Turn Loose the Dragons

by George C. Chesbro

  Wanting to get as far away from the front entrance as possible, he went down to the ring area and climbed a bank of bleachers on the opposite side to a row just below the stone balcony.

  He went to the moonlit area, sat down on the edge of a wooden bleacher, and took the barrette from his pocket. From his years of experience defending radicals and terrorists during the Sixties, John was familiar with various types of explosives. He assumed that the barrette was plastique inside some kind of laminated shell. From what he had read, and learned from prosecutors, John suspected that the material was C-5; if it were C-5, or some even more advanced compound, he estimated that the heavy barrette would have almost the explosive force of a stick of dynamite. It was not a lot of firepower, John thought, but it was enough to do the job if Peters could somehow maneuver Alexandra through a net of security agents to within a few yards of Salva. Or there could be more to the weapon, some deadly wrinkle that would give it an even greater range.

  In any event, John thought grimly, even if the barrette were just plastique, it was more than enough to do a job on Alexandra.

  Then again, John thought with a faint smile, the object in his hand might be just one of Alexandra’s barrettes. He could have it all wrong, which would make him the hands-down favorite for Dangerous Dunce of the Year.

  He knew that plastic explosives required some kind of triggering device, and his fear that he could be suffering paranoid delusions was dispelled a few moments later when he pressed hard against the base of the steel hasp anchoring the needle to the laminate. The small steel panel slid back to reveal a tiny electronic module embedded in the material.

  John shuddered as he thought of what the explosive would have done to Alexandra. Rage stiffened his muscles, and for the first time in his life he knew what it felt like to desperately want to kill a man, no matter what the cost. Perhaps he would yet, he thought; if Peters hurt Alexandra, he would definitely kill the man, or die trying.

  He removed the electronic component from the barrette, placed the barrette and module in separate pockets.

  He knew he could not afford to allow his mind to be clouded by hate; it was absolutely necessary that he remain clearheaded and calm. Without his small bomb, Peters was going to have to do some quick improvising; John wanted to see how fast the other man could think on his feet.

  He moved out of the moonlight and lay down on a bleacher, balling his shirt and using it as a pillow. He dozed for a few minutes, then was startled wide awake by the sound of Peters’ soft but resonant voice knifing through the stillness.

  “Finway. Where the hell are you, you chickenshit bastard?”

  Resisting the impulse to spring to his feet, John carefully turned his head and looked around the arena. He spotted Peters and watched as Peters descended from the opposite side, slowly circled the ring, then came halfway up the aisle toward him. John used the faintly echoing sound of the other man’s footsteps to mask the click produced when he lifted the lid of the tool chest. He took out a hammer and the crowbar, then eased himself up into a sitting position.

  “You said we could deal if I didn’t hurt your wife.” John judged Peters to be perhaps twenty yards away when the other man stopped and slowly turned in a complete circle. John gripped the crowbar at the straight end, cocked his arm, and let the steel bar fly. For one jubilant moment he was certain that the heavy tool would smash into Peters’ head, but the man ducked at the last moment and the bar clattered harmlessly into the darkness.

  John removed his shoes and set them aside. He rose silently, stepped onto the balcony, and moved off a few yards from his original position. It was now a matter of getting close enough to the other man to use the hammer.

  “Peters,” John said softly, “you just keep on popping up like a bad penny. Someone should take you out of circulation.”

  “All right, Finway.” The tone of voice was seductively reassuring, soothing. “Come on down and we’ll talk.”

  John moved a few steps to his left. “Fuck you, Peters. Let’s play hide and seek. The sun’ll be up in a couple of hours, and then we’ll have a lot of company. Maybe you’ll even get to wave to your mother on television.”

  John waited, watching the area where Peters had ducked down in the aisle. Suddenly the other man leaped up. In the moonlight John could see a crazed, ragged wave of rage and triumph sweep across the other man’s face as he clutched his radio to his chest.

  “Here’s a tune for you, Finway,” Peters said in a cracking voice that rose at the end and broke off just short of a hysterical laugh.

  For a few moments John was mystified by the man’s behavior: Peters grimaced, flung his free arm over his head, and fell face down in the aisle, disappearing from sight below the line of bleachers. Nine or ten long seconds passed. Then Peters poked his head up and looked around slowly, a baffled expression on his face.

  The significance of the other man’s actions suddenly came to John: he would have been blown into bloody pieces if he had not removed the triggering mechanism from the plastique barrette.

  John experienced a wave of nausea that almost caused him to vomit; something cold circled his heart and squeezed. However, the sick, icy giddiness was rapidly supplanted by wry amusement, and he decided that everything he had gone through was almost worth the opportunity to see the look of puzzlement, frustration, and outrage on Rick Peters’ features.

  John took the electronic module out of his pocket and threw it toward Peters, tossing it in a high arc up into the air in order to disguise the direction from which it was coming. “Here,” John said. “Why don’t you stick this up your ass and see what happens?”

  The component fell at Peters’ feet and broke with a small popping sound. Peters jumped, startled. He recovered and abruptly whipped off his belt. His face was set in a rigid mask of murderous, uncontrolled rage as he tore off the leather shield and charged up the aisle, swinging the buckle around his head in a deadly, whistling arc. John watched the other man disappear into the darkness of the bleacher section where he had been a few minutes before, and for a time John could track the man only by the sound of the singing steel. Then there was nothing but silence.

  John crouched down behind the balcony railing, gripping the hammer as best he could with his bandaged right hand. He dared not move while Peters remained still and listening, and he knew he would be in trouble if Peters decided to circle the balcony. However, a few minutes later Peters emerged from the bleacher section and slowly made his way down the aisle through a rippling chiaroscuro of moonlight and night. It seemed to John that the other man’s rage was now spent; Peters’ movements and demeanor appeared calculated, thoughtful.

  Alexandra had told him that Peters was dangerous, John thought. The description seemed to him now a remarkable understatement. The man was not big, but in the few minutes that Peters’ outburst had lasted John had experienced the illusion that he was being stalked by some jungle beast—an enraged, sinewy, and powerful panther crashing through the brush, capable of rending everything in its path with fangs of leather and honed metal.

  But now the panther was at bay, John thought, and it was his job to keep it off balance.

  John watched, his breathing rapid and shallow, as the slight, blond-haired man leaped nimbly up on the apron of the ring, stepped between the ropes and stood erect in a corner of the moonlight-bathed square of canvas. He set the radio down, then leaned casually against one of the thick, elastic ring ropes and peered up into the darkness.

  “You did say we could deal,” Peters said at last. The hysteria was gone from his voice and manner, and John was astonished to realize that the tone was almost petulant, as though he had wronged Peters by not allowing himself to be blown up or not stepping into the path of the whirling belt buckle.

  He was, John thought, dealing with a madman, a clever paranoic beyond reason or mercy.

  John walked silently and stealthily twenty-five yards to his left before he answered. “You’ve got it. The deal is that you walk out
of here right now. And you keep walking away from Alexandra and the rest of the tour group. Don’t even go back to the hotel. I want you to get lost somewhere in the countryside; crawl back under some rock. Make up some story to tell the Sierrans and let them put you on another plane. Or swim back to Miami; the exercise will do you good, help you to get rid of some of your excess energy. I think you tend to get a little overexcited.”

  “Maybe I’ll go back to the hotel and kill your wife, Finway.”

  “Will you? She may be laying for you by the time you get back. I don’t have to tell you that Alexandra’s not stupid. You tricked her pretty good, but the mirrors you used may be getting a little foggy by now. How are you going to explain being out all night? Did you tell her you were going out for a glass of coconut milk? Besides, I’ll bet I can find a telephone in here before you can get back there.”

  There was a prolonged silence. John knew that his hammer, wielded in a clumsily bandaged hand, was no match for Peters’ belt, and he wondered if he should move again. He decided not to, inasmuch as Peters showed no signs that he intended to come after him again.

  “I can get out of San Sierra any time I want,” Peters said at last. In the bright moonlight, the man’s blond hair seemed to glow with a ghostly penumbra, like some demonic halo. “I don’t need the Sierrans.”

  “Then go.”

  “I have a problem with that, Finway. Both you and Alexandra have good contacts with some very heavy people who are potentially nasty. If I leave now, I’ll be spending the rest of a short life looking over my shoulder. You could probably have both the KGB and CIA tracking me. And they’d find me. I’m just not in the mood to commit suicide.”

  “Just take off, Peters. That’s all I care about. Alexandra and I won’t say a word, won’t do anything.”

  “Things aren’t that simple. That was a CIA agent whose body you helped me get rid of.”

  The words blew through John’s heart with the force of a cold, numbing wind, and he cursed himself for not realizing the truth earlier, for not knowing that Swarzwalder was not an assassin. If he had thought more clearly from the beginning, if he had paid attention to his emotions and instincts, the big man who had saved his life once, and had spared it in their last encounter, might still be alive. He had sorted things out too late, John thought, and it had cost Swarzwalder his life. He found that his eyes had suddenly filled with tears; he was astonished and terribly saddened to realize how much he missed Swarzwalder. It was almost as if he were responsible for the death of a friend.

  “You see the problem, Finway,” Peters continued in a conversational tone. “In any case, I just don’t believe that you wouldn’t try to get me. By now I imagine you’re pretty pissed at me, huh?” He paused, laughed, and then his voice turned hard and cold. “But even if I didn’t doubt your sincerity, and even if I didn’t know the CIA is eventually going to be climbing all over you, it still wouldn’t make any difference. You’re not going back to the United States for some time; you’re headed for a Sierran slammer. The Sierrans are going to want to know what the hell’s been going on between the three of us, and they’ll just let you sit and rot on a bread-and-water diet until you tell them a story they’ll believe. You see my point? You and I are just going to have to put our heads together and come up with another solution.”

  “Maybe you’d like me to kill myself?”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Peters replied evenly.

  John knew that Peters had no choice but to try and kill him, but he could not understand what the man was hoping to accomplish by standing in the boxing ring carrying on an inane conversation. John was certain that Peters had to be feeling severe time pressure, regardless of what excuse he planned to offer Alexandra or Raul for his absence. His own watch had been broken in the escape from the airport, but he estimated that it was now three or four in the morning. He could stay there indefinitely, John thought; Peters could not.

  If Peters wanted to stand around and chat, John thought, he would certainly oblige him.

  “What’s the going rate these days for a good killer?” John asked casually.

  “Oh, I’m supposed to be paid a great deal of money for killing Salva. You’re hurting me in the pocketbook, Finway.”

  “And Alexandra? What did you do, pull her name out of an old hat?” John had tried to keep his voice flat and emotionless to match Peters’, but now it began to quiver with barely suppressed rage. “Why did you drag her into it, Peters? The plastique barrette is clever, but I don’t believe that a smart fellow like you couldn’t have come up with a plan for killing Salva that didn’t involve blowing an innocent woman’s head off.”

  “Yes,” Peters replied easily, “I suppose I could have. But you must admit there’s a certain elegance to this plan.”

  “You cold-blooded bastard: I’m going to enjoy the thought of about a dozen good agents tracking you down.”

  “Alexandra was mine before she was yours,” Peters said, sudden anger lending an even harder edge to his voice. “She was mine by choice and by nature. She shouldn’t have left me for you.”

  John swallowed. His mouth was dry, parched by hatred. “You want to kill a woman because she left you fifteen years ago?”

  “Yes,” Peters replied in a tone that was once again dry and matter-of-fact. “You’ve got the basic picture.”

  For a few moments John’s rage and hate were super-ceded by stunned bewilderment. “You’re insane,” he said at last. “Jesus Christ, don’t you realize that?”

  Peters suddenly pushed off the rope he had been leaning on. John tensed and prepared to move to another position, but Peters only walked to the center of the ring. The man removed his light green sleeveless sweater, pulling it up over his head and dropping it at his feet.

  “You don’t have the slightest idea what your wife is all about, Finway,” Peters said as he began to unbutton his Oxford shirt. “One thing you don’t understand is that there’s an unstable center there—a little rumble, if you will—that makes Alexandra something special. All really special people have that rumble; try to damp it down and the person will explode. A woman like Alexandra needs outlets. If you hadn’t stumbled along on this trip, you’d still think she was your average happy little housewife. Don’t kid yourself, Finway; if Alexandra weren’t here in San Sierra this week, she’d eventually have ended up someplace else just like it. For Alexandra, San Sierra’s a state of mind. It’s that rumble; it won’t be denied.”

  “The only rumble I hear is your mouth,” John said, puzzled and distracted by the bizarre strip act taking place in the moonlit ring directly below him. Peters, now naked to the waist, casually looped his belt around his neck. He kicked off his cowboy boots, then began to remove his slacks.

  “She’s wasted on you. You don’t know shit about what makes her go. I understand her better than she understands herself, and you don’t even live in the same world she and I do. Right now she’s back the way she used to be. It’s the way she is—and it’s how I want her when I kill her. With her head the way it is, having it blown off will be like the best fuck she’s ever had. She’ll really get off on it in that hundredth of a second, Finway, believe me.”

  Unwilling to trust his voice, John said nothing. He stiffened and prepared to run as Peters suddenly turned his head and stared directly up at the section of the balcony where he was standing. But Peters still made no move to leave the ring. The other man took the belt from around his neck, gripped it by the tongue end, and lazily swung it around his head three times before letting it fly. The belt sailed in a long, high arc through alternate patches of moonlight and darkness and landed with a dull clang on the stone a few yards from where John was standing.

  “Let’s you and I get it on, Finway,” Peters continued in a tense voice. “There’s a weapon for you.” He paused, carefully folded his slacks, and placed them next to his boots, shirt, and sweater. “That belt’s the easiest thing in the world to use; I’m sure even a chickenshit lawyer like you can figure o
ut how it works. The edge of the buckle is sharp as a razor. All you need is one good shot and you can slice me up like a carrot. I’m stripped down so that you can see I’m not armed. A duel; that’s the solution to our problem.”

  The point, John thought: a last, desperate attempt on Peters’ part to take him out. Or perhaps it wasn’t all that desperate. Even with the belt and hammer, and even if his hands were not bandaged, John knew there was no reason for him to go up against a professional killer; in fact, it would be a sucker play for him to do it. He remembered the finger jabbing into his solar plexus, the speed and moves Peters had demonstrated in his battle with Swarzwalder. Peters’ body was his weapon, John thought; the man was highly trained and conditioned, and lightning fast. Killing was Peters’ business. No matter how well armed he was, he would probably have only one chance at Peters before the other man commenced taking him apart with his hands and feet. If he were forced to fight physically for Alexandra’s life, he certainly would, but he did not see that he had to, or that he should. Time was still in his favor, and it was Peters who was out in the cold and desperate.

  He had talked enough, John thought, and he would say no more. He remained motionless, and for long minutes there was no sound in the arena.

  “Let’s talk about your kids, you chickenshit coward,” Peters said at last, his voice rising in anger and frustration. “If you don’t come down and fight me now, I walk right out of here and use an escape route to get out of San Sierra. The first thing I do when I get back to the States is kill your kids. That would be Michael, Kara, and Kristen, right? If I’m going to be hunted, at least I’m going to have the satisfaction of leaving your kids’ corpses behind for you to remember me by. That’s it, Finway. If you won’t fight me for your wife, how about fighting me for the lives of your kids? Don’t you doubt for a second, Daddy, that I won’t do what I say I will.”