Relentless

by Brian Garfield

  He sat suspended, breathing in and breathing out. Finally he reached for the extinguisher handle and started the pump. Foam smothered the flames on the starboard nacelle and covered the windows on that side like lather out of a pushbutton shaving-cream can.

  Baraclough said hoarsely, “Holy Mother of God.”

  15

  He unstrapped his seat belt and made an inventory of his bones.

  The Major said mildly, “That was a shitty landing, Mister.”

  “Tough tit,” he said absurdly, and found himself grinning like an idiot. “Major, any landing you walk away from is a good landing.”

  Baraclough stared at him out of bleak hooded eyes. “Walk away to where?”

  CHAPTER 3

  1

  A town cop sat cross-legged in the corner analyzing the rope they’d picked up on the highway by the cut power lines. There was an array of objects on the floor around him. Clues.

  Buck Stevens said, “Time’s it?”

  “Twenty to four,” Sam Watchman told him. About an hour and a half since they’d discovered the abandoned Buick.

  “Christ.”

  “Patience, white man.”

  Stevens’ rookie eyes flashed at him. “You don’t care much.”

  He thought of old Jasper Simalie. “I care. Just take it easy, Buck.”

  Radio microphone wires were tangled on the cluttered desk. Watchman stood near the front window, leaning a crook’d elbow across the top of the brown metal filing cabinet. Jace Cunningham was slumped at his desk and when Stevens paced angrily across the office Cunningham rolled his thin face around a few inches, without moving the palm on which his jaw and cheek rested. Cunningham’s freckled face was morose.

  The radio speaker crackled-the Highway Patrol dispatcher in Kingman. Because of the approaching storm the signal was weak and pulsing. Watchman walked over to the desk and picked up a microphone, pushed its Send button and talked and listened. There was no news. The Civil Air Patrol had planes in the air in three states and there had been a report from Nellis AFB radar that a blip had appeared briefly and then disappeared again somewhere near the mountains eighty miles west of San Miguel. Probably an ionized cloud; the storm was playing hell with radars.

  “That FBI agent get there yet?” the radio asked.

  “Negative,” Watchman said.

  “Keep a lookout for him. He should have landed in Kanab by now-he went up from Phoenix by Lear jet and he’ll be coming down to San Miguel by helicopter.”

  “I don’t know what he thinks he can do that we haven’t already done.”

  “Just cooperate with him, Sam. We don’t need to make enemies in that quarter.”

  “Well I wasn’t planning to put his nose out of joint.”

  “Just do what he wants. Hold it-Ben just handed me this, we’ve got a make on that Buick. Belongs to a fellow named Sweeney runs a cafe up in Fredonia. He didn’t even know it’d been swiped until Ben called him.”

  A fat lot of help. “What about Baraclough?”

  “Nothing from Washington. We’ve sent a telex to the Military Records people in St. Louis, maybe get a set of prints on him if he was ever in the arm service.”

  It might come to that-the long slow hard way: trace Baraclough back, trace his known associates, gradually build a picture through the FBI’s resources. But that could take months. Here it was hardly ninety minutes since the bandits had fled the bank.

  “Ten four.”

  Watchman put the mike down and went back to the window.

  Stevens leveled a pugnacious finger at him. “We ought to be out there doing something.”

  At the desk Cunningham picked up a pencil and played with it as obstinately as a bored child. Two of his deputies were still down at the bank taking statements. A lot of detail would pile up as a result but Watchman had a feeling it wouldn’t lead to much. This bunch had been smart-they’d had it all worked out, every last detail except the bad luck of one of them picking up a speeding ticket. Just the same, they had to be somewhere — why hadn’t anybody found that airplane yet and started tracking it? He scowled through the window at the Feed amp; Seed store across the street. Maybe they hadn’t gone all that far, after all. Maybe they knew they’d be tracked if they stayed very long in the air. The whole thing might be a bluff: maybe they’d scratched out a landing strip on some ranch close by, flown fifteen minutes and landed, and hidden the plane in a barn. Maybe right now they were sitting in a ranch house within fifty miles of this spot, counting the loot and laughing up their sleeves.

  Or it could be they’d decided to take a chance and flown right into that advancing blizzard. Not much chance of coming through that in one piece-but it did offer perfect concealment for an airplane, if you could keep it flying…

  Too many ifs, too many maybes. There was nothing for it but to wait, chained to the end of their prime umbilical, the radio-microphone cord.

  The phone rang and Buck Stevens jerked. Cunningham picked up the receiver and grunted, listened, grunted again, and hung up. “They’ve got the phone lines fixed out east. Still working on the other one.”

  It was a small blessing. Watchman said, “Mind if I use it to call Flag?”

  “Official call?”

  “Personal. I’ll pay the charges.”

  “Help ’self.” Cunningham got up and made his way around the desk. He moved with a heavy deliberation in his tread. Watchman walked past Buck Stevens, who had the look of a potentially enraged Brahma bull, and took Cunningham’s place in the swivel chair. He picked up the phone and listened for a dial tone and when he had one he put his brown finger in the dial holes and rang the number.

  “Mogollon Gift Shop, may I help you?”

  Watchman’s face changed with disappointment. “Hello, Phyllis, it’s Sam.”

  The woman’s voice turned chilly. “Lisa’s not here right now.”

  He’d known that already. If Lisa had been there she’d have answered the phone herself. Her sister-in-law only filled in now and then at the shop. “She be back soon?”

  “Well she went up the street to buy a sweater. I’m minding the store for her. I don’t know how long she’ll be.” The voice was cool with habitual disapproval.

  Watchman said, “Tell her I probably won’t make it back to Flag tonight. We’ve had a little ruction up here…”

  “I just heard about the robbery. On the radio.”

  He didn’t want to talk about that. Not with her. “I’ll probably get in tomorrow sometime.”

  “I’ll tell Lisa you called.” There was a beat of silence and then Phyllis said politely, “Be careful, Sam,” and hung up. Phyllis was always polite and rarely said what she meant: I hope you get your red hide in a wringer. It was going to be an interesting clan to marry into.

  It didn’t matter. He could see Lisa clearly, her movements and poses and faces; he could hear the cadences of her voice and feel the warmth of their deep silences together, filled with confidences.

  He put his hand in his pocket and closed the little velvet ring case in his fist.

  Buck Stevens was writing the past hour up in his daybook. He was filling a lot of paper. In this business it was getting so you even had to make out reports on the reports you’d made out. Abruptly Stevens snapped the book shut and began to prowl again. “God damn it.”

  “Take it easy now,” Jace Cunningham said. “Gentle down.” It didn’t matter to Cunningham; he had all the patience in the world and the first thing he’d done was see to it that everybody realized it wasn’t his fault the bank had been robbed. Cunningham was going along with middle-aged caution, piling up the years toward his pension and a little ticktack house in a retirement community down in southern Arizona.

  They heard the helicopter coming and Watchman said, “You suppose they know where to land that thing?”

  “All them Kanab pilots know the drill,” Cunningham said, reaching for his hat. “May as well get on up there.”

  2

  The FBI man emerged f
rom the bubble canopy and ducked to walk under the decelerating blades. A good deal of light had drained out of the sky and a chilly wind blew across the bald hilltop; only midafternoon, but electric lights were already coming on at the smelter on the hillside and in the town below them. Buck Stevens had his hands rammed in his pockets and was stamping from foot to foot. He said out of the side of his mouth, “Look out now for that masked man. He looks like he carries silver bullets.”

  “Dry up,” Watchman said.

  The FBI man had a sleek tawny handsomeness, somewhat dated, as if he required a slick part in the center of his hair and a cutaway coat to be in his element. In fact he was packaged in the Bureau’s regulation gray suit, handkerchief in breast pocket, white shirt and subdued necktie. His shoes were absolutely brand new: stepping out of the helicopter he had revealed shiny tan leather soles, hardly scratched.

  You could tell one by looking at him, always. The Bureau prescribed their standards of dress and stamped them like print-outs from a computer. Hair short, but not crew cut. Clean-shaven, short sideburns, exactly a quarter inch of white shirt cuff showing below the jacket sleeve. Side-vented jacket to allow quick access to the high-belted. 38 in its stubby canted holster.

  He had a rigid coin-slot mouth in repose but when he smiled he showed a double row of white teeth; the Bureau took them out of universities-all accountants and lawyers-and taught them to “look and act like gentlemen.” This one looked young and vinegary, as if he was up to date in his field: confident, almost jaunty.

  “I’m Paul Vickers. Special Agent.” He had his I.D. wallet open in his left hand.

  “Sam Watchman.”

  Vickers’ handshake was perfunctory; perhaps he disliked being touched.

  “This is Jace Cunningham, Chief Constable here.”

  Cunningham said, “Mighty nice to meet you.”

  Watchman turned. “And Trooper Stevens. My partner.”

  “Is he?” Vickers asked, and shook hands with Stevens. “That’s fine-that’s fine.” He turned, brisk, putting the wallet in his pocket and rubbing his hands together rapidly. “That your car over there? Maybe we can get inside out of this wind and then you can bring me up to date.”

  Walking to the car Jace Cunningham said, “We wasn’t sure if you’d want to check out the bank first or go on out to where they took off from in their airplane.”

  They climbed in and the four doors chunked shut. Stevens started the car and put it in low, crunching slowly down the steep gravel trail. The Special Agent asked a few questions to get things started. Watchman had not looked forward to a long-winded rehash of events but Vickers’ questions were compelling and logical; he knew his job. He listened expressionlessly, skeptically, with stony unimpressed eyes. It seemed to disconcert Cunningham: the Chief Constable enjoyed exposition and kept beginning his pronouncements with the words, “Well, sir, I’ll tell you,” but Vickers kept cutting him off and hurrying him up and Cunningham muttered, “Yes, sir, uh-huh,” to everything Vickers said. Finally Vickers turned to Watchman and got the story from him. By the time they reached the main street the high spots had been covered and Vickers said, “Let’s skip the bank for the moment. The important thing is to try and nail the fugitives before they’ve had time to go to ground. Where’s your communications center?”

  “That’s over to my office,” Cunningham said.

  Stevens turned the corner. Vickers said, “It’s important that we get these fugitives and get them fast. In this kind of case you’ve got to do that-give the public an object lesson in quick justice, remind them that crime doesn’t pay.”

  It had been an unnecessary speech and it made Watchman swallow a smile. How an FBI agent who presumably had spent a few years at his job could still believe crime didn’t pay was almost beyond belief but actually Vickers was only conforming to type: these fellows had all been Melvin Purvis Junior G-men when they were kids.

  The cruiser slid in at the curb behind Cunningham’s parked traffic-cop car and they filed inside. On his way through the door Vickers said, “I want to try and get the search coordinated. I take it you’ve got contact with the Civil Air people and the enforcement agencies in Utah and Nevada.”

  “More or less.” Cunningham showed his discomfort. “We ain’t exactly got what you’d call a sophisticated communications network up here.”

  Vickers swept the room with his eyes. The old transceivers were stacked in the corner on an old table and microphone cords trailed over to the desk. The deputy constable at the radio table nodded to them and said, “Ain’t nothing come in since you left, Chief.”

  But the phone was ringing and Buck Stevens, closest to it, picked up. “Police.”

  Then Stevens went stiff and his eyes whipped around toward Watchman. They all swung to face the rookie. Stevens listened hard and spoke two or three times and finally said into the mouthpiece, “Hold on a second.” He lowered the receiver and cupped his palm over it. “Civil Air Patrol in Kanab. One of their scout planes reports a wrecked plane near the foothills about eighty miles west of here. Could be them.”

  Vickers strode past Cunningham and took the phone from him. “This is Special Agent Vickers, FBI. Is your scout plane still in the area? Are you in contact with him?… Ask him if there’s any sign of survivors. I’ll hang on… Yes?… I see. Well how bad a wreck is it? Did they crash or does it look more like a forced landing?… Fine. Now if you don’t mind, ask him if he thinks they could have walked away from it… Yes, I’m still holding. What’s that?… Good, good. Ask him to fly a tight search pattern over the immediate area and try to spot any movement on the ground. Now can you give me an. exact fix on the location?” Vickers lifted his head and turned, lifting his eyebrows at Cunningham, and said sotto voce, “Get me a map.” Then he turned his shoulder to them and pulled out a pen to jot coordinates on the brass-frame calendar pad by the phone. Cunningham went around him and rummaged in desk drawers.

  Watchman glanced at Buck Stevens and surprised a look of anxious impatience on his face: Stevens was closing and opening his fists.

  Vickers said into the phone, “That’s fine-that’s fine. Now I want to get as many airplanes and choppers into that sector as we can get launched before dark. I want to blanket the area with searchers. Can you get on through to Las Vegas and Nellis and Kingman and pass on those instructions on my authority?… Now, look, the storm can’t be all that bad over there if this scout plane of yours is still in the sector… I see. All right, do your best. What’s your phone number up there?”

  When Vickers hung up Cunningham was spreading a Texaco road map out on the desk. Watchman had a look at the compass coordinates Vickers had scribbled on the pad. He put his finger on the map: “Right about there.” He felt a surge of purpose. All light-all right: now I’ve got a crack at them. For old Jasper.

  The map showed no useful detail and Vickers said almost immediately, “Is that the best you’ve got?”

  Cunningham swallowed. “Well, sir, I…”

  Watchman said, “We’ve got a county topographical in the car. Buck

  …”

  “Wait up,” Vickers said. “We may as well all go-get started rolling. I’ll use your car radio on the way. Let’s not waste time.”

  Watchman flicked imaginary moisture from his mouth corners with thumb and forefinger and waited until Vickers had crossed half the length of the room. “You’ll want a few things first.”

  Vickers stopped. His voice was metallic: “What?”

  “You can’t just head up in that back country with what’s in your pockets.”

  “Trooper, you’re wasting my time. Say what’s on your mind.”

  “You’ll want a jeep. And a pack of food and some heavy clothes. Rifles. Three or four walkie-talkies.” He glanced at the Special Agent’s feet. “A pair of mud boots wouldn’t hurt.” Turned to Jace Cunningham: “This is no time to play cute on this one so give me a straight answer. There must be plenty of night poachers in a town like this and you’ve probably seen the
m come and go. A few of them likely have snooperscopes-infrared. I want one.”

  Cunningham scraped a hand across the abrasive stubble on his jaw. It sounded like sandpaper. “I reckon I could scare one up.”

  The look in the FBI agent’s eyes was unreadable.

  3

  Cunningham and his deputies had gone out to assemble equipment. Watchman started taking rifles down from the locked gun rack and inspecting them and finding ammunition. Vickers had gone to the telephone and was talking, arranging relay contacts through the Highway Patrol dispatcher and the FBI District Director in Phoenix so he could keep in touch with CAP coordinators in three towns and sheriffs’ offices in two Nevada counties and one in Utah. Vickers had a brisk command voice and there was no faulting the efficient precision of his maneuvers to coordinate the search and start drawing up a tight net. “I want State Highway 793 sealed off at interval points and I want the roadblocks maintained until further notice… Keep every plane you can up there. I want every inch of ground air-searched before it gets too dark out there. They’re on foot if they got out of the wreck at all-I’m going out there myself but it’ll take at least an hour to get there. This damned copter pilot of mine won’t take me out there, he says the storm’s too close to that area. I can’t force the son of a bitch to do it.”

  Buck Stevens came in with an armload of coats and gloves and boots. “Bummed these from the deputies. See if you can find stuff that fits.”