Hard as Nails

by Dan Simmons

  Kurtz walked off the terrace and stepped around the south corner of the burning house. Inside, something heavy collapsed. There was movement at the opposite end of the house, and Kurtz turned with the Browning before he saw that it was Angelina, Gonzaga, and Bobby, carrying bags of stuff and heading for the helicopter.

  "Kurtz!" called the female don. "Come on. We're leaving."

  Kurtz nodded and waved. And waited where he was.

  It was about three minutes later when the barred doors were flung open and the Major came wheeling his chair out onto the terrace. The old man was in pajamas and a robe, a huge service .45 on his lap, both hands busy pushing the manually powered wheelchair away from the smoking doors and the burning house.

  The Major got to the edge of the terrace and stopped, coughing heavily and spitting.

  "Freeze," said Kurtz, stepping out onto the terrace, Browning aimed and braced with both hands. He walked toward the wheelchair, taking time to glance into the Major's bedroom. It was roiling with heavy smoke. If anyone was left in there, they were out of the game unless they were wearing a respirator. "Keep your hands on the wheels," Kurtz said, stepping to within six feet of the old man.

  The Major turned his head and shoulders, keeping his hands on the metal grab-ring of the chair's wheels as instructed. The military man who'd looked so powerful here on this terrace eleven hours earlier looked old and haggard and worn out now. His white crewcut was sweaty and matted, showing an old man's pink scalp. The pajama tops were open, showing the muscled chest but also gray hairs and old scars. Major O'Toole's eyes looked tired and watery. A line of soot under each nostril showed that even old military men couldn't breathe pure smoke for long.

  "Turn around," said Kurtz.

  The Major swung the chair around. Both men were obviously aware of the .45 on the old man's lap, but there was no way to get rid of it unless Kurtz allowed the Major to lift his hands or Kurtz stepped closer to grab it. The old cripple couldn't kick it away from him.

  Kurtz decided to leave it alone for now.

  "Mr. Kurtz," said the Major and then began coughing again. He started to lift a fist to his mouth, saw Kurtz thumb the hammer back on the Browning, and finished the coughing fit with his big hands firmly clamped on the wheels. When he was finished, he raised his soot-streaked face and said, "You win, Mr. Kurtz. What do you want?"

  "Did you order Peg O'Toole killed?"

  The old gray eyes widened. "Order my niece killed? Are you crazy?"

  "Who did?"

  "I have no idea. I presume it was one of your Mafia friends."

  Kurtz shook his head. "You killed your brother, John. Why not his daughter, too?"

  The Major flinched as if Kurtz had slapped him in the face. His powerful arms and huge hands flexed.

  "Why'd you kill your brother?" said Kurtz. "He was a cop, but close to retirement No, wait… it was because he found out you were trying to move your heroin ring into Lackawanna and Buffalo, wasn't it?"

  The Major snarled—he literally snarled.

  "So did you sic your crazy son on Peg O'Toole as well?" pressed Kurtz.

  "My son…" said the Major. The old man's chiseled face seemed to shift, like some morphing special effect in a movie. The strong bones seemed to sag. "My son is dead. Sean Michael is dead. He died fifteen years ago in a fire."

  "Your fucking son, the Artful Dodger, dodged that fire, too, didn't he, Major? Who'd you send to be a corpse in his place? One of your Vietnamese lackeys? No, it'd have to be someone who looked more like a crazy Irish bastard, even after he was burned up, wouldn't it? And then you supplied the dental records, didn't you?"

  "My son is dead!" snarled the Major. He grabbed for the .45.

  Instead of firing, Kurtz lunged closer and kicked the wheelchair, wedging his boot between the old man's withered knees and pushing hard.

  The Major let out a cry and dropped the .45, grabbing the steel rims of the wheels with both of his powerful hands, leaning forward to brake the sliding chair just as it slid back to the edge of the rain-slicked terrace. The gun bounced on the flagstones.

  "I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll kill you," panted the Major. He obviously wanted to grab Kurtz's leg, get both hands on Kurtz's throat, to choke the life out of him. But to do that, the Major would have to release the wheels.

  Kurtz hopped on one leg, Browning still aimed, and kicked again, pushing hard with all of his weight The wheelchair, wheels locked, slid and screeched another yard, until it teetered right on the edge of the near-vertical ziggurat staircase.

  "Who shot me?" gasped Kurtz, leaning closer. "Who shot Peg O'Toole? Who did you send?"

  "I'll fucking kill you," panted the old man. Sweat flew from his straining forehead and pelted Kurtz's face. The Major's breath smelled of smoke and death. "Fucking kill you. Kill you." His upper body strength was tremendous. Kurtz was being pushed back, his right leg folding back as the wheelchair moved forward six inches… then another six inches.

  "Send your crazy, fucked-up son to do it," panted Kurtz. His right leg was cramping wildly, but his boot remained firmly planted on the chair between the Major's knees.

  "Aarrrrgggghhh!" screamed the Major and lifted both of his huge hands to grab Kurtz's throat, to choke the life out of him, to drag him over the edge with him.

  Kurtz threw his upper body back, avoiding the lurching hands as he'd avoid a cobra strike, throwing himself almost horizontally backward. He landed heavily on one elbow, the Major's huge hands still grasping air above him. Kurtz gathered his legs like springs and kicked the wheelchair and the Major's withered knees with both boots.

  The wheelchair and the flailing old man flew backwards off the terrace and over the cliff.

  By the time Kurtz stood and stepped to the edge, the broken chair and flying, screaming figure had already pin-wheeled off thirty steps and were picking up speed as they tumbled into darkness.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  « ^ »

  Rigby came to when they were somewhere near Kissing Bridge.

  The take-off had been interesting. Coming down from Buffalo, the interior of the Long Ranger had been neat enough, even with all the ordnance. Everyone had been strapped in. Taking off, it was pure confusion—most of the people crouching on the floor, the little Yemeni doctor jumping back and forth as he worked on Rigby King and Colonel Trinh, the interior of the chopper smelling of smoke and sweat and blood and cordite and shit—Kurtz guessed that Campbell had voided his bowels when he died.

  "We're too fucking heavy," Baby Doc cried from the pilot's seat. "Throw someone out."

  "Campbell goes home with us," yelled Angelina. She was mopping blood off her face with her sleeve, but the sleeve was so bloody that it just moved the gore around in swirls.

  "Don't blame me if we end up in the side of some goddamned hill," shouted Baby Doc Skrzypczyk. But the turbines screamed, the rotors blurred, they bounced once on skids, and the overladen chopper lifted off.

  No one closed the side door. Kurtz hung on and looked below as they rose, banked left away from the burning house, and flew down the valley toward Neola.

  The road below was still filled with vehicles and lights, but except for the two burning vehicles at the top of the hill, the driveway was empty. No one had tried to assault the guardpost from where Baby Doc had fired his first RPG and then rained automatic rifle fire on the fleeing rescuers. Just as they banked and dropped over the edge, the Huey's gas tank exploded behind them, sending a second ball of flame into the air. The whole top of the hill seemed to be on fire.

  No one from the valley shot at them. Or at least Kurtz saw no muzzle flashes. Maybe, he thought, they believed the Long Ranger was the Major's private Huey.

  When Rigby awoke a few minutes later, they were flying a thousand feet or so over the dark hills, the air rushing in the open rear door. Dr. Tafer had covered her with a blanket, and now Kurtz tucked it in. She was shaking.

  "Joe?"

  "Yeah." He put a hand on h
er shoulder.

  "I knew you'd come for me."

  He had nothing to say to that. "Rigby," he shouted over the wind and turbine roar, "you need some morphine?"

  The woman's teeth were chattering, but not from the cold, Kurtz guessed. He suspected that she was on the verge of going into shock because of the pain and blood loss. "Oh, yeah, that'd be good," she said. "They didn't give me anything for the pain all day. Just that goddamned IV. And they couldn't get the bleeding to stop."

  "Did they do anything else to you?"

  She shook her head. "Just asked stupid questions. About you. About who we were working for. If I'd known the answers, I would've told 'em, Joe. But I didn't know anything, so I couldn't."

  He squeezed her shoulder again. Dr. Tafer leaned closer, but Kurtz pushed him back. "Rigby, the doc's going to give you a shot, but you have to listen to me a minute. Can you hear me?"

  "Yeah." Her teeth were chattering wildly now.

  "You're going to be out of it," said Kurtz. "Probably wake up in the hospital. But it's important you don't tell them who shot you. Don't tell anyone—not even Kemper. Do you understand that?"

  She shook her head 'no' but said, "Yeah."

  "It's important, Rigby. Don't tell anyone about coming down to Neola, the Major… none of that. You don't remember what happened. You don't remember where you were or who shot you or why. Tell them that. Can you do that?"

  "I don't… remember," gasped Rigby, gritting her teeth against the waves of pain.

  "Good," said Kurtz. "I'll see you later." He nodded to the doctor, who scooted forward on his knees and gave the woman a shot of morphine.

  The helicopter bucked and pitched. "We're too heavy!" called Baby Doc. "The Ranger's supposed to haul no more than seven people. We've got nine in here. At least come up front again, Kurtz. Help trim it."

  "In a minute," shouted Kurtz. He crawled farther back, to where Gonzaga and Angelina were grilling Colonel Trinh near the open door.

  The older Vietnamese man's visibly broken arm was twisted behind him, his wrists still flexcuffed. Gonzaga had also cuffed the man's ankles and he was propped precariously against the frame of the open door. The air roared past at over a hundred and thirty miles an hour.

  "Tell us what we want to know," shouted Toma Gonzaga, "or out you go."

  Trinh looked out at the darkness rushing by and smiled. "Yes," he said so softly that his voice was barely audible over the noise. "It is very familiar."

  "I bet," said Angelina. Her face and hair were a mask of blood. "Why did you kill our junkies and dealers?"

  Trinh shrugged and then winced from his arm and wounds. "It was a war."

  "It's no goddamned war," shouted Gonzaga. "We didn't even know you existed until today. We never touched you. Why kill our people?"

  The old colonel looked Gonzaga in the eye and shook his head.

  "What's the connection?" shouted Kurtz. He was on his knees, straddling Campbell's sprawled legs. Blood sloshed back and forth on the plastic that covered the floor as the overladen chopper banked and rose and fell. "Who's been protecting your operation all these years, Trinh? CIA? FBI? Why?"

  "There were three of us in Vietnam," said the old man. "We worked together very well. We have worked together very well since."

  "Three?" said Gonzaga. He looked at Kurtz.

  "The Major for the army," shouted Kurtz over the wind roar. "Trinh for the Vietnamese. And somebody in U.S. intelligence. Probably CIA. Right, Colonel?"

  Trinh shrugged again.

  "But why cover for you?" shouted Angelina. "Why would some federal agency keep your heroin ring a secret?"

  "We brought in much more than heroin," said Trinh. He leaned back against the pitching door frame almost casually, as if he were in his own living room. "Our people in Syria, the Bekkah Valley, Afghanistan, Turkey… all very useful."

  "To who?" shouted Gonzaga.

  "What are you going to do with me?" asked the Colonel. He had to repeat the question because of the noise. His voice was calm.

  "We're going to throw you out the goddamned door if you don't answer our questions better," shouted Gonzaga.

  "We'll take you to a hospital with Rigby," said Kurtz. "Just tell us who the federal connections were and why they…"

  "Do you know the irony?" interrupted Colonel Trinh, smiling suddenly. "The irony was that Major O'Toole and I are retired… we only came back to New York because of the SEATCO stockholders' meeting and because Michael wanted to see his niece."

  The colonel shook his head, still smiling, and then deliberately pitched over to his left.

  Gonzaga and Angelina grabbed at the man's legs and boots, but before they could get a grip, he was gone, out the black door, whipped away and down by wind and gravity.

  "Oh, fuck," said Angelina Farino Ferrara.

  "That's better!" shouted Baby Doc from the front. "Now someone get up here in the copilot's seat and help me trim this pig."

  * * *

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  « ^ »

  Angelina drove Kurtz and Rigby to the hospital.

  They took the extra SUV that Campbell had driven to Gonzaga's compound and tossed his body in the back. Dr. Tafer and Kurtz carried Rigby to it on a litter, sliding her onto the flat floor left after all the seats were folded away. Then Tafer drove off with Baby Doc's men, Gonzaga had driven away with Bobby and his crew, and Baby Doc himself had lifted the Long Ranger off with a roar of turbines amidst a hurricane of Utter.

  Kurtz had grabbed the keys and gone around to the SUV's driver's door, but Angelina had swung up first. "I'll drive," she said. "You stay in the back with Ms. Cellulite. I'll send somebody for the other vehicle."

  He had jumped in the back, propping Rigby's head on his leg. Tafer had put her on a second unit of plasma and she was unconscious from the morphine. The Yemeni doctor had warned that she was in shock and in bad shape from loss of blood.

  They were only a couple of miles from the Erie County Medical Center. For once, Kurtz thought, he'd planned ahead.

  "We can't carry her in, you know," called Angelina from the front. She was driving carefully, staying under the speed limit and stopping for lights even when the intersection was dark and empty. Kurtz smiled to himself when he thought of what a haul it would be for the policeman who pulled them over for speeding—a wounded cop, a dead thug, a cache of stolen night-vision gear and automatic weapons, with a bloody, female Mafia don driving.

  "I know," said Kurtz. "We'll drop her at emergency. I trust this truck isn't registered and the plates are bogus."

  "Totally," said Angelina. "This thing will be in a chop shop before sunrise."

  They drove in silence for a block or two. It was about two-forty-five in the morning. The time, Kurtz knew from experience, when human beings held their least firm grip on life. Rigby was cold to the touch and she looked dead. Kurtz used three fingers to find the pulse in her neck—it was hard to find.

  "Well," said Angelina, "you sure provided Toma and me with a bonding experience, just like you promised."

  Kurtz had nothing to say to that. He looked out at the dark buildings going by—they'd just crossed Delavan and were within a couple of blocks of the hospital.

  "This third party that Trinh was talking about before he took a header," said Angelina. "Did you ever consider that it might be Baby Doc? That he's been working both sides against the middle?"

  "Yeah."

  "If it is, we just paid the son of a bitch three quarters of a million dollars to help him take over a drug ring he's been trying to take over for years."

  "Yeah," said Kurtz. "But it's not Baby Doc."

  "How do you know?"

  "I just know," said Kurtz.

  They pulled up the emergency room drive. Kurtz kicked the back doors of the SUV open, pulled the IV needle, lifted Rigby out, and laid her on the wet concrete. Angelina laid on the truck's horn. Kurtz was inside and they were driving off at high speed just as the first nurses and orderlies came out the automati
c doors.

  "Think she'll make it?" asked Angelina. She swung the truck up onto the Kensington Expressway. No one was giving chase.

  "How the fuck do I know?"

  The bodyguard's body rolled against Kurtz as the SUV took the turn toward downtown. Kurtz crawled up into the passenger seat. "Where does Campbell go? Another chop shop?"

  "More or less."

  "Then why bring him back?"

  "Leave no man behind or somesuch macho shit, right?" Angelina looked at him. "You in love with the cop, Joe?"

  Kurtz rubbed his temples. "You going back to the Towers?"

  "Where else?"

  "Good. My Pinto's there."

  "You're not going back to your Harbor Inn dump, are you?"

  "Where else?"

  "Do you have any idea what's going to happen when they ID your girlfriend back there?"

  "Yeah," Kurtz said tiredly. "Buffalo P.D.'s going to go apeshit. And Rigby's partner, a hard-on named Kemper, is going to go more apeshit than the rest. I'm pretty sure Rigby told him that she was going to be with me yesterday, so he'll send black-and-whites out to pick me up as soon as he hears."

  "And you're still going back to your place?" Kurtz shrugged. "I think we've got a few hours. There was no ID on Rigby and she'll either be unconscious for hours or…"

  "Dead," said Angelina.

  "… or she'll wake but keep her mouth shut for a while."

  "But it's a gunshot wound," said Angelina, meaning that the police would be informed straight from the emergency room and that a cop would be sent over to check it out.

  "Yeah."

  "Come spend the night in the penthouse," said Angelina. "I won't rape you."

  "Another time," said Kurtz. He looked at the don's daughter. "Although I have to say, you do look ravishing."

  Angelina Farino Ferrara laughed unselfconsciously and pushed her sweaty and gore-matted hair off her bloody forehead.

  Kurtz knew as soon as he went through the front door of the Harbor Inn that someone had been there—perhaps was still there. He pulled the Browning. Then he went to one knee, laid the ditty bag on the floor, tugged on the night-vision goggles that he'd conveniently forgotten to give back to Baby Doc in the confusion, and clicked on the power. The glasses whined up and the dark foyer-restaurant glowed bright green and white in his vision.