The Ambushers Read Online Free PDF

the distance, I didn’t have much doubt as to what language it was. But the two bearded men squatting beside the truck as if they belonged to it weren’t Slavic types.
    “May I look?” Jiminez whispered.
    I’d taken back my binoculars earlier. I passed them to him again and watched him adjust them to his eyes, lying beside me in the brush. I couldn’t read his expression. I looked around the clearing. They had a couple of heavy machine guns set up strategically—there had been one nest along the road that we’d bypassed—and there were too many nervous sentries pacing around nursing too many rapid-fire weapons to make an attack seem like more than a forlorn hope. Just to get the two of us this close to the barbed wire undetected had taken all the woodcraft both of us possessed.
    A fresh burst of firing inland indicated that Jiminez’ boys were still leading the paper chase away from us. The men in the clearing looked that way, grimly or uneasily according to temperament. They knew the village had been hit; they were expecting to be next.
    “Cubans,” Jiminez whispered. “Those two by the truck. With the beards. One supposes they are technicians lent by Castro to his fond amigo, General Santos.”
    “Along with a nice little Russian toy that somehow got side-tracked when they were all being shipped home as a result of the U.S. blockade of Castro’s island. I wonder what Khrushchev said when his inventory added up one whiz-bang short?” I grimaced. “How did they get it in here?”
    “They could have floated it up the river and landed it well above where you were set ashore. There are little-used roads by which a truck like that, assisted by men with axes and shovels, could have brought it the rest of the way. It would take much work but it could be done. Señor Helm?”
    “Yes?”
    “I am not well acquainted with such weapons. What would be the range of this one?”
    “I’m no expert, either,” I said. “But I should think it would shoot at least five hundred miles. Our Polaris goes well over a thousand and it’s small enough to fit on board a submarine crosswise.”
    “It would seem, then, that we reached El Fuerte just in time,” whispered Jiminez, still studying the missile grimly. “With this, if it is as powerful as one suspects, he could have blackmailed our government into submission. Our capital city is less than three hundred of your miles from here. He could have threatened to destroy it if their demands were refused.” After a moment, the Colonel said, “I will have to speak to my informants in the village. They should have learned of this.”
    I said carefully, “I am thinking, Colonel, that my government would be pleased if something happened to that thing.”
    He lowered the binoculars and turned his head to look at me. “I know you are thinking that, Señor Helm,” he whispered. “I am thinking what my government would wish me to do. Now that El Fuerte is dead and the revolution no longer has a leader, I am not certain they would wish it damaged. A thing like that has many uses, in the proper hands.” He moved his shoulders. “But we speak of what is impossible. Those men are alerted. We cannot take them by surprise, and we have not enough force to overwhelm them. No. It is my duty to report this. That is all I can do. Come.”
    It was no place to argue; and even after we’d extricated ourselves from there, I wasn’t in a very good position for argument, deep in an officially friendly country surrounded by well-equipped representatives of its armed forces. Anyway, stray missiles weren’t really in my line. I’d done my work and, like Jiminez, I’d make my report. Washington could take it from there.
    We rejoined the rest of our group and reached the hiding place while the light still held, though it was fading fast. Two of the men of the special contingent that had entered the village, and the older woman—the younger one, wounded, had remained with us after delivering