The moment Hurtado hit that downstairs door, Wiley and Lillian were snapped up out of sleep. At once their minds were clear and their bodies quick.
They put on their nylon windbreakers, zipped them up partway and tucked their shoes inside them. They cocked their pistols, checked to make sure the silencers were screwed on tight.
The Colt forty-five containing the hydraulic bullets. Wiley shoved that into his windbreaker pocket. And also took along a regular three-cell flashlight. He retracted the bolt on the bedroom door and they went out into the upper hall. It was pitch black because all the windows were shuttered. They slid their stockinged feet along the varnished floor, moving with hardly a sound, could detect any slight noise caused by the men below going from room to room.
When they reached the well of the main stairway, they heard whispers from below. Listened carefully but could not make out what was being said. Merely sibilant fragments. But that close. They would not try going down that way, continued on along the completely dark hall. To the end of it, where a week ago Wiley had left the chair. The chair he’d used to climb up into the shallow space beneath the roof.
They would go up there.
But hold on, Wiley thought, what the hell. Were they trying to escape, or what? Hadn’t they decided not to run or hide? The reason for being there was to make a stand, wasn’t it? They’d reacted automatically, gone on the defense. Better they should use the advantage while they had it.
They went into the nearest room, which was just another bedroom. Wiley felt the floor with his feet, located the old-fashioned metal louvered transom of the heating system. He kneeled beside it. The louvers were shut. There was a lever that worked them. The tip of the lever barely protruded above the surface, not enough to trip over but just enough so a thumb could work it back or forth. To open or close the louvers and regulate the flow of heat. Often such old metal devices became stuck. Chances were this one was rusted tight from the ocean.
In total darkness, by feel alone, Wiley put his thumb to the lever and applied pressure.
The lever didn’t budge.
Greater pressure.
It still didn’t budge.
Lillian, kneeling in the darkness beside him, had only a notion of what he was trying to do.
Instead of pressing the lever, he tried pulling it.
It gave. Easily, in fact. The louvers rotated in unison until they were in wide open position.
The transom was paired exactly with another in the ceiling of the area below. The louvers of that ceiling transom were already open, so Wiley and Lillian were able to see down through. A very limited view and dim. A faint light provided from the relaxing room more than half the length of the house away. Neither Wiley nor Lillian saw anyone down there; however, they heard a creaking of a floorboard and another, suggesting the weight of someone’s steps.
They waited.
No one came into sight.
Still, they felt quite sure someone was down there.
Wiley took a loose bullet from his pocket. He dropped it clear through the transom. It struck the bare hardwood floor below and made a sound of exactly what it was: something small but relatively heavy dropped—accidentally, anyone would think, under these circumstances.
Within the minute, a figure moved stealthily to investigate. Drawn to the spot. He was crouched with gun in hand. His head was no more than three feet below.
Wiley, still kneeling, straddled the transom. He inserted the silencer-tipped muzzle of his Llama pistol between the metal louvers, careful not to hit or scrape against them. Aimed the pistol straight down. Thought how unfair it was but thought, what a damn fool thought. Squeezed up the slack of the trigger and, when he knew he had it all, continued squeezing.
The nine millimeter bullet went point-blank into the top of the man’s skull. His shoulders hunched, ass stuck out, legs folded. As though he’d been struck on the head by a sledgehammer. He didn’t cry out because the bullet didn’t stop in his brain, traveled down through that soft substance and tore into his windpipe.
He was one of the Conduct Section specialists. Anyway, had been.
Wiley waited a moment for someone else to come into view and, thus, into range. Wasn’t anyone concerned, even curious, about the man’s condition? Evidently the others had heard the silenced spit of the shot and already figured out where it had come from.
No reason to be so quiet now. Wiley and Lillian hurried out into the hall. Wiley used the chair to climb up through the trap door to the crawlspace beneath the roof. Lillian moved the chair to just inside the nearest bedroom so it wouldn’t give them away. Wiley extended his hand down to her.
She was reaching up for it, trying to find it in the dark, when she heard something—someone. Down the long hall, moving slowly toward her. Unless Wiley pulled her up, she was cornered there at the dead end of the hall. Where was his hand? She had to be just missing it. He was whispering useless directions.
She stopped trying for it, concentrated on her oncoming adversary. The pitch blackness was her protection and a handicap. She strained to make out any variation in it, a shape of any sort. Should she fire a shot blindly? Might he? The hallway was about seven feet wide. If he was coming straight on, the odds were about four to one against her making a hit. If he was moving in profile, offering as slim a target as possible, her chance of a hit would be maybe only one in eight. Out of habit she raised the Llama to eye level, as though she could see to aim. Her sense of direction was all she had to go by, and the longer she hesitated the more indecisive she became about that. Possibly she was aiming at nothing but wall.
She’d have only one chance. As soon as she fired she’d be giving her location away, inviting precise retaliation.
Wiley was calling to her in a more desperate whisper now.
She took up the slack in the trigger.
She altered her aim a little to the left, then down to the right a bit. Guessing.
Then she saw it.
The elongated triangle.
Glowing. Not brightly, but discernible. About two thirds of the way down the hall.
Him. He must have been moving in a crouch and had just straightened up. That was his second mistake. His first was wearing a new white shirt. A cheap one. Its fabric had been treated with a chemical whitener that made it phosphorescent. The triangle was wider at the top, formed by his neckline and the lapels of his coat. Where the lapels met would be about the center of his chest, Lillian estimated.
Still she couldn’t see to aim. But at least now she had something to shoot for.
She went for the heart, judging where it would be according to the low point of the phosphorescent triangle.
She didn’t hear the bullet smack in.
The man let out a short painful grunt and stumbled back, brushed against the wall and fell, dead weight, to the floor.
The others would be cautious, but coming.
Lillian looked up.
Wiley flicked his flashlight on for a fraction of a second for a bearing. She reached up, stood tiptoe. He found her hand, got a sure grip on her wrist and hoisted her up.
They fitted the trap door back into place.
Wiley switched on the flashlight.
For the moment they were safe, had a sort of advantage. Anyone who tried to come up through the trap door would be an easy target. And there was no other way up.
Wiley glanced at Lillian. Recognized something in her expression that he hadn’t seen before. At least, she’d never shown it.
Fear.
She smiled, but he could tell she was merely pulling the corners of her mouth up. She bumped her head on a rafter because there wasn’t enough space to stand. A hard bump, but she didn’t even grimace. Anesthetized by danger. What difference, between now and when they’d fought the soldiers that foggy night in the Andes?
The stakes had changed.
Same stakes, but changed.
They put on their shoes.
They heard some rumbling and slamming about bel
ow. The place was being searched, and not only for them. Wiley knew what else they were looking for. What he’d lost to the Caribbean. From the sounds, he tried to estimate how many men there were. He thought four, conveyed it to Lillian by holding that many fingers up. She held up her opinion: three.
Wiley considered: Should they remain there in the crawl-space? Wouldn’t it be only a matter of time before the trap door was discovered and their pursuers realized where they were? Better to make use of that time. No use cowering. Stay on the offensive. But how?
He moved in a crouch, stepped from raw beam to beam. Lillian followed. Across to the hatch Wiley had used to get out onto the roof a week ago.
He pushed it open.
They climbed up and out. Closed the hatch behind them.
Then they were on the peak of the roof. It wasn’t a sharp-angled peak. Wiley had been able to walk along it with hardly any concern about balance when he’d uncapped the chimney.
The idea now was to find a way to the ground. The pitch of the roof was not all that steep. They could inch down it and lower themselves to the roof of the veranda; from there would be an easy drop.
They took several steps along the peak, were committed to it before they realized how slick it was. The sea and the night had moistened the entire surface of the roof, and the cold had frozen it slick.
The foot Wiley had his weight on slipped from under him. Lillian grabbed to help. They both fell hard.
There was nothing to get hold of. They tried to dig in with their heels but couldn’t even slow their slide. Down the pitch of the roof, helpless, the rough shingles scraping their backs, backsides and legs.
They shot off the edge.
It was a two-story drop and they expected the impact of the frozen ground.
Instead, they were caught, as though by a net, by the thick growth of rose and berry brambles along the edge of the house. The bushes, dense as they were, gave, sprung, held—and took a price. Thorns stabbed through clothes and got to skin.
Lillian couldn’t keep from crying out.
It was as though they’d fallen into a basket of angry cats.
Claws by the hundreds went at them as they tried to check their awkward sprawls. Each movement brought more pain, and it was no better to move gingerly.
They managed to stand. Waded swiftly through the tangle, tore through it while it ripped at them, inflicting pain to the very last snag.
Wiley had thought being outside would give them the advantage of surprise and a better chance to pick off another of the men—or more. But their descent had been anything but sneaky, and Wiley reminded himself that they were up against professionals.
They made for the bridge that spanned the eroded dunes. Crossed over it and, when they reached the end, jumped the ten feet down to the beach.
Not unnoticed.
Two men came from the house, and then a third, headed for the bridge.
From the size of one, Wiley gathered it was Luis Hurtado. Wiley recalled Hurtado’s hands, twice the size of average hands, capable of breaking someone’s forearm like a stick of kindling.
They ran down the beach.
The tide was flowing, so they had to keep close to the dunes to avoid the wash of the breakers. Wiley looked for someplace on the way that might be good for a stand. Anything that might give them an edge. There weren’t even any rocks along there, only large, closed-up houses above the sheer dunes, not easily accessible.
They kept going.
The sameness of the beach, the water, the dunes lessened their sense of reality. The night seemed to be holding itself over them, over everything, like an apathetic spectator, and the light from the misted moon appeared artificial.
They came to a fence. Ordinary wooden slats connected by wire. Meant to impede the drift, the eating-away of the dunes. And a short ways farther on were some gray-green painted structures. They were one-room places, little more than shacks, about twenty of them in an evenly spaced line facing the sea. Each had the same eaves, door, windows. Identical in every way, even to the size and placement of the white-enameled wooden name-plates fixed above each door. The plainest sort of black lettering, professionally done, said so-and-so Vanderbilt, so-and-so Whitney, so-and-so Hutton.
Members of the Maidstone Club used these shacks to change in at the beach. In summer they were places for wet suits and plastic floats, mats, folding canvas recliners and gallons of Bain de Soleil. But now, on the opposite side of the year, the shacks were empty, the doors left unlocked.
To Wiley and Lillian the shacks offered welcome cover. They ducked in between two, peeked back up the beach. Their pursuers were barely perceptible: three upright, dark shapes moving against the sand and dunes. About four hundred feet, at the most, a minute away.
Was this a good place to make the fight? Wiley wondered. How could it best be used? How would a professional use it? Wouldn’t their adversaries approach these shacks with the utmost caution, anticipating a move? No way, therefore, of pulling off much of a surprise. Most surprising would be not to be there. Also, it would take their adversaries time to check out the shacks, give them precious moments to set themselves up elsewhere, Wiley decided.
He and Lillian went on.
Just beyond the last shack in the row was the Maidstone Club proper. A wide cement deck up off the beach. Steel poles, permanently embedded in the deck, formed a framework that would be for awnings. A short distance in from the beach was the swimming pool, empty now. The cement deck ran around it. Just back from the pool’s edge, along each side, were more of those same gray-green shacks.
Directly ahead, presiding over it all on the crest of the dunes, was the main clubhouse. An extensive building of turn-of-the-century design. Leading up to it were two identical flights of steps on the left and right, and a black-topped drive that served a beach-level parking area behind the shacks, not visible from the pool.
Sand blown from the beach occupied every crack and corner. There was as much as five feet of sand in the far end, the deep end of the pool. Surfaces were smooth and had a slight powdery coating, rather like talcum, from being sandblasted almost perpetually.
How about here? Wiley and Lillian considered. What would be the least expected, most advantageous positions they could take here?
Worst place would be down in the empty pool. The pool was an obvious trap. A four-way dead end.
Best place would be any of the shacks.
They decided on a little of each.
Wiley jumped down into the pool. The shallow end. It was too shallow for him to crouch. He had to kneel to get entirely out of sight. That end of the pool was nearest the entranceway, the way the men would most likely come.
Every few seconds Wiley took a one-eyed peek. Kept his head horizontal and raised it so one eye was just above the level of the pool’s edge.
It seemed they were a long time coming.
Now that he was no longer on the move, the cold got all the way into Wiley. He felt himself thickening inside, becoming brittle. His knees were ball-like aches and his hands burned so it didn’t seem he had hold of the pistol. He gripped it tighter to make sure it was there. Surely he wouldn’t have feeling enough to be able to squeeze off a shot. He put his trigger finger into his mouth. The entire finger. Soon it was thawed enough, flexible, ready, but he had to keep it in. Once he removed it, wet with saliva, it would begin to freeze. He also unzipped his fly, shoved his left hand in down between his legs to warm it.
Although he kept alert for any sign of them, he took the time to think.
About really losing.
All the other times when he’d come close, when what he’d believed he wanted had zigzagged by just out of reach, all those times altogether didn’t amount to anything, compared to this. Nothing had ever been so important to him, he knew. He viewed his death not so much as the loss of him as a loss by him. The loss of her, his ability to love her. An awful thought: never again to experience her, not even with his eyes.
An offsetting
thought followed, one that by no means completely consoled him but which helped nonetheless and caused him to smile inside. Pleased with himself that he’d been able to love her that intensely. Her or anyone, for that matter. It was an accomplishment, be it the last or not.
Apparently, it would be the last.
No matter if these three failed, Argenti would merely send another set of killers. At least it was a better way to go than Barbosa, Wiley thought.
He took another horizontal peek.
There was something. Something off to the side that broke the line of the entranceway.
Definitely one of them.
Wiley kept his eye on him.
The man advanced a few quick, light steps at a time. He was about sixty feet away. Wiley watched the man’s footwork, the way he shifted to the left and right, always forward but never straight on, scooting along smoothly in a crouch.
The other two men appeared, spaced well apart. Apparently the first was scouting the way, about twenty feet ahead.
Wiley’s eyes were watering from the cold and the strain of intense focus. He clenched them and a couple of tears dropped.
How long should he wait? How close should he let the man get?
The man was now only about thirty feet away, standing out in the open on the concrete deck but ready for action from any direction.
Wiley became aware of a clanging.
It was the tall metal flagpole up by the clubhouse. The flag-raising lanyards were whipping in the breeze, striking their metal clips against the pole. Like a knell.
The man was less than twenty feet away now.
Wiley didn’t just rise up suddenly. He had thought he would, but he was cramped with cold and he didn’t trust his freehand aim that much.
Careful not to make any abrupt move, as though the man were a bird who would fly at any sudden motion, Wiley brought his right hand, with the pistol, up to the edge of the pool, rested his wrist on the edge.
The man didn’t notice it.
He did, however, notice the upper half of Wiley’s head when it came up to aim. But by the time his brain had conveyed that information to his gun hand, Wiley’s first bullet had hit him. Hit him three inches to center of the top left button on his double-breasted overcoat. Straightened him up and drove him back. Wiley’s second bullet was unnecessary. Went in just above the right hip as the man’s body twisted on the way down.
Green Ice Page 38