Bub had secreted himself behind the left main gear of the inoperable (if looks had anything to do with it) airplane. A heavy pen of welded steel I-beams contained a pair of truly enormous chickens - eight feet tall, with luminously evil yellow saucers for eyes and six-inch spikes at the ends of their powerful feet. He was watching a ragged train of peasants loading massively large bales of something unidentifiable onto the patchwork twin-prop job darkening one end of this jungle airstrip. He was reviewing his tactical plan and silently hoping the Rambazon hadn't gotten her thong in a bunch with another band of these marginally evolved apes. Just then, a short and disorientingly ugly fellow in worn Italian silk stepped up to him, brandishing something halfway between an oversized Bowie knife and a young machete.
Bub stared at this apparition. Half man, half harbor seal, a good two heads shorter than our Hero, with his kinky graying hair slicked back with some indescribably malodorous grease. This strutting rat king was brandishing his bladed weapon and spraying him with fractured invective. Bub stood unimpressed, more annoyed with the drip of rancid Jet-A descending on his brush of hair from the hapless MiG's wing. After putting up with an unbroken one-minute barrage of provincial syntax, Bub shut this impertinent creature up with a hard look and quietly opined: "looks lahk someone has Ken confused wit GI Joe."
One moment Bub was standing there. The next, he was standing there, Casull in hand, his vest flapping back to his side. Bub leveled his front sight at the black-and-gold dentition and coarse nose pores before him and thumbed back the hammer.
"Now are we gunna do this th'easy way, or the hard way?"
This tableau was interrupted by the arrival of a woman. She was as striking as the male was ugly. "Eemelda - " the little man started. She tore in on him in a strange patois of English, backwoods Spanish, and something unidentifiable. Fire sprayed from her dark eyes, and spittle decorated her hapless victim's chin. Bub looked upon her and could not deny her coarse good looks. Ample of bosom and hip yet trim of waist, with smooth light-brown skin, she had an earthy appeal completely different from the sinuous grace of his erstwhile traveling rival. She stopped her tirade in midsentence when she noticed him. "Aaayyyy, who arrrre you?!" she said, suddenly unctuous. "Usted ees muy handsome! Ceartainly mejorrr than thees PEEEG off a man", she turned with sudden venom at her mate. Juan began to protest, but she would have none of this. Bub used the moment to reverse the weapon in his hand and laid a buttstroke upon Juan's knife hand. (That's fer callin me a wuss, Bub thought smugly.) He shrieked - a thin, ascending scream like a hurt schoolgirl - and dropped the blade with a clatter. Eeemelda reached to pick up the machete, having deduced that the tall gringo was trouble. And she wouldn't mind the opportunity to compel this well-constructed intruder's undivided attention! He might even like it...
...but Bub was gone. |
