"That's the stupidest plan you've ever had, brother. What makes you think they're going to let either of us do any talking? They're probably going to cut us in half the moment we step into the ballroom downstairs, which is where they must be."
"You'll just have to talk very fast. Say something instantly hypnotic."
"Instantly hypnotic. I see." I removed the gun from my waistband, stepped around behind Garth, and stuck it into his.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"It makes more sense for me to grab the gun off you; for one thing, I won't have to bend over to get at it. Don't you forget to drop to the floor. If you entertain any thoughts of trying to shield me after I grab the gun, forget them. You'll only interfere with my line of fire."
Garth reached back for the gun, but I grabbed his wrist.
"Mongo, you can't even see, for Christ's sake!"
"What's the matter? You afraid I won't remember to divide by two before I shoot?"
"Can you walk?"
"After all the other scrapes we've gotten into and survived, I find the prospect of being gunned down by a bunch of local shitheads in a place owned by a group of pacifists not only terribly ironic but tremendously stimulating to my nervous system. I can walk, and I'll shoot straight if I get the chance."
Garth sucked in a deep breath, slowly let it out. "Luck," he said softly.
"Luck," I said, then walked with my brother out of the room and into the corridor, which was now dimly awash with the light of dawn.
We'd reached the third-floor landing when a woman-this time definitely identifiable as Mary-screamed again.
"We're coming! Garth shouted, and we quickened our pace descending the stairs.
I half expected a gunman to suddenly appear in the stairwell below us and start shooting, but we made it to the ground floor. With Garth a half step ahead of me and slightly to my right, we walked quickly across the grand foyer toward the entrance to the ballroom. I was talking, loud and fast, as we proceeded under the great arch.
"You men may think you're fighting communism, but the fact of the matter is that the Russians are likely to give you the Order of Lenin for this little caper!"
Ah. No bullets tearing through us yet. We stopped a few feet inside the entrance and surveyed the scene. The sun was just climbing over the horizon, and light was pouring in through the huge bank of windows at the eastern end of the ballroom, to our left. Fourteen men and women, ranging in age from early twenties to middle age and most still in their pajamas and bathrobes, were standing on a paint-spattered tarpaulin, lined up against the wall directly across from us. They were being guarded by three men wearing identical green-plaid ski masks; the men were armed with automatic pistols they definitely hadn't picked up in the local Army Navy store. One man, easily identifiable from his physique as Gregory Trex, was standing next to Mary, twisting her right arm up behind her back. The gazes of all three men were on us.
They certainly looked like a death squad to me.
"If you love the United States of America, you'd damn well better listen to what I have to say before you start shooting anybody!" I continued quickly in a voice that sounded hopelessly high-pitched and squeaky in my own ears. "You've been set up and used by the very Russians you claim to hate so much. The communists have been making fools of you. If you kill us, they're not only going to get away with it but'll be able to go on making fools of you and the whole nation. You think Jay Acton, the man who's giving you your marching orders, is a super-patriotic American. I'm telling you the son-of-a-bitch is a Russian, and a KGB agent to boot! Without realizing it, you've been acting as a goon squad for the enemies of this country. Give it up now! Don't do this thing. If you give us time, my brother and I can prove that Acton is a Russian agent. If you stop the killing now, if you turn yourselves in and cooperate with the authorities, you may be able to strike a deal. If you love your country, you'll lay down your guns and help us nail Jay Acton."
I thought it was rather a nice speech-if not exactly instantly hypnotic, then at least strongly persuasive. However, it hadn't seemed to make much of an impression on my audience, the gunmen, who exchanged glances. It was Gregory Trex-making no effort whatsoever to disguise his voice-who spoke.
"What the hell are you talking about, dwarf? What's this bullshit about Acton giving us orders?"
Hmm. "You're saying he doesn't? You're saying it wasn't Jay Acton who put you up to this?"
"You're fucking crazy."
Trex sounded genuinely confused by the mention of Jay Acton, which tended to genuinely confuse me. The problem was that I didn't have time to be confused. I made an expansive gesture, putting my hands out to my sides, the purpose being to get my right hand as close as possible to the gun in Garth's waistband. Garth began to move slowly across the room, and I moved with him, resting my hand now on the butt of the gun.
Trex, still bending Mary's arm up behind her back, stayed where he was, while the other two men fanned out across the room, one stopping in the center and the other going to the opposite wall; it would make for a hell of a cross fire.
"It doesn't make any difference who gave you the orders, Gregory," I said, tightening my grip on the gun, "because it's obvious that somebody did. You didn't get those weapons on your own."
"Stop there!" the gunman in the center of the room commanded.
We stopped. The figures of the three men blurred in and out of focus, and I squinted to try to keep the ghostly double images away. Sweat was now running into my good left eye, stinging it, and that didn't help at all. If Garth and I were going to die, the man I most wanted to take with us was Gregory Trex, but Trex was still holding Mary close to him. Even if I weren't suffering from double vision, I couldn't be sure of missing the woman if I fired at him.
Almost as if she had been reading my mind, Mary suddenly twisted in Trex's grip, then spat in his face. "Let me go, Gregory! Don't be a fool! You'll never-!"
Trex abruptly released his grip on her arm, spun her around, and drove his fist into her stomach. She cried out, doubled over, and slowly sank to her knees.
"Enough of this bullshit!" the man in the center of the room shouted, and abruptly stripped off his mask. It was the Vietnam vet with the ponytail I'd seen at the art exhibition Friday evening. "We don't need masks! We came here to clean out this nest of communist faggots, so let's get on with it!"
The other two gunmen slowly removed their masks. Trex leered at me, bloodlust gleaming in his milky green eyes. His mouth was half open, and saliva glistened on his small, gapped teeth. I hadn't seen the third gunman before.
It was time, and I began to slowly pull the gun from Garth's waistband. I knew I had no chance of killing all three men before they killed Garth and me, but I was damned well determined to kill Trex.
A balding, middle-aged man abruptly stepped away from the wall and moved toward Trex. "Listen, you-!"
"Don't!" I shouted-too late.
The man with the ponytail leveled his automatic pistol on the other man's stomach, pulled the trigger. The bullets caught the middle-aged man in the stomach and torso, ripping him open and hurling him backward. Blood spurted, misted in the air, sprayed over the rest of the shocked, screaming members of the Community of Conciliation.
I grabbed the Colt from Garth's waistband at almost the precise moment when my brother lunged forward, hit the floor, and rolled at the legs of the ponytailed gunman. I crouched down, squinted, and squeezed off a shot at the blurred figure that was Gregory Trex. I heard him scream, saw him grab at his right shoulder as he spun around and fell to the floor. I cursed my poor markmanship and knew there was no time for a second shot. I leaped to my left, hit the floor, and rolled as a hail of bullets tore through the space where I had just been standing. I had no plan; there was absolutely no cover in the stripped ballroom, and there was no way I could make it out through the archway into the foyer before I was riddled with bullets. It was all instinct now, reflex; I knew I was going to die and was simply determin
ed to elude death until the last possible moment. I was sorry I hadn't had time to say a proper goodbye to my brother.
Then, mixed with the cacophony of screams and automatic weapons fire, there was another sound-the higher-pitched chatter of another, heavier automatic weapon, muffled somewhat, as if the fire was coming from outside the mansion. An instant later there erupted a booming cascade of sound like an explosion of glass, as if the bank of windows at the east end was collapsing. The Colt slipped from my grasp. I stopped rolling, curled up in an instinctive attempt to make myself as small a target as possible; I clamped my arms over my head and waited for bullets to rip into me.
And then the gunfire stopped abruptly, leaving in its wake an echo that reverberated throughout the huge chamber, a hideous counterpoint to the continued screaming of the Community members. Hands gripped my shoulders, and I recognized the touch of my brother.
"Mongo! Mongo, are you hit?!"
I opened my left eye, found myself looking into Garth's face through a film of blood that I knew was coming from the reopened gash over my right eye. But the wound didn't hurt. My head didn't hurt; nothing hurt. Astonishment at finding the Frederickson brothers still alive seemed to be working like a powerful general anesthesia. I wiped the blood away with my shirt sleeve, sat up.
"No," I said. "You?"
"No."
"What the hell happened?"
"We've got a visitor, brother," Garth said in a tone of voice that I thought sounded somewhat cryptic.
"Who?"
"See for yourself," he replied, and moved to one side.
I took Garth's hand and hauled myself to my feet, looked out over the room, and squinted in an effort to focus my vision. The dawn light streaming in through the open space where the windows had been was mixed now with swirling dust and gunsmoke that danced and spun and drifted on the gentle breezes flowing into the ballroom from off the Hudson. A figure moved in the backlit dust and smoke, but I couldn't see who it was. Off to my right, Mary and other Community members were attending to the men and women who had been wounded. The Vietnam veteran with the ponytail was missing not only his ponytail but the half of his head to which it had been attached; he was quite dead, lying in a spreading pool of blood in the center of the room. The third gunman was dead also. Of the death squad members, only Gregory Trex remained alive- thanks to me. The pig-faced young man with the bandaged nose and forehead was writhing on the floor, yelping in pain, clawing at his bullet-ravaged right shoulder. By attempting to kill him but only winging him and sending him to the floor, I had inadvertently saved Gregory Trex's life, protected him from the fate that had befallen his two comrades at the hands of our mysterious rescuer.
This did not please me. Suddenly the identity of the shadowy figure moving in the smoky light was nowhere near as important to me as the rage I felt toward Trex. I pushed Garth's supporting hand away, staggered over to where the wide-eyed Trex was thrashing on the floor, and sat down hard on his chest. There was a strong odor of feces; with the tables turned, with somebody shooting at him, the young killer had lost control of his sphincter.
"Who sent you?!” I screamed into his battered face.
Trex, saliva streaming from his mouth, moved his lips in an effort to speak, but he wasn't making enough progress to suit me. I punched his wounded shoulder, and he screamed; I raised my fist, threatening to punch him again, and he stopped.
"Who ordered you to do this, Trex? Was it Jay Acton?"
He shook his head back and forth, bubbled up some more saliva, and tried to reach across his body to grip his damaged shoulder. I stopped him.
"Who?! You'd better find your voice fast, kiddo, or I'm going to rip your fucking shoulder off! Who sent you?! Who gave you those weapons?!"
". . hane," he finally managed to croak. "Mr. Culhane. We've been. . helping him clean the trash off the streets and fight the communists. He said it was the only way left, because the leftists had taken over the government and the courts. He said what we needed was a death squad like they have in other countries. When he found out you were gone, he called me. He said I should get the other two and go after you. He said that you were probably hiding out here and that we should kill everyone because it was time to get serious about what we wanted to do. He said that you two and these people were just like the communists and that the only way to deal with you was to kill you."
"He gave you the guns?"
Trex nodded, then reached up with his left hand and wiped spittle off his chin. "He gave them to us a few weeks ago. He said first we'd kill some of the scum on the streets, like drug dealers, and then we'd go after communists."
"How did Culhane find out so fast that I was gone from the hospital?"
"I don't know. I suppose the police told him. Mosely's scared shitless of Mr. Culhane; he tells him everything."
"Did you people kill Michael Burana and Harry Peal?"
"No."
"Who did? Acton?"
"I don't know."
"I don't believe you," I said, and raised my fist again.
A voice close beside me said, "I think he's telling the truth."
In my seething rage at Gregory Trex, in my need for answers, I had virtually forgotten all about the man who had saved our lives. Now I raised my head, glanced to my left, and found myself looking into the dark eyes and deeply tanned face of Jay Acton. His razor-cut brown hair was covered now by a black seaman's cap; instead of one of his custom-tailored suits, he was dressed in black-boots, jeans, a turtleneck sweater. In his right hand he carried an Uzi automatic rifle. Under his left arm he carried the three automatic pistols originally wielded by the recently disbanded death squad. Garth's Colt was stuck in the waistband of his jeans.
"Damn," I said.
"What the hell have you two been up to?" he asked curtly, glancing back and forth between Garth, who had come over to stand beside him, and me. "Who have you been talking to, and what have you been saying?"
"What have we been up to?!" I swallowed hard, again used the sleeve of my shirt to wipe blood away from my eyes. "Listen, you lying, spying, Russian son-of-a-bitch, I-!" I stopped in midsentence when I heard the distant wail of approaching police sirens. "This should be interesting," I said, grabbing Garth's outstretched hand and hauling myself to my feet.
Jay Acton glanced quickly toward the front of the house, then back at us. "If you wait for the police, you'll be taken into custody," he said tersely. "If that happens, the chances are good that you'll both end up dead within seventy-two hours. We have to go."
"Why?" Garth asked, studying Acton through narrowed lids. He pointed at the two dead gunmen, then at the writhing, whimpering man on the floor at my feet. "You put the death squad out of business."
Acton shook his head impatiently, again glanced anxiously toward the front of the house. The sirens were much closer. "These were amateurs," he said quickly, in the same curt tone. "Clumsy boobs manipulated by Culhane to act out Culhane's fantasy of operating a death squad like the political death squads they have in his beloved Guatemala and El Salvador. I know because I put the idea in his head."
I blinked, stared into the other man's glacial black eyes. "You put-?!"
"There's no time to explain now," Acton interrupted. "I'm here because a few hours ago somebody tried to kill me-and that person was no amateur. I have reason to believe there's a KGB assassin after me, which means that the same assassin, or assassins, will also be after you now that this attempt has failed. You'll have no chance out in the open. You have to come with me."
"Where?" Garth asked.
The dark-eyed KGB officer with the high cheekbones and strong chin abruptly shoved one of the automatic pistols into my brother's hands. "We have to trust each other now; all our lives depend on it. I need you to tell me precisely what's been going on and to walk me in; you need me to stay alive."
Garth and I glanced at each other, and I could see my own thoughts reflected in his eyes; considering the fact that everyone in the mansion would now be de
ad if it weren't for Jay Acton, it seemed the man had proved his bona fides. "It's your show, Acton," I said.
"Who else knows about me?"
"I do." It was Mary. I hadn't heard her come up, but she was now standing directly behind me, and it was obvious that she'd overheard most of our conversation. "I'm coming with you."
"And we'll take him," Acton said, pointing to Gregory Trex. "He's been witness to a lot of things we'll need to prove-but he'll end up a dead witness if we leave him here."
Garth grunted, stepped over to Trex, and reached down. He grabbed the front of Trex's shirt, rudely hauled him to his feet.
"Let's go," Acton said as he grabbed one of Trex's arms. "Follow me. Down to the river."
Garth grabbed Trex's other arm, and together they half dragged, half carried the thoroughly terrified young man across the glass-strewn floor of the ballroom toward the gaping hole at the far end. Mary offered me her hand. I gratefully took it, and together we followed along through the clouds of sunlit dust and smoke. As I stepped up and over a jagged ridge of glass and dropped to the lawn outside, I thought I heard the police come crashing in at the other end.
Tightly holding on to Mary's hand for support, I stumbled along over the grass down toward the river and the Community's dock. Garth was already removing a canoe and paddles from the wooden rack nearby. Acton abruptly swung the stock of his Uzi around, catching Gregory Trex squarely on the jaw. Trex crumpled to the ground. Acton helped Garth put the canoe into the water, where Mary and I steadied it while they went back to the rack for a second canoe.
I glanced up toward the mansion, but saw no one in the space where the windows had been. Either I had been wrong about hearing the police coming in just as we were leaving, or everyone was too busy attending to the wounded to bother about us, or the Community members-sensing, if not understanding, our need to escape-were providing some kind of distraction.
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