Whirlwind

by Joseph R. Garber

  Miss Kolodenkova’s work, no doubt about it.

  The girl’s MO was to steal another car as soon as she abandoned whatever she was driving. However, there’d been no auto thefts in the town, not a single one. Schmidt only had to think about that fact for a moment before ordering his men to roust every automobile dealer in the area out of bed.

  It didn’t take long to find the right one.

  A more than merely nervous used car salesman burbled that yesterday, just before closing time, a woman calling herself Caroline Sonderstrom paid cash for a distinctive used Escalade. Yes, sir, the official Cadillac designation for that Escalade’s exterior is poppy red, but its more of a fire-engine red, you know, or maybe cherry, ’cause it’s the brightest red you’ve ever seen. Stands out like a hard-on in a nudist colony, if you know what I mean. Aw, sure, she fits your description to a T, only her hair is brown, but the thing is, when I took down her driver’s license number, I noticed her photo showed her blonde. No, sir, I didn’t even think about it for a second, because you know the ladies — they change their hair more often than most boys around here change their jockey shorts.

  Gratifying.

  It was about time Charles slipped up. He’d used old photos for the girl’s false ID. Unfortunately she dyed her hair to disguise herself. Had Charles been a bit more professional, he would have been prepared for that particular contingency. Schmidt most certainly would have been.

  Glancing at the GPS systems’s digital map, he pressed the Send button again. “Which way is she headed?”

  Hamadryad responded, “North.”

  “Our GPS database does not seem to portray every dirt track and cattle path in Arizona. Hamadryad, you’re going to have to help me find the turnoff. I’m on Navajo road thirty-four, repeat three-four, headed west. We’ve already passed a number of ranch roads. There’s no way we can tell from the ground which one Kolodenkova is on.”

  “Stand by, Cobra. I’ll drop back toward the highway and see if I can spot you.”

  “I’m switching my emergency flashers on. We should be easy to recognize.”

  “Copy that.”

  Hide in plain sight. He gave Kolodenkova credit for her cleverness. The girl intentionally chose a high-visibility vehicle. His soldiers would be looking for an anonymous car or truck — Dodge, Chevy, Ford, all the common name-plates found on every highway in the West. What they would not scrutinize was something so ostentatiously eye-catching that no fugitive would dare use it.

  Clever, uncommonly clever, she was a worthy opponent. The endgame would be sweeter for that.

  “I see you, Cobra.”

  Schmidt craned his neck. His G-Wagen had just passed through a pungent coniferous forest. Now on open plains, wild grass and grazing sheep, he peered into the distance. Two o’clock high, a tiny black dot hovered above a mesa layered like a cake. He flashed his high beams three times.

  “You just gave me three flashes, correct, sir?”

  “Correct, Hamadryad.”

  “And there’s a white van behind you.”

  “That’s Puff Adder and five team members. Correction, four plus a supernumerary. Our client is accompanying us, albeit not entirely willingly. Now where’s the turnoff?”

  “About five miles ahead of you, sir. You’ll pass one, no two, ranch roads. The one you’re looking for is the third. It angles back northwest almost as soon as you get on it.”

  “And our target?”

  “Approximately thirty miles north of the intersection. I estimate her current speed at about twenty miles per hour. She’s kicking up lots of dust. I’d say it’s a lousy road. She’s not going to make good time on it. Neither will that van behind you.”

  “The van has been modified for difficult terrain. Puff Adder may not enjoy the ride, but he’ll keep pace. As for myself, why, Hamadryad, a Mercedes Gelandewagen is a miracle of German engineering. At fifty miles an hour, I doubt if we’ll experience more than modest discomfort.”

  In the seat next to Schmidt, Coral Snake gritted his teeth and tightened his seatbelt.

  “Hamadryad, how much firepower is your chopper carrying?”

  “A .223 caliber chain gun, sir. That’s all we could find on short notice.”

  “Then I would encourage you to put it to the use God intended. Slow Kolodenkova down, stop her if you can. We’ll be there soon enough.”

  “We only have rubber bullets, sir. That was your order. I don’t know if —”

  “Ah, but neither does she. Pepper the ground in front of her and she’ll think it’s full metal jackets all around. Inexperienced girl that she is, she’ll probably pull over and step out with her hands above her head.”

  “Copy that, sir. I’m on it, sir.”

  Schmidt watched the distant helicopter bank into a turn, disappearing as it raced north.

  Usually his world was grey, was Johan Schmidt’s. All that caught his eye was cover, concealment, and camouflage. But every now and then, quite rarely, his personal clouds lifted, a sun of startling purity illuminating the very palette God used when painting His creation.

  So it was at just this delightful moment. He could taste the colors of plains, buttes, the sky. It was a feast!

  At one with the world, he nestled back in his Gelandewagen’s soft leather and breathed deeply of sage-spiced air.

  All that was missing was the appropriate music. Something triumphant, he thought. He fingered through the collection of CDs in his G-Wagen’s console, selecting, as always, the perfect choice. He slid the disk into the player, tapping his finger as he stepped through its tracks. Track seven. Act Three, Scene Five, Die Meistersinger von Nürnburg by Richard Wagner. A festive meadow outside of Nürnburg. Beneath a blessing sun, good burghers preen their gaudiest finery. All is joy as the guilds march in to celebrate this most important of feast days. The first to enter are the Schusters, the cobblers, singing jubilant praise of their patron saint, Sankt Krispin lobet ihn! War gar ein heilig Mann, zeigt, was ein Schuster kann.

  Johan Schmidt savored a wide delight, anticipation of greater delights to come.

  “Goddamn it to hell!” The helicopter was in Charlie’s rearview mirror, closing fast.

  “What?” It was the first word Irina had spoken for the last half hour. Charlie wished he had the luxury to enjoy it.

  “Behind us. Bell AH-1. Vietnam-era gunship.”

  He slammed the accelerator down. The Escalade had a plush comfy suspension, just what you wanted if you were a well-to-do pensioner retired to a golf resort condo. However, it was not made for bomb-crater-sized potholes on a badly maintained Navajo dirt track. It wallowed all over the road like a drunken hippopotamus.

  Irina appraised the surrounding terrain coolly; he expected no less of her. “There is no cover.”

  Charlie observed that her eyes were open wider than they should be. But resolution showed in the set of her jaw, and that was good. Growling, he wrestled for control of the lurching SUV. “Tell me something I don’t know.” Grazing land. This is the worst place in the world to get caught in the open.

  “Charlie, he is swinging sideways. He has a machine gun!”

  He downshifted to first gear as he threw the Escalade’s transmission into low-power four-wheel drive. “That drainage ditch on the right-hand side — keep your eyes on it. I need a spot where it’s shallow enough to get this pig off the road without leaving the undercarriage behind.”

  “Off the road? There’s no place to hide. It is flat, all flat.”

  Fear? Yeah, there was fear in her voice, but also courage and confidence. There was no one he’d rather have at his side in a situation like this. Not that he’d ever tell her that. “Optical illusion. Mitchell Canyon is…damnit!…” The Escalade bucked like a rodeo bull. Seatbelt notwithstanding, Charlie’s head bumped the cabin roof. “The canyon’s about a mile and a half to your right. Cuts straight through this plateau. Five hundred feet deep in places. You can’t see it until you’re on top of it.”

  The gunship was direct
ly behind him. The buffet of its blades made the Escalade even harder to manhandle. “The ditch, Irina? How deep?”

  She shouted over the helicopter’s roar. “Too deep! Five feet! Six!”

  A .50 caliber machine gun sounds like a buzzsaw chewing oak. The road exploded, sand geysers fountaining three feet above its surface. Charlie swerved. A trail of bullets cut in front of his bumper, kicking dirt so high that flecks of gravel pocked his windshield.

  “Warning shots. Next time they’ll blow the hell out of us. What do you see?”

  “Nothing! Charlie, nothing!”

  His skin prickled, he felt his muscles tense. It was always like that. The body knew what was about to happen before the brain. It readied itself, mustering resources for what was to come. Suddenly he was calm, so calm, quite thoroughly relaxed. “Well hell, looks like it’s going to be one of those days.”

  He tapped the brake. Not hard, barely enough to flash the rear lights, signaling his enemies he was slowing down. Here we go again, he thought, because he’d been here before and this time would be no different. “Blue sports bag. My war bag. In the backseat. Get it.”

  Irina swiveled in her seat, wrestling the open satchel into her lap. “Guns,” her voice was so low that Charlie almost didn’t hear her. “Four pistols.”

  “Two old FBI-style .40 calibers. Two Browning Hi-Powers. I’ll take the Brownings. The Smith & Wessons are yours. Lock and load.” It came to him that he was actually looking forward to it. There’s a real pleasure in doing those things you do well, and too bad if what you do best is kill your enemies.

  Irina flicked four safeties, slapped four clips into four butts, racked back four slides.

  He saw how the game would play out. A chess master sees the same. The pieces are in this position. In six moves they will be in that position. There’s no other way it can be. “Take two, tuck ’em behind you, beneath the belt, over your fanny. Give me the other two. Fetch a couple spare magazines for each of us.” He took the pistols from her hand, arched his back, slipped them under his waistband. “Okay, I’m coming to a stop. When I do, we both climb out with our hands above our heads. We walk to the back of this pimpmobile, and stand near the edge of the ditch. How are you at ambidextrous shooting?”

  “Not so good. With my right hand —”

  “Good enough to hit a helicopter at twenty or thirty yards?”

  “Yes.”

  “When I give the word, sweetheart, when I give the word.”

  “Cobra, do you copy?”

  “I copy.”

  “There are two of them, sir.”

  “Two what?” Schmidt snapped angrily. He was, he acknowledged, irritable — an unseemly emotion under the best of circumstances, and certainly ill-suited for a man who had victory in his grasp. Nonetheless, he could not help himself. This road — although that word was overly generous for the wretched sheep path — was worse than could be imagined. Its ruts were gouged more than a foot deep, a washboard for giants. Beach-ball-sized rocks littered the route. Every few hundred yards, the track disappeared, washed out, nothing but treacherous sand. He’d expected to be able to move at twice Kolodenkova’s speed. As it was, he felt lucky to hold the speedometer needle at thirty miles an hour.

  “In the Caddy, sir. It’s not just the woman. Someone’s with her.”

  Could it be? Oh, please, God, let it be!

  “Description?”

  “Good build, six feet-plus, white hair. Wearing khakis. We’re kicking up a lot of dust, Cobra, and I can’t make out his features.”

  McKenzie is with Kolodenkova! Perfect!

  “Your position?”

  “About thirty-five miles, make that thirty-eight, from the turnoff.”

  The Gelandewagen bounced. All four wheels left the ground. Schmidt grunted. In the seat next to him Coral Snake cursed. Schmidt, sunglassed eyes locked on the wretched route ahead, hissed, “Zip it. Not a word.”

  “Sir?” Hamadryad was shouting from a helicopter more than twenty miles from Schmidt’s current location. How irksome. At his present rate of progress, it would take a half hour to reach them.

  “Hamadryad, you’ve called in additional support, have you not?”

  “Affirmative, sir. Rattlesnake and two other vehicles are converging on the north end of this road. They’re coming up around where Mitchell Canyon dead ends. ETA is forty minutes.”

  Not good enough. “Other whirlybirds?”

  “Problem there, sir. Number five is low on fuel; he’s on his way back to base. Number three is the only other chopper in range, but he dropped down into Canyon de Chelly to check out a suspicious vehicle. Once he went below the rim we lost radio contact.”

  Needs must when the devil drives. “Keep airborne, Hamadryad. Do not attempt to land. Do not attempt to apprehend the fugitives. I’ll be on the scene in, oh, shall we say, twenty minutes. King Cobra, over and out.”

  “On this road?” Coral Snake gasped. “Are you crazy?”

  “Two observations. One, never use the word ‘crazy’ in my presence again. Two, if you do not know the meaning of the phrase ‘hairy mission,’ you are about to learn it.”

  Charlie felt more than good. Charlie felt like God.

  “Now!” he shouted, whipping two blue steel Brownings from behind his back. Eight inches and two pounds of righteous weight. Thirteen rounds in each magazine, one in each chamber. What more could a man ask for?

  Arms stretched to their uttermost, elbows locked, don’t aim, just point. “The pilot! Kill him!”

  The machine gunner had been calling over his shoulder, his eyes not on his targets. That moment of distraction was all Charlie wanted or needed.

  The pistols were finely balanced things, beautiful machines in their way, sweetly engineered to their lethal purpose. The rake of their butts nestled comfortingly in his hand, three fingers around the grip, thumb curled snugly above, and trigger finger…well, where else would his trigger finger be?

  Black iron silhouetted against a dusky grey target, the notches of his rear sights lining up so elegantly with the muzzle blades that he felt as if these guns were put here in his hands as a predetermined part of destiny’s plan.

  Two hammers clicked back with a most satisfying snap. Squeeze gently and…

  When you’re really in the heart of it, you don’t hear it. The ignition of the powder, the percussion of the bullet blowing through the sound barrier, the harsh flat crack of a pistol shot…no, you don’t hear a thing, not if you’re doing it right.

  However, you do feel it. The recoil hits your wrist first, then shocks along your arm, and no matter how hard you try, the jolt will send your barrel up and off target. A good marksman knows that, is ready for it, is already tensing those tendons that will bring his aim back down to the killing zone. Because if you know what you’re doing and you’ve done it many times before, then doing it again is just doing what comes natural.

  The helicopter’s left window starred frosty white. Charlie fired again. He heard the roar of Irina’s pistols. No need to look, he had every confidence in her. He squeezed his triggers another time, knowing that he’d done it well.

  The machine gunner was back on the job. A little too late for that. Look away for a moment and your barrel drifts. Up in the air on an unstable platform, it takes time to get the sights realigned with your target, time this man did not have.

  There is no such thing as bulletproof glass. There is only bullet-resistant glass. Hit it with enough jacketed rounds, eleven hundred foot-pounds of energy in each and every one, and star-shaped impact points form and crack. Hit it again the cracks widen. More bullets, please, the glass fractures. Jack fresh magazines into the butts of your weapons; start firing again. The face behind the glass fogs into blood pudding.

  And a machine gunner who has finally drawn a bead on his target is filling the sky above and the ground below with wild shots from a warship whirling out of control.

  Charlie hurled himself left. He didn’t have to look where Irina was
standing because he knew where she was standing, knew it in his heart. His shoulder clipped her in the upper rib cage. Grunting, air expelled from her lungs by the force of the blow, she windmilled off the road, slipping then tumbling into the drainage ditch. Charlie leapt after her. She landed facedown in the sand. He threw himself on top of her, pressing her flat, covering her.

  Protecting her.

  Metal shrieked. A thin wailing scream, human perhaps, rose above the forges of destruction. The sky itself shattered, iron thunder, and the rain that fell was a rain of hot steel. The ground shook as a helicopter burst to shards. A fragment of its blade whipped over the ditch; Charlie felt the wind burn with its passing.

  Transcendent satisfaction in every moment of it.

  The job was done. Strenuous and fulfilling labor complete, his senses tingled postcoitally. His enemies were dead. He was alive. Who is incapable of feeling joy at that?

  Irina squirmed beneath him. Nice, very nice indeed….

  Uh-oh! He rolled off her.

  Gasping, she crawled on hands and knees out of the ditch. “Oh,” was all she could say. Just “oh.”

  Charlie took a look. The carnage was most agreeable: twenty million dollars of finely tuned aerodynamics rendered into scrap.

  Less agreeable was the condition of a poppy-red Cadillac Escalade. One of the helicopter’s tail rotors had sheered through its front fender and was — spectacularly to Charlie’s eyes — embedded in the engine block.

  As for the rest…Well, hell, Charlie reflected, a posse of twenty men with shotguns would have trouble doing that much damage.

  Irina, cheeks smudged and clothes gritty, pulled at the Escalade’s door. It dropped to the ground. She fumbled inside, found the water bottle, and drank deeply before passing it to Charlie. “Now what?” she asked.

  Charlie swallowed once, twice, three times. It was cold and good. A beer would have been better, maybe. But water was just fine. He stood for a moment studying the landscape, then answered, “We need to be on the other side of Mitchell Canyon. It’s too far to walk around the north end. Only way to get where we’ve got to be is through it. Mile and a half that way…” he pointed east “…and we climb down. Three miles or so up the canyon, and we climb out. I’ve been there before. I know the way.” He smiled fiercely. “You up to it?”