“Everything’s going to be all right, Mary,” Garth said evenly as he helped her to her feet. “Just make the call. Try not to be seen, but if you are just act as if nothing is wrong.”
“I’ll be right back,” Mary said, and once more slipped out of the room.
“There’s going to be a lot of nasty fallout from this, Garth,” I said. “Hendricks and everyone else at the FBI are going to go apeshit when they find out Lippitt has muddied up their turf. Gregory Trex and Jay Acton and Dan Mosely’s buddy-buddy relationship with Elysius Culhane notwithstanding, it’s going to be hard to explain why I felt it necessary to skip away from police custody, and why you felt it was necessary to aid and abet me. You had to be there. They’re going to say we overreacted.”
“As long as we all get out of Cairn alive, anybody can say anything he likes.”
“I’m thinking of Mr. Lippitt; he’s not exactly a favorite son of the right wing. He could be accused of helping two of his friends elude justice, at considerable expense to the taxpayers. You know the right wing controls a lot of newspaper space and airtime. We don’t want Mr. Lippitt hurt.”
Garth shook his head. “Mr. Lippitt can take care of himself in any war, bureaucratic or otherwise. If he’s smart, and we know he is, he’ll send a second team to snatch Acton. With Elysius Culhane’s KGB staff member on ice and ready to be trotted out for public show-and-tell, nobody on the right is going to touch a hair on Lippitt’s head.”
“A hair on Lippitt’s head?”
“I was speaking figuratively, of course.”
“That’s good.”
The door opened, and Mary stepped in. She still held the slip of paper Garth had given her in a hand that trembled noticeably. Her face was ashen again, but her voice was steady. “The phones don’t work,” she said, looking back and forth between Garth and me. “I can’t get a dial tone on any of them.”
“We waited too long,” I said as I watched Garth take the Colt from his jacket pocket and remove the safety catch. “Somebody’s cut the goddamn phone lines. They found out I was gone, saw that your car was still in the parking lot, and guessed where we’d go. Or maybe Mary’s car was spotted after all.”
Garth nodded tersely, then turned to Mary, who was staring at the gun in his hand. “Mary, you must do exactly as I say, and you must do it quickly. I don’t know how much time we have. Right now there are men, maybe your death squad, watching this house, waiting for Mongo, you, and me to show ourselves. When we don’t, they’re likely to get impatient and come in after us. You have to get everyone else out of here; tell them to go jogging or take a walk into town, or whatever, but get them out.”
Mary, who was still staring wide-eyed at the Colt in Garth’s right hand, shook her head absently. “What reason am I supposed to give them, Garth?”
“I don’t know; anything. Just get them out. I don’t think the men will hassle the others; they want us.”
“I’ll send someone for the police.”
Garth shook his head impatiently. “I doubt you’ll find any cops in this part of town right now, but even if you did, it wouldn’t do any good. Both Mongo and I, and maybe you, would be right back in the situation we just got Mongo out of.”
Mary started to leave, and I grabbed her arm. “Mary, I know you don’t have guns in the house, but do you have anything I might be able to use to defend myself? A knife, maybe? The people who are after us will kill us in cold blood if they get the chance.”
“I believe you,” she replied in a hoarse voice. “I’ll see what I can find.”
“Go,” Garth said, and gently pushed her out of the room.
Garth turned off the light, left the door open a crack, and listened. I moved closer, listened with him. I said, “Unless they actually saw us in the car, they can’t be certain we’re here. They’re just guessing.”
“Unless they saw us in the car.”
“Right.”
We waited by the door, listening. The air in the room suddenly felt musty and heavy in my lungs. From below I thought I heard a knock, and then the sound of muffled voices, but I couldn’t be sure. Then there was silence. Footsteps, another knock, more voices.
And then gunfire—a short burst of automatic weapons fire from the ground or second floor. Shouts. Screams.
“Shit!” I said, and reached for the doorknob.
“Wait,” Garth said, pushing me back.
“Jesus Christ, Garth, they were already in the house. They must have seen or heard Mary trying to move the others out and decided they’d waited long enough. We can’t just let them kill those people down there.”
Garth shook his head. “Wait. I don’t think they’re going to gun down a bunch of pacifists. That shooting was just to get their attention—and ours. They still may not be certain we’re here; Mary may be able to bluff them.”
Suddenly there was another burst of gunfire and then the sound of running feet. There were more shouts, but from where we were it was impossible to tell what was happening or being said.
“Christ, Garth, can we take that chance?!”
Garth held up the Colt. “Walking down there is the same as committing suicide. They have at least one automatic weapon, and this thing isn’t going to be much use against it.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
We waited some more. There was no further gunfire, but muffled shouts continued to drift up from below. Then there was silence, which lasted for three or four minutes. Both Garth and I strained to hear some sound; what we finally heard was what sounded like heavy, booted footsteps on the main staircase, slowly ascending. The footsteps came closer, finally stopped at the top of the stairs on our floor, perhaps twenty feet to our right.
“We know the two of you are in here someplace!” a man shouted. I’d half expected the gunman coming up the stairs to be Gregory Trex, but this was not a voice I recognized. “We’ve got everybody downstairs in the big room! If you two aren’t down there in five minutes, those people are going to start to die! We’ll shoot the folksinger first!”
Somewhere below a woman screamed, the agonized sound penetrating clearly, harrowingly, up through the hardwood floors and thick plaster ceilings of the old mansion. I thought it might have been Mary, but I wasn’t sure. I swallowed hard, glanced at the luminous dial of my wristwatch.
“They may plan to kill everybody anyway,” I said in a voice that had gone hoarse. “Ten to one they’re local boys, and masks aren’t going to keep them from being recognized.”
“Uh-huh,” Garth said. From the light seeping in from the hallway, I could see that he was staring at the gun in his hand.
“If we go down there, we’ll be walking right into an ambush. They certainly mean to kill us, and they probably won’t waste any time doing it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But we don’t have much choice, do we?”
“Nope,” Garth said as he turned me around and pulled up my shirt. He stuck the gun into the waistband of my jeans, pulled my shirt back down over it. “This Colt isn’t going to do us much good in a straight shoot-out, but on the other hand, they don’t know we have a gun at all. We’re just going to have to rely on the Fredericksons’ natural talents for stealth and cunning to get us through this. If we can get close enough to them, catch them off guard before they cut us down, I just might be able to relieve them of duty. You do the talking, I’ll do the shooting. Bail out when you feel me grab the gun.”
“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 t
o 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 form 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 determined 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 erupt
ed 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.
The Language of Cannibals Page 16
