Koontz, Dean - (1973) - Blood Risk

by Blood Risk(Lit)

  Five minutes after that he'd transferred all three of the money-stuffed suitcases to the same spot. "Anything happening here?" he asked Shirillo.

  "No. They're too quiet down there."

  Before Tucker could respond, Miss Loraine came up behind him and said, "I'm ready."

  She was wearing white levis and a dark-blue sweater, all of it cut to fit like second skin, both functional and sensual. Tucker remembered how she'd looked the day of the robbery in the miniskirt and tight sweater, and he wondered why, with that canny head of hers, she still was so careful to keep her sex honed as a bargaining tool.

  As if reading his mind, she said, "It always pays to be prepared for anything."

  "It does," he agreed. He looked at his watch: 7:02.

  It was full daylight outside.

  He'd told Norton that the operation would be concluded by dawn at the very latest. Paul would be chewing his nails and wondering how much longer he should hold on. Tucker hoped he'd wait another ten minutes, until they could put a call through on the walkie-talkie. No, he wasn't just hoping for that-he knew Norton would wait. He would wait. He was sure of it. Damn, damn, damn.

  He slipped a new clip into his Lüger, pocketed the depleted clip and relieved Shirillo of his watch over the pear stairs.

  "Get the suitcases up first," he said.

  The kid nodded, picked up the largest piece of luggage and struggled with it to the top of the metal steps, muscled it overhead and slid it onto the attic floor. He didn't have the physique for heavy work, but he wasn't complaining. By the time he'd taken the second case from Miss Loraine and worked it through the trap door overhead, his face glistened, his black makeup streaked. When he shoved the third bag into place above, he leaned into the steps and let out a long wheeze of exhaustion.

  "Want me to get Bachman up?" Tucker asked.

  "No. I will."

  The time was 7:10.

  Norton would be waiting.

  Shirillo examined Bachman, helped the battered man to his feet, found an acceptable hold on him and went sideways up the narrow collapsible steps. Near the top he had to let go of his burden. Bachman gripped the top steps, his weakened hands clumsy with the splinted and bandaged fingers. Shirillo scrambled quickly into the attic, turned, reached down, took Bachman by the wrist and, with a little help from Merle himself, got him through the trap door and into the upper chamber.

  "Ready up here," Shirillo called down.

  "Good work."

  "Just plenty of motivation," Shirillo said, grinning.

  7:14.

  "Move," Tucker told the woman.

  She went up the ladder fast, took Jimmy's hand and was gathered into the overhead room.

  7:15.

  Harris looked up the hall, saw that most of the work was done, nodded in response to Tucker's hand signal.

  We're going to make it, Tucker thought. He'd done it. He'd made a botched job into a success; he'd persevered.

  Turning, he started up the steps-but got no farther than the third rung as the window shattered beside him and two closely spaced slugs struck him hard on the left side.

  He fell and struck his head on the last rung of the metal ladder before he rolled up against the corridor wall. Strangely, the moment he'd been hit, he thought: Iron Hand, recalling the nightmare. Then he was too numbed from the shock of being wounded to think of anything. When pain began to replace the paralysis, seconds later, he thought the man at the bottom of the back steps had shot him, but then he realized, as he sat up in the middle of all that broken glass, that the shots had come from outside the house.

  The shots were a signal to the man downstairs to try to come up now that their attention was diverted. Harris was prepared for that strategy, and he let out a long chatter of machine-gun fire down the main stairwell.

  Shirillo came off the attic steps fast, drawing another shot from outside as he moved quickly past the window. "How is it?"

  "The nerves are still mostly deadened from the impact, but it's starting to hurt pretty badly. I got it twice, I think, close together. Damn hard punch."

  "Rifle," Shirillo said. "The garage roof connects with this end of the house. I saw him standing out there when I went by the window just now." As he spoke he removed the shattered walkie-talkie from Tucker's arm and threw it into the middle of the hallway. "I was going to tell you that you'd overprepared by bringing two of these, since we never needed to use them between us. Now I'm glad I kept my mouth shut."

  "The damn thing didn't take both shots, did it?"

  "No," Shirillo said. "There's blood." He probed the wound with a finger until Tucker was sweating with pain. "You only stopped one bullet," he said. "It passed through the back of your arm and out the top of your shoulder, right through the meaty part, then out again. At least, by the way your jacket's all ripped up, I'd say that's how it is. But I wouldn't want to swear to it until we have you in the copter and can get your clothes off. There's a good bit of blood."

  Tucker winced at the pain, which, having held off for several minutes, now throbbed relentlessly, and he said, "It's easy enough to come down that ladder fast. But going up again is another thing altogether. He'll have enough time to pick us off like painted targets."

  "Clearly true," Shirillo said. Even now he did not appear to be shaken. Tucker thought he could see in the kid's manner, however, his own kind of bottled-up terror below a facade of calm maintained at only the greatest expenditure of nervous energy.

  Tucker said, "Now don't shout for him, but get Pete. Walk down there and ask him to come up here. I think, as long as there's one man on the garage roof, there isn't anyone else down there to come up the steps. Not unless they untied Keesey, which I seriously doubt."

  "Be right back," Shirillo said.

  He returned with Harris, who listened to Tucker explain the situation, which he had figured out on his own anyway. He assured them that he could use the rapid-firing Thompson to clear the garage roof while running little risk of getting hit himself.

  "Just be damned careful," Tucker said. "You deserve your share after making it this far."

  "Don't worry your ass, friend," Harris said, grinning. He got up and flattened himself against the wall next to the shattered window. He let a long minute pass, as if one unknown moment were better than another, then suddenly whirled around, facing the open window, the Thompson up before him, chattering away at the rifleman. No one screamed, but a moment later Harris turned to them and said, "He's finished. But one thing: it wasn't one of the gunmen. It was Keesey."

  "The cook?"

  "The cook."

  "Shit," Tucker said. "Then there's still one of them downstairs, and he knows you're no longer guarding the stairs."

  He got to his feet despite the thumping invisible stick that seemed to be trying to drive him down again. The pain in his arm lanced outward, crossed his entire back, over to his other shoulder, down to his kidneys.

  "You make the stairs yourself?" Harris asked.

  "I can. But Jimmy has to go first."

  Shirillo began to protest, realized he was the one carrying the last walkie-talkie, nodded and scrambled upward into the attic.

  "Follow me closely," Tucker said.

  "Don't worry about that, friend."

  Tucker gripped the stair railing with his good hand and climbed toward the square of darkness overhead which framed Jimmy Shirillo's anxious face. He felt as if he were with some Swedish mountaineering 'team, but he finally made it, with the kid's help.

  "Move ass!" he called down to Harris.

  The big man started up the steps.

  Tucker looked at his watch.

  7:28.

  Norton would be waiting. He would.

  After Harris drew up the attic steps, made certain the bottom plate was closed firmly over the trap opening and threw the bolt back to keep it that way, Jimmy Shirillo got out his walkie-talkie and, following Tucker's instructions, attempted to call up Paul Norton, the copter pilot.

  The open freq
uency hummed distantly, an eerie sound in the warm confines of the attic.

  Shirillo repeated the call signal.

  "Why doesn't he answer?" the woman asked.

  Tucker felt the future seeping away from him. He began to think of Elise, of the peace and quiet of the Park Avenue apartment.

  Abruptly, Norton's voice crackled over the walkie-talkie, strange and yet familiar, acknowledging the summons.

  "Thank God!" Harris said, his voice weak.

  "How long will it take him to get here?" Miss Loraine wanted to know. She was sitting between the two largest suitcases, one arm draped over each of them, as if she were daring Tucker, or any of them, to leave her behind.

  Tucker said, "Less than five minutes."

  She laughed and said, "Hell, then we're home free." Despite her good humor, she hung onto the pair of suitcases.

  "Hold the celebrations," Tucker said.

  "You okay?" Shirillo asked.

  "Fine," Tucker said. In reality, he felt as if he'd been dragged several miles from the back of a horse, aching in every muscle, exhausted, the pain in his arm spreading out until it was no longer localized but hard and hot throughout his body. To get his mind off the pain, he considered their situation and decided what must be done next. "You better go find the door that leads onto the roof," he told Shirillo. "According to those photographs your uncle took, it's down at the other end of the house."

  Shirillo nodded, got up, hunched down somewhat to keep from cracking his head against the bare rafters and went down that way to have a look around. In a couple of moments he located the overhead door, worked it loose of its pinnings, shoved it out of the way and called back to the others.

  "Let's go," Tucker said.

  He felt as if he were always telling someone to move, in one way or another. It would be good to get home again, to pay back the ten-thousand-dollar loan and to relax, to take a couple of months off before seriously considering any proposals that were forwarded to him by Clitus Felton out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Maybe if he could set up a few good deals on some of his artwork he could take as much as half a year off, and he'd hardly have to move at all.

  Pete Harris helped Merle Bachman the length of the low-ceilinged attic, while Tucker was able to make it on his own. He had a strong urge to grip his wounded arm and to stop the rapidly vibrating pain that made his bones sing, but he knew that would only make the pain worse. He let his arm hang at his side, and he tried not to think about anything but getting out of there.

  The woman carried the smallest suitcase, while Harris went back to fetch the last two after depositing Merle Bachman under the door to the mansion roof.

  Tucker stood over Bachman, swaying, needing to sit, refusing to allow himself that much. They were close, too close to stop being alert and prepared.

  In the distance the sound of a helicopter rattled through the still morning air.

  "Got to hurry," Tucker said.

  It had occurred to him that the gunman downstairs would hear the copter and might go outside where he could, at such close range, make an attempt to kill the pilot.

  Shirillo was the first onto the roof, making the move with little trouble, and, with Harris assisting him from below, managed to get Merle Bachman outside just as Norton brought the chopper in low over the house. The girl went next, looking back only once at the three bags full of money, and she did not require any aid. Tucker followed her, his shoulder blazing with pain as he bumped it on the beveled rim of the trap door, requiring Shirillo's help to make the last part of the trip. Pete Harris handed out the suitcases one at a time, almost as if they were filled with nitroglycerin, then followed them.

  The time was 7:38.

  "Fantastic!" the girl said, looking up at the chopper.

  Tucker said nothing.

  An automatic rope ladder wound slowly out of the passenger door of the helicopter, a feature which Paul Norton had installed for the benefit of his string of less than legitimate customers. In a half minute from the time it had begun to unroll, the ladder's final hemp rung scraped against the mansion roof.

  "Who first?" Shirillo asked, grasping the ladder and turning to look at the others. He wasn't having any trouble keeping his balance on the gently slanted roof, though to Tucker the angle seemed precipitous and the shingles seemed to move under them.

  Harris said, "I'll take Merle up first. I don't think any of the rest of you can manage him on that ladder."

  "Go," Tucker said.

  He longed to sit down and rest, even to sleep, but he knew that sleep was a dangerous desire right now.

  Harris gave Shirillo his Thompson submachine gun and said, "If you need it, do you know how to use it?"

  The kid checked it out, nodded, said, "Yes."

  Harris turned, gathered up Merle Bachman as if the smaller man were a child, slung him over his shoulder and held onto him with his left hand. He wasn't even bowed by the weight. Now, Tucker realized, despite the danger he'd posed throughout the operation, Harris was doing his share and had become as valuable as any man on the team. He gripped the rope ladder with his right hand, stepped onto the bottom rung and held tight as Norton drew them up toward the open copter door.

  A gentle wind swept over the mansion and, in conjunction with the copter's wallowing motion, caused the ladder to swing back and forth in a wide arc that threatened to dump both of the men clinging to it. However, Harris held on, and the sway declined as the ladder shortened. Then the ladder stopped; Harris climbed the last few steps, worked Bachman into the open door and followed the wounded man.

  The ladder raveled downward once again.

  "You next," Tucker told the woman.

  She was on the ladder the instant it fell before her, and she didn't wait to ride it while it retracted. As it pulled up into its mechanism, she climbed and gained the copter door in short order. Tucker wondered what Norton would think, whether he'd be nonplused by her unexpected appearance. He was relieved when, after she'd been inside the craft a moment, the ladder dropped swiftly again.

  The copter bobbed but stayed pretty much in one spot, riding the back of the wind.

  Shirillo shouted, "What about the suitcases?"

  Tucker looked at them. "Give me the 'Thompson. You take the bags up one at a time."

  Shirillo handed over the gun, lifted the smallest case, gripped the ladder and rode upward as it retracted. Harris, who was waiting for him, took the suitcase out of his hands. S'hirillo started back down.

  A rifle cracked from below, the sharp noise muffled by the heavy thumping of the chopper's blades but nonetheless frightening and recognizable, like an ax splitting wood.

  Tucker edged farther down the sloping roof until he could see the gunman on the lawn. Bracing the Thompson between his knees, weaker than ever now, his head swimming back and forth and his vision too blurred to take good aim, he clenched his teeth and let go a long, rattling burst of fire.

  Down there, where bullets were plowing up the grass like rain, the gunman turned and ran, dived for cover behind a cement flower planter a hundred yards out from the house.

  Tucker looked at Shirillo, saw the kid was just stepping onto the ladder with the second suitcase in hand.

  "Move!"

  Shirillo couldn't make the ladder operate any faster than it was doing now, and he couldn't very well climb it while carrying the luggage, but Tucker couldn't repress the shout. His calm facade was cracking, his carefully cultured composure slipping away. It had been one hell of an operation, and it mustn't go bad now because of one gorilla with a rifle, one punk out to impress the boss with his bravery.

  The man behind the concrete planter stood up long enough to aim and take a shot at Tucker.

  The bullet tore across the shingle two feet on Tucker's right, spraying chips of tarry fabric.

  He loosened a chatter of machine-gun fire, chipping the cement all to hell.

  Shirillo picked up the third suitcase and started up the ladder again, jerked as the man behind the planter
got him in the thigh.

  Son of a bitch, Tucker thought. His weariness and dizziness flopped over and were anger on the other side, anger enough to bring him into sharp, fast movement. He pulled hard on the Thompson's trigger and was rewarded with the sight of the gunman stepping frantically backward out of the way of a line of dancing bullets.

  The man turned and ran, the rifle on the lawn where he'd dropped it, darting this way and that, seeking the shelter of shrubbery.

  You dumb bastard, Tucker thought. I could have killed you, and what percentage would have been in that?

  Everyone seemed anxious to die, as if they couldn't wait for it, like this man and the man he'd wounded on the promenade earlier in the evening. And like Baglio, ready to take a beating rather than tell where Bachman was. Of course, in this business you took a blood risk, because you worked with dangerous men at dangerous times. But a risk should be reasonable, the chances of success greater than the chances for failure. Otherwise you were no better than a fool.

  "Hey!" Shirillo called down, breaking Tucker's reverie. He'd gotten the last suitcase into the chopper and had followed close behind it.

  Strapping the Thompson around his chest, Tucker got to his feet, almost fell, almost lost it all right there, grabbed desperately for the rope ladder, caught it, jerked as the device began to draw up into the hovering aircraft.

  A blood risk: he'd taken it, and he'd won.

  Harris leaned out of the open door, reaching for him, grinning broadly. He said, "Been waiting for you," and he took Tucker's hands to pull him the rest of the way. Tucker noted that Harris hadn't added "friend."

  Dr. Walter Andrion was a tall, slim, white-haired gentleman who wore tailored suits and fifty-dollar shirts, drove a new Cadillac and traveled in the fastest social circles. He was married to Evanne Andrion, a black-haired, blue-eyed lovely thirty years his junior, a young lady with incredibly expensive tastes. When Junior called him, he dropped everything and came out to the airfield right away, carrying two heavy bags instead of one, for he had long ago learned that he should meet any such call as fully prepared as he could be. This was not orthodox medicine by any means. He worked fast and was clean, bored out wounds, flushed away clotted blood and dirt, stitched the men up as well as they could have been in a hospital. He didn't speak, and no one spoke to him as he worked. He had made it abundantly clear to Tucker three years ago that he did not want to have to hear anything about the origins of such wounds and that he wanted these sessions to be terminated as rapidly as possible. When he was done, he insisted on taking Merle Bachman back to his clinic for a couple of weeks' rest and recuperation, enough time to have his entire mouth rebuilt as well. He accepted two thousand dollars from Tucker in fifties and hundreds, tucked this into an already fat wallet, helped Bachman into his Cadillac and drove away.