Dean Ing - Soft Targets

by Soft Targets(lit)

  Everett did not wait to peel the tape from his wrists when he had separated them. He ignored the tape around his ankles as well, springing up to attack the bindings that held Charlie George.

  Charlie's feet were nearest. Everett did not think to rip the plastic bag from Charlie's head; perhaps in some way he was reluctant to spill Charlie's blood. It was an absurdly stupid error with bizarre consequences.

  Peeling the tape from Charlie's ankles, Everett spotted the knife Hakim had thrown. It lay open near the doorway and in a moment Everett was slicing through the stuff at his ankles, then at Charlie's. He heard the Volkswagen engine then and rushed to the next room, fearing Hakim's return.

  From the window he saw Chaim Mardor stalk from the little bus. He had seen the man some-where, could not place him, but had no difficulty in identifying the snub-nosed handgun. He whirled, struck the stump of his finger against a chair, and dropped the knife as pain bludgeoned him.

  Everett stooped to retrieve the knife, mov-ing protectively toward the front door. Chaim stepped through.

  Chaim was no one. There was no tomorrow; there was not even a now. But there was a big man with frightened eyes, and he held a knife, and a knife had caused the death of Fat'ah. He raised the handgun and fired as Everett ducked behind Hakim's media center.

  The report was a cannonade in the confined space, blowing a tape machine into plastic con-fetti. Chaim needed an instant to recover from the recoil and to cock the single-action revolver, holding it in both hands, and in that instant Everett grabbed the handle of a portable televi-sion set. Both men shifted simultaneously, Chaim squeezing another round off, Everett swinging the portable set overhand. Everett had not released the set when the slug plowed into its steel chassis.

  Chaim's handgun was one of a family of weapons designed to stop the headlong charge of a madman. At close range, the energy of one slug from a.44 magnum is such that its impact against any part of an onrushing enemy will literally stop him dead. Everett was hurled spinning away, stunned, his arm nearly dislocated at the shoulder as the television set absorbed the slug in its guts.

  Charlie George concluded from the first explosion that Hakim Arif had returned. Only his ankles were free, his waist and wrists still taped to the table. Charlie, his feet facing the door, could not see Chaim or Everett but he knew mortal combat when he heard it. He brought his legs up, then flung them down again. The table tipped for an instant, almost brought him erect. Charlie hooked his heels over the lip of the table, levered his body along the table. This brought his head up. It was then that he lost his breathing tube. Frantically, Charlie folded his legs again, bringing them back nearly over his head, and gathered his strength.

  Satisfied that he had blown the knife-wielder away, Chaim Mardor turned toward the doorway and looked into the gloom toward the noise, cocking the revolver again. He saw buttocks and widespread arms, Charlie's legs poised for an instant, and Chaim did not understand what he saw. It did not look like a human form from his view and his finger paused on the trigger.

  Charlie's legs came crashing down, the table tipping him up as it fell, and Charlie stabilized himself to stagger upright, arms still pinioned horizontally, the table strapped to his waist. He faced Chaim, strangling.

  Chaim Mardor stood rigid, facing the appari-tion that had appeared before him like every butchered victim of every war in history. Its arms carried no weapon, could carry none in their imitation of the crucified orthodox martyrs of Neturay Karta liturgy. Its head was an almost featureless filmy horror, eyes staring through a shining red slickness. To Chaim Mardor it was victim, retribution, and golem combined in one flesh. He brought the revolver up with great deliberation and fired. Through the roof of his mouth.

  Everett was only half aware of the report, strangely muffled, that removed the top half of Chaim Mardor's head. He swung himself to a sitting position against the wall, saw Charlie George reel against the doorway before collaps-ing.

  Everett needed an interminable ten seconds to clear the mist from his brain, to stumble forward and tear the plastic bag from the head of Charlie George. He found the knife, stepping over things he did not want to see, and separated his friend from the table top. Coughing, gasping, Charlie gulped free air, then relaxed with closed eyes.

  "Come on, pal," Everett croaked, "don't go to sleep on me now." He saw the unspoken question as Charlie looked at him, chest still heaving. "Those other two cock-wallopers; which one will be coming back?"

  The keys were still in the Volkswagen bus. Somehow, weaving like a drunk, Everett drove it to Moorpark.

  SATURDAY, 24 JANUARY, 1981:

  Everett did not attend the private cremation service for Charlie George in Pasadena, con-vinced by physicians, the eloquent threats of David Engels, and telephone pleas of Gina Vercours. Instead, he waited at a Beverly Hills ren-dezvous for Rhone Althouse, who did attend.

  Althouse gained entry by way of a conduit tunnel with its own guarded entrance. The only identification procedure was a handprint analysis, but its brevity was deceptive. Gas chromatography assured that the whorls were not synthetic while standard optical matching techniques pronounced Althouse's hands to be the genuine articles.

  "Somehow I never thought of you as a red-head," was Everett's first remark as Althouse entered the waiting room.

  "Life is a puttynose factory," Althouse returned, taking the big hand. "I wouldn't have recognized you at all except for the newspaper shots of Simon Kenton."

  "That's one photographer I'd like to get my hands on," Everett growled. "For those of us bent on nudging it, a free society can get awfully expensive."

  "You'll slide off the back pages of the papers in a few days," Althouse predicted, "now that Charlie is dead."

  Everett, frowning: "Helluva loss to NBN."

  "We have to think of it that way: of Charlie is defunct, expired, gone to his reward. And that's okay, so long as my old friend Byron Krause is still sniffin' the breeze," Althouse waved a glee-ful finger.

  Everett glanced at the wall clock. "Visiting hours are a sham in here, Rhone; let's jump the gun a few minutes."

  "Don't say 'gun'," Althouse grumbled, follow-ing Everett to the elevator. Moments later they submitted to another print-check before entering the private room of Byron Krause. The attendant who opened the door never spoke but he did a lot of watching. Instinctively the visitors made every gesture slow and cautious.

  The face behind the bandages must have tried to smile, to judge from the crinkles around the mouth and eyes: "Ow, dammit," said the famil-iar voice. "Maury, do you live here? I saw you this morning." The slurring was not any lack of alertness, but implied the constraints of the tiny anchors that kept the facial planes properly positioned.

  "You were just whacked out this morning, Charlie. Sure I live here, until they get me patched. They're going to make me a new fingertip, too; guess where the skin is coming from," he smiled sadly, laying a hand on his hip.

  "Pain in the ass, I expect," from Althouse.

  From the bed: "Listen Rhone, glad as I am to see you, first good one-liner out of you and my silent partner here will cut you down."

  "Don't say 'cut'," Althouse muttered, then slapped his own mouth. "Look: I'm a compulsive. Change the subject. What really happened at that farmhouse?"

  Everett found a chair, Althouse another. Fed-eral agents had pieced much of the story to-gether, aided by tire tracks, reports of a high-speed chase, and fingerprints linking the destroyed van to the Iraqi, Hakim Arif. Everett supplied some of the information as he had it from Engels. "But I guess the biggest surprise, after all, was your opting for the identity change," Everett finished, nodding toward the comedian.

  "I had a lot of time to think, before the media people got tipped off to who and where I was," was the reply. "I decided I'd rather be a live Krause than dead with all those other charlies. Funny thing is, that sadistic little shit Hakim messed me up so much, cosmetic surgery was necessary anyhow."

  "How about the ear?"

&n
bsp; "They can make me a new one. Some agent found my ear; stepped on it. Boy, some of the apologies I get," he shook the bandaged head ruefully.

  Althouse brightened. "I gather from the news that Fat'ah's home base in Syria got creamed by some other bunch there-and that should write 'em all off, now that Hakim Arif is feeding flies all over Los Padres National Forest."

  "No, he isn't," the big Commissioner said, and shrugged into the silence he had created. "This is for your ears only, God knows it's little enough. Seems that the Soviets get nervous when anybody but themselves begins to panic the American public. They leaked the word-don't ask me why, a quid pro quo maybe-that the Iraqi turned his whole fanatical gang under interrogation."

  "Probably the kind we don't like to do," Althouse put in.

  "I expect so. But Arif got away into the moun-tains afoot after that explosion. They think it was the other guy, Guerrero, who's the flies' breakfast. But the Soviets think Arif was dying."

  "They think; they don't know," Althouse whispered.

  "Disinformation at all levels," Everett replied. "It's inevitable. Our people hope they've con-vinced the KGB that they were wrong about an FCC Commissioner hiding behind the face of Simon Kenton."

  "I'm resigned to being part of it," said the comedian. "But if they can alter my larynx properly along with the rest of it, I may show up as a retreaded top banana on TV again, one of these days. You can't beat the money."

  Althouse: "And if they can't alter you enough?"

  "Oh-I don't have to work. We'll get together again and gin up something for the three of us, maybe after the Commissioner's seven-year term is over."

  "Could happen sooner than you think," Althouse said quickly. "I keep fingers into ABC surveys. It'd be easy to include a few items to find out who the public sees as enemies of terrorism. If the names vary widely or change quickly, I could see that the data gets published. Maybe an article in TV Guide."

  "The point, Rhone, the point," said Everett.

  "Isn't it clear? The point is, every charlie on earth should learn in time that it's the idea, and not the man, they're up against."

  Everett cleared his throat. "And if you're wrong? If the same few names keep cropping up?"

  "He'll falsify the data," chuckled the ban-daged head.

  "The hell I will," said Althouse with asperity. "I have some ethics. Nope, but I wouldn't pub-lish the data, either. My ethics are, uh, flexible," he admitted.

  "That's a relief," said the ex-Charlie George. "Your media theories have cost us all the parts we can spare. Oh, quit looking at me like that, Rhone, I'm not blaming you. You were right about the solution."

  "And Everett was right about the odds against us," Althouse sighed.

  "They ran out on D'Este," Everett agreed, add-ing, "and I'll miss the Charlie George Show."

  "Just remind yourself it was all a lot of hype," Rhone Althouse said, grinning at the bandaged face for understanding. "When you think of the odds this funnyman beat, you realize he was never a very proper charlie."

  Everett glanced at his watch. "Time for my ultraviolet treatment," he said, getting up.

  "I'll see you here again, then?" said Althouse.

  "For a few more days. Then I've got a date up in the high lonesome with a one-room cabin." He did not add, and a blonde I'm very fond of, who likes to ski when she isn't near a bed or a tennis court.

  "In January? You're wacko, sire," Althouse laughed.

  "There is that," said Everett, and sauntered out.

  FRIDAY, 13 FEBRUARY, 1981:

  Nearly three weeks crawled by before Everett's skin grafts satisfied the surgeons in Beverly Hills. The new finger would always be numb and stiff at the tip, and it would never leave a print. Fingerprints could be fashioned, but the technique was an outrage in time and money.

  Maurice Everett gained almost no weight while in the clinic because the food all seemed to be vaseline in various disguises so the hell with it, and also because he daily performed all of the calisthenics he hated.

  On a Friday evening, hair bleached afresh, implanted follicles flourishing in the graft at his temple, Everett bade his friend Byron Krause a brief farewell. "I'm going shopping," he crowed.

  "Those are mighty domestic noises you're making," the ex-comedian called after him.

  "Get your ear rebored," Everett called back, and walked on. He considered lingering to admit the truth; that he was feeling a call to upholster his cave, to ask a leggy lady bear to share it permanently, and intended to do so when he got the chance. No one knew his plans for the next week-except for Gina, of course. If he kept it that way there could be no slips, no vulnerabili-ty.

  Engels had found him another superskate, a white virgin Mini-Cooper wearing Pennsylvania plates and sporty British car club badges as big as its hubcaps. It was, thought Everett, like pin-ning rhinestones on a gyrfalcon, but it would never be connected with Maurice Everett.

  At an outfitter's store he found a down-filled bag that would zip onto his, laughing as he paid the ionospheric tab with Simon Kenton's charge card. He was remembering the night before his kidnapping, the first time he had found a grassy nook with Gina in the balm of a Southern California winter evening. ("Don't take off yuh coat, stranguh," she had deadpanned; "we could wind up half a mile from heah...")

  Browsing among the freeze-dried foods, he had no trouble choosing those Gina liked best. At three-kilometer altitudes above the ski lift near Tahoe, they would eat with the abandon of starving weasels.

  At a bookstore he chose volumes they would both devour: Muir, Renault, Steinbeck, Sturgeon. The Lovecraft, he thought with a lewd grin, was for nights when the wind ululated in the eaves of the cabin, when she would nestle against him for more than physical warmth. Given enough books and dehydrated stroganoff, they might not come down for years.

  Stroganoff. The Russian word provoked a thought-chain ending with David Engels. He stowed the packages in the Mini, using only the surface of his mind to begin the drive up Interstate Five where, at Sacramento, he would sleep.

  Engels had visited him twice in the clinic. The first time there was only good news: Gina, rail-ing against the rules of the game to Engels, who did not have enough clout with physicians to get her into Everett's room. The Commission, which accepted Everett's participation via tapes and proxies, though Engels had caught some medita-tive glances in conference. The press, which had gone baying off after false musks when it determined that Simon Kenton was not worth a great deal of investigative reportage.

  On his last visit, Engels had been more sub-dued, with good news and other news. The good news was that Gina had not stopped demanding to see her man. Everett knew that much; they spent too much money on scrambler-equipped telephone calls for him not to know. After one plaintive call from Phoenix, Everett had threatened to send her a vibrator. At the time, she had questioned his taste in coarse humor.

  And two days later she had sent him the most startling dirty greeting card he had ever seen. As usual, some yahoo had already opened it as a routine precaution. But when he first picked it up, Everett thought he was empathizing a facet of Gina Vercours he had not felt before. It was a thin buckram volume filigreed with silver, restrained and elegant. It should have been the poetry of Keats, but its title was Apotheosis of Tissues. Inside was one page of onionskin with the couplet:

  Could silk or satin aspire to moa'

  Than sepulchre for spermatazoa?

  And behind that page were fifty more pages-all of facial tissue. He had cursed because his left hand was strapped to his hip, and he tended to kick his legs when he laughed.

  The other news from David Engels was pass-ing strange. A middleman from the Central In-telligence Agency had learned of some subtle backtracking into NBN visitors and consultants by a private-investigating firm. The firm's only mistake was in failing to realize early that its client was a foreign agency which they never did manage to identify.

  Among the persons of interest was a big husky specimen named Simon Kenton. That
was all Engels had. It might mean nothing. On the other hand, it suggested that Everett might be well-advised to pack a Browning parabellum and, Engels had tapped a stiletto forefinger on Ev-erett's breastbone, to get goddam good with it.

  Everett thought about that, off and on, all the way to Sacramento.

  SATURDAY, 14 FEBRUARY, 1981:

  Gina Vercours rubbed her hands together as she watched the blaze spread under seasoned wood. She had found the cabin exactly where he had said it would be, a few kilometers above the top of the chairlift, just north of the saddleback behind which lay the very nascence of the turbu-lent American River. She was supposed to meet him at the foot of the chairlift at Sunday noon but, knowing Maury, she didn't trust the canny bastard. He'd come sneaking up to the cabin a day early, more than likely, to lay out some fey greeting as a surprise. Well, she could play that game too.