by Dane Hartman
Harry moved her away from the door, then leaned down to retrieve the Baretta that had belonged to the guard. Only when he was armed did he allow her to go free.
The hallway, which he caught sight of for the first time, was empty as far as the eye could see. Empty and soundless.
“Calm down. Now who do we have to find?”
There was no way on earth this woman was going to calm down. No, she was flushed; her rage was a wonder to behold, the way it inflamed her eyes and set her lips trembling.
“Braxton, the fucker,” she answered, spitting out his name. “I got a telegram from him three days ago. He told me he wanted me back. I came back and what do you suppose he did?”
Harry could guess. But he didn’t have to.
“Soon as I got down here he treated me like shit. Wouldn’t let me out of this goddamn place. Took off to town with his whores and his flunkies, wouldn’t let me go with them. Just wanted to teach me a lesson, he said. Well, OK, he wants to play it that way. I’ll teach him a lesson!”
So this is how it is, Harry thought. Every time the girl gets pissed at her old man she comes to my rescue. This is one hell of a way to break a case.
In her fury she seemed almost to have forgotten Harry nor did she show any sign that she was now worried about the danger they faced.
“Where is Braxton?”
“Upstairs. They’re all upstairs except for the bastards on the grounds. They told me you were down here. I said to myself, ‘Shit, damned if old Matt ain’t gonna be surprised to see Harry walking free.’ ” She giggled like a little girl. An insane little girl. And here Harry had thought he’d merely been dealing with a neurotic; well, it appeared that instead she was really quite far gone.
As she turned to continue her vendetta against her erstwhile lover, she tripped against the guard’s corpse. In anger she kicked him irrelevantly in the ribs. Then she regained her composure. With a certain tinge of sadness to her voice she said, “I wasn’t going to kill him. I don’t want to kill anybody. Just was going to scare him a little. He didn’t want to scare, that’s all.” She shrugged.
“It happens,” Harry said, putting his hand on her shoulder, gently so as not to disconcert her further, and guided her out the door. The hallway, with its surface of flat white stone lit by shots of light pouring in through rows of windows, still remained empty. But no longer soundless. Footsteps echoed loudly off the stucco walls. Nonetheless, Harry and Darlene continued a bit farther; by tacit agreement they kept their steps quiet.
They’d scarcely progressed down the hallway when the shadow of a man—and judging by the shadow, a very tall man—fell across the foyer. Harry held back, flattening himself against the wall, but he was not in time to restrain Darlene, who in her headlong rush to get to Braxton had failed to notice the threat. When Harry threw his hand against her lips and attempted to plant her against the wall alongside him she bit into his palm and gave a small shriek of surprise. She wasn’t very good at getting hints.
The man heard her. He wasn’t alarmed, merely curious. He peered down the hallway but what he saw first was the absence of any guard outside the door. Only then did he spot Darlene and Harry, but this had necessitated venturing farther down the hallway. By this point he was facing two guns whereas his hands were empty.
“Drop,” Harry commanded him.
The man seemed not to know what he was talking about.
“To the floor. Down on the floor.”
The man was paralyzed. He looked from Darlene to Harry and back again, then he bolted, hoping that they wouldn’t fire or that he’d reach the staircase before they did.
“Oh no you don’t!” Darlene cried, raising her .38 with both hands and firing it with astonishing precision before Harry could stop her.
The man kept going; you might have thought Darlene had missed. But it was only sheer momentum that carried him forward. Suddenly he seemed to realize that he’d been mortally wounded and so he simply stretched out his arms and keeled over, reluctantly obeying Harry’s instruction.
It was at this point that Harry recognized exactly what kind of liability Darlene presented. No way to control her. No way to persuade her that the better part of wisdom was to escape the compound here at Boca de la Sierpe and live to fight another day. No, she was hellbent on exacting revenge against Braxton for all the real and imagined grievances she’d suffered at his hands and nothing was going to stop her.
As for Harry, his first priority was to get away, recoup, and consider his next strategy. But it became readily apparent that he was going to be denied that opportunity. Darlene, having neglected to use a gun equipped with a silencer, had by shooting this man alerted others upstairs. The guard she’d shot at close quarters and the sound of the shot had been muffled. But not this time. The report would have been heard throughout the villa.
There were footsteps coming down the stairs, and voices, and Harry knew now that there would be no escape without a struggle. Roughly, he pushed Darlene back out of the line of fire. He did not especially like the gun he had to work with, but in situations like this you took what was available.
It was not as easy for him to maneuver as it usually was; the drug still hadn’t altogether worn off and there was a persistent fuzziness in his brain that wouldn’t go away. He had to concentrate when he sighted his gun; it didn’t come as natural to him as it usually did.
But even so he achieved his mark. The security man who first appeared took a round in his chest; it knocked him off-balance but not down and he tottered several moments, his own gun discharging ineffectually, puncturing out holes in the ceiling and dislodging chunks of plaster which rained down on him. But the time he took in dying gave the others behind him a chance to descend the stairway in safety—Harry couldn’t get a line on them to fire.
Darlene was directly behind him, but rather than cowering under the hail of bullets, she enthusiastically threw herself into the battle, loosing a steady barrage in the direction of the attackers although to what effect it was hard to say. Harry had no opportunity to see to her, being as preoccupied as he was, but he hoped that when she’d exhausted her supply of ammunition she would drop back and withdraw from the conflict. No such luck. She’d been far-sighted enough, even in her madness—perhaps because of it—to carry additional cartridges, which she dug out of her handbag.
Because Braxton’s men could not fall back without sacrificing their advantage, they decided that their only real alternative was to rush Harry and Darlene, assuming that by their very number they would overwhelm them.
In their forefront Harry noticed the man who’d brought him down with the blowgun. In this instance, however, he had discarded his favorite weapon for an FN automatic which with his good hand he aimed at Harry. But he was moving so fast that his shot went awry, gouging out a thick wad of stucco. Whether it was Darlene’s shot or Harry’s was less significant than the fact that someone managed to hit him, driving him back in the direction the bullet had taken. The FN clattered to the floor. He couldn’t hold it when he had his open stomach to attend to. His mouth opened, he seemed to be trying to speak though no words emerged. Then, with a darkening look on his face, he sank to his knees. He didn’t go down any farther, just stayed that way, on his knees like a penitent, clutching his stomach, waiting to see whether or not he would die. A second man—Harry recognized him from the airport—had a better aim and his rounds were digging up patches of stone mere inches from where Darlene and Harry were spread out. But again he was exposed, and in his attempt to close the distance between them he threw aside his caution with the result that he was hurled back, like his friend the blowgunner, taken off his feet by a bullet—probably fired by Darlene—that shattered his kneecap and in its upward trajectory lodged somewhere in the muscles of his thigh. As he fell he jostled another assailant, causing him to lose his momentum; before he could recover Harry took him out with a round that, impacting above his heart, spun him around twice before dropping him to the ground.
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nbsp; There were two others right behind but recognizing how futile their initial strategy had been, they withdrew—or tried to anyway—clambering back up the stairs. But to do this successfully they had to turn, and in turning they lost valuable moments. Harry sprang up, with Darlene following right behind him, and raced to the foot of the stairs, firing as he went. One man clumsily stumbled right into the path of a bullet that otherwise would have done no harm. It passed through his head, entering at the tip of his spine and exiting right underneath his left eye. The exit wound was large; it had to be if it was to accommodate the amount of blood, brain tissue, and chips of bone that went flying through it. Much of the bloody material was spewed over his colleague, hitting him smack in the face so that he was temporarily blinded, his eyes misted by the blood and the gelatinous substance that had once done the thinking and dreaming for the man who lay spread-eagled on the stairs. In such circumstances, to be temporarily blinded was to invite permanent blindness. Darlene was much more exhilarated by this firefight than Harry; and being miraculously immune from bullets as some irrationally self-confident people occasionally are, she gave no thought to climbing up the stairs and putting her .38 to the survivor’s head and pulling the trigger. At such close proximity she was almost knocked over by the force of the recoil. The man obligingly flipped over the railing and smashed to the stone floor. Smoke thickened in the air, mixed with the stench of blood and cordite.
The stairs were slick with blood and unidentifiable viscera. Men were coming through the front door now and there were others appearing at the head of the stairs. This placed Harry and Darlene in the particularly unenviable position of being caught between the two groups. No choice but to keep firing—first down, then up.
Harry chose to advance up; retreat was out of the question now. He kept low and Darlene followed his example. The confusion and the smoke lent them a certain advantage. For one thing, the newly arriving security force wasn’t precisely sure what was happening or who their targets were supposed to be.
And by keeping low the way they were doing, Harry and Darlene invited fire from those positioned at the top. One bullet caught Harry in the fleshy part of his right arm but he felt no pain. Another grazed Darlene’s lovely stockinged leg but she too didn’t seem to register its impact. But many of the bullets flew inches above them, continuing on so that they struck a couple of the men who’d just come into the hallway below. The result of this was that now the security men in the hallway began aiming higher up, mistakenly believing that they were under fire from their own allies.
“Aim for their feet!” Harry whispered to Darlene which was what she did because that’s all she could see from where she was. They could see where they’d hit—the blood spurting from the row of anonymous ankles—and they could hear the cries of pain which followed almost immediately.
They succeeded in putting an abrupt end to the opposition from above. By the time they reached the top landing they found themselves in a sea of tangled flailing limbs. Men were crawling in all directions, resembling a colony of ants whose hill has just been flattened by a boot heel. Blood, streaming out of several wounds, collected and oozed in ever larger amounts down the stairs.
While there was still the occasional shot in their direction, whoever was firing seemed to have lost his fervor for the business. In any case, no one was pursuing them up the stairs; the bodies littering the immediate vicinity provided abundant testimony to the folly of doing that.
Ahead of Harry and Darlene was another hallway; this one was shorter and it terminated at a white door with a bronze handle to it.
“He’ll be in there,” Darlene said.
She was pale but unafraid; her eyes were deader than the men who lay at her feet. She was so intent on Braxton that nothing else mattered; not all this mayhem certainly, it might not have made the slightest impression on her.
“You don’t think he might have gotten away?”
She shook her head. Her blonde hair was matted with blood though she was oblivious to this too. “There’s a terrace adjoining the room through there, it’s the only way. You’d have to jump down into the pool. That’s not Matt’s style. Oh no, you’ll see, he won’t run from a personal challenge. From a prison maybe. But not from you. He thinks he can still kill you.”
“And what about you?”
She looked coldly at Harry and shrugged but didn’t answer. Instead she began in the direction of the white door. Harry, more cautiously, trailed along a foot or so in back of her.
Grasping hold of the brass handle, she tugged at it and drew the door open. Harry had expected it to be locked. But as soon as he saw that it wasn’t he threw himself against the nearest wall, preparing for the fire he assumed would come. But there was no fire.
Darlene sauntered in as though she were returning from a shopping excursion, the .38 held dramatically in her hand.
Harry, with his expropriated Baretta, stepped in after her.
It was a large and airy room. To one side was a canopied bed with a mirror overhead so that you could see just what sort of progress you were making under the covers—or on top of them. Directly opposite them was the terrace that Darlene had mentioned. And standing there, looking very uncomfortable, was Robert Nunn. He had a gun in his hand, but from the bewildered, slightly irritated expression on his face Harry could see that he wasn’t anxious to use it—if in fact he knew how. Every so often he glanced down below the terrace to where the haven of the pool was presumably situated. Probably contemplating his chances if he jumped.
To the left was a large walnut desk whose top was strewn with papers and open books—law books in which Braxton had been researching in his quest for loopholes. But then Braxton was always a man on the lookout for loopholes. The man himself was standing right in back of the desk, his face a shade redder than usual perhaps but otherwise no different. He appeared not at all disturbed by the loss of so much of his security force. Nor was he going to allow Harry—or Darlene for that matter—the satisfaction of panicking or pleading for a truce.
Darlene kicked the door shut behind her. Her eyes were locked on Braxton. She was not even remotely conscious of Nunn’s presence.
“This is where it ends, Matt,” she declared.
He only offered her a smile in return. “Darlene, Darlene,” he said in a soothing voice that only infuriated her more. “There’s no need to do this. So you’ve fallen for Callahan. It happens. Women do strange things for the men they love. I can understand that.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “What are you talking about, Matt? You think I did it because I was in love with him?” She gave Harry a derisive glance. Which didn’t bother Harry at all. Anyone who took on a lover like Darlene deserved what he got, Harry thought.
Darlene’s hysterical reaction didn’t trouble Braxton at all. His only interest was in disarming her and Harry. “Well then, we’re in agreement. Mr. Callahan can be dispensed with.”
Harry’s fate didn’t concern Darlene at all. “Who the hell cares. You’re the problem, Matt. You fucked with me once too often.”
All this while Harry kept looking down toward Braxton’s hands. Only one was exposed to view, resting on the desk. The other he figured was grasping a gun. An important observation.
Nunn he worried less about. Nunn was more interested in the distance he was going to have to jump than in turning his gun on either Harry or Darlene. Obviously the exchange between Braxton and Darlene was getting on his nerves. Who loved whom, who fucked with whom; what possible difference did it make when you were staring death in the face?
“This wasn’t supposed to happen like this, Matt,” he said.
Braxton shrugged. “You’re telling me.” For the first time he regarded Harry directly. “Got farther than you thought, didn’t you? Got farther than I thought too. Unfortunate. Because we could have made some kind of team, you and me.”
At that moment he brought up his gun—actually it was Harry’s, his .44 Magnum—thinking he had the advantag
e of surprise. But Harry had already fired two shots into him before he could pull the trigger, by which time it no longer mattered. Blood appeared at two points a couple of inches apart on his blue silk shirt and spread with astonishing speed until the wounds were indistinguishable. Braxton looked down at the blood with great puzzlement. His brow knotted and his hand groped tentalively for where the bullets had penetrated. Only when the blood was in his palm did he seem to understand what had happened. His eyes rolled up in his head and then he slid, slowly, with surprising gentleness, down below the desk.
It was only then that Darlene and Nunn reacted. That Braxton could be proven mortal was such a shock that they each needed time to absorb the event. Darlene whipped around, her eyes blazing, her lips like a red gash on her face. “You fucker! You killed him! You killed him!” Whether she hadn’t wanted Braxton dead in the first place, in spite of all her avowels to the contrary, or whether she felt deprived of the revenge that should have been by rights hers, Harry wasn’t sure—nor was he interested.
Darlene brought her gun around and fired—but as she did so, Harry turned aside, narrowly missing the bullet meant for him. There was another shot—and that, too, had been meant for him. Only Nunn, who had fired it, was not at all proficient with a pistol, and instead of hitting Harry he’d struck Darlene instead.
The look of surprise on her face was wonderous to behold. The bloodstain spread from a point near the sternum. Her breasts heaved with the pain of taking in breath. But the anger hadn’t gone away. She did something that resembled a pirouette and studied Nunn, trying perhaps to make out his reasons for the attack.
Nunn, horrified by what he’d done, tried to back away, though this was impossible since he was already at the terrace’s edge. He dropped his gun as though this gesture would signal his peaceful intentions.
“I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t mean . . .” he began, his face erupting with sweat, his glasses fogging with moisture. “It was for him, Darlene, I swear.”
