Capital Run

by David Robbins

  “Scouts of the Prairie,” Hickok replied.

  “When did it open?” the man asked, excited. “What is it about? I just love the plays!” he gushed. “There are so few anymore.”

  “It opens tonight,” Hickok told him. “At the… People’s Center!”

  “What is it about?” the policeman reiterated.

  A flash of inspiration motivated the gunman. “It’s all about how the Old West capitalists exploited the Indians and stole their land.”

  “Ahhhh, yes,” the policeman stated. “We studied it in school. What part do you play? Your costume is most excellent.”

  “I play a man named Hickok,” Hickok said. “He was what they called a gunfighter, or some such. It’s a real exciting play.”

  “I can’t wait to see it!” the policeman declared enthusiastically.

  “Tell you what,” Hickok said, leaning closer to the policeman. “I’m not supposed to do this, but I’ll leave a message with the head honcho. Why don’t you come and tell them Hickok sent you. I can promise you a time you won’t forget. Bring the missus too.”

  “Free seats?” The policeman laughed, elated at his good fortune. “I can’t thank you enough, comrade!”

  Hickok shrugged, feigning humility. “That’s what comrades are for, right?”

  “Thank you just the same.” The policeman continued on his rounds, whistling, content with the world.

  Hickok turned from the Lincoln Memorial, bearing south. Yes, sir.

  There’s no idiot like a happy idiot! He glanced behind him and detected a commotion at the eastern end of the Reflecting Pool.

  Uh-oh.

  Time to make tracks.

  Hickok hurried, cutting across a lawn until he reached an avenue. Was it the one he wanted? Independence Avenue? There was no way of telling.

  But on the other side of the avenue was a veritable wall of vegetation, dense underbrush, and abundant trees.

  The racket had reached the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

  Hickok looked both ways; nobody was nearby. Perfect! He ran across the avenue and into the bushes on the far side. The vegetation was thick, but negotiable. He pressed onward, keeping low, crawling under low limbs and protruding foliage or skirting them where possible. After 30 yards he stopped and listened.

  Nothing behind him.

  Maybe he had the breather he needed.

  Hickok crept to the base of a spreading maple and leaned against the trunk.

  So what was next?

  The gunman thought of Blade and Rikki, and speculated on how they were faring in St. Louis. He certainly hoped they were doing better than he was. How would Sherry take it if he never returned to the Home? And what about little Ringo…

  Hickok shook his head, annoyed at himself. Sure, he was in a tight scrape, but that was no reason to get all negative. He must look at the positive side of things.

  There had to be a way out of this mess!

  The air above abruptly became agitated by a stiff wind, and the tops of the trees started whipping from side to side as a funny “thupping” sound drew nearer and nearer.

  Hickok drew his left Colt, craning his neck for a clear view through the tree limbs.

  An enormous helicopter appeared, flying slowly to the southeast. It dwarfed the other helicopter Hickok had seen, the one responsible for flipping the SEAL on its side. This one was easily ten times as big. For a moment, the gunman believed the copter was searching for him, but it maintained a steady course to the southeast without deviating. A helicopter seeking him would be zigzagging all over the woods.

  Where was it heading?

  Hickok holstered his Python and rose. He hastened after the copter, striving to keep it in sight, flinching as thorns bit into his legs and arms.

  He felt the helicopter might be landing close by. Why else would it be so low? He reached a small glade and stared upward.

  The helicopter was descending toward the southeast.

  He was right!

  Hickok resumed running, ignoring the jabs and stabs from the sundry branches and twigs he passed. If he could reach that helicopter, and if he could force the pilot to fly him, he might be able to escape from Washington and head for St. Louis.

  If.

  If.

  If.

  Whoever invented that word should have been shot!

  Chapter Seventeen

  “The holding cell should be just ahead,” Lex said.

  Rikki nodded, a barely perceptible movement in the darkened hallway.

  “I can’t understand why we haven’t seen any of the Knights,” Lex whispered. “I doubt they gave up looking for us.”

  Rikki was bothered by the same consideration. Where were the Leather Knights? Even if Blade had been caught, it was doubtful the Knights would abandon their hunt for Lex and her “lover boy.”

  “I wish we were packing,” Lex commented.

  Rikki brandished the knife Blade had given him. “We’re not defenseless,” he reminded her.

  “Oh, great,” Lex said. “One lousy knife against all of their guns!”

  A lantern hanging from a metal hook illuminated one of the recessed doors into the holding cell.

  Rikki reached the door and gripped the doorknob. He listened, but all was quiet on the other side. Fully realizing he might be waltzing into a trap, he threw the door open. And there it was: the dirt floor, the balcony, the brick wall, and the chains.

  But nothing else.

  “We could try Terza’s quarters,” Lex recommended.

  “Lead the way,” Rikki said, stepping aside.

  Lex crossed the holding cell to the far door. After ascertaining the hallway was unoccupied, she led Rikki to the nearest stairs and up to the top floor of the library. “There might be guards,” she whispered.

  “I’ll go first,” Rikki offered. He cautiously opened the stairwell door and peered around the jamb.

  A solitary Knight, a lean man with a crooked nose and armed with a holstered revolver, was leaning against the wall about ten feet from the stairwell. He appeared to be bored to death.

  The knife in his right hand, Rikki eased from the stairwell and silently advanced toward the unsuspecting guard.

  The Leather Knight raised his right hand and began examining his fingernails.

  Rikki was eight feet from the guard.

  The Knight coughed.

  Six feet.

  The Knight sensed another presence. Not anticipating trouble, he glanced to his right, his eyes widening in alarm at the sight of the small man in black.

  “What the hell!” the Knight blurted out, and went for his gun.

  Rikki was already in motion, leaping forward and sweeping his right hand back and out.

  In the act of drawing his revolver, the Leather Knight was impaled in the throat. The horrifying shock of the knife in his neck stunned him. He opened his mouth to scream.

  Rikki sprang, his legs arching upward in a graceful Yoko-tobi-geri, a side jump kick, his right foot, extended and rigid, slamming into the guard, catching his crooked nose dead center and smashing his head against the wall.

  The guard grunted as his nostrils were crushed.

  Rikki landed, his coiled frame in motion, spinning, executing a flawless Mawashi-geri, a roundhouse kick.

  The guard was struck on his right cheek. He toppled to the floor with a faint gasp.

  Rikki looked at Lex. “Which room is it?” There were three doors on either side of the hallway.

  Lex hastened to the closest door. She tried the knob. “It’s not locked,” she said, and shoved.

  Rikki darted past her into the room.

  It was empty.

  “I don’t get it,” Lex stated. “I thought Terza was warm for Blade’s form. Maybe she changed her mind about him. They might have decided to feed him to Grotto.”

  “Where?” Rikki asked.

  “There’s a special room downstairs hooked up to the sewers,” Lex disclosed. “He might be there.”

  “Wh
y the sewers?” Rikki inquired.

  “That’s where Grotto lives,” Lex explained.

  Rikki scanned the room. “We need weapons.” He noticed a closet to the left of Terza’s bed and walked to it.

  “I’ll keep watch,” Lex offered, turning to the door, closing it.

  Rikki opened the closet and found a dozen black-leather garments on wire hangers. Piled on the floor were sandals, black boots, and peculiar shoes with spiked heels. He closed the door and moved to rejoin Lex, but a pile of white clothing heaped on the floor by the bed attracted his attention.

  “I hear voices!” Lex warned him.

  Rikki knelt and touched the white clothing, a white-lace affair undoubtedly intended to expose more skin than it covered. About to stand, he detected a glimmer of silver from under the bed.

  “They’re coming this way!” Lex whispered urgently.

  Rikki dropped to his knees and peeked under the bed. His pulse quickened at the discovery of the items he most wanted: Blade’s Commando and Bowies and his own scabbard lying next to his katana.

  The Spirit was with them! He grabbed the scabbard and slid it through his black belt, then withdrew the katana from under the bed and with a practiced flourish returned the sword to its scabbard.

  “They’re almost here!” Lex said.

  “Let them come,” Rikki told her.

  Lex turned from the doorway and glanced at him. “Why…” she began.

  Rikki grinned and rose, the Commando and Bowies in his arms.

  “Where did you…” Lex started to ask a question, then stopped as a loud shout filled the hallway.

  Rikki ran to her side and handed over the Commando and the Bowies.

  “Hold these,” he instructed her. He tiptoed to the door and pressed his left ear to the wood.

  “—dead. Who the hell could have done it?” a man was demanding.

  “The big guy is downstairs,” mentioned another. “It has to be the runt or Lex.”

  “Let’s check Terza’s room,” the first man said.

  “I don’t know,” hedged the second. “She doesn’t like anybody in her room without an invitation.”

  “She’ll understand,” declared the first man. “Come on.”

  Rikki motioned Lex away from the door. There were three lit lanterns in the room, and no time to extinguish them. He eased the katana from its scabbard and flattened behind the door.

  Lex took cover behind the couch.

  The door slowly opened, inch by inch. The barrel of a revolver materialized, jutting past the edge of the door.

  “I don’t see anyone,” remarked the second man.

  “We’d best check the whole room,” said the first man.

  Both studs entered, each with a revolver, and neither bothered to glance behind the open door.

  “There ain’t nobody here!” the second man groused.

  Rikki rushed from concealment, his katana streaking up and in.

  The first stud, a short man with a flowing mustache, never knew what hit him. The katana angled into his neck, severing half of his throat, causing large quantities of blood to gush from the cut vessels and pour over his chest and legs.

  Rikki didn’t wait for the first man to collapse. He took two lightning steps and aimed a slash at the second man.

  The second stud crouched and whirled, pointing his revolver at the man in black. He was squeezing the trigger when the sword hacked his gunhand from his wrist.

  Anyone could have heard his shriek a mile away.

  Rikki finished him with a well-placed reverse thrust into the stud’s heart.

  The Knight gurgled, spitting up blood and bile, and tumbled to the carpet.

  Lex emerged from hiding. She had seen the entire encounter by looking around the lower corner of the couch.

  “We must hurry to Blade,” Rikki said.

  Lex nodded. “I hope you show me how to do that someday.”

  Rikki wiped his katana on the second stud’s black vest. “Considerable practice is required.”

  “It’d be worth it,” Lex said. “If I get half as good as you, no one would dare mess with me again.”

  “Take me to Grotto,” Rikki directed her.

  “What am I going to do about these knives?” Lex asked, referring to the Bowies. “I’m liable to poke myself before we get there.”

  Rikki debated a moment. Both Bowies and the Commando were quite an armful. When the Knights had stripped Blade’s weapons, they’d merely removed the Bowies from their sheaths. So Lex was compelled to carry the Bowies with their keen blades exposed.

  “I’ll take them,” Rikki volunteered. He carefully aligned each knife under his belt, insuring the belt supported each knife by its guard, and slanted their points away from his privates.

  “That doesn’t look too safe,” Lex remarked, worried by the proximity of the knives to his groin.

  “Just hope I don’t sneeze,” Rikki joked. “Come on.”

  They left Terza’s room on the double, Rikki leading until they had descended the stairs to the bottom floor. Lex took over, cradling the Commando in her arms, making for the pit room where Grotto was fed.

  The hallways were a virtual maze, and Rikki chafed at the delay.

  “Isn’t there a shortcut?” he asked at one point.

  Lex stopped. “I’m sticking to the halls we don’t use too often. We might avoid the Knights this way.”

  Rikki glanced at the Commando. “Have you checked it to see if it’s loaded?”

  “Damn! Never thought of it!” Lex admitted. She fiddled with the magazine release until the magazine popped free. She held it in her left hand and studied it by the light of a nearby lantern. “The clip is full,” she announced, “but I don’t have a spare.”

  “Blade usually carries those in his pockets,” Rikki informed her.

  Lex replaced the magazine in the Commando.

  “Will we be there soon?” Rikki asked.

  “Pretty soon,” Lex replied.

  The sound of many voices in turmoil abruptly came from behind them.

  “What’s that?” Lex whispered.

  The turmoil was growing louder.

  Lex motioned for Rikki to follow. They raced along the passage until they reached a branch, and she took a right.

  The voices weren’t far off.

  Rikki drew Lex into the darkest shadows.

  “—tell you I saw them!” a woman was bellowing angrily.

  “Sure you did,” another woman responded.

  “But I did!” insisted the first. “About two hundred yards back. I saw them pass a junction.”

  “Then where the hell are they?” demanded yet a third woman.

  “If we haven’t seen them by now,” chimed in a stud, “we’ll never catch them.”

  “If they were ever there,” griped one of the women.

  “I saw them, damn you!” insisted the first woman.

  There were eight of them, five sisters and three studs, and they reached the fork in the tunnels and stopped. None of them ventured into the branch concealing Rikki and Lex.

  “So where do we go from here?” inquired one of the sisters.

  “I’m tired of looking,” said another. “Why don’t we grab a bite to eat? I’m starving!”

  “Will you listen to yourselves?” snapped the fifth woman. “They would hear us coming a mile off.”

  “So what do we do?” asked a stud.

  “Let’s try this way,” suggested a sister, and entered the right branch.

  A whirlwind in black, wielding a scintillating blade, pounced on them from the shadows. In the three seconds they required to react to the onslaught, four of them were dead. A stud whipped his pistol from its holster, but that streaking sword was lanced through his right eye and into his brain before he could fire. The sister responsible for initially glimpsing Rikki and Lex successfully pulled her revolver, but the katana bit into her forehead, slicing off the top of her head, hair and all, and she uttered an uncanny death cry as she
fell.

  Hidden in the shadows, Lex watched in dazed fascination, dazzled by Rikki’s prowess with the katana. His sinewy body was a twisting, flowing dervish of destruction. To her untrained eye, it seemed as if he executed his movements without conscious deliberation, as if he and the sword were one.

  Thirty seconds after they entered the right branch, the eight Leather Knights were dead.

  Rikki cleaned his katana on a stud’s pants and rejoined Lex.

  Lex stared at him with unconcealed admiration. “I’m beginning to wonder if anyone can kill you,” she said by way of a compliment.

  “Anyone can kill me,” Rikki stated. “We all die, sooner or later. It’s the technique for translating our souls from this world to the next.”

  Lex wanted to reach out and touch him, to smother his lips with fiery kisses. Instead, she chuckled. “You’re all right, you know that?”

  “I do now,” Rikki replied, smiling. Then he turned serious. “We must reach Blade as quickly as possible.”

  Lex nodded. “Come on.”

  They jogged along the tunnels, sometimes taking a right fork, sometimes a left.

  “How far underground are we?” Rikki asked once.

  “I don’t know,” Lex responded. “But Grotto’s room is the last one we built.”

  “It would be,” Rikki remarked.

  After a series of winding hallways, Lex slowed and pointed to a wall ahead. “That’s it.”

  “A dead end?” Rikki queried, perplexed.

  “Not really,” Lex said. “The door is hidden in the wall. It’s one of our secret retreats in case the Reds ever invade St. Louis.”

  Rikki ran to the brick wall.

  Lex checked to verify no one was in pursuit, then joined him.

  “How do we get in?” Rikki whispered.

  Lex groped over the wall, seeking the false brick, the one covering the latch for the door. “It should be here somewhere.”

  “I pray nothing has happened to Blade,” Rikki said anxiously.

  “I bet he’s okay,” Lex said optimistically.

  A tremendous roar shook the wall, emanating from the other side.

  “I can’t find the latch!” Lex wailed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hickok crouched in the high grass bordering the former East Potomac Park and surveyed the airstrip. He knew this area had once been the East Potomac Park because he’d stumbled across a faded, weather-beaten sign at the side of Buckeye Drive, a sign replete with a miniature map of the Tidal Basin and the tract east of the Potomac River.