Blood risk mt-1 Page 2

  Tucker peeled off his mask and pushed his sweat-slicked hair out of his face. His stomach was bothering him worse than ever. He said, "We don't have the means to get him out and hold off Baglio's whole army at the same time." He belched and tasted the orange juice that had been his entire breakfast.

  "Still " Harris began.

  Tucker interrupted him, his voice tense and bitter. "Bachman was right-we did need a fifth man."

  "We're boxed," Shirillo said.

  From here on out, the private road no longer hugged the edge of the ravine, struck toward the broad interior slopes of the mountain with land opening on both sides. Flanked by pines, it fed ruler-straight into the circular driveway in front of Rossario Baglio's gleaming white many-windowed monstrosity of a house only another mile ahead. Just exiting that drive, a black Mustang arrowed directly for them.

  "Not boxed," Tucker said, pointing ahead and to the left. "Is that a turn-off?"

  Jimmy stared. "Yeah, looks like it."

  "Take it."

  The boy wheeled hard left as they came up on the dirt track, braked, barely avoided ripping through several small, sturdy pine trees, slammed brutally across a series of wet-weather ruts, apparently unperturbed by all of it. Tramping down on the accelerator, he grinned into the rear-view mirror and said, "It's not my car."

  Despite himself Tucker laughed. "Just keep your eyes on the road."

  Jimmy looked ahead, straddled a large stone in the middle of the way and built more speed.

  The wind hissed at an open wing window, and insects smacked against the glass like soft bullets.

  "They're right behind us," Harris said. "Just turned in."

  Both Tucker and Harris stared through the back window, dizzied by the green blur of trees and underbrush, brambles and grass that whipped by on both sides, waiting for the Mustang to bounce into view. They were startled, then, when Shirillo braked to a full stop three quarters of the way up the long hill. "What the hell " Tucker said.

  "There's a log across the road," Shirillo said. "Either we move it or we go on foot from here."

  "Everybody out," Tucker said, pushing open his door. "We move it. Pete, bring the Thompson."

  The log was the corpse of a once mighty pine tree fully thirty feet long and as many inches in diameter, with a couple of thick branches that had been chopped short with a sharp ax. It looked as if it had been put there to keep anyone from using the road beyond this point, though it was just as likely that it was spillage from a logging truck when the forests had served to feed a paper mill or planking factory. Tucker directed all three of them to get on the same end of the log, spaced three feet apart, one foot on each side of the tree. Heaving together, stepping sideways in an awkward little dance, they managed to swing it around about a yard.

  "Not enough," Shirillo said.

  Harris said, "Where's the Mustang?"

  "It can't move as fast on these bad roads as our heavy car can," Tucker said. He sucked in his breath and said, "Again!"

  This time they moved the barrier almost far enough to squeeze the Dodge past, but when they stood to catch their breaths, their backs cracking with a pain like fire, Harris said, "I hear the other car."

  Tucker listened, heard it too, wiped his bruised hands against his slacks to make them stop stinging. "Take your Thompson and get ready to meet the gentlemen, Pete."

  Harris smiled, picked up the machine gun and trotted to the rear of the Dodge, where he sprawled in the middle of the dusty road. He was a large man, over six feet, more than two hundred and forty pounds; when he went down, the dust rose around him in a cloud. He raised the black barrel and centered it where the Mustang would be when it rounded the bend below. The large circular cannister of ammunition that rose out of the machine gun gave the impression of something insectoid, something that was somehow using instead of being used, an enormous leech draining Harris's body of its blood.

  Tucker bent and slipped his hands around the log again, found as good a hold as he was going to get on the surprisingly smooth, round pine trunk. Perspiration ran from his armpits down his sides; his shirt soaked that up. "Ready?" he asked.

  "Ready," Shirillo said.

  They heaved, gasped as all their stomach muscles tightened painfully. Tucker felt his back pop like a glass bottle full of pressurized soft drink, perspiration fizzing out of him. But he did not let go, no matter what the cost in strained muscles, raised the log a few inches, scraped sideways a frustratingly short distance before they had to drop it. This time Shirillo sat down on the log to regain his breath, panting like a dog that has run a long way in mid-June heat.

  "No loafing," Tucker said immediately.

  He felt as bad as the boy did, perhaps even worse-he was, after all, five years older than Shirillo, five years softer; and he had twenty-eight years of easy living to put up against the boy's twenty-three years of rough ghetto upbringing-but he knew that he was the one who had to keep the others moving, had to generate the drive, share some of his fanatical determination to see them through. It was not the getting killed that Tucker feared so much. More than that he feared failure. He said, "Come on, Jimmy, for Christ's sake!"

  Shirillo sighed, got to his feet and straddled the pine once more. As he bent to get a grip on it, Harris opened up with his Thompson, filling the woods about them with a manic chatter. Shirillo looked up, could not see anything because of the Dodge and the angle of the trail beyond that, bent again and took hold of the log, put everything he had into one final, frantic heave. Together they muscled the tree farther around than they had the last time before they were forced to let it go. Dropped, the tree landed in the baked roadway with a soft, dusty thump.

  "Far enough?" Shirillo asked.

  "Yes," Tucker said. "Move ass now!"

  They ran back to the car. Shirillo slid behind the wheel and started the engine. That was enough of an alert for Harris, who had not used the Thompson for almost a full minute. The big man jumped up and got into the back of the Dodge again. Tucker was sitting up front with Shirillo and was fumbling with his seat belt. He clicked it together as Jimmy pulled out, turned to Harris and said, "Get any tires?"

  "No," Harris said. The admission bothered him, for he respected Tucker and wanted the young man to return his respect. If this job had gone right, it would have been his last; now, because they'd botched it, he would need to work again, and he preferred to work with Tucker more than with anyone else, even after this fiasco. "The bastards caught on too quick, shifted into reverse before I'd nailed any tires." He cursed softly and wiped at his grimy neck, his voice too soft for Tucker to hear the individual words.

  "They coming?" Shirillo asked.

  "Like a cop with a broomstick up his ass," Harris said.

  Shirillo laughed and said, "Hold on." He tramped the accelerator hard, pinning them back against their seats for a moment, cutting into a long, shadow-dappled section of road.

  "Why don't they let us alone?" Harris asked, facing front, the Thompson across his lap. His face matched his body: all hard lines. His forehead was massive, the black eyes sunk deep under it and filled with cold, solid intelligence. His nose, broken more than once, was bulbous but not silly, his mouth a lipless line that creased the top of a big square chin. All those harsh angles crashed together in a look of bitter disappointment. "We didn't get their money."

  "We tried, though," Tucker said.

  "We even lost Bachman. Isn't that enough?"

  "Not for them," Tucker said.

  "The Iron Hand," Shirillo said. He took a turn in the road too far on the outside: pine boughs scraped the roof like long, polished fingernails, and the springs sang like a bad alto.

  "Iron Hand?" Harris asked.

  "That's what my father used to call them," Shirillo said, never taking his eyes off the road ahead.

  "Melodramatic, isn't it?" Tucker asked.

  Shirillo shrugged. "The Mafia itself isn't a staid and sober organization; it's as melodramatic as an afternoon soap opera. It's all the t
ime playing scenes straight out of cheap movies: bumping off rivals, beating up store owners who don't want to pay for protection, fire-bombing, blackmailing, peddling dope to kids in junior high school. The melodrama doesn't make it any less real."

  "Yeah," Harris said, glancing uneasily out the rear window, "but could we go a little faster, do you think?"

  The road curved gradually eastward now and narrowed as the huge pines and occasional elms and birches crowded closer-like patrons at a play getting restless for the last act and the climax of the action. Abruptly, the trail slid downward again, and the dust dampened and became a thin film of mud.

  "Underground stream somewhere nearby," Tucker said.

  At the foot of the hill, the land bottomed for a hundred yards before tipping over another slope. Here, shrouded by overhanging trees and flanked by thousand-layer shale walls, the Dodge choked, coughed, rattled like Demosthenes talking around his mouthful of pebbles and expired with very little grace.

  "What's the matter?" Harris asked.

  Shirillo was not at all surprised, for he'd been expecting this for some time now. He was surprised, though, by his own serenity. "The gas tank was holed when we turned onto the dirt track," he told them. "I've been watching the indicator drop little by little the last half hour-must be a small hole-but I didn't see any sense in putting everyone on edge until we were actually empty."

  They got out and stood in the small glen where a trace of early-morning fog still drifted lazily through the trees, a ghost without a house.

  Harris slung his machine gun over his left shoulder, by the black leather strap, and he said, "Well, the road's too damn narrow for them to get around the Dodge. If we have to walk, so do they."

  Tucker said, "We're not going to walk so long as they're right behind us with a good car." His tone left no room for debate. "We'll take that Mustang away from them."

  "How?" Shirillo asked.

  "You'll see in a minute." He ran around the nose of the Dodge, opened the driver's door and threw the shotgun on the seat. He tossed their rubber masks into the road. Unspringing the handbrake, he put the gear shift in neutral. "The two of you get behind and push," he said.

  They braced opposite ends of the rear bumper, while Tucker put his shoulder to the doorframe and walked slowly forward, keeping one hand on the wheel to prevent the car from wedging against the shale that loomed close on both sides. At the point where the road began to dip, Tucker picked up the shotgun and leaped out of the way. "Let her go!"

  Shirillo and Harris stood back and watched the black car rumble clumsily down the first few yards of the descending trail. As the slope grew steeper, the car gathered speed, veered to the left. It struck the shale wall, sparks flying, screeching, went toward the right like an animal seeking shelter, slammed into the other stone bank, skidded as the trail abruptly angled down, jolted in a rut they couldn't see from the top of the run. It started to turn around as if it had had enough and would come back up the hill, then it gracefully rolled onto its side with a resounding crash that slapped over them like a wave. It slid another two hundred feet before it stopped, its undercarriage facing them.

  "The conservationists would love us," Shirillo said. "We've started our own war on the automobile today-three down in less than an hour."

  "You want them to think we wrecked?" Harris asked. When Tucker nodded he said, "What about our footprints here in the mud?"

  "We'll have to hope they don't notice them." Half a mile behind them, the steady drone of the Mustang engine became audible. Tucker picked up the masks and distributed them, slipped on his own. "Move ass," he said. "Stay to the side of the road, by the wall, so the prints going down won't be conspicuous. By the bank, there should be enough loose shale to hide our trail." He took off, the others close behind, the fallen shale shifting under them, damp and slick. Twice Tucker thought he would fall, but he kept his balance by running faster. They made it behind the shelter of the overturned Dodge only a moment before the Mustang appeared at the top of the hill.

  "What now?" Harris asked. He had unslung the machine gun.

  Tucker looked farther down the hill, behind them, saw that the shale diminished considerably on both sides only a short distance ahead. "Stay down and follow me," he said, moving off in a fast duck walk.

  When they reached a point where they could get atop the banks that had hedged the trail all the way down the slope, Tucker looked back to see how visible they were from above. He couldn't see any of the road beyond the overturned Dodge; good, it was safe to assume they couldn't be seen, either. He sent Pete Harris to the left, took Shirillo with him on the right, climbed the now diminutive bank, slipping once, scraping his knee on loose shale, ignoring the flash of pain When they were in the woodlands that lay above the road, he looked across and waved at Harris, who signaled with his machine gun in response. Cautiously, they made their way back to the spot where the Dodge had flipped on its side, edged to the brink of the shale walls and looked down.

  The Mustang was parked twenty feet above the wreck, doors open. The two men who had been in it moved warily in on the Dodge, pistols drawn.

  "Don't move at all," Tucker told them.

  They were good, if surprised, and they listened.

  "Remove the clips from your pistols-but keep them pointed at the ground. You're covered from both sides of the road."

  The two men did as they were told, reluctantly but with the evident resignation of professionals who knew they were cornered. Both were large in the shoulders, dressed in lightweight summer suits that didn't seem to belong on them. Gorillas. Figuratively and almost literally. They would look much more at home in a zoo, railing at visitors through iron bars.

  "Now," Tucker said, "look up at me."

  They looked up, shielded their eyes from the bright sky, grimaced at the shotgun.

  "Now look across the road."

  They turned as if connected, stared up at the Thompson in Pete Harris's hands. Tucker couldn't see their faces, but he knew they were properly impressed, for he could see their shoulders draw up in an instinctive urge to crouch and run.

  "Now throw your guns up here," he told them. When he had both pistols tucked into his belt, he pointed at the dirt-streaked Mustang and said, "Who was driving?"

  "Me," the taller of the gorillas said. He jammed both hands into his pants pockets like a sulking child and looked up at Tucker from under his brow, waiting to see what came next.

  "You a good driver?"

  "I do okay."

  "Which of you is better?"

  The man who had not been driving pointed at the man who had and said, "He is. He drives for Mr. Baglio when-"

  "Enough!" the driver snapped.

  The smaller man blanched and shut up. He looked at Tucker, then at his partner. He rubbed at his mouth as if he could scrub out what he had already said.

  "Get back in the Mustang," Tucker told the driver, "and bring it right up to the Dodge."

  "Why?" the driver asked.

  "Because, if you don't, I'll kill you," Tucker said. He smiled. "Good enough for you?"

  "Good enough," the driver said, starting for the Mustang.

  Tucker said, "Don't try backing out of range. That gentleman over there could blow the car apart before you'd gone ten feet." To the second gorilla Tucker said, "Stand over against the wall. Stay out of the way and be good."

  "You won't get away with this," the gorilla said. Clearly, though, he expected that they would. His grainy, broad-nosed face was covered with more than a patina of defeat; the expression was deeply rooted. He was one of those who hadn't any faith in himself unless he could get his hands on his adversary. At this distance he was feeling exceedingly inferior.

  "Let's get this moving," Tucker said.

  The driver stopped the Mustang when its front bumper was a foot from the underside of the overturned Dodge. His window was rolled down, and he leaned out and said, "Now what?"

  "Move it ahead until you feel it make contact."

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p; The driver didn't ask questions. When a solid thunk proved he'd obeyed, he leaned out his window again and waited to hear the next part of it. While the man standing against the wall across the road seemed unable to comprehend what was happening, the driver knew what Tucker wanted. He was going to wait for Tucker to say it just the same.

  Tucker hunkered down at the top of the bank, brushed away a swarm of gnats that rose out of the grass at his feet, pointed the shotgun at the driver's face. "I want you to put the gas to it, slowly, build up the pressure until something happens. The Dodge isn't wedged tight. It should slide loose. The moment it's moved enough for you to squeeze your heap past it, do just that."

  "And if I keep going?" the driver asked. He smiled as if this were a joke between them, and he had very nice teeth.

  "We'll shoot out your tires, blow out the back window, very likely put half a dozen slugs in the back of your head-and possibly blow up your gas tank." He smiled back; his own teeth weren't bad, either.

  "I thought so," the driver said. He eased his foot down on the accelerator.

  For a moment nothing much happened. As the engine noise built into a scream, a ring-necked pheasant took off from the brush behind Tucker and Shirillo, startling the boy but not the older man. The Mustang's bumper popped a bolt and crunched back onto the grill. Still, the engine noise climbed. The driver was gritting his good teeth, aware that the Dodge might tilt the wrong way, that he might slip off it and careen into the shale wall himself.

  Then the Dodge began to creak and give. A section of the shale broke loose from the wall and crashed down over the ruined automobile, rained on the Mustang, clattered at the feet of the gorilla who stood against the far wall, above the, wreck. Then the big car twisted sideways, its roof coming around flat against the shale wall across the road. The driver of the Mustang pulled his car through the opening, badly scraping the whole length of his side against the rock. He stopped where he was supposed to, opened his door and got out.

  "Come back up here," Tucker said. He hadn't been sure that the Dodge would move, but now he showed no surprise. Tucker was never surprised. It would have damaged his reputation if he had been.