by Phil Swann
“Leave him,” Johnny ordered. “I want them to look at him.”
The soldier obeyed the order and stepped back.
Blood began puddling around Gene’s lifeless body. My legs went weak, and it was taking everything I had not to throw up.
Johnny handed the gun to the young soldier. “Now then, what am I to do with you three?”
Barnard said, “Send us away with a stern warning to never come back?”
“Oh, if only I could, Detective,” Johnny replied. He walked over to me. “No. You took something. I want it back. You’re going to give it to me or tell me where it is. Otherwise…”
“And if we do, you’ll let us live, right?” Clegg asked.
Johnny turned. “Of course not. But I will promise a death like the one you just witnessed from our friend Mr. Armstrong here. Quick and painless. Otherwise—and this I need you all to fully understand, gentlemen—I’ll kill you slowly, while deliberately administering as much pain as I possibly can. I’ll also make sure each one of you watches as the other suffers. Am I clear? Good. So, who’s going to talk?”
“I will,” Clegg said.
“No, I will,” I said, stepping forward. “I won’t tell you where it is, but I will go get it for you. One of your men can come with me.”
“That’s workable,” Johnny replied. “But, I think I’ll send two of my men with you if it’s all the same.”
“Sure. You need to tell me something first, Johnny. If you knew I was coming back for Clegg, why did you send Wilson looking for me?”
Johnny chuckled. “I don’t need to tell you anything, Mr. Callaway. But since you’re curious, and I’m in a good mood, let me assure you that if Mr. Wilson had been looking for you, he would have found you. The man is a most gifted hunter.”
It took a second for the meaning of what he said to register, but once it did, it was like a punch to my gut.
“I must admit, that was very inventive, Mr. Callaway. A whorehouse. Very inventive, indeed.”
Rage filled every cell in my body. “You had better pray Wilson didn’t hurt Jaqueline. You had better—”
“Or you’ll do what?” Johnny interrupted. “Give me a trumpet lesson?”
The other men laughed.
Johnny continued, “Honestly, Mr. Callaway, I don’t know if Mr. Wilson harmed Miss Plato or not.”
A loud, mechanical rumble came from behind me, and all heads turned as the garage door began to open.
“But why don’t we ask him?” Johnny added.
A burnt orange pickup truck pulled in and stopped. Hank Wilson stepped out, and yanked Michelle out behind him, Jean-Claude came got out on his own. He grabbed them both by their arms and started toward us.
Michelle’s face was overcome with fear, and Jean-Claude, though obviously petrified, was doing his best to put up a brave front. When they saw Gene’s bloody, lifeless body, however, both froze. Michelle put her hands over her mouth, and Jean-Claude began to shake. Wilson looked down at it and just smirked.
“Did you find it?” Johnny asked.
“No,” Wilson answered, shoving Michelle and Jean-Claude at me and Clegg. “but I’m certain Callaway stashed it at that dive nightclub he lives above. I decided to retrieve these two first, and then go back and get it. Don’t worry, the Neanderthal black man who owns the joint won’t be a problem, neither will his pretty little daughter.”
“Good,” Johnny replied. “Go get it now, please. And once you have it, kill the old man, his daughter, and anyone else who might have seen it. Then burn the place down.” He looked at me. “Mr. Callaway, it appears I won’t be needing your assistance after all.”
“Tying up loose ends, Johnny?” Clegg asked.
“Shut up,” Lassiter shot back.
Johnny looked at Clegg but didn’t answer. “Robert, there’s a truck the army kindly supplied us with parked behind the hospital. Put our guests, as well as the late Mr. Armstrong here, in it, and take them all out to the desert.”
“And do what?” Reeves asked.
“Kill them, of course. And make sure you put them in a very deep hole where they won’t be found.”
“Even the kid?”
Johnny walked up close to Michelle and put his face inches from hers. “Especially the kid.”
Michelle pulled Jean-Claude close to her. “Johnny, no!”
Reeves said, “Uh…Johnny…I’m not…look, Johnny, I don’t kill kids.”
Johnny turned to Major Reeves and stared at him. “Very well, then. Give me your gun. Let me show you how easy it is.”
Michelle began screaming, “No! God, Johnny no! Please—”
“Come on, Johnny,” I begged. “He’s just a boy. Don’t do this.”
Jean-Claude closed his eyes and held on tight to his mother, but he didn’t cry, he didn’t yell, he didn’t say anything at all.
Lassiter said, “Johnny, you don’t have to kill the kid.”
Johnny laughed. “I know I don’t have to. I just want to. I’ve been dreaming about this moment for two years.”
Johnny cocked the pistol and lowered it at Jean-Claude’s head.
“Drop your weapon!” a voice commanded from out of the darkness.
Johnny spun around.
I had only met the man once, but there was no question in my mind who the voice belonged to.
“I said, drop your weapon!”
Johnny’s face went red with rage. He pointed the gun toward the area the voice was coming from, and fired off a round.
I didn’t hear the return shot, all I saw was a black dot appear in the middle of Johnny’s forehead. He eyes crossed and he fell backward. After that, it was utter chaos.
Soldiers flooded into the warehouse from every corner. Johnny’s boys fanned out and began firing. Within seconds, shots were coming from all directions, and it was hard to tell who was shooting at who.
I felt two hands on my shoulder. “Get down, Callaway!”
It was my old pal Square Head, aka Agent Carson, and he was pulling me to the ground. I looked over at Michelle and saw Tonto, aka Agent Stevens, pulling her down as well.
Square Head had nearly his entire body weight on top of me, so I couldn’t make out everything that was happening. Happily, however, I witnessed Barnard throw an elbow into the groin of the soldier standing behind him. The young man doubled over, and the detective followed it up by slamming his head into the kid’s kneecap. He fell to the floor writhing in pain.
I’ll never know how he did it, but I also saw Clegg somehow make it to Major Reeves, throw him to the ground, and begin pummeling the man’s face, unmercifully. Doctor Lassiter was already lying on the ground unconscious.
It only took a minute or two for Johnny’s men—the ones who weren’t dead—to drop their guns.
Square Head pulled me up to my feet and brushed me off.
“You okay, Callaway?” he asked.
“Never thought I’d say this, but it’s good to see you, Agent Carson.”
Square Head smiled as much as his face would allow, and then slapped me on the back.
Colonel Pennington sauntered into the light with a cigar in his teeth, and a rifle slung over his shoulder.
Clegg got off an unconscious Reeves and met me and the colonel in the center of the room. “When I suggested you call in reinforcements, you didn’t mess around, did you? Excellent job, Colonel.”
Pennington said, “Thanks goes to your Agent Carson and Agent Stevens. They organized this ambush. These are Marines out of Pendleton, by the way.”
“Well, thanks for leading them in Buck. You saved our butts. And thanks for not taking your medication tonight.”
“I can’t believe Lassiter was drugging me. What tipped you off?”
“I knew they were smuggling heroin into this place somehow. The only thing that made sense was they were doing it at night after you’d gone to sleep—a very deep sleep thanks to Lassiter.”
Pennington shook his head. “Never trust a damn doctor. I’ve always
said it, and always will.”
Clegg chuckled. “Well, if it matters, I don’t think Doctor Lassiter is any more a real doctor than these men are real army soldiers.”
“You mean they’re bogus?” Pennington yelled.
“As a two dollar Rolex,” Clegg replied.
“Hey, fellas,” Detective Barnard called out. “We got a problem.”
“What?” I asked.
Barnard pointed, “She can’t find her boy.”
Michelle was running in and out of the crates frantically calling out for Jean-Claude.
I scanned the room. “Where’s Wilson?”
Everyone looked around. I eyed all the faces of the men Pennington’s Marines were rounding up, including the ones dead on the ground. Wilson wasn’t among them.
“The hospital,” I said. “there’s an army truck. He’s got Jean-Claude.”
Clegg said something to me, but I wasn’t paying attention. I grabbed the gun beside Johnny’s dead body, jumped into Gene’s station wagon, and pealed out of the warehouse.
Chapter 12
Wilson had at least a ten-minute head start, but I still believed I could catch him. My thinking was he had to first make it out of the warehouse unseen, and then get to the truck parked behind the hospital, and do it all while wrestling Jean-Claude every step of the way. If I knew the little guy like I thought I knew the little guy, he didn’t go willingly. That was my thinking, but I was painfully aware it could have been wishful thinking. Wilson just as easily could have been long gone.
Thankfully, I wasn’t wrong, and for once, the dark and desolate desert was my friend. After making the turn at the church and plowing through the main gate, I could just make out the faint glow of taillights up ahead of me. If I could see them, I reassured myself, then I could catch them.
Had I been in my Falcon, it wouldn’t have been a contest. The military truck was big, heavy, and slow. But Gene’s pathetic station wagon wasn’t exactly built for speed, either. Even though I had the accelerator pinned to the floor, the car still struggled to make it up to sixty miles per hour.
“Come on!” I yelled, pounding on the dashboard.
I was so focused on catching Wilson that I hadn’t been paying attention to where he was heading, I just assumed it was back to Las Vegas. It wasn’t. Somewhere along the way, he had turned off the main road, and onto a very un-main road. And, as if the suddenly sketchy asphalt wasn’t bad enough for my old jalopy, the once straight, flat, desert road, was becoming a narrow, serpentine deathtrap rising in elevation. We were heading into the mountains.
As the climb got steeper, the station wagon’s engine begged for mercy, but I wouldn’t grant it. I kept on the gas. The good news was, as hard a time as my car was having, Wilson’s truck was having a worse one. On two occasions, it almost came to a complete stop, only to belch exhaust, and lurch forward after Wilson found another gear that would get it moving again. I took full advantage of the situation and tightened the gap between us to only a few hundred yards.
It began to dawn on me I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do once I caught him. I knew Wilson wasn’t just going to pull over, apologize for his rash behavior, and then let Jean-Claude go, and I had no intention of leaping from my car onto the truck, Wild West stagecoach style. I decided the only choice I really had was to stay close, but not so close that it might make Wilson do something stupid because, given the road we were on, and the fact that neither of our headlights were doing much good, something stupid could be deadly. I didn’t give a hoot about Wilson, of course. He could fly off a cliff and die in a mangled inferno, for all I cared. But he had Jean-Claude, and that meant I had to be careful.
The turns got sharper as we ascended the mountain, but at least we were still ascending, which meant our speed remained at a manageable and relatively safe crawl. But I knew that wouldn’t last for long because, to coin a cliché, what goes up, must eventually come down. When I started noticing the enormous steel towers spaced along the ridge of the mountain, I realized the inevitability of that cliché was closer than I thought. Somehow, someway, I needed to stop him.
I had had a feeling I knew where Wilson was going the minute I realized he’d turned off the main road and was heading east toward the mountains, but now I knew for sure. The towers were for high-voltage power lines constructed to deliver electricity to most of the Southwestern United States. That could only mean one thing; Wilson was heading for Hoover Dam.
I shifted the car into the lowest gear I could grind out, and pushed the accelerator to the floor. I thought the pistons were going to come flying out of the hood. I steadily got closer to the truck, until my headlights were saturating its rear bumper. I had no sooner decided to pull in front of him, lock up my brakes, and force him to stop when we reached the top of the mountain.
At that point, gravity took over, and Wilson’s ten-thousand-pound brick began hurling down the hill at a suicidal rate. He careened around hairpin turns like he was at Indy. Every time the massive vehicle went around a curve, it leaned so severely in one direction or the other, the wheels nearly took air beneath them, and I held my breath, certain the truck was about to flip over. In a hopeless attempt to get him to slow down, I flashed my lights and laid on the horn. Finally, not knowing what else to do, I lifted off the accelerator, and let him go. It was my prayer that not having me on his tail would encourage the maniac to slow down. It didn’t. He just went faster, and it wasn’t long before he had disappeared from my view altogether.
I was reasonably certain there was no other way off the service road before reaching Black Canyon—that was the canyon Hoover Dam was in—so I told myself to relax, and that I’d catch up to him once I was off the mountain and back on the main road, which was U.S. 93—a real road. It was a sensible plan, and I felt good about it. That was until I came around the last bend, looked down into the canyon, and saw no sign of the truck.
When I moved to Vegas, Hoover Dam was one of the first places I went to see. I had heard about it all my life, of course, and had even given a well-researched—and well-rehearsed—presentation on it in high school. I lectured my classmates on how it stood over seven hundred feet tall from foundation to crest, spanned over twelve hundred feet, and was six hundred and sixty feet thick at its base. I illustrated its art deco design, and told them about the four million yards of concrete that was poured, and the countless lives that were lost during its construction. My report was so good, in fact, that many, including the teacher, thought I’d seen the dam in person. I didn’t correct them. I had prepared so much, I felt like I had, but I hadn’t. Then, when I did finally see Hoover Dam for the first time, all I wanted to do was to go back to my high school, offer an apology, and give my report again. Few things in life ever live up to their hype. Hoover Dam wasn’t one of them.
It was the middle of the night, and the entire canyon was bathed in an eerie yellow light. I drove out onto the marvel of modern engineering and stopped. Because of the hour, I was completely alone, no traffic, no people. Under different circumstances, I might have found the stillness quite peaceful. As it was, I only felt a sense of foreboding.
I sat in the car for a few seconds and looked in all directions. There was still no sign of the truck. I thought about Jean-Claude, and my gut tightened, and I felt sick. I knew there was no way Wilson could have gotten off the mountain, and across the dam to the Arizona side that quickly, not in the beast he was driving. That meant there was only one place it could be.
I turned off the engine and got out of the station wagon. I recall a warm wind whipping across the road and hitting me in the face. To the average ear, there was silence. But I don’t have an average ear. If I stood still, and cocked my head, I could hear the faint sound of water from the Colorado River slapping around hundreds of feet below me. I could also make out a low, steady, electrical hum being generated by the array of massive turbines located deep inside the bowels of the structure—it was a B-flat, by the way.
I went to the w
all, and looked over. I was prepared for the worst, but thankfully, I saw no truck. I let out a long, thankful sigh of relief and looked back at the mountain. I decided Wilson must have pulled off the road before entering the canyon. I couldn’t imagine where that would have been, but there was no other explanation. I had to go back up the mountain.
Now, I might be wrong about this, but I swear I remember thinking as I walked back to the car how Wilson was a trained hunter, and a classic technique of hunting was to lure one’s prey to where you wanted it to be before you pounced.
I heard the engine first. Then, I saw the headlights. The truck tore out from behind the tourist information building and headed straight for me. I was on top of a dam, so there was nowhere for me to take cover, all I could do was run. I ran as fast as my legs would move until I felt the heat from the truck’s engine on my back, and then I dove for my life onto the pedestrian walkway along the side of the road. The truck missed me by inches.
I looked up just in time to see the truck accelerate and ram into the side of the station wagon. I thought the assault was over, but Wilson was only getting started. He put the truck into reverse, backed up a few feet, put it back into gear, and then smashed into the car again. I picked myself up off the ground, and took a few steps forward, only to back up when he slammed into it one more time, this time staying on the gas until smoke billowed out of the truck’s wheel wells. The car didn’t go over the wall into the river, but it wasn’t for lack of Wilson trying.
Wilson got out of the truck and pulled Jean-Claude out the driver’s side door behind him. Jean-Claude’s hands were tied in front of him with a rope, and Wilson was leading him around as if he was on a leash. Jean-Claude wasn’t crying, but he did look petrified.
Wilson dragged Jean-Claude over to the station wagon, gave it a glance, and then looked back at me, and smiled. “I don’t think your car’s going to be drivable. Sorry about that.”
“You okay, Jean-Claude?” I yelled.
“He’s fine,” Wilson responded before Jean-Claude could answer. He came toward me, pulling Jean-Claude behind him. “So, Mr. Callaway, can I assume you’re my old friend named Carl little Tina told me about? You know, my old friend who likes to call me Bud?” He let out a laugh.