Extreme Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “Can you reach it?” Jessica asked the stranger.

  He used the crutch to lift the case handle and inch it from below the walk, under which all manner of strange green growth flourished atop the lunar like surface of the silicified earth here. In a moment, both crutch and briefcase clattered noisily onto the boardwalk. “What's in it?” asked the curious jogger now.

  Jessica itched to open the case. It had to be Dorph­mann's legacy. Who else might have left it at this exact spot?

  “Quickly, open it,” said the stranger as he climbed back onto the boardwalk.

  Her fingers held over the clasps. Maybe there is a reason why I'm here, she thought, conversing with herself. Why the killer brought me to this place, and perhaps I just found it.

  “Open it up!” insisted the man, a gleaming curiosity filling his green eyes, his white beard showing his agitation as it bobbed.

  Dorphmann was no fool. He had led her from the start, as if she had a ring in her nose and he a rope. If he put the case here for her to discover after his death...

  The old man grabbed the case, saying, “It's mine. I found it. Whatever's inside belongs to me.”

  “Damn it, mister, it's evidence in a crime that occurred here. I'll have to confiscate the case, sir. And I don't want it opened until it can be checked out by a bomb squad.”

  “Bomb squad, fiddle-faddle. That's ridiculous. A crime scene, out here?” He threw out his arms, one with the case dangling from it, to indicate where they were, and he laughed.

  “Careful with that thing, please! I'm the FBI woman who stopped Feydor Dorphmann at this very spot. Surely you've heard the story if you're staying at the lodge?”

  “No, I've heard no such thing.” He was clutching the case close to him now. His eyes and his body language told her that he didn't believe a word she'd said. He began examining the case, ignoring her. She'd come out in a pullover and jeans, and she'd left her gun and credentials in her room.

  “Be careful with that thing. It's full of explosive ma­terials. Butane, gasoline, who knows what else? Dorphmann may've rigged it to go off in the event—”

  But the man had begun to step away from her, backing off, and Jessica had grabbed up her two crutches, trying to keep pace, imploring him the whole time when he cut her off.

  “If you're FBI, I'm the King of Wales.”

  “But I am!” Where's your badge, then? Your gun? Show me some proof.”

  “I'm on vacation. I left all that in my room, but, but—”

  He turned and jogged off with the case, going toward the lodge. Jessica futilely tried to keep pace. She saw him disappear into a sulfur cloud and turn a comer along the boardwalk ahead.

  “Please!” she shouted when suddenly she heard and saw evidence of a fireball explosion ahead of her. The old man now came running mindlessly, wildly back at her, engulfed in flames, his hands outstretched, his head and entire body captured in its own holocaust, his screams like those of Dorphmann before him. Jessica realized that his cotton jogging suit continued to fuel the blaze that the briefcase-triggered bomb had begun. She saw that his left hand was completely gone, his right dangling by a thread of tissue.

  A few feet before her now, Jessica attempted to tackle him, bring him down, and do what she could to smother the flames, knowing she had little hope of doing so. She could easily find her own clothing on fire. But just as she threw herself at the flaming figure, he went soaring off the boardwalk and into the spongy, moving earth alongside Hellsmouth pool.

  Jessica knew that but for the grace of God, the writhing figure on the edge of the hot pool might well be her. Now the blazing, tortured man rolled into the now inviting, en­ticing pool in a vain attempt to end the pain of fire. Once more, she was witness to the searing, blistering tongue of Satan as it licked up the flaming figure of the man who'd only stopped in an attempt to help out Jessica Coran.

  It was as if Satan, bent on destroying her, like a bad shot, managed to hit everyone around her instead.

  The wails and flames and shouts brought other joggers and walkers along the boardwalk racing toward the scene as Jessica cautiously climbed down from the boardwalk, discarding one cratch, using the second as a futile lifeline to the stranger who'd first befriended her and then sus­pected her of lying. The man miraculously found the crutch and the strength to hold on by wrapping an arm through it, his hands being useless. By now, others along the boardwalk, alerted to the incident, were beside Jessica, and they helped heave the dying man crawling from the pit.

  There was little left to save.

  His feet slipped away from him like melted paint from a canvas, leaving only bone. Jessica knew that it was a matter of how long he'd suffer at this point. He had third- and fourth-degree bums over a hundred percent of his body, the jogging suit gone, the skin tattered, peeling away like soggy mattress pieces, sodden and useless.

  All around her, Jessica heard park personnel and rangers yelling in a bucket-line fashion all the way back to the lodge that someone had fallen into Hellsmouth, that air transport to Mammoth or Bozeman was immediately needed.

  A sudden last breath expired from the man in a cloud of heat, and then he, too, expired, a blessing, an end to what must be absolute hell, she thought.

  Jessica now called up to the closest ranger and shouted, “Forget the rush. There's no hope for this man. He's gone. See if anyone recognizes his features, so we can identify him, notify any kin.”

  “That was a brave thing you did, Dr. Coran, pulling him back in like that,” said one young ranger. “I never seen anything so gutsy before in my life.”

  Jessica was helped back to the walk, her crutches handed over to her, onlookers blocking her view of the steaming corpse, what remained of the old man who'd taken her place out there in Hellsmouth.

  Now a kid ranger called for assistance over his hand­held radio, telling headquarters, “We got another dead body out at Hellsmouth, and there's been some sort of explosion. Best get out here, sir.” Through the confusion of noise, Jessica heard a young woman who worked at the lodge say that she thought the dead man was a Mr. Har­mon, who'd only come in on a bus the day before.

  Jessica found her feet, her bandaged wrists and ankles dirty and sodden now. She next struggled along the walk­way with her crutches to the area where the flaming man had come from. She located bits and pieces of canister, briefcase, and flesh remaining in and around a bench where he'd obviously stopped to tear open the case. Debris lit­tered the area on and off the walkway here where the man, consumed by his greed, had snatched open the case to reveal its contents, only to be met with a chemical bomb that spewed forth butane and gasoline and flame over him.

  Unfortunately, it was not over in an instant for the el­derly gentleman.

  Jessica would have to live with this ninth and final death in the Dorphmann case, just as she had to live with the deaths of eight others destroyed by Feydor Dorphmann's mania as prerequisites to her death. Even in death, Dor­phmann had reached out a final time, only to miss her once again. Still, he had not failed to fill the ninth level in his personal inferno with the death trap he'd set for her.

  All along the way, Dorphmann had known her steps, and so he still did. He'd somehow known, in the event of his death, that she'd return to this place; and he had some­how known she would discover his final calling card.

  She cautioned herself, however, saying aloud, “I dropped my crutch, which led to the discovery of the case. Nothing supernatural in that.” But why had she dropped her crutch over the side at exactly the spot where the killer had left the firebomb? Because that was the place I wanted to see again, she cautioned herself. That's all there is to it.

  More rangers from the Lodge began arriving, some in­stantly recognizing her, some keeping their distance. She saw Sam Fronval, who'd made a remarkable recovery, rushing out to her, his arms outstretched to take her in. Sam had returned to finish out his final tenure before re­tirement, and to turn over his headquarters to veteran ranger Charlie Venable, a m
an of Native American par­entage whom Jessica remembered from her first visit to Yellowstone.

  Venable stood alongside them where Sam held Jessica and her crutches in an enormous one-armed bear hug, his left arm and shoulder in a harness. Venable, his ranger hat covering his brow, looked squarely into Jessica's eyes and gave a little gasp, as if he saw something dark and sinister in her. Seeing her return his stare, Venable gathered in the scattered debris about them with equal awe. Then he looked beyond Jessica, as did Sam, to take in the body still lying on the crusted earth between Hellsmouth's bubbling waters and the boardwalk path, some twenty yards from where they now stood.

  Out of breath, Jessica nonetheless found voice to say, “Sam, we need to throw up a barricade around this debris and call in a bomb expert.”

  “What in God's name've you got yourself into now, Dr. Coran?” asked Charlie Venable with a litde shake of the head.

  “Moments ago, I was almost killed by a dead man, Mr. Venable, Sam. That's what's up. Buy me a cup of coffee at the lodge and I'll tell you all about it.”

  Fronval smiled and said, “Sounds like a plan. Take care of things here, Charlie, will you? Jessica and me, we have some catching up to do.”

  “Please wait for a bomb squad to get here,” Jessica cautioned Venable. “I'd like to recover as much of the incendiary device as possible to reconstruct the attempt on my life from a dead man.”

  “Yes, ma'am, of course,” replied Venable, a hearty- looking, weather blown man whose wild shock of hair waved in the wind here. Jessica and Fronval, each with wounds given them by Feydor Dorphmann, walked into the mist and away to the lodge, Jessica's crutches tapping out an anthem.

  Venable turned and stared at the debris, seeing parts of it off in the distance, far from the safety of the boardwalk. They also had the old man's body to recover. It seemed to Venable, as it did to the other rangers, that the solemnity and peace of the park had been destroyed since the mo­ment of Coran's arrival here, and it appeared that loss would continue until she left for good. No one would be more pleased to see her leave than Venable, just as he'd be pleased to see the last of old Sam.

  The park was entering a new era, and new leadership was required, so far as Venable was concerned. Sam knew his feelings on the matter. There was no hiding anything from a man like Fronval. For now Charlie would take Sam's orders to oversee the men and the mess left by Coran here, but soon Charlie would be overseeing his men and calling the shots.

  Jessica wanted to cast aside her crutches, wanted to make her way back to the lodge on her own two feet, but she still couldn't bring her full weight down on the burned feet and ankles, still in cumbersome bandages. It wasn't the first time she'd been left scarred by a killer; she prayed it would be the last.

  “You'll have to pardon my savages, Jessica,” he told her, apologizing for the stares and the underlying fear his rangers displayed of her. “They don't know how to behave before a living legend.”

  Jessica laughed at this. “Then Sam, how can they pos­sibly ever behave properly around you?”

  He laughed in return. “They don't! Let's go find that coffee, Jess. Then maybe you'll be up for a hunt?”

  “On these crutches, sure!” she complained.

  Sam laughed even harder and said, “You on crutches will do better than most men I know on two good legs.”