by Robert Ward
“Yeah, amigo. It's now or never. Can you make it?”
“I'll try, compadre.”
Up on his ladder, Alex Williams revved the chain saw.
He moved it under Johnny Z's neck.
“You shall play your part!” he said.
And the entire congregation began to make a high-pitched keening sound as they watched Alex Williams ready himself for the execution.
Oscar and Jack leaped up and headed for the aisle. The congregation was so set on watching the murder on the cross that they were caught off guard.
“And we shall use your brain as well. With it we will create nectar, nectar that shall infuse the most loyal members of the Blue Wolf brotherhood with the greatest gift known to man. Eternal youth! All from you, Johnny boy. All from you.”
He moved the chain saw closer to Johnny Z's throat but was interrupted by a cry from Jack, who was now near the guards.
“Stop it, now! Drop that fucking saw! You're under arrest. FBI.”
Alex Williams was stunned. He stopped just short of slicing through Johnny's throat. He stared down and saw Jack and Oscar being met by a hooded guard who raised his machine gun, but Jack chopped at his wrist and the gun fell to the floor. Jack quickly picked it up and threw it to Oscar, who, though wobbly, caught it and trained it on the other guards. They dropped their weapons. Jack look up at Alex Williams.
“FBI, pal. Come down from there, now. You're under arrest for homicide.”
“I don't think so,” Alex Williams said. “And don't think you can shoot me. Because all our members are prepared to attack anyone who interferes with our sacred ritual.”
Jack turned his gun on the guests, some of whom were out of their seats and moving toward the two cops.
“All of you back the fuck up or I'll be forced to shoot.”
Jack looked up at Alex, who was waving his chain saw around in a circular motion. He looked down at Jack and laughed.
“You are two against a hundred of us.”
“That's right,” Jack said. “You get twenty or thirty of your people to take a run at us and we're going to lose. But the first ten or so are going to be full of bullet holes. I wonder how many of your loyal legion want to end up bleeding out on the floor?”
Alex nodded his head and grinned.
“Let's find out,” he said.
Jack gave his partner a quick look. This was not the reaction he'd expected. He'd used this old trick five or six times in the past and it always held back the mob. But then, as bad as those other mobs had been, they had been mere criminals, not true believers.
Alex looked down at the first row of his faithful.
“First row, up!” he yelled.
They were a spry old group of maniacs and, though on rickety pins, they stood up as a unit and readied themselves for battle.
Pointing to the three men in the middle of the row, Williams spoke calmly.
“Now, when I give the word, I want you three to charge these men, take away their weapons, and then hold them for me to punish. Do you understand?”
The three men nodded slowly, as though they were in some kind of dream state.
“Take him, now,” Alex said.
The three men rushed Jack, who calmly shot the first two. Oscar shot the third, right in the temple.
The entire room made a deep-throated growling voice. They were ready for blood.
Alex smiled down at Jack and Oscar. He revved up the chain saw again.
“You see how it is, Jack?”
Alex smiled widely.
The room of old people growled their approval.
“I'll come down and when I do you both may as well hand me your weapons,” Alex said. “There's no escape for either of you. But I promise we shall make good use of all your body parts.”
“So that's how it is?” Jack said. “Their fear of you is stronger than their fear of death?”
“I prefer to think it's their love of me that makes them fearless against your bullets.”
“I'm sure you do,” Jack said, taking the Super Soaker out from inside his robe. “But in most behaviorist experiments there are certain primordial fears that trump conditioned responses.”
Williams looked at the red plastic weapon in Jack's hand.
“You've lost your mind, Jack,” he said. “But don't feel bad. Fear of being torn apart will do that to even the bravest of men. Still, this must be a first in the annals of hopeless cases. Attacking an army of angry men with a child's squirt gun.”
He began to laugh and the entire room laughed with him.
As they did, Jack pumped the gun.
“I give you one last chance to give up and be arrested. If you don't, I can't guarantee your safety, Williams,” Jack said.
“You are an original, Jack,” Alex said. “I'll have to give you that.”
He turned toward the front row and almost regretfully said, “Tear this clown and his partner apart.”
The nine remaining men in the first row made weird, simultaneous growling sounds and charged Jack and his toy gun.
Jack pumped the red flamethrower and a mass of flaming gasoline shot twenty-five feet down the line, immediately setting the first two men on fire. Jack aimed the gun at the second wave of men and they screamed and fell back as their eyebrows and hair went up in flames.
Their robes caught fire and they panicked. They turned and ran toward the exit, spreading the flames.
A second row of men started to run forward but Jack blasted them as well. They fell back into the third row, some of whom also caught fire.
The third row of men began ripping off their robes and used them to beat out the flames engulfing the men in the second row.
The others behind them seemed to be coming out of their trances. Some of them tried to help the burned men and others looked up at their leader, still high up on the ladder, for guidance.
Alex Williams was red-faced, furious, and not a little embarrassed by his minions’ failure to overwhelm two measly federal agents armed with some kind of toy flamethrower.
He looked out at his suddenly timid, very human crowd, those who only seconds earlier seemed to be willing to die for him.
“Where is your resolve?” he screamed. “You are an army, and your cause is just! A few of you have fallen. Think what you are giving up if you let this man arrest you! You are giving in to a world where the old aren't valued. Where you will be shut up in old-age homes like the ones this other jackal owns.”
He turned and pointed at Phil, who was watching the whole thing unfold in deep shock.
“Listen to me,” Williams screamed. “All of you. Do your duty. Tear these two men apart, now! Before more police come and kill all our dreams. Do it! Now!”
He looked out at the men, his eyeballs bulging, his teeth pressed together as if he might physically will them to move as one large mass.
But the response he got was only a low murmuring, as if the men were talking to themselves. Many of them shook their heads from side to side, and some turned their backs to their leader in shame, for their failure to do as he commanded.
On the floor the burned and dying were moaning in pain, which further dampened the fanatics’ ardor. It was hard to be a killing machine once you lost your group spirit. Only minutes earlier they had all been happy as one entity, singing the old camp song as though they were on a scouting trip with a revolutionary purpose. Now, some of them looked like charred pieces of meat on the floor while the rest were being told to kill federal agents.
Something that could only end in disaster for all of them.
They saw that now, and they suddenly felt every bit of their true ages. They were old men who were likely to spend the rest of their lives behind bars. But maybe not, if they didn't commit any more crimes. After all, they were all rich, connected, and they could probably blame Alex Williams for brainwashing them. More then one man reached into his pocket and tried using his cell phone to call his lawyer, only to find that service wasn't provided a hund
red feet beneath the earth.
Only one man was truly anxious to continue with the work of the Blue Wolf brotherhood: Alex Williams. What he needed, he thought now, was to be a true leader, one who would do some outrageous act which would reinspire the faithful. Something that would show all of them their awesome power.
Yes, the situation was one that called for a revolutionary hero, and that hero had to be himself.
He looked down at Jack with a calculated hatred on his face.
“You think you've won now? You think you've broken our will?”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “I couldn't have said it better myself. Now come down from there before I put a bullet in your leg.”
“You want me to come down? You've got it!”
Alex Williams revved up his chain saw one last time and, as most of his army of ancient men watched, he turned and pressed it to Johnny Z's throat. Blood spurted out all over Alex's face, and then, as Jack shot him in the left shoulder, he leaped off the ladder like a man half his age, the chain saw screaming in his right hand.
He landed just in front of Jack, and though he wavered, he was able to stay on his feet. Jack stepped backward as Williams's chain saw smashed against his gun barrel. The flamethrower fell to the ground, and suddenly the older man was on Jack, clawing at his face with his left hand as he tried to press the saw's teeth into Jack's neck with his right.
Behind Jack, Oscar was of little help because some of the men had felt a revived spirit of twisted camaraderie and were moving forward with murderous intent.
Jack heard the screaming of the chain saw as it came close to his left ear. He tried to fight Williams off with his elbow, but even though wounded, the older man seemed to possess near supernatural strength.
The saw came even closer. In a second it would slice through Jack's neck. Jack felt his strength sapping. He couldn't hold the saw back for much longer.
Williams felt it, too. He would win this battle and then they would kill the Mexican and eat their bodies at the feast. And he would be a god again. He pressed the saw forward, felt Jack's muscles trembling as they became fully spent.
It would only be a matter of seconds now. He was stronger than the FBI agent. He redoubled his efforts, saw Jack pull his head away, and saw the sweat running down the agent's neck.
One more push.
But for all his strength Williams wasn't a practiced fighter. He was so intent on slashing the saw into Jack's flesh that he forgot an old rule of street brawling. You must fight with your feet and legs, as well as your hands.
A lesson Jack hadn't forgotten.
He kneed Williams hard in his groin, and Alex groaned and fell backward.
“You son of a bitch!” he gasped, the pain flooding through him.
As he fell, Williams lost his balance. Panicked by the sudden reversal, he tried to swing the power saw at Jack with a desperate hope that he could score a direct hit on his face.
But Jack leaned back and watched as the saw barely passed by him in a speedy, out-of-control arc that ended up embedded into Alex Williams's own flailing left arm. The blade cut through a tendon in the Blue Wolf leader's forearm and the ensuing geyser of blood splashed his shoulder and face. Alex dropped the saw and fell to his knees, howling in fear and pain.
Jack kicked the saw away, and quickly took off his robe, tearing off pieces of it to make a tourniquet for Williams's bloody limb.
As Jack expertly tied off the tourniquet, Williams tried once more to rise up and address his followers.
“Forget about me. Think of what we've accomplished. Attack these bastards!”
But the faithful, once wild, had too much to lose. Many of them were already thinking of plane tickets to South America, the last place that didn't have America's Most Wanted on DIRECTV.
Now the unrepentant leader looked up at Jack and held his ground.
“You have no idea,” he said. “None at all. What we found is real. Real!”
“Right,” Jack said. “Which is why you're so youthful. You found something, Alex, something that made you a little stronger, maybe gave you a couple of days’ energy—but, when your time is up, that's the end of the show.”
“No, no, you don't understand. It worked. I'm telling you, it's real. It's going to change the world and I am going to be the most powerful—”
“Right,” Jack said, keeping one eye on the mob, which was still filled with anger. Oscar held a shaky gun on them.
“And you actually ate them?” Jack asked.
“Holy cannibalism,” Williams said. “Like Jesus. The blood, the body . . . it's all one.”
His eyes began to get cloudy.
“The ancient tribes knew. We had the answer. You can't understand. You're a reactionary creep.”
He looked up at Jack with hatred, then gasped and died.
Jack watched the blood leak out of him and saw the crowd move forward.
He stood up and looked at them.
“Your leader is dead,” he said. “And this little game is over. If any of you want a chance of getting out of this without life in prison you should give up right now.”
There was some grumbling but within seconds the whole group had lost its nerve.
Jack and Oscar held their guns on them as they herded them toward the exit.
The roundup of the rest of the Blue Wolf crew went without incident. The FBI, the New Mexico State Police, and some local Santa Fe cops helped gather the now-depressed and embarrassed offenders.
“They look like a sad bunch,” Oscar said as the medics strapped him onto his gurney. The two agents watched the perps shuffle along with their hands cuffed behind their backs.
“Crazy shit,” Jack said, as he observed a bloodied Phil and Dee Dee being loaded into another ambulance. “But I understand the rage they must feel. At least some of it. The old are treated like hell.”
“Yeah, man, but all that other stuff? I don't get it.”
“Tell you who might know some of it. Jennifer and her very tricky sister, Michelle. Speaking of which, where are those two?”
Oscar looked around as a young medic tapped an IV into his left arm.
“I don't know, amigo. A minute ago I thought I saw them by the entrance but they're gone now.”
“Par for the course,” Jack said. “The hell with them. You go get stitched up.”
Oscar laughed and groaned.
“I'm gonna be okay. But looks like that girl got you again, Jackie.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “And right in the heart.”
Jack watched the medics shut the door to Oscar's ambulance and suddenly felt very alone.
Chapter Forty
After finding out that his partner was going to be okay, Jack wanted nothing more than to fill out his paperwork and get back to Los Angeles.
But before he could leave the scene, his phone rang.
He looked at the caller ID and shook his head.
“Hi, Dad. How's it going?”
“Hey,” his father said. “Well, it's fine now, Jackie. But where you been? I been trying to get ahold of you for two days.”
Jack could hear the panic in his dad's voice.
“Sorry, Dad. Where I've been they have very poor reception. Is everything okay?”
There was a long beat of silence, then, “Yeah, sure, son,” Wade said. “It all came out fine. In the end, I mean. But, well, we had us a little spot of trouble here. No, make that a darn big spot. Can you talk now? ‘Cause I got a lot to tell you.”
Jack felt his stomach turn. Then he got behind the wheel of his car and steeled himself for the bad news.
Chapter Forty-one
Back at La Fonda, Jack was still too wired and disturbed to go to bed. He left the hotel, walked over to the square, and sat down on a bench, the cold wind cutting through him.
He'd thought the case would be simple. He'd thought he'd clear it up quickly and, meanwhile, his son would be just fine with Wade. Kevin. His only son. Almost killed and who knew what psychological da
mage had been done by the freaking lunatic librarian and her homicidal husband.
And the whole time all that was happening, Wade was telling him that everything was just great.
“He's getting home a little late with the library lady. Other than that, everything's great. Don't you worry about a thing, Jackie.”
What had ever convinced Jack that he could trust Kevin with Wade?
If Jack himself was a fuckup who only bluffed and staggered his way through cases, what was Wade?
A bigger fuckup, that was for sure.
And yet Jack had somehow convinced himself that it was fine for his dad to take care of his son.
How could he have talked himself into that?
Because he was just like his dad. A selfish bastard who put himself and his needs first. Not that he didn't love Kevin. He was crazy about him. But deep down he had to admit it. He didn't want the boy to get in the way of his adventurous life.
He felt a hot jolt of self-hatred sweep over him. He was a selfish adrenaline junkie. He put his love for a woman like Michelle in front of his own son.
He felt such a self-loathing that he wanted to blow his own brains out.
But that wasn't the way.
He had to think of Kevin first. Forget Michelle. Break whatever hold she had on him. She had helped him once, true, but this had to be the end. She had almost sacrificed her own sister to do what she wanted.
He had to realize that basically she was no good. His son needed him and that was it.
But even now, thinking of her hurt.
There was something deeply lonely inside of him, something that Michelle identified and sympathized with.
He thought of his time with her. The feelings he had just looking at her. Intensely sexual, of course, but something more important as well.
He felt like they completed one another. That both of them had grown up lonely and desperate. But when they were together they were fulfilled. Whole. One.
And this time he had almost been sure that she felt the same way.
But that was another lie.