by Tom Clancy
tap-tap-tap-tap-tap pause tap-tap
5/2, Robin thought, the novelty of the moment fighting through fatigue. Letter W. Okay, I can do this.
2/3, 3/4, 4/2, 4/5
tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap . . . Robin broke that off for his reply.
4/2, 3/4, 1/2, 2/4, 3/3, 5/5, 1/1, 1/3
tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap
1/1, 3/1, 5/2, 1/1, 3/1, 3/1
Al Wallace? Al? He’s alive?
tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap
HOW U? he asked his friend of fifteen years.
MAKIN IT came the reply, then an addition for his fellow Utahan.
1/3, 3/4, 3/2. 1/5. 1/3, 3/4, 3/2, 1/5, 5/4 1/5
Come, come, ye saints . . .
Robin gasped, not hearing the taps, hearing the Choir, hearing the music, hearing what it meant.
tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap
1/1. 3/1, 3/1 2/4. 4/3, 5/2, 1/5, 3/1, 3/1. 1/1. 3/1. 3/1 2/4, 4/3, 5/2, 1/5, 3/1, 3/1
Robin Zacharias closed his eyes and gave thanks to his God for the second time in a day and the second time in over a year. He’d been foolish, after all, to think that deliverance might not come. This seemed a strange place for it, and stranger circumstances, but there was a fellow Mormon in the next cell, and his body shuddered as his mind heard that most beloved of hymns, whose final line was not a lie at all. but an affirmation.
All is well, all is well.
Monroe didn’t know why this girl, Paula, didn’t listen to him. He tried reason, he tried a bellowed order, but she kept driving, albeit following his directions, creeping along the early-morning streets at all of ten miles per hour, and, at that, staying in her lane only rarely and with difficulty. It took forty minutes. She lost her way twice, mistaking right for left, and once stopped the car entirely when another of the women vomited out the window. Slowly Monroe came to realize what was happening. It was a combination of things that did it, but mainly that he had the time to dope it out.
“What did he do?” Maria asked.
“Th-th-they were going to kill us. just like the others, but he shot them!”
Jesus, Monroe thought. That cinched it.
“Paula?”
“Yes?”
“Did you ever know somebody named Pamela Madden?”
Her head went up and down slowly as she concentrated on the road once more. The station was in sight now.
“Dear God,” the policeman breathed. “Paula, turn right into the parking lot, okay? Pull around the back . . . that’s a good girl . . . you can stop right here, okay.” The car jerked to a halt and Paula started crying piteously. There was nothing for him to do but wait a minute or two until she got over the worst of it, and Monroe’s fear was now for them, not himself. “Okay, now, I want you to let me out.”
She opened her door and then the rear one. The cop needed help getting to his feet. and she did it for him on instinct.
“The car keys, there’s a handcuff key on it, can you unlock me, miss?” It took her three tries before his hands were free. “Thank you.”
“This better be good!” Tom Douglas growled. The phone cord came across his wife’s face, waking her up, too.
“Sergeant, this is Chuck Monroe, Western District. I have three witnesses to the Fountain Murder.” He paused. “I think I have two more bodies for the Invisible Man, too. He told me I should only talk to you.”
“Huh?” The detective’s face twisted in the darkness. “Who did?”
“The Invisible Man. You want to come down here, sir? It’s a long one,” Monroe said.
“Don’t talk to anybody else. Not anybody, you got that?”
“He told me that. too. sir.”
“What is it. honey?” Beverly Douglas asked, as awake as her detective husband now.
It was eight months now since the death of a sad. petite girl named Helen Waters. Then Pamela Madden. Then Doris Brown. He was going to get the bastards now, Douglas told himself, incorrectly.
“What are you doing here?” Sandy asked the figure standing next to her car, the one he had fixed.
“Saying goodbye for a while,” Kelly told her quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going to have to go away. I don’t know for how long.”
“Where to?”
“I can’t really say.”
“Vietnam again?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. Honest.”
It just wasn’t the time for this, as though it ever was. Sandy thought. It was early, and she had to be at work at six-thirty, and though she wasn’t running late, there simply weren’t the minutes she needed for what had to be said.
“Will you be back?”
“If you want, yes.”
“I do. John.”
“Thank you. Sandy . . . I got four out,” he told her.
“Four?”
“Four girls, like Pam and Doris. One’s over on the Eastern Shore, the other three are here in town at a police station. Make sure somebody takes care of them, okay?”
“Yes.”
“No matter what you hear, I’ll be back. Please believe that.”
“John!”
“No time, Sandy. I’ll be back,” he promised her, walking away.
Neither Ryan nor Douglas wore a tie. Both sipped at coffee from paper cups while the lab boys did their job again.
“Two in the body,” one of them was saying, “one in the head—always leaves the target dead. This is a professional job.”
“The real kind.” Ryan breathed to his partner. It was a .45. It had to be. Nothing else made that kind of mess—and besides, there were six brass cartridge cases on the hardwood floor, each circled in chalk for the photographers.
The three women were in a cell in Western District, with a uniformed officer in constant attendance. He and Douglas had spoken to them briefly. long enough to know that they had their witnesses against one Henry Tucker, murderer. Name, physical description, nothing else, but infinitely more than they’d had only hours before. They’d first check their own files for the name, then the FBI’s national register of felons, then the street. They’d check motor-vehicle records for a license in that name. The procedure was entirely straightforward, and with a name they’d get him, maybe soon. maybe not. But then there was this other little matter before them.
“Both of them from out of town?” Ryan asked.
“Philadelphia. Francis Molinari and Albert d’Andino,” Douglas confirmed, reading the names off their driver’s licenses. “How much you want to bet . . . ?”
“No bet. Tom.” He turned, holding up a photograph. “Monroe, this face look familiar?”
The patrol officer took the small ID photo from Ryan’s hand and looked at it in the poor light of the upstairs apartment. He shook his head. “Not really, sir.”
“What do you mean? You were face-to-face with the guy.”
“Longer hair, smudges on his face, mainly when we were up close I saw the front end of a Colt. Too fast, too dark.”
It was tricky and dangerous, which wasn’t unusual. There were four automobiles parked out front, and he couldn’t afford to make any noise—but it was the safest course of action as well, with those four cars parked in front. He was standing on the marginal space provided by a sill of a bricked-up window, reaching for the telephone cable. Kelly hoped nobody was using the phone as he clipped into the wires, quickly attaching leads of his own. With that done, he dropped down and started walking north along the back of the building, trailing out his own supply of commo wire, just letting it lie on the ground. He turned the corner, letting the spool dangle from his left hand like a lunch pail, crossing the little-used street, moving casually like a person who belonged here. Another hundred yards and he turned again, entering the deserted building and climbing to his perch. Once there he returned to his rented car and got out the rest of what he needed, including his trusty whiskey flask, filled with tap water, and a supply of Snickers bars. Ready, he settled down to his task.
The rifle wasn’t prop
erly sighted in. Mad as it seemed, the most sensible course of action was to use the building as his target. He shouldered the weapon in a sitting position and searched the wall for a likely spot. There, an off-color brick. Kelly controlled his breathing, with the scope dialed to its highest magnification, and squeezed gently.
It was strange firing this rifle. The .22 rimfire is a small, inherently quiet round, and with the elaborate suppressor he’d constructed on it, for the first time in his life he heard the music-note pinggggggg of the striker hitting the firing pin, along with the muted pop of the discharge. The novelty of it almost distracted Kelly from hearing the far louder swat of the impact of the round on the target. The bullet created a puff of dust, two inches left and one inch high of his point of aim. Kelly clicked in the adjustment on the Leupold scope and fired again. Perfect. Kelly worked the bolt and then fed three rounds into the magazine, dialing the scope back to low power.
“Did you hear something?” Piaggi asked tiredly.
“What’s that?” Tucker looked up from his task. More than twelve hours now, doing the scut-work that he’d thought to be behind him forever. Not even halfway done, despite the two “soldiers” that were down from Philadelphia. Tony didn’t like it either.
“Like something falling,” Tony said, shaking his head and getting back to it. The only good thing that could be said about this was that it would earn him respect when he related the tale to his associates up and down the coast. A serious man, Anthony Piaggi. When everything went to shit, he’d done the work himself. He makes his deliveries and meets his obligations. You can depend on Tony. It was a rep worth earning, even if this was the price. It was a resolute thought that persisted for perhaps thirty seconds.
Tony slit open another bag, noting the evil, chemical smell on it, not quite recognizing it for what it was. The fine white powder went into the bowl. Next he dumped in the milk sugar. He mixed the two elements with spoons, stirring it slowly. He was sure there must be a machine for this operation, but it was probably too large, like what they used at commercial bakeries. Mainly his mind was protesting that this was work for little people, hirelings. Still, he had to make that delivery, and there was no one else to help out.
“What’d you say?” Henry asked tiredly.
“Forget it.” Piaggi concentrated on his task. Where the hell were Albert and Frank? They were supposed to be here a couple hours ago. Thought they were special because they whacked people, like that stuff really mattered.
“Hey, Lieutenant.” The sergeant who ran the central evidence storage room was a former traffic officer whose three-wheel bike had run afoul of a careless driver. That had cost him one leg and relegated him to administrative duty, which suited the sergeant, who had his desk and his donuts and his paper in addition to clerkish duties that absorbed maybe three hours of real work per eight-hour shift. It was called retirement-in-place.
“How’s the family, Harry?”
“Fine, thanks. What can I do for you?”
“I need to check the numbers on the drugs I brought in last week,” Charon told him. “I think there might be a mixup on the tags. Anyway”—he shrugged—“I have to check it out.”
“Okay, just give me a minute and I’ll—”
“Read your paper, Harry. I know where to go,” Charon told him with a pat on the shoulder. Official policy was that nobody wandered around in this room without an official escort, but Charon was a lieutenant, and Harry was short one leg, and his prosthesis was giving him trouble, as it usually did.
“That was a nice shoot, Mark,” the sergeant told his back. What the hell, he thought, Mark whacked the guy who’d been carrying the stuff.
Charon looked and listened for any other person who might be here, but there was none. They’d pay him big-time for this. Talk about moving their operation, eh? Leave him out in the cold, back to chasing pushers . . . well, not entirely a bad thing. He had a lot of money banked away, enough to keep his former wife happy and educate the three kids he’d given her, plus a little for him. He’d probably even get a promotion soon because of the work he’d done, taking down several drug distributors . . . there.
The ten kilos he had taken from Eddie Morello’s car were in a labeled cardboard box, sitting on the third shelf, right where they were supposed to be. He took the box down and looked to be sure. Each of the ten one-kilo bags had to be opened, tested, and resealed. The lab technician who’d done it had just initialed the tags, and his initials were easy to fake. Charon reached into his shirt and pants, pulling out plastic bags of Four-X sugar, which was of the same color and consistency as the heroin. Only his office would ever touch this evidence, and he Could control that. In a month he’d send a memo recommending destruction of the evidence, since the case on it was closed. His captain would approve. He’d dump it down the drain with several other people watching, and the plastic bags would be burned, and nobody would ever know. It certainly seemed simple enough. Within three minutes he was walking away from the evidence racks.
“Numbers check out?”
“Yeah, Harry, thanks,” Charon said, waving on the way out.
“Somebody get the fuckin’ phone,” Piaggi growled. Who the hell would be calling here, anyway? It was one of the Philly guys who walked over, taking the time to light a cigarette.
“Yeah?” The man turned. “Henry, it’s for you.”
“What the hell?” Tucker walked over.
“Hi, Henry,” Kelly said. He’d wired a field phone into the building’s telephone line, cutting it off from the outside world. He sat there, next to the canvas-covered instrument, having rung the other end just by turning the crank. It seemed rather primitive, but it was something familiar and comfortable to him, and it worked.
“Who’s this?”
“The name’s Kelly, John Kelly,” he told him.
“So who’s John Kelly?”
“Four of you killed Pam. You’re the only one left, Henry,” the voice said. “I got the rest. Now it’s your turn.” Tucker turned and looked around the room as though he expected to find the voice there. Was this some kind of sick joke that they were playing on him?
“How—how’d you get this number? Where are you?”
“Close enough, Henry,” Kelly told him. “You nice and comfy in there with your friends?”
“Look, I don’t know who you are—”
“I told you who I am. You’re in there with Tony Piaggi. I saw you at his restaurant the other night. How was your dinner, by the way? Mine was just great,” the voice taunted.
Tucker stood straight up, his hand tight on the phone. “So what the fuck are you gonna do, boy?”
“I ain’t gonna kiss you on both cheeks, boy. I got Rick, and I got Billy, and I got Burt, and now I’m going to get you. Do me a favor, put Mr. Piaggi on the line,” the voice suggested.
“Tony, you better come here,” Tucker said.
“What is it, Henry?” Piaggi tripped on his chair getting up. So damned tired from all this. Those bastards in Philly better have the cash all ready. Henry handed him the phone.
“Who’s this?”
“Those two guys on the boat, the ones you gave to Henry? I got ’em. I got the other two this morning, too.”
“What the fuck is this?”
“You figure it out.” The line went dead. Piaggi looked over at his partner, and since he couldn’t get an answer from the phone, he’d get one from Tucker.
“Henry, what the hell is this?”
Okay, let’s see what that stirred up. Kelly allowed himself a sip of water and a Snickers. He was on the third story of the building. Some sort of warehouse, he thought, massively constructed of reinforced concrete, a good place to be when The Bomb went off. The tactical problem was an interesting one. He couldn’t just burst inside. Even if he’d had a machine gun—he didn’t—four against one was long odds, especially when you didn’t know what was inside the door, especially when stealth was something you couldn’t count on as an ally, and so he’d try ano
ther approach. He’d never done anything like this before, but from his perch he could cover every door of the building. The windows in the back were bricked up. The only ways out were under his sight, and at just over a hundred yards, he hoped that they’d try it. Kelly shouldered the rifle, but kept his head up, sweeping left and right in an even, patient way.
“It’s him,” Henry said quietly so the others couldn’t hear.
“Who?”
“The guy who did all those pushers, the guy who got Billy and the rest, the guy who did the ship. It’s him.”
“Well, who the fuck is him, Henry?”
“I don’t know, goddamn it!” The voice was higher now, and the other two heads looked up. Tucker got more control of himself. “He says he wants us to come out.”
“Oh, that’s just great—what are we up against? Wait a minute.” Piaggi lifted the phone but got no dial tone. “What the hell?”
Kelly heard the buzz and lifted his handset. “Yeah, what is it?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“It’s Tony, right? Why did you have to kill Doris, Tony? She wasn’t any danger to you. Now I have to do you, too.”
“I didn’t—”
“You know what I mean, but thanks for bringing those two down here. I wanted to tie that loose end up, but I didn’t expect to have the chance. They’re in the morgue by now, I suppose.”
“Trying to scare me?” the man demanded over the scratchy phone line.
“No, just trying to kill you,” Kelly told him.
“Fuck!” Piaggi slammed the phone down.
“He says he saw us at the restaurant, man. He says he was right there.” It was clear to the other two that something was amiss. They were looking up now, mainly curious, but wary as they saw their two superiors in an agitated state. What the hell was this all about?