"Major Diego Segador. Know him?"
Lobo smiled. "You'll get through," he said. "Segador has nine lives, each of them tougher than the side of a battleship. Ask him to tell you what we did to those three Nazi heavyweights in San Souci in '39. Madre de Dios, Mateo, it was carnage!"
Twenty steps down the corridor, a Negro technician was focusing a sharp lens on page three of Arriba for April 27, 1938. The picture which spread across four columns of the top of the page was remarkably like the picture Hall had carried in his mind since that day with Jerry in San Hermano. The fans in the negative dryer were whirring over twenty-odd other negatives. Lobo was right, Hall realized. They were worth the life of one Rivas, they might yet take the life of a Hall. The stakes were worth the risk. Kill the beast in San Hermano, drive a knife into its arteries, keep it from crawling north and its foul breath beginning to stink up the clean air. Kill, so you can live again, kill, so you can go back to Ohio when the beast was dead, and have children and not worry that some day they'd have to kill or be killed too. Kill for the same reasons the Rafaels and the Santiagos and the Lobos kill and you'll never have to lose a night's sleep.
"What are you thinking, Mateo?"
"I'm thinking of the girl I'm going to marry in two weeks."
"Hijo de la gran puta! He's in love, too! Let's go to the laboratory. We've got a lot to do before you go."
Chapter seventeen
The American Army plane banked sharply over the blacked-out Caracas field. Three times the four-motored ship circled the airport, breaking its speed, rousing the men who controlled the lights along the correct runways. During the second time around, Hall thought he saw a Douglas with the bright green-and-white flag on its wings. He was not so sure the third time.
The pilot brought his ship in gently. It rolled down the new concrete strip, a silver juggernaut in a cloud of red dust. Hall climbed out, gave the captain a silver cigarette case as a souvenir of the trip. The plane was not through for the night; it was to take on more fuel and proceed to a base farther south.