Top Gun

by T. E. Cruise

  Layten reached a second time for Gold’s wrist. This time, Gold simply batted Layten’s hands away.

  “Get real, Turner. You and your whole family going back to the Mayflower couldn’t take me.”

  Layten looked frenzied. “You think you’ve got it covered, huh?” He took several steps backward, pawing at his right hip beneath the hem of his shirt-jac.

  Gun, Gold thought, tensing. Jesus Christ, he’s got a gun.

  Time seemed to slow for Gold, the way it always had in air combat through three wars. For an instant Gold found himself back in 1966, crouching fearfully beneath the palm fronds in a North Vietnamese jungle: Several hundred yards away his shot-down Thud fighter lay in flaming wreckage while looming over Gold’s hiding place was a Vietcong soldier armed with an AK-47.

  Layten had produced a small, blued, snub-nosed revolver from out of a high-ride hip holster.

  Gold moved instinctively, catching hold of Layten’s gun with both of his own hands and then bending Layten’s wrist around so that the revolver’s snout was shoved into Layten’s protruding gut. Layten, grunting in shock and pain, tried to twist free, but Gold hung on, keeping the gun jammed against Layten’s stomach while his fingers spread over Layten’s hands. Then Gold found the revolver’s hammer and managed to thumb it back with a loud click!

  At the sound, Layten froze, his eyes widening in alarm. “D-don’t,” he whispered, looking very pale. “D-don’t shoot.…”

  Layten winced as Gold drove the revolver’s snubbed snout deeper into his gut. At the same time. Gold surreptitiously put a finger in front of the cocked hammer to keep it from falling in case the trigger got pulled. He despised Layten, but he didn’t want to shoot the guy. Anyway, it was probably impossible to get bloodstains out of a hundred-percent-natural-fibers linen suit.

  “I’ve got to say, old buddy, for an ex-CIA man you are one sorry tub of lard when it comes to throwing down on a guy,” Gold observed. “Didn’t they teach you anything useful at spook school?”

  “Let go of me,” Layten demanded.

  “What the fuck are you doing carrying a piece in the first place?” Gold wondered. “It’s not your style, Turner. It smacks of prowess.”

  Layten tried to pull away.

  “Easy now,” Gold warned. “Single-action, these babies can have a hair trigger. “

  Layten again froze. “Let go…” he began to whine.

  Gold, his pulse racing, feeling giddy from adrenaline, couldn’t resist taunting, “Does this gun have a hair trigger? Have you ever even fired it. Turner? You hunk of shit!”

  “Let go of me!” Layten repeated, shouting.

  “Or what?” Gold sneered. “You’ll shoot yourself?”

  Gold roughly tore the gun out of Layten’s grasp and looked at it. It was a Smith & Wesson, a five-shot .38 special. Gold had known fighter jocks in Korea and in ‘Nam who’d carried similar revolvers as backup guns to their standard-issue sidearms.

  Gold opened the Smith’s cylinder and dumped out the rounds onto the carpet. He then tossed the gun into a large potted palm in the far corner of Layten’s office.

  “You get out of here,” Layten ordered.

  “Oh, shut up,” Gold said tiredly. “You couldn’t manhandle me, and now I’ve taken away your gun. Don’t you know when to quit?”

  Layten actually stamped his foot. “I said get out!”

  Gold, gathering up a handful of Layten’s shirtfront, lifted him and spun him around, slamming him against the wall.

  “You clearly don’t know when to quit, you little shit,” Gold swore, shaking Layten. “So I’ll tell you that the time to quit gunning for me and my company is now. You reading me, Turner? It’s now! You’d better get yourself a new job, because staying on with Tim Campbell is going to be hazardous to your health.”

  “You don’t scare me,” Layten said. He tried to wriggle free, but Gold kept him pinned. “I’ll never quit watching you,” Layten defiantly vowed. “I’ll always be watching and waiting for my chance to bring you down the way you did me! Tim Campbell and I make a great team! Together we’ve got what it takes to lay waste to everything you and your asshole kike father—”

  Kike? Gold savagely punched Layten in the stomach, and felt his fist sink into Layten’s gut up to his wrist.

  Layten cried out, his face twisting in pain. Gold stepped back, turning him loose. Layten, moaning, dribbled down the wall like splattered molasses. He slumped to his green-and-black-plaid knees, and then doubled over with his hands laced across his belly until his face was pressed against the carpet.

  Gold nudged him in the ribs with the toe of his shoe. “Give it up, Turner,” he muttered. “You aren’t built to take the kind of punishment I can mete out.”

  Layten, wheezing, was curled up in a fetal position, but he slowly turned his head to look up at Gold with malevolent eyes.

  “You’re looking a little green around the edges, Turner,” Gold said. “I hope you aren’t going to be sick…. Oh, and you’ve got some lint sticking to your upper lip.”

  “This isn’t over,” Layten gasped, pushing himself up to a sitting position on the floor. “It will never be over, not until one of us is broken once and for all! Now, get out of my office!”

  “Yeah, sure, I’ll leave.” Gold sighed. “Don’t bother to get up.”

  Gold left the office and headed back down the corridor. He’d anticipated feeling great after coming here, but instead he felt depressed and somehow degraded, like a man who’d given in to a tawdry temptation.

  It had been a childish, stupid stunt he’d pulled when he’d passed that Mercedes, Gold brooded. It had been even more reckless to have come here in the first place. Turner Layten had been right to ridicule me for gloating. Gold brooded. What the fuck was I thinking of.’ He shuddered as he replayed in his mind the tussle for control of Layten’s revolver. How easily either he or Layten could have died in that office!

  Gold’s dark thoughts once again found their way back through the years to 1966 and that North Vietnamese jungle. The Vietcong soldier that had stood over Gold’s hiding place had left Gold with no choice, so Gold had killed him, rising up from out of his hiding place with his pistol to blow off the top of the enemy soldier’s head at point-blank range.

  That had been the first and only time that Gold had killed at close quarters, and the memory of the look in that soldier’s almond-shaped eyes just before Gold blew his brains out had haunted Gold’s dreams for months. After that incident, Gold had thanked God that as a warrior his chosen weapon was the fighter plane, that he could wage war for his country without ever having to see his enemy’s face….

  Until now, Gold brooded. Now you have very clearly seen the enemies’ faces; they belong to Tim Campbell and Turner Layten. And don’t kid yourself: this war is not over, and it is every bit as bloodthirsty and potentially violent as any you’ve survived in the past….

  Yeah, it had been very foolish and childish to come here today. As was so often the case. Gold had done it without thinking through the ramifications of his actions. Now he would have to prepare himself for the consequences, whatever they might be.

  “Have a nice day, Mr. Gold!” the receptionist said brightly as he came through the door into the lobby.

  “Some turn out better than others. Red,” Gold said, passing her desk and continuing to the elevators, where he punched the Down button. While he was waiting, he tried to light a cigarette.

  He couldn’t do it. His hands were shaking too much.

  (Two)

  Turner Layten remained on the carpet in his office. His back was against the wall and his knees were drawn up to his chest. He was breathing deeply, waiting for the pain in his belly to subside as he listened to Steven Gold’s footsteps receding down the hallway.

  Then, suddenly, Steve Gold was back in the office standing over Layten.

  Gold began, “I came back to make sure you understand my position—”

  Layten didn’t wait for Gold to finish. He moved f
ast, pushing off from the wall and barreling into Gold’s knees, sweeping Gold’s legs out from under him to topple him. Gold cried out shrilly as he sprawled belly-down on the carpet. Layten rose up on his knees and clipped Gold on the jaw, just to quiet him down a bit. As Gold rose groggily to his hands and knees, trying to shake off Layten’s powerful punch. Lay-ten got to his feet and sauntered over to his desk, where he kept his backup gun, a .32-caliber Walther PPK.

  Layten always kept a round chambered in the Walther, so after taking the gun from his top desk drawer he had only to thumb the safety, revealing the red dot on the side of the sleek, black pistol that meant the weapon was “hot” and ready to fire.

  “Don’t shoot me. Turner!” Gold pleaded, staring at the Walther held casually in Layten’s hand. “I beg you, don’t do it!”

  Gold frantically crawled to the office’s far corner, upending the potted palm in order to retrieve the .38 Smith & Wesson. Layten watched as Gold then scrabbled across the carpet, fingers clawing around the bases of the packing cases in order to gather up a couple of the spilt .38-caliber rounds. He began clumsily jamming them into the revolver’s cylinder.

  “Take your time, Steven,” Layten said coolly as Gold managed to load the Smith. “I want to give you the fairest possible chance against me. You’re going to need it….”

  Gold, his face twisted into a hideous grimace of fear, rose up to his knees, grasping the revolver with trembling hands as he brought it to bear on Layten.

  “Go ahead,” Layten told him while still holding his Walther at his side. “Shoot, if you’ve got the balls.”

  Gold, bellowing in fear, started to press the Smith’s trigger. Layten smoothly extended his right hand holding the Walther. Gold fired the Smith. Layten squeezed off his own shot….

  Gold’s round went wild, plowing an ugly furrow in Lay-ten’s desktop. Meanwhile, the Walther had bucked in Layten’s hand, ejecting a brass shell casing that chimed musically as it bounced off the desk and then landed on the carpet. The guns’ twin sharp reports had sounded very loud within the confines of the office, but not as loud as Gold’s despairing howl as the crimson flower of death blossomed on his shirt-front.

  Gold’s revolver drooped. His eyes glassed over. “Help me,” Gold begged piteously, his earlier arrogant tone now reduced to a hoarse whisper. “Call an ambulance…. Please!… Help me, Turner….”

  But it was too late.

  “It’s too late,” Layten said, not unkindly, for he could afford pity for a vanquished foe. “1 aimed for your heart, and I never miss.” Layten shook his head. “Steven. Steven, Steven… You should have listened when I told you that someday I’d even the score between us.”

  “Should… have…” Gold nodded, pausing to cough bright scarlet bubbles of blood. “Should have listened—”

  Layten watched Gold pitch forward to settle into the oblivion of death. Then Layten heard footsteps clattering down the corridor.

  “Mr. Layten!”

  Layten looked up to see Clarice, his sultry redhead receptionist, standing in the doorway. Clarice pressed the back of her hand to her mouth as she stared with horrified, widened eyes at Gold’s corpse lying curled on the carpet.

  “M-Mr. Layten— Turner!” she amended shyly. “W-What happened?”

  “It was self-defense, Clarice.” Layten calmly gestured with his Walther to the smoking revolver still lying curled in Gold’s fingers. “As you can plainly see, I had no choice.…”

  “Yes, sir!” Clarice seemed to be calming. “But Turner, are you all right?”

  Layten, studying her, saw the smoldering passion in her blue eyes. It was a look he’d been aware of for months but had chosen to ignore.

  But no longer, he thought, feeling his own passion flaming his loins. Clarice. I will make you mine, for to the victor belongs the spoils.

  “I’m fine, baby…,” Layten murmured, beckoning her. “At least, there’s nothing wrong with me you can’t kiss and make better.”

  “Oh, yes, Turner.” Clarice sighed happily. She hurried across the room—stepping nimbly over Gold’s corpse—to fold herself within Layten’s strong embrace….

  The telephone on Layten’s desk rang, startling him out of his fantasy.

  “Yeah, it could have happened like that,” Layten told his empty office and the ringing telephone. “if Gold had come back, and if had a backup gun…”

  Layten guessed that by now Gold was in an elevator and on his way down to the lobby. Layten was still on the floor, where Gold had left him. He was still leaning against the wall, hugging his knees and breathing deeply, focused on his throbbing gut, waiting for the radiating circles of pain and the waves of nausea to subside. He wanted to answer the shrilly insistent telephone, but he didn’t think he was ready to get up yet.

  “Got to get into shape,” Layten muttered. “Ridiculous for one punch to have wiped me out like this…”

  Then again, it wasn’t as if he were used to physical violence. The CIA didn’t train you in firearms or unarmed combat unless you were designated likely material for certain kinds of field assignments, and from the beginning of his Agency career it had been clear that Layten’s future lay in administration.

  Really ought to answer that telephone, Layten thought. Then, mercifully, the damned thing stopped ringing.

  Haven’t been struck since I was a youngster, Layten remembered. That last time had been in prep school, during some altercation over a close call in a game of lacrosse. Ironically, back then as now, Layten had been punched in the stomach, and back then as now, he’d found the experience to be excruciatingly painful, humiliating…

  Enraging.

  Layten had been unable to exact his revenge upon that schoolyard bully, but this time things would turn out differently, because this time he had far more offensive options at his disposal.

  He was feeling better and got up slowly, groaning. He felt like he had a white-hot coal smoldering in his gut. He managed to hobble over to his desk and collapse in his chair.

  The telephone again began to ring. Layten wearily picked it up. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Layten?”

  “Yes, Clarice—I mean, Miss O’Brien,” Layten hastily corrected himself. Clarice, Clarice, Clarice. He’d had a crush on the redheaded receptionist for months, but had been unable to bring himself to do anything about it. It was too late now, he supposed with some relief. In a couple more days these offices would be closed, and he would never see her again. Just as well. He wasn’t good with women. Never had been…

  “Mr. Campbell has been trying to reach you,” the receptionist said.

  “Oh, did he just call?”

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Campbell said your phone rang and rang, and then he called me.”

  “Ah, well, I was… indisposed,” Layten said. “Did he leave a number?”

  “Mr. Campbell said you could reach him on his private line in New York.”

  “Thank you,” Layten said, and broke the connection. He then dialed Campbell direct, punching in the long-distance number from memory. He was very good with numbers.

  Campbell picked up on the fifth ring. “Yes?”

  “It’s me,” Layten said. “You wanted to speak to me, sir?”

  “Yeah, I did, Turner. I have some further ideas on the Amalgamated-Landis expansion we discussed—”

  “Excuse me, Tim, but before we get into that, I think I should tell you that Steven Gold was just here to see me.”

  “Hah! I told you so. Turner!” Campbell said, sounding pleased.

  “Actually, sir, he came to see you,” Turner amended respectfully.

  “Obviously, Turner,” Campbell said impatiently. “Well, what did Steve want? What did he say? Tell me everything!”

  Layten told him, leaving out the part about the gun. Layten was ashamed of how he’d fubbed that, and anyway, Campbell would never have approved if he knew Layten carried one.

  “He actually struck you. Turner?” Campbell asked when Layten had finished his account of what to
ok place. “You’re not exaggerating, now?” he cautioned. “Steven actually hauled off and punched you in the stomach?”

  “Yes, Tim.” Layten was feeling a bit affronted at the way Campbell was sounding so amused about the incident.

  “Well, you did call his father a despicable name,” Campbell scolded mildly.

  “With all due respect, Tim, I called Herman Gold exactly what he was.”

  Campbell chuckled. “In any event, you got off lucky with just a sore belly. Turner, boy. Many, many years ago I witnessed Herman Gold kill a man who called him a kike.”

  “Killed… ?” Layten echoed feebly, shuddering as he remembered how easily Steve Gold had taken control of the revolver. Layten often had fantasies in which he violently triumphed over his enemies, but the notion that he himself might be seriously hurt scared the daylights out of him.

  “Anyway,” Campbell said. “Let’s look on the bright side of this here juicy li’l contretempts between you and Steven.”

  “I didn’t think there was a bright side,” Layten said sourly.

  “There’s always a bright side,” Campbell lectured. “What separates the men from the boys in our line of work is the ability to discover it and use it to one’s advantage.”

  “Yes, sir,” Layten said happily. He loved it when Campbell got off on the Machiavellian thing.

  Campbell said: “Now, what we can infer from Steven’s belligerence today is that he’s been riled by his clash with us, or rather to the lengths to which he had to go to counter our threat.” He cackled. “In a word, son, poor ole Steven’s remorseful.”

  He didn’t seem very remorseful to me,” Layten muttered, rubbing his aching belly.

  “That’s ‘cause you don’t know ’em like I do, son,” Campbell assured.

  I don’t? Layten thought glumly. I’ve only spent the last ten years of my life obsessed with getting even with the man.

  “Oh, sure, Turner. You think about Steven a lot,” Campbell said, as if he’d read Layten’s mind or something. Campbell did it a lot, and it never failed to spook Layten.

  “You think about Steve and have studied up on “im,” Campbell was continuing. “But you don’t know him personally, the way I do, son. I watched Steven grow up, and I can tell you that he’s just like his father. Like Herman, Steven has a conscience. In other words, like his father, Steven has the brains to figure out what needs to be done in a specific situation, and the ability to do it, but he hasn’t got the willpower to put out of his mind the less savory aspects of what he’s done.” Campbell paused, sighing. “It was Herman’s inability to take pleasure in his ruthlessness that kept him from true greatness.”