Bitter Recoil

Chapter 23

When I realized the ghost off to my left was Robert Arajanian and not Deputy Paul Garcia, I took an involuntary step forward.

The object in his right hand wasn’t a flashlight. He held the heavy automatic pistol with its muzzle pointing up. I could see the bulbous silencer.

Maybe Arajanian had deliberately chosen the young deputy as his first target. Garcia was carrying the shotgun and would appear to pose the most obvious threat. Maybe Arajanian had been padding along behind us, just keeping tabs. I had my answer soon enough.

When he knew I’d seen him, Arajanian twisted at the waist. The silenced automatic pistol swung toward me. I didn’t have time to shout at him or plead or reason.

Arajanian’s mistake was shooting at me. I was the least threat. I’d been on the planet long enough to be cautious…and that was coupled with reactions and physical abilities far from athletic. But my instincts were honed, even if the old body didn’t provide much backup.

The blond-haired killer wasn’t there to talk. I knew Arajanian was going to shoot before he pulled the trigger, and I threw myself sideways toward the nearest ponderosa. The bullet gouged pine and spat bark in my face.

The automatic didn’t make much noise…just a nasty little sneeze with some clattering as the slide jarred backward to fling out the empty case and ram another cartridge into the chamber. But in the silence of the pines Robert Arajanian might as well have fired a howitzer.

Deputy Paul Garcia’s nerves were wired. He was less than six months out of the academy, where instructors teach the rookies all the right moves. He was young and athletic.

Robert Arajanian wasn’t allowed a second mistake. Garcia crouched and pivoted in one fluid motion. One knee hit the ground as support even as the twelve-gauge came up. He had enough moonlight and a clear target. Arajanian’s arm was outstretched, the big automatic and its silencer flashing moonbeams. I scrambled for cover.

I heard the shotgun’s pump action only as an extension of the explosion. The muzzle flash of the big gun lit up the hillside. Instinctively I ducked my head. Off to the left I heard a thump as Arajanian’s pistol flew out of his hand, and then an awful gurgling and choking.

“Christ, no!” I gasped. My intake of breath was so violent I sucked pine duff and choked. I spat and panted for breath, at the same time trying to draw my own magnum. I lay motionless. Arajanian might not be alone, and I didn’t know which way to turn. To make matters worse, I knew Garcia’s finger was still tense on the trigger of the shotgun.

I moved my head a fraction. I could see only Arajanian’s legs from the knees down.

“Paul,” I said, keeping my voice low and even, “hold your fire. Nobody move.” I pulled myself up beside the pine trunk. Garcia was crouched thirty feet downhill.

Beyond, the tent was dark and quiet. Where the hell was Finn? I cursed eloquently. What a goddamn mess. Any hope of surprise was gone. But maybe the camp was empty. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I ducked and looked uphill, scanning the hillside. Nothing.

“Paul, are you all right?” I said quietly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Estelle, stay put,” I said, a little louder. I glanced over my shoulder at the spot where I’d last seen her. She hadn’t moved, but I could see moonlight glint on her service revolver.

“Paul,” I said, “hold position.”

“Yes, sir.” There was a little tremor in his voice, but he wasn’t going to do anything stupid.

I pulled the small flashlight out of my coat pocket. With the revolver in my right hand and the light held well away from my body with the other, I crouched and stepped toward Robert Arajanian.

My light caught the glint of the automatic, and I detoured cautiously to pick it up, then shove it into my belt. It was a heavy frame Beretta…no kid’s gun.

Arajanian lay on his back. His heart was still beating, but he’d stopped struggling and he’d stopped breathing.

The blast of double zero buckshot had hit him a terrible, slashing blow at the base of the throat. Even as I knelt with the light I saw the pulse subside in the torn left carotid artery. His left hand lifted, opened wide, and then slowly drifted down to rest lightly on his blood-soaked chest. His eyes stared up into the night.

The kid wasn’t going to give us any answers. That left H. T. Finn.

I straightened up. There was still no sign of life in the tent. Would the son of a bitch just let us walk into camp? Was he waiting in the musty darkness of the tent, weapon ready, with one hand clamped over Daisy’s mouth to stifle whimpers? Or was he waiting for us, hidden behind a black tree trunk, invisible and deadly?

I whispered a withering curse at my own overactive imagination. In all likelihood, Finn was long gone with Daisy pulled along for the ride.

I took a deep breath. I blinked the light at Estelle quickly, then held it so that it illuminated my own right hand. I beckoned her over, then turned the light off. I moved off to the side a little and waited.

Garcia hesitated, then crept slowly up the hill. He wasn’t in a hurry to see what he’d done. When he was within whispering distance, I reached out and touched his shoulder.

“You did the right thing,” I said. He stared down at Arajanian, then looked away. I could hear Estelle’s quick breathing.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

“Yes. It’s Arajanian.”

“Was he going to shoot?”

“He did shoot,” I whispered. “Once at me. That’s all he had time for.”

She looked downhill at the dark blob of the tent.

“I want you two to stay up here for a minute,” I said. “Arajanian knew we were coming…there’s no way of telling how long he was on our heels. Maybe all the way from the parking lot. But if he knew, then that means Finn does, too.”

Estelle shook her head. “Listen,” she said and her whisper was almost harsh. I couldn’t see her face under the brim of the Stetson, but I knew her black eyes were drilling mine. “If he’s down there, then there’s a better chance with the three of us. We stay spread out, just the way we were.”

Garcia’s whisper was filled with tension. “And the more Finn knows that he doesn’t have a chance, the better the odds are that he’ll give it up.”

I might have agreed with the deputy almost any other time. But Finn was no panic-stricken teenager cornered in an alley after hitting a convenience store. That sort of mentality I could understand. But Finn? He was an unknown.

I thought of another chilling possibility.

“Maybe Arajanian killed Finn,” I said.

“No,” Estelle said. “Arajanian did as he was told. I could see that. And nothing else makes sense.”

I hesitated. I wanted a plan without risk. There wasn’t one, except to wait until dawn and ring the place with troops. And then the only person who’d suffer would be Daisy…if she hadn’t suffered already. “We’re wasting time,” I muttered.

Estelle motioned Paul Garcia into position. In the moonlight I could see that his face was as pale as Arajanian’s. His forehead was shiny with sweat, but he clutched the shotgun at high port, trigger finger out of the guard. He’d be all right. We turned and started down through the trees.

The three of us were spooked…but probably still thinking we could control events if we were careful enough. We reached the bottom of the slope where it splayed out into the narrow swale. I held up my hand and we stopped. The tent was twenty feet in front of me, the entry flaps on the opposite side, facing downhill.

I listened, my head cocked slightly. Nothing. No wisp of smoke rose from the ashes in the stone fire circle. A slight breeze was stirring the tops of the ponderosas, a signal that dawn wasn’t many hours away. I turned and caught Paul Garcia’s eye. I pointed to a spot between me and the tent. He nodded. I moved slowly to the side, toward Estelle. I wanted her off to the side of the door flaps. If I angled in from the other side, that would give us the best coverage.

With infinite care and listening so hard my ears hurt, I circled the tent until I was looking directly at the front flap. Again, I stopped. The silence was so deep that the normal ringing of my ears was a scream of head-noise.

I narrowed my eyes as if that would help me see through the tightly woven nylon. Just about the time when I had decided the place was deserted, I heard the noise. It wasn’t a cry, nor a whimper. Just the faintest sniffle, like a person would make when his nose is tickling. Estelle heard it, too, because she immediately took a step toward the tent.

I held up my hand sharply, and she stopped. We waited, and after a minute Estelle shifted position restlessly. As if that motion were a signal, we heard the noise again. Someone was in the tent. And whoever it was hadn’t been as patient as we were.

Estelle Reyes made her decision before I had a chance to move. She took three quick steps to the tent. She held her flashlight to one side and jerked the tent flap, hard. A frightened whimper greeted her. And this time I recognized the voice as a child’s.

“It’s Daisy,” Estelle said, turning toward me so that I would hear.

I took a step forward. The first rifle shot came from behind me, so loud that it numbed like a dynamite blast. Paul Garcia’s shotgun pinwheeled through the air, hit the side of the tent, and bounced to the ground. If the deputy made a sound, I didn’t hear it. He disappeared behind the tent.

“Get down!” I shouted. Estelle was crouched in the doorway of the tent with nowhere to go. I was out in the open, without a target. I thumbed the hammer of my revolver back, turned, and saw motion downstream by the boulders. I snapped off a single shot and then tried to sprint off to the right to draw fire away from Estelle and the child.

My right ankle collapsed, and I staggered sideways, fighting for balance. The rifle blasted again, and this time I saw the flash out of the corner of my eye. Something tugged hard at the back of my vest. I fell awkwardly and lost my grip on the revolver. Three rapid shots cracked out from my left, and I heard one of the slugs from Estelle’s revolver ricochet off the boulder and whine into the timber like a demented insect.

I was looking at the rock when the rifle fired, and I saw the massive corona of muzzle blast. The front corner of the tent collapsed, and it took an awful eternity for me to realize that it had been Estelle Reyes’s body spinning into the rope and support rods that brought the tent down.