That's what I was doing, after all. I was taking Nick away—or making a good stab at it. Yes, indeed, this was the kidnapping of Nick Colossus.
Despite my pleasure with the way this had gone so far, I knew very well that my luck couldn't possibly last much longer, not even the kind of arranged-for luck which might conceivably be expected to follow all the thinking and planning which had gone into preparing for this moment. So I moved as fast as I could, stumbling under Nick's steadily increasing weight, toward that open window.
I almost made it. Even halfway there my lungs were raw and burning, and every muscle in my body felt torn. I was making good time, though, my legs strong and reasonably steady under me. But as I reached the window and lowered Nick's body so that his feet flopped through it, and then started to shove him forward and out, I was spotted.
Nobody yelled at me this time. This time it was just a gunshot. The gun cracked and the slug snapped through the air alongside my head, crashing through the raised window with a sharp splat followed by the tinkling of glass as I spun around. I let go of Nick. He slumped limply in the window, half in and half out of it but with his head inside, in the exact reverse of White's earlier position.
I glimpsed Nick settling into, that posture as I turned grabbing the .45 and thumbing off the safety when I brought it up from my belt. Halfway between the far end of the hall and the open door leading up to Nick's suite stood Montana, gun raised in his hand and aimed at me.
He hesitated, undoubtedly because of Nick behind me, hesitated for part of a second.
That gave me time. I fired twice, the slugs whistling past his legs—and then his legs were whistling past the far end of the hall and out of sight around it. I heard his feet thumping down the corridor to the stairway, and he at least set a new record for that distance. He would run just far enough, however, to spread the word that I was stealing the boss.
I hadn't wanted to take a chance on marking Nick up, messing his clothes or bruising him anywhere except the spot on which the sap had landed. But I couldn't be cautious now. I grabbed his shoulders in my hands, lifted and shoved. He went out and down—but at least he went down feet first. Not too much damage should come from that. And then I went out after him.
His falling body had knocked the bamboo ladder away, so I hung by my hands and dropped to the ground. The framed pictures fell from inside my shirt, buttons tearing from the cloth. I swore, dropped the .45 into my coat pocket and used my flash briefly, grabbed the pictures and jammed them under my belt.
Somehow I got Nick onto my back again. Strangely, he seemed lighter. I knew that of course he weighed exactly the same, but I was so charged up now that for a minute or so I would probably have been able to lug around somebody weighing twice what Nick weighed. There must have been so many hormones and gland juices in my blood that the corpuscles were drunk on the stuff. There were screams and shouts inside the hotel now, joining the crazy noises from the sound track—and then, suddenly, the sound track ended. All noises from out there in the desert stopped.
The tape would have run for another half an hour if not disturbed. Somebody among the hoods or guests or drunks had braved the Jubongi tribe's attack and ended it all with the flick of a wrist—or stomp of a hard heel.
And in the sudden, shocking silence, I heard the beat of the helicopter's rotors. Malcolm Waters was coming in right on time.
In fact, he was in, he was there. I was the boy not on time. I was the late Shell Scott.
That had an awful sound: The Late Shell Scott.
I tried to run, but you don't run with a Nick Colossus on your back. And after all this trouble, all this hell, I wasn't leaving him now. Not if they shot me, stabbed me, boiled me in oil, was I leaving Nick. Either we both got out of here or neither of us left.
Blindingly, lights blazed all around me. I didn't look back but I knew what it was. There would be plenty of ordinarily unused lights, including spotlights, handy here and all of them were being used now. You just couldn't expect to kidnap Nick without stirring up a fuss. A gun cracked. Two yards to my right and ahead of me, dirt jumped; the bullet bounced invisibly from the earth and whined off over the desert with the metallic twanging sound of a ricochet.
I could see the helicopter now, in the bright flood of light. Still more than fifty yards away, it rested on the bare ground, rotor blades flashing in the light as they spun above it. I glanced back just as another gun cracked and the slug snapped past in the night air, and it looked for a moment as if those imaginary savages from the sound track were actually here, become real and attacking. Attacking—me.
At least ten, possibly as many as a score of hoods, I didn't worry about a head count, were running from the hotel building and grounds toward me. There was even one guy on a horse, galloping around the running men and charging in my direction.
I didn't look more than a fraction of a second at that miserable mass of running death. I swung my head around toward that still-too-far-away helicopter. And then even my forlorn hope of reaching it seemed to blow up in my face. Because it appeared that Malcolm Waters had seen that raging crowd behind me, too, and was getting away from it fast.
The rotors spun faster, the buglike helicopter soared up from the ground. I heard another gunshot crack loud in the night air. And behind me, like the sound of death running at my heels, swelled the drumming of hoofs.
I swung around, heavy .45 coming up toward the sound of the horse charging at me, and both horse and rider were outlined by the light behind them. I couldn't recognize the rider, but I could see the glint of light from the gun in his hand, and then the bright flash of flame as he fired. He hit me.
It wasn't bad, but he hit me. The slug slapped at my side, passing under the arm with which I still held Nick's massive wrists together and flaming through the flesh. It must have been a small handgun, because the shock didn't knock me down, or even spin me around. It jarred me, but I was still able to get off a shot. And the horseman was so close I couldn't miss.
I fired just once at him when he was three or four yards away. He was close enough so that I could pick my spot, so I aimed for his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. I heard the heavy .45 slug slap into him. He seemed to soar off the horse and through the air to thud heavily against the dirt as the horse galloped past me.
I turned the gun toward those running men and fired until the .45 was empty. The men scattered, several diving to the ground. And then I heard the roar of the helicopter's engines again—Waters hadn't been running away from those hoods, but at them. When I had more time, I would realize how much sheer guts that had taken.
When I turned he was just setting the machine down close to me. I stumbled toward it, wind from the rotor blades slapping at me, and somehow shoved Nick's body off my shoulders and in through the open door.
“Hurry up, you damn fool! Hurry up!” Waters was yelling.
Hell, I was hurrying. I was moving like lightning, it seemed to me. Waters twisted the throttle open even farther, making the beat of the rotors swell, the machine rock, the skids completely leave the ground. Those charging hoodlums were still charging—and close now.
Nick's .45, still in my hand, was empty; but my own .38 at my shoulder was loaded with six 158-grain bullets. I yanked the Colt Special out and it fit my hand like my palm, familiar and friendly—and deadly.
When I raised the gun and aimed at the first of the men, I had time to notice that there were eight of them running, several more behind them just getting up and starting this way. Four men, out in front of the pack, led the rest. I just swung the gun from right to left, from one man to the next, aiming at their legs, and squeezing off the spaced shots like timed fire on the police pistol range.
I saw the first man stagger and fall, the second and third kept on coming but the fourth man went down like a stone, rolled over and over yelling. The others hit the dirt then, and that stopped the men behind them. With Waters shouting loudly at my back, I squeezed off the last two shots, aiming low, and the b
ullets whined nastily as they ricocheted from the earth.
Then I turned and jumped into the helicopter. Waters pulled it into the air with a jerk, swearing, shoved the right-hand stick forward and we lurched violently. I'd barely gotten onto the seat when it shoved up against me hard as Waters lifted the machine fast, spinning it around at the same time, both hands working and his mouth moving as he swore blisteringly. Below I saw three or four winking lights as somebody fired at us, but nothing hit us or the helicopter.
I looked at Waters, then at Nick, massive and inert, on the seat between the pilot and me, slumped against me. My mind seemed deadened, its resilience sapped by the tension and excitement, the sounds and violence of the last minutes, but underneath it was a pulsing exhilaration.
I'd gone into the Desert Trails and come out with Nick Colossus. I'd bearded the lion in his den and belled the big cat. Actually, now that it was over, I could see how it might have gone off without a hitch, and I could have gotten in and out without even a shot being fired. But I wasn't kicking; just to have done it, to have gone in and come out alive with the lion, was quite enough for me.
I knew, too, that I was in the deep hole now—the deepest. There was one more act coining up, the final one, but I still had to beat Nick; I hadn't won yet. And if I lost this time, I lost it all.
I became conscious of warm wetness on my side. Blood had spread on my shirt, beneath my coat, where that small slug had caused some minor damage. It hadn't bled very much, but it stung like fury. The furrow on my left arm had opened up again, too, and stained the bandage on it. There were bandages and adhesive tape in the helicopter, and I staunched the flow of blood, tightly bandaged both wounds. Neither of them would incapacitate me, but they weren't going to speed me up. I ached in just about all the places there were, and in some places I'd thought there weren't, and I felt lousy. Lousy, but exhilarated.
I took my Colt out of its holster, loaded it with fresh ammunition. My fingers were shaking. In fact, my hand and everything attached to it was shaking. As I shoved the last deadly, ugly bullet into my gun—and seen completely, in all its dimensions, a bullet is perhaps uglier than any other thing in this world—that ugliness caused a different thought to swim into my mind. I leaned forward, peering through the plexiglass blister.
Waters was still swearing under his breath, letting off steam. He growled at me, “Well, you damn fool. What are you doing? What in hell are you looking for now?”
“Just ... Orion,” I said.
We landed at Magna, in a cleared space on the sprawling lot, at a couple of minutes after nine p.m. that Thursday night. Waters set the helicopter down neatly near Sound Stage Three and we got out. Nick was still unconscious, but I'd had to tap him a second time with the sap during the flight here.
Waiting for us when we landed were Harry Feldspen and two husky men. Harry stepped forward and silently squeezed my hand. “I'll confess now,” he said. “I didn't think you'd make it.”
I grinned at him. “I'll confess, too. There were about a dozen times when I didn't think I'd make it, either.”
“How did it go?”
“Pretty rough. But we're here. Incidentally, the Academy may have snubbed Jungle Fury, but I give it the Shell Scott award. It was beautiful.”
“Well, I knew it would provide a great deal of noise.”
“That it did. Everything ready here?”
“Yes. It was surprisingly easy once I got used to the idea except...” He was having trouble saying something. “Shell,” he began again, and stopped.
“What's the matter?” I looked at the two men and then jerked a thumb at Nick. “Take him in,” I said, then looked back at Harry.
He said, “It's Coral.”
“Coral?” She had been in and out of my mind a lot during this night, but there had been too much going on for me to dwell on her for long—or on why she hadn't answered her phone earlier. But Harry's hesitation and the expression on his face sent a ripple of fright over my skin. “What's the matter with her? Isn't she here?”
“No.” He shook his head.
I had been a little worried about her, when I'd been unable to reach her by phone, but I hadn't really expected anything to be seriously wrong. Fear for her was a cold weight in my stomach.
“Tell me,” I said.
“Well ... we don't know for sure, Shell. I phoned, but there was no answer, so I sent a man out there. She wasn't in her room at the motel. She hadn't checked out; she was just gone. A light was on, door open. It looked very much as if she had left suddenly. Perhaps unwillingly. And...”
He paused again. His phrase, “as if she had left suddenly” pushed into my mind the memory of her sudden flight from her house Tuesday night. She'd made it that time, gotten away from Nick's two men without harm, but I knew that twice would be too much. For it to have happened again, and for her to have gotten away again, would have been too unlikely a coincidence, No, if someone had caught up with her a second time, I knew in my bones that they had her still, had her now.
And then Harry said, “There was a towel on the floor. As if somebody had been hurt, and staunched the flow of blood with a handy towel.”
He said “somebody” but of course he meant Coral; Harry just didn't want to say it. I told him, “There's only one way it could have happened. Nick's men got her. It must have been Nick's men.” I shook my head. “How did they find her? How did they know she was in the Oasis?”
It was a rhetorical question; Harry could hardly know the answer. I said to him, “Well, I've got to go through with it now—more than ever, I have to go through with it. It's the only way now I might be able to help her. Show me that back door.”
He showed me. At the rear of Sound Stage Three was a small seldom used door, an emergency exit. In a way, that was appropriate, because this was an emergency. Besides which, I didn't want to go in the front way; there were people in front whom I didn't want to see until later—if at all.
Harry opened the emergency door and we both went inside. Dim light filled the interior of the sound stage and as we walked toward an enclosed structure a few feet away I could see the shadowy booms and lights, cameras and overhead beams and spots. We stepped over a coil of insulated electrical cable and then were at a small door.
Harry said, “This is it.”
I grinned at him, half-heartedly, in the dimness. “In more ways than one, Harry.” I said, and as he turned and walked away I opened the door and stepped inside—into the Desert Trails office of Nick Colossus.
Chapter Eighteen
Everything was just the same. The walls were smoothly paneled in rich walnut. The carpet was a plain rich brown, wall to wall. Behind the big black desk was a padded leather chair. On my left was a leather couch identical with that at the Desert Trails, and two overstuffed chairs which looked to me exactly like those in which Jabber and Whitey had sat two days ago, just before helping to beat me unconscious.
Undoubtedly the lumps in the upholstery of the couch and chairs were in different places from the originals, but to me they looked identical. This was an exact-as-possible replica of Nick's office. It was possible that Nick would notice something wrong, if he had time to examine everything closely—but I didn't intend to give him time.
I was now—even though there were no guns going off, no hoods trying to slam me over the head, in fact no sounds at all—just about as excited as I had been at any other time all evening. The fright, the worry that a bullet was about to slam into me—that was gone. But I was as charged up and tense, as quiveringly on the edge of popping open with suppressed excitement as I had been at any other time today.
Because this, as Feldspen had unconsciously said, was it. This was where the men were separated from the boys. This was the end of the line, either for Nick or for me. I was clear out on the end of my limb now, and I could either saw it off or get back to firm ground somehow. The next few minutes would tell.
The two husky men who had carried Nick here now stood in a doorway on
my left, a doorway which led into another small—and, I knew, incomplete—room containing a bed. And now containing also, I presumed, Nick Colossus.
The taller of the two men asked me, “In here where you wanted him?”
“Yeah. He make any noises yet?”
“Nope. Still cold.”
I walked to the door. Nick was lying on top of the bed. I said, “Give me a hand,” and had them lift him up while I pulled the blanket down. Then they lowered him to the bed and I pulled the blanket up over him, under his arms as I'd seen him, a hundred miles away, over an hour ago.
“Thanks,” I said to the men. “That's all.”
They left. As they went out of the room it looked, even to me, as if they must be going out and then down the stairs to the Desert Trails hallway, instead of into a dim sound stage. I added the final touches. With a last look at Nick I walked back into the “office.” I had carried in the stuff I'd brought from Nick's real office—the three pictures, the ashtray and desk calendar. Hooks were already in the walnut paneling behind the desk, in the location which I had remembered from my first visit to the Desert Trails, and as I'd thus described their location to Feldspen when I'd first broached this idea to him yesterday.
I hung the three pictures on the hooks, in the same order as they'd been at the Desert Trails. They seemed spaced well enough, at least as far as I could tell. I put the gold-coin ashtray and small calendar on the desk in approximately the same positions they'd occupied on Nick's real desk, shoved the beige phone to its far side. That beige phone was a dummy, not connected, but I had to take the chance Nick wouldn't have time to try using it. If he tried ... well, I'd worry about that when it happened. I placed Nick's empty gun and my leather-covered sap on the desk top and stepped back. Everything looked okay to me. That was all I could do until Nick woke up.
Slab Happy (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 20
