295 Hostile Alliance by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

5

Jaime Pacheco followed Bolan down the steps of the winding stone staircase outside the front door. The two men stopped at the bottom. On the lawn, he saw the gardeners finishing their tasks for the day. Several of the rifle-toting men who had guarded the house earlier in the day were gone, and had been replaced with new faces.

As they'd left the den, Gothe had requested that Pacheco give his friend a tour of the grounds before showing the big American to his sleeping quarters. But as they turned the corner of the house, they met Lima on his way back from organizing the night's digging. The belief that he was about to take over Gothe's operation had to still have been on the man's mind because he was walking with a gait that would have made a peacock's strut look like a shuffle. Pacheco couldn't resist. "Hey, Julio," he said pleasantly. "Gothe wanted me to show Mike around. Would you rather do it?"

Lima stopped a few feet in front of them. He came as close to sneering as a man could and still speak at the same time. "He's your friend," he spit. "You do it." He paused as another thought worked its way slowly across his mind. "And I suggest you get used to doing what I say from now on," he added before swaggering past them.

Pacheco waited until the man was out of hearing distance, then laughed softly. "Somehow, I knew he was going to say no," he whispered to Bolan. He shook his head in amazement. "Poor bastard," he said, still watching Lima's back. "Doesn't even have enough sense to know he's already dead." He turned back around and motioned for Bolan to go with him.

The American fell in next to Pacheco, and they crossed the lawn toward the vast expanse of land cleared out of the jungle behind it. Pacheco had heard the story of the knife fight in the bar at the resort, and now he asked the man to tell him about it. He listened attentively as Bolan ran down the encounter, then laughed. "By the time it got here to us you had cut Jorge's entire arm off. Whether you'd cut it into one or two pieces was a subject of much debate." He shook his head, still laughing softly. "We are a romantic people, we Hispanics. And you've now become a local legend. It won't be long until we're writing songs about you."

"You know any of that bunch?" Bolan asked. "Montoya or Jorge or any of the other men? I didn't get the feeling there was any connection to Gothe."

Pacheco started to answer but stopped as they passed a man raking the newly mowed grass. When they were out of earshot again, he said, "Oh yeah," he said. "I know who Montoya is. But he and his bunch are nothing more than a bunch of lowlife Osa trash. Don't get me wrong, they're evil souls who steal, rape and rob, and I imagine they have been behind a few unsolved murders.

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