Lone Wolf #5: Havana Hit (13 page)

Diluted, one of these bricks might be a quarter of a million doses, sugared and watered out with a little glycerine and a few inert materials a hundred thousand human beings would be able to take this jolt into themselves and become transported. Dreams and death lay within that case, all of them impacted into that small space, one brick a quarter of a million doses, twenty bricks two and a half million … Two and a half million voyages, and DiStasio looking at this felt transported himself, the sheer effect of this weighing upon him. His breath was shallow in his chest, pure constriction; finally he had to unleash his hands reluctantly, one by one, and stand back from the case breathing the air of the room. He felt lightheaded; almost as if he might faint and came forward then to carefully, lovingly put the lid back into place. Only when he did this did he feel the giddiness recede. He stood there, latching on the clips, looking at the case and a flicker of understanding came to DiStasio: he had been motivated thus far by greed but it was not greed alone which would send him on this voyage for he had plenty of money. He had position. It was not greed, either, which had imploded that building; no, it was something else, another kind of desire altogether and it had something to do with the power of these crystals, a silent power which overtook men and made them mad.

What was it? What was there in this valise that would drive a man like Delgado, a cynic, a beaten man, an old revolutionary, to such an excess of behavior? What, for that matter, was there about this valise which would send someone like Wulff on a journey of terror which probably involved five hundred dead men by now? DiStasio did not know, exactly. He only knew that he felt the same reaction himself, some call within him as he looked at those deadly cylinders and squares which told him that almost every sacrifice was worthwhile if, in the end, it could result in the putting of these into the supply channels. The wealth was almost identical. DiStasio did not need the money. No, it was the need …

… it was the need to filter the drug through those quarter-of-a-million doses because—and now he thought he had it—heroin was itself the revolution. It was a revolution taking place in ten million heads every day, four hundred thousand heads an hour were being overtaken by the sensations of the revolution, and if it began there, if the revolution could be brought home into the impacted psyches of all these users, then there was no question but that it could spread out and eventually overtake the world. So, it was, ultimately, a proselytizing drug, heroin, without it the world was a less mad, more contained place but the revolution was one step further away and if men were not dedicated toward revolution, toward the change of the conditions which bound them in … then what was their purpose after all? I must be a little mad, DiStasio thought, a little bit mad to think this way. It is only heroin, it is only money, this is a business transaction pure and simple, an investment. But the excitement would not drain from him; instead it seemed to be building, accumulating in small worn pockets of the psyche and finally to restrain himself he had to sit with an effort of will, clamp his hands into fists and try as much as possible to block all anticipation from his mind.

There was no turning back. Once he took this valise and left the country he could never return. The finality of this oozed through him, he thought of it—no more bureau, no more administration, no more channeling of secret information directly to the premier—and balanced it off in his mind: did he really want it to be this way? Would it not be better to let the valise go, let someone else take the responsibility and return to the man he had been twenty-four hours ago, before Delgado approached him?

No. He did not want to do that. DiStasio sat there and looked through the windows, waiting for Figueroa and made an admission which he would have thought to be impossible until all of this had happened … an impossible admission for an old revolutionary like him—but then consider Delgado … it had been the same thing.

He was tired of the revolution.

He wanted no more of the revolution.

The revolution had ransacked the country for fifteen years just as the government before it had ransacked, the only difference being that Battista had allowed others to do it for a cut of the proceeds, whereas this regime needed no intermediaries whatsoever.

They had failed—or looking at it another way they had suceeded. But in any event the country was finished.

It was best to take the valise and make for himself the best deal that he could. It was in the tradition of the government. Of all governments. The premier, granted the same circumstances DiStasio thought, would have done the same thing.

He waited for Figueroa.

Out on the flat back road, finally clear of the burning city, Wulff said, “Now we go to DiStasio.”

“He’s got an estate,” Stevens said, trying to hold the wheel steady on the difficult terrain. “He’s going to be sealed in there with heavy security. We don’t have a chance.”

“We’ll have to make our chances. There’s no choice. We’ll go in now.”

Stevens raised a hand to his face, brushed away smudge, shook his head. “You don’t stop, do you?” he said. “Not for a moment.”

“There’s no time to stop. He’s probably arranging to flee the country.”

“All right,” Stevens said, “so he’s fleeing the country. I think it would be a damned good idea if we did the same thing.”

“No,” Wulff said.

“You’ve done what you wanted to do. You’ve broken them wide open. You’ve—”

“I want the valise,” Wulff said. “They took the valise from me.”

“You don’t understand,” Stevens said, fighting with the wheel, the jeep skittering a little, hitting cobblestones, then coming back toward the center of the road with difficulty. “He’s the chief of intelligence. He’s
sealed
in there. We get within a mile of his estate—”

“I don’t care,” Wulff said. He checked the last pistol, everything in order. “We’re going to go in. We’ll do the best we can.”

Stevens shook his head. “It’s crazy,” he said.

“You want out?”

Stevens bit his lip, looked straight down the road. Little puffs of dust kicked up against them. “I don’t know,” he said.

“You’ve paid your dues,” Wulff said. “You were next to me when I needed it. Everything’s even now. You can go if you want to.”

“What’s the point?” Stevens said. “What’s my future in this country? How long do you think I’d last?”

“I never even considered it.”

“Not very long,” Stevens said, “not very long at all. I had a nice comfortable life you know. I lived in a hotel and had all the whiskey I needed and now and then I’d do a little job for them, little risk. I didn’t have to think about anything and I didn’t have any responsibility. Now you’ve fucked the whole thing up.”

“Sorry,” Wulff said, “I’m sorry I mucked up your life so bad.”

“Oh you didn’t,” Stevens said. Like all good drivers he was able to focus his perception of the road down a single, long narrow tunnel, outside of that he could converse, look at Wulff, carry ninety percent of his attention outside of the act of driving. He brought the jeep out of the country road to a long, flat narrow highway which looked off across empty fields, accelerated sharply, yanking the gears so that the jeep lost road adhesion momentarily, then seemed to settle at a newer, more insistent level of speed. The speedometer went toward eighty. “I took care of fucking things up myself…. We’re about five miles from there now, no more.”

“Good.”

“We’re going to go up against that man with four pistols and a jeep, is that right?”

“It could be worse,” Wulff said. “We might be unarmed altogether. He won’t like it.”

“I never thought this would happen to me,” Stevens said. “How did I get into a fucking crusade? I’ve got nothing against drugs at all. As far as I’m concerned people can shoot it, suck it, drink it, eat it or blow it up their ass. What’s the difference? It’s just another way out of the world, that’s all.”

“That’s your point of view.”

“I messed with it a little in the Navy years ago. Pot and cocaine.” Stevens’s eyes narrowed, he appeared abstracted. “It didn’t do a goddamned thing to me.”

“We’re not talking pot and cocaine,” Wulff said, “we’re talking about heroin.”

“Heroin too,” Stevens said. “What’s the difference?” A dog ran across the road; he braked sharply, swerved, accelerated out of the pocket quickly. The dog was safe. “It’s a matter of individual choice, isn’t it?”

“Not anymore.”

“Of course it is,” Stevens said. “If people want to shoot a little smack they can do it as far as I’m concerned. Why put them in prison? They should have all the smack they want; they ought to have clinics, give it away free. As far as I can tell,” he said, “there’s no drug problem up there. It’s not the drugs, it’s a drug deprivation problem. Now if they only made it available—”

“No,” Wulff said.

“No? Why not?”

“Because it wouldn’t work,” Wulff said. “You’re talking to a man who was on the narcotics squad for five years and the solution isn’t to hand out drugs on street corners or in drug stores. The only solution is to get rid of them.”

“Seems to me it’s a matter of choice.”

“Drugs are death,” Wulff said.

“So are a lot of other things.”

“Drugs are death,” he repeated. “Heroin is death and anything that leads to it is the same. All drugs are death. The people who sell them are murderers.”

“Seems to me you’ve got a rather simplistic view of things.”

“I have a goddamned simplistic view,” Wulff said, lurching in the seat, holding on for purchase. “There’s nothing complicated about it at all. Certain things in or out of this world are very simple. Heroin is one of them.”

“All right,” Stevens said, “I don’t want to get into a fucking argument—”

“No one’s arguing,” Wulff said flatly. “There’s nothing to argue about. Certain things are very simple I said. The trouble began when people were sold on the idea that they weren’t. That there were two sides to every question, that every dog had its day, that you had to consider the criminal’s rights along with the victim’s. Fuck that. That’s not truth, it’s conspiracy. Drugs are death. Have you ever seen death?”

“I’ve seen a fair amount of it,” Stevens said quietly. “I’ve seen so much of it in fact that I never intend to see it again if I can help it.”

“Have you ever seen a seven-year-old junkie? Have you ever seen a little girl holding a doll and so strung out on junk that she didn’t know her name? Did you ever see a whole city destroyed, turned into death, converted into a bombed-out zone because of drugs. Did you ever see an eighteen-year-old kid jump off a roof in front of you because he couldn’t take withdrawal anymore? Have you ever seen the soft men who peddle the stuff, the soft men in their houses on the bay, far away from all of this, laughing at it, shielding themselves from what they’ve done, taking the money, filling the vein—”

“All right,” Stevens said, “all right then, you’re a fucking crusader. See where it gets you.” The road arced right and there on a hill in the other direction Wulff could see the outlines of a house, the house was shielded behind fences, gates, half-concealed by the roll of terrain so it was only barely visible at points, jutting randomly through the landscape. “You’re a fucking crusader and you’re going to clean all the drugs out of the world everywhere and drugs are death and you’re a killer, Wulff, a real killer. But
that’s
your problem right now. How are we going to get in
there?
” Stevens rolled the jeep to a stop by the side of the road and looked outward, his eyes shaded and abstract. “How?” he said.

“I’ll think of something.”

“You’d better think of something,” Stevens said, “because that place is guarded. There-are at least five men on duty all the time and they’re armed and expert.”

“I’ve gotten into worse,” Wulff said, thinking of Boston, then of New York, images of the freighter in San Francisco darting through for just a moment. “I’ve faced a lot worse and am sure I will again.”

“You’re too much,” Stevens said.

“Well,” Wulff said, vaulting from the jeep and standing by the roadway, “it beats working for the New York narcotics squad.”

He looked out into the distance with Stevens, considering.

They ditched the jeep by the side of the road, finally, sheltering it under a clump of trees, and made their entrance on foot. Stevens had been all for sinking the vehicle entirely but Wulff had said no, they might possibly have use for it later and in any event, ditching it would be more trouble than it was worth in terms of the attention they might attract. There were woods cutting off DiStasio’s estate from the road and they made their way through it with difficulty, the ooze sticking to their shoes, branches jutting out, administering small, painful blows throughout the body. DiStasio had sealed himself in pretty well, no question about it. All of them had sealed themselves in well, they were experts, these people, they knew how to cut themselves off from the very consequences of the lives they were leading. No ragged pack of citizens would come through this wood to burn and sack the DiStasio estate, no counter-revolutionaries could find a position from which to bring fire. There was only the necessity to stagger through the wood, approaching the house in a concealed fashion, avoiding the cobbled roadway which certainly was patrolled and hope that there would be some position from which to fire once they got to the top of the hill. They staggered up that rise, gasping, the pistols in Wulff’s clothing slamming into him at odd intervals, making him inhale in pain so that a few times he simply had to stop while Stevens, himself in bad condition, hung against a tree trunk and breathed hoarsely.

Finally he passed over two pistols to Stevens, trusting the man finally and irrevocably and after that the climb was a little easier. They came finally to a point about fifty yards downrange from the estate and Wulff looked through the clearing cautiously. From this distance there seemed to be no surveillance whatsoever, the grounds were deserted, small plumes of smoke drifting from a chimney toward the rear gave things almost a pastoral tinge, but that Wulff knew was deceptive. Surely there was a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree surveillance conducted from some point of the estate and the moment that they came into the clear they were under severe risk. There was the sound, then, of a helicopter.

It was an unmistakable sound. Wulff could identify it instantly and he was not an old hand like Stevens who involuntarily jerked to attention and looked toward the sound. As they stared a copter appeared at some point far above them, dropping in a quick, graceful descent toward a landing point which would put it on a low, flat terrain midway between their vantage point and the estate. The machine gleamed, the sun bouncing little particles off it.

“Look at that,” Stevens said. “The man is good.”

Professional admiration to be sure. The helicopter was coming in delicately, easily at a rate of descent that would not break eggs. The pilot controlled the sideways motion absolutely, the hand on the throttle so steady that there was no miss in the engine even as the
RPM’S
dropped further. “He’s getting out,” Wulff said.

“What?” said Stevens absorbed in the landing. “What’s that? Who’s getting out?”

“DiStasio. Obviously he’s planning to leave the country with the valise.”

“By helicopter,” Stevens said. “The boy at those controls is really good, isn’t he?” His eyes were glazed, he was focussed to attention. Wulff was able, almost, to envy him. It would be nice to admire something that much, to be able to generate that kind of respect for a machine.

“He’s not bad,” Wulff said. “He would have made a good combat pilot.”

“Combat?” Stevens said. “With a hand like that he could have done stunt shows.”

Gently, delicately, the copter came down on the enormous lawn. It swayed carefully, left to right as the pilot checked for balance, then came down, bobbling slightly on the wheel struts as contact was made. The pilot cut the machine down to idle and the blades revolved almost noiselessly, little wisps of smoke and haze drifting out from the cockpit to blend into the air underneath him.

“He’s not getting out,” Wulff said after a moment. “He’s waiting.”

Stevens carefully restored a branch to the front of his face and said, “That would be reasonable, wouldn’t it? DiStasio should be out any moment now.”

“That could make it a little easier,” Wulff said. “He may come out with only a bodyguard.”

“Nothing is easier,” Stevens said. “There’s probably an armed guard in that cockpit.”

“Probably,” Wulff said, “it would make sense if there was. Still, let’s wait for him.”

“All right,” Stevens said, “that suits me. I sure as hell don’t want to take the house.”

Me neither
, Wulff thought and yet that was dangerous thinking. Without Stevens he might have followed his own inclination, which was to rush the house at once and take the consequences. There would have been, then, at least the element of surprise; DiStasio could not have possibly anticipated a direct attack and they might have succeeded. However, DiStasio would certainly be on the alert as he approached the copter. That would be his only point of exposure, after all, moving from the seclusion of the house to the protection of the plane; it stood to reason that he would be geared to the highest point of alertness then.

The thing about Stevens’ kind of thinking, of playing matters cautiously, functioning on the path of least resistance, was that it was so seductive. It was so easy to fall into it, to hold back, to take the safe rather than the proper path. Looking sidewise at the man next to him Wulff began to see exactly how Stevens had become the kind of man he was, why at the age of thirty he was functioning, or had been functioning, as an odd-jobs man for a corrupt official in a two-bit country. He was like most of the men on the narco squad; all that he wanted to do was to survive, to cut corners, to get along. It could not even be called a matter of corruption. People like DiStasio were corrupt. They devoted themselves to aggrandizement and destruction with the same energy that Wulff was trying to devote to set matters right. But it was the people in the middle like Stevens who were responsible for almost all of the problems: the people who merely wanted to get along as best they could, curry no disfavor, make it from one day to the next. And they were so reasonable in their outlook, their arguments so defensible that at almost any given point it was hard to resist them. Certainly, unless you saw the end-product here in the person of Stevens, unless you could see the exact results of being accommodating, not taking chances, cutting corners, you might do it yourself. Already Stevens had corrupted
him
. Cuba had become a nightmare of missed purposes because he had slid along with it rather than rising to the circumstances. If he had gone after Delgado immediately he might have gotten to DiStasio at the same time. Now he had to do two sweaty, nasty jobs instead of one.
Son of a bitch
, Wulff thought, looking at Stevens,
son of a bitch, he is the enemy
. This did not exactly change the situation.

Stevens tensed, seeing something even before Wulff did. “All right,” he said, “here he comes.”

Wulff followed the man’s gaze. In the distance, two men were walking from the house, one of them holding a large, bulky object against him. This must be DiStasio, then, the object the valise. The man behind him, following in close order no more than a pace separated was carrying a machine gun. Briskly they walked toward the copter.

“Son of a bitch,” Wulff said, “they don’t take any chances at all, do they?”

“A machine gun,” Stevens said almost reverently. “How the hell are they going to get equipment like that on a light copter?”

“Oh they’ll manage,” Wulff said, “they’ll manage.” He looked at DiStasio downrange, the little man walking almost jauntily and then reached inside his coat and took out a pistol. The man might have been thirty yards from the copter now. The blades stroked lazily.

Stevens reached out and put a hand on Wulff’s wrist. “Are you crazy?” he said.

“No.”

“For Christ’s sake!” Stevens said desperately. “You’ll never get him with a light weapon at that distance and even if you do, you’ll bring fire on us—”

“Shut up,” Wulff said distinctly. “Shut the fuck up.” And then with assurance waved the pistol backhand, hit Stevens a stunning crack on the forehead. With a little shriek the man fell heavily. Wulff felt just an instant of remorse; he had not wanted to do it, this man had fought with him in one of the worst battles of all. But it had to be done, Stevens had to be dumped, he could no longer go along with him because the man’s terror was holding him back and it was contagious as well. He kicked Stevens away, making this calculation in just an instant and then aimed the pistol quickly, bore it down on the man holding the machine gun. And he fired.

That was the only hope, to get the man carrying the gun. Stevens in his panic had not seen that obviousness; that of course the bodyguard would have to be downed. That was the only way to DiStasio. The man holding the machine gun spun as the shot hit him and then in perfect, soundless slow motion lifted the weapon clumsily against his chest, pointing it in Wulff’s direction. He struggled with the mechanism, at the same time as DiStasio dove toward the ground. And then he must have found the trigger because the gun began to boom. But even as the first shots sprayed out, moving well above Wulff’s head, the man had collapsed, the machine gun flung from him in the death agony, the gun rolling harmlessly on the field.

He had downed him.

DiStasio lunged toward the coper, holding the valise, and then, as Wulff came from the bushes aiming, DiStasio must have seen that that wouldn’t work, there was simply no way that he could get to safety before Wulff would place the killing shot. Instead he dropped the valise reached inside his clothing and in one gesture which was almost a blur got a shot off which passed above Wulff’s left shoulder, just missing him. Wulff dove, unconscious of everything but the need to find cover and as he did so the pistol, in his fall was torn loose from his hand, rolled away from him. DiStasio put the second shot a foot in front of Wulff’s face and then ran toward him. Wulff tried to roll toward some kind of safety but there was none. DiStasio had him levelled. But the man was not shooting; instead he closed in on Wulff and then stood above him at a distance of six feet, holding the pistol, looking at him.

The man’s face was contorted with fury. Looking up at him Wulff understood why DiStasio had not put in the killing shot. He was so filled with hatred that he wanted to see Wulff’s face in the knowledge of death. He wanted Wulff to know panic before death, die with his bowels open. He would not give him that. If it all ended here, then it must, but he would not give the enemy the satisfaction of breaking him. He waited.

“You son of a bitch,” DiStasio said, “you dirty bastard, I want you to beg for it. Come on. Come on beg to live.” He squeezed off another shot, it landed in the dirt near Wulff’s wrist. “Beg for your life,” he said.

Wulff said nothing. He lay there like a patient on a hospital rack and closed his eyes. It was not true that death was the common end. There were any one of a number of ways to die and each of them refracted back upon the life that man had lived. He would not buckle. He would not beg. He had done all of his dying in New York, months before.

“You crazy, lousy bastard,” DiStasio said, “you’ve ruined everything, everything you touch turns to shit, don’t you know that? But you’ve come to the end of it now.” He let out a maniacal laugh. “Beg,” he said again, “I want you to beg.”

Wulff shook his head.

“All right,” DiStasio said. He was a short man with transparent features; this was a man, Wulff thought staring up at him, who found it impossible to conceal his emotions to maintain any kind of dissemblance whatsoever. Everything would show on his face the instant that he felt emotion. Right now confusion was making the changes with hatred around his lips and mouth. “You killed a good man,” he said. “You killed a good man. Delgado.” ready to betray him.”

“Delgado was such a good man that you were ready to betray him.”

“Delgado was a good man, an old revolutionary, he was one of those up in the mountains,” DiStasio said, not hearing what Wulff had said. “He worked hard and he deserved better than this.”

“Delgado was a dealer.”

“You killed my friend. You killed Raoul Delgado.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Wulff said and he thought yes, you do believe that, you believe it completely. You have managed to convince yourself that Delgado was your friend, that you were not going to betray him and that in killing me you are merely avenging his death. Already DiStasio had his cover story straight. Even before the commission of the act he had altered reality to accommodate his interpretation of it. No wonder, Wulff thought, no wonder that this man was the head of the intelligence division. Ex-head, of course. DiStasio would have another career waiting.

“Goodbye you filthy, dirty, rotten, murdering son of a bitch,” DiStasio said and aimed the gun and gritted his teeth and something came into his left ear and his head exploded.

DiStasio’s skull opened up like a pulped tomato, spitting seeds of brain and blood and he put a hand to his head, touched the explosion, brought down the hand with what was still left of his intelligence must have seen it, must have seen what had happened to him. He emitted one terrible wail like a tortured infant and then fell heavily across Wulff, the body already like a corpse, covering him like a sheet. Wulff took the impact off his haunches and stood above him, holding a pistol.

“You know,” he said to Wulff with the casualness of a stranger asking someone to please get off his toes in a crowded public place, “you’re just goddamned lucky that you didn’t hit me hard enough to really put me to sleep. Where the fuck would you have been then, I want to know?”

He sounded piqued.