Reckoning (14 page)

Sure enough, after more than twenty minutes, Peter Ligeti showed. This was his first time seeing Ligeti but Dockrell had plenty
of time to check him carefully with his miniature binoculars. There was no
doubt involved, this was the target. In addition, the man was dressed distinctly, in a red-and-white check shirt and bluejeans.
Red, white and blue. A marksman’s delight.

They turned into the garden, and Dockrell saw the red-and-white shirt moving away among the bushes. He patted the slight bulge
his shoulder holster made beneath his cotton jacket and moved after them. He followed the main path through the bushes, keeping
his eyes peeled for an ambush.

Normally Dockrell would not have considered it a good move, but in this case he was fairly sure they were not aware of his
presence. He could never have tailed Savage here without being observed had he not managed to plant that transmitter yesterday.
That had given him the edge. Now he had to take advantage of it while he still had it. Where else would he ever find the two
of them together like this? He didn’t know where Ligeti had come from. If he let him go, he might never find him again. And
if he didn’t take Paul Savage out now, he would keep showing again and again, more dangerous every time. Two birds with one
stone. He couldn’t slip up on this.

He couldn’t see and he couldn’t hear them on the paths among the bushes. He quickened his pace. There were no tourists hereabouts,
no witnesses. Damn, those two could be on any of these paths, hidden by bushes in this swampy area. Hell of a place to put
a garden. Southerners liked living in swamps, he supposed. Give him cold foggy potato fields anyday.

The red-and-white shirt up ahead! Just a flash of it through some bushes. This was the right place to pull a quick double
and move out. He’d do it now. He moved quickly, drawing his Smith & Wesson 9 mm pistol and sliding a cartridge in the chamber.
He should have seen them by now. Unless they were moving fast too. He caught a glimpse of the red-and-white shirt ahead. The
bastard was running! Dockrell took off after him.

He had no idea where Savage had gone. He had either taken off or he was pulling some dirty number behind Dockrell’s back.
Either way, Dockrell could handle him, once he nailed Ligeti good. He was being paid for Ligeti. The Iranians couldn’t give
a shit for Paul Savage.

Dockrell ran stealthily, pistol in front of him, ready to dive for cover or take off at an angle through the bushes. He was
set to fire instantly, ready to rip off two or three nine-millimeter slugs at anything that stood in his way.

He saw the shirt. The bastard was standing in the bushes up ahead, waiting on him. The fool thought he was concealed, but
his shirt gave him away.

Dockrell was going to show him something before the fool died. He was maybe twenty paces away, with a semiautomatic pistol.
Dockrell cracked off two shots, then put another three slugs in the same place.

The bastard in the red-and-white shirt sank slowly into the bushes like he was drowning in water.

Dockrell knew his aim was true. He had no need to check the body. But Savage might still be waiting for
him to come in range. So Dockrell moved out fast, heading back to his car. His work in South Carolina was done. He was on
his way to New York City. Maybe he’d meet up with Savage another day. Well, not maybe. Next job Savage would be waiting for
him. He’d handle that when the time came. What he needed now was a clean getaway.

Dartley was at point sixteen when he heard Dockrell coming up to point fourteen. Dartley stepped into the path to wait for
him. He had one of Mrs. Talbot’s guns in his right hand, an old Smith & Wesson Pistol Revolver No, 2, a version of the Regulation
Police Model, manufactured for British forces during World War II, known also as the 38/200 for its caliber and bullet weight.
As a backup piece, he had another of her pieces, a Smith & Wesson M38 Bodyguard Airweight revolver, with a two-inch barrel
and a five-round cylinder. The weapon was pushed into his belt at the small of his back, so it wouldn’t show under his light
tweed jacket.

He snapped back the hammer of the revolver, balanced lightly on his evenly parted feet, held the gun at eye level, supporting
his right wrist in his left hand. His forefinger rested like a feather on the trigger.

Dartley almost fired as he appeared around the bend, when the unforeseen happened. A screaming kid ran between the pair of
them. She was no more than seven or eight, and was being chased through the
azaleas by some other kids whose voices and laughter he could hear.

Instinctively Dartley eased on his trigger finger as the girl came in his line of fire.

Dockrell was fast. He grabbed the kid by her long hair, held her in front of him and blasted a shot at Dartley. Dartley had
to fling himself in the dirt and scuffle away through the bushes.

Dockrell was moving fast again, dragging the girl along with him. Dartley could keep track of them by following her screams
and sobs. Dartley knew the paths and gained time on Dockrell when the latter lost his way for a while. He waited out of sight
close to where Dockrell had left his car, hoping Dockrell would have released the kid and they could have a shootout.

But Dockrell knew that kid was his ticket to safety. He had found a soft spot in his opponent’s armor. She slowed him down
with her wailing and kicking, and he might have to gun down her ma or pa or any jerk who felt it was his duty to try to rescue
her. But she was something he could hold between himself and Paul Savage. He could even use her as cover behind which to shoot.
She was better than a bulletproof vest.

Dockrell emerged on the asphalt road at the parking lot. He was still dragging the yowling hysterical kid by the hair in one
hand and holding a big pistol glinting blue in the other. Dartley stepped out into view, keeping his revolver barrel pointed
at the sky.

Dockrell ignored him and headed for his car. They were nearly a hundred yards apart, more or less beyond
the range for accurate handgun shooting. Dartley moved in closer, but kept the barrel pointed upward.

Small groups of people scattered, grabbed little children and backed away. Neither gunman paid any attention to them.

Dockrell stopped at a car, put his gun away and turned the key in the door. He opened it. He stood and watched Dartley, still
holding the screaming child by a hank of her hair.

Dartley covered the firing pin with his left thumbnail and eased the hammer down. Then he slowly returned the revolver inside
his jacket to his waistband.

The kid took a moment to realize her captor had set her free. She took off like a terrified rabbit.

Dockrell got in his car. Dartley made no move as he watched him drive off.

Dartley bundled Mrs. Talbot and Peter Ligeti into the back of his car and moved out of Magnolia Gardens before the posse arrived.
He was in no position to explain things to the local authorities. He made them lie down out of sight.

“Just in case Dockrell is watching,” he explained.

“That sonofabitch is some shootist,” Mrs. Talbot said. Lying on the back seat, she pulled the lookalike red-and-white checked
shirt from the big rag doll she carried in the outsize cotton bag. She threw the shirt over the front seat to Dartley.

As he drove, he flattened the shirt on the seat
beside him. On the shirtfront, five bullet holes fitted in a circle the size of a large grapefruit.

“That was at more than twenty-five yards,” Mrs. Talbot said admiringly. “Two short bursts over just a few seconds. In my day,
I’ve seen some of the best, Henry. They could hit a moving snake in the eye. But I wouldn’t bet on any of them outshooting
Mr. Dockrell.”

Dartley said nothing but he was taking it all in.

“Are you listening to me, Henry?” she asked querulously. “Now Peter here has had a very trying time today. He’s not like you
and me. He doesn’t enjoy this kind of thing. I hope you’ll make no more demands on him.”

“Peter, you’re officially dead so far as Dockrell and the Iranians are concerned,” Dartley said. “But keep your head down
until you get word it’s safe to come out.”

“Thank God,” Ligeti murmured fervently from the floor.

“I’ll have my cousin put those fake news items in the newspapers,” Mrs. Talbot said. “Something about an unidentified man
shot to death in Magnolia Gardens and the police making enquiries. They’ll complain of course about having to run the item,
but they can’t say no in Charleston to us Talbots.”

Dartley said, “You did everything fine, Peter. You have a right to be proud of yourself. Not many would have the nerve to
do what you did.”

“How about me?” Mrs. Talbot demanded. “I was the one who pushed up that rag doll for him to see after
Peter dived under the roots. I was the one ready to blast him away if he came to look at the results of his shooting. How
did I do?”

Dartley kept a straight face and said without much enthusiasm, “You did okay, I guess.”

“Just okay, is that so?”

Dartley could tell from her voice that she was steaming.

She said, “If I had a harder, meaner partner, that low trash would never have gotten away.”

“What do you think I should have done?” Dartley asked. “Taken a chance on hitting the child?”

“You’re getting soft, Henry.”

“It was a spur of the moment thing. Instinct. If I’d had time to think, I’d have killed them both.”

“Sure you would, Henry,” she taunted him. “Sure you would.”

“What would you have done, Evangeline, if you’d been in my place? I suppose you’d have shot him right through the little girl’s
body. These forty-fives would have carried right through. Is that what you’d have done?”

“Sure I would.”

This time Dartley was fairly sure she was teasing him.

“Your reward is for eternity when you die for Islam,” the highest ranking mullah at the meeting said.

Abdel Saleh bowed his head in reverence for a moment before replying, “Indeed it is, you speak truly. Yet it seems to me I
have done nothing to be offered such an honor.”

Some of the men exchanged glances. One said, “Certainly you have, brother. You are a strong leader among us. You can be counted
always to be in the first row, to speak the first words and say them in the loudest voice, to point the way to those slower
to act.”

The others nodded and murmured in assent.

Abdel Saleh stared back at them, wondering which one had come up with the idea of sending him off to lead a human-wave attack
of Revolutionary Guards against Iraqi troops. These almost-certain-death mass assaults had been very effective during the
early stages of the Iran-Iraq war, but now as the years passed and
the war still dragged on, great swarms of poorly armed, undisciplined Iranians no longer bewildered the Iraqi career soldiers.
They chopped the Iranians into kebab with 50-caliber machineguns.

Illiterate fanatics from the Teheran slums might see glory in an end like this, but not Abdel Saleh. These men who confronted
him were all middle-level leaders of the Revolutionary Guards, the citizen army formed from the violent mobs by the Ayatollah
Khomeini as a check to the regular army. Most army officers had been loyal to the Shah, and many could not be trusted now.
Abdel believed that the main function of the Iran-Iraq war was to keep these officers busy on battlefields distant from the
seat of political power.

Always in the first row, always mouthing off in the loudest voice. So that’s what they had against him. As middle-level leaders,
they all ranked below Abdel himself. They were just doing their masters’ bidding, obeying the orders of men who feared to
challenge Abdel directly themselves. These men in front of him were only the smoke, not the fire.

“Brothers,” Abdel said, holding his arms open wide to them with a big smile, “I am too humble a man to allow you to go on
saying such complimentary things to me. There are those among yourselves who are stronger and more fearless by far than me.”

They shook their heads vigorously at this. One said, “Abdel, we depend on you as we do on a flashlight in the dark to show
us the way. We insist that
you lead our revolutionary brothers into the sacred struggle against those who disgrace Islam.”

The slimy sons of whores didn’t have the balls to mention the lies written by the Englishwoman who claimed he had raped her.
Abdel’s political enemies had that story mentioned on television—in the form of a denial of course. The story had been circulated
abroad, and there was no need for it ever to be mentioned in Iran, involving as it did a shameless infidel woman. Mention
of the incident had damaged him. The rank and file of the Revolutionary Army were shocked that one of their leaders had even
met with those godless females. Now his enemies were trying to take advantage of his temporary weakness to send him off to
die in a faraway desert or marsh, along with the suspect army officers and chanting riffraff from the back streets.

Abdel embraced the men nearest him. “Brothers, you hail me as a leader and say you want me to lead you personally against
the Satan-inspired enemies of our land. I promise you I will give this close consideration in the days ahead. I could not
do it on my own. But with every one of you by my side, fighting shoulder to shoulder with me against these devils, how could
I refuse to lead you? You say you look for me to show you the way. I say I look to you to be my inspiration. Don’t hold back.
Come with me, every one of you, and I will be your leader.”