Extreme Instinct jc-6

by Robert W. Walker

  She took the gamble, stopped, and leveled the gun as the disappearing shadow turned a corner and was gone. "Damn! Damn!"

  She found a stairwell, and exit sign, and a window at the end of this corridor. She heard the exit door below open and she rushed to the window to stare out into the night, hoping to see him come into view, running from the building. She prepared to blow a hole through his damned head when he did so, but no one appeared from the exit below. A noise filtered up to her. Someone pushing through yet another door, a gunshot, and silence.

  She raced down the stairs and pushed through a door on yet another corridor leading to the center of the complex, and there, on the floor, lay Sam Fronval, a bullet hole seeping blood from his stomach, his walkie-talkie lying some feet away.

  ''Bastard run right up on me and fired. I didn't expect-"

  "Save your breath, Sam!" she ordered and got on the two-way radio, calling for anyone listening, "Get those medics from room four twenty-two to… to… where the hell are we, Sam? Sam?"

  "Main floor, corridor B, near center exit," the old ranger said, moaning now with the pain.

  Jessica ripped the leather pouch from the radio and tore Fronval's belt from his pants with an effort. She wrapped the belt around the wound, shoved the leather pouch in tight against the bleeding, small-bore hole, and tightened the belt around wound and makeshift bandage as best she could, all to the complaints of Fronval, who kept saying, "I'm all right, Jessica! Get on after the bastard! Don't let him get away now! Go! Go!"

  Jessica wouldn't leave until others arrived on the scene to care for Sam. She raced off in the direction the killer had taken, finding herself in the deserted, stone-silent main hall, off which stood the gift shop, the ranger information station that posted the time for the next eruption of Old Faithful, the massive dining room, a breakfast place, a lounge.

  There were exits on all sides and through any number of other rooms. It was before hours, so no one was working here. Not a sound to be heard.

  Jessica looked up at the mammoth heart of the old hotel, a living monument to the early interest in Yellowstone and the great white American hunter. This area was the original lodge, the workmanship magnificent, lost to the ages. And everything was on a grand, gaudy Gilded Era scale. She imagined the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, and the Morgans, all the powerful barons of the turn of the century meeting here, settling on prices of goods and services, enjoying themselves in a luxury not even dreamed of by others of their day. The main hall sported a wraparound second floor and elegant balcony, so huge a hundred modern-day tourists could stand upon it and watch Old Faithful blow its fifty-foot plume skyward from this observation point and never leave their seats.

  Above the second-floor veranda there were rooms and more rooms and additional floors. All the walls were lined with stuffed animal heads, from bison to elk to bear, and beside these hung great, opulent oil paintings depicting scenes and events of a bygone era. Native American blankets and rugs hung everywhere.

  All of it stood stark, silent. She hadn't a clue as to Fey-dor Dorphmann's immediate whereabouts.

  Then she heard a noise, a pattering, metallic noise. It seemed to be coming from the dining area. She pushed through the closed double doors to stare in at the elegant, wood-motif dining hall, where a massive fireplace, large enough to house a small family for a portrait picture, stood at the center of the room.

  Dorphmann could be hiding on the other side of the fireplace and no one could see him.

  She glided into the dark room, its lodge pine interior usually inviting but currently menacing. Again, she heard noise-the sound of muffled music, pots and pans, coming from the kitchen area.

  She moved slowly, cautiously, her gun extended in two hands before her.

  When all had calmed at the lodge and a fire company had put out the blaze, it was predawn before anyone took a breath. Rideout had come down from the air for good and had found breakfast in the lodge kitchen where he once worked as a boy, before his ranger days. It had finally dawned on him where he'd heard Coran's name before. Old Fronval had spoken of her on occasion when telling a story of how a murder in the park had been uncovered by a young female doctor and himself.

  Rideout shook his head and stared out a back window, where he could see the east wing of the lodge, scattered ghost clouds from the geysers drifting by, and through a window, he saw a sudden rush of flame in a room several hundred yards away. He instantly got on the house phone and called Fronval's office, getting some female subordinate of Sam's.

  "Fire! There's another fire! He's struck again, east wing, near the end. I'm going after the bastard!" he shouted over the woman's questions.

  Rideout dropped the receiver and snatched a high-powered rifle from one wall, cartridges from a drawer, and began loading the weapon when the door burst open and Jessica Coran had him in her sights, shouting, "Drop the weapon! Now!"

  Corey Rideout's call had had the effect of instantly recalling the fire trucks into action. He and Jessica now raced together for the east wing, Rideout yelling after her to wait for him as he tried to load the weapon kept at all times in the kitchen by the lodge's number one cook. Rideout had known about the legendary cook, who carried his weapon about the place whenever he felt the need.

  When Jessica turned a corner of the multifaceted lodge, she saw the figure of a man rushing away from the east wing, and then her eardrums were split open by the piercing sound of a high-powered rifle. Rideout had fired from behind her, and his shell ricocheted off a brick wall, stunning the fugitive momentarily, making him drop his case. Recovering from her own reaction to the gunshot that whizzed past her, Jessica now saw the running figure drop to the ground, roll about the concrete of a vestibule, and snatch up his case. Jessica raised her gun and aimed, but Dorphmann had kept going, ducking behind the wall. She didn't have a shot.

  "Are you nuts?!" she shouted at Rideout. "You might've hit me!"

  "Not a chance," countered Rideout.

  She momentarily wondered if she shouldn't worry about Rideout, if he could possibly be, like others before him, currently in the employ of one Frank Lorentian.

  "Just be careful with that damned elephant gun, will you? Stay here and direct traffic to the fire!"

  Rideout frowned and replied, "I'm not letting you go off after that maniac on your own."

  "It's my job, not yours!"

  She made off for the shadow man. It had to be Dorphmann. Two fires in one night. It would end his kill spree now to conclude with her, number nine, as was his intention from the start, from the very first phone call he'd made in Vegas to show her how easily he could kill Chris Lorentian, to his now eighth victim in this latest fire:

  #8 if #2-Lustful.

  Jessica made it to the vestibule. Behind her, she heard Rideout calling out to her to wait. She shushed him, her Browning automatic at her cheek as she turned to stare down the vestibule. In the distance, disappearing into the billowing clouds of geyser smoke ahead of her, ran the fire Phantom. Behind her, Jessica could hear the sirens and the firemen going into action, and she saw Rideout's silhouetted figure directing them, the big rifle held over his head. Confused firemen rushed now to a second and distinct fire site here this night, once again waking all the guests.

  She knew what the firemen would find in the east wing; she didn't need to see it, not to know that inside the charred room, they would find the fire-blackened corpse of the Phantom's eighth victim and the message #8 is #2- Lustful.

  So now Feydor had filled his quota, all save #9 is #1, all save his delivering Jessica to his god.

  Ahead of her, his shoes clicked on the boardwalk that led deeper and deeper into the Upper Geyser Basin and toward Hellsmouth. It had become painfully obvious what this fiend wanted of her; for her, by her. He wanted her to be swallowed by the waters of Hell, licked to death by Satan's tongue, to enter Dante's Vestibule. He would have placed one human soul on each level of Dante's Inferno. He was ready to come full circle to #9 as #1, as all his victim
s shared not only the same fate but also parts of one another, shared in the traits and human frailties that had brought them to this end. That, at least, was the thinking of the madman, the force driving him. He killed only those who deserved to die, those who deserved to die by fire for the savior, Feydor Dorphmann-Moses and messenger to Satan.

  And Feydor was so anxious to see an end to it, even as anxious as she was to see an end to it.

  He expected great rewards, she realized.

  Behind her, the second fire raged out of control. In front of her, Feydor awaited her, Hell awaited her, Satan awaited her. Somehow, Feydor Dorphmann had gotten it into his head that Satan required Jessica Coran's soul as a crowning achievement in a string of murders.

  It still all added up to dementia.

  TWENTY-ONE

  He maketh the deep to boil like a pot.

  — Job 41:31

  John Thorpe had wasted no time in contacting Eriq Santiva at Jackson Hole to inform him that Agent Jessica Coran had deciphered the final mystery of Feydor Dorphmann's strange and bizarre odyssey. Santiva and Gallagher were far closer to Yellowstone than Thorpe was. They could intervene far more effectively and speedily. They had an army of FBI agents under their command.

  Santiva and Gallagher now raced toward Old Faithful Lodge, knowing that it was Jessica Coran's new destination and that she was close on the heels of the madman Dorphmann. When their helicopter approached the lodge, they could see the evidence of a new blaze below them, the activity of firefighters, confirming J. T.'s suspicion. Nearby Jackson Hole had been quiet, a decoy jumping-off point for Dorphmann's kill spree. The near capture in Salt Lake City had spooked him and he had changed his plans, or so it appeared.

  On the ground at Old Faithful Lodge, the evidence of Dorphmann's presence could hardly be denied: two fires, one under control, one being battled as they landed. And somewhere in all the confusion was Jessica Coran.

  Behind them, in radio contact, Dr. John Thorpe followed in another helicopter. Over the radio, he was told the situation.

  He blared out to Santiva, "We've gotta find her! Help her!"

  "We're doing everything possible," replied Santiva. "Over and out."

  Gallagher and Santiva leaped from the helicopter even before it touched earth, the powerful wind from the rotor blades dispersing the smoke, steam, and haze surrounding them, blinding them. They'd been in radio contact with Sam Fronval's people and had gotten word of Fronval's having been attacked, that he was rushed off to a nearby hospital, and word had it that Agent Coran had disappeared out into the Upper Geyser Basin springs along the visitor boardwalk that snaked inward for several miles along a honeycomb of hot springs.

  Daylight had yet to break. Taking a helicopter over the basin might prove futile, but Eriq hailed J. T., who was still up in the air, to do so. They watched as the Salt Lake City police chopper carrying Thorpe turned up its powerful searchlights. Nose down, it zeroed in on the Upper Geyser Basin to begin visual pursuit. Santiva and Gallagher then raced for the boardwalk, which went in two directions where it forked in a huge circle around Old Faithful. "You take that way, I'll go north," Santiva told Gallagher. Both directions were obscured by ground clouds that swelled up from the hot springs here.

  ''Leave it to Jessica Coran to get into this kind of quicksand," bitched Eriq Santiva.

  Before Jessica Coran stretched a lunar and Mars mix of landscape that must appeal to Dante or any aficionado of his Inferno, for here in the vast region of the Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone, encircling the wondering gaze of the frail human form, were Hell's venting ports, the life-blood of Hades itself, touching God's morning breeze to singe His breath and turn it to sulfuric clouds. These clouds joined as they rose, moving across the land like the mightiest of ghosts heavenward, while still trailing an attachment for the dark underworld from which they came in the form of silicified rock.

  As Jessica raced after the killer, her nostrils and eyes assaulted by the sulfuric acid, the stifling air all around her, she panted with running and swallowing the horrid stench that now enveloped her. The thermal clouds, at once beautiful, fantastic, alluring, captivating, and dangerous, now hid a killer who had enticed her this way, leading her to this time and place all the way from Las Vegas, Nevada, that first night when she heard the dying pleas of Chris Lorentian.

  The killer had gotten off the footpath, or else he had stopped stone still somewhere in the sulfuric mist ahead of her. She felt dangerously close to the hot springs, which could be as hot as 180 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. All around her she heard the gurgle and burp, the sputter and swallow of the superheated minerals here, as if they called out a chorus to the aeons-old danse macabre between good and evil here. She could no longer hear Dorphmann's corporeal steps on the boardwalk. Where the hell was he?

  Jessica cautiously continued her pursuit. "I'm here, Feydor!" she shouted, her anger rising. "For the first time you have to face a lucid victim, someone with her senses intact. You cowardly bastard!" She hoped insults might instigate a mistake on his part. She listened for any sound.

  Nothing.

  "Feydor! Feydor Dorphmann! It ends here!" she shouted.

  "Yes! Agreed!" he shouted back and her gun went instinctively to the direction from which his voice came. She fired twice into the mist, his form hidden in the steam clouds ahead of her.

  "You stand before the Vestibule, the mouth of Satan and the River Acheron," he shouted, and again her gun went up and fired at the sound, this time in another direction.

  "Number nine is number one, you, Jessica Coran." Again she fired, this time three shots. She had two left in the Browning.

  "Sonofabitch," she muttered, trying to hold her gun firmly on him, or what appeared ahead as possibly him, possibly a tourist who had gotten between them. She prepared to put a bullet through his brain, his heart, whatever it took, should he make one move toward her.

  "Number nine is number one in Dante's Inferno, isn't it, Dorphmann," she replied. "That would be Limbo, now, wouldn't it?" she asked. "Satan has asked you to send me there, and that's the reason for this entire deadly charade, isn't it? Isn't it?"

  The dark figure ahead of her spoke. ''Yes, I knew that you would finally understand… Wetherbine never fully believed, but you… you do, don't you? You know the power of the Dark One."

  "I understand this much, mister: If there's going to be a ninth fire for a soul to be placed in Limbo, it'll be your damned soul and not mine."

  A thick, choking cloud of sulfuric mist suddenly divided them, Feydor's form disappearing before her eyes. She fired where his heart had been, but she heard no result, no thud, no outcry. She'd missed.

  She leaped into the cloud that had engulfed him, running along the boardwalk in an area without railings now when suddenly she felt someone grab hold of her ankle and snatch her feet from beneath her. She held tightly to her gun even as she fell from the boardwalk and onto the spongy, cracked earth that made up the lip of the hot springs called Hellsmouth. She fought to get to her feet, fearing to stand and take a step, fearing the ground beneath her not solid enough to hold her, but it held. Then she saw him, standing over her, a pair of ragged sneakers at her eye level.

  "Go ahead then," he said, "shoot me… Kill me if-"

  "If, hell!" she declared. "No ifs!" She raised the gun, but he had already aimed and fired from a Mace container, which she saw at the last moment before snatching her eyes away from the direct shower to her face. Jessica felt him wrench the gun from her grasp the instant she protected her eyes. His unearthly laughter followed.

  She clambered to her feet and backed from him, in an attempt to avoid the brunt of the pepper gas he continued to taunt her with. She now backed frightfully close to the hot pool behind her, almost losing her balance, while her gleeful attacker followed with an attempt to shove her into the bubbling cauldron of the white sulfur and winking blue pit. She realized only now that he'd been under the boardwalk, like some ogre in a child's nursery rhyme.

  She felt he
r foot slip and go under the scalding water, and instinctively she went to her knees to gain a foothold before the hot spring behind her, but she feared losing control as she clawed to stay on solid ground, fighting madly to regain her balance, just as he rushed her, kicking out at her, still laughing maniacally.

  She dodged his first blow by rolling to one side. Screaming his victory, in hot pursuit and sure of victory, he charged, but Jessica brought up a board from below the boardwalk-left there for years, for this moment, for her to grab hold of-and she brought it against his charging temple. Both the board and Dorphmann fell into the pool, him up to his thighs, screaming with the pain of it, dropping to his waist in his frenzied fight to return to solid ground; the board was seared to boiling like a large hot dog, and then it sank below the superheated water.

  He attacked with renewed vigor, although his legs and lower trunk must be tearing at him, burned as they were, smoke coming off his clothing. Unarmed, not wearing a second gun as was her usual habit, because she'd earlier insisted J. T. take it, she attacked him with a molten rock that had solidified here.

  This creature was trying to send her to Hell via the hot springs beside them. The rock hit him solidly at the already fried kneecap, sending him dazed, reeling back, struggling anew for his footing, his lower extremities still seething and sending up a small cloud of smoke. Feydor Dorphmann now screamed in frustrated anger as well as pain.

  "Get thee behind me, Satan!" she shouted the familiar biblical epitaph just as he lost his battle with equilibrium and his footing. He toppled for the second time into the hottest of the hot springs here.

  She struggled now to get a hand out to him, to help him save himself, searching frantically for something at hand to assist, but there was nothing, no trees or branches nearby.