Hardcase jk-1

by Dan Simmons

  Kurtz was still distracted. "I'm afraid my contest is going to be against flesh and blood, as well as against powers and principalities."

  "Ahhh," said Soul Dad. "You're going up against the shit-eating Seneca Social Club."

  "And I don't have a clue as to how to get to Malcolm Kibunte," said Kurtz.

  Pruno opened his eyes. "Which book on my list did you like the most and understand the least, Joseph?"

  Kurtz thought a moment. "The first one, I think. The Iliad."

  "Perhaps your solution lies in that tale," said Pruno.

  Kurtz had to smile. "So if I build a big horse for Malcolm and his boys and seal myself in, they'll wheel me into the Social Club?"

  " O saculum insipiens et inficetum, " said Pruno and did not translate.

  Soul Dad sighed. "He's quoting Catullus now. 'O stupid and tasteless age. When Frederick gets like this, I am reminded of Terence's comment: Me solus nescit omnia. 'Only he is ignorant of everything. "

  "Oh, yes?" said Pruno, his rheumy eyes snapping open and his wild gaze fixing on Soul Dad. "Nullum scelus rationem habet—" He pointed at Kurtz. "Has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus—"

  "Bullshit," responded Soul Dad. " Dum abast quod avemus, id exsuperare videtur. Caetera, post aliud, quum contigit, Mud, avemus, Et sitis aequo tenet! "

  Pruno shifted to what sounded like Greek and began shouting.

  Soul Dad answered in what had to be Hebrew. Spittle flew.

  "Thanks for the dinner and conversation, gentlemen," said Kurtz, standing and moving to the low doorway.

  The two men were arguing in what sounded like a totally unknown language now. They had forgotten that Kurtz was there.

  Kurtz let himself out.

  CHAPTER 30

  Kurtz parked next to Doc's old rusted-out pickup with the camper shell on its back. It was starting to snow harder, and the black sky seemed to blend with the looming black buildings. Kurtz put the little.38 in his coat pocket, made sure he had extra boxes of shells in the other outside pocket, and walked across the dark and slippery parking lot into the open maw of the abandoned steel mill.

  As soon as Kurtz stepped through the open doors, he felt that something was wrong. Everything looked and smelled the same—cold metal, cold open hearths, huge crucibles hanging like looming soup ladles high above, towering heaps of slag and limerock, a few pools of light from hanging lamps, and the distant glow of Doc's control room thirty feet above everything—but something was definitely wrong. Kurtz's neck prickled and cold currents rippled across his skin.

  Instead of walking across the open area between heaps of coal black rock, Kurtz ducked and ran toward a maze of rusted machinery to his right. He slid to a stop behind a low wall of iron, the.38 in his hand.

  Nothing. No movement. No sound. Not even a flicker of motion.

  Kurtz stayed where he was for a minute, making sure that he was concealed from all sides, catching his breath. He had no idea what had spooked him—but paying attention to such nothings had kept him alive for more than eleven years of prison life, much of that time with a price on his head.

  Staying to the shadows, Kurtz began working his way toward the control room. He had briefly considered making a break for the door and then sprinting back to the Buick, but it involved too much open space. If everything was all right and Doc was up there waiting for him, Kurtz might be slightly embarrassed by this melodramatic approach, but he always preferred embarrassment to a bullet in the brain.

  Kurtz moved around the edge of the huge space, advancing toward the control room in short sprints of five yards or less, always keeping to cover behind pipes or mazes of I-beams or half-removed machines. He stayed to the ink-black shadows and never exposed himself to fire from darker areas. He made very little noise. This worked for two-thirds of the distance, but when he came to the end of the machinery, he still had sixty or seventy feet of open space between himself and the steel ladder to Doc's control tower.

  Kurtz considered shouting for Doc, but quickly decided against it. Even if someone had watched him enter, they probably did not know precisely where he was at the moment. Unless they have long guns and night-vision goggles like the good old boys in the icehouse. Kurtz shook that thought out of his head. If they had rifles and scopes, they almost certainly would have taken him when he came through the main doors, still a couple of hundred feet from the control tower.

  Who the hell is "they?" thought Kurtz, and then tabled that question for later.

  He moved backward, crawling under a latticework of pipes that were each at least a yard across. The metal was inert and empty. Cold seeped up from the concrete floor and made his feet and legs ache. Kurtz ignored it.

  Here. Doc's control room was connected to every corner of the huge space by catwalks and here against this brick wall, far from any light, a man ladder ran up to the maze of catwalks.

  Kurtz crouched next to the ladder and hesitated. This part of the ladder was cloaked in darkness and shielded from the main space by vertical beams and pipes, but what if the intruders were up on the catwalks, hiding in that very darkness? Or even if they were on the main floor, Kurtz would have to move through relatively lighted areas up there to get to the control room. Despite all the James Bond movies where the secret agent ran across endless catwalks with automatic weapons just kicking up sparks around him, Kurtz knew that there was very little cover on any exposed steel. One aimed slug would probably do the job.

  No guts, no glory, said part of his mind.

  Where the fuck did that thought come from? replied the sensible majority of his brain. He would do a commonsense audit later.

  Kurtz glided up the ladder, his long, dark coat billowing behind him. When he was level with the distant control room, Kurtz threw himself flat on the catwalk, wishing that the steel were solid instead of a grille.

  No shots. No movement.

  Kurtz moved out from the wall, crawling, his knees and elbows being abraded by the rusty metal, pistol aimed. At the moment, he wished to Christ that he had kept the Kimber.45, incriminating bullet-matches or no. Another reason to get to Doc's control room and supply closet.

  At the first juncture of catwalks, Kurtz paused. There was enough metal beneath him and around him here to act as a partial shield for a shot from below, but there were also two tiers of catwalks higher up. Kurtz did not like that. Up near the ceiling, sixty feet above the mill floor, the shadows were almost impenetrable. Anyone already up there would see him silhouetted against the few lights on the floor below, and it was always easier to fire downward with accuracy than up.

  Kurtz rolled on his side and studied the approach to the control room.

  Three catwalks on this level connected to Doc's glass and steel box, but all three were illuminated from trouble lights below and the glow from Doc's lighted shack. One catwalk ran east and west a dozen or so feet above the control room and connected to this level with a ladder. Twenty feet above that second catwalk, three higher catwalks—and very thin ones at that, as far as Kurtz could tell peering up at the shadows—ran out from the walls to various old crane beams and girders. The highest catwalks crisscrossed above the control tower. This would be the most concealed avenue of approach, and the height—at least sixty feet—might hinder a shot from a handgun. The only problem was that no ladder or stairway ran down from these highest crane-maintenance catwalks to the second level above the control tower. There were a few steel support cables running down, but these looked very thin from this distance.

  Fuck it, thought Kurtz and began climbing again.

  The high catwalk was half the width of the one he had climbed from. Kurtz's elbows almost slipped over the side as he began crawling out toward the center of the open space. He could feel the narrow catwalk sway to his movement, so he kept his motion as fluid as possible.

  It was so damned dark up here that someone could be sitting on the same catwalk ten feet in front of him, and he wouldn't see him. Kurtz thumbed the hammer of the.38 back as he crawled, pisto
l extended.

  Don't be an asshole, came the condescending thought. Nobody else would be stupid enough to come up this high.

  It was high. Kurtz tried not to look down, but it was impossible not to see through the open metal grate of the catwalk. He could see the filthy, littered tops of the floor-level office roofs to his right, the mounds of dark rock heaped like sandbox piles littering the main floor, and the black spiderweb of catwalks and cables below. Kurtz felt a pang of sympathy for the mill workers who would have to crawl out on this exposed, wobbly catwalk to work on the high cranes.

  Fuck them. They were probably paid hazardous-duty pay. Halfway out, Kurtz noticed that the catwalk was so unstable primarily because the company had ripped out the crane itself, obviously selling it and its motors and primary support equipment. The catwalks ended thirty feet above and twenty feet beyond the control tower in… nothing.

  How much support did the crane and its superstructure provide? Kurtz paused and tilted his neck, looking up at where the pitifully few and thin steel cables ended in the ceiling just ten feet or so above him. It was too dark to see cracks or missing bolts, but it was obvious that the cables alone had not been designed to support this catwalk system.

  He kept crawling.

  Just above the control tower and—despite the shadows—Kurtz began doubting just how invisible he was < here. Everything felt exposed and tenuous.

  The roof of Doc's control shack was flat and black. The catwalk below looked thin and shaky, and the three catwalks below that were obviously impossibly distant. The only good thing Kurtz could find to think about his present position was that it provided a good vantage point. Nothing moved in the cold, empty space, but much of his field of vision—and fire, if he had been carrying a better pistol or a rifle—was blocked by limerock heaps and hidden by shadows.

  Kurtz lay on his side to give his elbows a rest and found that he could feel his heart pounding. Close up, the steel cables he had seen from far away looked even thinner and less substantial man they had from a distance. Each cable was thinner man his little finger, almost certainly was saw-toothed with steel burrs and razor-sharp loose strands, and was attached to the outside of the lower catwalk, making it difficult for him to see how he could even swing over the handrail down there without exposing himself for lethal lengths of time.

  I'm wearing gloves, he thought. He flexed his fingers in the thin leather and almost laughed out loud at the thought of the cheap gloves protecting him from steel burrs.

  Well, it was either start crawling back toward the wall or do something.

  Kurtz thumbed the hammer down, secured the pistol tight in his waistband, swung over the catwalk, grabbed the cable, felt his heart leap into his throat, and then started down as quickly as he could, swaying, using his shoes and hands as brakes, going down hand over hand rather than running the risk of sliding. The control room was thirty feet below and ten feet to his right. There was nothing beneath him except for empty air and cold stone sixty feet down.

  Kurtz reached the lower layer of catwalks, swung, missed his first try, and then swung again. He dropped onto the wider catwalk. It swayed, but not as violently as the higher one had.

  Not resting for a second, Kurtz loped to the intersection of the three walkways, swung over the side to the man ladder, ignored the rungs, and slid down the outside rails in pure U.S. Navy fashion.

  He hit the lowest catwalk hard, illuminated now by the glow through the dirty control-room windows just fifteen feet away. Kurtz rolled, crouched, and moved in a fast duckwalk to the wall of the control room.

  Panting, he moved fast, kicking the unlocked door open and throwing himself into the room.

  Doc's going to laugh his ass off, was his final thought before hitting and rolling.

  Doc was beyond laughing. The old man was lying in front of the padlocked supply closet. There were at least four large-caliber entry wounds visible: three on his chest and one in his throat. Doc had bled out, and the pool of blood had covered a third of the floor space. Kurtz swung his little.38 left, right, and left again, but other than the corpse and him, the control room was empty.

  CHAPTER 31

  Kurtz duckwalked closer to Doc's body, keeping his head below the level of the windows, ignoring the blood on his shoes and knees. The padlock to the back room was still secure.

  Pistol still covering the doorway, Kurtz patted down Doc's old leather jacket and his bloody trousers.

  No keys. Doc kept the padlock keys on a large ring with his other security-guard keys. The key ring was gone.

  Kurtz crawled over and checked the desk drawers and even the low filing cabinets, but the keys were gone.

  He considered shooting off the padlock, but even as he weighed the pros and cons, he heard footsteps on the floor below. One man. Running.

  Shit! Kurtz reached up and turned off the single desk lamp. His eyes adapted quickly, and soon the rectangles of windows and doors seemed very bright. There was no more sound.

  Kurtz grabbed Doc by his jacket collar and dragged the old man across the smeared floor. His old acquaintance felt very, very light, and Kurtz wondered idly if it was a result of having bled out.

  I'm sorry, Doc, he thought and wrestled the old man to his knees and then upright in the open doorway, using his left arm around the body while he kept to the side of the door, peering around the door frame.

  The first bullet hit Doc high in the chest again. The second took off the top of the old man's skull just at the hairline.

  Kurtz let the body drop, raised the.38, and squeezed off three shots toward the point of muzzle flash at a bank of machinery about fifty feet away. Bullets whined off steel. Kurtz threw himself back just as four more shots blew out the window on his right and slammed against the open door to his left.

  One gun firing, thought Kurtz. Probably 9mm semi-auto.

  He knew that did not mean that there was only one shooter down there. He doubted if he could be so lucky.

  Three more shots, very close together. One came in the open door, ricocheted off the steel ceiling, and struck sparks on the floor and two walls before embedding itself in the desk.

  A couple of seconds of silence as the shooter slapped in a new magazine. Kurtz used the intermission to reload the three bullets he'd fired. His spent brass rolled into the black pool of blood behind him and stopped rolling.

  Five more shots from below in immediate succession, the loud 9mm blast echoing. Four of the slugs ricocheted around Kurtz's small place. One of the ricochets slammed into Doc's upturned face with the sound of a hammer striking a melon. Another ripped the shoulder padding on Kurtz's topcoat.

  This is not a good place, he thought. The shots were still coming from the heap of girders and dismantled machinery to the right of the control tower. It was quite possible—even probable—that a second and third shooter were waiting somewhere to his left, like duck hunters in a blind. But Kurtz had little choice.

  Swinging into the doorway, he fired all five shots toward the darkness to his right. The shooter returned fire—four more shots—the last two ripping the air where Kurtz had stood only a second earlier.

  He ran in the opposite direction along the catwalk, shaking the spent brass out of the.38's cylinder and trying to reload as he ran. He dropped a bullet, fumbled out another. Five in. He snapped the cylinder shut even as he ran full tilt.

  Footsteps pounding below him. The shooter had run from cover and was running under the control room, firing as he went. A flashlight beam played along the catwalk. Sparks leaped and bullets whined ahead of and behind Kurtz. Could it be just the one shooter?

  I couldn't be that lucky.

  Kurtz knew that he could never make the extra hundred feet or so to the wall without being hit. Even if he could, he would be an easy target as he crawled down the ladder.

  Kurtz had no intention of running all the way to the wall. Grabbing a suspension cable with his left hand, clinging tight to the.38 with his right, Kurtz swung up and over the handrail
and dropped.

  It was still a bone-smashing thirty feet to the mill floor, but Kurtz had jumped above the first pile of limerock he had reached, and the heap was at least fifteen feet high. Kurtz hit on the side away from the shooter—smashing into the sharp rock and rolling in a cascade of cinders and stones—but the slope helped break his fall without breaking his neck.

  Kurtz rolled out in a landslide of black stone and was on his feet running again before the shooter came around the heap.

  Two shots from behind, but Kurtz was already running full speed around the third pile. He slid to a stop and dropped prone, bracing the short-barreled revolver with his left hand clamping his right wrist.

  The shooter wasn't coming.

  Kurtz opened his mouth wide, trying to calm his panting, listening hard.

  Limerock slid and scraped behind him and to the right. Either the shooter or an accomplice was flanking him, climbing over the limerock heap or climbing around it.

  Kurtz shifted the.38 to his left hand and rolled right, sweeping black pebbles over him like a man attending to his own burial. He dug his feet into the heap, letting the small, smooth stones slide over him. He butted his head into a depression in the heap and let the black rock cover everything but his eyes. As the stones settled, Kurtz shifted the pistol to his shooting hand, but buried the hand in rock.

  He knew that he was only partially covered, quite visible in all but the dimmest light. But the light here was very dim indeed. Kurtz aimed the.38 in the direction of the earlier sound and waited.

  Another sliding sound. There was just enough light for Kurtz's eyes to see the silhouette of his attacker's gun arm as it came around the edge of the mound of limerock twenty feet or so away. Kurtz waited.

  A man's head and shoulder appeared and then jerked back out of sight. Kurtz waited.

  The light was stronger behind Kurtz. That meant that the shooter could see silhouettes on the floor or rock pile better than Kurtz could. Kurtz could only wait and hope that he was not presenting a silhouette to view.