Hard as Nails

by Dan Simmons

  Kurtz stood. "Do you bill by the hour?"

  Rigby grabbed his wrist and looked up at him. "Lie down here with me, Joe. Make love with me in the sunlight."

  Kurtz said nothing, but he remembered the seventeen-year-old Rigby naked above him, straddling him in the dim light of the choir loft, Bach echoing from the huge pipe organ in the darkened basilica. He remembered the exquisite pain in his chest that night and how—only years later—wondering if that strong emotion had been love as well as lust.

  "Joe…" She tugged. He went to one knee in the grass.

  Rigby used her free hand to begin to unbutton her shirt as she lay back. Her short, dark hair was lifted into spikes by the soft grass. "Make love to me," she whispered, "and let it all back in. Me. The world. Your daughter…"

  Kurtz stood abruptly, jerking his wrist free.

  "There's a train track around here somewhere," he said. "I'm going to find it." He stepped past Rigby and began walking up the slope.

  She caught up Co him before he reached the top of the mountain. Neither said anything. Rigby's cheeks were flushed and there was grass on the back of her corduroy jacket.

  The miniature train tracks, no more than a yard across, were just below the summit. The trees had been cut back for twenty feet on either side and had never grown back. The gravel under the ties looked fresh.

  Kurtz turned north and began following the tracks along the hill.

  "The rails aren't rusted," he said. "They're almost polished. Missing spikes have been replaced and the bed built back up. This little line's been used. And recently."

  Rigby said nothing. She plodded along ten ties behind him.

  They crossed a small trestle that had been built over a stream, then followed the tracks up to the crown of the hill, where they emerged from the woods and continued north-northeast.

  A quarter of a mile from where they started, they emerged from the woods. The grasses were high and tan and brittle here, rustling in the stronger breeze as the clouds covered the sun again. The miniature railway's tracks ran down across a ridge and then rose over another treeless hill toward a huge house just visible about a mile away to the northeast.

  Kurtz started down the grade.

  "Joe, I don't think…" began Rigby.

  Her voice was drowned out by a deafening THWAP THWAP THWAP and a huge Huey helicopter, Vietnam War-vintage, came swooping just over the trees from which they'd just emerged. Men were visible in both doorways as the big machine side-slipped, its forty-foot-wide rotors filling the mountaintop with their bats-wing beat.

  Kurtz began to run toward the trees, saw that he would never make it and dropped to one knee, pulling the small .38 from its holster.

  A machinegun opened up from the side of the Huey and slugs stitched a row between Kurtz and Rigby King.

  "DROP YOUR WEAPONS… NOW!" boomed an amplified voice from the helicopter.

  It swooped low and fast over them, banked hard, and swooped back. A machine gun from the other open door scythed grass not ten feet from Rigby. She threw down her gun.

  Kurtz tossed his into the grass.

  "ON YOUR KNEES. HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD. DO NOT MOVE A MUSCLE."

  Kurtz and Rigby complied as the huge, black machine hovered over them and then settled heavily onto the grass near the tracks, the wind blowing up straw and dust and dead grass around them in a blinding blast.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  « ^ »

  The Dodger stopped at the edge of the woods and then stepped back under the trees when he heard the familiar sound of the Huey's engine and rotors. The goddamned perimeter sensors again.

  He'd stalked the man and the woman through the woods, watched as they entered Cloud Nine, attached the suppressor to his Beretta, and begun moving in on them as they sat on the grass talking. Something was weird between the two; it looked as if the woman with the big tits and the short hair wanted to fuck and the man called Kurtz did not. That was new in the Dodger's book, unless Kurtz was all worn out from his night with the Farino woman the night before.

  They'd been to the hut. This irritated the Dodger to the point that he planned to take real pleasure in shooting both of them. He would use more bullets than was necessary. It would disturb the aesthetics of his use for them, but that wasn't as important as getting rid of this unaccustomed anger he felt.

  I'll put them at the top, he'd thought as he moved stealthily behind the funhouse, into the Beretta's killing range. He carried the weapon with both hands, his palm under the grip as he'd been taught, ready to lift it and aim down his rigid arm—first the man, then the woman. First the body mass to drop them, but not in the heart. Then the arms and legs. It was nice of them to come here.

  Then the wind had blown some damned bit of plywood, making a noise near him, and the Dodger had been forced to freeze, bending low, not even breathing. By the time he was ready to move again, so were they, climbing the hill toward his train tracks.

  He'd cut over the hilltop, hurrying ahead to the big oak near the edge of the forest. The bulk of it bid him and when they followed the tracks out into the open, he'd have a clear shot of no more than fifteen meters. As his anger faded, he considered a head shot for the man, saving the multiple slugs for the woman. Not because she was a woman or beautiful—the Dodger was indifferent to that—but because he sensed that the man was the more dangerous of the two. Always eliminate the primary danger first, the Boss had taught him. Always. Don't hesitate.

  But he'd hesitated, and now it was too late.

  The goddamned helicopter. That same, goddamned old Huey the Major had used for more than thirty years.

  The Dodger watched the four Vietnamese men flexcuff Kurtz and the woman and load them into the helicopter. Then he faded back into the woods as the Huey lifted off and flew north, its passing flattening the grass for sixty feet around.

  He was glad that he'd hidden the bug truck in the thicket where it couldn't be seen from the air. Removing the silencer, the Dodger slipped the Beretta back in its holster, paused only briefly at the hut, and then walked quickly back to the truck.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  « ^ »

  Kurtz watched and noted everything as the Huey hauled them the short mile to the mansion. He and Rigby were unhurt—except for the cutting pressure of the flexcuffs—and surrounded by the four men whom he believed to be Vietnamese or Vietnamese-Americans. There was only one pilot—a Texan judging from his accent when he told everyone to hang on for take-off—and he said nothing for the rest of the flight.

  The train tracks came to within a hundred yards of the mansion and then looped in a turnaround. The Cloud Nine kid-sized locomotive and cars were just visible in a long storage shed that straddled the tracks. Evidently the Major had kept the train and tracks maintained all these years.

  The Huey landed and the four men half-pushed, half-dragged Rigby and Kurtz out of the open doors. All four were dressed in jeans and field jackets. Two of them carried M-16s that Kurtz was certain were illegally rigged for full auto; the other two carried even more formidable military firepower—M-60 machine guns.

  Where are the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms pukes in their windbreakers when you need them? thought Kurtz. The man behind him shoved him through doors that a fifth Vietnamese man, this one from inside the house and dressed in a blue blazer, opened for them.

  This butler or whatever he was led them through a foyer, down a hallway, through a library, and out onto the rear terrace on the cliff's edge. Kurtz had noted every side room and everything else he could see during their short transit through the house, and he knew that Rigby was doing the same. The fact that they hadn't been blindfolded bothered him a bit, since the simplest explanation for that was that they planned to kill both him and Rigby.

  The house was large—three stories tall, comprising at least five thousand square feet inside—and it looked as if it had been built in the 1970s, around the time of the Major's retirement to Neola. It
was built to fight off Indians. The first story and a half were stone—not only faced with stone, but built of stone. The windows to the rear of the house, nearest the helipad, were all leaded glass, but the leaded parts were actually bars. Thinner, taller windows to either side of the main ones were too narrow to scramble through but would offer perfect firing positions. A five-car garage ran to the north of the house along the same circular driveway, but all five of the wooden doors were down. The house doors they'd come through—the house was situated so that its fancier front was facing the bluff rather than the heliport and driveway—were a thick hardwood reinforced by steel. Enough to stop a Kiowa war lance, that was for sure.

  This side of the house facing the cliff was less defensible. The library opened onto the terrace through wide French doors that let in the view and afternoon light to the west. Off the library had been an adjoining bedroom—Kurtz only caught a glimpse but thought it was probably the Major's bedroom, adapted from a huge parlor on the first floor, because of pill bottles and military photos on the burgundy wallpapered walls—and that bedroom also had wide doors opening onto the terrace. Kurtz guessed from oversized drape boxes above the doors that there were steel shutters that could drop down if necessary.

  The Major, Colonel Vin Trinh, and three other men were waiting on the terrace. One man wore sheriff's gray, a Colt .45 in a western holster, and a name tag that said "Gerey"—the name of the sheriff that Rigby had talked to little more man an hour earlier; the other two men were younger, white, muscled, and also armed.

  That's seven bodyguards so far, counting the servant in the blazer and not counting the chopper pilot and the sheriff, thought Kurtz as he and Rigby were shoved into the sunlight in front of the man in the wheelchair, which was in the shade of a striped canvas awning. And Truth, the Major, and this other old guy.

  "Mr. Kurtz, Miss King," said the Major. "How nice of you to drop in."

  Ah, Jesus, thought Kurtz. This old fart gets his material from villains in B movies.

  "I'm a police officer," said Rigby. It was the first full sentence she'd completed since Kurtz had been sitting on the grass with her.

  "Yes, Miss King… Detective King," said the Major. "We know who you are."

  "Then you know what a bad idea this is," said Rigby, her voice low but solid. "Get these cuffs off us this minute and we'll let it slide for now. We were trespassing."

  The Major smiled again, shook his head almost sadly, and turned toward Kurtz. "I think it was very clever of your masters to send the policewoman along, Mr. Kurtz. If circumstances were different, it might… might… have been a disincentive to what has to happen next."

  Aw, shit, thought Kurtz. He said, "What masters?" The Major's smile disappeared. "Don't insult my intelligence, Mr. Kurtz. It makes perfect sense that they sent you—with your policewoman chippie here as an escort From what we can glean, you're one of the few people that both the Gonzaga and Farino families do business with."

  "Chippie?" said Rigby. She sounded more amused than insulted.

  Colonel Vin Trinh stepped forward and slapped Rigby hard across the mouth. He wiped the blood from his knuckles with a silk handkerchief, took Kurtz's holstered .38 from one of the Vietnamese men, and held his arm at full length, the muzzle inches from Rigby's temple. Kurtz was reminded of a famous photo from the Vietnam era, taken during the Tet Offensive he thought, where a Saigon chief of police had summarily executed a Viet Cong suspect in the street.

  Trinh cocked the pistol. "If you say one more word without being told to," he said in almost unaccented English, "I will kill you now."

  Rigby looked at the tall man.

  "What do you want?" Kurtz said to the Major.

  The old man in the wheelchair sighed. The bodyguard in the blazer had moved behind the chair, hands on its grips, obviously ready to move the crippled man back deeper into the shade should the sun encroach or Kurtz or Rigby make any sudden move. Or to get him out of the path of any arterial sprays, thought Kurtz.

  "We want the obvious, Mr. Kurtz," said the Major. "We want an end to this war. Isn't that what your masters sent you down here to discuss?"

  War? thought Kurtz. According to both Toma Gonzaga and Angelina Farino Ferrara, they didn't have a clue as to who was killing their junkies. They certainly had never talked about fighting back—about any war. Was all that ignorance a ruse to get Kurtz involved? It didn't make much sense.

  He said nothing.

  "Did they send you with terms?" asked the Major. "Or shall we propose our own?"

  Colonel Vin Trinh's arm was still rigid, the hammer on Kurtz's .38 was still cocked. The muzzle ten inches from Rigby's head did not waver by so much as a millimeter.

  Kurtz said nothing.

  "For instance, what would it be worth to you for us to spare Miss King's life?" said the old man.

  Kurtz remained silent.

  "She means nothing to you?" said the Major. "But you were fellow orphans together as children. You were in the army together. Surely that must have created some bond, Mr. Kurtz."

  Kurtz smiled. "If you've got my military records," he said, "look at them more carefully. This bitch is one of the reasons I was court-martialed."

  Major Michael O'Toole nodded. "Yes, that fact is in your records. But you were not, as it turned out, dishonorably discharged, Sergeant Kurtz. The charges appeared to have been dropped. Perhaps you and she have… made up?" He showed hard white teeth.

  "This isn't about her or me," said Kurtz. "What do you want?"

  O'Toole nodded at Trinh, who lowered the hammer, stepped back, and slid Kurtz's pistol into his belt The man had a stomach flatter than most fences.

  "We need to meet, your masters and I," said the Major, speaking in a rapid, clear clip that must have been perfected in a thousand briefings. "This war has become too expensive for both sides."

  Rigby glanced over at Kurtz as if seeking to find out if any of this made any sense to him. Kurtz's face revealed nothing.

  "When?" said Kurtz.

  "Tomorrow. Noon. Both Gonzaga and the Farino daughter must come. They can each bring one bodyguard, but everyone will be disarmed before the meeting."

  "Where?"

  "This town," said the old man, sweeping his powerful-looking right arm toward Neola visible in the valley to the northwest. With the sunlight gone, all color had faded from the trees and the steeples visible were more a dismal, chimney gray than a New England white. "It has to be in Neola. Sheriff Gerey here…" The Major nodded toward the sheriff who never changed his bassett-hound expression or blinked. "Sheriff Gerey will provide security for all of us and offer the meeting space. You still have that secure conference room in the back of the station, Sheriff?"

  "Yeah."

  "There you have it," said the Major. "Any questions?"

  "You're letting both of us go back, right?" said Kurtz.

  The Major looked at Colonel Vin Trinh, then at Rigby, then at Kurtz, and smiled. "Wrong, Mr. Kurtz. Detective King stays as our guest until after this conference."

  "Why?"

  "To insure that you do your absolute best at convincing your principals to be at the Neola sheriff's office at noon tomorrow, Mr. Kurtz."

  "Or what?"

  The old man's black eyebrows rose toward his steel-colored crewcut. "Or what? Colonel Trinh? Would you like to demonstrate the 'Or what?' to Mr. Kurtz?"

  Without blinking, Trinh pulled the .38 from his belt and shot Rigby in the upper leg. She fell heavily, arms still cuffed behind her, and struck her head on the flagstone. One of the Vietnamese bodyguards dropped to one knee, pulled his belt off, and rigged a makeshift tourniquet.

  Kurtz had not moved and he did not move now. He made sure that his face showed no concern.

  "Does that explain the 'Or what?' Mr. Kurtz?" said the Major.

  "It seems like more trouble for you than it's worth," Kurtz said calmly. "Kill me, nobody much notices. Kill her…" He nodded toward Rigby where she lay, face sweaty, eyes wider, but not speaking. "Kill her an
d you'll have the entire Buffalo Police Department on your ass."

  "Oh, no, Mr. Kurtz," said the Major. "We're not going to kill Detective King if you fail in your mission by tomorrow noon. You're going to kill her. In Buffalo. Probably in that abandoned flophouse you call a home. A lover's quarrel, perhaps."

  Kurtz looked at the .38 still in Trinh's hand. "No GSR with me," he said.

  "Gun shot residue?" said the Major. "On your hands and clothing? There will be, Mr. Kurtz. There will be." The old man in the wheelchair nodded again and two of the young men grabbed Rigby, lifted her—she moaned once—and carried her into the house.

  The Major glanced at his heavy and expensive digital watch. "It's after two P.M. You'll be wanting to go. It's a long drive back to Buffalo and it looks as if it might rain." Colonel Trinh slipped the .38 into his belt but pulled a Glock-nine from a holster behind his back. Two other bodyguards lifted their M-16s.

  Kurtz looked toward the driveway to the north of the house.

  "No, Mr. Kurtz, the easiest way out for you is down this way." The Major nodded his head toward the almost vertical staircase down the cliff face.

  Kurtz took a step closer to the edge, very aware of the two men behind him, who could push him over with a shove, and peered down.

  It was not so much a staircase as a descending concrete ziggurat. The steps were oversized—each at least twenty-four inches high, maybe thirty inches—and cut into the almost sheer rock cliff face. Far below—two or three hundred feet at least and half as many sheer steps almost straight down—the stairway ended in the black asphalt of the curving driveway.

  "You're joking," said Kurtz.

  "I never joke," said Major Michael O'Toole.

  Kurtz sighed and held his arms up for someone to cut the flexcuffs.

  "Perhaps later," said the Major. "Sheriff Gerey will meet you at the bottom." The old man in the chair nodded again and someone behind Kurtz gave him a hard shove.