by Barry, Mike
“You’re too much,” Stevens said.
“Well,” Wulff said, vaulting from the jeep and standing by the roadway, “it beats working for the New York narcotics squad.”
He looked out into the distance with Stevens, considering.
XIV
They ditched the jeep by the side of the road, finally, sheltering it under a clump of trees, and made their entrance on foot. Stevens had been all for sinking the vehicle entirely but Wulff had said no, they might possibly have use for it later and in any event, ditching it would be more trouble than it was worth in terms of the attention they might attract. There were woods cutting off DiStasio’s estate from the road and they made their way through it with difficulty, the ooze sticking to their shoes, branches jutting out, administering small, painful blows throughout the body. DiStasio had sealed himself in pretty well, no question about it. All of them had sealed themselves in well, they were experts, these people, they knew how to cut themselves off from the very consequences of the lives they were leading. No ragged pack of citizens would come through this wood to burn and sack the DiStasio estate, no counter-revolutionaries could find a position from which to bring fire. There was only the necessity to stagger through the wood, approaching the house in a concealed fashion, avoiding the cobbled roadway which certainly was patrolled and hope that there would be some position from which to fire once they got to the top of the hill. They staggered up that rise, gasping, the pistols in Wulff’s clothing slamming into him at odd intervals, making him inhale in pain so that a few times he simply had to stop while Stevens, himself in bad condition, hung against a tree trunk and breathed hoarsely.
Finally he passed over two pistols to Stevens, trusting the man finally and irrevocably and after that the climb was a little easier. They came finally to a point about fifty yards downrange from the estate and Wulff looked through the clearing cautiously. From this distance there seemed to be no surveillance whatsoever, the grounds were deserted, small plumes of smoke drifting from a chimney toward the rear gave things almost a pastoral tinge, but that Wulff knew was deceptive. Surely there was a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree surveillance conducted from some point of the estate and the moment that they came into the clear they were under severe risk. There was the sound, then, of a helicopter.
It was an unmistakable sound. Wulff could identify it instantly and he was not an old hand like Stevens who involuntarily jerked to attention and looked toward the sound. As they stared a copter appeared at some point far above them, dropping in a quick, graceful descent toward a landing point which would put it on a low, flat terrain midway between their vantage point and the estate. The machine gleamed, the sun bouncing little particles off it.
“Look at that,” Stevens said. “The man is good.”
Professional admiration to be sure. The helicopter was coming in delicately, easily at a rate of descent that would not break eggs. The pilot controlled the sideways motion absolutely, the hand on the throttle so steady that there was no miss in the engine even as the RPM’S dropped further. “He’s getting out,” Wulff said.
“What?” said Stevens absorbed in the landing. “What’s that? Who’s getting out?”
“DiStasio. Obviously he’s planning to leave the country with the valise.”
“By helicopter,” Stevens said. “The boy at those controls is really good, isn’t he?” His eyes were glazed, he was focussed to attention. Wulff was able, almost, to envy him. It would be nice to admire something that much, to be able to generate that kind of respect for a machine.
“He’s not bad,” Wulff said. “He would have made a good combat pilot.”
“Combat?” Stevens said. “With a hand like that he could have done stunt shows.”
Gently, delicately, the copter came down on the enormous lawn. It swayed carefully, left to right as the pilot checked for balance, then came down, bobbling slightly on the wheel struts as contact was made. The pilot cut the machine down to idle and the blades revolved almost noiselessly, little wisps of smoke and haze drifting out from the cockpit to blend into the air underneath him.
“He’s not getting out,” Wulff said after a moment. “He’s waiting.”
Stevens carefully restored a branch to the front of his face and said, “That would be reasonable, wouldn’t it? DiStasio should be out any moment now.”
“That could make it a little easier,” Wulff said. “He may come out with only a bodyguard.”
“Nothing is easier,” Stevens said. “There’s probably an armed guard in that cockpit.”
“Probably,” Wulff said, “it would make sense if there was. Still, let’s wait for him.”
“All right,” Stevens said, “that suits me. I sure as hell don’t want to take the house.”
Me neither, Wulff thought and yet that was dangerous thinking. Without Stevens he might have followed his own inclination, which was to rush the house at once and take the consequences. There would have been, then, at least the element of surprise; DiStasio could not have possibly anticipated a direct attack and they might have succeeded. However, DiStasio would certainly be on the alert as he approached the copter. That would be his only point of exposure, after all, moving from the seclusion of the house to the protection of the plane; it stood to reason that he would be geared to the highest point of alertness then.
The thing about Stevens’ kind of thinking, of playing matters cautiously, functioning on the path of least resistance, was that it was so seductive. It was so easy to fall into it, to hold back, to take the safe rather than the proper path. Looking sidewise at the man next to him Wulff began to see exactly how Stevens had become the kind of man he was, why at the age of thirty he was functioning, or had been functioning, as an odd-jobs man for a corrupt official in a two-bit country. He was like most of the men on the narco squad; all that he wanted to do was to survive, to cut corners, to get along. It could not even be called a matter of corruption. People like DiStasio were corrupt. They devoted themselves to aggrandizement and destruction with the same energy that Wulff was trying to devote to set matters right. But it was the people in the middle like Stevens who were responsible for almost all of the problems: the people who merely wanted to get along as best they could, curry no disfavor, make it from one day to the next. And they were so reasonable in their outlook, their arguments so defensible that at almost any given point it was hard to resist them. Certainly, unless you saw the end-product here in the person of Stevens, unless you could see the exact results of being accommodating, not taking chances, cutting corners, you might do it yourself. Already Stevens had corrupted him. Cuba had become a nightmare of missed purposes because he had slid along with it rather than rising to the circumstances. If he had gone after Delgado immediately he might have gotten to DiStasio at the same time. Now he had to do two sweaty, nasty jobs instead of one. Son of a bitch, Wulff thought, looking at Stevens, son of a bitch, he is the enemy. This did not exactly change the situation.
Stevens tensed, seeing something even before Wulff did. “All right,” he said, “here he comes.”
Wulff followed the man’s gaze. In the distance, two men were walking from the house, one of them holding a large, bulky object against him. This must be DiStasio, then, the object the valise. The man behind him, following in close order no more than a pace separated was carrying a machine gun. Briskly they walked toward the copter.
“Son of a bitch,” Wulff said, “they don’t take any chances at all, do they?”
“A machine gun,” Stevens said almost reverently. “How the hell are they going to get equipment like that on a light copter?”
“Oh they’ll manage,” Wulff said, “they’ll manage.” He looked at DiStasio downrange, the little man walking almost jauntily and then reached inside his coat and took out a pistol. The man might have been thirty yards from the copter now. The blades stroked lazily.
Stevens reached out and put a hand on Wulff’s wrist. “Are you crazy?” he said.
“No.”
“Shut up,” Wulff said distinctly. “Shut the fuck up.” And then with assurance waved the pistol backhand, hit Stevens a stunning crack on the forehead. With a little shriek the man fell heavily. Wulff felt just an instant of remorse; he had not wanted to do it, this man had fought with him in one of the worst battles of all. But it had to be done, Stevens had to be dumped, he could no longer go along with him because the man’s terror was holding him back and it was contagious as well. He kicked Stevens away, making this calculation in just an instant and then aimed the pistol quickly, bore it down on the man holding the machine gun. And he fired.
That was the only hope, to get the man carrying the gun. Stevens in his panic had not seen that obviousness; that of course the bodyguard would have to be downed. That was the only way to DiStasio. The man holding the machine gun spun as the shot hit him and then in perfect, soundless slow motion lifted the weapon clumsily against his chest, pointing it in Wulff’s direction. He struggled with the mechanism, at the same time as DiStasio dove toward the ground. And then he must have found the trigger because the gun began to boom. But even as the first shots sprayed out, moving well above Wulff’s head, the man had collapsed, the machine gun flung from him in the death agony, the gun rolling harmlessly on the field.
He had downed him.
DiStasio lunged toward the coper, holding the valise, and then, as Wulff came from the bushes aiming, DiStasio must have seen that that wouldn’t work, there was simply no way that he could get to safety before Wulff would place the killing shot. Instead he dropped the valise reached inside his clothing and in one gesture which was almost a blur got a shot off which passed above Wulff’s left shoulder, just missing him. Wulff dove, unconscious of everything but the need to find cover and as he did so the pistol, in his fall was torn loose from his hand, rolled away from him. DiStasio put the second shot a foot in front of Wulff’s face and then ran toward him. Wulff tried to roll toward some kind of safety but there was none. DiStasio had him levelled. But the man was not shooting; instead he closed in on Wulff and then stood above him at a distance of six feet, holding the pistol, looking at him.
The man’s face was contorted with fury. Looking up at him Wulff understood why DiStasio had not put in the killing shot. He was so filled with hatred that he wanted to see Wulff’s face in the knowledge of death. He wanted Wulff to know panic before death, die with his bowels open. He would not give him that. If it all ended here, then it must, but he would not give the enemy the satisfaction of breaking him. He waited.
“You son of a bitch,” DiStasio said, “you dirty bastard, I want you to beg for it. Come on. Come on beg to live.” He squeezed off another shot, it landed in the dirt near Wulff’s wrist. “Beg for your life,” he said.
Wulff said nothing. He lay there like a patient on a hospital rack and closed his eyes. It was not true that death was the common end. There were any one of a number of ways to die and each of them refracted back upon the life that man had lived. He would not buckle. He would not beg. He had done all of his dying in New York, months before.
“You crazy, lousy bastard,” DiStasio said, “you’ve ruined everything, everything you touch turns to shit, don’t you know that? But you’ve come to the end of it now.” He let out a maniacal laugh. “Beg,” he said again, “I want you to beg.”
Wulff shook his head.
“All right,” DiStasio said. He was a short man with transparent features; this was a man, Wulff thought staring up at him, who found it impossible to conceal his emotions to maintain any kind of dissemblance whatsoever. Everything would show on his face the instant that he felt emotion. Right now confusion was making the changes with hatred around his lips and mouth. “You killed a good man,” he said. “You killed a good man. Delgado.” ready to betray him.”
“Delgado was such a good man that you were ready to betray him.”
“Delgado was a good man, an old revolutionary, he was one of those up in the mountains,” DiStasio said, not hearing what Wulff had said. “He worked hard and he deserved better than this.”
“Delgado was a dealer.”
“You killed my friend. You killed Raoul Delgado.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Wulff said and he thought yes, you do believe that, you believe it completely. You have managed to convince yourself that Delgado was your friend, that you were not going to betray him and that in killing me you are merely avenging his death. Already DiStasio had his cover story straight. Even before the commission of the act he had altered reality to accommodate his interpretation of it. No wonder, Wulff thought, no wonder that this man was the head of the intelligence division. Ex-head, of course. DiStasio would have another career waiting.
“Goodbye you filthy, dirty, rotten, murdering son of a bitch,” DiStasio said and aimed the gun and gritted his teeth and something came into his left ear and his head exploded.
DiStasio’s skull opened up like a pulped tomato, spitting seeds of brain and blood and he put a hand to his head, touched the explosion, brought down the hand with what was still left of his intelligence must have seen it, must have seen what had happened to him. He emitted one terrible wail like a tortured infant and then fell heavily across Wulff, the body already like a corpse, covering him like a sheet. Wulff took the impact off his haunches and stood above him, holding a pistol.
“You know,” he said to Wulff with the casualness of a stranger asking someone to please get off his toes in a crowded public place, “you’re just goddamned lucky that you didn’t hit me hard enough to really put me to sleep. Where the fuck would you have been then, I want to know?”
He sounded piqued.
XV
In the copter, Figueroa saw everything. He saw everything but he could not believe it: his boss, the best of the bodyguards, the valise that was somehow so important to this, they were all coming aboard the copter and then in the next moment the shots had begun and then the terrible, unbelievable scene which followed. He simply could not believe it, he could not believe what was going on but he knew that he should not interfere either. DiStasio after the bodyguard was killed seemed to have the situation completely in control and he would only become very angry if Figueroa interfered. Once Figueroa had interfered in something like this and DiStasio’s wrath had been terrible; Figueroa had been afraid that he was going to get killed himself. DiStasio was very private about his murders. So Figueroa merely sat hunched over in the compartment, watching all of this, giving orders to the pilot with his hands that he was to keep in place, do nothing, keep the motor running. Surely DiStasio would come aboard quickly, just as soon as he had finished his business with this man lying on the ground and he would want the motor running.
Figueroa waited it out. It could not be long now although he found himself becoming a little impatient; DiStasio was his boss and a wonderful man but he wished that he would not relish killing as much as he did. Figueroa had watched DiStasio kill five or six men now and toward the end the kills had been very slow and soft because DiStasio wanted his victims to beg. He liked begging; he was making this one beg now but probably the man was holding out, that was all.
Suddenly the two forms touched and then he saw DiStasio levelling the gun. Now at last it would be over. DiStasio would kill the man and would get in the copter and Figueroa was glad, because he always felt a little bit empty when he was not near his boss where he could see and touch him. Also he had been very frightened at the strangeness and suddenness of this attack. Surely everything would be all right now, though. He saw DiStasio level the gun and then, from nowhere, a bullet struck his boss and Figueroa saw horror.
It was pure horror; he had never seen anything so terrible in his life. DiStasio’s head, that handsome, passionate head was suddenly opening up like a decayed fruit and from all kinds of openings and holes Figueroa c
ould see the blood lurching. It was a mortal shot; Figueroa knew it instantly. DiStasio was dead even as he lifted a hand to draw it across his bloody face and then stare at it with a shudder. Figueroa could see death in the gesture; then DiStasio fell over the man that he had been about to kill. It was a death fall. From a clearing another man holding a pistol had come and now he joined them.
Figueroa screamed. It was the scream which he had been building up within himself for thirty-nine years; a scream of utter torment and loss because now his boss, his protector, his life and guardian was gone but as he screamed he was, at some cold and efficient level of himself, working and thinking. He drew his pistol. If nothing else he would kill the men who had killed his boss, wreak a terrible vengeance upon them and then he would bury his boss and kill himself because there was no point in living. But even as he aimed the pistol clumsily through an open part of the compartment his hand jiggled and he felt himself losing aim. The copter was lifting.
“Goddamn it!” Figueroa screamed, still trying to get off a shot. But the copter was coming off the ground at great speed; they were now ten to twenty feet up and soaring, soaring. “What are you doing?” he screamed to the pilot. “You had your orders—”
“Not me,” the pilot said behind the bulkhead. He was one of the best in the corps of engineers, the best that Figueroa could find but he was merely a hired man without true inner loyalty and now he sounded like one. “We must save ourselves. I do not know what is going on down there but we are taking a terrible risk—”
“Put it down!” Figueroa screamed, “you can’t do this! Put the plane down! We cannot leave; he may still be alive—”
“No,” the pilot said. “That man is not alive, and even if he were our primary responsibility is to ourselves and to property. We cannot remain there and risk the property. My orders are very distinct. We will return to the capital and make a full report and troops will be sent—”
