The Demolishers (26 page)

“Well, I wasn’t exactly looking for swans, but I did see a flash of white off to the side as he hit the water. Matt.”

“Yes?”

She was watching me. “You’ve done that before, haven’t you?”

I said, “They always get so obsessed with killing the guy ahead that they forget about saving the guy behind. Them.” I could see that she was still feeling a certain
amount of reaction, so I kept talking to steady her—and maybe myself as well. “The last time, we were in my Mazda, heading down a mountain road in New Mexico. The opposition of the moment sent a big semi after us. Their boy got overeager just like this one. He took a hundred feet of guardrail with him as he went off the cliff.”

Sandra shivered. After a moment, she said, “We’d better get back there, hadn’t we?”

“Why?”

“The man in the van. He’s probably hurt.”

I said, “I was just giving him plenty of time to drown. I hope it’s a good deep lake.”

But when we got there, leaving the Porsche parked well off the road and making our way down through the brush, we found that the van had by no means sunk out of sight. It had plowed its way about twenty feet out into the pond before lying down to rest, on its left side, like a tired horse. It must have thrown up a junior-grade tidal wave when it hit; mud and weeds were still oozing off it, but it was less than half submerged at the rear. While I looked for signs that somebody had waded ashore nearby, a car went by on the road behind us; but you couldn’t see the wreck from up there, and the damage to the vegetation could have occurred at any time during the past day or two.

“Looks as if he’s still on board,” I said. “Unless he swam across the lake. I see no indications that he came out here. . . . Where are you going?” I grabbed her arm as she started down the bank.

She gave me a shocked look. “We’ve got to get him out, don’t we? The way it’s lying, he could be underwater, unconscious and drowning!”

“And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. The sonofa-bitch was trying to kill us, remember?”

“Let me go!”

She gave a sudden lunge that, when I hauled her back by the arm, swung her against me. I grabbed her by both shoulders, intending to shake a little sense into her. I’d underestimated the power of the Florence Nightingale syndrome. I hadn’t taken the precautions I’d have used instinctively struggling with a man, or a woman, I considered dangerous. She had a clear shot and she took it, kneeing me in the groin, not hard, but it doesn’t take much down there. The pain was as shocking as always. I was only vaguely aware of her pulling free. I was wondering dimly how the hell I’d ever managed to get mixed up with a screwball kid who’d castrate a man who’d saved her life in order to rescue a man who’d tried to murder her.

When I managed to straighten up, she was wading out into the muddy pond, heedless of her nice white pants. I had my .38 in my hand by this time, but it was too late. She was in the line of fire and moving so erratically, as she fought her way through the muck and weeds, that I couldn’t take the risk of shooting past her. Otherwise I’d have riddled the van systematically to make sure the occupant was harmless before she reached him. Of course, I could have gone charging out there bravely to drag her back to safety, but if she was right about the poor helpless victim inside, I’d be getting wet for nothing, and if I was right about the murderous bastard, I’d be dead right along with her. Mac doesn’t run any suicidal agents.

I picked up the purse she’d dropped at my feet. Apparently I’d been a little premature when I’d admired her fine sense of self-preservation: She hadn’t even taken her gun along on her idiot mission of mercy. After pocketing the automatic for extra firepower, and the spare clip she carried with it, I tossed the bag down the bank to join the high-heeled shoes she’d kicked off before entering the water. I took cover behind a tree from which I could rake the van from rear to front whenever I got a clear field of fire. Sandra was getting close, almost hip-deep now, working hard against the drag of the mud and the resistance of the water. I resisted the impulse to yell at her to come back; why waste the breath? She’d already made it painfully clear what her response would be.

Reaching the van, she paused a moment to catch her breath. Then she tried the handle of the big rear doors, but they were locked or stuck. After straining at the handle for a minute or two, she gave it up, and moved over a bit, and bent down to peer through the smoky glass of the right rear window. The left one was pretty well submerged.

I saw her suddenly throw herself sideways. Apparently she’d seen something hostile inside. The sound of the shot was muffled, but her gasp was not, as she clapped her hand to her left arm. She tried to run, but the gluey mud betrayed her and she fell headlong—her only sensible move since she’d put her knee into my testicles. There were two more muffled shots from inside the van, but both missed her. One made a starry hole in the black glass of the door, the other punched through the black-painted metal a foot away, near the exit hole of the first shot, the one that had winged Sandra.

I’d switched guns, since pinpoint accuracy wasn’t needed here: I had no real target to shoot at. The .38 was the best weapon I had and I wanted to save it for a final showdown, if any. I used Sandra’s automatic, therefore, and emptied half a clip of .380s into the van’s rear doors, crouching low to send the bullets almost parallel to the water and angling them to search the interior thoroughly. This was a better gun than the last one I’d borrowed from Sonny Varek’s little girl; at least it shot pretty much where it looked. It wasn’t very powerful, but I had a square shot at the van doors and even a .22 will perforate car metal at that angle.

Of course our mystery murderer had a bulletproof hideout in there. All he had to do was duck under the water that partially filled his vehicle and no slug could reach him, but unless he had finny ancestors he couldn’t stay under very long. For the moment, however, he wasn’t shooting, as Sandra surfaced, dripping and spitting.

“Keep down!” I shouted. “Head over to your left. Work your way clear, but stay low. ’ ’

There was another muffled report inside the van, and a bullet came screaming out through the already riddled doors; a hope shot that hit nothing but made a very nasty sound as it passed overhead. I gave him the rest of the .380’s first clip to cover Sandra’s clumsy withdrawal, spacing my shots deliberately to make it last longer.

As I was reloading, a movement in the trees made me swing around quickly. A sandy-haired young man in jeans, T-shirt, and windbreaker was heading towards the water, stripping off his jacket as he ran. Well, it was about time Trask’s agent joined the battle even though his current duties were technically confined to merely following us so he could keep the Porsche from being sabotaged or booby trapped whenever we left it. He dropped the jacket on the bank and waded out towards the floundering girl. I gave him covering fire, putting the metal-jacketed .380 slugs where I felt they would do most good, varying my aim and timing to keep the van’s occupant ducking. Trask’s boy helped Sandra ashore. He half led, half carried her into cover, and knelt beside her to examine her wounded arm.

That situation seemed to be under control. It was time 202

to put an end to this nonsense, before the neighborhood got ass-deep in cops. I moved cautiously along the shore to the right and waded out until I had a clear view of the underside of the van, exposed as it lay on its side. The gas tank was an obvious and easy target. I used Sandra’s last two bullets to perforate it neatly low down, and saw the volatile fuel come spurting out of the holes. The water of the pond had already acquired a limited rainbow sheen around the wreck; now it started to spread rapidly.

“Hey, in the van,” I shouted. “Come out fast before I burn you out.”

There was no answer, but he could smell the stuff as well as I could—better, since he was closer. I saw the vehicle shake as he moved around in there. Then he was at the rear, working at the double doors. He had to lift one a little—the right-hand one when the van was upright—in order to open the other. It flopped down with a sudden crash, like a station-wagon tailgate. A dark object came flying out to make a splash in the pond: a large automatic pistol. Great, but who’d guarantee he didn’t have another, large or small?

I was ready with the Smith and Wesson as he came rolling out of there, picked himself up painfully, and waded ashore, a husky dark man in jeans and a gray work shirt. I hadn’t wasted all the lead I’d thrown at him. He was limping and one arm hung loose. Attaining dry land, he went to his knees, first, and then fell on his face and rolled over on his back, lying there with his arms spread wide in an attitude of total helplessness. He wasn’t much better as an actor than he’d been as a driver. I sloshed ashore, avoiding the spreading film of gasoline, and moved over cautiously to cover him as he lay there.

At first glance, his face was totally unfamiliar, and I 203

wondered who this angry stranger was and why he’d been so eager to murder me. Then I realized that I had, after all, seen this dark Latin face before, twice: once in a fuzzy photograph supplied by Trask, and before that. . . . I remembered a boy named Antonio Morelos bleeding to death from a bullet hole in the leg. He’d had the same face fifteen years younger.

“Senor Dominic Morelos,” I said. “£7
Martillo,
The Hammer.”

He licked his lips, but it took him a moment to work up strength enough to speak. I could see the deformed fingers of the left hand, where the Gobemador torturers had done a job on the nails. Sometimes it’s hard to know who the bad guys are. And the good guys. I don’t qualify, that’s for certain.

“You murdered my little brother, seiior,” he whispered. “The woman was present also. ...”

Hatred was in his eyes; then it was replaced by a look of shocked surprise. He coughed twice, rackingly, and a thick dark stream of blood poured from his mouth, while his eyes went blank and his body went slack. After a moment I bent down and found the hideout weapon he’d been trying to conceal from me when he rolled over on his back like that: a businesslike knife sheathed at the nape of his neck. I found that he’d actually been hit or nicked five times. The one in the lungs had done the job. Another asterisk for Dana Delgado.

When I got over to where Sandra lay, I found a situation I hadn’t expected. Instead of one man watching over her, there were two.

One was the sandy-haired fellow who’d pulled her out of the pond. Wet and muddy now, he was standing against a tree with his hands in the air, peering through big hornrimmed glasses at the other man. Fortunately, I recognized that one, or there could have been an awkward misunderstanding. I’d seen him in Savannah, one of Trask’s lean young men, tanned and tough, wearing khakis and holding a .38 revolver.

“Gregertsen, sir,” he said. ‘‘The recognition code is . . . ”

‘‘Never mind that crap, I recognize you,” I said. ‘‘What goes on? Who’s this character?”

I had the chilly feeling you get when you’ve taken things for granted. I’d assumed without checking that the sandy-haired boy was one of ours running to my assistance, when he could just as easily have been racing to help Morelos. Well, it was a good antidote to the cocky superagent syndrome that often hits in the wake of a victorious firefight.

Gregertsen said, “My orders were to follow you and just keep an eye on the Porsche so nobody’d tamper with it; but I saw this guy tail you from Newport. Then the van picked you up at the bridge. You were handling that okay, nice driving, but when you and the lady headed down here, and the fireworks started, and I saw this punk sneaking after you, I figured I’d better forget about watching the sports car and see if you needed a hand. Incidentally, he’s clean. No weapon.”

Sandra stirred weakly. “Matt, it’s a big mistake. Let him go! I don’t know who he is, but he helped me in spite of all the shooting. See, he even used his handkerchief to bandage my arm.”

I looked down at her for a moment as she lay there, even wetter and muddier than the young man who’d rescued her, with a bloodstained cloth around her left arm.

I said, “Nobody’d know you were a respectable widow lady, the way you keep making a mess of yourself.”

She seemed to take that as a statement of forgiveness, and maybe it was. “I’m sorry if I hurt you,” she whispered. “But I had to do it; I couldn’t let you stop me,
even if it went wrong. But tell your man to put that gun away, please.”

“Sure.” I made a sign to Gregertsen and he holstered his piece. I turned to the other. “We’re grateful for your help,” I said. “But who the hell are you and why have you been following us?”

He licked his lips. “I’m Lester,” he said. “Lester Leonard. I read about you in the newspaper. I wanted to talk with you.”

He was having a hard time finding a piece of dry shirt on which to wipe his spectacles. Without the glasses, his eyes looked wide and innocent. They were an indefinite gray-green color; a cowlick of the damp sandy hair fell down his forehead. His face seemed unformed, as if his mother hadn’t quite got around to finishing him, before giving him birth. Pale and a little pudgy, he was clearly not a trained outdoor type like Gregertsen; I should have seen at a glance that he couldn’t be one of ours.

“Who’s Lester Leonard?” I asked.

“I am . . . was a friend of Linda Anson’s.” He put his glasses back on. I guess they helped him recognize my doubtful expression; he wasn’t exactly what I’d judged to be Linda’s type. “Well, not really a
friend
,” he corrected himself hastily. “She hardly knew I existed, although we went to high school together. But I ... I
admired
her, I admired her tremendously for years. When she was killed like that . . . ” He stopped and cleared his throat. I saw that his weak eyes were wet behind the big glasses. He said hoarsely, “I understand from the newspaper story that you’re Hunting the people responsible. I want to help you. I want to help you kill them!”