Dean Ing - Silent Thunder

by Silent Thunder(lit)

  What erupted from the other side of Johnnie's head was not stuff Laurie wanted to remember, as Johnnie jerked and flopped like something filled with dirt and did not move again. But as Laurie laid the weapon down and emptied the purse onto the floor, the ringing in her ears became a chirping too. Then Laurie realized that the chirps were not inside her head. They were coming from the comm set.

  Bobby Lathrop enjoyed tooling the Firebird around, even if its brakes were lousy, and he took the Gaithersburg turn-off from Highway 70 by gearing down so that Harman, his companion, grabbed for a handhold. Jondahl's failure to respond was probably just an equipment failure, the two men agreed. It would take a half-hour to actually reach the isolated house by road, and only moments to rectify the trouble. So much the better; neither of the men enjoyed the company of that reptilian twat, though that wasn't supposed to count among hardened pros. After parking near the darkened country place, Bobby stayed at the wheel while Harman, wearing the thinnest of leather gloves, took his stubby Ingram stuttergun into the house on recon.

  Harman came back at a dead run. Somebody's plucked the kid, he panted. They whacked Johndahl, man, I mean recently! Still warm. All her fucking credit cards and shit spread around-but I didn't see that little shooter she carries. And listen, I want you to come verify something.

  Bobby flowed out of the Firebird fast. Harman's observation was easy to verify, but not to figure. If some rescue team had got past Johnnie, then why the fuck would they unscrew the hinges of the back door from the inside, leaving the combo lock untampered?

  Not once did Bobby or Harman entertain the idea that an eleven-year-old child, sufficiently brutalized, might have managed such carnage unaided....

  FIFTEEN

  Ramsay padded into his study and answered the phone as churlishly as anyone would, at one o'clock in the morning. Uh, jus'aminute.... Okay, I'll tell her if I see her. He disconnected, yawned from his study into the bedroom playing out the old-fashioned phone cord to its full length, flicked on the light and gently shook Pam's shoulder. Somebody named Carol Heaton; friend of yours. You're supposed to call forward. That's all she said, tell you to call forward.

  Two blinks, and suddenly Pam was wide awake, nodding. He handed the instrument to her, then sat on the edge of the bed.

  Without hesitation, Pam Garza dialed a number. I'm here, she said. Pause. Yes, he is. In the next room.... Of course I am, you should know that by now. Ramsay could hear, very faintly, the timbre of the voice, and it was male. Ten seconds later, he saw the color drain from her face. She pulled the sheet up to cover her, gooseflesh prominent on her arms. I, I don't think so, I'm not- that's not the kind of thing I-please, no! Now her free hand covered her brow, fingers unconsciously flexing in her dark hair. She was trembling.

  Then, chewing her underlip as she listened, Pam seemed to regain some composure. Twisting the mouthpiece away, her ear still against the earpiece, she whispered to Ramsay: Get dressed just as fast as you can. Now she resumed talking. I don't know what I can do, but I'll try, and so on, furiously waving Ramsay away from the bed.

  Three minutes later, as he was pulling his shoes on, she put the phone down and fairly leaped from the bed to begin dressing. Her voice was very small: Alan, Jesu Maria, darling, what have you done!

  You tell me. Where the hell are we going?

  Different directions. I have to ask where you're going, but you mustn't tell me. She pulled a mascara brush from her purse; showed him the hollow needle that slid from its stem. I was told this was for me, if I ever needed to use it. But now Lathrop says it's for you. I-even for my country, Alan, you know I couldn't, and I told him so. He must be desperate to even say it indirectly; the police probably heard every word. Then he said to keep you here any way I can until they can talk to you.

  He barked a bitter laugh. I can imagine the questions: bang, bang, and bang. Who the hell is Lathrop?

  The man I work for, when I'm not doing company business. You don't seem very surprised.

  I'm not. I've known you were on the wrong side for some time. A new thought twisted his face into something ugly. I don't suppose I could beat you into telling me where Laurie is.

  With whispered intensity: Softly, Alan, there are audio transmitters in the apartment. You must believe me, I had no idea-well, if I knew where Laurie was, I'd tell you. It's just not right! Have you done something so terrible? Now she was tucking her blouse in, following him as he headed for the living room closet for a windbreaker.

  Yes. I learned how, without being elected, a man can become the real President of the United States using a psalm-singing figurehead as his puppet.

  I don't understand. Now they were both whispering with quiet fury. Harry Rand isn't-that can't be true.

  He reached for the doorknob. If it isn't, people are dying over an empty rumor.

  She stood transfixed, staring at him, perhaps hoping to see duplicity in his eyes. Then she said, Look out for Lathrop, he's a bad one. I'm supposed to try and stop you.

  In his rage, without a real opponent he could reach with his bare hands, he said the most vicious thing he could: You'll think of something, you Mexican whore.

  She swallowed, taking two steps toward him, tears beginning to course down her face. Make it look good. Hit me.

  He had already turned away in disgust when she said it another way. If you ever loved me, Alan, hit me.

  He wheeled and struck her with his open hand, then started down the stairs as she fell. He heard his telephone begin to ring and did not give a damn.

  Laurie had considered flagging down the car-in daylight she would have seen that it was an old Firebird-as it swung into view, half a mile from the solitary house. But she was cutting across an open field at the time, toward the vague glow of neon in the distance. The purse was heavy with the weapon, and the coins and bills were more money than she had ever had at one time. The contents of that purse gave Laurie a heady sense of power.

  A small aircraft, its landing lights arrowing past her, swung into its final approach. When Laurie saw the beacon flash across her quadrant of sky, she turned in its direction. That is why, as the Firebird roared back through the silent neon-lit center of Emory Grove, Bobby Lathrop did not catch her.

  Laurie made it afoot to the Montgomery County Airpark nearly two hours later, hoping someone there might have a telephone. The man in the old leather jacket was nice, though inquisitive as a truant officer when he saw the swollen left side of her face; but since she only asked to call her mother, he could hardly complain.

  But when she dialed home, a recording said that the number was not in service or had been disconnected. Laurie knew that had to be crazy, but she called her dad next.

  The line was busy. I bet he's talking to Mom, Laurie said, and accepted half a Hershey bar from the man, who said he had a girl just about Laurie's size and he would sure as heck like to know how come she was tarryhooting around the countryside at one a.m. He did not seem particularly satisfied by Laurie's shrugged, I got lost.

  Two minutes later, Laurie tried again and became puzzled immediately. Who? This is Laurie. You know: Laurie Ramsay? Pam? Hi, Pam. Boy, have I had a day, I'm at the airport- She listened for long moments, ignoring the interested frown of Mr. Leatherjacket. Then: Well jeez, why not?... I don't get it; who's listening?... Okay, if you say so.

  Momentarily, Laurie wore a frown too. Then she said, Hey, you been crying? Me, too. Huh? Naw, I won't have to hitch, I can take a taxi, I've got money, hundreds and hundreds. And a gun, too. She glanced at Mr. Leather-jacket and saw the gold caps gleaming in his rear molars.

  He snapped his mouth shut and began to chuckle as she went on: Mostly I'm just sleepy, but Johnnie beat me up a lot and, she flushed, catching the man's gaze, other stuff. Pam, is it okay to kill people like her? A shorter pause. Soon as I can. Will Mom and Dad be there?

  She was not pleased with the response and laid the receiver down with, Durn. She hung up on me.

  Young lady, said Mr. Leatherjacket, let m
e congratulate you on the most creative imagination I ever saw or heard of. Can you really afford a taxi home?

  Laurie assured him that she could. But I'm not going home. And he better take me where I say, she hinted darkly, hugging the purse.

  The man said she could depend on it. Herb, the only driver on duty thereabouts this time of night, was a personal friend.

  Ramsay couldn't say why he turned the Genie back for a single run past his apartment; but slowing to stare toward the lighted place, he saw the dark Firebird double-parked, one man dashing up the stairs. As Ramsay passed, the man at the Firebird's wheel turned and saw him, then honked several quick blasts. The man on the stairs turned, something squarish and metallic showing through the opening of his coat, and then he was racing back as the Firebird's engine coughed a warning rumble. The driver was hammering on his steering wheel in frustration as he waited for his companion and Ramsay whacked the gear lever, reaching with two fingers for the boost switch on the lever's side. He wasn't sure the Genie's booster was working until his Pirellis began to smoke.

  SIXTEEN

  He took the first right-hander he saw, thinking that the Genie's maneuverability might make up for a Firebird's monstrous rush up through its gears, and for his own lack of experience in life-or-death driving. With a ten-second head start, Ramsay hoped to make enough tight turns that sooner or later, the Firebird's driver would begin to lose more precious seconds wondering which way he had turned.

  But Ramsay soon found himself overmatched. Instead of beginning each turn at the intersection, as he did, the big muscle car was starting its turns efficiently, very early and very wide, ticking the edges of curbs, booming down suburban streets with a surge of sound that Ramsay could hear above the wail of his own smaller engine. And when he divided his attention between the streets ahead and the onrushing Pontiac behind, he managed to misjudge his own path. The big car loomed only five seconds behind when Ramsay, driving beyond his capacity to react to what appeared in his headlights, saw the extreme dip at one intersection too late to avoid it.

  He braked in panic when he should have accelerated, the Genie's nose diving, rebounding with a mighty thump of bottomed suspension, starting a sidelong slide. He released the brake, judging that if he was very, very lucky, the Genie might make it between a fence and a brick wall into someone's driveway-which meant that, lucky or not, he would be afoot within seconds.

  Except that it was not a driveway at all. He had turned in at an alley, a piece of Americana left over from times when trash collectors drove behind a house, not past its front. Ramsay nudged the edge of the fence with his left front fender as he powered past it, still badly overdriving his lights. He saw a streetlamp's glow a hundred yards ahead, then squinted into his rearview at the twin beams that caught him as the Firebird entered the same alleyway. But the Firebird, still jouncing from that dip in the intersection, had too much weight to recover its poise in such a short distance. It missed the fence but evidently not the brick wall, and then Ramsay caught a glimpse of orange sparks showering an outline of the big car, still pursuing but now with only one headlight.

  Someone had left a huge pile of trimmings-leaves, grass and small branches-against a back fence on the right side, and Ramsay slowed just enough to steer to the left of the mess, brambles screeching down the left side of the Genie as he slammed his foot on the accelerator again. His right wheels, whirling through the edge of the trimmings, bounced hard and then he was past them, risking another look back. The drum and wail of his Genie were too loud now for him to hear anything else, but he saw winks of light stutter from the Firebird as if signaling.

  Signal, my fat ass, he's shooting, Ramsay thought as his outside rearview mirror exploded three feet from his face. Then the Firebird driver elected to force his way straight through the trimmings. Ramsay had never seen a car stop so fast in his life.

  Below all the grass and leaves lay cordwood, piled in no particular order, flying forward into the Firebird's single headlight beam as the car became a bludgeon. Ramsay did not realize until he was turning left onto the paved street that the Firebird was rocking backward, then forward, as lights began to wink on in bedrooms that flanked the alley.

  Ramsay took a right, then another right, then a third, simply because it seemed the last thing his pursuers would expect. As he flashed back past the street where he had exited the alley, he spotted the Firebird lit by a streetlight, turning left as he had done, its entire right side a ruin, dragging its rear bumper. Before he passed from sight, he saw the big car's nose dip under heavy braking and assumed he'd been seen. He took the next right-hand alleyway he found and got a two-second view of a weedy track that was clear as far as the next street. He shut off his lights and continued much more slowly, letting his eyes get accustomed to the light of stars and half a moon, snarling, Yeahhh, with a raised fist when the Firebird hurtled up the street, crossing behind him, the bellow of its engine rising as it kept accelerating. Somewhere in the distance, sirens hooted.

  He proceeded down the alley for two more blocks, using his lights only for brief flashes, and turned right onto a paved street after making certain that no headlights were approaching from any direction. After a few blocks, he turned his lights on and headed for Route 1 and the District of Columbia.

  He parked as inconspicuously as possible behind a Seven-Eleven, still trembling, and wondered if his panic flight had condemned Laurie to death. He tried to tell himself that they would keep her as a bargaining chip as long as he maintained his silence, but he remained unconvinced as he entered the phone kiosk and consulted his memocomp. Ten seconds later he began to whistle a single tone into the mouthpiece, a tone as shaky as he was.

  He tried another tone less wavering, and when someone lifted the receiver he said, You called me Mr. C., and you offered me a place to hide. Well, I need it. I'm in trouble.

  Someone told him to wait. He waited a hell of a long time, it seemed, before he heard the sleep-fogged voice of Tom Cusick. Understand you need a safe place. What happened?

  Ramsay told him. Maybe I should've stayed, he added, for my daughter's sake.

  You did right, said Cusick. Something forced them to change plans; something major, I think. We'll work on it. Right now, let's get you picked up. And your rolling toy that anybody can spot a mile off, we'll need to hide that. Um; you know where we met? You arrange a breakdown on the street outside. Can you get there in thirty minutes?

  Hell, I can do better than- Ramsay began. He was only ten minutes from the Smithsonian.

  Just yes or no, and I make that yes. Try not to get there ahead of time. Suddenly Ramsay was monitoring a dead line.

  He bought a cup of coffee in the Seven-Eleven and browsed among magazines as he sipped. Then he drove the Genie toward Jefferson Drive, taking it slowly, pulling to the curb near the massive Air and Space Museum with three minutes to spare. A tow truck pulled up behind him two minutes later, three men shuffling from the big vehicle. One of them was Cusick, who pointed at the elevated cab and told Ramsay to stay in it. One minute later they had a huge opaque tarp bundled around the Genie; in two more, the Genie's front end swung gently from a cable sling and the truck was underway again.

  Ramsay finished his account as they drove across the Anacostia River into Fairmont Heights, Tom Cusick asking a few questions in the interim. Neither of the other men broke their silence until Ramsay asked, Why do we need my car, if it's such a giveaway?

  That's why, rumbled the driver, bait, if they really want you.

  He can park it at the NBN studios, Cusick said.

  But not too near the building, just in case, the third man said. And what if they're waiting?

  We'll run interference with this rig until Ramsay's inside the building, Cusick replied. But right now, I could use a few hours' sleep.

  God, I'm too wired for that, said Ramsay, but he was wrong. Minutes after they parked the tow truck and filed into the boarded-up service station off East Capitol Street, Alan Ramsay was snoring lus
tily on an air mattress.

  Ramsay was up by seven and tooling the Genie toward NBN by eight, in the shadow of a big tow truck that just happened to turn in abreast of him and loomed so near that parking was difficult. He hurried upstairs and absorbed the impact of a different and more familiar reality, as if the outside world were only a hallucination. He sifted through a stack of callback requests, including one from Lieutenant Corwin that only said, 'We have your girl,' and he wondered why Pam Garza had gone to the cops until he was arguing about a feature with Irv, and then he made the connection that had been too good to imagine the first time around, and he leaped for Irv's phone so abruptly that the producer ducked.

  He talked his way past two people before Corwin came on-line. Corwin, this is Alan Ramsay. Which girl do you mean?

  Gruffly, but pleased: How many kids do you have, Ramsay? Laurie, of course. At Ramsay's whoop, which drove the harried producer from his own office, Corwin went on, She called your place and talked to your lady friend, who told her to take a taxi direct to me, and not to budge out of the cop shop without me. She showed up in the middle of the night at Fourth District HQ in a taxi, f'God's sake, with somebody's money and somebody's purse and somebody's gun, and it seems she's whacked out some troll who needed whacking the worst way, but it still sounds very much like homicide to me, but not in my district, thank you very much, and-are you getting this, Ramsay?