“He’s a muckraker.”
“He sure is. And that’s exactly what we need.”
Ray was silent for long moments. “We could write letters. It’s still days until Operation Barbados is scheduled. Someone somewhere might believe us.”
“Your credentials aren’t exactly invalid,” Sara said.
“No. I can vouch for my techniques with Martin’s hypnosis.”
“Can it be duplicated?”
“There’s no need to. It’s part of his conscious mind now.”
“Then he can repeat it?” Sara asked. They both looked at Martin. “Can you?” she asked.
“Yes,” Martin answered after a pause.
Sara’s excitement began to build. At last she had a weapon to overcome the frustration of recent events—a weapon not only of historical importance, but of personal vindication. “We’ll compose a letter containing all the facts in as brief form as possible. We make a list of the congressmen, columnists, and papers we want to contact. The letters we send will be essentially the same, but someone somewhere is going to have their interest sufficiently piqued to begin to make inquiries. The information is too damn specific.”
“If they don’t kill us all in the meantime,” Ray said.
“Once the information is in the hands of responsible parties, we’ll have built-in protection.”
Ray nodded. “I hope so, Sara. I hope to God so.” He walked toward the stairs. “I’ll get paper and the typewriter. We sure in hell better start today and get those letters mailed tomorrow.”
“Don’t they ever go to sleep?” Althea lowered the binoculars and turned impatiently toward Billie.
Billie took the glasses from her and trained them on Ray Heath’s lighted living room. He examined the room through the uncurtained windows for five minutes before putting the binoculars down. “The bastard’s typing something.”
“I’ll give you one guess what it is.”
“We’ll have to make sure we hit all three of them.”
Althea levered the short Uzi machine pistol from her haversack and checked that the magazine was firmly seated.
“Let’s get it over with,” she said.
“Patience, dearie.”
“Why in the hell should we wait? With two of us we can probably take them through the front window.”
“Maybe. Take another look with the glasses. Examine the right living room wall.”
Althea snatched the binoculars from his hand and adjusted them. She swept them to her eyes and trained them on the living room. She moved her field of vision past the three people in the center of the room and began to examine the surrounding walls carefully. “I don’t see any … oh, oh. Against the far wall, by the fireplace.”
“You’ve got it, dearie.” Billie smiled in the dark. “Now what do you see?” he asked as if teaching a primary lesson to a new recruit.
“A shotgun. Double barreled with open hammers.”
“Twelve-gauge, I’d say. Notice that the hammers are pulled back. The damn thing is ready for big game.”
“It’s no match for an automatic weapon.”
“Maybe not, but why take the risk? Here’s the attack plan.…”
“I’m not a goddamn Green Beret, Billie.”
“Honey baby, you’re my A team tonight ’cause you’re all I’ve got. Now shut up and listen to me.”
He began to outline the attack in careful detail culled from his day’s examination of the house. They would go in at 4:00 A.M., the hour before dawn when the human metabolism was at its lowest ebb, when disorientation was most likely to occur. He explained to her that there were three bedrooms in the upstairs of the house. They would enter the downstairs silently through the front. He would go into the master bedroom where Sara and Ray slept and take them both. She would hit the middle room where Martin slept.
The attack should take less than two minutes including a forced entry into the house.
Althea yawned and looked down at her watch. Three more hours to go.
In the beginning, Sara’s and Ray’s excitement had been infectious. They marveled at each new sentence and paragraph of the rapidly lengthening letter they were composing.
Martin had sensed that their vitality somehow excluded him. It was not a malicious affront. It was habit—they had assumed the composition of the letter to the media and selected congressmen themselves and somehow he had been shunted aside.
It was as it always had been. As hard as he had tried he had never fit into the training school either. The others, his peers, had somehow unconsciously understood, and although they did not or could not voice it to their keepers, they had automatically made him an outsider.
They had gone to classes of a sort. He remembered the arithmetic classes. He was soon able to add the sums in his head, but even years ago he had somehow felt that any alacrity with answers would only draw attention to himself. If the problem’s total were a figure such as 932, he would write 239. It was his own private way of indicating that he really knew the correct answer, even if he were unwilling to let others know.
A young temporary teacher had seen through the subterfuge and called Martin into class after hours. He had given Martin a long series of examples and Martin had dutifully entered the totals in reverse order.
“I know what you’re doing, Fowler,” the young teacher had said. He had written a report and shortly thereafter left to go on to graduate school. The report had been lost in the files and eventually thrown away—after all, the young teacher was not certified.
Martin involuntarily yawned and Sara looked over at him with a softness about her face. “This must be boring you to death. There’s no need for you to stay up, Martin. Go on to bed.”
“Another half an hour and I’m turning in,” Ray said. “We’ll finish copying tomorrow morning and can have them in the noon mail.”
“Thank God,” Sara said tiredly.
Martin saw how they touched—small, intimate gestures. His fingers lingered on her arm for a few moments, her hand brushed against his shoulder. Little things, but somehow they made him ache.
Martin stood and stretched. “I think I will go to bed.”
“Goodnight,” they both chimed as he walked slowly up the stairs.
Martin paused at the top of the stairs where he was hidden from view, but where he could hear what was said.
“I think we should watch him tonight,” Ray said.
“You think he’ll run?”
“There’s that possibility. Let’s be on the safe side and take turns checking on him.”
“You’re right,” she agreed.
Martin walked down the hall to his room.
Ray was correct in his assumption. He did intend to run, and he intended to do it tonight. He slipped out of his shoes and lay fully dressed on his cot. He pulled the blanket up under his chin and lay staring at the ceiling.
They would be safe if he were gone. As long as he lived here the people who wanted to kill him would harm anyone who stood in their way. He must leave so that they could not hurt Sara.
He was still awake half an hour later when the door to his room silently opened. He saw Sara standing in the doorway.
“Are you awake, Martin?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
She came into the room, sat on the edge of the cot, and ran a finger along the line of his cheek. “It’s going to be all right, you know that?”
“I know. Everything will be all right when we hear from someone we wrote to,” he answered, but did not believe it.
“Ray has his gun loaded.”
“It’s a shotgun. A gun is a cannon,” he automatically responded.
She laughed. “All right. A shotgun. He’ll see that nothing happens to us.”
“I know.”
“Goodnight now.” She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.
She left the room and he was alone. Blotchy moonlight running before scudding clouds cast patterns on the wall. The dull ache of loneliness th
at he knew so well surrounded him. He had been an outsider before, but had always associated his necessary apartness with a sense of security. Now he had neither, and that filled him with a nostalgia for things he had never known.
He lay quietly, attempting to come to terms with feelings outside his experience. He knew that in a few minutes Ray would poke his head in the door to check on him and then they would both sleep. They were tired and dawn was only an hour away. Then it would be time to go.
The door opened and Martin saw Ray’s head, recognizable in the dim light of the moon. The door closed again. A few more minutes until Ray was asleep and then he would leave.
“It’s time,” Billie said as he glanced down at the luminous glow of his watch. “Check your weapon.”
“I did that an hour ago,” Althea said.
“Do it again,” he snapped back. He listened until he heard the double click of her magazine as she reseated it and then the short dull clunk of the bolt as the weapon was primed for firing.
“I’m ready,” she whispered.
He nodded in satisfaction. This was the first operation he had ever run with a woman, but he could not detect any tightness in her voice. She was a cool one. He stood in a crouch and began to move away from the stand of trees where they had been hiding. He glanced to the right and left.
The narrow secondary road that ran past the Heath house was deserted. In all probability it would remain that way, since the nearest neighbors were a mile in either direction. They would not be disturbed.
He saw her take a position a few yards away on his flank … a smart and safe move.
In soft-soled shoes they walked up the steps of the front porch. When he reached the door, Billie inserted a thin wire into the lock. There was sufficient moonlight to work, and he did not use his flashlight.
It took fifteen seconds for the lock to click open. He slowly turned the handle. The door moved forward a few inches and stopped.
They had hooked the latch chain. He replaced the wire in his belt and removed the wire cutters from their holster at his side. He pushed the cutting edge through the door’s aperture and placed the jaws around the chain.
He snipped and heard the barely perceptible clank as the chain fell apart and back against the doorframe.
They stepped inside and Althea silently closed the door behind them. The staircase was a few feet in front of them, and they moved in single file, keeping as close to the wall as they could, in order to avoid the old house’s creaking floorboards.
At the top of the stairs, Billie stepped toward the master bedroom and quickly measured the distance before looking over his shoulder toward Althea.
She stood before Fowler’s room, the same distance from the door as he. Her weapon was unslung from her shoulder and held ready.
Billie nodded and nearly simultaneously their feet thudded against the respective doors at a spot a few inches below the door handle.
The doors flew open and they moved into the rooms firing as they went.
Martin was bent over, giving the last tug to his sneaker laces, when the door flew open.
Automatic weapon fire stitched a pattern across the cot where he had lain moments before, and continued across the room shattering the window into a hundred shards.
Over the clatter of the weapon in his room he heard the double boom of a shotgun from Ray’s bedroom.
As Martin came up out of his crouch he was inches away from the barrel of the. Uzi.
The weapon continued its arc across the room as Althea realized the cot was empty.
He grabbed the hot barrel with both hands, and while it was still firing, tore it down and away from the woman’s grasp.
“Bastard!” she was able to say before he hit her on the side of the head with the stock of the stubby weapon.
Althea fell in a heap to the floor without further sound.
As the door to Ray Heath’s room slammed back against the wall, Billie stepped into the room and arced his shotgun toward the frightened man who sat up in bed.
Ray made a lunge for the 12-gauge standing by the bed table. Billie’s first shot nearly tore off Ray’s arm and shoulder.
Sara screamed as Ray threw his body sideways toward her and rolled them both over onto the floor. He splayed himself across her in a protective cover as the second shotgun blast tore through his back.
Billie knew that the man was dead as he stepped further into the room and around the side of the bed. The woman beneath the man’s body groaned, but his field of fire was obscured by the bloody corpse covering her.
He was reaching down to pull the body off the woman when he heard the sound behind him and whirled to face the door.
Martin leveled the Uzi at the small man across the room. “Drop the weapon,” he ordered.
Billie smiled as he let the shotgun clatter to the floor. “You learned good, kid.”
“Back away.”
Billie stepped cautiously away from the bed until he stood before the window. Martin walked toward him, and he turned to take a quick look at the two people sprawled in the corner by the side of the bed.
The woman groaned.
“Sara!” Martin gasped.
Billie’s forearm dropped and the knife popped into his grasp.
Martin turned. His concern over the two bodies had obscured his fear of Billie, and suddenly he realized that the diminutive man held a dagger in his right hand.
The Uzi was pointing toward the floor. There was not nearly enough time to swing it toward the man with the knife.
He knew, all too well, the lethal accuracy of the throwing weapon. He knew the rapidity with which the small man could deliver the blow. At that close range, there was no way he could miss.
The knife was flung as Martin took the one half-step he had time for, in order to present his profile to Billie.
The knife imbedded itself deeply into his shoulder at the exact height of the sternum.
As Martin staggered back under the knife’s impact, he swung the Uzi up with one hand and pulled the trigger.
Firing in continuous staccato bursts, shells walked across Billie Bamburg’s abdomen and flung him through the window.
Chapter Thirteen
The entire battle had lasted less than ninety seconds, and now in the quiet, night sounds again filled the air. Martin’s right arm was numb from the knife wound. He could feel the warm trickle of blood along his arm and down to his fingertips. He walked slowly to the shattered window and leaned out.
Billie Bamburg was spread obscenely on the ground, his body speckled in moonlight. His lifeless grin turned toward the partially obscured moon as if he jeered at the gods who now possessed him.
Martin let the Uzi fall from his left hand, and it landed on the ground below the window not far from Bamburg’s body.
Sara groaned.
Martin tore the knife from his shoulder and the shock of withdrawal sent a stab of pain through him with such force that he fell to his knees and bent over to retch on the floor.
Sara groaned again.
He stumbled toward the two bodies huddled in the corner. Ray’s body was still spread over Sara’s, protecting her even in death.
Martin pushed the bed away from the huddled forms and with the exertion felt another dizzying pain course through his arm. He stood and held a bedpost a moment as his vision blurred. His eyes returned to focus, and again he bent to pull Ray away from Sara.
Her head was tilted up against the wall. She’ wore only a man’s pajama top that now rode high over her hips, revealing the streaks of blood that covered her body. Her eyes were wide, infantlike, and she stared up at him without recognition.
“Sara.”
His call was answered with a whimper of terror.
“Bastard,” was the guttural choke from the woman who stood in the doorway. Her body was half-shielded by the doorframe as she pointed a .25 Beretta toward Martin and fired.
The small projectile tore into the wall four inches from Martin’s head. He
instinctively ducked as she fired again, hitting the mattress.
His hand clutched the sawed-off shotgun and he raised it with his one operational arm.
Billie’s words from the firing range at Camp Mohawk were as clear as if he stood by Martin’s side giving calm instruction. “A handgun is a waste, can’t hit a damn tank at anything over a few feet.” Martin levered the shotgun over the side of the bed. “Point it at your target, like your finger, and fire. You’ll take them out.”
Althea fired again and then Martin pulled the trigger.
The blast of the shotgun tore through the doorframe, blowing away her left cheek. She tumbled backward down the stairs and lay in a senseless heap on the floor.
The shotgun fell from his hand as he bent to help Sara to her feet. He automatically tried to use both hands, and again felt the shoot of pain dash down his injured arm. Sara seemed to sense his anguish, pulled her legs under her body, and stood.
“Ray’s dead,” she said more as a statement of fact than a question.
“Yes.”
“Oh, my God.” She put both hands to her face, leaving streaks of blood where they touched.
“Are you all right … you’re all …”
“I’m not hurt,” she answered flatly.
“We have to leave. There may be others.”
“Leave?” She looked at him with dull eyes.
“Now!” He led her into the hall where they stood at the head of the stairs looking down at the body of the red-haired woman crumpled below.
“You killed her?”
“I guess so.”
He put his arm around her shoulder and helped her down the stairs. They moved slowly, as if each step they took was racked with pain. At the bottom they stepped over Althea and walked numbly into the living room.
“The car keys? Where are the car keys?”
“Keys?” She looked up at him dumbly. “You’re bleeding, Martin.”
“The keys. Where are they?” he asked as forcibly as he could.
“Hanging … on a wallboard in the kitchen.”
He let her sit on the edge of the couch and hurried into the kitchen. The car keys were where she said, and he grabbed them from the board. She was still sitting on the edge of the couch when he returned to the living room. She was staring at the far wall as if the reason for incidents that had just befallen them would shortly be revealed there.
The Man Who Heard Too Much Page 13
