Man on a Leash

11

He’d long since lost all track of time, but Romstead guessed they’d been off pavement for more than an hour now. They must be approaching the pickup area from the back. The road was rough, with a great many turns, and they were driving fast, bouncing and swaying while dust filtered into the vehicle, whatever it was, and rocks and gravel clattered against the undercarriage. The heat was stifling, very near to unbearable. He was blindfolded and gagged, his hands cuffed behind him, and his ankles were bound with rope. Paulette Carmody was beside him. They were lying on a mattress in what he believed was the bed of a pickup truck with a steel or aluminum cover. He had raised his feet when he was first shoved in, hours ago, and had felt the cover above them, too low to be the roof of a panel truck. A panel would be conspicuous out here, anyway, where everybody had a pickup.

They hadn’t used the sedative drugs this time, he supposed, because there could be no certainty he’d regain consciousness in time. They were efficient, all right; he had to admit that in spite of the rage and the desire to get his hands on Kessler and kill him. Sometime later today it would be seventy-two hours since they’d been kidnapped, and not once had he seen one of the four of them as anything but a shadowy figure in a black hood; he couldn’t describe any of their vehicles, the exterior of either of the buildings, or even the interior except for one room that would be completely done over after the thing was pulled off.

He wondered at these precautions, since it was certain they’d be killed anyway for knowing Kessler’s identity. More embroidery? A flair for drama? Or did they think he was stupid enough to be lulled by all this window dressing into an idiot’s belief that they would be turned loose afterward? No, he decided, it was more likely the others had insisted on it in case he should escape, as impossible as that might be. He didn’t know any of them, though he had a hunch that Top Kick might be the Delevan that Murdock had mentioned, the corrupt private detective who’d done a stretch in San Quentin for extortion.

They were slowing. The vehicle came almost to a stop, turned, and began to crawl, swaying and lurching over uneven ground as though they had left the road. This continued for a minute or two, and then they stopped. The noise of the motor ceased. He heard a door slam on another car nearby. They must be there. One of them had driven the deadly two-door sedan, and this was their rendezvous point. He heard the driver of their vehicle get out and then the sound of voices, though he could make out nothing that was said. Then the tailgate of the pickup was dropped, and he heard the door being opened.

“We’re here.” It was Top Kick’s voice. “All out.”

He heard Paulette being helped out; then they were hauling on his legs. He managed to get his feet on the ground and stand, swaying awkwardly and stretching cramped muscles after the hours of constriction. He could feel the sun beating on his head now as it had on the metal cover over them.

“Pit stop,” Top Kick said. “You’re going to be in that car quite awhile. This way, Mrs. Carmody; nobody’ll watch.”

“You’re shore you don’t need no help?” Tex asked. He’d be my second choice, Romstead thought, after Kessler. Just five minutes alone in a locked room.

“Get on with those antennas,” Top Kick ordered. “We haven’t got all day.” So they’d removed them for the trip. Smart. Anybody might notice a car with two whip antennas.

Two pairs of footsteps went away and one came back. The bonds about his ankles were loosened so he could hobble. “Cover him while I unlock the cuffs,” Top Kick said. The handcuffs were removed and then replaced with his hands in front.

“Okay, Mrs. Carmody?” Top Kick called.

“Yes,” she replied from somewhere off to his left. They had removed her gag. Her voice was strained, and he could sense the shakiness under it. She was fighting hard to keep from breaking. “Keep him covered,” Top Kick said, and went to get her. They came back. Top Kick took him by the arm and guided him off to one side. The ground was rocky and uneven. “Fire at will, Romstead. She’s still blindfolded anyway.”

He urinated. Top Kick led him back, shuffling in his hobbles. He heard the rattle of tools against metal over to his right. Then in a minute Tex said, “Okay, the ears is on. You can do yore’s, an’ welcome to the mother-lovers.”

“Right. Watch him.”

He heard the door of the car being opened. In back of him, Tex said, “ ‘Member how he said, y’heah? Watch that relay when you turn the radio on. Be sure it pulls over an’ holds tight as a bull’s ass in flytime before you start wirin’ them caps.”

“I know how to do it,” Top Kick’s voice said from inside the car.

“I shore as hell hope you do, ole buddy, ‘cause we’d all go with you. Be hamburger for miles around.”

Romstead realized then that Paulette was right beside him. A hand groped along his arm and slid down it to his. Hers was trembling. He squeezed it. You did what you could. It wasn’t much.

“All right, the baby’s born,” Top Kick said. “Put her in.”

She was whispering, very softly, against his ear. “I won’t—I won’t break down—in front of—these goddamned animals. . . .” Then she was being led away. In a moment that car door slammed.

The shotgun prodded his back, and somebody had hold of his arm. He was led forward and stopped, and he could feel the car against his right arm. Somebody was untying his ankles. “In you go,” Top Kick said. He slid in on the seat. The door closed. The handcuffs were unlocked then, and one was resnapped about his left wrist. He heard the rattle of chain, and then the sound of the rod’s being fed through the hole in the left door. It pushed past his stomach and went on. There was the rattle of nuts and washers and then a little pop when the thin sheet metal of the door buckled slightly under the pressure of the tightening nuts as wrenches were applied. “That’s good,” Top Kick said.

Fingers worked at the knot at the back of his neck, and the gag was removed. His jaws ached, and his mouth was dry as he worked the tight ball of cloth out of his mouth.

“Leave the blindfolds on until I tell you,” Top Kick said beside him. Then, apparently to Tex, “All right, take it away.”

Romstead heard the other vehicle start up and move off, going toward their rear. In a minute it apparently stopped, for he could hear the idling motor some distance away but no longer fading.

“All right, remember what he told you,” Top Kick said. “You’re out of sight of the road here, so you won’t be able to see it either. It’s off to your right, just the other side of this hill. Brooks won’t know where you are, but he’ll be watching his odometer and when the specified mileage turns up, he honks his horn, twice, as he goes by here, if there’s nobody else in sight, ahead or behind. When you hear him, start up, go on around the end of the hill, and you’ll be on the road with him ahead of you. He’ll see you in the mirror, and after a mile he’ll pull off the road twenty or thirty feet to the right and stop. You go on by, and he’ll fall in and follow you a quarter mile behind. Check your odometer here. At five point three miles from this point you stop. Brooks has instructions to stop a hundred yards behind you. You’ll both be in the field of a telescope, and a hand will be on the switch of that transmitter that’s keeping you from blowing up, so remember it.

“He walks forward with the two suitcases, puts them in that steel box in the trunk, and latches it. If he takes one more step, up the side of the car toward you, the whole thing goes up. If he tries to pass you a gun or a tool of some kind, she blows. He’s been told all that already. So he goes back to his pickup, turns around, and heads back to the highway. It’ll be hours before he gets there; that’s been explained to you—the rock slide. He’ll have to walk most of the way.

“The rest of it’s marked on your map, the turns you make and the distances. We’ll pick you up and disarm the thing before you go out of transmitter range. It’ll be dark very shortly after then, and we’ll be out of the country in a different set of vehicles before they even find out what direction we went. Okay?”

“If you could call it that,” Romstead said.

“So you can take off the blindfolds when I sing out. Then just wait.” Footsteps receded. Sing out, Romstead thought. Ex-seaman. So far, that was the only slip Top Kick had made.

“Okay,” Top Kick called, some distance behind them. At the same moment a car door slammed, and he heard the other vehicle accelerate in low gear, going away. He yanked off the blindfold, winced at the sudden glare, and craned to look back. The vehicle was already out of sight around the curve of the hill, but he could still hear it. It had apparently turned when it came out on the road, for it seemed to be fading away in the same direction they were headed.

He looked around then. Paulette Carmody had put her head down and pulled off her blindfold with her manacled hands; but her eyes were still closed, and he could see tears on the curve of her cheek. Her hair was in disarray from removing the cloth. He reached over with his free right hand and did his awkward best to smooth it back in place. He squeezed her shoulder then and could feel her trembling.

“Thank you, Eric.” Her head was still lowered. She sobbed once and went on shakily, “I—I’m so ashamed—”

“Of what? You didn’t break.”

“B-but I almost did. You’ll never know how close it was. I ha-have to tell you. I wanted to throw myself on the ground and grab them by the legs and b-beg them to send you alone. Kill you—save me. Oh, Christ—”

“Well, you didn’t, kid, and that’s where they start from when they give out the medals. Wanting to but not doing it.” He felt like a sadist for not telling her there was a faint ray of hope even yet because it was Carroll Brooks who was bringing the money, but it was too soon to begin the charade. He glanced at his watch. It was three fifteen. Far too soon. That great extemporizer with the chain-lightning mind wouldn’t even have reached Barstow yet, and it would wreck everything if he said a word before they were irretrievably committed to the delivery. They’d call it off, and they’d have to go through the whole thing again somewhere else with another man bringing the money. And they wouldn’t be beyond the point of no return until after Carroll had made the change of vehicles and recrossed the highway, headed north. He didn’t have the faintest idea when that would be because he didn’t know how far east of Barstow they were. They could be in Nevada for all he knew. He’d have to wait until Carroll went by here to be sure. It would only take a few words, anyway, to plant the doubt.

Maybe he could whisper it right against her ear. No. Let it ride. He didn’t know how many bugging devices there were in the car, what kind they were, or how sensitive. And it was only the slimmest of hopes anyway. Maybe it would be even crueler to mention it.

Her hands were tightly clasped together. She took a deep, shaky breath and said, “It was different back in the room. It was unreal—it wasn’t actually going to happen—and now it has.” She shook her still-lowered head. “I’m almost afraid to breathe.”

“No. Forget that,” he said—with more confidence than he felt. “It’s set up for electrical detonation and won’t go off unless he does it.” He saw they’d brought her purse. It was on the seat between them. He fumbled it open with his right hand and brought out the cigarettes. Shaking one out, he located her lighter, fired it up, and held it between her lips. She puffed and inhaled deeply. If she had anything to do, he thought, it would help.

“You’re in charge of reading the odometer,” he said. “Check it now and add five point three so you can watch it and tell me when it’s coming up.”

“Right.” She took another puff of the cigarette, and when he removed it, she lowered her face and tried to wipe the tears from her cheek by dabbing it against her sleeve. He transferred the cigarette to his other hand and found a tissue in her purse. When he blotted at them, she smiled wanly. “You know, I think you are a gentle man. Maybe I won’t tell your girl to get the hell out before it’s too late.”

He made no reply. He was studying the desolate and sun-blasted country around them, trying to guess where Kessler would be. Judging from the time and the shadows of the few cacti around them, they must be facing approximately north. They seemed to be on the floor of an immense valley, perfectly flat except for an occasional small hill or rocky ridge and, a few miles farther west, three higher hills shaped like truncated cones. He could be on one of those, he thought; he’d want to be as high as possible, but still not on anything isolated and conspicuous. He turned to look back. It was rougher there, in the distance, at least, a naked badland of much higher ridges and towering buttes, but that might be on the other side of the highway. Ahead of them, at a distance he guessed must be ten miles or so, the country began to rise again and break up into a lunar landscape of desolate ridges and canyons.

He could see nothing to the right because of the hill behind which they were concealed. He leaned down to look up through the window and saw it wasn’t much more than a stony hummock some twenty feet high and perhaps a hundred yards long dotted with big boulders and here and there a cactus struggling for survival in the flinty ground.

He wondered if the other side might be where the charge was placed to drop a rock slide in front of Carroll’s car so he’d have to walk back to the highway, as Kessler had said. The terrain here, however, was so flat he could drive around it, so it must be farther back. His thoughts broke off then. A car was coming. It couldn’t be this soon, could it? No, it was approaching from the north. Well, even in this Godforsaken place there must be a little traffic on the roads. It went on by, traveling fast.

They waited. It was 4 P.M ... 4:30. The sun beat down. Heat waves shimmered above the desert floor, distorting everything in the distance. He looked around and saw Paulette had her eyes closed, her lower lip clenched between her teeth, silently crying. He put a hand on her arm and squeezed. She nodded thank you but didn’t trust herself to try to speak.

It was five. A quarter of six.

They heard him coming.

* * *

It had to be. The car was coming up from the south. As it approached at moderate speed, he was conscious that he was holding his breath. It was going past now on the other side of the hummock. Still going. Maybe they’d called it off— Then it came, two short blasts of the horn. He exhaled softly as he hit the ignition switch and started up, automatically checking the odometer again as he’d already done a half dozen times before. It would read 87.7 at the stopping point.

The ground ahead was uneven and rock-strewn, and he eased forward at a crawl, feeling the tightness in his throat at every lurch and sway. It wasn’t the dynamite as such or even the detonating caps he was thinking of. They’d be cushioned. It was that relay. How strong was the current that was keeping it pulled over against the tension of its spring? Well, it would be cushioned, too, he thought.

They came around the end of the hummock and onto the road. It wasn’t even graded, just a track running north across the level floor of the desert. The old pickup truck was ahead, a little less than a quarter mile and going very slowly, waiting for him. As he closed the distance, it began to pick up a little. Now? he thought. No, wait’ll you pass and be absolutely sure it’s Carroll. And it’d be a lot more effective if he could get Paulette to give him a cue to lead into it. Coming on cold with it could have a very phony ring, and Kessler, whatever else he was, was no fool.

The pickup was pulling off now. It stopped a scant twenty feet from the road. Romstead slowed. The driver was hatless, and he’d taken off his sunglasses as he leaned out the window to wave, a man with prematurely gray hair and a lean, alert face stamped with a questing intelligence. During their college years Brooks had wanted to be an actor; his only drawback was an inability, or unwillingness, to learn lines, when it was so much more fun to make them up himself. Give him one cue, and he’d ad-lib the whole play. Romstead sighed.

He slowed a little as the pickup fell in behind them. They had only four miles now to the transfer point. The road ran straight ahead across absolutely flat terrain unbroken by any irregularity except for another low hummock or stony ridge far ahead. Kessler had chosen his spot well. With his telescope he could see for miles in any direction across a landscape where nothing could be concealed. They and the pickup were the only vehicles anywhere in the immensity of it. Three miles.

Okay, he thought; air time. He began to whistle “Sweet Georgia Brown,” drumming the beat on the wheel. Paulette Carmody raised her head and stared at him in horrified disbelief. He grinned and winked and cupped an ear in the listening gesture.

“My God, aren’t you even scared?” she asked.

“Relax,” he replied. He had no idea where the bug was, but it didn’t matter. He’d be heard. And of course, there’d be another in the trunk to monitor Brooks. “They’re not going to blow it while the money’s still in the pickup, that’s for sure. And I don’t think they’re going to blow it afterward either.”

She swallowed, and moistened her lips. He could see her wanting desperately to hope but not daring to. “What—what do you mean?”

“Intelligence slipup. Theirs is pretty good, but they didn’t go quite far enough. They investigated you, and Jerome Carmody, and me and my background, but they should have done just a little checking into Brookie’s background, too.”

Two point six to go. Her eyes were imploring. Her lips formed “Please,” but nothing came out. He went on. “That’s the reason I kept nudging him on with that bat sweat about its being impossible, that the FBI would find a way to ring in one of their men. I wanted him to insist on Brooks and get him. You see, Brookie and I used to be a team in an outfit that forgot more dirty tricks last week than Kessler’ll know in a lifetime—”

She nodded, and said in a small voice. “I thought so. The CIA.”

“You said it; I didn’t. Anyway, we operated in Central and South America because we’re both bilingual in Spanish and English. We’ve been through kidnappings before—from both sides of the fence, whether you agree with it or not. So I don’t think they’re going to blow this car. I know what I’d do if they had Brookie, and our minds always seemed to operate along the same lines. I would have told you before, but it had to wait till they were committed. They can’t call it off now, so they’re stuck with Brookie. Right, Kessler?”

It was less than two miles now. She had lowered her head again, and her hands were clenching and unclenching. He looked back. Carroll was hanging a steady quarter mile behind. The road, if you could call it that, ran straight on with nothing to break the monotony of the desert floor except the low stony ridge coming up on their right. The seeds of doubt should be planted now, they had a few minutes to germinate, and now it would all depend on Carroll. He reached out a hand and squeezed Paulette’s arm. She raised her head, tried to force a semblance of a smile, and checked the odometer again. He glanced at it. It read 86.8. Nine-tenths to go.

He looked off to the left toward the three hills that resembled truncated cones. One of those was bound to be where Kessler was. There was no real elevation anywhere off to the right, and anyway that hummock or ridge was coming up on that side not more than two hundred yards off the road—

Panic hit him then for an instant, along with a surge of guilt and rage at his own stupidity. Maybe it was already too late, and he’d killed the friend behind him. He’d been so intent on the other thing he’d missed it entirely. He’d blown it. The odometer read 87.1, and the .1 was already past the center and moving up. He cut the throttle and rode the brake. It would look like a crash stop to them, so he said, “Damn! Almost overran it.”

Paulette Carmody jerked her head around and was opening her mouth to speak when he got a finger to his lips and gave a violent shake of the head. He looked at the odometer again as they came to a full stop, and then at the nearest point on the ridge. Call it nine hundred yards. Maybe he’d saved it. Just maybe. The rifle would be sighted in for two hundred, and changing the elevation on the scope was guesswork without a few rounds to check it, but the man, whichever one he was, was plenty good. He’d seen some of his work.

How in hell could he have fallen for that rock-slide story? He’d heard the car go off toward the north, hadn’t he, and then a little later another car go by them headed south? Kessler couldn’t keep that communications frequency jammed for very long at a time or the FBI would use their direction finders to zero in on his jamming transmitter, and anyway they had to keep Carroll from getting back to the highway for longer than any hour or two. He should have seen all that, but he’d been too wrapped up in some way to save his own neck.

He looked back through the settling dust of their passage. The pickup was stopped a hundred yards behind them, and Carroll Brooks was getting out.

Pal, he thought, this could be the biggest role you ever played; just pick up your cues and ad-lib the hell out of it.