Whirlwind

by Joseph R. Garber

  Mitch whimpered.

  “A quarter-inch bit, I think. Now where’s me Allen spanner, I’ve got to open up this chuck a bit.”

  “Sir!” Another voice, a man who called himself Boa. He stood at the top of the arroyo, calling down to Schmidt.

  “Not now. I’m busy.” Schmidt’s tongue whisked across his lips.

  “Sir, it’s important. I have Cottonmouth on the radio. She says she’s found her, found Kolodenkova!”

  Schmidt spun. “Where?”

  “About ninety miles northeast, sir. The chopper can get you there in thirty minutes.”

  Leaning forward into Mitch’s face, Schmidt showed his teeth. “Well, well, well. It appears that fate has intervened on your behalf, Mr. Conroy. I see no need to squander any more of my time talking to you.” He turned toward Keough. “Sorry, old friend, you’ll have to put your toys away. But don’t feel badly. I’m sure that in roughly half an hour’s time you’ll be able to put them to good use.”

  (Singing “Amor, amor,” two young lovers leave the stage, their fading voices hanging in the air as they depart for dinner on a Christmas Eve.)

  Schmidt stepped behind the juniper tree to which his prisoner was tied. A single slice of a damascened blade severed the jugular. Mitch watched his blood fountain out from beneath his chin, a wide red geyser that splashed maroon on desert sand. He felt nothing, and was dead before he understood what the caress of Schmidt’s knife had done.

  Someone asked, “What about the body, sir?”

  “Leave it for the coyotes.” Schmidt climbed toward the helicopter. “But I’ll want the finger for a souvenir.”

  (Upon one final “Amor,” the curtain falls.)

  I’M NOT IN YOUR HURRY

  read the bumper sticker on a wheezing Winnebago camper. Agonizingly slow, it sluggishly climbed a twisting back road. Immediately behind, a spa-toned couple in a Porsche Boxster fretted and fumed, the driver darting into the left lane to see if there was room to pass, darting back because there never was.

  Irina inched along behind the Boxster.

  A cream-colored Silverado pickup truck followed her.

  Schmidt’s people, she was sure of it. A husky, broad-shouldered man sat at the Silverado’s wheel. Irina could see the bulge of his biceps in her rearview mirror. His passenger was a woman, sharp-faced with straight blonde hair. When she moved, her pale green jacket revealed shadowed metal holstered beneath her armpit.

  When the Silverado had first pulled behind her, Irina’s heart almost stopped. Still shaken by the deaths she’d left behind two hours earlier, she nearly pulled off the road.

  If she had, they would have known instantly.

  Controlling her fear hadn’t been easy. Doing the right thing — the thing she’d rehearsed over and over — was harder still.

  Crawling uphill at twenty miles an hour, she’d let her dashboard clock tick off three minutes. Then she’d turned her head slowly so that the two mercenaries could see her profile. She’d smiled at the Silverado’s driver and had given him a hopeless shrug, as if to say: these old fogies in the Winnebago are slowing me down too, but what can I do about it?

  The driver nodded at her. She’d gotten away with it.

  The trick wouldn’t have worked in open sunshine. Shadowed inside Mitch’s Dodge, she was eight meters from the hunters. If they’d been closer, they would have seen the shape of her nose had been clumsily disguised by a wad of chewing gum across its bridge. However, from a distance and observed through tinted glass, she bore the beaky profile of an English aristocrat.

  Now the mercenaries had been behind her for a half hour. The Winnebago had painfully breasted a mountain pass. The road had straightened enough on the downhill run for three cars to pass the lumbering yellow elephant. Out on the flats, another three had managed to speed by.

  Then another climb, an endless climb, and there were only four vehicles left in the slow-moving convoy: a Winnebago, a Boxster, Irina’s black Dodge pickup truck, and a Silverado the color of vanilla ice cream.

  Again the Boxster shot out to pass. The next blind curve was too close. It pulled back in front of Irina.

  She kept her eye on the rearview mirror. The Silverado’s driver and his passenger exchanged a few words. A water bottle passed hands. The woman stretched. The man rolled his shoulders. And every fifteen minutes, the woman lifted a microphone from its cradle.

  Status reports — she was calling in at quarter-hour intervals. The web Schmidt wove was fine indeed.

  The road ahead seemed endless. Hairpin curves, less than thirty meters of straightaway, then another switchback. To her right, a narrow shoulder bordered empty air. A hundred vertiginous meters below lay a valley pocked with boulders and tawny hummocks of wild grass. To her left: the chiseled rust orange of a mountain whose slope had been dynamited and jackhammered to make room for a preposterously narrow two-lane blacktop.

  No exit. Nothing but curve after endless curve.

  Hazy streamers of sand spit across the road. The wind was stiffening, evidence that they were nearing the top.

  How far was the summit? A mile at most. Then the road would go downhill. The Boxster would rocket around the Winnebago, and she finally would be able to pass the ponderous camper. If she timed it right, she might be able to leave the Silverado stranded behind, he trapped at twenty miles an hour, while she sped away.

  She’d pick the place carefully. She was sure she could do it.

  More wind. Her truck rocked in a gust bursting over the ridge.

  Something flickered in her rearview mirror. Green. Cloth. The tarpaulin.

  The wind lofted its corner. She heard it snap, saw an unfastened rope whip into the air.

  The woman in the Silverado turned to the driver, spoke a few terse words, then snatched the microphone from its cradle, pressing it close to her mouth.

  It wasn’t time for her check-in report. Only minutes had passed since she’d made her last call.

  Irina sweated. The sweat was ice.

  They’d seen Whirlwind. When the wind lifted its tarpaulin cover, they’d seen it clear as day. A matte-brown ingot a meter wide, a half meter deep. They knew what it looked like. They knew they’d found it.

  She twisted her steering wheel left, accelerating into the passing lane. No hope. The next curve was too near. The Boxster’s driver — moussed hair, aviator glasses, tailored shirt — looked angrily over his shoulder. She slipped back behind him.

  The man in the Silverado fumbled one hand over his head. He was reaching for something…for what?

  A rifle. He took it from its rack, and laid it across the dashboard.

  Turning to him, the woman said something. The man’s sole answer was a hard-eyed nod.

  Irina asked herself what words had been spoken. The logical…the probable…scenario was that the woman had radioed her superior — perhaps radioed Schmidt himself. He would have given her an order: don’t try to take Irina Kolodenkova on your own; she’s trapped in slow traffic on a road from which she cannot exit; stay on her bumper, but do nothing else; a full backup team is on the way.

  It made sense. Once Schmidt knew where his prey was, he’d order every available soldier to the scene. He’d make sure that she could not escape, that she could not even hope to escape.

  Of course, she thought, of course that’s what Schmidt has done. I know because I reasoned it out, and Charlie would have reasoned it in precisely the same way. Inexplicably, the memory of Charlie gave her comfort. She held it tight, a shield against her fear.

  What else would he say? He would say he is a strategist and long-range thinker, but I am only a tactician who seizes opportunities and makes the most of them. So be it. What tactical opportunities do I have?

  The two behind her did not know she’d guessed who they were. There was an advantage in that. Another advantage: the high mountain pass was nearer with each weary minute. Once across it, she might be able to outrun the Silverado.

  But running would be futile. Schmidt�
�s army was surely on its way. By now all of them knew the make, model, color, and license of the vehicle she drove. No matter how fast she ran, she’d be dead before dusk.

  Irina steered into another hairpin curve, no hope of passing the Winnebago.

  The Boxster’s driver thought otherwise. He gunned left, flooring his gas pedal. The Porsche’s engine was not as spunky as its styling. On a seven percent grade its puniness showed.

  It edged past the Winnebago’s left. The Winnebago’s driver did not slow down, probably could not slow down without stalling. The Boxster’s front bumper drew level with the Winnebago’s, and it was all happening painfully slowly, and the road curved out of sight, so near, so dangerously near….

  A dark blue Chevrolet truck slewed around the curve, straight into the Boxster’s path. It pulled a trailer bearing two Arctic Cat all-terrain vehicles, both looking like ugly four-wheeled motorcycles. The Boxster could not pull right without ramming the Winnebago. Instead, its driver whipped left onto the shoulder, his wheel skimming the mountainside. The Chevy slammed on its brakes, blue smoke streaming from its tires. Its trailer whiplashed into the Winnebago’s path, out of control.

  Tactics. Seize the opportunity. Irina threw her gearshift into neutral.

  The Boxster made it by inches, its badly frightened driver weaving as the Chevy slid across the road in a cloud of oily smoke, its trailer clipping the Winnebago’s front fender and flipping, sparks everywhere, two Arctic Cats tumbling and rolling, gasoline spilling from their ruptured tanks.

  Irina threw open her door.

  Metal crumpled. Someone shouted.

  She leapt backward from the still-moving truck, landing in a parachutist’s crouch, twisting slightly to the left, taking the fall on her shoulder, rolling head over heels like a circus acrobat.

  The Chevrolet teetered on the edge of the precipice, its trailer dragging it down.

  Pistol in hand, Irina was up and running. Schmidt’s gunmen rammed Mitch’s truck, hitting it hard enough to trigger their air-bags.

  A bullet whined by Irina’s ear, a shot from behind. She whirled. The Chevy’s driver was leaning out his window, a revolver clenched in a two-handed combat grip.

  They too were part of Schmidt’s team. They too would die.

  She raised her Tokarev, finger to the trigger. The Chevrolet’s front end tilted up. The driver screamed a curse. A last, meaningless, slug passed high over Irina’s head, and then the shooter, the truck, the ruined trailer were gone, only a shattered railing to mark where they had skidded backward over the cliff.

  Irina spun and ran. The Silverado’s air-bags deflated. The driver slapped at shiny aluminized fabric. She reached the Silverado’s side-panels, and she drew a bead on his head.

  Bad shooting conditions. His window was rolled up. Its heavy, laminated glass would deflect the bullet. A ricochet was more likely than a killing shot.

  The driver’s expression changed to animal stupidity, death’s final insult. His face painted a red brushstroke against the glass as he slid down to where the dead men go.

  The woman — the passenger — had recovered faster than her partner. She’d tried to shoot over his shoulder. She’d missed.

  Irina hurled herself to the ground, rolling under the Silverado as a fusillade of shots shattered its windows. She pulled herself up on the passenger’s side, flung open the door, and — muzzle aimed at the woman’s throat — whispered, “Drop it.”

  The woman, still wearing her seatbelt, lashed out with her foot. Irina slammed the door on her ankle. Bone cracked, and the woman shrieked. Opening the door again, Irina seized her enemy’s pistol, hurling it over her shoulder.

  Sobbing, the woman cradled her broken leg. Her features were contorted with pain, her unfeigned tears sea blue in prismatic sunlight. She wore the sort of long skirt favored by women who are ashamed of their legs; sometimes Irina wore the same, although for different reasons. Still crying, she slid her hands the length of her leg, stretching towards her ankle. Irina whipped her pistol barrel against the woman’s temple, then snatched down to her enemy’s ankle holster, jerking out a short-barreled automatic.

  The pistols — both of them — were small caliber, .25s. Irina was surprised. She’d expected Schmidt’s employees to carry nine millimeters or .40s. The rifle that lay across the dead man’s lap was equally surprising. It was — and Irina was insulted by the discovery — a short-action Sauer model 202, a small-game gun. Why? she asked herself. Why so light a weapon? An armalite automatic would make sense. Or a Weatherby Magnum. But these? Both the pistols and the rifle are not what a professional would carry. You would have to be very close to kill someone with them — very close, or very good.

  The woman groaned. At first glance she looked to be in her early thirties. Irina knew better. The telltale signs of skin too diligently cared for told her true age, as did the bitter experience in her eyes.

  “I can kill you,” Irina said. “Or I can give you a chance. Which shall it be?” Was that true? Could she really kill in cold blood? Irina did not know.

  “What chance?”

  “Reach over, reach slowly, and put the gearshift in reverse.”

  The Silverado’s engine still rumbled. The woman shifted gears. The truck lurched away from Mitch’s Dodge.

  “Now what?”

  “Pray that your seatbelt holds.”

  The woman’s eyes goggled. She shouted, “No!” as the Silverado’s rear wheels jolted over the edge of the road. Irina stepped away. The truck rolled backward, down a drop the length of a soccer field. It bounced, somersaulted, slid sideways upside down. Irina tasted her own blood, a lip bitten too hard.

  “My God.” He was small, white-haired, and freckled with age. “My God, what’s going on here?” He inched forward nervously, tiny steps in orthopedic shoes, a toy poodle of a man.

  His wife, blue-tinted hair and a termagant’s face, stood by the Winnebago’s rear. “You keep away from her, Peter. You just stand back and let her get on with her business.”

  “They were shooting at you. I saw it. The folks who came around the curve. The people in that truck behind you. Gunmen. Shooters. And now they’re gone. Gone all the way to the bottom. My God.”

  Irina lowered the Dodge’s back gate, wrestling the Whirlwind ingot off the truck bed. “You,” she said to the woman, “what’s your name?”

  “None of your business.”

  The man said, “Patricia. She’s my wife. I’m Peter. We’re retired. We’re touring the country. We don’t want any trouble.”

  “Patricia, open your camper’s back door.”

  “When hell freezes over.”

  “Pat, do what she says. She’s got a gun.”

  “I do. Please do not make me use it.”

  Patricia wrenched the door wide, then moved angrily to the side. Irina carried her heavy brown secret to the Winnebago, shoving it firmly in the back. Once it was safely out of sight, she returned to her truck for her overnight bag, and for the roll of duct tape that had already served her well.

  “Peter, I will tie you up and put you in the back. Your wife will ride up front with me. If you cooperate, you will not be hurt.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you do to him. He’s insured.”

  Irina shut her eyes. Is there nothing in my life that will be easy?

  “Change of plan. Peter, you shall be up front with me, hands tied. Patricia, come over here, I will tape you so you cannot move.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  “Your mouth too.”

  “Young lady, you can just —”

  Irina snapped off a shot, muzzle aimed three feet to the left of Patricia’s feet. Patricia folded limply to the ground. Irina sighed with relief. So did Peter.

  Patricia was mummified with duct tape in the Winnebago’s back. Peter, who’d asked permission to urinate before she tied his hands, was in the front seat.

  Ready for any contingency, the two kept a five-gallon jerrican of gasoline strapped to the bac
k of their mobile retirement home. Irina splashed it liberally over Mitch’s Dodge. Putting the truck in low gear, she turned the wheel toward the cliff edge. As she jumped, she flipped a lit match into the cabin. Flames boiled through the open door. It did not explode until it shattered at the bottom of the precipice.

  No one could descend that slope without ropes. The valley beneath was too narrow for a helicopter. It would take Schmidt and his men hours to make their way down, sift through fiery rubble, and discover that neither she nor Whirlwind was in the wreckage.

  Better still, the fire blazed high, thick smoke billowing in an ever-mounting cloud. Rangers would see it, and firemen and state troopers. Would they let a civilian like Schmidt interfere with their rescue efforts — and later, their investigation?

  Johan Schmidt was going to be a frustrated man.

  Tactician, she thought. That’s what I am. I should be proud. Then another thought. Unbidden. Horrible. You have done well, daughter, you have done what I would do.

  Unable to stop herself, Irina Kolodenkova, murderer of many, doubled over vomiting.

  Pain chewed at Sam’s sinuses. As his plane descended, air pressure drove phlegm and agony into his Eustachian tubes. He swallowed hard to clear the blocked passages. No success. His inner ears felt ready to explode.

  Cursing cats, the unquestionable source of his suffering, he shut his eyes and tried to concentrate on the problem at hand: Charlie McKenzie in possession of a videotape that could — that would — spell the end of Sam’s career.

  Best case scenario: if the media found out about Sam’s role in the Kahlid Hassan debacle, he’d become a political pariah, lucky if he could land a job as lobbyist for the North American Man-Boy Love Association.

  Worst-case scenario: jail time, hard time, and plenty of it.

  Which was unfair. He’d been drinking. His judgement was impaired. The worst you could say was that he’d misconstrued — that was the word, “misconstrued” — the president’s wishes. It could have happened to anyone. After all, the chief wasn’t the most articulate man in the world.