Lone Wolf #4: Desert Stalker

by Barry, Mike

  “I don’t like it,” the passenger said. He shifted in the seat, fumbling with a gun. “Look at what he’s done already. Look at what he is. I think we should get rid of him now.”

  “We’ll do it,” the driver said. The nervousness was infectious; he felt his hands fluttering on the wheels. “Shut up,” he said, “think of something else. Don’t bother me now.”

  “I think Lazzara is dead,” the passenger said. “I think he killed him.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. We’ve got a job to do and we’ll do it.”

  “We’ve never gone up against anything like this. There’s never been anything like this guy before.”

  “Wait until you’ve been around a bit,” the driver said. He squinted through the windshield, observing the Tempest. It was weaving on the roadway now, greyish clouds pouring out of the exhaust as it wobbled on the center lane. Coming up through it he could smell the stink, pumped through the intake vents.

  He put the airconditioner on recirculate. “He’s breaking down,” the passenger said.

  “I don’t think so. He’s slowing.”

  “No, I think the car’s busted,” the passenger said and then leaned forward with the driver. The Tempest threw out another explosion of exhaust and then abruptly accelerated. It came over on the right lane and blew momentarily out of sight behind a signpost. The driver accelerated to keep pace.

  “He’s doing eighty now,” he said. “I don’t think the car will take eighty.”

  “I don’t care what he’s doing,” the passenger said. He cocked his gun. “Let’s get rid of him now.”

  The driver looked through the rear-view mirror. The other Fleetwood was almost invisible now, dropping back half a mile or more. Maybe the sudden acceleration had caught them by surprise. But the car was lagging.

  “I don’t think we ought to,” the driver said. He rubbed his eyes against the glare, shook his head and shut off the recirculating mechanism, putting the car on intake again. There were black smudges under his eyes and suddenly he looked quite old. He could not have been more than forty.

  “Yes you do,” the passenger said. Suddenly the gun was leveled at the driver. “I’m not going to put up with any more of this shit. Now hammer him down.”

  The driver’s hands convulsed around the steering wheel but otherwise he kept calm. The car accelerated imperceptibly. “This isn’t the way to handle it,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me how to handle it. I’ve had enough, you understand me?”

  The Tempest bucked off the road a few hundred yards up, white exhaust spilling from it again. It came to an apparent stop. The driver hit the brakes.

  “What is he doing?” he said.

  “He probably broke down,” the passenger said. The car slowed more. “What are you doing?”

  “I told you,” the driver said, “I just don’t like it. I don’t know if I want to come up on him like this.” He checked the rear-view yet again. The other car was now entirely out of sight. Was it a double-cross of some sort? Was he being set up for something? He brought the car to a halt about fifteen yards behind the Tempest. There was no movement inside the car now. He could detect no sign of head and shoulders.

  “I don’t like it,” he said again. He turned toward the passenger. “Get that fucking gun out of my face.”

  “Drive up alongside him,” the man said, turning the gun aside, “and I’ll pump one through the window.”

  “Maybe he’s waiting for us to do just that. Maybe he’ll pick us off.”

  “The fucking car is bulletproofed,” the passenger said, “if you don’t listen to me now, I’m going to blow your head off.”

  “Who’s in command here?”

  “Not you,” the passenger said softly. “Not you.”

  The driver put the car into neutral. “I don’t want no part of it,” he said, “I’m not coming up alongside him. You want to do something, you do it on foot.”

  The passenger switched his attention fully to the driver now as if an itch of which he had been semiconscious had finally prodded him into activity. His eyes had a peculiar coalescence and purpose. “Don’t make me do this,” he said, raising the gun.

  The driver held the wheel steadily, looking out in front of him. “We’re supposed to kill him,” he said quietly, “not each other.”

  “Move the car.”

  “No. I don’t like it.”

  The Tempest slewed onto the road abruptly, tires screaming. It burst out at full throttle skittering several hundred yards down the road and then came to a full stop. Laboriously, it cranked through a U-turn.

  The passenger let the gun fall to his lap. His eyes were galzed with interest. “What the fuck is this?” he said.

  The Tempest came directly toward the Fleetwood, gathering speed. It was moving thirty, perhaps forty miles an hour on dead-collision course.

  “For Christ’s sake!” the passenger said. His hands were loose at the wrist, he raised and flapped them like wings. “What’s going on! The son-of-a-bitch is going to …”

  He choked, dived into the compartment under the dashboard. The driver grabbed the wheel, dropped the Fleetwood into drive and floored the accelerator, trying to ditch it on the side of the road. He had never seen a head-on collision, never believed that such a thing was possible with modern roads and cars, but the Tempest seemed to be looking for it.

  The maneuver did not work. As he came onto the shoulder at the side of the road, the Tempest, implacably, swung left to meet him. Maybe fifty miles an hour and gaining. There could not have been more than ten yards between the cars.

  “My God!” the driver screamed, “he’s going to hit!” and still fighting with the wheel tried to pull the Fleetwood out but they were in a box now, the Tempest coming in at an angle which cut them off the road, the shoulder to the right looking out at rocks and boulders. He closed his eyes then and took a deep breath, waited for the impact that would be the last thing he would ever know. Underneath, the passenger was babbling, seemed to be praying.

  The roar increased, the droning, scattering sound coming from the Tempest’s mufflers. Then, having hit a peak, it began to diminish. The driver felt a slight wind through the bulletproof windows although this was impossible. Then he opened his eyes to see the Tempest disappearing down the roadway, the engine screaming.

  The passenger scrambled upward from hiding, his face very pale. Everything seemed to have gone out of him. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he said, “son-of-a-bitch.”

  The driver put the car into neutral and took several shallow breaths, trying to force air into his lungs, trying to find normal respiration. “That won’t work,” he said, almost matter of factly, “the other car will get him. He didn’t know that we have two cars.”

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” the passenger said. His gun, which he had forgotten lay on his lap, he picked it up and looked at it incuriously, as if it were an alien artifact, something pulled out of the desert. “I thought that we had bought it,” he said.

  “He’s good,” the driver said. He put the car back into drive, feeling a tentative kind of control again. “The man is good. He’s a police driver. Let’s go back and see what happened.”

  “No,” the passenger said, “no, I don’t want to go back. I give up.” He paused. “I admit it,” he said then, “I don’t want to die.”

  “Nobody’s going to die except him,” the driver said and rolled the car into a broken U-turn, headed it down the empty road. “It’s all over for him. The other car will get him.”

  “Leave me out of it,” the passenger said. “Just leave me out of this.”

  “You’re never out of it until you’re dead,” the driver said, thinking that this was a large, philosophical thought; oh my, indeed he was becoming metaphysical, well there was nothing like a little sight of death to get you to take the longer view. The Tempest had laid down tracks on the roadway. Following them he found himself thinking, I’m getting old, I’m not what I was, I don’t know if I can take thi
s anymore … maybe, maybe, I should try to find another life.

  XVIII

  The maneuver with the pursuit car had worked as he thought it might, an old high-speed maneuvering trick which Wulff had never performed but which he thought he had worked out in sleep time and again, he knew that he could intimidate them and pound them out of the pursuit if he only performed the unexpected of going right into the strength rather than away for it. There was still the other car; it had been dropping behind but not that far, was probably only a mile down and at the rate he was going he would cross it in a half a minute or less. Wulff stared down the road driving one-handed, his other hand gripping the revolver, and concentrated on what he had to do next. It was difficult and precise, two qualities that he wondered if he really possessed in this state of physical siege. Then again, there was just no alternative to failure and if he had gone this far he could go a little further. The balance wheel was always there hovering in his mind. It would be easier by far to have given up at the start rather than to become what he had, but every challenge conquered was a further investment in going on; if you did not go on then what had already happened meant nothing. He would not yield it. Not so easily, not now.

  The other Fleetwood came over the horizon, mounting in vision. The car had been tooling along, acting as a backstop and as a kind of patrol site just as he had expected. That had been clever of them, not committing both cars to the attack at once. This way they would always have reserve. He put the Tempest over the center line, the wheels just straddling it on the left side and flicked on his headlights, floored the accelerator and sent the car staggering directly toward collision. The Tempest was holding up, the motor gasped and he smelt rubber and oil, fumes coming back at him through the open windows but the car would hold up. He had confidence in it.

  The Fleetwood picked him up. He saw the car weave, stumble as the driver moved from recognition through indecision and he locked himself into a tunnel of perception, focusing his attention, seeing nothing but the car. They were closing rapidly, it was only a matter of seconds. The Fleetwood held course for a moment and then dived toward the side of the road. Wulff pursued it, holding it in a trap. The car squalled and screamed, kicking up little absent puffs of dust and he came in on it hard this time, closing the gap with force and he sideswiped the sliding Fleetwood hard, smashing it onto the shoulder, then moved out of the trap.

  The impact of the swipe made the Tempest yaw, it seemed to be considering spinning out of control completely, but he worked the brakes and transmission evenly, coaxing it back under control and finally it yielded. The Tempest came out of the collision pulsating like a fist, and he kept it going on course, down the wrong side of the road, pumping the brakes for control this time, then coming in a long, sidewise drift to ten miles an hour and he wheeled the car around.

  He came back toward the Fleetwood.

  Well thank the desert roads anyway; five miles out of Vegas and it was as barren as Beach Channel Drive at dawn on a Sunday morning. However it ended, this last act of Las Vegas would be played out by the principals. There would be no walk-ons here. The Fleetwood was in a cloud of exhaust and sand at the side of the road, the body quivering and as he brought the Tempest down he saw the doors begin to flutter, just as he had hoped they were, moving tentatively like butterfly’s wings and men were peering out. In the panic of the collision that had been their first, expected impulse, to get clear of the car and he had been counting on it. He brought the Tempest directly toward those doors.

  The doors closed as he came in at forty miles an hour and he swiped the car again, wheeling left at the last moment, delivering a smashing impact to the side of the car, then, before he could take the full jolt of it himself he was away, skittering free over the road, the car twice damaged once again diminishing. He repeated the U-turn movement again, a few hundred yards down, concentrating on whipping the car in short, precise strokes, the least amount of wasted movement, no play in the steering wheel, no false movement in the brake. He had done panic-driving in his life on the pursuit end, now all of it was coming into focus for these enormous stakes. He reached for the revolver which he had dumped at his side while holding on for the first impact. Then he came toward the Fleetwood again.

  The sight of the Tempest bearing down on them must have lurched the men inside into panic. They had been the pursuers in a bulletproof limousine, following a miserable junk. It had been for them nothing more than a quick and interesting job, but, insanely, the Tempest had become the attacker. He was counting on the effects of this reversal bolted onto that older, more familiar element of panic for what would happen next … because if it did not he was as dead as he had been when he left Vegas, came onto these roads. If they behaved sensibly, if their professionalism did not desert them he was finished. All that they had to do was to say within the car and wait him out. After a certain amount of time they could start pumping shots.

  But this did not happen. They did not stay within the car. The doors came open, this time on the desert side and a form hurtled into the sands, then, a little further along another form leaped and they began to roll. Seen from this angle they were a target, a possibility, but Wulff did not want to risk it, not when there was a better opportunity. He clutched the gun, jolted the Tempest to a stop and before it had even finished its roll, clearing the Cadillac, he was outside, bearing down on them.

  What happened then happened quickly, although now for Wulff, in the intensity of the action and the depth of his concentration, it seemed to go on for an extended period giving everything that he did the aspect of stop-action. He leveled the gun, standing and pumped two shots into the man nearest him, tearing off an ear, sending the man reeling and vomiting into the sands, then he felt a stab of pain in the shoulder and realized that he had been hit. The second one, the man now running from him had had the presence of mind to desert the car with his gun, either that or he had held it instinctively and now, surprised that it was still with him had decided to use it.

  It was not a serious wound, just a minor scrape of the shoulder fired off by a man blocked by terror but it had been bad enough. If the man’s luck had held just a shade more strongly he would have been hit and doomed. As it was, Wulff paused only an instant, yanking back from the pain, then aimed his revolver at the man who leaped into the air like a dancer. “Don’t!” he screamed. It was the first time he had heard a voice through all of this; its effect in the desert was stunning. This desert had existed five million years before speech; it would last five million after speaking beings had left, it swallowed all sound. “Please!” the man said, and dropped his gun; it sparkled in the air. He showed Wulff his empty hands. Wulff shot him in the head.

  The man turned around once, a dancer caught in the ropes and reached toward him gracelessly, Wulff shot him again, this time in the gut and the man kicked, fell. He took a long time falling, falling slowly through particles of sand and at the end of it Wulff had another bullet for him, soldering him to the ground, blood running in the arid desert, the sands devouring it.

  He turned and the other Fleetwood, the one he had chased off the road above had come into sight and was rolling down from the horizon.

  He had to credit them for their persistence; he thought that they more likely would have pointed in the opposite direction and kept on going. But if he was desperate they were desperate too and Wulff, feeling the pain beginning to lance from his shoulder now knew that he could not take them. He was too exposed, he had to reload, the wound, superficial or not was hurting. This time they would not be stupid, they would not leave the car. He put the gun away and began to run toward the two cars at the side of the road, his side hurting, arm hurting, flashes of pain all the way through. Then he dived into the Cadillac, the keys still in it, the motor running, put it into gear and let it go.

  It went. The two blows had done bad things to the suspension, the car seemed to be hanging down on its springs but acceleration, transmission, power were unaffected. The car burned out of t
here, grabbing the road at forty miles an hour and then beginning to gain.

  Now it was a flat run back toward Vegas. He was in a better car than the Tempest, albeit a damaged one, he thought that he had a chance to outrun them and, even if he did not, he thought—using the power switches to seal the windows up tight—he was behind bulletproofing. He was living right, things were getting better all the time. He had traded up so to speak and he had, he noticed, not only better transportation, he had a very good-looking revolver on the seat next to him, dropped by the passenger when they had fled the car. He picked it up, driving one-handed and put it on the dashboard, wedging it in tightly.

  Then for the first time he checked his rear-view, to see how closely the other car was following.

  But they were not following. Far back he could see the outline of the car by the side of the road, two tiny figures bouncing around it. And then, finally, he understood what had happened and Wulff began to laugh.

  He had to laugh: it was such a fitting conclusion, and there was a little bit of irony in it too, the Vegas kind of irony which even the losers back at the Paradise might have appreciated. There luck had turned against them and with it, as so often happens, their judgment had gone too. They had not pursued him because they thought that he was they in the Fleetwood, moving away from the scene and that the two bodies on the sands were his and one of the assailants, the other one taking off either out of fright or in such of some kind of help.

  They hadn’t figured that he had driven away at all.

  Wulff felt the pain from the wound but it wasn’t bad at all; he could live with it. The bleeding had already stopped and in a little while it would congeal into nothing more than itching. He would have to get some treatment of course but there was no rush. It was a light wound, he was sure. He could probably go around for days like this. He had the car, he had two guns, he had four men behind him on the sand, two of them dead … and he had an airport locker key in his pocket which might mean more than any of this.