Atlanta Extreme

by Randy Wayne White

  Hawker answered back. “Pendleton! Warren! I don’t want you two! I want Curtis. Understand?”

  A long burst of weapons fire was their answer.

  “All I want is information! Do you hear me? Show yourselves and we can talk!”

  “Who in the hell are you?”

  Hawker pulled a second thermite grenade from his belt and absently checked his watch. 10:47 P.M. By now Jon Sanders and his family should have already left the gas station and be well on their way to Athens, their alibi intact. There was no way in the world that the people on the adjoining farms could have missed hearing the explosion of the first grenade, and later the authorities would tie the explosion directly to the deaths of at least two of the men.

  “You don’t need to know who I am,” Hawker called back. “All you have to do is answer my questions. Now come on out!”

  Another hail of slugs smacked through the brush overhead. Hawker pulled the pin on the second grenade and tossed it toward the building, turning his eyes away from the blinding flare.

  The old wood caught on fire immediately, wildly, in a popping, all-consuming blaze.

  “We’re going to burn to death in here!”

  “Then come on out! Toss your weapons out and follow them, hands on the tops of your heads.”

  “You’re going to kill us!” The voice was Pendleton’s, and he was crying as he yelled, “You got to promise not to murder us!”

  “All I want is information,” Hawker yelled back. “Understand? That’s all I want.”

  “You got to promise!”

  Hawker almost chuckled at the childish whine in the man’s voice. What was he going to say: Cross my heart and hope to die?

  “Get your asses out here, you two pukes!”

  The door of the warehouse swung open. One Uzi then another was tossed out, followed by Pendleton and Warren, hands on the tops of their heads.

  Everything was as bright as day now, brighter in a wild, flickering golden light. Electrical wires popped and burst as the flames consumed the wooden building. Hawker slid a new magazine into the Commando, drew his .45 ACP, and walked slowly toward the two men.

  Pendleton was standing nervously, shifting his weight like a child who had to pee. “You promised, you promised, you promised,” he kept saying nonsensically.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Warren, the smaller blond man, snapped at him. “He ain’t going to kill us.” He glared at Hawker. “Are you, man?”

  Hawker thumbed back the hammer of the .45. “What makes you so sure—man?”

  “’Cause we got money. Lots of money. We’ll give it to you. We’ll give it all to you.”

  “How much?”

  “Sixty, seventy grand. And it’s all yours. In cash.”

  “But it’s Curtis’s money. What’s he going to say?”

  “I don’t give a shit what he says as long as you don’t kill us.”

  “Why would you give the money to Curtis, anyway? Why wouldn’t you keep it for yourselves?”

  Warren’s eyebrows raised as if surprised. “We do keep some of it. But the rest is small potatoes compared to what we’re going to get, man. Hell, he’s going to take over Masagua. He’s going to rule it like a king. We’re going to be his top men. Anything we want, any money, any property, any women, anything we want is ours. Hell, you could be part of it. We could tell Curtis that you helped us. What you make as a cop? Twenty grand a year? Hell, down there, when he takes over, you can live like a fucking sultan. Screw a different girl every night—”

  “Shut up.”

  “You a cop, man?” whined Pendleton. “You a cop, sir? Please, we know our rights, sir. You got to take us in. You got to call us a lawyer. You got to read us our rights. Ain’t that right, Greg?”

  “You’ll get a fair trial, sport. But first I want to know a couple more things. How do you get the money to Curtis?”

  “We got a deal with a cargo company in Atlanta. They fly it direct to Belize City. Hell, they think we’re shipping out drugs or something. But the customs people don’t look for nothing going out of this country, just in. In Belize the customs people are on the take, anyway. Then Curtis’s lady picks up the shipment, or I hire a small plane, depending on the load, and fly the guns and money and all direct to the base.”

  “And when are they due to pick up the next shipment?”

  “It’s up to us, always up to us unless they really need something special. I’d planned a shipment in about another week or two, I guess.”

  “And how do you let Curtis know you’re coming? How do you let him know you don’t want Laurene Catacomez to pick up the stuff?”

  Warren hesitated just a little too long, and the vigilante slapped him with the barrel of the .45. He said, “I know a lot about the operation already, friend. Some of this shit I’m asking you are test questions. Others aren’t. If you lie to me once, just once, I’ll kill you and your friend.”

  “I’ll tell you, mister,” Pendleton cried, stepping forward. “I’ll tell you everything. Greg sends him a telegram, sends it to a pimp he’s got in Belize City. Says either, ‘Pick up produce Monday two P.M.’ or whatever the day is, or it says, ‘Arriving with produce,’ then whatever the day is.”

  “What’s the pimp’s name in Belize?”

  “His name’s Martin … Martinis. Thurston Martinis. At the Sea Beach Hotel. Martinis gets in touch with Curtis.”

  The vigilante thought for a moment. “You ever have a beard, Warren?”

  “Well, yeah, why—”

  “When’s the last time Curtis saw you?”

  “He ain’t seen either of us for almost two months,” Pendleton shot in.

  Hawker nodded. “That’s it, then. That’s all I need to know.”

  Pendleton sighed and started to lower his hands. “We can go, then? You’re letting us go?”

  The vigilante shook his head. “No. But I’m about to give you your fair trial.” From his belt Hawker took the UHF radio, switched it on, and hit the mike key. “Air mobile, air mobile, this is Almighty, do you copy?”

  There was a squawk of static, and the voice of ex-sergeant Doug Miles came back. “I’ve got you, Almighty. Things all tidied up there?”

  “Just about. You can come on in now and make it quick. Get the box of salt ready.”

  “Box of salt, that’s a roger. Will do.”

  Hawker switched off the radio, put it away. Now Warren was getting nervous. “What was that box-of-salt business? I don’t like that. What in hell are you planning to do?”

  “Greg Warren,” Hawker said in a formal voice, “are you responsible for the deaths of children in Macon and Marietta?”

  “What? Hey, no, you can’t ask me that. It ain’t legal—”

  “Shawn Pendleton, are you responsible for the murders of one child in Marietta and two children in Macon?”

  Pendleton dropped to his knees, begging, a huge, blubbering baby with the face of a weasel. “I didn’t want to do it. Please, please don’t kill us, sir. It was Greg’s idea.…”

  “You have both been as fairly tried as you deserve, and I now pronounce you guilty of murder in the first degree—”

  “You son of a bitch—”

  The .45 automatic jumped in Hawker’s hands, making the familiar loud metallic clang with each ejection of spent cartridge as he shot them both, Warren in the face and Pendleton in the top of the head.

  In the near distance the vigilante could hear the ceiling-fan thud of Miles approaching in the helicopter.

  Calmly Hawker holstered the .45 and took out his knife.…

  sixteen

  A Rain Forest in Guatemala

  On the grass landing strip the faces of two men stared blankly out of the cockpit of the little red Dakota airplane that James Hawker had hired in Belize City.

  Hawker had sent a telegram three days earlier to Thurston Martinis. The telegram read: “Will deliver produce Monday, two P.M. Big load.

  Now it was Monday. Now it was one thirty-five P.M. And the vigilan
te sat comfortably in the dank coolness of a towering guanacaste tree while wild monkeys squawked and chattered overhead.

  From his hiding place he could see the plane, could see the faces of the two men inside the plane, could see the landing strip and the mud road that led toward Curtis’s camp.

  He had been sitting in this spot for more than an hour, waiting. He had been sitting since he and Miles had finished the digging and planting and preparing it had taken to get ready for Curtis and his army.

  The vigilante wore camouflage fatigues and greasepaint on his face so that no one could see him, not even Doug Miles, who, similarly dressed, was hidden on the other side of the landing strip.

  Resting across Hawker’s lap was the Colt Commando, barrel and folding stock scratched from rough use. Strapped to his hip was the Smith & Wesson .45. On the ground beside him was a metal can full of loaded clips for the Commando. Nearby were two electronic detonators, each with four individually wired toggle switches.

  Miles also had a submachine gun … and detonators.

  At 1:48 P.M. Hawker heard the first sign of their approach. The monkeys in the high trees began to scream their warnings, spooking outward, away from the mud trail.

  Then Hawker could hear the clank-rattle-snort of horses pulling wagons in jungle heat and, later, the muted sound of a man’s voice.

  It was Wellington Curtis.

  The vigilante fought the urge to stand so that he could get a better look. Any movement now might give his position away, might ruin everything.

  Then Curtis came riding into the clearing, riding in on the ragged gray horse. He wore khaki pants, combat boots, aviator sunglasses, and a jaunty red beret on his shaved head. In the saddle scabbard appeared to be some kind of pump-action shotgun, probably a Winchester Model 12. Slung over his shoulder was an Ml6, and strapped bandolero fashion across his hairy chest were belts of ammunition. The squat, heavyset man held up his hand like a cavalry soldier, and his troops on foot and horseback halted behind him, about forty yards from the plane. Laurene Catacomez, her pretty black hair hanging down over her safari shirt, reined up beside him.

  Curtis looked at the woman, said something, then he cupped his hands and yelled toward the plane, “Captain Warren, Pendleton! Wake up, you lazy bastards! You can sleep after we’ve had a drink together!”

  Behind him his band of mercenaries chuckled.

  Curtis waited and, when they did not stir, yelled again, “Warren, Pendleton, wake your asses up!”

  Slowly, ever so slowly, the smile faded from the man’s face. “Captain Warren? Captain Warren, I’m talking to you!”

  Hawker could hear the woman’s voice. “They’re probably very tired, Colonel.”

  “Probably drunk, more like it.”

  Curtis kicked his horse into a brief gallop, reined up beside the plane, reached over from the backside of the wing, and yanked open the door.

  Hawker had been waiting for this moment, anticipating Curtis’s reaction. And he wasn’t disappointed.

  When the door was thrown open, the severed head of Greg Warren tumbled out, pulling along with it the stick on which it had been placed. It rolled across the wing, making a sound like a rotten melon, right into Curtis’s lap.

  The colonel slapped at it with a look of wild distaste on his face and finally grabbed it by the hair and flung it away. Warren’s head hit the fuselage with a thud, and the vibration caused Pendleton’s head to pivot in the other seat slowly, eerily, staring wide-eyed, mustache salt-encrusted, directly at Curtis.

  Curtis sat staring in disbelief, his chest spasming as if he had just had cold water thrown on him. “Jesus Christ … they’re … they’re … Somebody cut their heads off!”

  He whirled away on his horse, then stopped cold. His eyes frantically searched the line of trees. He yelled to his troops, “Separate! Dispersar, dispersar. Meet at B Camp, Camp B!”

  There were about seventy or eighty men. Hawker had seen them before, coming across the field that day when they massacred the boys of the village. This, though, was a different situation. The men saw the heads, and they knew what the heads meant. They meant that someone—probably government troops—waited in the trees, ready to attack. And these men were murderers, not soldiers, not fighters.

  All of the men tried to run at once, on foot or on horseback. There was panic, chaos, much shouting, many collisions, but they finally began to move in a wild herd away from the plane.

  The vigilante waited calmly, and when the troops were near enough, he picked up the detonator and flicked the first toggle switch.

  There was a deafening explosion that brought grass and human debris raining down through the forest.

  Overhead, the monkeys shrieked.

  The men who survived sprinted away in the opposite direction. On the other side of the clearing Doug Miles used his detonator, and there was another huge explosion.

  Now the survivors scattered in all directions. One by one Hawker touched the other toggle switches and watched as the grassy clearing became a boiling inferno of dust, of flames, of quaking earth.

  Then there was silence or what seemed to be silence: all along the far end of the landing strip, men lay scattered, a few of them moaning, as debris continued to clatter through the high canopy of forest.

  James Hawker stood still. He had insisted that none of the charges be planted close enough to damage the plane—he wasn’t about to spend another week with Miles fighting his way out of the jungle.

  So now only the plane remained, and it was in the plane that Wellington Curtis and the woman had taken sanctuary. In that moment the vigilante realized his own stupidity. He had expected them to run with the others. But, of course, they wouldn’t, because Laurene Catacomez was a pilot.

  The red Dakota barked and shuddered, and then the single propeller began to blur.

  Hawker was running. He raised the Colt Commando, knowing that he could destroy the engine or explode the gas tank with a long burst of fire—but then how would he and Miles get out?

  The plane jolted, began to move slowly, and pivoted on the strip toward Hawker and the long expanse of open runway.

  Hawker ran out into the middle of the field. From the corner of his eye he saw Miles lifting his rifle awkwardly in his one good arm. There was the muted clatter of fire, and dirt exploded near the landing gear of the moving plane. The plane jolted and swerved as one of the tires gave way, and now it was coming right at the vigilante, gaining speed despite the blown tire. Hawker could see Curtis and the woman clearly now, as if in eerie slow motion: Curtis’s face a pasty mixture of fear and rage; the woman looking preoccupied, intense, as if concentrating on nothing more than getting the wounded craft off the ground.

  The vigilante did not move as the plane bore down on him. Calmly he raised his submachine gun and brought the grooved sights to bear on Curtis’s face. The little colonel, the war historian who had lost his personal war in the jungle, raised his hands as if to fend off a blow, but he was too late. Hawker squeezed off four single shots as the plane swerved to a halt, engine still running, only a few yards away.

  Hawker jumped onto the wing root and pulled open the door. Curtis fell out onto the wing, then fell off onto the ground, bleeding badly from the neck and shoulder.

  The vigilante looked down on him as his eyes struggled to open. “I am dying?” he whispered, but in an oddly clear voice. It was not the voice Hawker associated with the insane guerrilla leader. It was a softer, more refined voice, touched with the dignity of the Old South.

  “Yes,” said Hawker. “You are dying.”

  Curtis nodded as if in agreement, then his eyes closed for the last time as he whispered, “What took you so long, Mr. Hawker? What took you … so … long?”

  Behind him, the woman stepped out onto the wing and jumped down to the ground. She looked at Curtis’s body for a moment, then looked up at Hawker. “I’m glad,” she said, looking hard into Hawker’s eyes. “I’ve wanted him dead for so long.”

  Ha
wker stepped down beside her. “Have you, Laurene? Have you really?”

  She fell against his chest, holding him while Hawker stood icily, not looking at her, not touching her. “How can you believe anything else, James? That night we spent together, didn’t you know then? God, how I hated that man! How I wanted to vomit when he touched me! I knew you were going to escape; I wanted you to escape, even though it broke my heart to know that we probably would not see each other again. But now …” Her dark eyes looked up into Hawker’s, and he noticed again how beautiful her Latin face was. “But now that’s all behind us, James. We’ve both been through hell, but we can start again. Start fresh, just the two of us.”

  “If that’s the way you felt, Laurene, why didn’t you leave Curtis earlier?”

  She pulled away, her small hands squeezing Hawker’s arms, trying to shake him to make him believe. “He had my brother, James! He would have killed my dear Mario—”

  “But Mario was killed.”

  “Yes, but I haven’t had a chance to escape since his death. Curtis knew I wanted to go, so he had me watched constantly after Mario’s death. I think he always knew how much I hated him—”

  “And how much you hated killing? I saw you, Laurene. I saw you and Curtis ride down into the village, hacking little boys to death. You thought I would be miles away, running. But I wasn’t. I was sitting on the hillside, watching. And you know something else, Laurene? You enjoyed it. You enjoyed every second of it.”

  Slowly the woman’s face changed. It changed from the mirror of breathless, frightened beauty into something bitter … tormented … vile; a snake’s head on a beautiful woman’s body. “You saw that, did you?” she said, her lips contorted. “Yes, then you know. Enjoy it? Of course I enjoyed it! You saw them as boys—I saw them as men. Pigs! The bastards! They play in the fields when they could be fighting for the return of our land. Were they not of Mayan blood like me? Yet their blood has grown so thin, so cowardly, that they are worthless. Worthless! Yes, I hacked them into little pieces, and I would do it again in a moment.” Slowly she began to back away from Hawker. “They bowed down to men like Curtis. I said that Curtis made me want to vomit? I told the truth. For a time I thought it could be different with you. For a time it did seem … different; you with your muscles and your tenderness and your strange, quiet ways. But you are an Americano, like all the rest—”