“Welcome to the chambers of the United States Senate,” Thy Estes said grandly. She took Hawker’s arm and pulled close. He could feel the heat and weight of her left breast. “Care for a tour?” she asked.
Hawker looked down into her green eyes. They seemed to be burning. There was no mistaking the heavy-lidded, sloe-eyed, flushed expression. “As long as you keep it short, lady,” he said. “I’m kind of anxious to get back to your room.”
The Senate Chamber was bathed in shadows and soft light. She showed him her seat, the electronic voting mechanism, and pointed out the seats of some of her more famous colleagues. The whole time, Hawker could feel the tension building in his stomach, the butterflies of sexual anticipation. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but he could see signs of the same physical wanting in her: the shortness of breath, the nervous movements, the projectile shape of her nipples hardening beneath the body stocking.
“And do you see the two light bulbs beneath the chandelier?” Thy Estes said, now conducting the tour by rote. “The red bulb indicates that an executive session is in progress. The white one indicates a regular session.”
They stood now at the front of the Senate well. Separating them from the doorway was a massive podium. Hawker turned and looked deep into the woman’s eyes.…
“And this is the Vice President’s seat,” she continued. “Here he’s called the President of the Senate.”
He reached out and unsnapped the barrette in her hair. A mahogany veil swung down onto her shoulders, and she shook her head, so that the hair spread around her face and slightly over one eye.…
“The Secretary of the Senate—”
Hawker took her by the shoulders and pulled her against him.…
“—sits to the right of the Vice President—”
Hawker began to kiss her neck, feeling her gasp slightly as he slid the green warm-up jacket off her, then rolled the burnt-orange body stocking down over her shoulders to her waist. Her breasts seemed to expand and settle, relieved to be free, and he lifted them in his hands, squeezing the weight of them softly.
The woman moaned and arched as Hawker kissed her shoulders and chest, then touched his tongue to the long nipple of her right breast. The skin was as translucent as expensive paper, and the white orb was webbed by delicate blue veins. The veins seemed to throb and darken as Hawker sucked on the woman’s nipple.
“God, James, you’re making me so dizzy—”
“I’ll help you put your jacket on, and we’ll go back to your room.”
“No! God, I can’t wait. Please! Don’t stop, not yet!”
Without waiting for a reply, the woman dropped to her knees and, with shaking hands, unbuckled Hawker’s belt. The vigilante knotted his fingers in her hair as she pulled his pants, then his briefs, down around his ankles.
“My goodness!” she exclaimed softly, taking him in her two small hands.
“Your goodness has nothing to do with it,” Hawker moaned.
There was no doubt that Thy Estes enjoyed what she was doing. She made the small hungry noises of an animal as she took him into her mouth and began an assault, with tongue and suction, that seemed to draw at his very soul. When Hawker could stand it no longer, he forced the woman’s face away from him. Wordlessly, she lay back on the floor and let the vigilante strip the rest of her clothes away. She was a beautiful woman indeed, with a full mature body that had been well tended. Her hips were wide, moist, and ready. Her pubic hair was a darker, glossier shade of auburn than the hair on her head, and her breasts flattened and spread themselves beneath their own weight. She ran her hands over her body, eyes half closed in ecstasy, as Hawker took off his own clothes and draped them over a huge chair.
“The Vice President’s chair,” Thy Estes whispered, giggling, as the vigilante knelt before her.
Hawker said nothing as he let the woman roll him over onto the carpet so that now she was on top. She lifted her hips, positioned herself, then forced Hawker to enter her with a long, strong thrust of her hips. “Oh …” she whispered softly, “yes … yes … yes … harder, please, harder. Make me feel like a woman, James. Make me feel like the most desirable lady in creation.…”
As the woman found the rhythm she wanted—slow, angled, and hard enough so that her pelvis slapped against his—Hawker took a discreet look at his Seiko Submariner watch.
12:19.
Hawker was relieved to see he had plenty of time.
There was every indication that Senator Thy Estes was about to stage her first filibuster on the Senate floor.…
eighteen
At 1:45 A.M., James Hawker, refreshed but weary, content but just a little sore, trotted down the steps of the Capitol Building. The May night was cool, blustery, and ripe with spring thaw. Sporadic traffic echoed through the streets.
His rental Ford was parked beside a line of newspaper dispensers. One of the headlines caught his attention:
“Teen Prom Queen Gunned Down”
Hawker shook his head as he got into the car. Who in the hell would shoot a defenseless teenage girl? It was Them, the nameless, faceless Them, savages who walked the streets, walked the streets of every city in the country.
Maybe tonight he could rid the land of just a few of Them.
Hawker started the car, checked the map under the dome light, and steered off through the glistening streets toward Fairmoor Heights, his jaw set tightly.
Within half an hour he had found 2007 Bleaker, an estate of dark trees and rolling grounds set within a high concrete wall. At the entrance was a massive wrought-iron gate and a small lighted guard’s station. Inside the little station two dark, swarthy men sat within smoking, playing cards.
Hawker drove past without slowing.
He had one thing in his favor: the estate was set apart from the other mansions in the area by its own acreage. Once he got in, noise—within reason—, wouldn’t matter all that much.
Hawker parked in a church parking lot two blocks from the back of the estate. He strapped on the heavy Colt revolver in its shoulder holster, checked the canvas chest-pack to see if it had everything he might need.
Finally, he hefted the little Ingram MAC-11 submachine gun. With the metal stock folded, it was only ten inches long. Unloaded, it weighed less than a pound. Its box clip held thirty-two rounds of nine-mm cartridges, and the silencer he screwed onto the barrel was longer than the weapon. Taped to the strap of the chest-pack were six more full clips.
When he was ready the vigilante pulled on an old trench coat and trotted down the dark sidewalk to the back wall of the estate.
While driving around the block he had pinpointed the telephone terminal. It was a ground terminal, green and tubular, and now he knelt beside it, watching carefully for traffic. At Thy Estes’s office he had called Information to see if there was a telephone number for Isfahan Shiraz. As he expected, the number was unlisted. He had toyed with the idea of calling Lester Rehfuss and asking him to get it, but he felt that, if he told Lester what he knew, the CIA might pull him off the case and send its own people.
Now he had to play it by ear. He loosened the single screw that held the green cap and removed the top of the terminal. Using his little Tekna flashlight, he studied the brass pairs. Candy-colored wires ran to the entire vertical row of them, but only four drop lines were connected. Hawker had no way of knowing if they all led inside to the estate, but it was not unlikely. Shiraz might well have two private lines, and the other two lines might be wired to burglar alarms.
Carefully, Hawker loosened the brass nuts and disconnected all the wires.
When he was done he listened closely for any gong of alarm from the security system Shiraz no doubt employed.
Except for the wind in the trees, there was no sound.
Bundling the old trench coat around him, Hawker walked quickly around the block to the front of the estate. When the wrought-iron gate and the guard station came into view, his walk abruptly changed. He began to weave and stagger, head bowed, hands st
uffed in pockets. He began to sing:
“Mamas, don’t let your cowboys grow up to be babies …”
He sang and staggered up to the gate, fell against it, and slid down to the asphalt still singing.
“Hey! You there! Get away, you drunk! We call the police, have your ass arrested. Hey! You, wake up!”
Hawker groaned and looked up. The two guards, dressed in khaki, stood within the gate. Each of the men held a revolver pointed at his head.
“Oh-h-h,” the vigilante moaned, “going to be sick. Got to throw up.”
“You no puke your guts here, you bum! Go away now!”
“Leave me alone … got to vomit.…”
Hawker got to his knees and, holding his stomach, began to heave. Immediately, the big gate swung open. From the corner of his eye Hawker watched as the two guards holstered their weapons so they could drag him into the street.
They did not get the chance.
From beneath the trench coat Hawker pulled the Ingram submachine gun and shot them both quickly with short bursts. When the Iranians hit the asphalt, it was like the thud of heavy bags of fruit.
Quickly, Hawker jumped to his feet and dragged them both into the bushes inside the estate. He pulled the gate closed behind him and stripped off the trench coat. From the oversized pockets he took his Navy watch cap and a tin of military skin-black. He streaked his face with the grease, then pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves.
It was 2:45 A.M.
He could see the lights of the house through the trees. It was elevated on a hill, down a winding asphalt drive. Hawker trotted down the drive, his New Balance running shoes making almost no noise. The drive ended at a circular commons in front of the house. Hawker stopped. It was a massive brick house, three stories high, with keystone windows and layers of ivy. There were dim lights burning on the bottom floor, and one bright window upstairs. He watched for several minutes, expecting someone to be patrolling outside the house.
No one there.
Cautiously, Hawker made his way to the door—and had the wind knocked out of him by something big, dark, and heavy that hit him from the side.
It was a third guard, the guard he had expected to be there but had not seen.
The man wrestled Hawker to the ground, but the vigilante still held the Ingram. He swung the silencer against the guard’s chest and squeezed off another short burst. The impact of the slugs knocked the man off Hawker onto the ground. The guard made a heavy, liquid gurgling sound while clawing at his throat. Then he lay still.
Kneeling, Hawker turned away and forced himself to inhale deeply, trying to get his wind back. Had anyone heard the hollow thud of the shots? He studied the house closely. There seemed to be no additional lights, no sign of anyone moving inside.
Apparently, they had not heard.
The vigilante made a slow, precise trip around the outside of the house. There was one other guard. He could see the orange bead of his cigarette burning in the darkness of the back entrance, not far from the bank of garage doors. Hawker drew the Randall Attack/Survival knife from its leg scabbard, got down on his belly, and crawled silently across the damp grass. The guard sat on the back stoop, an automatic rifle at his feet. He smoked and stared at the stars. When Hawker was close enough, he lunged from the ground, found the man’s throat with his left hand, and drove the Randall through the fibrous wall of his windpipe.
To Hawker’s surprise, the guard bolted away from him, running wildly, clawing at his throat and making a harsh gasping sound. Then he sat down abruptly on the asphalt and leaned against the garage. Finally, he keeled over into the blood that pooled beneath him, and died there.
The vigilante cleaned the knife on the grass and studied the house once again. The fury in him was now like a cold, living thing. How would he take them? He thought about it. He wanted to look into their faces; he wanted to see them filled with the same terror they had brought to the lives of so many. He wanted to see terror in the faces of four of them in particular: the three students who had murdered Thy Estes’s sister and her family, and Isfahan Shiraz. He wanted to look into their eyes and tell them why they were going to die.
Calmly, Hawker reholstered the knife and slid a fresh clip into the Ingram.
The Iranians’ first line of defense was gone now. And their telephone access to the outside world was cut. They were his; each and every one of them was now his.
nineteen
The vigilante tested the back door. It was not locked. He stepped into a darkened room of pots and shelves that smelled of grease and curry: the kitchen. As he moved down the hall he swung open each side door he came to: closets; storage areas; then a small meeting area.
The hall opened out into a massive living room. There was a marble fireplace and twin winding stairways. Over the fireplace was a huge oil painting of the Ayatollah Khomeini. A brass display lamp burned above it. In the silent house Hawker carried a chair to the fireplace, stood on it, and removed the painting. Then he braced the painting against the chair at the foot of the stairs. On the mantelpiece he found matches and charcoal starter. He squirted the starter over the portrait, then set it ablaze.
Quickly, then, he ran up the stairs to the second floor. There were darkened halls to his left and right. From his chest-pack Hawker took an Mkl illuminating hand grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it down the stairs into the middle of the living room. It went off with a loud whoof and illuminated the entire bottom floor in a searing light.
Suddenly the house was alive. Hawker stepped back into a closet as doors on the second floor began to slam open. He watched silently as more than a half-dozen men, all in pajamas or their underwear, and all carrying handguns, sprinted past and down the stairs. Hawker studied them closely to see if they might be young enough to be college students. He decided none of them were.
At the base of the stairs they stopped one by one, frozen in outrage at what they saw. The face of the Ayatollah was beginning to melt into a gruesome montage of color and flame, all of it illuminated by the garish light of the illuminating grenade. One of the men made a move as if to put the fire out.
“Hey!” The vigilante stood at the top of the stairs, the Ingram held in his left hand, the Colt .44 Magnum in his right. The Iranians all turned toward the voice at once. Hawker smiled at them. “There’s only one way I’ll let you bastards put out that fire. You can piss on it. Did you hear me? If you want your beloved Ayatollah saved, you’re going to have to piss on him.”
For a moment Hawker thought a couple of them were actually going to do it. But then they brought their handguns up to fire, which is exactly what the vigilante expected them to do. He dropped to his belly and held the Ingram on full automatic, spraying it like a garden hose. In less than two seconds it was over. Eight Iranians lay at the bottom of the stairs, hands still quivering, mouths open with screams that never made it past their lips. The white marble floor was splattered with red.
From the floor above, Hawker heard the muted thud of someone running. He turned and sprinted up the stairs, reloading the Ingram as he went. As he got to the top of the stairs, he saw an older man disappear into a room and slam the door behind him. Hawker went to the door, jiggled the handle, and stepped back against the wall.
The old man fired through the door four times. The weapon made the substantial ker-whack of a heavy-caliber revolver.
Hawker pivoted, kicked the door open, and once again stepped back against the wall.
The old man fired twice more.
Calmly, then, James Hawker stepped into the door, the Ingram held at hip level. “Smith & Wesson, right?” The vigilante’s grin was cold. “You’re empty, friend.”
The man stood behind an ornate bed, cowering against the wall. His hair and pointed beard were gray, and he wore burgundy pajamas. He pointed the gun at Hawker and pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession.
The hammer made an empty clapping sound.
“See?” said Hawker. “What did I tell you?”
<
br /> The man dropped the gun. “Please,” he cried, “please don’t kill me. I’ll do anything, anything you say, just don’t hurt me. I have money, a lot of money. I’ll give it all to you—”
“How about just telling me your name for starters.”
“Shiraz. Isfahan Shiraz. I am a very important man. If you have already … accidentally killed some of my staff, I’m sure a word from me to the police—”
“Isfahan Shiraz,” Hawker interrupted, making a friendly, expansive gesture. “Gosh, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
The old man was immediately wary. “You … you have?”
Hawker walked calmly toward him. “Yes, indeed. I’ve heard a lot about you. Things that might surprise you!” The vigilante’s manner became frigid in an instant as he grabbed the man by the collar and banged him against the wall. “I’ve been looking for you, you sick old son of a bitch, because I want the names of the three students who have been doing your bombing—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
Hawker backhanded him across the face. “Don’t lie to me, you goat-fucker. You have one chance to live, and one chance only—tell me the names of those students and where I can find them.”
Isfahan shuddered, tears rolling down his cheeks. “If I tell you, will you promise … promise not to kill me?”
“On my honor.”
“You swear it?”
Hawker shook him roughly. “I’m running out of oaths. I gave you my word of honor, didn’t I?”
The Iranian began to talk then, too rapidly at first, and Hawker had to make him slow down. He made him repeat everything twice. The students hadn’t killed Rultan at the restaurant—one of Isfahan’s hit men had because they suspected him of being too friendly with CIA people. But the students had been doing the bombing. When the vigilante was satisfied, he released his grip, smiling. “There, now, was that so hard?”
Terror in D.C. Page 10