The two men stand near Sunny in the sparse clearing. In the glow of a flashlight, I can see the three figures gathered near a single bent shrub. Sunny is awkwardly pulling a climbing harness over her legs. Even in the dark I can see that her limbs are visibly shaking. But despite the sobbing and quivering, she puts on the harness with jerky, mechanical motions. Burgermeister’s huge form is obvious. He’s looping a rope around the shrub, setting up a rappel. A red ember burns in front of his face, giving his features an evil orange glow. In one hand he holds the flashlight. David Fast stands nearby. There’s the shape of a gun in his hand.
I crouch behind some brush, scanning the clearing and finally spotting Burgermeister’s twin-barreled shotgun propped against the shrub. It’s within his easy reach, leaning on the same plant he’s just finished tying the rope to. Staring at it, I think, That’s what he used to shoot my dog. I let the memory of last night roll over me like a cold wave. The anger washes away my fear.
Sunny, in a harness now, lies collapsed on the grass. She’s speaking to the earth, the sounds pleading but at the same time flat and weak. “Please. Don’t make me go down there. Please. Don’t destroy it. Please. I swear I won’t tell anyone . . .” It sounds almost like a chant, a useless mantra, that she’s been mumbling for hours.
The drone of her pleas makes it clear that her mind has all but fled from here. In the last forty-eight hours she’s been beaten, seen her lover brutally murdered, been told her remaining friends had been shot, and probably been raped. Animals like Burgermeister would need to play with and torture their prey.
“You’re right about one thing, honey,” the big man’s deep voice growls from behind his cigar. “You won’t tell anyone about it.”
“Let’s just get this over with, Alf,” Fast says tiredly.
Burgermeister reaches down and grabs Sunny by her neck. He lifts her to her feet. “Get on down there. This had better not be some wild-goose chase.” He pushes the rope through the belay device on her harness and shoves her toward the cliff.
Sweat is running into my eyes, stinging and burning. I wipe it away with my sleeve, then take three deep breaths. Time to move.
I come out of the trees and walk quietly toward them. The brilliance of each star in the sky above seems to intensify; the air seems full of sound and scent. I can feel every stone, blade of grass, and twig beneath my boots. The world condenses to just this place.
At the first sign they’re aware of my presence, when Burgermeister’s cigar jerks in my direction, I squeeze the trigger of the small Beretta. I hear the hammer fall on the bullet, the explosion of gases, and the .22 caliber projectile spinning out of the short barrel to slice through the night above the men’s heads. A thunder strike breaks open the cloudless black sky like a sign from God.
“Federal agents!” I shout. “You’re surrounded! Put down your guns!”
The two men leap as if they’ve been electrocuted. Sunny’s small form remains heartbreakingly still.
Fast, with the pistol still in his hand, hesitates.
“Drop it! Now!” I scream at him. I fire a second shot just over his head. The pistol bounces on the soft earth at his feet.
“Who the fuck are you?” Burgermeister asks in his dead man’s voice. There’s not a trace of fear in it.
I can hear Kim and Roberto thrashing through the leaves as they run up the hill.
“Shut up. Move away from her.”
“Sure thing, partner.” And he shoves Sunny over the edge of the cliff.
She screams as she falls, her white arms windmilling in the air before she disappears from sight. A second later the shrub gives a violent jerk as the rope around it goes taut. Sunny’s belay device had automatically stopped her fall.
“Watch the rope!” I shout as Kim and Roberto burst out of the trees. Then, without thinking, I aim the Beretta at Burgermeister’s left thigh and pull the trigger. In my sensory-enhanced state, I think I hear the bullet smack flesh before the explosion echoes through the night. He goes down without a sound. I’m disappointed the tiny bullet didn’t have the force to blow him over the edge, too.
“Where’s Sunny?” Kim’s shouting from behind me.
“She went over the cliff—but she’s tied in. Check on her.” My gun is pointed at Fast’s chest now, my index finger tight on the trigger.
Kim runs to the edge. Roberto stalks up to where Burgermeister’s massive form is curled on the ground. He’s acting like he’s dead. But I don’t believe it—a single .22 caliber bullet wouldn’t kill a man that size, even if I’d hit him in the chest. And my aim isn’t that bad. His cigar smolders in the grass an inch from his lips.
“Remember me?” I hear Roberto ask him.
“Sunny!” Kim’s yelling.
“Get out of my line of fire!” I yell at my brother.
Roberto’s boot blasts into Burgermiester’s face with lightning speed. Sparks and burning ash explode from the cigar. If it hadn’t been for that and the big man’s head snapping back, I wouldn’t have even seen my brother’s leg move.
“Cut it out, Roberto!” I shout. Then at Kim, “Do you see her?”
My brother has moved on until he’s standing before Fast. I start to yell again, “Get out of my line—” but my command isn’t finished before Roberto punches Fast in the face. Fast sags backwards into the grass, sitting down hard and holding his nose.
“There’s a gun by his feet—kick it off the cliff,” I tell my brother, hoping for once he’ll listen. He doesn’t. He bends and picks up the gun.
“Kim?” A small voice calls from the darkness beyond the cliff’s edge.
“Sunny! It’s me! How far down are you?”
“Oh, Kim!” comes the sobbing reply. “I can’t tell. I don’t know.”
“Ask her if she can climb back up,” I order.
Headlights flash on near the trailers and the burnt-out lodge halfway up Wild Fire Peak. Two different pairs. I can hear the roar of racing engines as they begin to bang and weave their way down the mountain. Toward the meadow. Fast’s and Burgermeister’s men must have been alerted by the gunfire. Shit.
“We’ve got to get the fuck out of here, bro,” Roberto tells me.
Almost at my feet and still curled in a massive ball, Burgermeister grunts a painful curse. Finally his voice has some feeling in it. He’s holding his thigh with both hands. “That’s how my dog felt,” I tell him. “You shot him in the leg, too.”
I walk to the shrub with the rope tied to it. I feel the knot—it’s tied securely. And all three of us still have our harnesses on. I take Burgermeister’s shotgun by the barrel and sling it out over the edge.
“We’ll rap it. You go down first and get Sunny,” I say to Roberto. “I’ll hold them while you guys get to the ground. If the rope doesn’t reach, we’ll find a ledge or something and traverse from there.” I have an image in my head of the three of us—four with Sunny—gliding silently down to the meadow and then disappearing into the forest. There’s no other way. With more of Fast’s men coming, there’s no time to haul Sunny back up and run from here.
“Fuck holding them,” Roberto advises. “Just shoot ’em.”
I’m tempted. My brother adds, sliding back and forth the chamber on Fast’s gun with a vicious snap, “If you don’t, I will.”
Kim shouts at us. “No! Remember, Anton! This is mine! I want to see that bastard taken down in court!”
“Fuck that, too.” Roberto lifts the pistol so that it’s pointed at Fast’s forehead. Fast is kneeling just ten feet away, his hands still gripping his own face. “I’m afraid you don’t get your day in court, buddy.”
With my free hand I grab the gun, pulling it toward me instead of Fast. “No, ’Berto. She’s right. This is hers. We do it her way.” I don’t add that if he shoots them he’ll spend years, if not the rest of his life, in prison. They’ll nail him for everything they can, even if it’s only violating his probation. I don’t say it because it won’t do any good—Roberto has no concern for co
nsequences.
There’s a slight tug as Roberto thinks about pulling the gun away from me.
“I want to see him in court!” Kim shouts again. “I want to ruin him. In public!”
“Twelve years ago,” I say softly, talking fast, “he got her so drunk that she passed out. Maybe drugged her, too. Then he and his buddies stripped off her clothes. They touched her, they took pictures. And later that night she lost her eye while retching in a sink. This is her deal, ’Berto. Her call.”
Roberto lets go of the gun.
“You’re wrong, you know,” he tells Kim. “A rich shit like him can afford a different type of law. But like my little bro said, I guess it’s your call.”
I throw Fast’s pistol over the cliff, too. I don’t want it anywhere near us, where it might tempt my brother into changing his mind.
Roberto manages to twist the rope, taut with Sunny’s weight, through his belay device. “How far down?” he asks me. When I tell him I don’t know, he grins at me. We’re both thinking the same thing—we’re breaking one of Dad’s cardinal rules. “Soon as our weight’s off, you come down,” he tells Kim. Then he disappears over the edge.
While I keep my gun pointed at Fast, and Burgermeister remains curled in a massive ball, Kim keeps a hand on the rope, waiting for it to go slack. I explain to her how to push it through her belay device. And how to brake the rope with one hand. It seems like minutes go by as the headlights bounce down the dirt road to the valley’s floor and then across the meadow.
Finally Kim says, “It’s slack!”
“Push it through,” I tell her. “Remember to brake.” She jumps up and shoves the rope through the piece of metal hanging from the front of her harness. Then she backs to the cliff’s edge. I hope Roberto thinks to give her a fireman’s belay from below. If she starts an out-of-control slide, by pulling the free end of the rope tight he can lock it in her belay device.
“Go!” I say. With a final look at me, she disappears over the edge.
I realize that there’s no way I can rappel fast enough to hit a ledge or the bottom before one of my captives can either cut or somehow destroy the rope. Looking at Fast and Burgermeister on the grass before me, I give serious thought to shooting them both. But I can’t. Not just because of Kim’s command, but also because I don’t have my brother’s wild streak. I can’t just shoot them in cold blood.
Below the hill the trucks slow to a stop at the edge of the forest. In a few seconds Fast’s friends will be running up the hill. I hear doors slamming shut.
Burgermeister apparently is thinking the same thing I am. “You’re all dead. You know that, don’t you, Scarface?” I’m sure he’s sneering at me in the dark.
“Bite me.” I touch the rope with my boot and feel some slack. Roberto, Sunny, and Kim are either on the ground or on a ledge. It isn’t easy to do while holding the gun on both men, but I manage to get the rope through my own belay device.
“What makes you think I won’t just shoot you now?” I ask.
“’Cause you’re a pussy. Just like her.”
I fire a shot into the grass in front of him. Then I point the gun at Fast and say, “Start running. And drag that piece of shit with you.” I want them as far away from the ropes as possible to give me at least a fighting chance of making it down. I can hear men crashing through the trees. Fast doesn’t move, so I fire another shot. He bends and grabs his wounded partner’s shirt to start pulling. The bigger man shoves him away and climbs unsteadily to his feet. I guess I’d just winged him earlier.
“You’re dead, fucker,” Burgermeister says to me. He’s evidently collected himself—his voice is once again devoid of any emotion.
The two of them take a few steps back. Burgermeister is limping, holding his thigh with both hands.
“Move!” I shout. I fire my last bullets into the ground at their feet.
Even as I drop over the edge, I can see men with flashlights coming out of the trees. The last thing I see before the dark red cliff obscures my vision is Burgermeister’s smiling face in the beam of a flashlight. The light flashes on a blade in his hand.
THIRTY-SEVEN
I’M SLIDING DOWN the rope so fast that the skin of my left palm begins to slough off as the rope burns through it. At first there’s no pain, only the sensation of flesh peeling off like hot wax. Then an agonizing jolt of pain rips up my arm. I bite back a scream as I continue to drop down the cliff’s face but don’t let go of the rope. My abseil into the darkness is nothing more than a barely controlled fall.
Three pickups are visible far below me and to one side, parked where the flat meadow’s grass ends and the forested hillside begins. A few doors have been left open. The cabs appear empty. Their headlights blaze into the woods. For a moment I think maybe we can steal one. But then I notice in some of the refracted light that reaches the cliff that it’s far bigger than I remembered. There’s no way a regular-length climbing rope will reach the ground. I pray either Roberto or the men above have tied a knot onto the end of the line, because I’m descending so fast that I’ll just slide right off the end of the rope.
Suddenly it’s no longer an issue. I really am falling. The rope is no longer searing through the belay device—it’s clenched and locked in the raw muscle of my palm. Burgermeister has cut the rope.
I’m toppling backwards in the night, starting to turn in a slow back flip, and hoping I’ll at least turn all the way around before I deck out—I don’t want to hit headfirst. But then maybe it’s better to die clean than risking fifty years in a wheelchair. Headfirst doesn’t seem so bad after all. Some barely conscious instinct has my free right hand whipping the slack rope around my thigh as the wind roars in my ears with the approach of terminal velocity.
This is how I’ve always known I will die. My mother, in moments of anger when she raged at my father for the needs and skills he taught Roberto and me, had predicted it long ago. She told him this addiction would kill us all, that Death waited for us in the great voids beneath rock walls. And for so many years I’ve teased that ugly cloaked skeleton, letting him snatch at my ankles and laughing as I rudely kick at his face.
WHAM!
I’m jerked to a stop, then thrown into the cliff. My body hits it with such force that the air is torn from my lungs. I want to howl in pain but air won’t come back to me. The pain almost takes away my consciousness, too. A horrendous throbbing is shooting up my arm from my burnt left hand, my spine and ribs feel as if they’ve shattered on the wall, my lungs won’t work, and where the rope’s wrapped around my thigh it feels as if my leg’s being crushed by some impossible weight. And that weight starts increasing with tiny jerks.
It takes me a minute to draw a haggard breath and figure out what’s going on. There’s no doubt I’m still alive—death could not possibly hurt so much. I’m hanging upside down with the cut rope wrapped around my thigh and locked in my belay device. Something has caught the other end. A new pain, a kick to the stomach, makes me realize that the belay device, overheated from the wild rappel, is burning through my jacket and shirt and is pressing against the bare flesh of my stomach. The tiny tugs keep constricting around my leg—suddenly I’m aware that I’m being slowly dragged into the sky.
I want to call out, to ask who’s doing the hauling, but there’s not enough air. It can’t be Fast and Burgermeister, as they’d been the ones who’d cut the top end of the rope. So it must be Roberto. He must have gotten to a ledge or something and tied in with the lower, free end. I’d like to help but even the smallest movement is far beyond me right now.
I moan uncontrollably with each new tug. Staring out over the dark valley, I see men running down the hill and out of the trees now, running toward the two trucks. Engines rev. I watch their headlights swing out, then in, coming closer to focus on the base of the cliff.
The sound that comes from my mouth is what I remember Roberto once describing, after I’d taken a mogul full in the chest in a youthful attempt to ski a double-black-diamond ru
n at Jackson Hole without turning, as a moose-call. The headlights below bounce like crazed puppies until they’re aimed somewhere beneath me. I hear men’s voices shouting. Then handheld deer-spotting lights are turned up toward me and the air around me becomes like the Fourth of July—there are the stars in the sky, stars in my head, and a whole new light show of other violent flares and explosions. They’re shooting at me. I recall that in my two previous gunfights I’d felt like Superman, able to dodge bullets. Now I just feel like some celestial black hole, pulling them toward me with a force stronger than gravity.
Hands grab at my clothing and drag me over a sharp edge that tears at my ribs. Kim’s voice is loud in my ear but still sounds very far away. Too distant to comprehend. Even though I’m finally on a relatively flat surface, the pain doesn’t ease. The grasping hands, the shouting voices, they pull me up and over what feels like a low staircase before I’m shoved into a dark hole and dumped into total blackness. The only light comes from the stars swirling in my head.
“You shot? Anton! You shot?” It’s my brother’s voice shouting at me now. His words echo off the darkness in such an odd way that I figure I’m in a cave. Cal’s cave. Cal’s Bad Cavern. I want to respond but nothing will come from my lips but that low moose-call. I don’t know what my response would be anyway.
A single blazing eye—the cyclops beam of a headlamp—begins cutting at me like a laser while hands roughly tear the rope from around my thigh. Then my clothes are being dragged off. I try to sit up but am shoved back down.
“I’m all right,” I finally manage to rasp. “I think.”
“No, che, you’re totally fucked up.” But my brother chuckles at my attempt to speak. “He knocked you down, but he didn’t knock you out!”
“Who?”
Point of Law Page 28