Death Merchant #13: The Mato Grosso Horror

In The Mato Grosso Horror, Richard Camellion heads an "archeological expedition" that is trying to locate a group of former Nazis, headed by Doctor Klaus von Linderbock, who have constructed a laboratory in the "hell-hot" Brazilian jungle and are working on a powerful mind control drug. They have been secretly testing the drug on the Carajas natives. With the drug, the Nazis plan to unite Germany and regain Europe - and then the world!

From various reviews of the Death Merchant series, I know that author Joseph Rosenberger filled more of the later books with his own political and social beliefs, from straight American ultra-conservatism to the occult. (His anti-religion stance has been crystal clear since the first book. Here, Camellion dismisses missionaries who venture into the jungle - "one of the most unexplored regions on earth" - armed with little more than Bibles as "idiots to begin with".)

Early in the book (published in September 1975), Camellion opines on the feminist movement while the members of the expedition are double-checking their cache of supplies. The narrative suddenly stops after Major Ryan refers to Monica Belone, an anthropologist, as "Miss Belone". She replies that, "if you don't mind, I prefer to be addressed as 'Ms.'"

[Major] Ryan looked startled. Then he looked as if he wanted to laugh.

"Oh, that 'Ms.' business!" He grinned broadly. "To me that means either 'manuscript' or 'multiple sclerosis!' but if you want to be called 'Ms.,' that's okay by me."

Monica didn't appreciate Ryan's comments, and her brown eyes flashed in anger. She folded her arms over her breasts (which were slightly larger than two fried eggs) and said stiffly, "It's gratifying to know that some men have the good sense to realize male supremacy is on its way out in all the industrialized nations, that it was just a phase in the evolution of culture."

Relighting his cigar, Ryan did not reply. But Camellion did.

"Maybe so, but I'm not very optimistic about the net results of the democratization of sex relations," he said, his eyes on the planes, rather than on 'Ms.' Belone. "The death of male supremacy may simply mean that the sexes become equally powerless, rather than equally powerful. For example, if we continue with the present economic system, the sexual democratization of the labor market will result not in women improving their position, but in a period of worsened conditions for both sexes."

The Death Merchant turned and raked Monica with his icepick-like gaze. "To be specific, the kinds of advantages that have been obtained by women act against the better interests of black women and poor women. I say that because mobility for women depends on education; and it is middle-class women who get the best educations, the most opportunities, and the best jobs."

"Apparently, Richard, you are not familiar with the work of Claude Levi-Strauss and the French structuralists. The emic-etic debate has . . ."

"I'm not interested in self-appointed messiahs who prefer theories and ignore facts. One of those facts is that middle-class families will have both marriage partners working, and that will pull their incomes even farther away from those of working-class families. In short, Ms. Belone, the opening up of certain jobs for limited categories of women may actually mean more economic deprivation for poor people in general!"

He smiled at the angry but subdued young woman. "But all that doesn't have anything to do with this expedition, does it?"

And with that dismissal, the main story continues.

Also, Rosenberger must have done a ton of research on the jungles of Brazil - and he was clearly determined to put it all into the book. The Mato Grosso Horror is packed with information about Brazil, its wildlife and plants. However, Rosenberger isn't really able to integrate his research materials smoothly into the narrative. Here is some info snakes and other hazards of the jungle:

There were more than thirty species of poisonous snakes in that special kind of Hades, divided into two general families: the colubrids and the vipers, such as the corals, short-fanged, which caused them, to hang on and chew after striking. The pit vipers were much worse - two subfamilies or genera; first, the many tropical cascabelas, like bushmasters (aggressive, extremely vicious, no rattles to warn you with); the fer-de-lance, a long-fanged killer, called the jararaca, a night rover and 94 percent fatal; and, of course, the yacu maman, or anaconda, so huge it could swallow a man whole!

The forest would be denuded of game and other foods. There was El Tigre, the man-eating jaguar, hunting in singles or in pairs; crocodiles; pana - two varieties, first cousins of the meat-eating piranha; the ten-foot cannibal zungaro or tiger fish; and giant electric rays capable of electrocuting a man. There were scores of jungle diseases. Ants whose single bite could cause blindness. In short, just staying alive and halfway healthy was a full-time job in the Mato Grosso!

Besides the snakes and other dangerous animals, there are also two tribes of "savages" to contend with. The Carajas are cannibals and "the most warlike tribe in South America". While providing pages of information about the fictional tribe, what they wear and how they paint their faces, Rosenberger helpfully notes that the women are "attractive for savages ... some of them were quite shapely".

At one point, Rosenberger has one of the Carajas alert the Nazis as to Camellion's group's progress: "Drums they say white man-devils close to the land of the Muraitos. Drums they say Muraitos plenty mad and make chop-chop-kill of white devils." Rosenberger also indulges in some casual racism, having the explorers battle the "jungle lollipops", "painted gooks", and "South American jungle bunnies".

The death count in this book is well over 1,000. The various battle scenes are more one-sided than usual, as the DM and his cohorts have automatic weapons and grenade launchers, while the Muraitos and Carajas natives have only spears and arrows. (The Carajas guarding the village in which the Germans are located have modern weapons, however.)

As they make their way through the jungle, our heroes have to take refuge in a cave while battling two bands of Carajas warriors. The Germans then set off some explosives, sealing off the cave's entrance with tons of rocks! It's the end of a chapter - and when the next chapter begins, the group is out of the cave and has made several days' progress towards the Germans' village. ?!?! It's a total cop-out by Rosenberger, as he explains how they escaped being buried alive in only a few sentences.

The Nazis are found, and the DM and his team of 10 men split into two groups and attack the compound from two sides. (Ms. Belone does not participate in the final battle.) During the all-out fire-fight, Camellion narrowly survives a hail of slugs (naturally):

The Germans open fire! In the center of a hurricane of hot steel, he reached the top, jumped over the rim, and zigged and zagged, moving at a left angle on a one-way route for life. A nine-millimeter Heckler & Koch slug sang sinisterly by his left ear. Hot steel from a 7.92mm Krieghoff automatic rifle came within half an inch of drilling a couple of bloody tunnels through the top of his cap-covered skull. Damn! I should have gone into the hardware business with my father! A loud zinggg as steel smashed into steel and his right hip felt as if it had been hit with the head of a hammer. But it hadn't been. A 7.92mm from a St.G. Mauser assault rifle had cut through the metal sheath and had struck the steel blade of his M-4 bayonet-knife. Another 7.92 blob of steel barely raked across his left hand.

Also, Rosenberger adds to his list of food used to describe carnage: "Three more [Walther slugs] opened up his chest and split his skull the way a macana would chop apart a kisva melon!"

Death Merchant #12: The KGB Frame

In a summary of the Death Merchant series, the writer of Spy Guys And Gals, notes: "Extremely little is recorded about the man nicknamed the Death Merchant. His early years are a total mystery as are the means he used to acquire his awesome killing abilities. For a series with 70 different adventures, this is remarkable."

All we know (through the first 11 books) is that Richard Camellion used to be a high school history teacher in St. Louis. We have a basic physical description: "a lean almost-handsome face - straight nose, firm, determined jaw, eyes as blue as polar ice. Brown hair clipped in a two-inch crew cut."

But we get a lot of circumstantial information about Camellion in the early pages of The KGB Frame (published in July 1975). First of all, the Death Merchant has owned an 81-acre ranch seven miles south of Votaw, Texas (an actual small town roughly 75 miles northeast of Houston), for at least six years. The ranch is named Memento Mori ("Remember Death"). Jesus Sontoya, a trusted friend of the DM, lives on the ranch.

Camellion also has four "safe houses" in the United States, each with a sizeable hidden cache of weapons, disguises, etc.: (1) one in Alhambra, a suburb of Los Angeles, (2) a four-room brick house in Arlington Heights, north of Chicago, (3) "a neat cottage" in Sioux Falls, Iowa, and (4) an apartment on Vermilyea Avenue in upper Manhattan. Unfortunately, Camellion ends up having to destroy (by planted explosives) the New York apartment house, which he owned under the name Corliss Durbenten.

Also, it is revealed that Camellion knows (or can speak) 11 languages!

In The KGB Frame, the Russians want to get rid of the Death Merchant, so they create a recording of him supposedly admitting to being a double agent for the Soviets. When the CIA hears the tape - and its experts determine that the recording is genuine - they send several assassins to kill the traitorous Death Merchant. After figuring out that he has been "netted" by the KGB, Camellion travels to both New York and Mexico City in an effort to clear his name. (The final shootout is among the ruins of the Pyramid of the Sun outside of Mexico City.)

Rosenberger engages in some American exceptionalism:

[Belov] like [sic] the country and he liked Americans. In the two years that he had been stationed at the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., he had come to learn that Americans are the happiest, the best fed, the best-dressed people in the world.

Belov thought of the large apartment near the embassy that he and Elana rented. Every single piece of furniture was American and fifty times better than similar items manufactured in the Soviet Union. The refrigerator was a General Electric, the vacuum cleaner a Hoover, the color television set an RCA, the stereo a Philips. Why, even the shower head had come from Sears & Roebuck! Then there were those little everyday things that Americans took for granted, like American cigarettes, ballpoint pens, hot dogs, cola drinks and - Nescafe!

But not all of the United States is super-amazing. For example, New York City is referred to as "the land of freaks and ripoffs, with more kooks per square mile than even L.A.!" Camellion later muses: "If God existed and ever wanted to give the world an enema, New York City is where he'd stick the nozzle!"

One aspect of some men's adventure paperbacks is what is described as "gun porn", in which the author describes - at length - the various weapons used, the caliber of the shells, and how the various guns work. So far, Rosenberger is more apt to over-describe the gore than the specific firearms. Nevertheless, no one in these paperbacks simply fires a gun. It's a "9mm Spanish Astra Condor pistol equipped with a Bennim-Molig silencer" or a "9-MM Tula Tokarev TT pistol". In addition to his trusty shoulder-holstered .357 Magnums, Camellion uses an Ingram M10 .45 ACP caliber submachine gun with a Sonics silencer, and a silenced 9-millimeter Hi-Power Browning. At various points in the book, he carries SIG 7.65-millimeter pistols, a Colt AR-18 rifle (5.56MM slugs), a Remington 870 Wingmaster shotgun, and two .45 Mexican Obregon automatics.

Rosenberger continues his use of racial slurs. During a shootout at a Mexican whorehouse, Camellion refers to gunning down some "chili peppers" and "hot tamales". He also refers to the Russians as both "Ivans" and "pig farmers". The latter insult - which, perhaps in ignorance, I really don't understand - will be used throughout the entire series.

And this volume's food/fruit metaphors: "Dyudin's head exploded from the impact of the Super-Vel .357 slug that split open his skull like a watermelon kicked by an angry mule." ... A gunshot victim's legs give out from under him like "soggy breadsticks".

Death Merchant #11: Manhattan Wipeout

Manhattan Wipeout is a sequel of sorts to the previous Joseph Rosenberger volume, The Mainline Plot. After busting up Joey Pineapples' mob and destroying $300 million in heroin, Richard Camellion - the infamous Death Merchant - stays in New York and goes after another of the city's mobsters: Salvatore Giordano, perhaps the most dangerous gangster in the U.S.

This book is one of the weaker volumes in the series so far. While Rosenberger's action scenes are as lengthy and gory as usual, there is very little resolution after the mad shootout at the meeting of the various mob heads on Long Island. Camellion indulges in all sorts of murderous mayhem, killing mobsters and their bodyguards, but he makes his escape before he can kill Girodano, after hearing approaching police sirens. And then the book ends. But apparently, the secret recordings Camellion was able to make of the meetings is enough for the feds to move against some of the surviving mobsters, so the Merchant of Death will earn his standard $100,000 fee.

While the action scenes in these books are clearly not meant to be believed - and I'm fine with that - the way that Rosenberger handled the secret recordings really bugged me (pun intended). One device hidden at Krantz, Koonze, Rosenthal & Lebokowski (Giordano's attorneys) picks up "every word uttered in the offices of the high-powered law firm". How is this possible? The firm is likely using multiple floors of a large Manhattan office building. But this is how Camellion finds out about the big meeting Giordano is planning. And then when Camellion stakes out the meeting house on Long Island, he ends up shooting about a dozen dart-bugs outside various windows. Once again, I had serious doubts about how well these mics would pick up sounds within the walls of the house (there is also the howling mid-February winds along the water to consider).

However, you don't expect realism when you read about the "incredible adventures" of the Death Merchant. What you do expect - and what you get, over and over again - are hilarious turns of phrase, some godawful writing, and a bit of casual racism.

One hood is describes as being "uglier than a week old pastrami sandwich", while another one "looked like a man who would use Janitor in a Drum for a cologne". After the Death Merchant fires a few slugs into one bad guy, he acts "like he had a wasp in his underwear, he jumped, jerked, and died." And in seemingly every book of the series, at some point Rosenberger describes someone's shot-up head by referring to smashed fruit. This time: "The back of his head resembled a burst pomegranate ..."

The violence is, as usual, minutely described, with Rosenberger outlining exactly what the DM's many slugs do to the human body:

Two slugs missed Provanzano. Two didn't. One hit him in the left shoulder and tore off his arm. The second hollow-point struck him in the left side, flattened out, and tore all the way through him, taking chips of rib bone with it. ...

Al Ponzi tried to escape through the kitchen door, going through it in a dive. Half of him made it; the rest of him caught a .357 slug that tore off his left foot, and four 9mm pieces of steel which hacked through his stomach, his liver, and his gall bladder. Ponzi died in midair.

Elsewhere, Rosenberger describes Camellion firing his submachine gun ("the chatterbox"): "a whining symphony" of slugs, "the hot hornets of ricocheting steel". Rosenberger even teaches us a little bit about Italian food: "... fresh fettucini, boiled al dente European style, twice as tasty and chewy as al dente American style".

Rosenberg's racism is usually so over-the-top that it makes you shake your head in amazement rather than anger. In this book, he refers to Harlem as "coconut-land" and "apeland" and mentions "a coconut dishwasher" working in a restaurant's kitchen. While describing the events of the previous book, Rosenberger recalls the "slant-eyed monkeys from North Korea". He also describes the "spic areas" of Manhattan and refers to Italians as "garlic-snappers".

Other References?: Rosenberger refers to the Chicago mob as "the Outfit", which could be a nod to Richard Stark and his superb series of Parker novels. Elsewhere, someone is called Hardin, which is the last name of another crime fighter in another series: Mark Hardin, The Penetrator (so named because he was an expert at penetrating enemy lines in Vietnam, not due to any sexual prowess (though his last name might hint otherwise)).

Death Merchant #10: The Mainline Plot

Communists in North Korea have created a super-potent, super-addictive strain of heroin called Peacock-4. It only takes one shot to become an addict for life. The North Koreans intend to introduce the heroin into the U.S. and enslave a generation of young adults. As The Mainline Plot's back cover states: "Wreck the youth of a nation and you wreck its future."

So the North Koreans forge a three-way alliance with the Corsican mob in France and the Pinappello mob family in the New York area, to transport 1,000 kilograms of heroin halfway across the world. It's Richard Camellion's job - as the infamous Death Merchant - to bust up the deal and recover the drugs. (This was the fourth Death Merchant book to be published in 1974. Rosenberger was really cranking them out.)

Camellion begins the book in Seoul where he is being followed in his car by Wan Kwo-Do, North Korea's counterintelligence group. He ditches the car at a farmers' market and runs into a teahouse. After gunning down a team of eight assassins, Camellion is off to France to meet with CIA agents and undercover agents of the US Narcotics Bureau.

This time, a seven-man murder squad is waiting in his hotel room. Camellion, tipped off to the instrusion by his E.I.D. device, comes into the hotel room via the fire escape, surprising the goons. He kills all seven and high-tails it out of the building before the cops arrive.

We then get a couple of chapters of exposition, as we go to the House of Fouche, a small winery run by Roger Fouche, the most powerful syndicate boss in southern France. He and four other men are talking about the operation. He is meeting with two North Korea agents and two Mafioso from New York. It is during this meeting that Fouche gets the bad news that the DM waxed seven of his finest assassins in the hotel room. (At one point, Rosenberger actually writes that the North Koreans "remained silent, their almond features inscrutable".)

More information is given - including the six stages of preparing heroin (it's practically a how-to guide) and background on the New York mobsters - as Camellion visits an apartment in Marseille where the undercover US agents are working. The DM sees Fouche as the link and so he proposes to go to the winery and get some information.

After a couple of shootouts, Camellion captures Fouche and gets him to spill the beans on the heroin deal, how it was arranged, and how it will be shipped. He tells the DM the drugs will be hidden in the gas tanks of Renaults in the hold of a certain vessel, but this turns out to be a lie. (The drugs are moved several times from a seaplane to a cabin cruiser to other vessels before being delivered safely to Joey Pineapples' Jersey City estate.)

Camellion arranges a massive ambush on the Pineapples estate and the drugs, hidden under the floorboards in the stables, are destroyed in a fire. The mission is a success, but the Death Merchant realizes that there are four more powerful Mafia families in the New York area ("he had only begun"). And so it looks like that will be the DM's next target: "There's going to be a Manhattan wipeout!"

Joseph Rosenberger has devoted far more pages in this book to fight scenes and shootouts than in the previous volumes. At every stop Camellion makes, he has to blast his way out. (The Death Merchant actually gets shot in this book, but he is wearing a vest, so he survives.) At one point, Camellion is using something called The Blaster, a submachine gun developed by the CIA with a whopping 3,117 (!) cartridges in the magazine! As Rosenberger describes the damage that the dozens of slugs do, he showcases his unique style of writing:

The tornado of Blaster bullets did more than wreck inanimate objects; it found three of the troops. One man, to the side of a small sofa, simply fell back dead, his face a bloody pulp, his brains smeared all over the Persian rug. The second man cried in pain, jumped a foot, rolled over, and wondered if there could be life after death. He found out a few seconds later. The third man also had a very important question: could a man live without his stomach, with half his insides scattered all over the floor? Then he passed out and found out that a man could not ...

Death Merchant #9: The Laser War

In 1941, Nazi scientists developed a laser gun capable of utterly destroying whatever it was aimed at. They had taken it to North Africa for testing but were forced to abandon the weapon, buring it near a series of ancient tombs near Al-Jaghbub, a village in Libya. In The Laser War, Richard "The Death Merchant" Camellion's job is to find and bring Die Brandwunde ("The Burn") back to the United States.

When the book begins, Camellion is on his way to see Otto Frenswagger - one of the only men left in the world who knows where the weapon is buried. However, Egyptian agents from Bureau 7 have reached him first and kidnapped him. Camellion wastes the agents who are remaining in the apartment - and soon decides that he must break into the fairly impenetrable Egyptian Embassy (where he believes Frenswagger is being held) before the Egyptians are able to get the laser gun information.

Armed with two 9mm Soviet Stechkin APS machine pistols and a short-barreled Colt AR-18S (a submachine gun with 30 5.56 mm cartridges) - Rosenberger is very specific about the firearms - Camellion gets inside the embassy via a roof skylight and advances from room to room, his quick reflexes saving his life time and time again, while his 5.56 slugs do their destructive, deadly work. He finds Frenswagger, who has been roughed up but has not talked, and they escape.

Camellion travels to Cairo, disguised as Osgood Godfrey Rodley, a British professor of "Egyptology". He goes to the home of Magdi Al-Shafik, a rugmaker, who is also the section chief of the local Shin-Bet cell. As they are talking about setting up a meeting with Okba Bin Naffa, who would guide the DM to the laser gun location, the house is raided by Egyptian police. Al-Shafik is killed and Camellion (unrecognized by the police) is taken to jail. They know his ID is fake, but they do not know his real identity; they believe he is an Israeli agent. So they handcuff him to a pole in a room where four guards play cards nearby.

Thankfully, the Death Merchant has a tiny lock pick "buried" in his left forearm, between his flesh and the latex scar tissue (which looks like a healed knife slash). While the men are distracted by their card game, Camellion gets the pick out and works it into the left cuff keyhole. Soon he has the cuffs off and he lunges at the men "with the speed of a meteor". With no weapons, he gives a four-finger strike to the throat of one man, kicks another in the kidneys, uses an "axe-hand Judo chop" on a third, and a back-breaking kick to the spine of the fourth agent. Once they are subdued, he grabs their weapons. He also creates some chlorine gas with some extremely handy cleaning supplies (bleach and vinegar)! He puts the mixture near the A/C vent and distributes the gas throughout the building. With other Egyptian agents overcome by the gas, he's able to shoot his way out of the building.

After lengthy discussions about how to get close to the location of the laser gun, the Death Merchant and eight others parachute out of an F-82 a few miles outside of Al-Jaghbub "into a night so dark that not one man could have found his mouth with a five dollar pizza!" They meet up with Okba Bin Naffa and his tribe at the tombs of the Ksar Mara Wadi, north of Al-Jaghbub. In no time at all, they find the buried weapon. It's as if they had a detailed map with an X on it!

Rosenberger cops out when the final battle is about to start. The Egyptians have four helicopters of troops (75 in each helicopter) ready to attack the DM and his small band of men. It is at this moment that the DM decides to try to fire the laser gun, which two of his commandos have been trying to assemble. The batteries, buried in the sand for roughly 30 years, appear to be fully charged (!) and the beam of green light coming out of the laser is at maximum strength. Aiming at one helicopter, the laser evaporates it. It is there one minute, then gone! They do that to two more helicopters, leaving just one to land and send its men to battle the DM. They kill many of them, but are forced to retreat into the underground chambers of a fort. There is one long hallway in the fort, with some rooms off to the side. The bad guys come down both ends of the hallway, but the DM has a flamethrower with him (pages ago, when they rattled off what weapons they were bringing, the flamethrower seemed odd; here is why it was mentioned). They roast dozens of Egyptians and many others flee from the flames. (There is also some hand-to-hand combat, intricately and minutely described - it goes on for 9 pages.)

Rosenberger has not offered much biographical information about the Death Merchant in the previous eight books, but here he identifies him as "Richard Joseph Algernon Camellion, the ex-school teacher from St. Louis". Camellion continues to enjoy eating raisins and blurting out unasked-for opinions about religion. When one of the DM's commandos makes a crude remark about some nearby Arab women, Camellion says, "I'd say they are pretty useless. About as useless as a professor of moral theology, or any other idiot who rearranges man's superstitious fears about gods and devils and calls it 'religion'!"

Death Merchant #8: Billionaire Mission

I don't have Death Merchant #7 (The Castro File), so I will proceed to the eighth number in Joseph Rosenberger's long-running series: Billionaire Mission.

Cleveland Winston Silvestter is a paranoid, misanthropic billionaire businessman who, after much deep study of the occult, "discovered" that Satan is the true God and controller of the world and that he, Silvestter, is his chosen disciple. Silvestter believes the complete destruction of the human race is necessary to make a new beginning - a new dawn - for Lucifer, with CWS as the new Adam!

His plan to bring it about: assassinate various world leaders and blame enemy nations. When the book begins, several leaders are already dead and only two assassination plots remain: the U.S. President and the Russian Premier. Silvestter plans to retreat to his 850,000-acre sheep ranch in northeast Australia and sit tight as the nations of the world annihilate each other with atomic weapons.

Richard Camellion, the Death Merchant, argues with the CIA about the best way to go after Silvestter. The DM wants to infiltrate his Manhattan skyscraper, but the decision is ultimately made - early in the book, page 44 - to waste him in Australia. So we know that the ultimate battle will come with Camellion travelling Down Under. Camellion first goes to Rome, to meet up with agents from Russia, Britain, France, and Australia, who will assist him in storming Silvestter's massive compound.

Camellion and the other assassins fly from Rome to Bombay and then are transported by yacht to Brisbane, which leaves plenty of time for conversation. And considering Silvestter's religious beliefs are key to the book, Rosenberger has the Death Merchant engage in not one, not two, but three separate arguments about religion. One of the discussions (which becomes a lecture when Camellion is talking) goes on for seven pages!

Whether it's Satanism or Christianity, each form of belief is based on the acceptance of sheer myth as concluded fact. Each is a narrow form of belief, and both are childish. ...

The world would have been spared a lot of pain and suffering if Christianity had evolved into a religion of tolerance as, say, Taoism or Buddhism. Instead the religion of the Bible is as intolerant and militaristic as any Hitler ... a religion that has to go out and conquer the world - and God help those who disagree with it, if you'll pardon the pun! ... The great tragedy is that none of it, not a damned bit of it, has anything to do with the real creator of this universe! ...

I deal only in facts! And I have refused to let myself be influenced by a religion that is more interested in money than men! Behind the Biblical idea of 'Jehovah' stands a political pattern of tyranny, of rule by violence, of mental and moral slavery.

Camellion does not elaborate on "the real creator of the universe". During the debate, the Russian agent discourses on the "sociopolitical domination" of organized religion and points out various inconsistencies in the four "inspired" gospels.

During the voyage to Brisbane, they are met by a large enemy ship sporting an antiaircraft gun on its deck (a German 5.5-cm Gerat 58-AA). After a lengthy shootout - in which Rosenberger tells us what kind of gun each man is using - and some fancy maneuvering by the yacht's captain, Camellion actually leaps aboard the enemy vessel. In no time at all, he has killed everyone on board. Then, after pouring shark repellent over his body, he leaps into the sea and swims back to the waiting yacht!

When the men are back again on dry land, they are flown to within sixty miles of New Eden, and they set off in armoured jeeps. They are met with resistance once they cross over into Silvestter's land, but they get through and storm the main compound. There is a fierce shootout in a gym/pool area: "Pavel [the Russian agent] gave the last rites ... sprinkling them with holy lead from his blessed submachine gun ... From then on, the devil dunces would have to do their calisthenics in Hell ..."

[In the building's hospital] Two patients in bed were too ill even to hold weapons, but that didn't prevent Pavel from giving them shots not called for on their charts - a prescription of 9-mm slugs guaranteed to cure any aliment! No one ever complained about the dosage ...

Rosenberger also delivers his usual hilarious (and often racist) descriptions of the goons and boobs gunning for the DM. This time, they are Italian: "spaghetti elbow bender ... garlic gobblers ... wop cops ... goofy guinea". Also, Silvestter's group of believers are described alliteratively as "Satan saps", "demonologist dummies", and "Lucifer lunatics". My favourite line, which came completely out of the blue: "The old bastard looked about as intelligent as a high-school football coach."

After driving into the underground compound and wasting everyone on the first floor, Camellion and his men quickly race through the other floors, making their way to the sixth and final level and the Hall of Conjuration. The DM and four men blast in, outnumbered 2:1 and quickly out of ammo. What follows is 12 pages of intricately described hand-to-hand combat! One of Silvestter's men catches a knife in the neck, his blood "spurting as thick as a pencil".

The Death Merchant emerges victorious. The CIA wanted Silvestter taken alive, but that was not possible. The epilogue has Camellion already contemplating his next mission: "I've got to go waste some sandcrabs!", i.e., Arabs in North Africa.

Death Merchant #7: The Castro File

In Death Merchant #7, Richard Camellion - supreme master of disguise, deception, and death - is sent to Cuba to prevent the assassination of Fidel Castro. The Russians want Castro to assist them in overthrowing existing governments in South America, but Castro, feeling the need to throw off Soviet influence, is unwilling. So the Russians plan to assassinate him and substitute a lookalike in his place, and gain complete control of Cuba.

Camellion travels to Cuba with a Canadian passport in the name of Milton F. Sessions, a left-wing sympathizer who works for The Voice of the People, a radical newspaper operated by the CIA in Toronto (!). We learn a bit more about the mysterious man known as the Death Merchant. He is described as "ruggedly handsome" and is an "agnostic". He hates bugs and has an "absolute horror" about rats. His love of raisins is mentioned twice.

Rosenbegrer describes Camellion as "a man with a computer for a mind .. a man with nerves of pure ice who killed more efficiently than most men could spit on the sidewalk." He is a "dealer in instant oblivion", a "one-man circus of Death and Destruction", and a "vendor of mayhem and violence".

Camellion is ambushed on his fourth day in Havana, and realizes there is probably a spy within the Cuban Revolutionary Council who outed him to the government. He kills all eight of the Army intelligence agents sent to capture him and escapes to a safe house. But the spy has also tipped off the DIER agents about the safe house and so there is a big shootout, with Camellion escaping through a tunnel in the floor of a back room.

He ends up high in the Sancti Spiritus Mountains, where the CRC has its headquarters. A plan is hatched to kidnap two Russian officers who frequent a Havana whorehouse. Under threat of torture, the officers reveal that the Castro double is due to arrive by ship in a few days. The Death Merchant and CIA agent Vallie West attack the cargo ship - Camellion disguises himself as a Russian military officer to gain access to the ship - and grab the double, thus foiling the Russians' plan. They end up hijacking an armoured car outside of an arena where Castro is speaking, then drive straight into the arena and dump the drugged double's body near Castro's box.

At one point, Rosenberger has Castro reflect on the differences between Cuba and the U.S.:

He was very proud of what he had accomplished. Unemployment was nonexistent in Cuba. Illiteracy had practically vanished. Schools and medical care were free, and rents were fixed at no more than a tenth of one's income. Hunger had been vanquished, and children with bloated bellies were now impossible to find.

Castro's jaw knotted in determination. Let the Yankee imperialists call him a brute! Let the wealthy pigs call him a communist! The world still defined his achievements by the schools, roads, housing projects and hospitals that had already established Cuba's preeminence in Latin America for mass delivery of social services. That's more than the Yankee imperialists could say for the United States, where five million were unemployed, eighteen million were on welfare, and the average worker couldn't afford to be sick!

When the mission has been completed, someone thanks Camellion and the U.S. government for its help. This gives the Death Merchant a chance to rant about

the idiots who occupy very high places in Washington ... peanut-minded men who should be running filling stations. Instead, they're governing the United States. This explains why Billy Graham leads the White House in prayer to a 'God' who applauds napalm, and why Washington leads us in worship of a corporate self whose body we do not perceive!"

When told he sounds bitter and is asked "don't you love your country?", he replies:

If I didn't, I wouldn't give a damn! I wouldn't criticize Washington's crazy politics! But I don't like living in a blind tribe led by Lilliputians who stupidly mistake power for greatness and mechanical aptitude for holiness!