Dance of Death

by John Case

  Burke thought fast. “Police. They’re on their way.”

  Wilson nodded. “They’ll never get here,” he said. Suddenly, he frowned. “You’re the guy from Ireland.” He laughed, incredulously. “What are you doing here?”

  Burke opened his mouth, but gave up. What was the point?

  Wilson just shook his head. “Irina,” he said, “please sit down. Enjoy your wine.” He gestured to a pair of Adirondack chairs that flanked a small table. On the table were a candelabra, two champagne flutes, and a bucket of ice. A telephone sat on the floor.

  The woman was in a panic, Burke saw. Her eyes flew between the two men. “Is all right?” she asked, her voice trembling.

  “Yeah,” Wilson said with a laugh. “It’s fine. This is Mr. Aherne –”

  “Burke. Actually, it’s –”

  “Mr. Burke,” Wilson said with an apologetic nod. He turned toward Irina. “Mr. Burke’s a long way from home.”

  “Like me,” she said, with a nervous smile.

  “No,” Wilson said. “Not like you. You are home. This is your home, sweetheart.”

  She blushed. “But why he is –?”

  Wilson cut her off with a gesture. “I’m afraid we don’t have a third glass,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting guests. It’s kind of an old-fashioned celebration. Stay up till dawn. Greet the solstice. That kind of thing.”

  Burke glanced around. He took in the candelabra, the only source of illumination in the cabin. It occurred to him that Wilson might have fired the transmitter already. It was almost light outside, and out here, how would you know if the world had ended? The landscape lights had been on, but … were they still on? “Did you pull the trigger?”

  “Not yet,” Wilson told him.

  “Trigger?” This from Irina.

  He’s going to kill me, Burke thought. But not in front of his bride.

  “Is that it?” Burke asked, gesturing at the transmitter.

  Wilson nodded. “You seem to know a lot. How’d you find us?”

  “Ukrainebrides,” Burke replied.

  Irina brightened. “You know Madame Puletskaya?”

  “Yeah,” Burke said. “We’re old friends.”

  Wilson glanced outside. “I think it’s time,” he said. “Why don’t you sit over there?” He gestured toward the chair where he’d thrown the “cell phone.”

  Burke went over to it, and sat down.

  “Do me a favor,” Wilson said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Just stay off the phone.” With a look of warning to Burke, he laid his gun down on a table next to the transmitter, and began to attach a cable to a laptop on the floor.

  Burke watched Wilson go about his business, and thought about the people he’d seen on television, their faces deranged by loss. Loss was something Burke understood, just as he understood what the people in the courthouse must have felt when the temperature began to soar inside their skin. Burke knew what it was like to be badly burned. It was a terrible way to die. A bullet would be better.

  And he was going to get one, anyway. Sooner or later.

  So he stopped thinking, and came out of the chair so fast that Wilson couldn’t grab his gun quickly enough. Irina screamed, and a glass crashed to the floor as Burke plowed into the bigger man, driving him into the wall. The two men fell to the floor, wrestling. Burke had one arm around Wilson’s neck, and was punching him with the hand that held the cell phone. But he was no match for the Indian. The guy was just too strong.

  Though Wilson was on the bottom, he got a hand on Burke’s neck and began to squeeze. Burke felt the air fly from his lungs, even as his thumb found the activator on the cell phone. He slammed the phone into Wilson’s neck and, in an instant, there was a staticky crackle, and Wilson began to go limp. Jesus Christ, Burke thought, it’s working! It’s actually –

  Lights out.

  When he came to, about five minutes later, he was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs, bleeding from his good ear, which Irina had clobbered with the candelabra.

  Wilson stood next to the transmitter. Irina was pointing the submachine gun at Burke, crying softly to herself. “Why is crazy man coming here?” she asked. “What does he want? Jack!”

  Wilson shook his head, typing on the laptop. “He wants things to stay the way they are.”

  “We call police, okay?” she asked.

  “Well …”

  “But he attacks you!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Wilson told her. Then he turned to Burke. “That was cute,” he said. “A real surprise.”

  “Thanks,” Burke replied. He brought his hand away from his ear and stared at the blood on it.

  Wilson returned his attention to the computer.

  Then they heard it – a thwop thwop sound, outside the tower. They turned and looked, and saw it right away: a helicopter hovering about a hundred yards from the ranch house.

  Burke couldn’t believe it. It could only be Kovalenko. Or someone sent by Kovalenko. He’d given the guy enough to figure it out. Once Culpeper and the courthouse got their attention, it wouldn’t have been all that hard for the Bureau to find Wilson and the B-Lazy-B. They certainly had the resources. So the cavalry had arrived.

  Too late.

  “They friends of yours?” Wilson asked.

  Burke shook his head. He would have laughed, but there was too much at stake and, besides, he hurt too much.

  “I don’t think the helicopter’s going to be a problem,” Wilson said, typing furiously. “In about a minute, it’s going down. Everything is.” He looked out the window. “Why are they at the house?”

  “Because the guy who’s running the operation is an idiot, that’s why,” Burke explained.

  Wilson nodded. “I’m not surprised.”

  “Why is there helicopter?” Irina asked.

  “It’s the police,” Wilson told her. “They’re coming to arrest Mr. Burke.”

  “Good,” she said.

  Wilson turned back to the laptop. In the distance, a bullhorn began to call his name. He shook his head.

  “We should tell them where we are,” Irina said.

  “In a minute,” Wilson replied.

  “I thought you guys were in love,” Burke suggested.

  Wilson paused, and turned to look at him.

  “We are,” Irina insisted, proudly.

  “What’s that got to do with you?” Wilson asked.

  “Nothing, I guess, but … you’re gonna kill her with that thing,” Burke told him. “Seems like a helluva way to end a honeymoon.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wilson replied. “It’s not like a bomb.”

  “I know,” Burke said. “But … she’s got a pacemaker.”

  Wilson stared at him. Finally, he said, “What?”

  “Irina. Has. A. Pacemaker.”

  Wilson blinked a few times. Then he laughed. “Good try,” he said. “Full marks.”

  But Irina started to cry. “And how you are knowing this?” she demanded. “This is my secret!” Her whimpers deepened into the soft sobs of a distraught child.

  “ ’Rina?” Wilson went to her side, his voice so soft it was barely audible.

  “I don’t want you to know,” she said, “I am damage goods. Is why I make love with you in dark. No way you see scar. Is ugly.” She wailed. “Now you’re not wanting me!”

  A strange smile came to Wilson’s face. He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Then he went to her, and crouched by her side. “Show me,” he said, taking the submachine gun from her.

  She complied, sobbing in the way little kids do, taking shuddery breaths. She fumbled at the buttons to her blouse, and finally pulled it aside, baring the scar. Wilson ran his finger along the ridgeline of skin, then pressed his lips to it.

  Burke felt like a voyeur. He turned away.

  “I love you,” Wilson told her, his voice thick with emotion.

  “I –” Her voice fell apart. The sobs came heavier.<
br />
  “Shhhhh,” Wilson said. “I love you. I’ll always love you.”

  In the corner of the room, a telephone rang. It was the last thing Burke expected to hear and the sound startled him.

  Wilson kissed the top of Irina’s head and tried to dry her tears with his fingertips. Her weeping subsided. The phone continued to ring.

  Finally, Wilson got to his feet. Burke couldn’t read the expression on his face. “It’s an extension from the house,” he said as he moved toward the ringing phone. He picked up the receiver. Listened. With a smile, he put the palm of his hand over the phone and turned to Burke. “Somebody named Kovalenko wants me to come out of the house with my hands in the air. He says he knows I’m in there.”

  Burke didn’t know what to tell him.

  Wilson said into the phone: “Give me a minute.” Then he hung up, and slowly crossed the room to the transmitter. Laying his fingertips on the laptop’s keyboard, he took a deep breath. And hesitated.

  For a moment, it seemed to Burke that Wilson was screwing up his courage to derail the world. But that wasn’t it at all.

  Wilson was sailing in a secret storm between one dream and another, tossed this way and that by the uncertainties of his own heart. Love and revenge waited in the darkness, sirens singing from the reefs surrounding his imagined Paradise. He’d risked everything, and it had come to this: Which reef would he wreck himself upon? Love … or Revenge?

  Finally, he exhaled. Jerking the plug from the laptop, he closed the computer and gave it to Burke. “Don’t let them get this. It wouldn’t be good.”

  Burke nodded.

  “Get Irina out of here,” Wilson said. “Away from here, and away from the house. There’s a footpath behind the tower. It goes to the hot springs. She can show you the way.”

  “No,” Irina cried. “I stay with you.”

  Both Burke and Wilson ignored her. “And what do I do, once I’m there?” Burke asked.

  “Get rid of the laptop,” Wilson said. “There are caves, and the one that’s farthest west has a cenote, about thirty feet inside the entrance.”

  “A cenote?”

  “A well. It’s actually a mine shaft. They used to mine silver here. Anyway, the well is a couple of hundred feet deep. So be careful. Way down, it’s filled with water. If you drop a rock in, and count to six, slowly, you’ll hear the splash. So toss the laptop in, and forget about it.”

  Burke nodded. In truth, he wasn’t even sure he could walk. His ribs hurt, and his head was pounding. But he wasn’t going to argue. If Wilson was going to make a last stand, Burke didn’t want to be there for the finale.

  “Irina, sweetheart. I want you to go with Mr. Burke,” Wilson said.

  “No, no Jack,” she crooned. “Nooooo. I stay with you. I want –”

  Wilson smiled teasingly. “Already? Just a week ago, you promised to obey. C’mon,” he cajoled, “you promised. Remember?”

  Burke had no idea what was going through Irina’s mind, but suddenly, she stopped weeping. She nodded her head solemnly, and kissed Wilson on the lips. A long kiss that Wilson ended, drawing away, holding her face in his hands.

  “Go on,” Wilson told her.

  Irina turned. She was weeping again but she began to climb down. Burke was right behind her.

  Wilson watched them descend from the tower, and begin running. Burke was practically dragging Irina, though Wilson could see that he was in pain. Irina kept her eyes turned toward the tower all the while. And then the two figures were gone, lost amid the trees.

  The phone rang, and Wilson picked it up. A voice shouted at him over the thwop thwop thwop of a helicopter’s rotors: “I’m losing patience!”

  “You’ll be lucky if that’s all you lose,” Wilson told him.

  “What?! Let me explain something to you,” the voice screamed. “You got one chance to walk out of that house alive. Either you come out, now – or I’m taking you out! Which way do you want it?”

  Wilson nearly laughed. The uncertainties he’d felt a minute earlier were gone now, replaced with an unfamiliar clarity and calm. He was not going back to prison. He’d rather die. And would. Soon.

  He could escape, of course – for a little while, anyway. He could lose himself in the trees, then make his way into the mountains. Like Geronimo. He could hide for a while, moving from place to place, scavenging food and shelter. But what was the point? Better to die like a man than live like a dog.

  And it was, as they say, a good day to die – the right day to die. The solstice.

  “Wilson!” The FBI agent’s voice crackled over the phone.

  “I’m thinking …”

  In fact, he’d made up his mind. But he had to get their attention before they turned their guns on the house and burned it to the ground. Irina would need the house. He could tell that she was going to love it here.

  Grabbing the Ingram, he went to the window and smashed the glass. Without even bothering to aim, he fired a long burst in the direction of the helicopter – and then another. And another. The chopper swayed, jerked upwards, and turned toward the lookout tower.

  Wilson laid the submachine gun on the floor. Straightening to his full height, he stripped to the waist, revealing the ghost shirt that was his flesh – the crudely etched crescent moon and dragonfly, the stars and birds, and the words in Paiute:

  when the earth trembles, do not be afraid.

  Through the broken window, he saw the helicopter bearing down on the tower. Slowly, he began to dance, singing a song without words.

  Running through the trees, Burke and Irina stumbled over the rocky ground, heading toward the hot springs. They were almost there when a burst of submachine-gun fire shattered the morning air. The volley of shots was answered a moment later by the distant thwop of the helicopter, growing louder and more urgent.

  My God, Burke thought. He’s drawing them to the tower. Irina was sobbing. Burke expected to hear a fusillade of gunfire, but what he heard instead was a zipper of noise, a sort of whoosh, followed by a blaze of light and a shock wave that threw the two of them to the ground.

  Irina quaked in terror as a second explosion, and then a third, shook the trees around them. Looking up, they saw a pillar of black smoke churning into the sky. The tower was gone.

  Irina screamed.

  Burke grabbed her by the arm and pulled her toward the hot springs. “Wait for me,” he told her and, getting to his feet, ran toward the caves. It took him a minute to find the one Wilson had told him about.

  It was dark and damp, and he moved gingerly into the blackness, feeling his way with his hand on the wall, sliding his feet across the floor. When his right foot found the edge of something, he gave the laptop a little toss. And listened.

  There was no sound. And then, just as Wilson promised, he heard a splash.

  Returning the way he’d come, he called out to Irina. But, of course, she wasn’t there. She was on her way back to the tower, Burke thought, or to what was left of it. Looking for love. Or what was left of it.

  It was something they had in common.

  Epilogue

  Nairobi | February 2006

  Burke sat at a table outside the Giraffe Cafe, sipping strong, hot coffee. He was girding himself for a long day at the ministry, getting the necessary permissions for a convoy carrying food and medical supplies to southern Sudan. Dealing with the bureaucracy was like taking apart a set of matryoshka dolls. You had to keep going until you reached the innermost bureaucrat, whose magic stamp would provide passage through the checkpoints.

  Ordinarily, he spent most of his time in remote villages or refugee camps, so he was enjoying the bustle of the city, the chance to pick up his mail, make phone calls, and read the papers.

  He’d talked with Tommy the night before. “Business is grand,” the old man reported. “Maybe too good. Any chance of you coming back?”

  Burke laughed.

  “So when d’you come for a visit?”

  Burke said he wasn’t sure.
r />   “Just like Katie. She’d never say.” Another pause, and then: “Jay-sus, I almost forgot! Here’s a bit o’ news’ll make you laugh. I got this off Billy Earnshaw – who’s a mate of that Garda fella.”

  “Doherty?” Burke asked.

  “The very man!”

  “So, what’s up?”

  “Remember that shite, Kovalenko? You won’t believe it, but they’re givin’ the bleedin’ eejit a medal! For meritorious service!”

  “You’re kiddin’ me.”

  “I couldn’t make it up, Michael. That’s a great country you’ve got!”

  Most of his mail consisted of bills and junk, but he did have one real letter – in a lavender envelope. It was from Irina.

  After the “event,” Burke had stayed on in Nevada for a few days, more or less holding her hand, while keeping Kovalenko at bay.

  He’d driven her to Fallon and introduced her to Mandy. The two of them got along like a house on fire, and Mandy took her under her wing. They organized a memorial service for Wilson, which was well attended by high school and college friends, a couple of teachers, and a tribal rep from Pyramid Lake. Eli Salzberg and Jill Apple made the trip from their respective coasts.

  It was Mandy who got Irina a lawyer. The government was making noises about seizing Wilson’s assets as “ill-gotten gains.” But Wilson had been clever in covering his tracks, at least in so far as the money was concerned, and with the lawyer’s help, his widow got to keep it all. She wrote:

  Six members of my family, are joining me at the ranch. And we have plans! Uncle Viktor takes me to visit the tribal council in Pyramid Lake. We learn that 1847 treaty grants land of B-Lazy-B to tribe, then later, government takes land back, and sells it to religious people. Now, we find way to return this land to tribe. Then I think we open Internet gambling site with B-Lazy-B as home base! First one in U.S., I think. Very excitement! Money for tribe, money for us. And here is other thing – big big news – am having baby! Soon. Little girl! Please to tell me you will be godfather!

  I am thanking you always for your help to me.

  Much kisses, Irina.

  After he left the cafe, Burke spent the rest of the day at the ministry, shuffling from official to official to get the proper permits. Although traveling with the convoy was by far the most dangerous part of his work – you never knew when a kid at a checkpoint would go nova – it was the days at the ministry that he disliked the most. Each bureaucrat required an investment of time, a kind of toll: three hours for this stamp, two hours for that, eight hours for a laissez-passer.