The Annihilators

by Donald Hamilton

  I stopped well away from the three tall condominium buildings, first, and got out of the car and walked a small distance up the road. It was a clear night for Chicago, but the stars were dim and distant; we put on a better celestial show out in my home state of New Mexico. I stood quite still for a minute or two, listening to the wind. Well, “listening” is perhaps not quite the right word; but I’ve always found my ears to be most sensitive to air movements, even when the zephyrs are too weak to make a real sound. Now in winter there were no leaves on the trees to respond to wandering breezes; and any pools or ponds that I might have used to get an estimate of wind speed and direction were either drained or frozen. I felt a slight chill on my left ear as I stood there, but it wasn’t strong enough to be significant. The weather boys had got it right for a change: a nice calm night.

  I got back into the Datsun and drove around to the parking lot behind the apartment building to the right. I flashed the lights twice before cutting them entirely. Locking the little car, I walked up to a metal service door in the rear of the building, as instructed. It was opened by a husky dark-haired young man in white coveralls, not clean. Whether he actually had a janitorial job there, or was just depending on the fact that nobody pays any attention to a workman around a building like that, I didn’t know.

  “Go on up the stairs,” he said. “It’s a climb, but you’ll have plenty of time to catch your breath. I’ll be along as soon as I’ve checked to see if you brought any company with you.”

  I climbed the seven flights of concrete stairs, making some use of the tubular iron railings—as I’d been told, it was a climb, but at least the steps were engineered for ordinary human beings, not like some steps I’d climbed recently, which had been designed for priests and gods. A heavy fire door let me into a carpeted hallway on the eighth floor; the key I’d been given let me into the apartment with the proper number. I proceeded through the place without turning on the lights.

  In the dining room I found what I was looking for. The dining table, a fairly husky piece of modern furniture, had been pulled over to the window. On it lay the long gun case, a respectable piece of luggage constructed like a good attache case but several times as long. There were also two black binocular cases, some small sandbags, and a couple of little items that turned out to be penlights. Well, all that could wait. As the man had said, there was plenty of time, two hours and twenty minutes to be precise—assuming that Bultman actually hit at the hour he’d specified of the night he’d specified and didn’t get cute and tricky.

  I moved to the window. It was a country view, night version, with the landscaping, tennis courts, empty swimming pool, and lighted drives of the condominium complex spread out below me. Beyond them, across the main road, was the businesslike chain-link fence topped with barbed wire guarding the Jimenez property, more rustic and less manicured. A goodly distance behind the fence—four hundred yards is a lot of yards—was the rather elaborate dwelling, with the grounds around it brightly floodlit.

  The house had been built in an era when stately country homes, or replicas thereof, were the in thing; it was a two-story manor house in the British tradition. Constructed of stone, it was blocky and impressive. The adjacent swimming pool with its green corrugated plastic windbreak did not really go with the original architect’s design; it had obviously been added later, as had the garage wing with its three blank doors that faced the paved parking area at the end of the drive curving in from the elaborate front gate of the estate, which was complete with a little gatehouse. There was a light inside this, and a man.

  I was aware that my colleague of the evening—observer, Jackson had called him—had entered the apartment and come to stand behind me.

  “Four-hour shifts at night,” he said. “Two on at a time. Everybody takes turns except the daughter and Jimenez the Elder. That’s Arturo Valdez, the cook, holding down the gatehouse now. Manuel Cordoba is working the perimeter with one of his dogs; the other cut a foot and is kenneled tonight.” He glanced at the glowing display of his digital watch. “We should see Cordoba over by that big pine tree inside the fence, in just a minute… There he comes.”

  I reached for one of the binocular cases, got out the big night glasses, and focused them on the distant figure that had just appeared. The dog, walking at heel, was a black Doberman with brown edges, quite a handsome fellow. The man was tall for the country from which he had come, and quite broad; he had a big black piratical moustache. It was a face I’d seen once before in a stolen car from which a dead girl had just been thrown. Oso the Bear. We’d come the long way around, at least I had, but here we both were, although he didn’t know it. Strangely, I found no hatred now. Well, there seldom is any, when the time comes. It’s generally enough just to know that they’ll be dead shortly.

  The glasses were heavy 7 x 50s, a Japanese brand with which I was not familiar, but sharp and clear. I watched man and dog disappear again into a thicket of leafless trees.

  I said, “Hell, the way the place is lighted, we didn’t really need to go for that crazy night-fighting gadget. A good bright four-power scope with fairly heavy crosshairs would have done the job.”

  He thought I was criticizing him and said quickly, “I had to consider the possibility that Bultman would wipe out the lights somehow, or that we might get a night with poor visibility.”

  I said, “I wasn’t complaining, just commenting. You’re the one who set it up?”

  “Yes, I’ve done more long-distance sniping than Jackson. I’m Marty.”

  We shook hands. “I’m Eric,” I said.

  He grinned. “Well, if you’re not, I’m in big trouble.”

  But I could sense a certain amount of resentment. There always is some, when they have to do all the dirty work and are then asked to roll out the red carpet for the big-shot prima donna marksman who’ll march in at the last moment and take all the credit for making a perfectly easy shot they could have managed perfectly well by themselves. There was also some curiosity. He wasn’t quite sure whom I was here to shoot, although he was guessing hard.

  I said, “It’s a good setup. Let me check out the placement of those sandbags—I think I have bigger hands and longer arms than you do—and then I guess I’ll lie down and rest a bit. Wake me if you see anything unusual; if not, kick me in the ass at one-thirty.”

  I actually did go to sleep; which I think impressed young Marty more than my gaudy reputation as a hotshot senior operative. Aroused at last, I yawned and stretched and pulled myself together and went into the bathroom and took care of that, no bladder distractions tonight. I wondered idly how many important shots, and great opportunities, had been missed in the course of world history because somebody had to go at the wrong time. It was better than wondering just what the wind was doing out there now, and whether or not the damn gun was going to fire at all. Some haven’t.

  Then it was only to wait by the open window, with the big rifle resting on the sandbags, muzzle well inside the room to contain the blast a bit. Cartridge in chamber. Safety off and to hell with the conventional safety rules. The piece wasn’t going to fire itself lying there, and nervous thumbs have been known not to get that lever all the way to “off” when shooting time came around. Night sight on, and what a Mickey-Mouse gadget that was: our own long-range adaptation of a military gizmo that wasn’t too pretty a design to start with. I’d been assured that the battery was good for hours, even days; and that as a matter of fact the thing should be switched on well ahead of use to make sure the circuits had time to stabilize—well, if you don’t like my scientific terminology, make up your own. Anyway, everything was ready that could be readied; and I was pleased to discover that Marty was smart enough to know this was no time for idle chatter. He busied himself with his binoculars and kept his mouth shut as we waited.

  Suddenly he poked my arm. “That man in the gatehouse. I think he’s dead.”

  I picked up my own glasses and studied the small, distant, illuminated house. The head of the man
inside had fallen over at an odd angle. A very neat and sneaky piece of work. I glanced at my watch. Two o’clock.

  I asked, “What about the dog patrol?”

  Marty glanced at his own watch. “We’ll know in… three minutes. He should appear by that… There he is, a little ahead of… Christ!”

  I had just spotted the man with the dog far off along the perimeter to the right, when the dog fell down. The man started instinctively to bend over the animal, but realized his mistake and whirled, unslinging the machine pistol he carried; but he never got it into firing position. He seemed to flinch and freeze; then he fell down beside the dog. Scratch Oso the Bear. I felt no great triumph. He was merely dead, as he should be; and I always hate to see a dog killed, even a savage guard dog that’s hardly more than an animated weapon. But the dog has no choice. He can’t help it if his fierce loyalty is employed in the service of a bunch of bastards. He can’t resign his job and go find some nice people to work for.

  “What the hell are they using?” I asked.

  “Arrows,” Marty said, squinting through his binoculars. “For God’s sake, real Robin Hood arrows with feathers on!”

  “Probably with poison pods attached, to work so fast,” I said. “They made succinylcholine pods legal for bow-and-arrow deer hunting once, somewhere. Don’t ask me where, and don’t ask me to spell it for you; but you’ll be happy to know that the meat remains perfectly edible… Ah, here comes the main attack. Can’t say the Kraut doesn’t have discipline!”

  With the guards out of the way, black-clad shadows were filtering in from the fences they must have cut or climbed, and converging on the big house. The doors delayed them only briefly; then they were disappearing inside. I heard a faint distant tinkling sound: the alarm bells. Then there was a mild rattle of sound like popcorn popping in a skillet several rooms away as the guns went into action. I remembered a tough little brown man, a good soldier, with whom I’d once done a difficult job in the Costa Verde jungle. Well, if they will go the terrorist route because it looks easy, the only answer is to show them how hard it really is.

  Hector Jimenez was getting his hard answer now. I felt a little cheap, and a little relieved, because I wasn’t delivering it personally.

  Meanwhile the estate gates had opened. Two vehicles entered and moved into the parking area before the garage doors. One was a big Lincoln, the luxurious semilimousine size that’s slightly out of fashion now; the other was a long Ford van. In addition to the driver in front, the Lincoln had a passenger in the rear. I tried to make out his face with the binoculars—I thought it was a man—but you can’t see much through that damn tinted glass.

  But it was getting toward time for me to make my contribution to the evening’s performance. I laid the glasses aside and hunched over the big .300 Magnum in the bench-rest shooting position, right hand closed around the pistol grip of the stock to steady the weapon, left hand brought around under the butt in such a way that I could make fine adjustments in elevation simply by clenching or relaxing my fist. The fore-end of the rifle was, of course, solidly supported by the sandbags.

  I squinted through the trick electronic scope and saw the idiotic little red dot glowing in the center of a field that looked a bit like a camera ground-glass except that, thank God, the image was at least right side up. The colors were all screwed up. I wondered if perhaps I shouldn’t focus the intense aiming dot a little more sharply. Then I told myself to stop that, leave it alone, cut it out! No final fiddling, dammit! And don’t hold low, you stupid jerk! Stop thinking…

  “Oh, Jesus!”

  I glanced quickly at Marty. He was staring through his binoculars, fascinated and aghast. Moving carefully so as not to disturb the gun too much, I reached for my night-glasses left-handed and put them to my eyes, and winced. A small pretty figure, elflike and unreal in a single long loose white garment, was stumbling through the gap in the swimming-pool windbreak: a slim young girl with long black hair whose bare arms and feet looked unbearably cold, and whose thin fluttering nightgown was darkly stained. She stopped and turned, waiting for someone, and he came: a young man bare to the waist and barefoot, wearing nothing but a hastily-pulled-on pair of trousers. Well, there they were, I told myself grimly. Leona the Lioness, and Lobo the Wolf.

  He was carrying a submachine gun of some kind. As he turned to fire it behind him, he was hit hard and dropped the weapon. He went to his knees. The wounded girl staggered back to him and tried to lift him and lead him away, but her own strength was fading and his weight pulled her down. She managed only to pull him aside a little before she collapsed against the plastic windbreak, sliding down to a graceless sitting position—the girl who’d passed the sentence of death on Elly Brand. Okay, she had it coming, I told myself firmly. So she was a pretty young girl, so what? She still had it coming. I watched her find enough strength to lift her brother’s head into her lap.

  The rear door of the limousine opened. Enrique Echeverria got out. There was no mistaking the red beard, even at night at that distance. As befitted his status as observer, he was in ordinary street clothes covered by a sharp-looking gray overcoat. But he was clearly unable to pass up the opportunity to make his own little contribution to the night’s proceedings. He stopped to take out an automatic pistol and haul back the slide to chamber a round; then he walked over to where Dolores Jimenez sat in her bloody nightgown, weakly stroking the unconscious face of her brother Emilio.

  I laid the binoculars aside and bent over the big rifle once more. In the weird field of the image-intensifying gadget, as if on a TV screen that badly needed its colors adjusted, I saw Echeverria standing over brother and sister. The girl looked up at him dully, perhaps hoping for help. Echeverria took careful aim and put a bullet into Emilio’s head. He turned to Dolores. I had a strong urge to shoot, to hell with vengeance; but there were bushes along the windbreak and I could not be certain that a branch was not in the way. Anyway, the damn girl had made her choice, and I hadn’t come all this way to make a sentimental gesture on behalf of someone who wouldn’t survive the night anyway. Bultman would take care of her if Echeverria didn’t. No witnesses.

  I waited and saw the man’s gun-hand jump with the recoil. Echeverria backed away and stood looking down at his handiwork with satisfaction. Bultman was inside dealing with the old wolf, but he, Enrique Rojo, had made sure of the cubs out here, with pleasure. The floodlight on the nearby roof shone brightly on the back of the natty overcoat, no branches intervened now, and the silly little red aiming dot looked very good, very steady, where I placed it carefully…

  The Magnum fired. It made a fearful roar. It slammed back against my shoulder and reared up off its sandbags like an old-time artillery piece lifting its wheels off the ground in recoil. Then it fell back, leaving a ringing silence.

  “Call it!” I said.

  “Got him!” Marty said. “Dead center. I think you got the spine, the way he fell. Good shot, sir!”

  It was the first time he’d called me sir, and he had no business doing it. There’s only one sir in our outfit.

  I said, “Start putting this stuff away while I watch what’s happening.”

  “Yes, sir. Greg should be along any minute to give us a hand cleaning up.”

  I was watching through the binoculars. It had worked out better than we’d hoped, planning it. We’d expected that Bultman would have to coax the man out of the car with some excuse and set him up for me. Of course Bultman could not actually dispose of Echeverria, the representative of his client, himself. That would have been unethical—and if you feel like laughing, I suggest you do it where Bultman can’t hear you. He’s a very ethical guy according to his lights.

  But now he could with a clear conscience remind President Armando Rael that he, Bultman, had protested vigorously against having a babysitter inflicted upon him; and if the guy wouldn’t stay in the car as he’d been told but wandered around in the middle of the firefight to exercise his silly little pistol, and stopped a stray slug, it cou
ld hardly be called his, Bultman’s, fault or sufficient reason for withholding the balance of his fee.

  The withdrawal was a very quick and neat operation. They came running from the house and filed into the long van rapidly. I could see only one casualty that had to be helped. Bultman came last, in black like the rest, limping a little on his artificial foot and carrying a machine pistol that looked like an Uzi. He paused briefly to glance at the two dead young people, and bent for a moment over Echeverria’s body where it lay in a spreading pool of blood. He straightened up, looking in my direction, nodding. Bull’s-eye.

  You had to hand it to the guy. For all he knew I was watching him through the night-sight of the Magnum rifle; and as he was well aware, there were people in my government who wouldn’t mind a bit hearing that he was dead. But he was a pro, and I was a pro, and he stood there for a moment allowing himself to be a perfect target; then he turned deliberately and got into the Lincoln. The big car rolled away in the wake of the van.

  There was no sign that the single shot had aroused anybody in our building—one shot at that time of night generally just wakes them up confused wondering if they actually heard anything. But I heard a long, wild howl in the distance. The remaining Doberman, that had survived in its kennel because of a hurt foot, was mourning its dead.

  34

  Mac thought he was entitled to an explanation. It was morning, and I was sitting on one of the big beds in my big double room in the Allmand Hotel, listening to the familiar voice in the telephone.