faked it and rolled off with an exhausted sigh.

  She might have been showing off too. She rose from the bed, got a washcloth from the bowl on the stand, and returned to clean him off, saying, “We’d better save some of this for Puntarenas, darling. I have to get dressed now.”

  “Oh, I thought you’d given up on the night coach.”

  “I certainly have, you horrid thing. But I have to send a wire so they’ll know not to expect us in the morning. The telegrafo’s not far. Do you want to come with me?”

  “I’ve already come with you. A lot. I’d better take the guns and extra pistol rounds over to my place. Gaston will be wondering what’s keeping me so long.”

  She laughed and said, “I doubt that very much. He walked in on us the last time, remember?”

  “Yeah. Okay, here’s the form. We’ll meet in the morning at the coach station. Like I said, we ought to make Puntarenas during la siesta. So tell your pals to expect us around sundown and … wait a minute. How are you going to wire them if you don’t know what boat they’ll be on?”

  “Silly. The people at the waterfront cantina are go-betweens. What’s the matter? Do you mean to say you still don’t trust me, Dick?”

  He didn’t answer. He was too polite to say it but, hell; he’d have licked her pussy by now if he’d really thought he could count on her to tell him the truth about anything.

  *

  Captain Gringo naturally took a dark side street on his way home with a pair of Winchesters cradled over his left elbow. So he was mildly surprised when a shadow detached itself from a doorway and fell in step with him along the dark lane. The tall American said in Spanish, “I hope you don’t think I carry lots of money, amigo. It’s stupid to get hurt for small change.”

  The other man answered in English, “I’m Carson, from the U.S. Embassy, Walker. I know where you got those carbines. We were watching her when she bought ’em the other day.”

  Captain Gringo didn’t answer as they walked along side by side for a while. Carson said, “You wouldn’t have those guns if you hadn’t agreed to work for her. I don’t suppose a renegade like you gives a damn who you work for, right?”

  “Damned A,” said Captain Gringo, adding, “You know my name, so you know my story. The official army version, anyway. I don’t suppose you care what really happened back in the States, eh?”

  Carson shrugged and said, “Not really. Some say you got a bum rap. Some say you’re no fucking good. Since we both know Uncle Sam can’t touch you here in San José, I don’t give a damn either way. Let’s talk about that German agent of yours, Walker.”

  “Is she still a German agent? That’s not the way she tells it. But what the hell, if you guys say she is, who am I to argue? Is there any point to this conversation, Carson?”

  “There is. Young Kaiser Willy makes President Cleveland nervous. Just like he makes everyone else with a lick of sense nervous. We don’t give two hoots in hell about scum like you signing up to fight for greaser factions down here, Walker. But, renegade or not, you’re still a Yank, God damn it, and that dame you’re working for is out to screw Uncle Sam!”

  “Hey, don’t knock it until you try it. Uncle Sam could do worse. Why the hell does the embassy care about old Claudette working for Germany? Everybody has to work for somebody. Germany’s not at war with the States. Can’t Kaiser Willy have spies around here if he wants ’em? God knows everyone else has.”

  Carson shook his head and said, “The Monroe Doctrine says different. It’s agreed Great Britain, France, and the U. S. of A. have a legitimate interest in the Panama Canal project. It’s none of the Kaiser’s fucking business whether said canal gets built or not. The square-heads are out to fuck things up down there.”

  Captain Gringo chuckled and said, “That sounds fair. Everyone else has been meddling in the revolutionary movement down that way. We all know the only way the canal will ever be completed is if the Panamanian rebels win. I was down in Colombia a while back. I noticed the Colombian junta didn’t like us outsiders much. They seem to resent the way everyone tries to screw up their internal affairs. I didn’t know the Germans were trying to steal the Isthmus of Panama from Colombia, though I was betting on us or the Brits.”

  “Look, why don’t you come over to the embassy with me, Walker? My boss can explain better than I what’s involved in this latest German move.”

  Captain Gringo snorted in disbelief and asked, “Do I really look that stupid, buddy? It’s true Costa Rica has no extradition treaty with the States, but let’s not get silly about it! We both know that once you guys had me inside a U.S. embassy, the U.S
. Marine Guard would no doubt find some ingenious way to smuggle me out of the country. Embalmed in a large diplomatic pouch, perhaps?”

  “Don’t talk like an asshole, Walker! We’re too far from either coast even to consider taking you, alive or otherwise. This German plot is more important to us than your petty set-to with the U.S. Army. We’re with the State Department, not War or Justice. I give you my word you won’t be arrested if you come with me to the embassy to hear us out.”

  “I can hear you just as good right here, Carson. No offense, but I’d still be a U.S. Cavalry officer instead of an outlaw on the dodge if I hadn’t once taken the word of a guy I knew a lot better than I know you.”

  He kept walking, so Carson had no choice but to keep pace with Captain Gringo as he sighed and said, “God damn it. Walker, the French have a legit claim to interest in the future canal, since they started the whole idea and would have finished it by now if it hadn’t been for Yellow Jack and those damned Colombians blackmailing them for more money. The Brits have a legit interest because they let the U.S. Navy use their Suez Canal, and one hand washes the other. The U.S. has an even better claim because American interests bought out the French canal, company when it went broke.”

  “Tell me something I haven’t already heard before, from both sides, in the guerrilla fighting down there. Where does the Kaiser and his neat new navy fit in?”

  “They don’t. The German shipyards are working around the clock to catch up with the Royal Navy, and at the rate they’re going, Germany will have as big and probably more modern a navy than Great Britain by the turn of the century. By then, hopefully, the Panama Canal will be in business. When, not if, Kaiser Willy decides Der Tag has arrived, he’ll face a Royal Navy that can take considerable shortcuts through a canal he knows he’ll never be able to use in wartime. The British have crown colonies in this neck of the woods. Germany doesn’t, and won’t, if the U.S. has anything to say about it. And the U.S will. Not even Kaiser Willy is dumb enough to get into a war with us and the Brits at the same time.”

  “That sounds reasonable. So what’s the problem? Germany can’t build any goddamn Panama Canal, no matter what they may be up to, right?”

  Carson nodded, but said, “We know what they’re up to, the devious bastards! Germany will never be able to use such a canal in time of war, and they know it, so they’re busting a gut making sure said canal is never built! Krupp’s been selling arms, at cost, to Colombia. German agents are working on both sides in the ongoing revolution down there to see that neither side can ever hope to settle the matter.”

  Captain Gringo nodded as he spotted the lights of his own hotel ahead. He said, “Makes sense. If I had a navy that had to go around Cape Horn to get to my Pacific islands, I think I’d make sure all my rivals had to go around the Horn a lot too. But just what do you expect me to do about all this, Carson? I don’t hold a commission in any fucking navy at the moment.”

  “We want you to find out just what Claudette Pardeau, nee Pfalz, is picking up for the German embassy here in San José. We know she’s going somewhere to pick up something. You no doubt have a better idea than we, right?”

  “She didn’t say,” Captain Gringo lied, adding, “It’s been nice talking to you, Carson. By the way, did you say something about a pardon for me if I spied on Germany for dear old Uncle Sam?”

  Carson didn’t answer. Captain Gringo hadn’t expected him to. His voice was bitter as he nodded and said, “That’s what I thought you said. I stopped a war for the U.S. Marines in Venezuela one noisy afternoon a while back, Carson. You know what I got for fighting for my old country, free? I got shit! Those same marines I helped got orders to arrest me. So I had to run like hell.”

  Carson looked uncomfortable and said, “Look, I know you think you got a raw deal from the U.S. Cav’ that time, but—”

  “But me no buts,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “I don’t think I got a raw deal, Carson. I know I did! I was serving my country as best I knew how when some incompetent senior officers decided to cover their own poor soldiering by hanging it all on yours truly! You might say it soured me on my country right or wrong, Carson. My country was wrong as hell and I came awfully close to hanging for it!”

  “Come on, Walker. You have to admit you killed a fellow officer back in the States.”

  “Admit it, shit, I’m proud of it! The motherfucker was fixing to hang me in the morning and he was dumb enough to gloat about it where I could get my hands on him! What would you have done, kissed his ass and gone to the gallows as requested? Sure I killed him. I’d have killed a dozen like him if I’d had to. But that’s ancient history. So let’s just agree that you’re a good guy and I’m a bad guy and it’s been nice talking to you, but not that nice. So, adios, motherfucker.”

  He left Carson standing on the corner as he turned it to enter his own hotel. It was a better place than Claudette’s, so there was a room clerk on duty in the lobby. The room clerk knew better than to ask what he was doing with two carbines in his hands and a very annoyed look on his face as he grumped his way across the lobby and up the stairs.

  He and Gaston had booked adjoining rooms, of course. He saw light under Gaston’s door, so he went in. Gaston was reclining on the bed, smoking a cigar and reading, or scanning, a magazine that must have been rather naughty. Gaston was idly jerking off with his free hand.

  Captain Gringo propped the guns in a corner and growled, “Didn’t your folks ever tell you little boys can go blind playing with themselves?”

  Gaston stuffed his tool back in his pants with a sheepish grin as he answered, “Oui, but I don’t need glasses yet. Your Maria is a trés inspiring muchacha, Dick. But, as you just saw, she was true to you when I told her you couldn’t make it, or her, tonight. How did things go with m’mselle Claudette? After you laid her, I mean.”

  Captain Gringo lit a smoke for himself and sat on a chair near the bed long enough to fill Gaston in on both Claudette’s plans and the U.S. embassy’s apparent objections to them.

  When he’d finished, Gaston sat up and said, “Eh bein. We had better go with her to Puntarenas, in that case.”

  “Are you crazy, Gaston? I was about to suggest we double-cross her again. What’s in that cigar you’re smoking? I just told you the goddamn U.S. government is on to her! They’re watching her hotel. That’s how they spotted me coming out. They may not know where she’s going, or to do what, but they’re bound to tail her, and us, to the stage station in the morning. Have you forgotten she’s not the only person in town Uncle Sam is interested in? You and me are both wanted, dead or alive, damned near everywhere but here!”

  Gaston nodded and said, “Oui. It is our own sweet young derrieres I am thinking of saving, Dick. We’ve enjoyed a most pleasant stay here in San José, but all in all, I think it is time we left for parts unknown again. It makes me nervous to have your Uncle Sam’s undivided attention in any case. I don’t think you were diplomatique in calling an embassy official a motherfucker, Dick. Whether we help the pretty German spy or not, I see no future for us here. We shall take her down to the coast and then double-cross her, hein?”

  “What are you talking about? The deal was to convoy her down to the coast and back.”

  “Oui. So we shall only be half double-crossing her if we see her safely to Puntarenas. Whatever double-cross she may have in mind would be planned for the return trip. Meanwhile, since Puntarenas is a seaport—”

  “Gotcha. Do we hop a freighter going north or south this time?”

  “South, if we want work, and we’d best be thinking of hiring out to someone or other before we run out of drinking money. I think we have just enough to book passage to Panama. That seems to be where the action is at the moment.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” sighed Captain Gringo, adding, “Okay. If they can’t use a machine-gun crew in Panama, they can’t use one anywhere. Our next move is to get Claudette from her hotel to the stage station unobserved, which is … hmm, impossible.”r />
  “Qui, it might be best to double-cross her right off, non?”

  “No. That won’t work either. I already told her to meet us there in the morning. So she’s bound to show up, with a brace of Secret Service agents tailing her. It gets worse. She’s wired by now, so her pals in the seaport will be waiting for her. And said Secret Service will follow her all the goddamn way. Shit, there’s got to be another way to skin this cat, Gaston!”

  Gaston consulted his watch before he said, “I have skinned the cat many times, my old and rare. It is still too early. Four o’clock in the morning is the best time for skullduggery, non?”

  “That’s when cat burglars do it. If everyone’s not asleep at that hour, forget it. But what’s the plan?”

  “Eh bien, if it’s not obvious to you, how could the trés fatigué Secret Service men foresee my brilliance, hein? In the eerie hours when only mice and ghosts come out to play, we shall sneak over to m’mselle’s hotel and awaken her. At such an ungodly hour, who could be watching for her to make serious moves, hein?”

  “Yeah, yeah, we can probably sneak her out of her hotel at four o’clock. But then what? There’s nothing going on in San José at that hour.”

  “Exactly. The stage leaves just after dawn. No doubt the people watching her will be watching the stage station as well. But neither she nor the two of us leave on the stage for Puntarenas, won’t they assume all three of us are simply late risers?”

  “Sure. But how the hell are we supposed to get down to the coast if we don’t board the coach, Gaston? It’s too fucking far to walk, and it gets even worse once the sun comes up!”

  “Oui. That is why nobody will expect us to try such a silly thing. We don’t have to board the stage here in San José. It stops every six or seven miles. That is why they call it a stagecoach, hein? If we leave San José at four, we can easily be in Heredia by sunrise. Heredia is only two stages from here, non?”