Lone Wolf #5: Havana Hit (11 page)

Delgado got off another shot. This one was aimed for Stevens again, but Stevens had scattered, scrambling toward the wall to the side and the shot failed, spattering into the carpet. Little filaments of dust came up. Wulff aimed through the filaments and fired again.

Delgado screamed. He reared from his concealed position and there was the sound of wood shattering as he hurled himself into the desk in some complex agony. The agony had lifted him; now Wulff saw his head and shoulders convulsed across the desk. Weakly, Delgado extended the gun for another shot. Wulff put a bullet into the gun hand. The gun fell away like an overripe fruit.

Stevens lifted his own pistol and bore in for the killing shot. Delgado whimpered, shook his head, raised his hand. “No,” he said.

“No,” Wulff said to Stevens.

Stevens, locked into the act of slow levelling did not even appear to hear him. Wulff got to the man from behind, put an arm around his stomach and restrained him. Stevens struggled, then dropped the gun.

“Why?” he said, turning toward Wulff. “Why can’t I—”

“No,” Wulff said, “not now.”

“I want to kill him,” Stevens said. His face was red and filled with moisture. Wulff had never seen so much emotion on it. “He needs dying.”

“Not now. Later.”

“Please,” Delgado said. He was lying on the desk, his legs dangling toward the floor. Now and then he attempted to stand, but he skittered and whined. Blood fled down the panels of his body. “Don’t kill me.”

Wulff hit the man across the face. The impact was satisfying; he could feel his palm drilling through toward bone. Delgado shrieked again. Wulff lifted his hand and then in a quick spasm of indifference stepped away. It
made
no difference. Once they were hurt, once you had made them vulnerable and brought them to the level of pain … once all this had happened, they were no longer the men who had brutalized you. The brutal parts of them were gone. There could never be, then, retribution, all of it was merely a turning of the wheel.

“Let me kill him,” Stevens said. He was shaking. “I want to kill him.”

“No point,” Wulff said. He turned, walked back quickly toward the open door and then, peering out gun in hand, checked the hallway. Empty, the purring of typewriters continuing. No one had paid any attention whatsoever. A tactic of revolutionary governments, he thought, everybody attending to his and her work. He closed the door, bolted it, and walked back toward Delgado. In pain but lucid, the man had gathered up his legs underneath, now lay across the desk curled like a paper toy.

“Where’s the valise?” Wulff said.

Delgado shook his head. He opened his mouth but no sound came out.

“The valise,” Wulff said, “I want the valise. Tell me where it is.”

Delgado tried to talk. Wulff could see the words forming in his throat, moving up then toward the mouth but they were blocked at the lips. His eyes were dark and fixed. He shook his head violently, stricken.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere at all,” Wulff said. “Tell me where the valise is.”

“I don’t—” Delgado said faintly and then choked. He hawked, gasped saliva, his body shaking. “I’m dying,” he said.

“Soon enough. Where is it?”

Again, Delgado said nothing. This time though there was no effort to speak. His eyes clouded over. Apparently he was attempting silence, now.

“All right,” Wulff said, turning to Stevens who had been watching this impassively from one side of the room. “You wanted to hit him, hit him. Ask him to tell us where the stuff is.”

“Right,” said Stevens. He seemed made cheerful by this. He walked over to the desk lightly, stood over the shrunken Delgado. Delgado flopped on the desk like a fish. “You know what I’m going to do now,” Stevens said.

Delgado said nothing. He closed his eyes.

“You thought I was a hired hand,” Stevens said, “a possession. You took away any pride I had.”

He reached forward, dug two fingers into Delgado’s throat and pushed, gently, then with increasing force. Delgado’s eyes opened. They bulged.

“But I’ve got a little left,” Stevens said. “Just a little. Tell this man where the valise is.”

He removed his fingers and looked at them as if they were blood-smeared. “I could enjoy this,” he said, “I can do this all up and down your body. I’m going to take you apart, Delgado.”

“All right,” Delgado said faintly. “I don’t have it.”

“Sure you have it.”

“No I don’t. You think that I’d have something like that in my possession?”

“Yes,” Wulff said, “I do.”

“Well I did. But now I don’t. When I knew about the plane going down I had to get rid of it.”

“You had to get rid of it,” Stevens said. He hit Delgado open-handed across the mouth. “Sure you did. Who did you get rid of it to?” He hit the man again, his hand trembling. Wulff went behind Stevens and said, “Stop it now.”

“Stop it?”

“You’ll kill him,” Wulff said, “but not now. He has to talk.”

“I gave it to DiStasio,” Delgado said. His eyes had become hopeful seeing Wulff. They looked trusting. Like a child fallen down a hole, he had seen his saviour and Wulff was going to get him out of this.

“Who is DiStasio?” Wulff said.

“You son of a bitch,” Stevens said to Delgado. “I know who DiStasio is. Why did you do it?”

“I had to do it,” Delgado said. “I couldn’t hold onto it any longer. I knew that this was going to happen.”

“Who’s DiStasio?” Wulff said. Stevens was hovering over Delgado. He poked Stevens in the ribs, hard. “I said, who is DiStasio?”

“Intelligence,” Stevens said abstractly. He hit Delgado open-handed across the mouth again. He could have been a surgeon performing an operation under Wulff’s supervision. “Intelligence division.”

“I couldn’t handle it alone anymore,” Delgado said. “You see, I realized that I had been wrong about this. Nothing like this could be handled by oneself. I underestimated you Wulff,” he said. “I was wrong. Help me. You’ve got to help me.”

“Intelligence division,” Stevens said again. He spat in Delgado’s face. “Sons of bitches, you’re all in it.”

“Who is DiStasio?” Wulff said.

“DiStasio is an intelligence chief,” Stevens said. “Delgado here probably got panicky and decided that he needed help right from the top. You got it, didn’t you?”

Wulff thought he heard a thin scurrying in the hallway. He backed away, went to the door and was about to open it when some instinct told him to keep it closed. He tensed himself against the door listening. There were footsteps in the hall, picking up in volume and intensity. Intermixed were voices through the poor soundproofing.

“I think the party’s over,” he said to Stevens. “They’re coming up after us.”

“They found the guard.”

“Of course they found the guard. What did we expect, that he’d just lie there?”

“Well,” Stevens said, “you never know about those things. You know these south of the border countries.” He spat in Delgado’s face again. “How do you like it?” he said. “How do you like being spat on?”

Wulff took out his pistol and held himself against the door evaluating the situation. It looked fairly grim. They were going to have to shoot their way out of the building, that is if they got out at all. “Let’s go,” he said to Stevens. “Do you know where we can get to DiStasio?”

“I know where we can find him,” Stevens said. “If he’s still there. He may have already left the country. Wouldn’t you with the supplies he’s got now? He’s come into an inheritance.”

“He wouldn’t,” Delgado said, “he wouldn’t do that. He’d—”

Wulff looked at Delgado and then toward Stevens. He could see the desire in the pilot’s eyes. “All right,” he said, “kill him.”

“With pleasure,” said Stevens. He slapped Delgado once more in the face, almost casually, and backed off from him, levelling the pistol.

“Please,” Delgado said.

“Fuck you,” said Stevens and pulled the trigger. The shot tore, almost absently, through Delgado’s skull, taking out pieces of bone and hair. A little halo of fragmentation hung around the man’s head for an instant, then disappeared in the glow of the lights. The thing that had been Delgado rolled from the desk and hit the floor with a watery sound.

Stevens levelled the pistol and put two more shots into the neck. The corpse jumped; beyond life it was apparently not beyond pain. More blood exploded, lacing little strips of red on the carpet.

“Enough,” Wulff said.

“Son of a bitch,” said Stevens, “son of a bitch you just don’t know—”

“It’s over. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“You don’t know what it means,” Stevens said and fired the pistol again. Wulff aimed, shot the pistol neatly from Stevens’s hand even before he had gotten off the next shot. Stevens’s pistol spanged against the wall as the man clutched his wrist, turned toward Wulff with the aspect of a man who was about to be killed.

“There’s no time for this shit,” Wulff said, “we’ve got to get out of here. We’ll never find DiStasio unless we get out of here.

“I wish that the son of a bitch was alive again so that I could kill him twice.”

“That’s all right,” Wulff said, “but one death is the most a gun can get out of a man.”

Not, however, drugs, he thought. Drugs could extract an infinity of deaths.

The voices in the hall were rising.

They burst from the room together, heading toward ground as soon as they were out of the door, ducking into the low-fire position. Staying in there was no good, Wulff had decided, not two long flights up with no visible means of scaling down the wall. They could be burned or gassed out merely waiting; when in doubt, combat training had taught him, it was best to make a frontal attack. You had, at least, surprise on your side and it was possible that the enemy would fail in courage. You could intimidate them. Even forty men could be intimidated by two if you came at them in a certain way.

The hall was filled with noise and uniforms; guards had sprung from the lower levels to fire aimlessly without seeming direction and one of them, stupidly, threw a tear-gas cannister, probably thinking that this was a clever idea. It was not, however, the plumes of smoke choked and blinded the guards nearest it, the fumes dispersing harmlessly by the time that they had wafted toward Wulff and Stevens and crouched on the floor they offered poor enough targets anyway; they were even poorer without visibility. Down the hall women were screaming, the typists had come from their offices to stand in the corridors, then shriek for cover and Wulff, from the low position, fired a couple of shots above their heads, just to create further confusion.

It created more than confusion; it was total panic. The guards were trying to close in on them but they had no idea where Wulff or Stevens were. Also, the women blocked their passage, taking the guards, in the clouds of gas, to be the assailants themselves and the noise volume was rising, creating further panic. Wulff, using Stevens as a screen, got off a couple of careful shots, dropped two guards quickly, then reloaded while Stevens put fire ahead of them. The screams rose and then someone threw a grenade at them. It fell on the carpet, yards in front and went up in a sheet of flame but the flame too was protective. The attackers’ luck was not with them at all this morning; the flame merely walled off Stevens and Wulff from their assailants down the hall, setting up a protected area through which Wulff could pinpoint his fire and more guards dropped. He had lost count; there must have been seven bodies on the floor, half of the original force anyway. Stevens turned toward him, his face smeared with smoke residue and murmured, “I think we can get out now.”

“Not through them.”

“No. Don’t have to.” His speech was coming in short, stricken puffs. “There’s a back way.” Stevens motioned behind them. “Direct to the street.”

“All right,” Wulff said, “give ground slowly though. Maintain fire.”

“Right,” Stevens said and got off another shot through the flame. Someone screamed. They had opened up an area in front of them now of at least several yards; through the dying flame they could see that the guards had retreated. Fire was only sporadic now. A clot of people at the end of the hall were wedging themselves into a staircase. “Keep it up,” Wulff said, “go back step by step,” and back-pedalled slowly then, holding the pistol level, imagining the guards to be pins set up in a long, flat alley, and he used the bowling ball of the gun to knock and scatter those pins, sent them sprawling one by one to lie in the refuse of that long alley. Stevens was already back-pedalling down the stairs, firing himself; Wulff held in close to one of the walls to cover from that angle, and then one of the guards, perhaps the last one standing, began to fumble inside his clothing, reached in there, took out something ominously shaped and threw it. Wulff found himself reacting before he was even sure what had happened; he caught the grenade on the fly and hurled it back at the guard, then turned, leaped down the full flight of stairs, sprawled down another, the dull
whoomp!
of this second grenade heard above him and then the upper level literally shook. Scars of fragmentation burst open above him and he heard the reverberating concussion. No dud this grenade: this would kill anyone standing within six feet of it and probably had, he thought, it probably had.

But better not to think of the destruction above. That was behind him. Wulff found himself on the first level, the door adjacent to him open. He went through it and was in what appeared to be a large convoy area to the opposite side of the building; here were a number of vehicles lined up in a huge, flat yard, some of them with engines idling. There was no one here; apparently the fury on the third floor had drawn everyone up there as spectator if not participant.

“Look at that,” Stevens said to him, gripping him by the arm. He had backed off ten to twelve feet from the building, was staring upward. “Son of a bitch, look at that.” His features were twisted in something approaching reverence; Wulff looked up and saw what was happening on the third floor.

Jets of flame like propeller blades were shooting from the building, arcs and circles of fire. The third floor had imploded, buckled in within itself and was now open to the air in a hundred ways, holes and jagged lines of destruction opening it up and it was through these openings that the fire sped. Even as they looked, the implosion was continuing, that level carried in upon itself like a smashed bag and within the heart of this forms which looked like ants seemed to be struggling around, black, shrivelled forms trembling in the wreckage. “Those are people,” Stevens said quietly. “My God, those are people.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Wulff said. He inhaled, the stink carrying deep within his gut. “That whole building is going to go,” he said.

“They must be evacuating the other side,” Stevens said, “but they’ll be back here any moment.”

Indeed they would. Wulff could hear the sirens dimly now. It was the international sound just as drugs was the international currency; the universal, recognizable point of connection. The sirens carried on the wind, approaching.

“All right,” Stevens said. He sprinted away down the line of vehicles, lumbered into a small jeep. Wulff watched him struggle with the clutch and levers and then the vehicle was free, rolling toward him. He put a foot on the running board and then with some difficulty got all the way in, Stevens helping him.

“We’ll have to make a run for it,” Stevens said. “There’s no other way. We’re going to have to drive right through them.”

“All right,” Wulff said, “you know your geography.”

There was a secondary series of explosions above and the roof of the building fell down. It was as simple as that. Staring up they could see the roof settle to a different level, diving five or six yards toward the earth, held up then by the beams themselves, the beams stretching upward almost like human arms for that laborious support and then, almost as if in slow-motion or freeze-frame the roof came all the way down, swooping through the building like a cookie-cutter, compressing the first floor.

Stevens was already rolling. His reflexes were still there if not his attention. He had the jeep in full flight before the swath of destruction had been cut, and bearing left, away from the building he sent them away at fifty miles an hour, the sheer discord of metal underneath them, the bolts and joints of the vehicle slamming at thighs and back with iron hands as Stevens carried them away: away from the burning capital, away from the sirens, away from the death and the terror, into the garbage-strewn back streets of Havana where the same empty faces looked at them as they whipped past … the faces so unchanged and unchangeable that if the burning building had been dropped on them they merely would have died without attention.

Wulff’s hands clenched on the bar underneath the windshield as he held on for balance. His thoughts had already turned from the destroyed capital, had restlessly probed ahead—like blood through a sick artery—to the next point of interception.

He was thinking about DiStasio.

God help DiStasio now.