Free Killing Castro by Lawrence Block Page B

him ’arper . He wished she would call him Ray .
    A dry, hot, lazy afternoon. Maria sat by the ashes of the dead campfire. She was cleaning her Sten gun. Only a fool let his gun become dirty. Once she had seen such a fool with a dirty gun. A troup of Castro’s forces had attacked, and one of their men fired his weapon. And it had blown up in his face, had disintegrated it.
    She went on cleaning her gun, humming softly to herself. Her mind was busy with thought and she did not hear Garth until he was at her side.
    Then she whirled. This big man frightened her; twice already he had put his hands on her, bothering her.
    “You be nice to me,” he said now. “You be nice and we’ll have a good time.”
    She did not understand the words; they were in English and she didn’t know the language. But the meaning was clear enough even though the words were unintelligible. He wanted her.
    She tried to get to her feet. But he put his big hands on her shoulders and pushed. She fell down and he threw himself down beside her. She could smell the strong animal smell of his sweat. He was no man, this Garth. He was a pig.
    She cursed him in Spanish and he smiled, not understanding her words. He reached out a massive paw that closed around her breast. He squeezed and she writhed in terror. He was hurting her.
    “You and me,” he said. “We’ll have ourselves a ball.”
    He was lying on top of her now, his breath strong in her face. She felt one of his hands forcing itself between her thighs, touching her. She twisted, got a hand free, slapped at his face. He only leered at her.
    She saw the heat building within him, noticed the way he was breathing faster. She lay there, fighting him, waiting for the rape to begin, knowing he was stronger and she could not resist him. His hands were busy with her full, firm breasts, busy with her groin. She would have screamed but there was no one to hear.
    He might have raped her, but he did not. There were sounds of men coming, sounds of the rest of the party returning to the camp. He stopped, listened, grunted.
    “We got company,” he said. “Sometime soon, honey. We’ll have to get this finished, you and me.”
    “I will kill you,” she told him in Spanish. “I will kill you. I will shoot you and watch you die.”
    That night she spoke to Manuel. In Spanish, Maria said: “That Garth continues to bother me. Today he put his hands on me. Several times.”
    “You have no man,” Manuel said. “He wishes to be the one.”
    “I don’t want a man.”
    “It is not natural,” Manuel said. “A woman without a man.”
    “I do not want one. And even if I did, it would not be Garth.”
    Manuel shrugged expressively. “If you took another man, perhaps Garth would cease to bother you.”
    “I cannot. Not any man. You know what happened.”
    What happened was simple. Four months ago Maria had had a man, a husband. She and her man fought in the hills with Manuel. Then one day the Castristas caught them both on patrol. There were four of the Castristas. First they killed Maria’s husband by shooting him in the head with a machine gun until he had no head left. That was a picture which never left Maria’s mind, the picture of Carlos lying on his back in the dirt with his body ending at the neck, with blood everywhere.
    And then she had been raped. The four of them took her in turn, and it didn’t do her any good to struggle, but she struggled nevertheless. She kneed one soldier in the groin and tried to gouge the eyes of another. To punish her for this, the four of them burned her breasts with a cigar after they had finished with her. They did not kill her. They left her on the road, living but in fearful pain, as an example to the others. And for dramatic effect they placed Carlos’ dead body upon her and tied the two of them together.
    Her breasts still bore scars from the cigar burning. And she wanted no man now, no man at all.
    “If this Garth bothers me,” she said levelly, “I will