The Starshine Connection Read online

  BEN SLAYTON REALIZED THAT NO ONE KNEW WHERE HE WAS.

  Alone, somewhere in Mexico, and about to be killed by bribed Federales. Incapable of defending himself, doped up and bound like a chicken ready for the chopping block. They tossed him into a cell and the Federales began softening him up the way a cook might soften a cheap steak with a tenderizing mallet. What had he done wrong? He had to make his phone call, had to call Winship in Washington and find out what he had done wrong! Did he have Miranda rights in Mexico? Did Mexico have an repatriation treaty with the United States? Did they even have phones in Mexico…?

  Books by Buck Sanders

  T-Man #1: A Clear and Present Danger

  T-Man #2: Star of Egypt

  T-Man #3: Trail of the Twisted Cross

  T-Man #4: The Starshine Connection

  Published by

  WARNER BOOKS

  Copyright

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1982 by Warner Books, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: September 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56615-5

  Contents

  Ben Slayton Realized that no One knew where he was.

  Books by Buck Sanders

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  1

  “Códmo te gusta, gabacho?”

  The question was a crude joke, accompanying as it did the man’s headlong plunge onto the floor.

  The floor was closely packed dirt. Brown and choking, it kicked up a pale cloud of dust as the man made contact with it, propelled there by the Federale who had escorted him to the cell.

  The scene was so clichéd in the prisoner’s mind as to be nearly surreal. It was a Mexican jail with adobe walls and a dirt floor. The Federale had a lewdly crooked mustache, a gold tooth right in front, black beard-stubble to beat the band, and a huge beer belly straining against the confines of his sweat-soaked tan uniform. He also had the strength of a practiced sadist, grabbing the prisoner by the crotch of his pants and the scruff of his neck and introducing him to his cell with a grunt and a fling.

  The prisoner clopped across the cell on rubbery legs. He met the far wall with a crunch, rebounded drunkenly, lost his balance, and sprawled on the ground. The guard watched, allowing himself his own brand of disgust. The man clawed at the floor, trying to hang onto it in the mistaken impression he could hold his own swirling world still. His legs flailed, uncontrolled by his mind. Sweat poured from him as from a fever victim.

  Fuentes, the guard, knew the man was not sick. He was dndrogada, drugged to the gills—though on what, Fuentes had no idea, and cared less. More to the point, Fuentes was a class-A Mexican bigot. He despised Chicanos and their pathetic attempts to mate their character with American sensibilities. To him, such coupling was like trying to hybridize a snake with an eagle—the result would be no good for anything except making true Mexicans throw up in disgust. This less-than-brotherly sentiment on behalf of Chicanos made Fuentes’s attitude toward Americans famous in his district. That they were all whores or sons of whores was a forgone conclusion.

  It had taken the man on the floor of the cell about ninety seconds to climb to his hands and knees. Fuentes cleared a stray hair of his mostacho away from his mouth, stepped forward, and with a practiced motion, swung his booted foot upward into the man’s stomach. He flipped over without a noise, landing on his head, and splaying across the floor. He had a mouthful of loose dirt, but barely enough saliva to make it into mud inside his mouth.

  Behind Fuentes, another passing guard arched his eyebrows in silent question as to the problem of the gringo in their smallest cell. Fuentes said nothing.

  His companion, Cholla, squinted briefly -at the white man, mumbled, “Quedarse súpito,” almost inaudibly, and left. Fuentes nodded. The gringo was completely under.

  To Fuentes, it was not enough to hate Americans merely for their drug trafficking, their annoying melting-pot approach—lumping the Spanish in with the Mexicans and assuming they were the same, for example—or their snobbish disdain for Mexican culture. He had formulated his hatred from observing wave after wave of plump American touristas and their chicken-skinned puta wives and their melenudo children. As to this last, Fuentes had taken great joy in rounding up long-haired Mexican boys once the law had been passed. Grabbed them straight off the. street and trooped them to the barber in bunches for a proper shearing. Fuentes himself had wide, white sidewalls around each ear, and hair no longer than half an inch on top. He respected the decrees of the Nacionales.

  Then he found out that the reason the law had been passed in the first place was so touristas would not be offended by the scruffy appearance of long-haired kids in the streets during their trips across the border. It was all a show for the gringos, the gabachos.

  That was another strike the man on the floor had against him: not only was he an American, not only was he drugged, or drunk, not only was he an irresponsible mess, but as far as Fuentes was concerned, he was a jipi, a hippie, judging by his rags and his unkempt hair. As such, he was, for Fuentes, the perfect embodiment of every wrong ever wrought on the Mexican culture and character by Americans. And Fuentes never let opportunity get away from him when it favored his prejudices so blatantly.

  He gave the unconscious man a swift boot in the ribs. The man groaned and withdrew, like a snail, into a more fetal, protected position. Fuentes grinned and kicked the man again. This time, no reaction.

  He frowned suddenly and bent to check the man’s jugular pulse, holding two fingers skillfully against his throat. He was still alive, his breath coming in shallow gasps, his perspiration a living thing standing out in beads against the dim light in the close and stinking cell. He was still alive, but not conscious.

  Fuentes lit a sulphur match by snapping it against his thumbnail, a trick learned early in life on the streets. He lifted the insensate man’s left hand by the wrist, so it dangled limply in the air. Between his fingers he could also feel a weak but regular pulse, assuring him that there was nothing wrong with this fundillo that a rigorous sobering-up program would not cure—so Fuentes proceeded with his own peculiar brand of sobering-up.

  He held the match below the man’s hand and watched it redden, then scorch, the flesh of the palm. Finally, there was a reaction. The man cried out weakly, like a girl or a baby. Fuentes vised the wrist and flipped the man over again. He stood to his full height and planted his boot on the man’s throat as he struggled for breath.

  He had America by the throat. Gringos bastardos!

  But the man was not even capable of a good fight, let alone a token resistance. Fuentes decided to return when he could force the man to stand up, so he could flatten him with a few well-placed punches. Harassing officers of the law, taunting his jailers; yes, that would be a good one. You could insult the idiots to South America and back and they never understood a word you were saying. Because they, like all Americans, were overconfident and stupid.

  He had returned to the door of the cell when the man on the floor spoke to him.

  The voice was a dry growl of defiance.

 
; “Tiene lonjas mas grandes, eh, gordinfldn?”

  Insults! Fuentes reddened. Insults from the hijo de puta on the floor, the American sonofabitch he had thought unconscious! He was faking it!

  With a smile of pure pleasure, Fuentes slammed the cell door, remaining on the inside. He hitched up his belt, and then waded into the man on the floor.

  Cholla passed by the cell again, peering briefly through the slot in the door. Fuentes was doing his dance, kicking the shit out of the gringo in the cell. He shrugged to himself. It was a slow Wednesday.

  Benjamin Justin Slayton, special assignment pet of Hamilton Winship of the United States Treasury Department and number-one troubleshooter for the difficulties of said office, was whacked out of his skull.

  They had poured liquor down his levered-open gullet. They had injected kickapoo-juice into his bloodstream. They had blindfolded him, let the intoxicants get a running start, and then they had passed him around like the last roach at a pot party, pounding and pummeling the piss out of him. Three, four, or two hundred: it made no difference to him then—it might as well have been a legion of Cortez’s in full armor and regalia that had run him through the meat grinder. Ben Slayton was signed, sealed, and delivered. And he didn’t even care, let alone know, where in hell he had been delivered to.

  The colors, the flowing shapes, undulating and geometric, were the first order of attention. There was much to be learned from observing, with a scholarly eye, the ebb and flow of rainbow trapezoids and long funnelling corridors of purple and ebony.

  Ben Slayton was whacked out of his skull, and not doing a damn thing about it except grooving on the colors. He was actually capable of little else.

  You are the sunshine of my… no wait, starshine of my leaf. My left. No, wait a minute…

  He began to sing it in the car as they drove. The singing, he reasoned, would serve a twofold purpose. It would put his captors at ease, thinking he was stoned. He would sing loud and long in his rich basso, and in so doing hide the fact that the bumpy car ride had aroused him sexually—nothing more embarrassing than an erection in a carload of cholos—and it would prove that he was still conscious, still lucid: indeed, still capable of putting out the words to something as complex as a song without mucking it up! Try to dope him up and run a fast one past Ben Slayton? Hah! Cold day in hell.

  Singing would also refute the allegation of someone else in the automobile that Slayton was knocked out. Dumb Chicanos. They thought he did not understand their insults, their conversation, their plotting as to where he would be taken and what would be done with him. He was a goddam Treasury agent; they couldn’t get away with this!

  He opened his mouth to sing and somebody slapped it shut. So much for that brilliant idea.

  The blow stung him back to momentary reality. These bastards were taking him to be killed!

  Training, his mind chattered, training and discipline! You’ve been bombed before! Burn it off, bring yourself out of it, they’re going to kill you, you dumb gringo, they said so!

  Or was it have you killed? He furrowed his brow. He could not remember. That was the problem with the grammar in romance languages, he complained to himself; declaratives and inquisitives all sounded alike when they were slurred. Or was it declaratives and imperatives? Slayton was confused. But it was okay to be confused in Mexico; Mexico was a place where confusion was the order of the day, n’cest-ce pas?

  Something seemed wrong with that, too.

  Damn it, nothing was staying the same for more than a few seconds! How in hell could he be expected to behave professionally when reality stayed in flux, kept zipping around like a crazy slot car on a chicane track, always changing lanes unexpectedly?

  He thought he could fool them by pretending to be blasted—that was the key! If they thought he was stoned, he would be no threat to them, and he could make his plans and escape unnoticed.

  Slayton promptly pounded the shoulder of the cholo beside him in the back seat. He pounded with his head, using a butting motion to get the boy’s attention—his hands were bound behind him and the rough hemp chafed his wrists. Slyly, he told the man that he would fool them by pretending to be childlike, by faux-naif, eh?

  The boy’s eyes flared whitely in the nut-brown face. “Callaté, gabacho!” He slammed a pointed elbow into Slayton’s ribs and Slayton folded up as much as his bindings would permit. He was wound up inside coil after coil of thick shipping rope. His nose was in terrible pain.

  Tears came from his eyes, at first from the pain, then because his feelings had been hurt. It wasn’t fair to truss him up and call him nasty names! He was just doing his job. Everybody has a job to do, and it wasn’t fair!

  Suddenly he realized that pouting would do him no good either. These were professionals, too sophisticated to be taken in by such a ruse. Slayton decided to stick with his fake drunk act. It was easily done; all you had to do was recall innumerable times you had done it for real. Dutifully, Slayton conjured up an image of himself standing in a men’s room, lubricated to the pores, transfixing himself in the bathroom mirror with an idiot grin. “I’m okay. I’m not really bombed at all!”

  The ride was bumpy and uncomfortable, and seemed to take a couple of centuries. Slayton did his best to try to break up the monotony of the trip by singing and telling jokes in Russian. Nobody laughed. He thought that was unfair, too. Those jokes would have caused a riot in Washington. He was socially adept: he knew what he was doing. It was just that these guys were a bunch of callous oafs. No sophistication at all. Slayton had been fooled; reality had changed again. He wanted to cry. He wanted a woman to hold him and give him eight hugs—that was what some headshrinker had said, that everyone needs eight hugs a day—and when he was finished crying, he would take her to bed. He had been told he was very good, and by women, too, so that meant it had to be true.

  A blast of chill night air smacked him as he was jostled out of the car, and with the fresh air came a warning, all gilded in danger-signal red letters: They’re going to kill you; you’ve got to pull yourself out of it! He had not uttered a coherent phrase or done a logical thing since entering the car, and now that he was out, he tried to shed the stupor, and leave it behind with the car.

  He tried shaking his head, but that only broke his consciousness apart, sending it flying like swirling snow in a paperweight.

  He recognized the uniforms of the men who collected him. He was somewhere in Mexico. He was taken into custody of the Mexican police. What had he done wrong? He had to make his phone call, had to call Winship in Washington and find out what he had done wrong! Did he have Miranda rights in Mexico? Did Mexico have an expatriation treaty with the United States? Did they even have phones in Mexico…?

  You are my starshine, my only…

  Ben Slayton realized that no one knew where he was. Alone, somewhere in Mexico, and about to be killed by bribed Federales. Incapable of defending himself, doped up, and bound like a chicken ready for the chopping block. They tossed him into a cell, and the Federales began softening him up the way a cook might soften a cheap steak with a tenderizing mallet. It just wasn’t fair. He had to fight back.

  One guard was leaving him alone in his cell, when Slayton mustered energy, trying to fight back in some small way. The guard had taken advantage of his debilitated condition and had abused him sadistically, kicking him in the ribs and slapping him around. Oh boy, there would be hell to pay if Slayton ever got back to Washington! He’d have the sonofabitch arrested!

  Brutal reality flooded back in again: //. If you live through the night, you’ll be lucky, he told himself. The specifics of Slayton’s peculiar journey into Mexico betrayed the nature of the trip as one-way.

  But he had to let that damned smug guard know that Ben Slayton was not down and gone, not yet. He summoned his reserve of energy and let the guard have it. He told the guard in Spanish, You have a huge roll of lard around your gut, don’t you, fatso?

  Oops, wrong move, thought Slayton. The bastard is coming back to
stomp me. It was, and he did, and eventually Ben Slayton passed out for real.

  As he tumbled down into darkness, Slayton fought to remember how he had managed to make it from a cushy party in Washington D.C. to a death cell in Mexico in less than a week.

  2

  Ben Slayton was laughing out loud now, and Hamilton Winship simply could not stand it.

  He leaned forward, toward the surface of his desk; and planted his chin between the first two knuckles of his left fist, contemplatively ignoring the laughing agent and scanning the characteristically clean work area of his desk. Winship got things done quickly and efficiently, with no loss of face cither to the government or the Department, a feat which had garnered him endorsements from Presidents. Further down the Treasury hierarchy, the rookies of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms regarded the name of Winship as one of those too-rare legends.

  When Ben Slayton had been one of those trainees, Winship recalled, the first thought that had occurred to him was to have Slayton yanked from the line and subjected to a governmentally proper haircut. But later, Winship had followed young Slayton’s suggestions to modify dress standards for Treasury agents. When Slayton was a rookie, Treasury agents were still wearing white socks and black shoes. Thanks to Winship’s directives in the years that followed, they were no longer so conspicuous or inept. This was one of the many small ways the Department managed to catch up with the twentieth century under Winship’s tenure. There had since been just as many large ways.

  And though he frequently grated on Winship’s nerves and tested patience, Ben Slayton was his best agent. Win-ship had given just such an endorsement of the man to several Presidents. He made a silent memo of thanks that none of the men to whom he had commended Slayton so highly were present now.

  He cleared his throat, and Slayton clammed up. Almost no one was comfortable enough to laugh in Winship’s presence except Slayton—but then Slayton was a legend himself within the Department.