Lone Wolf #12: Phoenix Inferno

by Barry, Mike

  “You never stop,” Owens said. “If you stop you start to think,” and the fire went yet again, the bullet passed through the rear and impacted into the windshield, driving itself out on a course no more than a foot above Wulff’s head. “Back it,” Wulff said, “back it again.”

  “I’m going to go right into him,” Owens said. “I don’t mind, if you don’t, you understand that? If you want to bear down on top of him it’s perfectly okay with me, but you’ve got to understand that we’re just giving him a larger and larger area—”

  “I don’t give a damn,” Wulff said. It was almost as if the role-reversal was now complete; he had to explain his conduct to Owens, he had to justify himself to the man who only a few days before had been his captive, a man who had been hired to kill him. “Shut the fuck up,” Wulff said and waved the pistol at Owens. Owens gave him a single look of astonishment and then his eyes blinked shut in something like an ecstasy of concentration moving inward, seeing animals stalk behind the panes of his eyes, then he floored the accelerator and the Fleetwood was bearing down at ten to fifteen miles an hour in reverse, the fastest it could go in the low gear. Wulff perilously balanced himself on the seat, aiming for a good shot. He still could not see the man.

  But even if he could not see him he could see the source of the fire. Another shot came through, this one a little high, smashing into the ceiling, scattering dust over him as he ducked. Owens grunted something, but his concentration did not lapse. He kept his foot on the floor and they had now closed to within a hundred yards of the Bonneville. “Son of a bitch,” Owens said, “son of a bitch, where is it coming from? Where is the bastard?”

  “I don’t know,” Wulff said. “I don’t know where he is. That’s what we’re trying to find out.” He saw a scurry of movement, just a little twitch of shadows near the left front bumper of the Bonneville. It might have been the man moving, but then again it might only have been some reaction to his passage; the sun, off-angle, was casting shadows in a peculiar way counter to movement, and Wulff desperately tried to bring back the training he had had in combat sighting. They were still closing, and Wulff realized that the situation was cutting both ways. They were coming closer all the time, and at a certain point the assassin would no longer be able to find cover; but in exactly the same way they were losing their own cover, that distance which granted them some measure of safety.

  Owens must have had the same thought. He was moving the car clamped down into the seat now, his forehead buried against his crossed arms, his eyes closed, his frame hunched over in anticipation of the killing shot. Yet to his credit—Wulff had to give the man credit, he was no fool, everything that he had said to Wulff about his training was the truth—he had not given any ground whatsoever. The only way they were going to get Owens out of that seat was to shoot him out, preferably with a howitzer and at close range, the man was not going to give. But the assassin was not going to give either. Another shot came through and Wulff twitched in reaction, taking cover deeply. Then, as if unconnected, he heard Owens’ dull scream, and then the car was thrashing, bucking out of control.

  His processes had been so slowed by the shock of this, he had been so funneled into concentration upon the assassin, that for an instant Wulff reacted stupidly, trying to make some connection between the shot, the scream, and the wild slewing of the car. Then, as Owens collapsed from the wheel, pinning him with his weight, the feeling of blood coursing down Wulff’s body, Wulff understood what had happened and fell all the way to the panels of the floor, guiding himself to fall away from Owens, trying to find some stability. He could not move to stop the car, could not yank Owens’s dead foot away from the accelerator because he was pinned in by the weight and could not lose the time to try and strain. Owens’ bubbling death-sounds were moving high in his throat, sounding like a flute now.

  “I’m sorry,” Wulff said, not that it made any difference now—it was another man dead, that was all, forget it, concentrate on the task at hand, stay to it, don’t get distracted, put it away. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and the next shot came in, the assassin placing his fire carefully, gaining in confidence now as well he might, and this bullet passed so closely over Wulff that if he had not fallen, had not gotten below the line of the seat, he would have been gone. No time to think of that, though, no time for calculation of any sort, what he had to do was to somehow protect himself.

  The assassin was obviously running out of fire. If he had not been he would not have settled for one shot or two; he would have followed up the dead hit on Owens with only one shot but would have made that one right, then would have pumped in the remainder and finished off Wulff for sure. But he had not done that and that could only mean one thing—he had only one weapon, he had run out, he was reloading. All of this swept through Wulff in a matter of thickened seconds while the Fleetwood was still barreling in reverse at its maddened ten to fifteen miles an hour, Owens’s dead foot linked to the accelerator, Owens already quiet above him. And Wulff did the only thing he could have in that instant to avoid either death by impact or by fire, nothing to lose really, double dose of death carried in the situation. He reared up from the alcove, pushing away Owens’s body with an effort of strength, came up on his knees and, centering his weapon, put one shot downrange toward what he saw as an explosion of light, then braced himself against the seat as he saw that they were going to pile into the Bonneville. There was nothing to be done. There was no way around it; no way to deny the crash. In a perfect panorama of stopped time, Wulff saw it all and what would happen then, and there was nothing to do but to hang onto the seat, close his eyes as had the dead man, and hope that when the Fleetwood crunched into the Pontiac dead-on, the assassin, if he were not dead already, would be caught in the impact.

  VII

  Carlin had decided that he had to make a break for it. Call it crazy, what the hell. He had to get out of Phoenix until Wulff was gotten, had to lay low until he was sure that the madman was no longer on his trail. Maybe it was crazy, maybe it was cowardice, maybe what it really was was showing a lot of sense. He had entirely too much at stake now. Everything was breaking for him, if only he could save his ass. He might have the whole country in his palm, but what the hell good would that do him if Wulff got to him first? It wasn’t worth thinking about any longer. Carlin wasn’t going to consider it. He would go south of the border, lay out for a while. In Mexico City he knew at least three men at the highest levels, each with impregnable villas, each with a hundred gunmen. He could take his choice of any of them, hide out in perpetuity. When the time came to get out of there he could pay off any one of the men or all three in ways that would make it worth their while. No. When you considered the situation overall, when you considered all the stakes and the possibilities, he would be a fool to stay, not to go. Going made sense.

  He had twenty men in teams on the trail, but what the hell were twenty? What were thousands as against this Wulff? He had taken out singlehandedly at least that many in that freighter in San Francisco; then there had been that business in Boston where they were still counting the bodies. And Las Vegas—he had blown up an entire operation in Vegas. No, twenty men, no matter how skilled, no matter who they were, could not be considered ample protection. It made sense. It made sense to get the hell out. Besides, and at the heart of it, Carlin was terrified. He was man enough to make that admission. Wulff scared the shit out of him. Anyone who wasn’t scared by that man had no business being in the world. Wulff wasn’t even a man, he was a beast. An animal could do anything. How could you buy off a murderous jungle beast on the full prowl?

  Fuck it, Carlin thought. Fuck it, it isn’t worth it. He decided to travel light, that was the best way to do it. Anything he needed he could pick up en route or on the other end. He wouldn’t even call ahead because the lines might be tapped, you never knew. Not by the government—the government had had taps in for years—he couldn’t give less of a shit about the government. No, it might be Wulff. Wulff somehow might have go
tten lines in. Anyway, it made sense not to take any chances on it. Say nothing, travel light, get into Mexico City and then laugh about what a fool he had been. That would be the proper way to manage it. Perhaps he wasn’t thinking too sanely, but then again what was sane about the Wolf Man? The only way to deal with a lunatic was to be as fast and cunning as the lunatic himself. Right? Carlin knew he was right. His judgments had carried him to a hundred acres on the irrigated desert and he wasn’t going to start losing faith in himself now.

  The only thing to do was to break the word to his mistress. He didn’t want to take her along. On the other hand, it was too risky to leave her behind, what with her knowledge of certain things and also—he had to admit it—that he wanted her along for the sex. He had been fucking her almost exclusively for a couple of years, had lost interest in most other stuff, and he could have had anything he wanted. He wasn’t sure he could perform with anyone else; in any event it was not a discovery that he wanted to make. There were certain things better off unknown; certainly by your forties you could stand as little new knowledge as possible. You had devised your life as a matter of fact for the purposes of keeping the knowledge out. Otherwise how could you live? Well, you could not live at all, that was the point. You simply could not live unless you set up certain barriers between yourself and your experience. To experience something twice was to come close to death. Carlin knew it. He knew everything that he had to know and wanted to know nothing else.

  “We’re going to get out of here,” he said to her. He had barged in on her in the bedroom, found her lying idly amidst the pillows, picking at her hair and looking at the ceiling. She was naked under the sheets, the sheets pulled half across her breasts, the breasts falling enormously to the side. Even under all the circumstances he felt a hard-on coming. Ridiculous. It was ridiculous to feel desire for her; yet he did, and maybe it was better that way then to feel nothing. “Right now,” he said. “We’re going to take a trip.”

  “Where?” she said without looking up, “take a trip where? What shit are you talking about?” She did not have a pleasant personality. In fact, aside from her skills at fucking, she was a nasty bitch. Surely she was not the kind of person who would have appealed to Carlin on any basis other than sexual. Not at all intellectual, with no appreciation of the basic and yet more refined areas of life. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I want you to get ready. We’re going really light; anything you need you can pick up on the way.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Mexico City,” Carlin said.

  “I don’t like Mexico City,” she said, still not looking up. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I’ve seen enough places; I think I’d like to stay put for a while.”

  “Janice—”

  “Don’t Janice me,” she said, “don’t look at me that way, Joe. You got business, you want to take a trip, take it. It wouldn’t be the first time. Why do you need me? You never asked me anywhere before.”

  “I was never gone awhile either. I’m going to be gone awhile this time.”

  “No,” she said and shook her head, “no, I don’t think I want to go anywhere; I don’t really want to go anywhere at all. I think I’ll stay right here, as a matter of fact.”

  It was difficult to keep a lid on his temper when everything was closing in and the situation was as out of control as it threatened to be, but Carlin made the effort. Discipline. Everything came down to a matter of self-discipline and control. If you could not yourself be manipulated, then you would be able to manipulate other people. “Please, Janice,” he said reasonably. “We have to go.

  It’s for your own good and you’ll appreciate it.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think you understand, Joe,” she said. “I owe you nothing, you owe me nothing, that was the arrangement from the first, right? I’m not a traveling companion. If you have to go somewhere, that never stopped you in the past from just doing it and letting me know you’d be back. I never asked you to stay.” She adjusted the sheet around her chin. “I’ll leave,” she said, “I was just going to get up in a little while and go.”

  “You’re a fool,” he said. He knew he was starting to go out of control now, but Carlin didn’t care; there was a kind of luxury in going out of control. “You don’t really know what’s going on at all. You understand nothing.” He was sweating. He could feel the sheet of it against his face, flapping as if a hand was pressing down on his features, moving that film of water like a wave breaking over his head, diving into the water, submerged by it, sinking, drowning. He came toward the bed, took her by the wrist and pulled her up. Her breasts bounced as she reared out of the bed, then hung limply, near her navel. She was not, out of bed, a very attractive woman. Aesthetically speaking she was nothing at all. Her flesh was made for lying-down sex; dressed or merely standing she was completely out of proportion. Still, what the hell. He had never said that he was in it for aesthetic reasons.

  “You’re hurting me,” she said. She twisted her wrist around in his grasp and he went with her. Cunning, she pulled the other way and he was left floundering, without support, while she came up with her other hand, hit him a hard blow on his jaw, striking him near the nerve, stunning him, and Carlin sat down rapidly on the bed gasping, wondering, pulling at the tight flesh of his jaw and not sure exactly what had happened to him, but knowing the pain.

  She moved away from him and he could swear that she was smiling, although he would have wanted her eyes to show some despair that they had come to this. “Why?” he said, “why?”

  “Leave me alone, Joe.”

  “You had no right to do that,” he said. “What reason was there to hurt me?” and he realized that he was sniveling. He, Joe Carlin was whining and crying on the bed as if he were a child, and a charge of revulsion so clear and vicious that it might have been illness swept through him; there was no reason for him to take this, Carlin thought. He was entitled to better than this; he could not possibly take shit of this sort, because if the word got around, well then, he was done … and the gun was in his hand, he was pointing it at her stomach, and then as he saw the rage and panic twisting across her face he realized for the first time what he had done. My, he thought slowly, that was peculiar, I wonder why she’s backing away from me like that, and then he looked down at the gun and the situation slowly pulled itself into shape for him like a child clumsily tying a scout knot. “Don’t,” she said to him, “don’t do it Joe. This is me.”

  “It’s not right,” Carlin said. He was not sure what he was talking about but the idea at least was clear to him. He had no doubt whatsoever of the idea. “It just isn’t right, it isn’t fair, you can’t do this kind of thing to me.”

  “Joe,” she said, and now she was backed against one of the walls, her stomach shrinking and shriveling, her nipples alert with panic, standing up as if he had been playing with them. “Joe, I don’t know what you think you’re doing but you can’t. You can’t do this, Joe. You can’t do it to me.”

  “All I wanted,” he said thickly and slowly, “all I wanted was for you to come with me. Was that so much to ask?”

  “All right.”

  “Don’t tell me all right,” he said, the gun steady, the rest of him shaking, but the gun held rigid in his hand just like a cock, “don’t tell me all right, you bitch, you just can’t get away with it, you can’t make it disappear! Things don’t disappear just because you say that they weren’t meant. I can’t take it any more,” he said. Surprising how steady the gun was. It occurred to him with clinical detachment that it was very possible that he could shoot her. He did not know which way it would go yet, you had to watch this kind of thing, but that was definitely a possibility.

  “Joe,” she said, lifting her arms, but very cautiously, holding them, palms turned outward against the wall, “Joe, I don’t think you know what you’re doing.”

  “Yes I do.”

  “I’ll go with you. I’ll go with yo
u if that makes any difference. Put that gun down.”

  “You should have said that before. You’ll say anything now with the gun turned on you.”

  “I’m trying to help you. I’m trying—”

  “I didn’t want much,” Carlin said as if talking to someone else, not Janice now but some distant auditor who he could imagine as a wise, benevolent old man shaped from gases, drifting in and out of the spaces of the bedroom, turning a curious and attentive ear to his utterances, nodding wisely and sympathetically every now and then to indicate that basically, despite his silence, he was on Carlin’s side. “I just wanted to be left alone. I worked hard, I had a nice thing to look forward to, a good thing going, I didn’t want much. Mostly I just wanted them to leave me alone. I wanted all of the sons of bitches to let me alone, but do you understand something, they wouldn’t.” He wiped some sweat out of his eyes with the gun hand. Janice twitched against the wall, and then as he leveled the gun back to position, she returned to her solemn, frozen position. “They just wouldn’t let me alone and now after all of it I’ve got to do something, you see. I’ve just got to do something. It’s Wulff, you see, that son of a bitch, I could have held the whole thing in my palm, the two of us could have worked it out together, we could have had a deal, Wulff and me,” Carlin said, and the circumspect form nodded, waved an index finger in quizzical agreement showing that he wanted more information. “Well of course,” Carlin said, “I mean that stood to reason, he was working for me just as I was working for him, and so the two of us could have worked together. You dig what I mean? He was knocking off the bastards right and left, he was clearing the ground making things easier, and I could have made things easier for him, too, because once I was on top no one could have touched him. No one at all, not with me running the interference. And I could have done anything he wanted, within reason of course, even given him a piece of it, but he just didn’t understand.” The auditor made a come again? expression. “He wouldn’t understand anything like that,” Carlin said. “I think that the trouble with the son of a bitch is that he’s truly crazy. He doesn’t want to get along, he just wants to blow things up. But that doesn’t make me crazy, does it? Not when I’m trying to get along as best I can. I mean, somebody has to run the operation, no? Supply and demand, that’s very important, that’s a brutal law of economics, that if there’s a demand then somewhere there’s got to be a supply. So why not me?” Carlin said, “why the hell not me? I’m just giving people what they want, and there are a hell of a lot who would have done it worse than me.”