Boobytrap

19

For a little time it was like rushing through a nightmare wood, blind and stumbling. If the eucalypti hadn’t been widely spaced I might have done myself some damage; as it was, I managed by luck and intuitive radar to get to where I could make out the shapes of the fallen tree and the car beyond it with only a couple of trip-and-staggers and no falls. Haste was imperative, the only thing on my mind.

My feet got tangled in some strips of peeled bark as I climbed over the downed tree; I kicked loose, doglike, and lurched to the car. I slid under the wheel, tossing the binoculars onto the backseat. The keys dangled from the ignition where I’d left them. I got the engine going and the car moving within a few seconds, making a conscious effort not to jazz the throttle and surge ahead too fast. The machine rocked and bounced in the ruts and then I was out onto the road, angled straight across, blocking it about twenty yards from the curve. There was still room to get around on both sides, but not without easing off slow onto rough ground.

I jammed on the parking brake, shut off the motor and pulled the key out and flipped the trunk release. When I was free of the car, I could hear him coming, a low rumble just distinguishable above the cry of the wind and the beat of the surf. Close but not too close yet; driving fast enough from the sound of it. I ran back and leaned into the trunk and pawed in the carton in the back corner and dragged out one of the pairs of emergency handcuffs I keep in there. Stuffed them into my pocket, banged the lid down.

The Toyota’s headlights were visible on the blacktop now, laying down a whitish sheen that extended to the fence posts and lengths of wire separating the road’s edge from the pumpkin field.

I ran away from the car, back toward the trees so the Toyota’s lights wouldn’t pick me out when Latimer made the turn. Something on the .38 snagged in my pocket as I tried to free the weapon; I cursed and yanked hard, heard the faint ripping of cloth as it tore loose. Then it was out and tight in my fingers and I was in a half crouch in the grass and shadows a few yards off the road, a dozen yards from my car.

The engine whine grew louder; the headlamp beams began their sweep as he drove into the curve. The instant I saw the Toyota’s nose I knew he wouldn’t be able to stop in time straight on. I was up and already starting forward when the lights threw the shape of my car into bright relief.

Latimer stood on the brakes, cramping the wheel to the left to protect his side from impact — the instinctive reaction I’d counted on. Tires and stressed brake linings screeched; the station wagon slid sideways into my car in a three-quarters broadside. Not hard enough to raise much noise or do much damage to either one, but with sufficient force to stall the Toyota’s engine, knock something off one or the other’s body. There was a metallic clatter on the pavement as I ran up on Latimer’s side with the gun extended. The driver’s door wasn’t locked. I yanked it open with my left hand, my mouth coming open at the same time to yell at him to freeze where he sat.

He should’ve been confused, if not stunned or hurt; I should’ve been able to get him under the gun and keep him there. But it didn’t work that way. He was already moving when I opened the door, lunging straight up at me, his face twisted and shining masklike in the dome light. I did not have enough time to set myself or to pull the .38 back out of the way; he plowed into me and one hand struck my arm above the wrist, dislodged the piece and sent it flying. He wedged his shoulder into my sternum, wrapped his arms around my body, and drove me backward and then down under his weight.

If he’d been bigger, if I had landed on the blacktop, it might have been over then and there — for me. The back of my head banged into the ground, but it was mostly thick grass there on the verge, and that cushioned the impact. Still, my vision went out of whack; light and dark images danced and collided and swam apart. He was still on top of me, spitting and snarling in my face, one of his hands groping for my crotch. I bucked him off. But he was back before I could roll over and lever myself up into some kind of fighting position. Pinning me down with torso and legs, swinging with both hands.

Even flat on my back I was able to fend off most of the blows. You can’t get much leverage or power behind a punch at close quarters. But I still couldn’t see very well; he was just a dark blur in front of my face. I blocked two more swings, but the one after that got through and slammed into my Adam’s apple. Pain erupted; I thought in that first instant that he’d crushed something in there. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t move my head.

His big mistake was in not following up, because in those first few seconds after the blow landed I was pretty much helpless. Only he didn’t know that, didn’t realize where or how hard he’d hit me, and in the darkness and sweaty heat of battle he couldn’t see me pawing at my throat. All he knew was that I was flopping around, kicking my legs, and that I was bigger and stronger than him, even if he did have fifteen years on me; he wanted no more of this kind of give-and-take. The punches stopped coming. He was off me then, and through the blood-pound in my ears I could hear him scrambling away, then beating frantically at something nearby.

The fence. Trying to get over the fence.

I rolled over, shoved onto my knees. My vision was no longer cockeyed, but ghosts kept fluttering at the edges and I was trying to look through them and through a haze of sweat; it took a few seconds to get a bead on Latimer. He was over the fence by then, stumbling off among the pumpkin vines. Ex-military man, ex-con, vicious murderer — fleeing across a pumpkin field like a frightened rabbit.

It took two tries to get on my feet. I could breathe all right through my nose, but my throat was on fire; pain pulsed up into my skull with the first step I took, kept on pulsing in harsher surges as I staggered to the fence. I could not climb the thing — my body wouldn’t respond that way. Latimer had bent the fence inward making his climb, so I went through it at the same point, bending wire and uprooting posts, knocking it flat the way a tractor or a tank would. Ahead, Latimer was looking back and he saw me coming; it must have been a hell of a fearful sight because he tripped in his haste and fell and then scuttled like a crab before he was able to regain his feet.

The field was mostly plowed earth and vines and developing fruit. The going wasn’t too bad as long as you stayed in between the rows. I had a head of steam up, and when Latimer stopped and then bent and groped along the ground for something to use as a weapon, I knew I had him. Panic had taken him over, and panic loses a two-man confrontation — most other confrontations — nearly every time.

He came up with a rock or dirt clod, flung it at me as I barreled in on him. It missed wide, but I would not have slowed unless it had struck me square in the face; I didn’t even turn my head aside.

That was the last straw for Latimer. He broke and ran again, this time in a veer toward the bluffs, as if his terror was driving him to seek escape by a plunge into the sea.

I caught him before he’d gone another twenty yards.

The rest of it was anticlimactic. He threw obscenities along with a few punches, but fighting with your hands and your mouth at the same time is a loser’s game. I hit him twice in the face and once over the heart, and the heart shot put him down on all fours. He crawled around in a confused way, like a wounded animal, until I put a foot in the middle of his back and flattened him. Then he quit moving and just lay there, sucking air in gasps louder than mine, while I straddled him and hauled out the handcuffs and snapped them over his wrists.

The next few seconds were lost time, a blackout period induced by intense stress and its sudden release. When I came out of it, I was on my feet and dragging Latimer back toward the fence, one hand bunched in the material of his jacket. We were almost there before I grew aware of the headlights fast approaching on Bluffside Drive.

Dixon, I thought. Better be. I’m in no shape to deal with strangers.

It was Dixon. Whatever he was driving bucked to a halt with the headlights shining close on my car and the Toyota. Not that he had any other choice; the way the impact had left the two machines jammed together, there was no room to drive around on either side. He came out in a hurry. He must’ve seen me — I was at the fence by then, the section of it that I’d knocked down — but he went straight to the station wagon, leaned his body inside. Looking for his son. I’d have done the same thing if the boy were mine.

Once he’d convinced himself Chuck wasn’t there, he backed out and headed my way. I was half dragging, half lifting Latimer’s limp form over the wire when he reached us. He looked at me, looked at Latimer, and said in anguished tones, “What happened, what’s Latimer doing here? Where’s Chuck?”

I tried to tell him, but my voice box wouldn’t work; all that came out of the burning in my throat was a barely audible croak. I touched my Adam’s apple to let him know I was hurt and he nodded jerkily. Then I gestured at Latimer, semiconscious and groaning; gestured at the cars, saying mutely that Dixon should help me haul the prisoner over there.

He understood, all right, but the only thing on his mind was his son. He wagged his head, backed off a step. “The house… how far is the house?”

I got words out this time in a broken whisper. “Pat, listen to me…”

He wouldn’t have listened if I’d shouted at the top of my voice. He said, “I have to know if he’s all right,” and turned on his heel and ran for the road.

Shit!

I let go of Latimer, hopped free of the fence, and went after Dixon.

On the blacktop his stride faltered briefly as his head swiveled toward his car and the other two blocking it. Then, like a long distance runner shifting gears, his body bent forward and he was into an all-out sprint. He was in good condition, and he had long legs and the impetus of a father’s fear for his child; he began to pull away from me immediately. Even before he reached the straight stretch beyond the curve, he was eating up ground and widening the gap between us at an alarming rate.

At first I ran with one hand massaging my throat, in an effort to work off the paralysis so I could yell the right words to make him stop. But even if I’d been able to start my larynx functioning, I didn’t have the wind for forceful shouting; the suck-and-blow of my breathing was like noise in a wind tunnel. It took all I had left, as badly used and hurting as I was, to keep up the pursuit. Dixon had left me no choice. I had to get to him before he got to Chuck and it didn’t matter right then if I collapsed, maybe blew out something vital, in the effort.

More than likely I would have lost the race if he’d known which of the houses was Latimer’s. He’d opened up better than a fifty-yard lead by the time he neared the cinder block, but because the fourth house was also lighted and he couldn’t be sure which was the right one, he stayed on the road and skidded to a halt at the mailbox in front, just long enough to read the number. I was off the road by then, racing in a long diagonal for the porch. When he came charging along the path and up the porch steps, the distance between us had been chopped nearly in half. Even so, he had the door open and was bulling inside before I reached the strip of weedy front lawn.

Survival instinct shrieked at me to cut it off then and there. Urgency kept me pounding forward. I hit the bottom porch step, used the railing as a fulcrum to propel myself up the rest of the way and into the open doorway. Lights were on all through the interior, but Dixon was nowhere in sight. Then I heard him, in one of the rooms off a short hallway to my left. Involuntarily I ducked my head, hunched my shoulders — and plunged inside, into the hallway.

“Chuck, oh God, Chuckie, it’s Dad, I’m here now…”

Second room on the left. I stumbled to the doorway, and Dixon was down on his knees beside a saggy bed with an old metal frame. Chuck lay supine on the bare mattress, spread-eagled with his arms and legs tied tight to the frame, gagged and blindfolded with rags. Dixon reached out to him, crooning.

I got in there, wheezing and shaking from the exertion, and laid both hands on his shoulders and heaved him backward before he could touch the boy. He lost his balance and landed on his buttocks, yelling. “What’s the idea? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

I put myself between him and the bed, dragging in air with my mouth wide open, rubbing again at my aching throat. The first time I tried to talk, nothing happened. The second time, I was able to make words, cracked but with some force behind them. They felt bloody coming out, as if they’d torn skin off the walls of my esophagus.

“Bomb in here.”

“What!” He stared at me in confused disbelief.

“Chuck… the bed… wired somehow. Latimer boobytrapped him.”

It took a cautious look under and around the bed to convince Dixon. The explosive device was on the floor underneath, packed in a cardboard carton with wires coming out of the far side and snaking, tight with tape, along the bed frame and along Chuck’s left arm to the rope that bound his wrist. Cut or pull on those wires and father and son — and me along with them — would’ve been torn apart by whatever Latimer had put into the carton. Judging from the size of the carton, there was enough black powder and frag in there to blow up the entire house.

“The dirty son of a bitch,” Dixon said. He was trembling like a man with palsy. “I ought to go back and kill him for this. I mean it, I ought to blow his miserable fucking head off.”

But it was just talk, an expression of the most intense kind of hatred one man can feel for another. He had himself more or less under control and I would not have to go chasing after him again. I left him with Chuck, found the phone in the kitchen and called the SFPD. My voice had come back strongly enough so that I had no difficulty explaining to the night chief of inspectors what we had here. He said he’d get the bomb unit out the fastest way possible, and that he’d take care of notifying the local authorities.

I went to tell this to Dixon, but he was kneeling again beside the bed with his head bowed in an attitude of prayer. He hadn’t touched the boy in any way, but he must have talked to him, let him know everything was going to be all right: Chuck lay relaxed now, waiting, secure in the presence of his father. I went away quietly, without saying anything to either of them.

The long walk back up the road left me weak-legged and shambling a little. I’d been running on reserves for some time now and the tank was almost empty. Latimer wasn’t where I’d left him, but he hadn’t gone far; I spotted him in the pumpkin field again, crawling along crab wise on his belly between two of the rows. He was in much worse shape than I was, still dazed and disoriented, mewling words to himself. I could make out some of what he was mumbling, and it was mostly gibberish dominated by phrases like “make them pay” and “blow him sky high” and “boom boom big boom.”

Wrong, Latimer, I thought. This is the way it ends for you.

Not with a boom but a whimper.