Captors
Page 23
Carol picked up the bolt cutters and stood. She made a clumsy rush at Big Jim and, just as he was turning, she swung the cutters savagely and crushed his left temple, opened his forehead to the bone in an angular slash that extended to the tip of his right eyebrow. He crumpled in a dark gush of blood, the pitcher bounding away across the floor. Carol dropped the bolt cutters and ran.
She ran right into a shrieking Babs.
"What? Jim! Carol, you—"
"Babs, let me go!"
"I'll kill you!"
Carol dropped a shoulder into her imposing breasts and rammed her back a couple of inches; she was almost able to slip away to the steps but Babs, reaching frantically, grabbed the wrist chain and jerked it, upending Carol.
"You hit him. You hit Jim! And I'll kill youuuuu!"
Carol, on her back, kicking with a bare foot, found nothing but substantial blubber. Babs was coughing and trampling with an elephantine instinct, still holding fast to the chain. She stepped ponderously on Carol's stomach and stepped on her face. Carol pummeled the girl with both feet, still screaming. A heel in the groin undid Babs and she tottered backward to a wall. Carol lunged for the steps, a second too late.
Babs rebounded from the wall and lumbered toward her with arms opened wide for a pulverizing embrace.
Carol ducked and tried to evade her charge but Babs hooked a solid arm around her throat. Babs took two more flatfooted steps to slow her momentum and the last step found nothing but air. She howled at this essential miscalculation and toppled down the stairs, pulling Carol along. Carol's head glanced off the wall, then struck a riser. She was only distantly aware of the great tumbling mass of Babs rolling over her like a warm wave of the ocean.
She was restored to full consciousness by the terror of being crowded upside down in a small space, by the more specific sensation of being casually and meatily pressed to death. She gasped for air and tried to wriggle free of her burden, but her skull was achingly wedged against a step and she wasn't quite sure where her hands were: there was no feeling in them. Dimly she heard a burning crackle, a gusty explosion. The mouthful of air she had taken was spoiled by smoke.
Her bare feet were planted against something solid. She heaved again, increasingly frantic, and the hill of flesh above her shifted a little.
Babs, she thought, recalling now what had happened to her. She felt more irritated than frightened. "Babs, damn you, get off!"
The wall against which her feet were braced had become hotter. Carol ground her teeth and hoarded her strength and bucked again. This time she managed to change position, freeing her hands and turning her face to the bad air. The space above them was filled with orange-tinted smoke. Babs, the ninny, was just sitting there on top of her with her ample chins on her breast and her greeny eyes wide, a kind of elongated foolish grin on her face. She seemed to be having a damned good time in perilous circumstances. Bits of glowing wood were falling like meteors. Babs's soft, pink sweater was already charred in several places, and smoking.
"Babs!"
To Carol's horror Babs's hair suddenly lit up in a frowsy nest of flame, casting a sullen light on her wide face, on the expression of goony passiveness.
Carol reared with all her might and Babs was dislodged from her seat on Carol's back and shoulders. She keeled over in a buttery sprawl to the floor inches away. Carol followed her, tried to beat out the flames with her hands, but in seconds it was too late. Somewhere above there was a resounding crack as some vital part of the roof structure began to cave in. Carol backed away from the lifeless Babs. There was nothing left of her hair except crispy smudges, a sour reek in the air. Carol, temporarily unhinged, grasped Babs's outstretched hands and began to pull her corpse across the highly polished floor. She stopped with a grimace of anguish when she saw the loose way Babs's denuded head rolled against the boards.
Carol barked and coughed and some dark fluid ran out of the corner of her mouth. She stared at the heavy smoke boiling down the steps. Then she simply turned and walked away from it all, went outside by way of the unlocked back door.
There was no moon now and it was raining, but very softly, an almost unnoticed, fragrant summery rain. She walked along a well-trod path with her head high, ignoring stones and ruts, sometimes stumbling but always regaining her balance. When the path cut down a long slope to a woodlot she paused for a moment and looked back at the glaring windows and plumed roof of the isolated country house.
She thought she saw something near the house: the tall shape of a man. Perhaps her name was called. She whimpered and spit up more of the bitter liquor and took off in a streaking run with her fists upraised, sawing against the chain at each long stride.
At the edge of the woodlot, away from the light of the burning house, she stopped. She heard her pursuer. Looking over her shoulder, she saw him in a skidding plunge down the loose stony path a hundred feet behind her. She whirled and tripped over a root, fell hard. She sighed in pain and crawled into a scraggly pasture. But she was trembling too violently to go far on her hands and knees.
He seized her from behind and lifted her up. Her head fell back.
"No more!"
"Carol?" he said.
She looked at him then but her eyes were glazed, she couldn't see a thing. Still, there was no mistaking his voice.
"Oh, Sam," she said, "thank God!" and she leaned gratefully against his chest.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sunday, July 14
The unlighted drive swept between cedars that seemed biblical in age; their trunks were as thick as masts of old sailing ships. At night, the massed branches formed a barrier against the sky, obscuring the yellowed drift of moon; they absorbed the silent rain and the sounds of the car toiling without headlights up the low hill to the General's house.
In the loop of the drive Sam parked behind the General's own car, a modest Buick. He looked at Carol. She was curled up in the trench coat he had provided, fast asleep, breathing through her mouth. She had been like that for half an hour and he was confident she would go on sleeping for a while, as long as she was undisturbed. He got out of the Mercedes and closed the door without latching it, turned up his coat collar and walked to the front steps of the General's mansion. On the third floor he saw a lighted window but otherwise the place seemed dark. There was an old-fashioned bell pull beside the door. He tugged at it intermittently for three or four minutes before the General came and looked out at him.
"I thought you'd send Metts down," Sam said pleasantly. "All those steps must be hard on your leg."
"He's on the phone to Cairo. What do you want, Sam?"
"General, you're in a hell of a lot of danger." The General looked at him as if he were drunk. "Can I come in? It's wet out here."
The General hesitated a full thirty seconds longer, his veined eyelids twitching and crawling like pink caterpillars; then he swung the massive door wide and turned away. He was wearing boots, whipcords with suspenders, an old flannel hunting shirt as soft as the skin of a pampered woman.
"Sam," he said, "I can't recall five minutes I've spent with you that I didn't consider a complete and sinful waste of my precious time. You'd just better not be drunk, that's all I've got to say."
Sam closed the front door and followed the General as he clomped slowly back up the broad staircase to the third floor. There were a lot of echoes in the place: the rooms on the first two floors were as dark and empty as a series of caverns. Each landing was lighted by a couple of bulbs in wall sconces; the bulbs were the size and shape of those that decorate Christmas trees. The carpet on the stairs was in tatters, and they raised unseen dust that caused the General to cough miserably on the way to his quarters.
In the smoky sitting room, the General waved Sam to a chair and went to close the door to the adjoining office. Sam had a glimpse of Vernon Metts inside and heard his voice. He was speaking a strange language, Egyptian Arabic for all Sam knew.
The General eased down into his own favorite chair and put his
good leg on a hassock made from an elephant's foot. He reached for the tumbler of Southern Comfort that was never far away, no matter where he happened to be. He didn't offer Sam any.
"What's it about, Sam?"
"I'll try to be brief, General."
"That would be appreciated."
"Well," Sam said, leaning against a gun case with his arms comfortably folded. "Do you remember the kidnapping, General?"
"I'm sure not about to forget it."
"It was a fake, a ruse. The girl the police brought home that night wasn't Carol. We've been living with an impostor all this time."
The General's hand paused with the liquor partway to his mouth and his small-bore, flesh-encrusted eyes studied Sam with a keen flicker of amazement. Then the lower part of his face opened like a clam: he was smiling.
"You're crazy."
"Am I?" Sam said evenly. "She looks, talks and acts like Carol Watterson, but it's all an act. Her real name is Lone Kels. She knew Carol at Berkeley. She's part of a plot to kill you and Vernon Metts. Rich dreamed the whole thing up; he and your buddy Turo are the assassins. They're going to take both of you prisoner tonight, then use cyanide gas to finish you off."
The General's face bulged like a mottled balloon as he sought to contain his amusement. Or perhaps it was triumph he was enjoying so vividly. "I've always known, Sam, that you were a bona fide mental case. This, by God, proves it for all time! Not Carol? You think I don't know my own granddaughter?"
Sam fidgeted. "Your eyes aren't what they used to be, General. Neither is your pickled old brain. I'm telling you we were all fooled for a while. They switched girls to give themselves a base of operations close to you. Until an hour ago two other members of their little group were holding Carol prisoner in a farmhouse out in the boondocks of Rockland County."
"Until an hour ago?"
"I went and got her."
"That so? How did you know where to look?"
"I searched their luggage today," Sam explained. "One of them had a map with the location X'd on it. I had to drive around for about an hour before I found the house. You can't see it from any road."
"Then you just walked in and walked out again with Carol."
"It was almost that easy. The house was burning when I got there. Carol set fire to her mattress with a cigarette and when they cut her loose from the bed she smashed one of them in the head with bolt cutters and ran. The other one, a girl, broke her neck falling down some steps. That's what Carol told me, but she wasn't clear about it. I found her wandering around outside. Except for a bruise or two and total exhaustion she's all right. We got out of there before the local fire brigade turned up and I drove straight here."
The General sipped his whiskey, no longer appearing amused. "Expecting maybe to find us dead, Sam?"
Sam looked at an old Swiss cuckoo clock on one wall: the General's rooms were as disorderly and packed with mementos as a pawnshop. "It's only twenty minutes after eleven. I didn't think Rich and Turo would be in a hurry about this thing after waiting so long for Metts to show up."
"Why didn't you invest a dime and warn me as soon as you had Carol safe?"
Sam grinned edgily at him. He was sweating. "Why, do you believe me now?"
The General ruminated, rapping his knuckles lightly against his artificial leg. "I'm not sure. It's a hell of a story. Still—after we got her back she was all of a sudden fond of my birds. Carol never would go near them before. But she hunted with me, and she took that runty tiercel I couldn't do a damned thing with and trained him herself." He looked up. "Where is she, Sam? Where's Carol? If you've got her, bring her up here. I'll believe what Carol tells me."
The door to the office opened and Vernon Metts came in. He was a bony, morose-looking man with a Guardsman's moustache. "Hello, Sam. Didn't know you were here."
"Did you put the screws to that son of a bitch Fouad?" the General asked.
Metts nodded and lighted a cigar. "I was about to place a call to Jean-Claude in Marseilles when something went wrong with the phone. It seems to be dead."
The General looked puzzled. Then he glanced at Sam and at the same time reached for the telephone beside the chair. He picked up the receiver, listened bleakly for several seconds. "Dead," he pronounced, hanging up. "Wires cut?"
Sam said, "They must be in the house already."
"Who's in the house?" Metts asked sharply.
The General heaved himself out of the chair. "What's their plan, Sam? Are they coming in together, or did they split up?"
"I don't know."
"What are you talking about?" Metts demanded.
"Not a lot of time to explain now, Vern. There are two punk revolutionaries loose in the house and they're after our hides. They've got guns. What kind, Sam?"
"Semi-automatic shotguns."
"Oh-oh," the General said, impressed at last. He limped to the gun cabinet, took a key ring from his pocket and unlocked the doors, revealing a gleaming row of high-powered weapons. Metts looked regretfully at his cigar and placed it in an ashtray. He took off his Cardin blazer and folded it across the back of a chair, removed the studs from the cuffs of his classy striped shirt, peeled the cuffs back.
"Name your piece," the General said to him with a faint smile.
"Tell you what, Henry, I'll just take that Russian Army assault rifle. I don't want to tear up the plaster any more than necessary."
"Maybe," Sam said, "I could get out of here somehow, get the police—"
"We don't need them," the General said flatly. "Now, do you want to be in on this or do I lock you up in the bathroom until the shooting's done?"
"I can help," Sam said. "Let me have a shotgun. Pump action, please."
The General threw a shotgun to him. "Fully loaded, Sam. Don't aim from the hip, it'll cave your ribs in."
"I know how to shoot."
"By the way, Sam, I don't believe you mentioned what these boys want us dead for."
"It's a raison d'être experiment in ethical murder. Rich and Turo consider you to be immoralists. You sell guns and cause a lot of human suffering. Institutions protect you and absolve you of guilt, so they feel obligated to remove you as a source of corruption to the human spirit."
The General and Metts exchanged amused glances. "Whew," said the General, "I just feel dirty all over, don't you, Vern?" He paused to listen carefully to something, then gestured and whispered, "A little less light there."
Metts turned off the table lamp, leaving the room dark behind them. There were three stout doors to the sitting room. The General's bedroom, a cul-de-sac, was behind one. The office door was directly opposite and it now stood open about two feet. The door to the foyer and steps outside was closed. Metts, moving lithely, his assault rifle at port arms, crossed to the foyer door, turned the knob, toed the door open a few inches while Sam and the General moved back out of the way. With his body and most of his head behind the thick oak paneled wall, Metts examined the foyer. It was dimly lighted by a high chandelier, the crystals of which were yellow and crusty with age.
"Clear," he said. "Shadowy where the stairs begin, though; one of them could get that far easy, pour a few rounds in here."
"Sam says they want to take us by surprise and then use gas. For humanitarian reasons, I suppose. Open the door a little wider, Vern. That's enough. I'll just sit right here and draw a bead. You and Sam sweep the rest of the apartment. Pay particular attention to the back door into the kitchen and the door at the top of the steps to the servants' wing. Both are locked, but those goddam revolutionaries had the run of this place long enough to get keys made."
"Reconnaissance down below?" Metts asked with a hungry smile.
"Why not? I'd join you except for my leg. You know the layout of this place, Vern. Try to flush them up the front stairs into my gun. Maybe if we pour a little fire into them they'll get discouraged and quit."
"Don't forget the cylinder of gas," Sam warned. "I don't know who's carrying it."
"That does complicate
things. We'll just have to try for head shots, then. Sam, you go along slow and careful and do what Vern says or you might wind up getting blown in half. Those shotguns are nothing to trifle with."
"OK," Sam said, and the General, taking up a shooting position in a chair with his own weapon, a rare custom-made Parker that was the cream of sporting shotguns, waved them off.
Sam followed Metts, who was stalking now with a monkish concentration. They passed through the office. Metts paused to turn out the overhead light, then stationed Sam with a jab of his finger and went through his door-opening routine. Sam's hands were slippery on the shotgun. The outer door of the office opened into a hallway that was long to the left and carpeted in red. Metts sprang out into the hall like a commando, taking up a prone shooting position. There was a little light, not enough to make him a fat target. But no one fired on him. Sam knew the man was in his fifties, but he seemed to have no regard for his bones. He picked himself up as quickly as he had dropped, the stubby military weapon level in the crook of his right arm, and beckoned to Sam. Sam, breathing through a dry mouth, joined him.
They saw at a glance that the kitchen was empty. A leaky faucet dripped water into the corroded sink and a moth fluttered around the shaded bulb fixed to the greasy plaster near the door to the outside staircase.
Metts turned the kitchen table over. "Stay here, Sam. Nothing to it. Just lay the barrel of your shotgun across the edge of the table and cover the door. Don't open the door for any reason; don't go poking around. I'll sweep the rest of the apartment and drop down into the servants' wing for a look around." He grinned. "Having fun?"
"I don't think so."
"You'll know I'm back when I tap you on the shoulder." He demonstrated, then left without a sound. Sam looked back at the doorway through which he had vanished. His glasses were misting from perspiration. He took them off and wiped them, then put the shotgun over his shoulder and went to the outside door. He slid the bolt back and opened the door, left it ajar.