Not that I gave a damn.
The spell of silence that had descended upon the other players in the moment after the Voice of Heaven’s initial accusation still hung thick and stifling over the room.
They had come to play poker, not to be entertained by a clown act.
Still, it isn’t every day you are privileged to see a professional blatherskite wag his jaw without talking, and the unexpected discovery that a media icon—spiritual leader of a television ministry estimated (even by skeptics) at upward of fifteen million souls—was also a sleazy little card cheat might be worth the price of admission.
And there was a bonus.
His trip to the floor had been bumpier than I’d thought—and one of the bumps had dislodged something from the breast pocket of his coat. A small, neat packet of white powder lay forlorn on the carpet beside him, and its mate could be glimpsed peeking out from the space between lapel and shirtfront.
It explained a lot.
Or maybe it didn’t. At any rate, Sam Goines was not pleased.
“Preacher...” he said.
“That’s what they call me.”
He did not speak again, but he was still communicating and I heard every word of it. As he knew I would.
Lots of people call me Preacher.
The name fits and it’s easy to remember. But not everyone knows that it’s not entirely because of the black suit and string tie that are my poker-playing uniform. Sam’s silent monologue was a rebuke, not subtle and not accidental, and there were replies I might have offered. But I kept them to myself.
If complaints were in order, he probably had a right to them.
He was a friend, someone who had been to see the elephant. Once upon a time—back before the beginning of recorded history, it seemed now—we had been close, protecting each other’s backs in a world made of broken glass and sharp objects. That alliance, and the reasons for it, had passed long since into dim memory. But friendship had not, and this session had been arranged as a kind of ten-year reunion. The boys in autumn. Sam had set up the game, selected the players, and included me among them as an act of amity, an evocation of times long past but well remembered. And now I had flattened one of the guests and perhaps offended the others.
On the whole, though, I can’t say he had any real cause for complaint—and the Voice of Heaven might even have glimpsed in it the protecting hand of the Almighty.
Down there on the floor, the larceny-hearted bastard was safe.
And that was a lot more than you could say for the rest of us.
We were all sitting upright, exposed, and taken entirely by surprise a moment later when the double doors to the VIP suite exploded in a ruin of splinters and sound to admit two men wearing dark workmen’s jumpers and stocking masks, who opened fire on us with mini-Uzi submachine guns.
A SERMON
(CONTINUED)
Power, for this ancient ruler, had been a matter of violence, always. He had come to his throne by violence, and he spread his kingdom by violence, and he remained a violent and wrathful man all the days of his life.
In this respect, he is a man of our time as well as of his own.
For we live in a world of violent events...
TWO
Only heroes are required to be heroes; the rest of us are exempt.
My first instinct was to hit the dirt and roll toward darkness. Humankind survived its infancy by an inborn tendency to flee from loud noises and unexpected visitors; run now and think later. Its claws may be sharper than yours.
But time means change and change means learning.
The modern world has developed all kinds of situations where instinct must be subdued in aid of staying alive, and I had that in mind as I lunged forward—in the direction of the nearer of the two stutter-gun mechanics—instead of joining the general scramble to the rear.
Fully automatic weapons have a logic all their own.
So do closed rooms.
Escaping from just one Uzi in the hands of just one competent user can pose a real problem when the field of fire is unrestricted and cover virtually nonexistent. Getting away from two of the damn things is a labor that admits of no solution whatever within the realm of sane and considered action—and therefore must be attacked, like any truly impossible project, with total insanity.
Right up my alley.
And I had an extra advantage: The world and I were already moving at different speeds.
The little scene with the Voice of Heaven on Earth had put me in an unusual frame of mind for a man who had been playing poker all night. I was alert, reflexes at peak and primed for intense effort, with senses and perceptions at ultra pitch. Everything around me still seemed to be in slow motion.
The unannounced entrance of two machine gunners, therefore, played itself out almost leisurely from my point of view and gave me far more time for reflection and decision than I might otherwise have had.
I used it as well as I could.
First a little distraction: I sent the poker table flying toward the gunner farthest from me. The shower of cards, chips, ashtrays, and drinks kept him busy for a moment and left me free to deal with his colleague.
Form is much in the martial arts, and for classic performance the move that I made—a forward roll to remain under the general line of fire before ending on my feet with arms crossed to deliver a double kite—should have been accompanied by kiai, the deep-chested shout intended to transfix one’s opponent and to intensify one’s personal force.
But I attacked in silence. The kata of the martial arts are intended for close combat, with the exception of those few that may involve evasion or harmless interception of hand-and-bow-powered missiles. Firearms at any range outside the reach of an arm are all more or less beyond consideration. A no-no, Hollywood chop-socky notwithstanding. And the kind of firearms that cycle 950 nine-millimeter Parabellum rounds per minute are definitely in that category. Machine gunners, therefore, become accustomed to the standard reactions of flight and interposition when dealing with unarmed prey.
Targets that attack barehanded are the stuff of dreams. Of nightmares...
Faced with such a situation, a gunman can find in himself doubts and hesitations that he thought he had put aside long ago, and the target’s best move is to keep him thinking that way as long as possible. This time it worked well enough to bring my hands within range, but not well enough to end the engagement then and there. Both my kites missed. The one intended to crush the intruder’s larynx broke his collarbone instead, while the blow I’d hoped might stop his heart did no more than loosen his grip on the Uzi.
But that was sufficient.
A burst of fire that might otherwise have turned my head into pink mist rattled harmlessly into the ceiling and I was able to take the weapon with me, breaking his right forefinger in the process, before beginning a second roll in the direction of the other gunman, who was swiveling in my direction after evading the table.
He was quicker and smarter; instead of firing at the spot where I had been—the reaction I had hoped to see—he swung the metal stock of his Uzi toward my oncoming head and almost connected before I was able to parry with the weapon I had taken from his partner.
That was bad, too.
The metallic clangor of the colliding weapons was something from the known world. Real. It shattered the tenuous fabric of illusion that had slowed and confused the intruders, and left me facing the pair of them on even terms. The one who was still armed pivoted like a bullfighter to avoid the rush to which I was now physically committed. I turned a shoulder under to deflect myself to the right and used momentum to lend emphasis to that most ancient and effective Oriental maneuver known vulgarly as a Kick in the Formal Dances.
It was as subtly efficacious as always.
The gunman screamed, folded at the middle, almost dropped his Uzi—and gave me a moment or two for recovery and reflection.
I needed all the moments I could get. The man now clutching his midsection
was still armed and, therefore, still had to be considered the more dangerous of the pair, but it was his unarmed companion who now constituted the true threat. He was not where he was supposed to be. I had left him nursing a ripped and fractured finger when I went for the other Uzi-bearer and had hoped to see him in the same position when I turned with the captured weapon in my hand.
But he was gone.
Where?
The room was now virtually innocent of obstruction, chairs and tables all swept aside in the general confusion. No place to hide.
The shattered double doors, however, were still open and I thought fleetingly of rushing through them in hot pursuit. But not for more than a second.
I’m crazy, not stupid.
Besides, there was still the problem of the remaining gunner. The Uzi dangled, apparently forgotten, as he remained in the classic “September Morn” pose of true visceral distress. But he was still alive, awake—and dangerous—as I discovered when I moved to snatch the Israeli chopper from his grasp.
“Fuck you, asshole!”
They were the first words he had spoken, and I found them almost touching in their earthy familiarity. My kind of folks. My feelings were almost brotherly as I watched him swing the Uzi once again in the direction of my head and force himself—with an effort and control that must have been expensive—to stand erect.
I dodged easily, wondering if perhaps he had forgotten that the thing in his hand was intended more for shooting than for batting practice. I certainly hadn’t, and my own fingers were already curling around the rear pistol grip of the stutter gun I’d stolen from his partner when I understood the reason he hadn’t tried to blow me away.
The Uzi is a clip-fed weapon, and he was using the standard thirty-two-cartridge combat box. He hadn’t fired because the clip was empty, and now he was trying to release it from the pistol grip and insert another. His movements were cool, controlled, and efficient. Behind the stocking mask, his eyes seemed to widen and bulge, fixing on the center of my face as the mesh-flattened mouth thinned to a hard line. The world began to slow.
Oh, this one was good.
Professional.
Deprived of all other weapons, he was using the mana of his own gaze in an all-out effort to hypnotize me—hold me in situ long enough for him to get the fresh clip out of his jumper and into the weapon. And it might have worked. Even filtered through nylon mesh, his eyes were compelling, filled with the power of his persona. It was a good show, worth paying to see. But not worth dying for.
I snapped myself back into the real world.
“Freeze,” I said, bringing the ugly little snout of my stolen weapon up into firing position as I released the safety.
The button man’s hand stopped moving, but I could sense no attitude of resignation or surrender. He looked at me for a moment and then at the hand-chopper. He was thinking, and if I’d had sense enough to do the same I would have used the time to jam the Uzi into the still-tender area of his midsection, just for luck. But firearms are a snare and a delusion.
They give the impression of power and control, channel thought into a single straight line.
And that’s how funeral directors get rich.
“Fuck you,” the hitter said again, and threw the Uzi at my head. I ducked, curled my finger around the trigger, aimed for the legs to make sure we would have a chance to talk later...and found out why he had seemed so confident. As he had suspected, my ammo clip was as empty as his own.
Well, hell and harpsichords...
I made a quick grab in his direction, reflecting darkly on the vanity of all human works and earthly endeavor, and wasn’t at all surprised when I missed. He was already in motion, making for the shattered glass double doors that led to the balcony, and I was going to be too late to stop him, though I couldn’t see why he wanted to go out there.
The balcony was narrow, surrounded on three sides by Nevada night air, and thirty-two stories above the earth. The tower penthouse suites are built on an aesthetically interesting overhang that would rule out any thought of through-the-window-below movie heroics.
But he hadn’t planned to go down.
Our button man was, it seemed, an acrobat of sorts, and it was becoming increasingly clear that preparations for tonight’s operation had been both thorough and competent.
The Sultan’s Turret of the Scheherazade is designed to look medieval Eastern, pointed and moody-looking, from ground level. But its top is really flat, and the architectural grace note that makes it look otherwise is an overhang that provides partial shade for top-floor balconies.
Disregarding what must have been serious complaint from his battered testicles, the fleeing gunman took two quick steps toward the railing—and leapt into space, catching himself at the last moment on the edge of the overhang. Heels together and toes pointed, he began an easy swing that was intended to use his momentum to skin the cat in a back somersault onto the roof tiles.
I could hear the sound of a helicopter approaching at flank speed.
Their escape vehicle...
His partner, I realized, would already have reached the roof-top pickup spot, and I had to admire the thinking that had gone into the evening’s program. If all had proceeded according to plan, it should have worked like a watch...and even with all that had gone wrong, it almost worked.
But almost isn’t even nearly good enough.
What happened wasn’t the fault of the planner or of the man who had to carry it out. His groin was still throbbing and the rhythm was wrong, the sense of sureness and power suddenly less reliable. He was plotting each movement now, forced to use the conscious mind in a way that can inhibit a trained athlete by a critical fraction—and can make all the difference.
The upward swing halted, achingly, in midturn with the toes not quite ready to complete their arc toward the surface of the overhang...and then the right hand slipped, altering balance.
Even in darkness I could appreciate the muscle-tearing effort to hang on, to force the stunt through. But it was no go.
There was a grunt of pain as the right hand slipped, and then a sob that mingled rage and fear in equal parts as the full weight of the body loosened the left hand’s grip on the roof edge. An instant later he was in free fall.
But only for about nine feet.
I had been too late to prevent him from reaching the balcony and beginning the acrobatics that might have left him free on the overhang. But I was just in time for the finale. My foot hooked solidly around one of the railing supports, and my hand shot out to close around his left wrist as he began the windmilling descent to Gehenna.
Hara.
The individual is a whole that can be directed; I seized the moment to center every ounce of power in the fingers of my right hand, and even so the sudden shock of his full weight—doubled and more by the accelerating force of gravity—came scraping and scratching to the very edge of being too great to bear.
But then the fall stopped.
And it was over.
We held that position in tableau for a long moment, my legs and body braced against the anodyzed aluminum of the balcony railing, one arm rigid in space beyond with a mass of human terror and surprise at its end. Ballet by Hitchcock; choreography by Stallone.
A moment to remember.
But too good to last.
“Hi, there!” I said. “In a hurry, or can you hang around for a while?”
Sometimes I’m such a cornball...
The face that looked up at me was still distorted by the stocking mask, but the depths of its eyes burned with tiny hell points.
I let him dangle.
My sense of time had slowed again; the acceleration that had enabled me to move quickly and accurately in the moments just after the initial attack was gone now, and I was back to living the minutes and seconds at the same rate as everyone else. The quiet center was spent and exhausted.
But, moment by moment, I was now able to force the world back into a semblance of order, to reestabli
sh control. The noise of the helicopter above us helped; it made reality of what was, essentially, disorder and insanity. I thought of a card from the Greater Arcana—Number 12, the Hanged Man—and brought its image to bear on the man suspended below me.
It helped a little.
The power that had centered momentarily in my right hand was redistributing itself after the near-overload performance, and I was able to use a part of it to reach out, probing for his wa, the personal aura and magnetism that surround all living beings. I found it without difficulty. And was immediately sorry.
I had expected the chill of terror; the dream-sweat that accompanies the sudden and unexpected perception of imminent death.
But his wa was hot. Marveling, even in recoil, I forced myself to face and evaluate the roiling nova of rage and frustration—and something else—that were the soul and center of his being. Fear was there, yes. But it was a prisoner, caged and impotent before the all-embracing authority of malice, centered and focused.
On me.
That was a surprise...and a revelation, because hatred of that intensity is not cheap. It does not come on command, and it cannot be bought or commanded.
It requires time. Effort.
And personal acquaintance: The man whose rage and detestation came hammering up in waves of heat could not be a stranger. He knew me and I knew him, and sometime, somewhere, we had been close enough to touch minds.
Yet even this was not enough. The something else I had sensed at first contact remained between us, flavoring and warping the rest. A crosscurrent almost of friendliness or fellow-feeling mixed with the angry heat of rejection.
Enough. I closed the way that had opened between us and groped for the unity of mind and body that is the essential condition of clear thought.
He knew me, but I still didn’t know him.
Aces and Eights Page 2
