Hard as Nails

by Dan Simmons

  Kurtz rolled the colonel on his belly, pulled flexcuffs from his bag, and cuffed the man's wrists behind him. Tightly.

  "Take him out to the chopper," he told Bobby, who was swinging his shotgun in short arcs, covering every opening, including the broken doors onto the lighted terrace.

  "I don't take orders from you."

  "Do it," said Gonzaga, stepping through the broken doors from the hallway.

  Bobby grabbed the old Vietnamese man by his hair, pulled him halfway up, tucked a shoulder under him, hoisted him onto his shoulder without releasing his shotgun, and jogged down the hallway with him.

  "Strong fucker," said Kurtz.

  "Yeah."

  The two men had each taken a knee and were covering different doorways. Upstairs, the rock 'n' roll gunfire had resolved itself into the occasional short bursts of full auto.

  "That's the Major's bedroom," said Kurtz, jabbing a finger at the closed door on the south wall of the library. "You get him. I'm going to check the basement."

  Gonzaga nodded and ran to the right of the bedroom doorway, jamming more shells into his 12-gauge as he did so.

  Good idea, thought Kurtz as he went back out into the hallway. He pulled another clip from his pocket. He'd kept count of his shots out of old habit—nine fired so far. There should be two bullets left in the Browning, one in the chamber and one in the clip.

  The bodyguard's body at the bottom of the steps was still on fire, but the smoke in the basement had dissipated some. Besides the burning carpet and books in the library on the first floor, something on the second floor was also burning—smoke poured down into the foyer. The shooting up there had stopped.

  Suddenly there was a double explosion from outside, north of the house, where the driveway came up from the valley.

  Well, Baby Doc got to use at least one of his RPGs.

  Kurtz went down the steps, pistol extended. A glance at the heaped body at the bottom showed him that he'd managed to put three slugs into the Asian man's chest through the door. Kurtz moved into the basement.

  Surprisingly for such a fancy house, the basement wasn't finished. The central part was open and carpeted, there was a big screen TV and some cheap couches near the far wall a small kitchen and bar area showed a refrigerator and booze, but part of the floor was bare concrete and the place smelted of sweat and cigarettes. It looked to Kurtz like a place where the bodyguards might hang out. More smoke was roiling down the stairway.

  There were three small rooms and a bathroom off the open room, and Kurtz kicked all the doors open.

  He found Rigby in the last room.

  She was lying half-naked on a bloody mattress set on the concrete floor and she looked dead. Then he saw the crude IV-drip and wad of bandages on her left leg and he went to one knee next to her. She was unconscious and very pale, her skin felt cold and clammy, but when he put fingers to her throat, he could feel the faint pulse. They'd been trying to keep her alive until tomorrow when they could finish the job in Buffalo with Kurtz's gun. Rigby's eyes fluttered but did not open.

  He unslung the litter from his back, unfolded it, and then wondered what the hell he was doing. He wasn't going to get anyone else down here to help him carry the stretcher.

  "Sorry, Rig," he said, and tucked the Browning in its holster, folded her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, grabbed the slung IV bottle, and carried her up the sleep stairs. She moaned when he moved her but did not regain consciousness.

  The house was definitely on fire. There were shots from the library, but Kurtz didn't turn that way. He went down the hall and into the smoky foyer.

  Movement on the stairs made him shift the small IV bottle and draw his pistol.

  Angelina Farino Ferrara came down the stairs through toe smoke, staggering under the load of a man's body on her shoulder. Her face, arms, hands, and sweater were drenched in blood, and she still carried the Mp5 in her right hand.

  "Jesus," said Kurtz as they both went out the front door with their burdens. "Your man?"

  "Yeah," panted Angelina. "Campbell."

  "Alive?"

  "I don't know. He took one in the throat." She paused under the porte cochere and nodded toward Rigby's pale, bare legs and white underwear. "Your girlfriend? She'd have a nice ass if it wasn't for the cellulite."

  Kurtz said nothing. He drank in the fresh air. Flames crackled from the upper stories. A figure moved in the driveway and both he and Angelina swung, weapons coming up.

  "Don't shoot," said Baby Doc. He had his own Mp5 slung over his shoulder and was carrying one of the RPGs with its grenade still on the muzzle.

  Kurtz looked to where the driveway came up to the last guard barrier and saw an SUV and a sheriff's vehicle burning in a single conflagration. "All that with one RPG?" he said as the three turned and began moving quickly toward the helicopter.

  "Yep," said Baby Doc. His face was smudged with soot and there was a burn or cut on his right cheek. He looked at Angelina staggering under the weight of her bodyguard but didn't offer to help. "You two go on," he said as they passed the dark Huey. "I'll be right there."

  Halfway to the Long Ranger, Angelina had to pause to shift Campbell's weight on her back, but Kurtz didn't pause with her. Rigby was moaning. Blood poured down her leg and sopped through his sweater and ran down his left arm.

  A loud blast made him turn. Baby Doc had fired the remaining RPG into the Huey and the black machine was burning strongly. The Lackawanna boss jogged past him, carrying only his rifle now. "Old Israeli commando rule—don't leave their air force behind," he said as he ran past. "Or something like that."

  Baby Doc had already clambered into the chopper and fired up the turbines when Kurtz reached the open door and laid Rigby on the plastic-sheeted floor next to where the Yemeni doctor was working on Colonel Trinh where he lay, still flexcuffed and bleeding. Dr. Tafer moved away from the colonel, leaned over Rigby and shined a flashlight into her eyes and then on her wound.

  "How is she?" asked Kurtz, leaning against the open door of the helicopter to catch his breath.

  "Barely alive," said Dr. Tafer. "Much blood loss." He pulled the IV needle out and tossed the almost empty bottle out into the grass. "This is saline solution. She needs plasma." He pulled a plastic bag of plasma from his box and slid the needle into Rigby's terribly bruised arm.

  Angelina staggered up with her man and dumped him onto the floor next to Rigby. The floor of the Long Ranger was filled with bodies. "Triage," she gasped and sat down on the grass.

  Dr. Tafer shone his flashlight into Campbell's open, unblinking eyes and inspected the neck wound. "Dead," said the doctor. "Get him out of way, please."

  "We're taking him home," said Angelina from the grass.

  Kurtz leaned and shoved the bodyguard's body against the rear bulkhead, tucking him half beneath the bench there.

  "It sounds like Napoleon's goddamned retreat from Moscow back there," called Baby Doc from the pilot's seat.

  "Shut up," said Angelina over the rotor and turbine roar. She got to her feet, dropped the empty banana cup out of her rifle, and slapped in a new one from her ditty bag. She and Kurtz both began walking back toward the burning house.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  « ^ »

  Arlene caught just a glimpse of the Burned Man's ballcap—an old Brooklyn Dodgers' cap, she noticed—before the flashing lights arrived.

  It was five minutes before midnight, she noticed, and the man from the pest control van had spent a few minutes looking at her car and another couple of minutes walking around out there, checking it out, before approaching her driver's side door—still unlocked, she feared—on foot. Then the top of his cap rose above the driver's side doorsill of the Buick. Arlene aimed the Magnum and prepared for the recoil and flying glass.

  The red lights flashed first, and then she heard the sirens.

  The ball cap disappeared from the window and a few seconds later an engine started up and the van's headlights splayed acros
s her windshield again.

  When the headlights turned away, Arlene sat up and peeked over the dashboard.

  The ambulance was accompanied by a police cruiser and both vehicles were sweeping around in a turn, away from the mall entrance, toward the pest control van with its hypothetical cardiac arrest victim.

  The van drove away toward the north exit at high speed.

  Both the ambulance and police cruiser stopped—as if nonplussed—and then gave chase to what appeared to be the fleeing heart-attack victim. Within a few seconds, the flashing lights had disappeared out onto Niagara Street and the parking lot was quiet again. Arlene bad known that Niagara Falls's Memorial Medical Center was only a few blocks north on Walnut Avenue, but this was good time even for that proximity. Evidently midnight on a drizzly Sunday in late October was a slow time for them.

  The old Dodge with Ontario plates turned into the mall lot slowly, hesitantly, braking twice, as if the driver and occupants—Arlene could see several heads silhouetted against the streetlights along Niagara—were suspicious, ready to bolt at any sign of movement. Arlene shifted to the driver's seat but kept her head low, peering through the Buick's steering wheel.

  "Arlene?"

  It was a good thing, she realized later, that she'd just lowered the hammer on the big Magnum and set it back in her purse, or she probably would have soot herself when Gail's voice erupted from the cell phone. Arlene had forgotten about the phone. Heck, she'd forgotten about Gail.

  "Are you all right!?"

  "Shhh, shhh," Arlene hissed into the phone. "I'm fine."

  "Well, damn it!" cried her sister-in-law and friend. "You're scaring me to death."

  The Dodge with the Ontario plates had stopped by the mall doors. Now a small woman carrying an old suitcase was shoved out onto the sidewalk in front of the doors and the Dodge accelerated away toward the Third Street exits.

  "Gail, it's quite possible that you just saved my life," Arlene said calmly. "I'll call you tomorrow with the details."

  "Tomorrow!" squawked the phone. "Don't you dare wait until…"

  Arlene broke the connection and turned her phone off. She waited only a few seconds, half expecting the bug control van or the police cruiser to reappear at high speed.

  Nothing. Just the small woman and the old suitcase and the empty lot.

  Arlene started the Buick, turned on the headlights, and drove up to the woman in a wide arc so as not to spook her.

  More girl than woman, thought Arlene as she hit the button to roll down the passenger side window. The doors had, as she'd feared, not been locked. "Aysha?" she said.

  The young woman did not flinch back. She looked to be a teenager, with a pale face and large eyes above her cheap raincoat. The suitcase she clutched looked like something Arlene's parents might have owned.

  "Yes, I am Aysha," said the girl in accented but smooth English. "Who sent you, please?"

  Arlene hesitated only a second before saying, "Yasein. Please get in."

  The girl got in the front seat She still clutched her bulky suitcase.

  "Toss that in the back," said Arlene and helped her lift it between the seats and drop it on the rear seat. The young woman was smaller than fourteen-year-old Rachel.

  Checking her mirrors again, Arlene drove quickly out of the Rainbow Centre's parking lot took Third up to Perry, and Ferry to 62. Within minutes they were on the northern extension of Niagara Palls Boulevard, headed toward Buffalo. It was drizzling again and Arlene turned on the Buick's wipers.

  "My name is Arlene DeMarco," she said slowly. And then, without planning it she said, "Welcome to the United States."

  "Thank you very much," said the young woman, looking calmly at Arlene. "I am Miss Aysha Mosed, fiancée of Mister Yasein Goba of Lackawanna, New York, United States of America."

  Arlene nodded and smiled, while inside she was hurting and thinking, How am I going to tell her? And how am I going to tell her in a way that will still allow her to talk to Joe tomorrow?

  "Yasein is dead, is be not?" said Aysha.

  Arlene looked at her. Lie to her, was her thought Aloud, she said, "Yes, Aysha. Yasein is dead."

  * * *

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  « ^ »

  The Artful Dodger lost the ambulance and the cop car in the rainslicked streets of Niagara Falls—all he had to do was get out of sight of them and then duck down an alley between Haeberle Plaza and Oakwood Cemetery—and then he headed back to the Rainbow Centre.

  Once there, he parked near the mall doors, watching the street and the Niagara Street entrance for the returning police cruiser.

  What the fuck was all that about? He was sure it had something to do with the Buick parked out there. It was gone now, of course. He'd known for half an hour that something had been wrong with that blue Buick—that someone was out there. He should have driven straight out there and shot the shit out of that car as soon as he'd arrived.

  But what kind of tough guy drives a blue Buick? That's a granny-lady's car.

  Now the Dodger waited fifteen minutes, watching over his shoulder the whole time, before deciding that the package had been dropped off and picked up already. He called the Boss and told him the situation.

  "Did you get the tag number on the Buick?"

  "Sure I did," said the Dodger, and recited it from memory.

  There was a brief pause while the Boss fed it into whatever computer or data bank he had—the Boss had access to everything and anything—before the man on the phone said, "Mrs. Arlene DeMarco," and gave an address out in Cheektowaga.

  The name meant nothing to the Dodger.

  "The P.I.'s secretary," said the Boss. "Kurtz's secretary."

  The Dodger had left the mall and was driving toward the expressway, but he had to blink away red in his vision when the Boss said Kurtz's name. That motherfucker has to die. "You want me to go out to Cheektowaga now?" said the Dodger. "Get the package back and settle things with Mrs. Arlene DeMarco?" Maybe Kurtz will be there and we'll get everything settled.

  The Boss was silent for a minute, obviously weighing options.

  "No, that's all right," said the Boss at last. "It's your birthday and you've got a long drive ahead of you. You go on and take the day off. We'll deal with all of this on Tuesday."

  "You sure?" said the Dodger. The Beretta with its silencer was on his lap as he drove. It felt like a blue-steel erection. "Cheektowaga's on my way out of town," he added.

  The Boss was silent another few seconds. "No, you go on," said the calm voice. "It might work out better all around if we wait a day."

  "All right," said the Dodger, realizing how tired he was. And he did have a long drive ahead of him. And much to do when he arrived. "I'll call you Tuesday morning. Want me to go straight to Cheektowaga then?"

  "Yes, that would be good," said the Boss. "Phone me when you get near the airport. No later than seven A.M., all right? We want to meet these ladies before Mrs. DeMarco goes in to work."

  "Okay," said the Dodger. "Anything else?"

  "Just have a good birthday, Sean," said the Boss.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  « ^ »

  "I'll go in through the door I blew," said Angelina. "You go around by the terrace. I think we'd better wrap this up fast Baby Doc looks like he's ready to take off without us, and it might be to his advantage to do it. Get Toma and his guy and we'll get the fuck out of here."

  Kurtz nodded and they split up.

  Kurtz was still carrying his ditty bag, but there was no need for night-vision goggles now. The house was fully engaged, the second floor pouring flames out of its high windows, the roof cedar-shake shingles smoking and more smoke billowing out the first-floor windows on the east and west sides. The flickering light from the flames illuminated everything out to the Bell Long Ranger.

  Kurtz paused at the corner of the house and then swung around onto the terrace overlooking the cliff.

  Gonzaga's guy, Bobby, swung a shotgun his w
ay.

  "Hey!" said Kurtz, holding his hands and the Browning high. "It's me."

  Bobby lowered the shotgun. He was watching the open doors to the library and the Major's room, which lay behind two closed, heavy, windowless doors.

  "What's the situation?" asked Kurtz. He popped one cartridge out of the Browning's chamber and dropped it in his pocket. Then he racked the next cartridge in, dropped the empty magazine to the terrace, and slapped in another ten-round clip.

  "The boss is still in there, gathering up papers and shit and keeping the Major in his room. The whole fucking place is beginning to burn in there, so the boss won't be staying much longer."

  This last information was redundant The flames were pouring out of the second floor windows above the terrace and the heat was significant.

  "I think the Major's room connects to Trinh's next to it," said Kurtz over the crackling of the flames. "The old man could get out that way."

  Bobby shook his head. "The boss had me shove what was left of that library table up against Trinh's bedroom door and pile up a bunch of shit on it The Major ain't getting out that way. Not in a wheelchair."

  "Anyone else in there with the Major?"

  "We don't know. The boss don't think so. We got some handgun fire from the bedroom door right when you left. Then the Major closed and bolted it. The boss thinks he's in there alone."

  "C-4?" said Kurtz.

  Bobby shrugged. "I guess. Me, I'd let the old fuck burn." He said it loud enough to carry through the outside doors.

  "Go help Gonzaga," said Kurtz. "I'll watch out here."

  When Bobby had run into the smoking library, Kurtz backed away, then peered over the edge of the cliff to the valley floor far below. There were emergency vehicles down there—he could see a fire truck and at least three sheriff's cars, as well as a gaggle of big SUVs—but no one was coming up the winding drive or climbing the ziggurat staircase.