On Broken Wings

by Francis Porretto

  It was the other man, not the mistress but the one with whom the mistress sometimes left him for a little while, the one who smelled like an ancient wolf. Boomer's ears pricked up and his tail wagged feebly as the man examined him. He flinched in pain as the man's fingers passed over the giant bruise in his side and the broken ribs behind them.

  An unknown time later the man's strong arms lifted him. He yelped from the spikes of pain as the ends of his broken ribs ground together, and again as the man deposited him in the back seat of the mistress's car.

  As he passed into unconsciousness, the familiar smell of the car filled his nostrils and reassured him that all would soon be well.

  ====

  Chapter 50

  Christine fingered the key. It was the only one Louis had given her that she had never used. The time had come to use it. She descended to the basement, went to the steel-doored room off the exercise area, and admitted herself. She flicked a switch on the wall to her right, and a darkroom bulb set into the ceiling overhead began to glow, providing her with a bare minimum of crimson illumination.

  The little room was lined with office-style sheet steel cabinets. Each had a strip of masking tape on its door with two or three words written thereupon. The concrete floor was bare except for a drain in the center. She approached the cabinet at her right and began to puzzle out the legends.

  Handguns & ammo

  Full auto

  Reloading supplies

  Reagents

  Stealth gear

  Optics & batteries

  Blades

  Exercise room spares

  The last cabinet's label prodded a chuckle out of her. It appeared that Louis had decided to make maximum use of this storage space.

  From the handgun cabinet she extracted a chromed nine-millimeter Beretta. It was a beautiful piece. She had practiced with it when Louis was alive. Two magazines for the Beretta, and the rounds that would fill them, went into her pockets.

  From the full auto cabinet came two Uzi submachine pistols. On the shelf below lay the empty clips for them. Louis had told her they held fifty rounds apiece. She took four and a large box of the rounds for them, and put them aside before closing the cabinet.

  The Uzis caused her some worry. She'd never practiced with them; there had been nowhere to do it. Louis had harped on how difficult and uncertain a full auto weapon was to control.

  He said they all pull up, and most pull to the right. There's no other way this is going to work. I'll have to chance it.

  She took a seven-power pair of night binoculars from the optics cabinet and disdained the rest. This wouldn't be distance work. Most of her targets would be close enough to spit in her face as she killed them.

  From the blades cabinet came a K-Bar combat knife. She couldn't foresee a use for it, but to head into what she planned without at least one strong blade on her person would be simple madness.

  She hesitated before opening the cabinet labeled Reagents. She knew what it held, knew what she intended to do with it, and was still unhappy at the thought.

  You know it's necessary, don't you, Christine?

  I know, Nag. But I don't have to like it, and I don't.

  The bottom of the cabinet held two large ceramic containers that looked like cheese pots, their lids held on by self-tensioning retainer clips. Louis had called them "shock crocks." After Christine stopped tittering, he had warned her in the strongest possible terms not to jostle or bump them if she could avoid it.

  She calmed herself, took the two containers by their wire handles, and swung them out of the cabinet. Once they were off their shelf, she was massively reluctant to put them down again. She carried them to their deployment points, settled each onto the floor with all the delicacy she could muster, and breathed a great sigh of relief.

  Mustn't forget the fusing.

  She returned to Louis's arms room and took a large bundle of medium-gauge rope with a waxy surface consistency from the Reagents cabinet before closing it for the last time.

  I'll string this last, I think.

  The enormity of what she planned to do was upon her.

  Louis, wherever you are, please forgive me. I have to do this. If you were here, I know you'd understand.

  She gathered her selections, locked the door behind her and headed back upstairs. There was a lot of work ahead.

  ***

  Tiny stared at Tommy Lekachmann in complete disbelief.

  "You're shitting me."

  Tommy shook his head. "It's all over the street, Boss. I ain't the only one to hear it. Five guys in Butcher colors attacked a couple on Cayuga yesterday about this time, and four of them got iced."

  Rusty must've picked on a real badass couple. In a real badass mood.

  "Are all the guys in the barracks right now, Hans?"

  The lieutenant bobbed his head. "To a man, Boss."

  "Keep them here. No exceptions, not even for booze. I've got to pay a call to our official friends." He plucked his leather jacket from the coat tree and headed out into the evening.

  The ride to First Precinct headquarters helped to clear his head, but failed to supply any explanations. He couldn't work out why Rusty's bunch would have attacked some random couple walking the streets of the city.

  How the hell did they blow it so badly as to take eighty percent casualties? Al and Pete? Mac and Carl? They weren't phonies. Was the guy carrying a rocket launcher or something?

  Maybe Lawrence can tell me more. If he can't, we're going to have to stay forted up for a while, make sure there isn't someone else out there trying to get us in a crosshairs.

  Tiny nursed his anxiety in the anteroom while the desk sergeant sought for Raymond Lawrence. The hour being what it was, the Chief of Police wasn't likely to be around. When Wendell Magruder came out to greet him, he was unsurprised. Magruder escorted the biker boss into his office without a word. Tiny settled into a guest chair without waiting for an invitation as the policeman seated himself behind his desk.

  "Can you fill me in, Captain? I'm in the dark about this incident."

  Magruder rocked backward in surprise. "You've lost four associates and you hadn't even noticed it yet?"

  "Captain Magruder, as far as I know, all my men are in the barracks."

  The policeman tapped several times on a thick sheaf of papers. "Six eyewitnesses say otherwise. Are there a lot of non-Butchers out there riding Harley hogs and wearing leather jackets with bloody cleavers on the back?"

  Tiny started to speak, caught himself in time.

  They don't know about Rusty's bunch. The little faggot didn't exactly go register with the cops when he rode into town. They've got no reason to accept my word that it was a splinter gang that had nothing to do with the Butchers. If my guys had done this, I'd say exactly that. What'll it do to my relationship with Magruder and Lawrence if they decide I can't control my own men?

  "You know, Captain," he said, "I took my lieutenant's word for it that all the boys were in the playpen. I didn't do my own headcount. There's a nice, accommodating bar just down the street where a lot of us go when we have nothing else to do. We don't bother to take our bikes. I just might be short a few, and Hans might have assumed they were at the Crazy Clown."

  Magruder's mild, urbane expression acquired a delicate moue that beat any scowl of contempt Tiny had seen.

  "The county protects you because we consider you an asset, Tiny. But Chief Lawrence and I have been worried from the start that you might push the boundaries of acceptable behavior. We've talked about proper responses to such a development, at some length. I think it only fair to tell you that the one Ray likes best is to eliminate your entire pack."

  Oh, the gloves are off, are they?

  "Captain, if I were to authorize any of my men to go freelancing in this manner, surely I'd have that possibility in mind already. Wouldn't I? A clever fellow like me? And I'd have prepared for it by gathering some strategic information and fashioning a deterrent from it. Something with both
poignancy and punch, so that you'd think twice before trying to take us out. Perhaps you should call Eric Smalley again, ask him a few more questions about the arrangement we had, about this time last year."

  Magruder stared at him a moment, then chuckled.

  "We know about Buffalo, Tiny. It was very clever of you, really. It impressed the hell out of Commander Smalley. And apparently there was no need for you to use it, which was for the best all around. But you're not the only clever fellow in Onteora County. And you should always remember that the value of information decays over time. You know, as people move, and change their places of employment, and their names, and their hair colors, and their facial characteristics. So sometimes your deterrent doesn't have the effect you planned for."

  Tiny did his best to control his reaction, hoping his face remained smooth. Ray Lawrence has at least one smart guy working for him. If the chips ever do go down, I'll have to take him out first.

  "I see, Captain. Well, pursuing the other line of thought, doesn't it strike you as implausible that I'd have come here on my own if I were the mover behind the deed?"

  Magruder's tiny shake of his head was all but imperceptible.

  "So, where do we go from here, then?"

  Silence stretched.

  "Ray wants you boys to confine yourselves to your barracks for a few days. No unnecessary trips anywhere, and no showing your colors whatever. We have to defuse this thing before we have a regional panic over the breakdown of law enforcement."

  Your scare tactics worked pretty well, eh, Captain? And all the county needed to go from anxiety to all-out panic was one sufficiently bloody incident that occurred on its own, outside the perimeter of your planning. Nice work, asshole.

  Tiny stood, thought about offering his hand to Magruder, and decided against it.

  "Very good, Captain. I'll be in touch in about a week. Send my compliments to the Chief. Your men are doing a hell of a job."

  He let himself out, mounted up and started to ride back to the Woodlawn barracks, then changed his mind and headed across town.

  Hans will keep them all indoors until he hears from me. He's reliable that way. I'm going to give myself a few hours off from this. Ride for a while, drink for a while, shake the cobwebs out. Tomorrow will be time enough for everything.

  ***

  Christine was sitting on the sofa honing the K-Bar when Malcolm returned. Dusk was deepening into night.

  "Find him?"

  The old warrior seated himself beside her and surveyed the mini-arsenal she had arrayed on the coffee table. "He's at the hospital. Four broken ribs and one enormous bruise. They say he'll live."

  "Thanks, Malcolm." She looked up from her knife and her whetstone, and was surprised when he drew back.

  That's right. He's never seen me without makeup.

  She had decided not to make up again after she showered. She wanted Tiny to face her au naturel, to see the price she'd already paid.

  I was sure Louis had told him about it.

  "Is that what you're going to wear to the party?"

  She glanced down at her chosen combat outfit. "Yup."

  "Chris, are you sure you're ready for this?"

  "No." She stropped the blade along the stone from back to point, ending with a baroque flourish. "Why?"

  He said nothing more.

  "It's going to happen, Malcolm. If you've got something more to throw into the kitty, just do it. I'm not going to ask."

  "All right. Is there anything more you want me to do?"

  She nodded, eyes still on the blade. "Go up to the office and disassemble the computer. Put it in the Chrysler. Take anything else you want from this place and throw it in there too. Drive it all out to your trailer and stuff it in there. You won't have time for more than two or three trips, so be selective."

  He swiveled his head, scanning the many bookshelves.

  "I can't save much, Chris."

  "I know. Take what you want. Oh, and take this." She fumbled for her keys, found the key to the arms room and passed it over to him. He took it with no sign of recognition.

  "There's a gray steel door just to the right of the exercise room. It's where Louis kept his weapons. Take what you want from there, too. In fact, go down there first. I expect a lot of it will be irreplaceable. Just don't forget the computer."

  Loughlin studied the floor.

  "How do you think he'd feel about this, Chris?"

  She sighted along the blade of the K-Bar, saw no burrs or chips, and sheathed it carefully in her boot.

  "I don't know, Malcolm. Probably, he'd hate it. For all that he could whip a whole regiment with nothing but a handful of pine needles, he didn't like himself better for it. He said he let Tiny live to send a message to the rest of them. I always figured it was just as much because he didn't have the heart to kill him, once the bastard was down and helpless."

  The old warrior nodded. "He was a good man."

  "Oh, the best. There'll never be a better one, take it from me. But he let Tiny live, and now I have to do this. I figured something out today, Malcolm. Want to hear it?"

  Loughlin's head came up, and she looked him in the eyes.

  "Once you know a man deserves to die, you have to kill him. If you don't, you're committing a crime against everyone who doesn't deserve to die. If you get him down but can't bring yourself to do it, and he gets up off the mat and kills you instead, you're only getting what you deserve yourself."

  Loughlin nodded again. "I figured something out today myself, Chris."

  "And that is?"

  He grinned. "All my best students have taught me more than I taught them. And you're the best I've ever had."

  "Malcolm? Are you really two thousand years old?"

  "Older, Chris." He paused. "Would you like to hear about it?"

  Holy shit. It's breakthrough time.

  She settled back into the sofa. "Well, yeah."

  He told her.

  ***

  Rusty McGill was looking at the end of his life, and found that he didn't mind it at all.

  The house was all his, now, but there was no purpose to it. He had no reason to hole up any more, there or anywhere. He'd gathered from it what little he could use and rode away without a backward glance, shortly after full dark.

  I've got no mates now. If I'm gonna take Tiny down, I've got to do it myself.

  I still want to. Motherfucker got Rollo killed and then lied about it. But it's seventeen to one against. And I didn't do so good at five to two in favor yesterday. Sergeant Avery would be tellin' me to pick another fight about now.

  I ain't got no other fight. But I ain't gonna kamikaze the bastard. I'm gonna have to watch him and think hard.

  Wait till it's deep night, set up in the bushes across from the barracks. Just watch. Wait for an opening. And be ready to take it.

  Shit, I didn't want to get old anyway.

  ***

  "So how old are you, then?"

  Loughlin shrugged. "I didn't count the years. They just went by. The people around me aged and died, or sickened and died, and I went on. Of course, I died a few times myself, but I always came back three days later."

  Christine studied his face. "What's the earliest thing you remember?"

  He closed his eyes. "A wall of ice under an open sky, a few hundred yards from the edge of a huge forest. The sky was so blue, so brilliant. Nobody's seen a sky like that for a very long time. I was already full grown."

  "Sounds like the end of the last ice age."

  He nodded. "I knew I was different. The challenge was convincing the others that I wasn't different. A few times I wasn't able to, and I had to die."

  "Not a tolerant bunch, huh?"

  His jaw clenched. "Do you think things have improved very much in that regard since then?"

  She chuckled. "Forget it. I accept you. Will that do, for starters?"

  He nodded. Color rose into his face.

  What must it have been like, to have lived so many thousa
nds of years having to conceal the most basic fact about himself? He's right, though, that hasn't changed. If anyone ever found out his nature, Joe Sixpack would be howling to have him dissected for the secret of eternal youth, whether it did anyone any good or not.

  "When did you get into the general business?"

  "Just after I, ah, gave up preaching. God help me, what an idiot I was back then!" He shook his head at his younger self's naivete. "I thought I just had to find others who valued freedom and justice as much as I did, and train them up to be champions for the rest. I never reckoned on the corrupting effects of mating that kind of knowledge to any kind of charisma. Almost all of them disappointed me very badly." He leaned back against the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. "Do you begin to understand why I don't look for great deeds to do?"

  "But you kept on. Why, Malcolm?"

  "Because I had no other ideas. Religion had failed. Persuasion by reason had failed. I had to do something, and I couldn't think of anything else. So I kept selecting likely young men with some aptitude for leadership and some hint of moral courage, and I approached them and offered to train them. I told each one that I would watch him, and I did, and despite my warnings, in all but seven cases I had to kill them or arrange their deaths."

  "How many were there altogether?"

  "I didn't keep count. I used to break cover and select a fresh trainee about once every twenty-five or thirty years. That would make it between sixty and seventy."

  "That gives you about a ten percent success rate. Not entirely shabby, even if it doesn't speak too well for the human race."

  A sharpness entered his expression. "Don't disparage the human race, Chris. It's made fantastic progress in many ways. There is nothing higher in the world, and there can never be."

  "Why is that?"

  "Because the ability to reason is the final step in evolution. It's the key to the universe. There is nothing beyond its powers."

  "And you know this for certain."

  He sat up straight. "Yes, I do. Don't ask me to tell you how, but I'm certain of this as I am of little else."