Therese took a firm two-handed grip on the gun, and nodded to Ted. I almost laughed. She was picking up my working habits. What an extraordinary girl. They left the kitchen with Ted pulling up the rear. Therese hadn’t even questioned it. She had taken the gun like it was an old friend because it had come from me. Trust is everything. Better and better.
“Cover the hallway.”
Evie walked with me across the room and crouched by the frame of the archway that led into the hall. George and I kept going.
“George, take the garage. Nobody leaves. Period.”
“Right.”
He turned to go, holding his snubby standard issue .38 Police Special five shot revolver. Pathetic.
“Hold it.”
“What?”
I handed him the H&K that I was carrying in my right hand, while I pulled the other one from the right holster with my left.
“Put that pop-gun away.”
He looked at the snubby, and took the proffered H&K .45, smiling as he did. The Toronto Force never kept up when it came to firepower, so this was a treat for him, I guess.
“Right.”
Then he was gone. The first stop was Ronnie’s room. As I walked to the door, I had to make up my mind, was I going in hard, or did I just knock softly on the door and hope for the best. Quietly. That was how.
Just as I reached out to rap lightly on the door with the back of my knuckles I heard the whisper, I’m coming, and damned if I didn’t get it wrong.
I glanced over my shoulder quick-like, when I didn’t have to, I was being covered from behind, but there was nothing there anyway. While my head was turned, Wilson flung Ronnie’s door open and when I turned back to the door, I was screwed.
He had shoved a very large gun into my face while I wasn’t looking. Not good. Not good at all. In fact, I was very angry about it with myself. I’d have a grand old time giving myself shit when it was over, I knew that for sure. In the meantime, I was a little too busy for self-recriminations.
I shifted gears right in front of his eyes and he didn’t see it, maybe the panic that he was feeling had clouded his mind, but the mistake had been made. He didn’t pull the trigger. Tit for tat. My error was history, his was a leveling out of the playing field.
All of this happened in as long as it takes to flick a glance across your shoulder. Wilson was good, just like he’d said. Just like Ronnie had said. But he wasn’t good enough. I knew that for sure now, because I was still alive.
The jolt of adrenaline and brain chemicals that did their magic on me were already running hot in my blood, and now everything came to a screeching halt, like slamming into a wall at full running speed. I shook a little but not so as anyone who didn’t know me would notice, and Wilson didn’t. Both know me, or notice.
I knew what came next, so before he could disarm me, or change his mind and pull the trigger, I opened my left hand and dropped the H&K I was carrying. It made a loud noise when it hit the hardwood floor. That’s when his eyes moved to the source of the sound. I give him credit, he didn’t move physically, just his eyes. And just for a fraction of a second. To me that was like he had turned his back on me and counted to five.
While his eyes were distracted I slid right into him, throwing him off balance, and literally rolling my face off of the barrel of his gun. At the same time the movement brought me too close inside his grasp to effectively draw and use anything except what I had left. Thankfully.
It was knife time, and I was going to find out how well the new Japanese blade worked in close combat mode, as well as the rig that I had fixed up for it.
My left hand was close to him, and he was trying to catch his balance and regain his shot on me at the same time. All of the wrong things to do. I didn’t pay any attention to the gun. I was focused on Wilson, the betrayer. That left hand only had to move less than six inches. Before he could accomplish either of his goals my left hand was on him. I clutched the centre of his throat and crushed with all the strength I had, then let go as fast as I had grabbed him. I concentrated on the upper swing of the blade I had drawn with my right while I was choking him with my left.
I was pounding with the slow time fever now and everything was stuck in molasses. As I let go of his throat, I thrust against him with my body, giving me the separation I needed. It was also the separation he needed in order to use the gun he still held in his right hand. As I let go of his throat I felt a blast of hot cloying air hit me in the face, and I could smell garlic and fear in it.
Now it was just a race against time and reflexes. I thought of nothing, I knew nothing, I was death and I had come. Later I would think, or later I would be mourned, but the moment was all. The gun barrel was slowly turning upwards in his hand, pointing right into my lower chest at an upwards angle. He wasn’t trying to move the gun hand, just aim it to kill me. That was the first right thing he had done, but it was based on the wrong tactic. He had to win the race in order to win the fight, and I was too fast for him. Or he was too slow for me. Whatever.
I knew it would be close, but not in his favour. When you start this kind of crap that’s the way you have to think. It’s the way I always thought when I fought.
At the very last moment, as he was starting to tighten his finger grip on the trigger of the H&K there was a flash of bright silver that passed between our faces. We were still only inches apart, but that was all the space in the world.
With a blade, it’s usually in-fighting, and when you cut someone they always seemed surprised, but this time was the most extreme example that I had ever experienced.
As the flash of silver passed our faces it was like an instantaneous transformation took place in Wilson. The bullet that he wanted to put in my heart never came, and the surprise was amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone that surprised in my life before.
Then it was as if time stood still again, because he stopped fighting me, completely. You never win when you do that. My right arm was in the air next to his face, and the long Japanese knife glowed dully in the light coming from the window in the room. His eyes could see the blade in his peripheral vision, he didn’t have to look to see it. The blood that dripped from the blade was only a drop or two, barely even wet, but I knew it wasn’t mine. Wilson was just starting to catch on to that fact as well.
He was rooted to the spot, with his back against the door. The fire in his eyes went out, and the astonishment turned quickly to emptiness as they started clouding over, and his mouth made a peculiar fish-like gasping motion. I think I had crushed his windpipe a bit, but it had happened so fast that he wasn’t even fully cognizant of the pain yet. Besides, he had other problems right now.
He had just begun to look down when the sound finally came. It was like a sound that had started off big, and then echoed away down a subway tunnel, finally being heard miles away at the next subway stop by someone all alone in the station. It was the sound of another H&K .45 hitting the hardwood floor, but muffled, not sharp like mine had been. It was an ugly sound.
That would be because his hand was still wrapped tightly around the gun when it fell. The blade had cut through the bone without the slightest hesitation or resistance whatsoever.
At almost the same moment in time the falling hand with the gun still in it finished pulling the trigger. Or maybe the way it hit the floor caused the finger to be forced that extra fraction of an inch it needed to fire.
Either way, the bullet meant for my heart exploded out of the gun with a roar that rose up and consumed us both. The explosion sent a tongue of fire reaching up my pant leg, and I could feel the heat of the powder, sense the bullets’ path of travel in my mind’s eye, I could feel the displacement of air as the heavy lead slug accelerated out of the barrel at over twelve hundred feet per second, sending the gun and hand spinning across the floor from the force of the launching bullet.
It passed my head on the left side, close enough to leave a roaring sound in my ear after it had gone by.
All of thi
s was in about two seconds. Two seconds that seemed like eternity. It always did.
Wilson started collapsing in on himself, slowly sliding down the door, his knees buckling under him as he went down. And the stupid bastard wasn’t even dead. But he would be soon if someone didn’t put a tourniquet on the stump where his right wrist used to be connected to his hand. The blood was pumping out in a serious manner. The floor was covered, he was covered, I was covered… it’s amazing how much of that stuff runs through our systems.
Evie was behind me all of a sudden, calling out my name and hers too. She was learning well.
I stepped into the room and saw what had been happening. Ronnie was sprawled in a chair, not bound or gagged, so, drugged. And drugged heavily from the looks of it.
Her papers were all over the bed, and her notebook PC lay open and running on a desk in the corner. Wilson had been trying to access some information that he shouldn’t have I’ll bet.
Later, we’d see the level of damage as far as any transferred data went. For now, we had to help Ronnie. Her eyes were barely open, and her head lolled about from side to side, slowly.
I was coming out of my state already, set into renewed action by the sight of Ronnie like that.
“Evie, help me get Ronnie out of this room.”
“Yes, sir.”
There wasn’t any attempt at dialogue, she followed her orders. We picked her up and carried her out into the hallway, where I shouted for Loretta. She was there in a trice, and never spared a look for Wilson, either.
“Yes, sir.”
“Help Evie get Ronnie settled in the living room. Make her as comfortable as you can. Keep everyone in there with you until I join you. Don’t try any radical medical techniques unless I authorize it first. Go.”
They went without looking back. I walked back to Wilson, who was bleeding to death in front of me. And choking from a damaged trachea.
“Wilson.”
No response.
“Wilson!”
His head moved a bit that time. I was standing over him in a crouch, shouting into his ear. He was close to death and his hearing wasn’t what it once was. He was trying to see who was talking to him, but he was too far gone into shock.
I reached down and undid the belt he had on and quickly wrapped it around his arm. I used the handle of the blade to tighten it until the bleeding stopped completely. I put it just above his elbow, where it would cut the flow faster. He was unconscious now, and it was going to take a little doctoring to bring him out of it. He was definitely down for the count.
I grabbed a good hold on the blade handle and started walking back to the kitchen. Wilson was dragged along behind me, sliding easily on the slick hardwood floors of the hallway, and the ceramic tiles in the kitchen when we got there. The trail of blood was grotesque, but couldn’t be helped.
When I got to the kitchen I searched around for something to use instead of the handle on my blade. I found a good old-fashioned wooden spoon, which did the trick. I tied it in place to the faucet of the sink with some clothesline from one of the drawers so that it wouldn’t fall away when I let go, then I quickly frisked him and left him lying on the tile floor while I headed out to the garage, picking up my H&K on the way. I was lucky in that it had fallen to the side of the doorway, and so had been spared more than a cursory spray of blood. The rough surface of the grips compensated for the slippery coating, and I carried on. There was nobody in Wilson’s room, and we were all accounted for.
When I got out there I couldn’t spot George at all. Which was pretty damn good work for George, because although I couldn’t spot him, I knew without a doubt that he was watching me as I looked for him.
“George!”
“Here!”
He stepped out from behind a large oak tree on the side of the garage, to my left. Aha, simple but effective.
“Good move. Let’s get back inside, it’s time to rethink our travel plans buddy.”
“Right you are.”
I took back my H&K as we both trooped back into the house. When we passed the doorway with the pool of blood, and the hand lying across the hall holding the gun, he blanched.
“Who’s dead?”
“Nobody, yet. But the day is young.”
Pausing, I quickly separated the gun from the hand of its original owner. George was looking the other way. I smiled at him, knowing what his reaction was going to be when he saw Wilson. One of relief.
George works for a living, and his work is to bring murderers to justice. He cannot abide murder in any form, even if it’s the bad guys that are getting nailed. He’d be pleased that Wilson had been spared. It wasn’t permanent yet, though. We still had some doctoring to do.
~
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I
had been right. As soon as we came into the kitchen and George saw Wilson, he cheered right up. He just hated killing. Mind you, he was trained to hate it, as well as having a natural disfavour to it, and the scene wasn’t really a cheery one by anyone’s standards, but at least there were no bodies to deal with. Yet.
I threw Wilson’s H&K .45 into the kitchen sink, and ran the cold water over it. It poured and splashed off of the gun in a frothy wash of water and blood, a dark red mixture that rapidly turned pink, light pink, and finally, clear. I turned off the water, shook the gun to relieve it of excess water, and placed it on the countertop next to George.
“That’s for you. That pop-gun of yours has to go. Keep it for a back-up, but this is your new weapon of choice.”
He made a face, but he was with the programme.
“Whatever you say, boss.”
He picked it up and hefted the weight of it a couple of times. I could tell that he’d come around on the ‘military command’ thing. George had hated the navy, but loved it at the same time. He always had said the same thing most other military personnel throughout the centuries said, but not what the officers usually said, and he’d been an officer. ‘I love the Service, it’s the Commanders I can’t stand’.
“You’ve got to start carrying a real gun, as well as that little snubby you cherish. This is now yours. Officially. Ronnie will arrange the paperwork when we get her back on her feet. Don’t go anywhere, from now until this is over, without this gun. I mean it. See Evie for some ammunition, and a holster. She has an interesting selection. Take about four clips of mixed rounds. I’ll talk to her.”
He wasn’t sure for a second or two, so I prompted him.
“It’s not a ‘request’, George.”
“I see. Very well.”
He took it, but I could see his distaste in the whole affair showing through. It triggered a reaction in me.
“You were the one who started this, pal. Don’t give me any grief here. Just do what I tell you, and we’ll be fine.”
“Not every day is going to be like today, you know. I’ve been bored stupid half the time so far.”
“That’s nice. I haven’t, and each day has been worse than this, so far.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, ‘oh’. I’m not giving you a hard time, George. I’m giving you leadership, and you need it. Accept that for now, Okay? This isn’t Parkdale, or Cabbagetown, or even the Jane-Finch Corridor, this is the ‘Field’. The rules change here when I say so, and right now I’m saying. Carry it.”
“Fine, then. Do I clean it, or is it good just like this?”
“It’s good. Check the clip, that’s all.”
I turned away from George, and focused on the scene. The gang had clustered in the living room around Ronnie, except for Evie, who was already sweeping the house for bugs, and killing them as she went.
Collette still had a hold on Therese’s hand, and I didn’t blame her. If I’d been able to sit around holding her hand, I would have been perfectly content as well. She had stopped dripping over the whole place, although there was a little puddle of water at her feet.
The living room was carpeted, and someone had treated the carpet with an
inordinate amount of ‘ScotchGaurd’, or some similar repellant. All of the water at her feet was sitting on top of the carpet knap, except where it had been forced into the carpet by someone’s footsteps. It looked odd, that’s all. Whereas Therese didn’t. The robe had draped open so that her left leg was visible all the way to her thigh. Magic.
She looked like one of those bizarre adds for designer perfume, sitting there totally naked under a fluffy white robe down to her feet, her hair slicked back, holding hands with a woman almost as striking as she was, and holding a Glock .40 calibre compact combat pistol. Okay, maybe it looked even odder than a commercial.
Others might see the girls’ roles reversed, but for me, Therese was the gorgeous one, even if Collette was the real model. Well, Therese was the real ballerina. It impressed me.
Loretta had placed Ronnie as comfortably as possible on the couch, and was going over the basics with her, blood pressure, temperature, pupil dilation, that kind of thing. It turned out that they had a pretty fair medical bag with them, and Loretta looked like she knew how to use it too. I found myself wishing I had brought old Doc Verley with me.
“Loretta, do you have any pharmaceutical knowledge?”
She glanced up at me, and there was an immediate recognition of the pain in her face. I’d seen it too many times before to pass over it unknowingly. She was drop-dead-scared, and Ronnie was the focus of her fear. She was soldiering on though.
“Yes, I have some. The same as my doctoring skills, some. Not enough for this situation, I know that for sure.”
“Are you referring to Ronnie, or to the little rat on the floor in the kitchen?”
I didn’t even want to validate his current high-priority medical status, and I certainly wouldn’t put up with any impact on the team from this. He’d been flushed out, stopped, and that was that. We carried on. Hopefully with better security, and the foe would have to find another way of gathering intelligence on our actions now, because shithead in there wasn’t going to be set loose anytime soon, even if he became capable of functioning on his own. That would be some time, from the look of him right now.
The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel Page 89