The Ambushers by Donald Hamilton

friends as looney as he is. Well, that’s pretty close, except for the religious angle. Actually, the place belongs to rich old Uncle Sam, and I guess we qualify as his friends, and if we weren’t crazy we wouldn’t be in this business. I eased the old heap down the hill on what compression was left in the remaining cylinders, and let it roll to a stop in the yard.
    We were expected. A man in a sports shirt was coming to meet us. The doctors don’t wear white coats at the ranch, and the nurses don’t wear uniforms, but they aren’t hard to spot.
    “You can wake up any time,” I said over my shoulder. “We’re in.”
    I heard my passenger stir in back. The guy in the bright shirt came up. He was young and earnest-looking, with metal-rimmed glasses, and he had all the qualifications of a good doctor except common sense and a sense of humor— well, any kind of sense at all, to be perfectly honest. That’s just one man’s opinion, of course, based on previous visits.
    He was one of the first-name boys. He was Dr. Thomas Stern, and he ran the place with all kinds of authority, but he’d think you were mad at him unless you called him Tom.
    “Hello, Tom,” I said. “She’s in back. Give her a chance to put her shoes on.”
    “How’s she feeling?”
    “I’m just the chauffeur,” I said. “I’m just the guy who gave her a lift because we happened to be going the same way. Telepathy is out of my line... No, I wouldn’t go back there and get helpful.”
    He’d started toward the rear of the wagon. He stopped, frowning. “Why not, Eric?”
    “Get a nurse, anything in skirts,” I said. “She’s gotten kind of used to me, to the point of silent toleration, but I don’t know how she’d react to you.” I limped around to the rear of the wagon and yanked open the transom and dropped the tailgate. “All right, Skinny,” I said. “Out you come.”
    The thin little girl sitting on the blankets in the rear of the station wagon looked a lot more human than the one I’d helped lug out of the Costa Verde jungle, but she wasn’t a jewel of glowing health and perfect adjustment. She just stared at me silently and crawled back to the opening, waiting for me to get well off to one side before she swung her legs over and slid to the ground.
    She was wearing a pair of slim, tapering cotton pants, light tan in color, and a boy’s white short-sleeved shirt. They’d been clean and crisp enough in Washington, D.C., but now they looked kind of like a well-slept-in suit of pajamas. Well, I was in no position to criticize. My costume was no fresher. At least she didn’t have a beard.
    I’d been feeding her milkshakes and stuff clear across the country, whenever she was awake enough to absorb nourishment, but she still hardly cast a shadow. Her left hand was still wrapped in bandages. Her face was all bones and eyes, mostly eyes. Her hair had reverted to a light shade of brown, like the description in the files, and the machete haircut had been repaired as far as possible. Actually, it didn’t look much worse than the short tousled messes some girls pay money to wear on their heads, even in this era of haystacks and beehives.
    But it was the eyes that got you. They were big and gray and shiny, and sometimes they were big and yellow and shiny, and they never seemed to close at all. They were watching all the time, waiting for something dreadful to happen.
    “She’s all yours,” I said to Dr. Stern. “So long, Skinny. Thanks for the company, such as it was.”
    I saw the eyes change, just a little. I was getting to her. If I’d had her for another sixty hours, I might even have made her blink. Dr. Stern was looking at me reproachfully. He obviously thought I lacked tact and feeling. A stout nurse in a print dress was glaring at me.
    “Oh, you poor little thing,” she said to the girl, putting her arm defensively around the narrow shoulders. “Come on, honey, this way. You’re just going to love it here. You’ll