by Tom Clancy
Kelly’s back got straighter and his eyes namower. He’d seen that before. Even in Vietnam, a country at war since before his birth, there were still parents, and children, and, even in war, a desperate quest for something like normality. Children needed to play some of the time, to be held and loved, protected from the harsher aspects of reality for as long as the courage and talents of their parents could make that possible. And it was true here, too. Everywhere there were victims, all innocent to some greater or lesser degree, and the children the most innocent of all. He could see it there, fifty yards away, as the young mother led her child across the street, short of the corner where a dealer stood, making a transaction. Kelly slowed his car to allow her safe passage, hoping that the care and love she showed that night would make a difference to her child. Did the dealers notice her? Were the ordinary citizens worthy of note at all? Were they cover? Potential customers? Nuisances? Prey? And what of the child? Did they care at all? Probably not.
“Shit,” he whispered quietly to himself, too detached to show his anger openly.
“What?” Pam asked. She was sitting quietly, leaning away from the window.
“Nothing. Sorry.” Kelly shook his head and continued his observation. He was actually beginning to enjoy himself. It was like a reconnaissance mission. Reconnaissance was learning, and learning had always been a passion for Kelly. Here was something completely new. Sure, it was evil, destructive, ugly, but it was also different, which made it exciting. His hands tingled on the wheel.
The customers were diverse, too. Some were obviously local, you could tell from their color and shabby clothing. Some were more addicted than others, and Kelly wondered what that meant. Were the apparently functional ones the newly enslaved? Were the shambling ones the veterans of self-destruction, heading irrevocably towards their own deaths? How could a normal person look at them and not be frightened that it was possible to destroy yourself one dose at a time? What drove people to do this? Kelly nearly stopped the car with that thought. That was something beyond his experience.
Then there were the others, the ones with medium-expensive cars so clean that they had to come from the suburbs, where standards had to be observed. He pulled past one and gave the driver a quick look. Even wears a tie! Loose in the collar to allow for his nervousness in a neighborhood such as this one, using one hand to roll down the window while the other perched at the top of the wheel, his right foot doubtless resting lightly on the gas pedal, ready to jolt the car forward if danger should threaten. The driver’s nerves must be on edge, Kelly thought, watching him in the mirror. He could not be comfortable here, but he had come anyway. Yes, there it was. Money was passed out the window, and something received for it, and the car moved off as quickly as the traffic-laden street would allow. On a whim, Kelly followed the Buick for a few blocks, turning right, then left onto a main artery, where the car got into the left lane and stayed there, driving as rapidly as was prudent to get the hell out of this dreary part of the city, but without drawing the unwanted attention of a police officer with a citation book.
Yeah, the police, Kelly thought as he gave up the pursuit. Where the hell are they? The law was being violated with all the apparent drama of a block party, but they were nowhere to be seen. He shook his head as he turned back into the trading area. The disconnect from his own neighborhood in Indianapolis, merely ten years before, was vast. How had things changed so rapidly? How had he missed it? His time in the Navy, his life on the island, had insulated him from everything. He was a rube, an innocent, a tourist in his own country.
He looked over at Pam. She seemed all right, though a little tense. Those people were dangerous, but not to the two of them. He’d been careful to remain invisible, to drive like everyone else, meandering around the few blocks of the “business” area in an irregular pattern. He was not blind to the dangers, Kelly told himself. In searching for patterns of activity, he hadn’t made any of his own. If anyone had eyeballed him and his vehicle especially hard, he would have noticed. And besides, he still had his Colt .45 between his legs. However formidable these thugs might appear, they were nothing compared to the North Vietnamese and Vietcong he’d faced. They’d been good. He’d been better. There was danger on these streets, but far less than he had survived already.
Fifty yards away was a dealer dressed in a silk shirt that might have been brown or maroon. It was hard to tell the color in the poor illumination, but it had to be silk from the way it reflected light. Probably real silk, Kelly was willing to bet. There was a flashiness to these vermin. It wasn’t enough for them merely to violate the law, was it? Oh, no, they had to let people know how bold and daring they were.
Dumb, Kelly thought. Very dumb to draw attention to yourself that way. When you do dangerous things, you conceal your identity, conceal your very presence, and always leave yourself with at least one route of escape.
“It’s amazing they can get away with this,” Kelly whispered to himself.
“Huh?” Pam’s head turned.
“They’re so stupid.” Kelly waved at the dealer near the corner. “Even if the cops don’t do anything, what if somebody decides to—I mean, he’s holding a lot of money, right?”
“Probably a thousand, maybe two thousand,” Pam replied.
“So what if somebody tries to rob him?”
“It happens, but he’s carrying a gun, too, and if anyone tries—”
“Oh—the guy in the doorway?”
“He’s the real dealer, Kelly. Didn’t you know that? The guy in the shirt is his lieutenant. He’s the guy who does the actual—what do you call it?”
“Transaction,” Kelly replied dryly, reminding himself that he’d failed to spot something, knowing that he’d allowed his pride to overcome his caution. Not a good habit, he told himself.
Pam nodded. “That’s right. Watch—watch him now.”
Sure enough, Kelly saw what he now realized was the full transaction. Someone in a car—another visitor from the suburbs, Kelly thought—handed over his money (an assumption, since Kelly couldn’t really see, but surely it wasn’t a Bank Americard). The lieutenant reached inside the shirt and handed something back. As the car pulled off, the one in the flamboyant shirt moved across the sidewalk, and in shadows that Kelly’s eyes could not quite penetrate there was another exchange.
Oh, I get it. The lieutenant holds the drugs and makes the exchange, but he gives the money to his boss. The boss holds the earnings, but he also has a gun to make sure nothing goes wrong. They’re not as dumb as I thought they were.”
“They’re smart enough.”
Kelly nodded and made a mental note, chastising himself for having made at least two wrong assumptions. But that’s why you did reconnaissance, after all.
Let’s not get too comfortable, Kelly, he told himself. Now you know that there’s two bad guys up there, one armed and well concealed in that doorway. He settled in his seat and locked his eyes on the potential threat, watching for patterns of activity. The one in the doorway would be the real target. The misnamed “lieutenant” was just a hireling, maybe an apprentice, undoubtedly expendable, living on crumbs or commission. The one he could just barely see was the real enemy. And that fit the time-honored pattern, didn’t it? He smiled, remembering a regional political officer for the NVA. That job had even carried a code name. ERMINE COAT. Four days they’d stalked that bastard, after they’d positively identified him, just to make sure he was the one, then to learn his habits, and determine the best possible way to punch his ticket. Kelly would never forget the look on the man’s face when the bullet entered his chest. Then their three-mile run to the LZ, while the NVA’s reaction team headed in the wrong direction because of the misleading pyro-charge he’d set up.
What if that man in the shadows was his target? How would he do it? It was an interesting mental game. The feeling was surprisingly godlike. He felt like an eagle, watching, cataloging, but above it all, a predator at the top of the food chain, not hungry now, ridin
g the thermals over them.
He smiled, ignoring the warnings that the combat-experienced part of his brain was beginning to generate.
Hmm. He hadn’t seen that car before. It was a muscle car, a Plymouth Roadrunner. red as a candy apple, half a block away. There was something odd about the way it—
“Kelly . . . ” Pam suddenly tensed in her seat.
“What is it?” His hand found the .45 and loosened it in the holster just a millimeter or so, taking comfort from the worn wooden grips. But the fact that he’d reached for it, and the fact that he’d felt a sudden need for that comfort, were a message that his mind could not ignore. The cautious part of his brain began to assert itself, his combat instincts began to speak more loudly. Even that brought a surge of reflective pride. It’s so nice, he reflected in the blink of an eye, that I still have it when I need it.
“I know that car—it‘s—”
Kelly’s voice was calm. “Okay, I’ll get us out of here. You’re right, it’s time to leave.” He increased speed, maneuvering left to get past the Roadrunner. He thought to tell Pam to get down, but that really wasn’t necessary. In less than a minute he’d be gone, and—damn!
It was one of the gentry customers, someone in a black Karmann-Ghia convertible who’d just made his transaction, and, eager to have this area behind him, shot left from beyond the Roadrunner only to stop suddenly for yet another car doing much the same thing. Kelly stood on his brakes to avoid a collision, didn’t want that to happen right now, did he? But the timing worked out badly, and he stopped almost right next to the Roadrunner, whose driver picked that moment to get out. Instead of going forward, he opted to walk around the back of the car, and in the course of turning, his eyes ended up not three feet from Pam’s cringing face. Kelly was looking that way also, knowing that the man was a potential danger, and he saw the look in the man’s eyes. He recognized Pam.
“Okay, I see it,” his voice announced with an eerie calm, his combat voice. He turned the wheel farther to the left and stepped on the gas, bypassing the little sports car and its invisible driver. Kelly reached the corner a few seconds later, and after the briefest pause to check traffic, executed a hard left turn to evacuate the area.
“He saw me!” Her voice hovered on the edge of a scream.
“It’s okay, Pam,” Kelly replied, watching the road and his mirror. “We are leaving the area. You’re with me and you’re safe.”
Idiot, his instincts swore at the rest of his consciousness. You’d better hope they don’t follow. That car has triple your horsepower and—
“Okay.” Bright, low-slung headlights made the same turn Kelly’d executed twenty seconds earlier. He saw them wiggle left and right. The car was accelerating hard and fishtailing on the wet asphalt. Double headlights. It wasn’t the Karmann-Ghia.
You are now in danger, his instincts told him calmly. We don’t know how much yet, but it’s time to wake up.
Roger that.
Kelly put both hands on the wheel. The gun could wait. He started evaluating the situation, and not much of it was good. His Scout was not made for this sort of thing. It wasn’t a sports car, wasn’t a muscle car. He had four puny cylinders under the hood. The Plymouth Roadrunner had eight, each one of them bigger than what Kelly was now calling on. Even worse, the Roadrunner was made for low-end acceleration and cornering, while the Scout had been designed for plodding across unpaved ground at a hot fifteen miles per hour. This was not good.
Kelly’s eyes divided their time equally between the windshield and the rearview mirror. There wasn’t much of a gap, and the Roadrunner was closing it rapidly.
Assets, his brain started cataloging. The car isn’t completely useless, she’s a rugged little bitch. You have big, mean bumpers, and that high ground-clearance means you can ram effectively. So what about the coachwork? That Plymouth might be a status symbol for jerks, but this little baby can be—is—a weapon, and you know how to use weapons. The cobwebs fell completely from his mind.
“Pam,” Kelly said as quietly as he could manage, “you want to get down on the floor, honey?”
“Are they—” She started to turn, the fear still manifest in her voice, but Kelly’s right hand pushed her down towards the floor.
“Looks like they’re following us, yes. Now, you let me handle this, okay?” The last unengaged part of his consciousness was proud of Kelly’s calm and confidence. Yes, there was danger, but Kelly knew about danger, knew a hell of a lot more than the people in the Roadrunner. If they wanted a lesson in what danger really was, they’d come to the right fucking place.
Kelly’s hands tingled on the wheel as he eased left, then braked and turned hard right. He couldn’t corner as well as the Roadrunner, but these streets were wide—and being in front gave him the choice of path and timing. Losing them would be hard, but he knew where the police station was. It was just a matter of leading them there. They’d break contact at that point.
They might shoot, might find a way to disable the car, but if that happened, he had the .45, and a spare clip, and a box of ammo in the glove compartment. They might be armed, but they sure as hell weren’t trained. He’d let them get close . . . how many? Two? Maybe three? He ought to have checked, Kelly told himself, remembering that there hadn’t been time.
Kelly looked in the mirror. A moment later he was rewarded. The headlights of another, uninvolved car a block away shone straight through the Roadrunner. Three of them. He wondered what they might be armed with. Worst-case was a shotgun. The real worst-case was a rapid-fire rifle, but street hoods weren’t soldiers, and that was unlikely.
Probably not, but let’s not make any assumptions, his brain replied.
His .45 Colt, at close range, was as lethal as a rifle. He quietly blessed his weekly practice as he turned left. If it comes to that, let them get close and go for a quick ambush. Kelly knew all there was to know about ambushes. Suck ’em in and blow ’em away.
The Roadrunner was ten yards behind now, and its driver was wondering what to do next.
That’s the hard part, isn’t it? Kelly thought for his pursuer. You can get close as you want, but the other guy is still surrounded by a ton of metal. What are you going to do now? Ram me, maybe?
No, the other driver wasn’t a total fool. Sitting on the rear bumper was the trailer hitch, and ramming would have driven it right through the Roadrunner’s radiator. Too bad.
The Roadrunner made a move to the right. Kelly saw its headlights rock backwards as the driver floored his big V-8, but being in front helped. Kelly snapped the wheel to the right to block. He immediately learned that the other driver didn’t have the stomach to hurt his car. He heard tires squeal as the Roadrunner braked down to avoid a collision. Don’t want to scratch that red paint, do we? Good news for a change! Then the Roadrunner snapped left, but Kelly covered that move also. It was like sailboats in a tacking duel, he realized.
“Kelly, what’s happening?” Pam asked, her voice cracking on every word.
His reply was in the same calm voice he’d used for the past few minutes. “What’s happening is that they’re not very smart.”
“That’s Billy’s car—he loves to race.”
“Billy, eh? Well. Billy likes his car a little too much. If you want to hurt somebody, you ought to be willing to—” Just to surprise them, Kelly stomped on his brakes. The Scout nose-dived, giving Billy a really good look at the chromed trailer hitch. Then Kelly accelerated again, watching the Roadrunner’s reaction. Yeah, he wants to follow close, but I can intimidate him real easy, and he won’t like that. He’s probably a proud little fuck.
There, that’s how I do it.
Kelly decided to go for a soft kill. No sense getting things complicated. Still, he knew that he had to play this one very carefully and very smart. His brain started measuring angles and distances.
Kelly hit his accelerator too hard taking a corner. It almost made him spin out, but he’d planned for that and only botched the recovery enough to make
his driving look sloppy to Billy, who was doubtless impressed with his own abilities. The Roadrunner used its cornering and wide tires to close the distance and hold formation on Kelly’s starboard-quarter. A deliberate collision now could throw the Scout completely out of control. The Roadrunner held the better hand now, or so its driver thought.
Okay . . .
Kelly couldn’t turn right now. Billy had blocked that. So he turned hard left, taking a street through a wide strip of vacant lots. Some highway would be built here. The houses had been cleared off, and the basements filled in with dirt, and the night’s rain had turned that to mud.
Kelly turned to look at the Roadrunner. Uh-oh. The right-side passenger window was coming down. That meant a gun, sure as hell. Cutting this a little close, Kelly . . . But that, he realized instantly, could be made to help. He let them see his face, staring at the Roadrunner, mouth open now, fear clearly visible. He stood on the brakes and turned hard right. The Scout bounded over the half-destroyed curb, obviously a maneuver of panic. Pam screamed with the sudden jolt.
The Roadrunner had better power, its driver knew, better tires, and better brakes, and the driver had excellent reflexes, all of which Kelly had noted and was now counting on. His braking maneuver was covered and nearly matched by the Roadrunner, which then mimicked his turn, also bouncing over the crumbling cement of an eradicated neighborhood, following the Scout across what had recently been a block of homes, falling right into the trap Kelly had sprung. The Roadrunner made it about seventy feet.
Kelly had already downshifted. The mud was a good eight inches deep, and there was the off-chance that the Scout might get stuck momentarily, but the odds were heavily against that. He felt his car slow, felt the tires sink a few inches into the gooey surface, but then the big, coarsely treaded tires bit and started pulling again. Yeah. Only then did he turn around.