Hawker crawled through the dust and stink toward a rectangle of light at the far edge of the attic. It was a wooden vent. Hawker kicked the vent away and stuck his head out to see the blackness of the Hudson River, three stories below. A pair of roosting pigeons fluttered wildly into the city darkness as he pushed himself through, onto the roof.
The roof of the building stunk of asphalt and bird guano, and it was still hot from the summer sun.
Hawker got to his feet and was just about to check on the progress of the men at the second fire escape when a sudden explosion shook the whole building, throwing chunks of the roof high into the city sky.
Hawker dropped to his belly and covered his head as debris tumbled down.
For a wild moment, he thought he had accidentally hit the electronic detonator in his knapsack and set off the Astrolite.
But then he remembered the booby-trap he had planted at the first window.
Hawker got shakily to his feet, making a mental note to use less C-4 plastic explosive next time.
If he lived to see a next time.
Hawker walked to the new crater in the roof and stared down into the room where he had first entered the building. The entire wall was gone, and most of the floor, so he could see right through to the second story. There were still only three corpses in the alley. Whoever had set off the booby-trap had been scattered in pieces with the debris.
Moving quickly, Hawker crossed the roof to the other side of the building. Four Mafia goons had worked their way up the second fire escape in single file. Hawker could have wasted all of them, but he didn’t want to give away his position.
If the hunter moves too quickly from the blind, he will frighten the tiger.
And Hawker didn’t want to lose this tiger. Not now. He had a feeling they wouldn’t make it so easy for him next time.
He still had one major obstacle to overcome. He had to get back down to the ground floor.
If he waited for the four men on the fire escape to go inside, there was a chance he could work his way down the brick facade of the building to the iron ladder. But that was damn risky.
His second option was to try to jump from the Mafia headquarters to the next building, then hope to find a skylight entrance or another fire escape.
The third option was, at best, an emergency exit—to plunge the forty feet into the black Hudson River and hope that the water was deep enough and there were no submerged pilings to hit.
Hawker considered the water below. If the fall didn’t kill him, the pollution might.
Hawker opted to jump to the next building.
The dead-air space between the Mafia headquarters and the broken-down apartment behind it was about twelve feet. That wasn’t much in a broad jump pit, but it looked a hell of a lot farther at night. Three stories high. With nothing to break his fall but the asphalt below.
After pacing off the distance, Hawker got a running start—and hit a slick spot and skidded just as he pushed off with his left leg. For a long, sickening microsecond, Hawker knew that he wasn’t going to make it. He flapped wildly in midair like a dying bird. All he could think of was that, if the fall didn’t kill him, the Mafia thugs would take their own sweet time about finishing him off.
It was that thought which probably gave Hawker the will to stretch out the extra inch or so it took to lock his fingers on the lip of the next roof. His left hand slipped off at impact, but his right hand held firm, fingers digging, arm muscle straining, legs frozen perfectly still so as not to throw off his tenuous balance.
Slowly then, Hawker got his left hand back on the roof and held there for a moment, trying to regain his composure.
Below he heard footsteps and loud voices. If they saw him now, he was dead.
But that was a secondary worry.
Right now, he had to concentrate on pulling himself up onto the safety of the roof.
fifteen
Grand Cayman
Jacob Montgomery Hayes awoke, expecting sunlight to stream through the window with the sound of morning birds.
It was, after all, a bad dream.
Or was it?
As his eyes adjusted to the tropical darkness, his brain began to locate the injuries his body had suffered and began to register the intensity of the pain. It left him with the stark truth:
This was no dream.
If anything, it was hell.
Painfully, Hayes turned his head and looked at the glowing numerals of the desk clock. It was the one bit of hard reality they had allowed him. A clock. Something with which to measure the suffering.
It was 1:13 A.M.
Hayes tensed as he saw the time. They would be coming soon. Every four hours without fail, they came. They came with their lengths of surgical tubing and their rubber gloves, and their scalpels.
Always the questions were the same: What had he done with the folder on Fister Corporation? Who else knew? Who was helping him?
Hayes allowed his head to fall back on the table where he was strapped, hands and legs, nude. An examination table—the kind you see in doctors’ offices.
But these men were not doctors.
Quite the opposite.
They were killers. They were ghouls who enjoyed inflicting pain. Professionals who knew how to inflict pain without damaging the body.
But, so far, Hayes had bested them. So far he had refused to speak a word. Every time they came with their instruments of pain, he would draw on his Zen training—the ability to rise out of his own body and block out all earthly suffering; the power of zazen he had learned so many years before at the monastery on Crystal Mountain in the thin air of the Himalayas.
Again and again the words of his beloved Roshi returned to him:
“When your concentration becomes strong, instead of hobbling you, pain will spur you on if you use it bravely.…”
Now Hayes was using his pain as bravely as he could. He had no thoughts for his own life. He had lived his life fully, and, besides, it was the nature of Zen to understand that one’s own life means nothing.
But he had to hold out to give his friends Hawker and Hendricks time. Time to close in on the man who called himself Blake Fister. Time to learn his awful secret, and to destroy him.
Slowly the minutes slid by. Hayes could hear the crash of the Caribbean surf outside. He could smell the sweet scent of citrus and frangipani.
Twenty-four minutes after one by the clock on the desk.
Hayes wondered what Hawker was doing right now. Alive, certainly—for no one knew better how to stay alive than James Hawker.
Asleep, perhaps. Yes, James would certainly be asleep.
There was noise in the hallway, and the lights flashed on. Hayes’s eyes rebelled against the glare of the neon.
Three men came into the room. Two of the men were in their late thirties or early forties. They were the men who had kidnapped him.
The third man was a Napoleon-sized man, squat and thick, with jet-black hair greased straight back. Despite his age, his paunchy face and lively dark eyes retained the confidence of youth. He was dressed in a white smock, like a surgeon.
Hayes noted the relish with which he pulled on the rubber gloves and then, idly, toyed with the mole above his left eye before selecting an instrument from the tray beside the table.
“Have you yet decided to speak to us, Mr. Hayes?” the man asked with a thin smile.
Hayes did not answer. He settled back on the table, willing his body to relax.
“No?” the man said, as he threaded one piece of surgical tubing into another. “Well, now, we must convince you then. Your stubbornness is to be admired—but hasn’t it gone on long enough?”
Hayes closed his eyes as they used a pair of tongs to hold his penis and forced the tubing up him, probing at his bladder.
At first, their questions echoed loudly through the ripping pain. But then he willed his center of consciousness to drop low and deep within him, letting the words of his Roshi blot out all other feeling:
It was one thirty in the morning.
The torture would last until after two.
sixteen
London
From a sound sleep, Hendricks sat bolt upright in bed. His heart was pounding, and he didn’t know why.
He listened carefully, staring hard into the darkness. Outside, rain fell against the window in a steady drizzle. There was the distant hiss of traffic in the streets as late travelers hurried through the cavern of London Town.
Hendricks threw back the covers and switched on the table lamp. His pocket watch had been placed neatly on the vanity along with his billfold, a brush, and a lethal-looking Walther PPK.
Hendricks looked at the watch.
Forty minutes after six in the morning.
What in the hell had woken him?
Disturbed by the strange anxiety that now flooded him, Hendricks picked up the cold weight of the automatic and began a methodical search of his room.
He was barefoot and wore gray pajamas.
All the closets were empty, the door to the hallway locked and chained.
Hendricks ran a hand through his close-cropped hair and sat back on the bed. Something was wrong, but what?
His old military atlas was on the desk. Absently he picked it up and began to leaf through it.
Earlier that evening, he had used it to ascertain the location of Loughros Moor, Northern Ireland.
Now he found himself irresistibly drawn to the maps of the Indian subcontinent.
Tibrikot? Ring Mo? Crystal Mountain?
Why should villages in the Himalayas suddenly be of such intense interest?
Hendricks immediately thought of Jacob Hayes. Hayes had studied there—but how could that account for his unreasonable urge to review the atlas?
He placed the Walther back on the desk. He stared at the phone. For some reason, he felt he should try to contact Hayes. It was a strong, almost overpowering urge. But it would be nearly 2 A.M. in Grand Cayman.
Hayes would think he was crazy.
Feeling strange and silly, Hendricks reluctantly climbed back into bed and switched off the lamp.
He had nearly an hour before he had to get up.
And the ferry ship to Dublin rarely left on time anyway.
He decided he would call Hayes before he left for Ireland.
seventeen
New York
Hanging from the lip of the roof, Hawker did not move until he heard the footsteps pass beneath him.
Then slowly, so he would not lose his grip, he pulled his head above the tarpaper and locked his chin on the gravelly surface before bracing his elbows on the roof and hauling himself safely up.
He rolled several feet away from the precipice, then lay there for a time, breathing deeply.
He didn’t fear death from a bullet. But the idea of busting his back in some Greenwich Village shithole didn’t appeal to him.
Brushing the gravel off his pants, Hawker stood. The green numerals of his Seiko said it was 1:45 A.M.
Strangely, strong thoughts of Jacob Montgomery Hayes suddenly coursed through his mind. Strong thoughts with strong images: Hayes, dressed in white, sitting beneath a fir tree on a mountain snowpeak.
With the thoughts came a momentary feeling of dread.
If Hawker had been a superstitious man, he might have wondered if Hayes was trying somehow to communicate with him—that’s how vivid the sudden image was.
But Hawker—like Hendricks who, at that very moment, was sitting in a London hotel room studying a map of the Himalayas—wasn’t a superstitious man.
And, besides, he didn’t have time to think about it right now.
After making sure none of his weaponry had spilled out in his near-fall, Hawker moved on across the roof. He was looking for another fire escape so he could get back down to street level.
The building had a fire escape—but it ended abruptly at the second floor. Cursing beneath his breath, Hawker realized he was going to have to jump to yet another building.
The next building in line was in better shape. There were lights in the windows. People probably kept offices there—though it now appeared empty.
But, more important, its fire escape was in proper condition. Hawker could see it plainly in the dim light.
He backed up, took a deep breath, got a good run, and jumped.
This time, he made it without incident.
Quickly he climbed down the iron steps to the street. If anyone had heard the shooting in the Mafia headquarters, there was no sign of it. Hawker had the feeling that, if vigilante hangings were held in downtown New York, no one would make the effort to look—let alone try to stop them.
Hawker walked through the darkness of the alley and peered out onto the street.
All three floors of the Mafia headquarters were lighted now. He could see men crossing before the second-floor windows.
They had made it that high. Soon they’d gather their courage and head to the third floor—and that’s when he would hit them.
Hawker trotted down the street, wary of being spotted.
The front door of the headquarters was open. There were no guards to be seen.
Hawker ducked beneath the two front windows, then swung into the doorway, the Ingram at his hip, freshly loaded and ready.
It was a broad room with bare wooden floors and long tables. There were rows of liquor bottles on the counter, and the whole place stank of cigarette smoke and sweat.
Except for the occasional shuffle of footsteps upstairs, the building was deathly quiet. Hawker guessed they must have regrouped and were moving as a team now.
He wondered how many there were.
If they made it to the third floor, it didn’t matter.
Quietly he crossed the room to the stairwell. The corpse of the short, stocky man he had killed still lay on the floor where he had fallen. The man’s eyes were wide and glassy, and a fecal stink oozed from the pool of blood beneath him.
Hawker stepped over the dead man and looked up the stairs. At that moment, a voice from the second floor called out, “Hey—asshole! You listening?”
For a shaky moment, Hawker thought they had spotted him. But then he realized they were trying to get him to answer from the third floor—probably to pinpoint his exact location.
Hawker said nothing.
“Look,” the voice continued, “maybe we can work out some kind of deal or something. Hey—you hear me?”
Slowly Hawker began to work his way up the stairs, the little submachine gun, with its tubular silencer, vectoring ahead of him.
Three quarters of the way up the stairs, just when Hawker thought he had it made, just when he began to grow confident he could take them by surprise, there was a stumbling, grunting noise behind him. Hawker whirled around to see a man with a revolver sprawled belly-first on the floor at the base of the stairs.
He had seen Hawker apparently and was sneaking in for the kill when he somehow tripped—probably over the corpse.
The dead man would never know it, but he had saved Hawker’s life.
The man who had tripped brought the revolver quickly up to fire.
Too quickly.
The shot shattered plaster behind Hawker’s head. Hawker squeezed off two careful shots, and the man’s face disintegrated into a pulpy mess.
Hawker didn’t have much time to enjoy the irony of it.
Footsteps pounded the floor above him, and two men swung into view at the top of the stairs. Their handguns roared in the narrow confines of the stairwell.
Hawker dropped low on the steps, hugging the wall. He had a narrow view of their heads, but it was enough.
He held the submachine gun on automatic fire, and the two faces exploded open, then disappeared like clay targets at a shooting gallery.
He could hear more voices behind him now. He swore softly under his breath.
This is exactly what he had most desperately wanted to avoid. Getting caught in a crossfire.
He had one chance, and one chance only.
He had to drive the men on the second floor to the third floor, then turn immediately and fight his way back outside.
Hawker drew the Browning automatic from beneath his jacket with his left hand and peppered the front doorway with four quick shots as the first man tried to come through.
The man screamed and spun away, holding his stomach.
Hawker punched the near-empty clip from the Ingram and slid in the last fresh clip he had.
There were still nine rounds left in the Browning, and he had thirty-two in the submachine gun.
It would have to be enough.
Hawker took a deep breath and, with a weapon in each hand, he charged up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time.
There were at least seven men at the top of the stairs—probably more. The last thing they expected was for Hawker to attack. He could read the shock plainly in their faces.
He held the trigger of the Ingram down, clearing the path ahead, while squeezing off a steady stream of fire from the automatic pistol.
Two of the men jolted backward, clawing at their ruined faces. The others bolted up to the building’s next level to join their remaining comrades.
It was exactly what Hawker had hoped they would do.
The Browning was empty, but there was no time to reload now. Hawker jammed it back into his shoulder holster and drew out the Randall Attack-Survival knife.
If someone jumped him from behind, he wouldn’t have the opportunity to fight him off with his fists.
And there was no way they were going to take him alive.
eighteen
With both weapons ready, Hawker ran back down the stairs. At the door, he paused and peered outside. One of the Mafia goons swung around the corner, and Hawker used the Ingram to chop him down.
Hawker knelt in the doorway.
He wasn’t in the safest place to touch off the Astrolite, but he had no choice.
If he took the time to fight his way down the street—assuming there was opposition—the others would wise up and follow him out.
Deadly in New York Page 8