Hard as Nails jk-3

by Dan Simmons

  The burned man kept staring at her from the pest control truck. His rapt but blind attention reminded Arlene of something but she couldn't think of what for a moment. When she did remember, it wasn't reassuring.

  Like an animal—a predator—that can't see its prey but smells it.

  She thumbed her cell phone on and held that thumb over the fifth pre-set fast-dial button. Earlier in the evening she'd looked up the number for the Niagara Falls precinct house closest to the Rainbow Centre Mall… sometimes direct dial brought help faster than 911.

  The burned man stared her way for another minute but then pulled his scarred face back into the shadows of the van. Arlene couldn't see even a silhouette.

  Is he back in the van? Did he get out the other side? The overhead cab light hadn't gone on in his vehicle, but Arlene was sure that this man had long since broken or removed that bulb. Whatever else he was, he was a stalker. He loved the night.

  Arlene licked her lips and considered her options. She assumed that the burned man was also waiting for Aysha, although there was no evidence for that yet. But like her boss, Arlene DeMarco very rarely believed in coincidence.

  If the man started across the parking lot on foot toward her—and she was still about eighty yards away from his truck and parked in the shadows here by the Dumpsters—she'd simply start the Buick and drive like hell.

  If he pulls a weapon?

  She'd get her head down, steer by instinct, and try to run over him.

  If he starts that obscene pest control van and drives it my way?

  Outrun him. Alan had always kept their Buicks well maintained and Arlene had continued the practice after her husband's death.

  But what if he just sits there and waits until Aysha's dropped off?

  This was the contingency she didn't have an answer for. The burned man was much closer to the mall doors than Arlene was. The Yemeni girl, Aysha, had been told she'd be picked up by her fiancé—the man Joe had killed—or by someone who'd take her to her fiancé. She'd get in the first vehicle that drove up.

  What then?

  Let her go. Let them both go. That was the obvious answer. Could this be so important, Arlene thought, that she should risk her life to pick up this strange girl?

  Joe asked me to. We don't know how important it might be.

  The burned man was still invisible in the darkness of the van's shadowed interior. Arlene had the image of the man pulling a rifle from the back of the van—of him sitting in the darker shadows of the passenger seat, invisible to her binoculars, and sighting through a scope at her this very second.

  Stop it. Arlene resisted the urge to sink down out of sight or to start the Buick and drive off at high speed. He's probably here to pick up his girlfriend who works on the janitorial crew

  "Uh huh," Arlene whispered aloud. "And if you believe that, dearie, I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might want to buy."

  She desperately wanted a cigarette, but there was no way that she could light one without showing the burned man that someone was in the dark, silent car out here in the shadows by the Dumpsters.

  It might be worth it. Light the Marlboro. Enjoy it. Make him tip his hand.

  But Arlene didn't think she wanted to tip the burned man's hand. Not right now. Not yet. Arlene looked at her watch—almost 11:20.

  She was peering through the binoculars again, trying to decide if that darkness within the darkness there might be the shapeless silhouette of the man behind the wheel of the van, when her phone rang.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  They lifted off and flew southeast out of Buffalo, past the few tall downtown buildings, past the twin goddesses atop twin buildings holding their twin shining lamps high toward the last low clouds, south along Highway 90—the Thruway toward Erie, Pennsylvania—then banking east and swooping south again along the four-laned Highway 219. Baby Doc was keeping the Long Ranger at an altitude of about five thousand feet for this first part of the flight to Neola. The remaining clouds were fewer and higher now and the view of the city, the great dark mass of Lake Erie to the west, the hills and villages to the east, was beautiful.

  Kurtz hated it. He hated being in a helicopter—even the helicopter pilots he'd known in Thailand and at army bases in the States years ago had admitted, almost gleefully, how treacherous and deadly the stupid machines were. He hated flying at night. He hated being up front in the left seat where he could see more easily—even through bubble windows under his feet in this infernal machine modified for tourists. He hated the bulk of the Kevlar vest under his windshell and the fact that he hadn't shifted the Browning enough on his hip to keep it from digging into his side. Most of all, he hated the sure knowledge that they were going to be shot at in a few minutes.

  Other than that, he was in a good mood. The little blue pills were keeping him awake, alert, and happy, even while he was busy hating the hell out of a lot of dungs. But the problem with pills for Joe Kurtz was that he was always Joe Kurtz there behind whatever curtain of pharmaceutical emotion or relief that was being granted by random molecules, and the Joe Kurtz behind the curtain usually couldn't stand the blue-pill condition of Kurtzness in front of the curtain.

  Or at least this was his analysis as the seven of them flew south toward Neola five thousand feet above Highway 219.

  Baby Doc had been making cryptic but pilot-sounding comments into his microphone, and now Kurtz shouted at him over the roar of the rotors and turbines—"Are we flying legally?"

  Baby Doc looked at him and made arcane motions.

  Kurtz repeated the shout.

  Baby Doc shook his head, tapped his earphones, covered the microphone in front of mouth with his large fist, and shouted back, "Put on your cans."

  It took Kurtz only a blue-pill second to realize that the pilot was talking about the bulky earphones and attached microphone on the console between them. He looked back to where four people sat on the side seats, the little Yemeni doctor sitting alone on the cushioned rear bend that could hold three more, and he realized that Gonzaga and Angelina were already wearing their earphones and mikes.

  Kurtz tugged his on. He asked the question again, into the microphone this time.

  "You have to click that if you want to be heard on the intercom," came Baby Doc's voice in his earphones. The pilot pointed to a button on the control stick that he'd referred to as the cyclic.

  Kurtz clicked the button, touching it only gingerly, and shouted the question again.

  "God damn it, Joe," cried Angelina over the intercom.

  "Hey!" shouted Gonzaga. "Easy!"

  "You don't have to shout now," said Baby Doc, his voice crackly but clear and soft on the intercom. "You're asking if I filed a flight plan? If we're flying legally?"

  "Yeah," said Kurtz… softly.

  "The answer is… sort of," said the pilot. "Up until thirty seconds ago, we were a legal Flight for Life charter carrying two kidneys from Buffalo to a hospital in Cincinnati."

  "What changed thirty seconds ago?" asked Kurtz, not sure if he wanted the answer.

  Baby Doc grinned, pulled his clumsy night-vision goggles down over his eyes, and pushed the cyclic-thing forward, even as he twisted the throttle.

  The Long Ranger swooped from an altitude of five thousand feet to an altitude of about two hundred feet in fewer seconds than it would take for a roller coaster car to drop the steepest descent of its biggest hill.

  Kurtz had always hated roller coasters.

  Beneath them, the mostly empty four-lane highway had narrowed to an even emptier two-lane road that wound between ever higher hills. Kurtz knew that they must be south of Boston Hills now, deep into the woods. He couldn't see where they were going—the hills and horizon and sky all blended together into a rushing black on black—but he could feel how they were following the ground below. The big chopper banked left and right, then left again, following the valley terrain in a motion that made Kurtz want to roll down the window and throw up. He was fairly certain, however, that these window
s didn't roll down with a crank, and he wasn't going to take his hands away from their deathgrips on the side of the copilot's seat long enough to hunt for a handle or slide or switch.

  Baby Doc said something to him.

  "What?" shouted Kurtz, realizing that he'd shouted again only after the volley of epithets from the back seats.

  "I said, do you know what IFR stands for?" Baby Doc said.

  "Instrument Flight Rules?" said Kurtz.

  "Not tonight," said Baby Doc with another grin. "Tonight it stands for I Follow Roads."

  Kurtz didn't really see how, even with those dumb goggles, the big man could see the coming twists and turns and dark hills soon enough and react quickly enough to keep up this swooping, banking game of dodgeball. They passed some lights to the left and Kurtz realized that they must be near the empty Kissing Bridge ski area that Gonzaga had stipulated as Baby Doc's DMZ should he manage to take over the Neola drug trade. More than halfway to Neola. Kurtz decided that he might walk to Buffalo if he survived the next half hour.

  Suddenly Angelina's voice in his earphones said, "Skrzypczyk…" pronouncing it correctly as Scrip-zik, "…what happens if there are high tension wires across the valley up ahead?"

  "We die," said Baby Doc.

  Kurtz closed his eyes and hoped there would be no more questions.

  "Do we have our plans clear once we're inside?" said Gonzaga. The mafiosa in the back all had their night vision equipment strapped onto their foreheads. Kurtz hadn't taken his out of the ditty bag yet and he'd be damned if he'd remove his hands from the seat to do so now.

  "Campbell and I clear the upstairs," said Angelina. "You and Bobby search the first floor and basement. Kurtz is Rover."

  "The doctor… whatshisname… isn't coming in with us?" asked Kurtz over the intercom.

  Baby Doc shook his head. "Dr. Tafer. And no, the deal is that he stays in the chopper. But the folding litter is back there. Take that in with you in case the cop… whatshername…"

  "King," said Kurtz.

  "Is still alive," finished Baby Doc. "There's Neola."

  They'd come at the town from the west as well as north. There was no highway beneath them now at all, just dark hills. Even without night vision goggles, the little town looked like a blazing metropolis of lights after the blackness south of Boston Hills.

  Baby Doc gained more altitude—thank the Lord—so that he flew north to south above the main street at a height that wouldn't wake people from the noise.

  "You have to help me find this house," said Baby Doc. "You'd better put your night vision on."

  "Maybe I won't need it," said Kurtz. "Just follow Main Street south over the river and bank left… there it is."

  They'd passed over the starlight-rippled ribbon of the Allegheny River on the south end of Neola—Baby Doc having them gain altitude all the time so they couldn't be heard—and now the county road running east from Highway 16 became visible. Powerful sodium vapor lamps illuminated the base of the ziggurat cliff and there were security lights all along the mile-and-a-half twisting driveway rising through checkpoints to the large house at the summit of the hill. There were no lights visible in the house itself, but more exterior lights illuminated the top of the driveway, the rear of the house, and the terrace.

  "Come at it from the south," said Kurtz. He was wondering if Cloud Nine would be visible in the dark.

  Baby Doc nodded and made a wide circle, swinging a mile or two to the east, and came at the estate from the south and east, away from the road. Even without night vision goggles, Kurtz could see the starlight gleaming on the rails of the little railroad far below. But rather than land, Baby Doc hovered about a thousand feet off the ground and two-thirds of a mile from the house. He rotated the nose of the Long Ranger until it pointed ninety degrees to the left of its alignment with the estate.

  Gonzaga undid his seat belt, lifted a long, bolt-action rifle with a heavy scope from beneath his seat, and went to the side door. His man, Bobby, undogged that door and slid it on interior rails to the left. Gonzaga went to one knee and braced himself against the rear bulkhead, moving the rifle in slow circles as he looked through the scope.

  "I see one man at the barrier at the top of the drive," Gonzaga said, still hooked to the intercom circuit, "and another closer, in that little open cupola Kurtz said was heated."

  "Do you have a shot?" asked Baby Doc.

  "Not on the far guy. But I'll take out the one in the cupola."

  Kurtz raised his hands to his ears before he remembered that he was wearing the headphones.

  The sniper rifle had some sort of suppressor on it. It spat once, twice… a lull… then a third time.

  "He's down," said Gonzaga. He slipped onto the rear bench next to the doctor and fastened his seat belt. He was still holding the long gun.

  "Did the other guard notice?" asked Angelina.

  "No."

  "All right everyone," said Baby Doc. "Hang on. I'm going to put it down on that flat, grassy area about forty feet south of where the Huey is tied down. That wind sock is going to help."

  "Wait," said Kurtz. "How you going to land this thing without the noise waking everybody."

  "I'm going to use a technique called autorotation," said Baby Doc. He was throwing switches.

  Kurtz turned to look at him. "Isn't that just sort of a controlled crash, just using the turning rotors without the motor on?"

  "Yeah." Baby Doc killed the twin turbines. The night grew silent except for the slowing rush of rotors and the rising sound of the wind.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  "Arlene? Are you there? Arlene?"

  It was her sister-in-law, Gail DeMarco, calling. Arlene answered in a whisper, although it was doubtful that the burned man could hear from this distance.

  "Is everything all right?" asked Gail. "We were going to talk after the weather…"

  The two women spoke almost every night after the Channel 4 weather, before the sports, before going to bed. Arlene had been looking forward to tonight's conversation because they were going to talk about Rachel's fifteenth birthday later in the week—although Arlene was dreading being asked if Joe was going to attend. Rachel looked up to and adored the occasional dinner visitor, Joe Kurtz—the girl's real father, Arlene was absolutely sure—and Joe seemed oblivious to it all. It had reached the point where Gail almost couldn't stand Joe—"a jerk" Gail had called him during a recent conversation with Arlene—but Gail understood the situation, and wanted Rachel to know the man who was probably her father.

  "I'm sorry," said Arlene, still keeping her eye on the dark pest control truck near the mall. "I'm out running an errand for Joe and just forgot the time."

  "An errand for Joe?" said Gail. "At this hour?" Arlene could hear the disapproval in her friend's voice. Arlene had been close to her husband's sister when Alan and her son were alive, but they'd grown even closer in the years since those deaths.

  "Something that had to be done," said Arlene. I'd kill for a cigarette, she thought, and then realized that was an option. Just walk up to Mr. Burned Face in his bug truck and put two.44 slugs into him. As he waits for his girlfriend on the night custodial shift to come out for a midnight lunch. Arlene decided that if she went that way, she'd use the nicotine-withdrawal defense in court. Maybe the jury would be composed mostly of ex-smokers. Hell, it would only take one.

  She and Gail chatted for a few minutes, Arlene keeping her voice down and the Buick's window up. If the Burned Man was still in the cab of the van, he wasn't showing any movement.

  "Well," said Gail, her voice changing slightly, "will Joe Kurtz be coming to dinner on Friday night?"

  Arlene chewed her lip. "I haven't asked him yet. He's been… busy."

  "Yes. Dr. Singh asks me about Joe Kurtz almost every day. I imagine Joe's been in bed a lot, recovering. It must mean extra work for you at the office."

  "Not that much," said Arlene, commenting on the first part of Gail's sentence but letting her think she was answering the second part.


  "But do you think he'll be up to coming to Rachel's birthday party? It would mean the world to her."

  Arlene knew that although Rachel was a sensitive and lovable girl, she had few friends at school. Besides Gail and Arlene—and maybe Joe—there would be only one other teenager besides Rachel at the party, a skinny, bookish girl named Constance.

  "I'll ask him tomorrow," said Arlene.

  "I mean, he does remember it's Rachel's birthday, doesn't he?" asked Gail, voice rising a bit.

  "I'll ask him tomorrow whether he feels up to coming," said Arlene. "I'm sure he will if he can. Gail, by any chance do you have Rachel's phone around? The one I gave you in the spring?"

  "Rachel's cell phone?" said her sister-in-law. "Yes. She never carries it I think it's in her room. Why? You want it back?"

  "No, but could you go get it right now? And check the battery."

  "Now?" said Gail.

  "Yes, please," said Arlene. There was movement in the cab of the pest control van. The Burned Man was shifting positions, perhaps getting ready to step out.

  Gail sighed, said she'd just be a minute, and set her phone down.

  Arlene looked at her options here. They were awkward. She wanted the Burned Man out of the way so that she could pick up this Aysha person in… she looked at her watch… twenty-one minutes. Even if the Burned Man wasn't also waiting for the Yemeni girl—although Arlene's instincts told her that he was—it would be better if there were no witnesses. The girl was illegal in more ways than one. What if she didn't want to get into the car with Arlene? Well, to be truthful, that was one reason Arlene had brought the.44 Magnum.

  So how to get this guy out of the way? And what to do if he suddenly drove toward her Buick or began walking her way? Arlene had no idea why this scarred man in the bug truck might want to grab Aysha, but she felt that this was precisely what he was going to do in… nineteen minutes… unless Arlene intervened.

  How? She had the Niagara police on speed dial, but even if she got through to someone who actually called a patrol cruiser who actually got here in time, they'd almost certainly still be here when the Canadians dropped Aysha off at the mall door. And if the people-smugglers from the north caught one glimpse of red and blue lights flashing or police cars here in the parking lot, they'd keep going and drop Aysha somewhere else, far from here.