Trap Angel (Frank Angel Western #3) (10 page)

‘Well, well, well,’
Denniston said.

You had to hand it to him,
Angel thought. He didn’t blow his cool at all — just a slight rise
of the eyebrows and even, perhaps, a hint of a smile at the corners
of the patrician mouth.

It was the kid, Jackson, who
reacted. He was on his feet in an instant, the chair going over
backwards away from him as he faced Angel across the table, his
hand poised over the tied-down gun. The tableau froze: nobody
moved.

‘All right, you treacherous
bastard! ’ snapped the kid. ‘You said you could use your gun. Let’s
see you do it!’

Angel looked at Denniston,
who returned his gaze blandly. Frank Angel shrugged and cocked the
gun he was holding beneath the table. The kid heard it and his face
went white.

‘That’s right,’ Angel told
him.

He let them all think about
it for a moment, then spoke again. ‘The gun I’m holding under the
table is loaded with soft-nosed bullets, and each one of them has a
cross cut into it,’ he lied.

‘I hope I don’t need to give
you a detailed description of what would happen to any of your
bellies if I were to cut loose with it.’

He let them think about
that, his own mind racing. Getting the drop on the men in this room
was one thing. Getting out of the building and then out of the
compound was something else again. It might have been that some of
this showed on his face, for Denniston smiled and spoke, laying his
hands flat on the table and leaning forward carefully, so as not to
precipitate violence.

‘Put the gun on the table,
Mr. Angel,’ he said. ‘There is no way you can get out of here
alive.’

‘He’s telling you the truth,
bach,’ the man on Angel’s left said.

‘Sure,’ Angel replied. He
got up and pushed his own chair back, his eyes watching all of them
for any sudden move. But with the exception of the kid, who still
stood looking as if he would like to go for his gun, the men around
the table looked relaxed — as though they had no wish or need to
try to prevent his escape.

‘Listen to me, Angel,’
Denniston said. ‘Just listen.’

‘Talk away,’ Angel said. He
eased over to the window, taking in the layout of the compound,
adding what he could see to the mental map he had drawn on his
first arrival. He knew without looking that there were buildings on
each side of the one he was in: Quarters for the ‘officers’ of
Denniston’s ‘army’. He was facing north: the gate and its bridged
ditch lay straight ahead. Off to the right was a stone building,
the south wall of which was sandbagged and reinforced with timber
to take the impact of the bullets fired at the targets standing
before it — the rifle range. On the western side of the compound
stood six barracks and in the far north-western corner he knew
there was a high wire-mesh compound that housed patrol flogs —
Alsatians, he had guessed. All this he took in swiftly, his gaze
checking off the number of men in the square outside, the distance
involved, the odds for and against the several plans that came into
his mind to be immediately discarded.

‘If you should get across
the parade ground to the gate — which is highly doubtful — you have
to cross the bridge. There are four guards on the bridge day and
night and two guards in each of the vedettes flanking the gate. Let
us suppose,’ Denniston droned relentlessly on, ‘you even managed
somehow to get past the guards and over the bridge, you would be in
no—man’s land. The trail you came in here on is the only way in or
out. If you step off it, you will be in no-man’s land. There are
trip wires linked to explosives buried everywhere out there, Angel.
There are man-traps hidden beneath soft sand, under bushes — they
would take the hoof off a horse and certainly cripple a man. Let us
suppose, however, that you neither hit a tripwire nor stumbled into
one of the traps, you would be alone in the wilderness, your wits
and your pistol all you would have to sustain you. I, however,
would send a hundred men out to find you, hunt you down, kill you.
The dogs in the compound are man killers. They can find you in land
where an Apache would lose a trail. There is no way out, Angel. Put
down your gun.’

‘Very convincing,’ Angel
said. ‘I almost believe you.’

Denniston threw up his hands
in a gesture of near—disgust. ‘I thought you were an intelligent
man, Angel,’ he said. ‘Instead, I see that you’re a fool. Very
well, I wash my hands of you.’

Angel raised the window. It
moved easily on its sash cords. When it was open about three feet,
he bent in one smooth movement and stepped on to the ramada outside
the building. As he did Ray Adam stood up and in the same moment
flipped the gun he had drawn beneath the table level, easing back
the hammer and letting fly as Angel stepped swiftly to one side,
moving fast across the face of the building and down the alley
between it and the officers’ quarters adjacent, running flat out as
he heard shouts and the sound of running feet crunching on the
gravel of the parade ground. Ahead of him reared the high wire
fence.

It looked enormous,
unscalable, but he thrust the pistol into his holster and ran at
the fence, using the vaulting-horse technique they had taught him
in the gymnasium in Washington. His left hand acted as a pivot,
gripping the wire about his own shoulder height, hurling his body
flat on to the wire, and arcing on the pivot of the hand like
someone vaulting a stile, the powerful surge of run and whipcorded
muscle taking his right leg across the top strand of the wire, the
jagged ends tearing into his skin as he switched his weight over
and then dropped down to the far side. Men came skidding around the
corner of the building and saw him. He heard one of them shout
something and threw a shot towards them, the slug aimed high to
make them hunt cover rather than to kill. They dived to both sides
of the alley, getting as near to the walls of the buildings as they
could.

‘Come back!’ he heard
someone shout. ‘Come back!’

He threw another shot at the
sound just for luck and then turned and hunted cover down the steep
side of a low shelf that overhung a thin wash perhaps fifteen yards
from the wire. He whirled sharp left, moving up the wash towards
the west, where the peaked edges of the divide above Kiowa reared
sharp against the sky. He was thinking about the climb up there
when he hit the tripwire and the world blew up in his
face.

Angel surveyed his
prison.

It was a square stone room,
with a barred window: set high on the wall opposite his
bed.

There was a table with a tin
washbowl on it, a chair. Into the right hand wall was set a massive
wood door with a judas window. He could hear the sounds of men
marching on the parade ground outside. He eased his position in the
bed and winced. Every muscle of his body ached. He felt as if he
had been stepped on by some gigantic monster. His hands were
bandaged. He had no mirror so did not know that his face was
lacerated and that most of his body was one solid
bruise.

They had come out and
carried him in unconscious, every shred of his clothing tattered
and ripped by the flat hard force of the explosion that had been
set off when he hit the tripwire. He grimaced, and tried to sit up.
The world swam and he fell back on the cot, panting. Great, he
thought.

After a while he tried
again. This time the dizziness was not so bad and he was able to
sit up and then swing his legs down to the floor. He was sweating
as if he had lifted heavy loads for an hour. No good. He wasn’t in
any condition to go anywhere yet. He went across and dragged the
chair towards the wall, standing on it to look out of the window.
There seemed to be a lot of activity outside. The men were being
assembled, horses being led across the parade ground, orders
shouted. He heard footsteps. in the passageway outside the door of
his cell and stepped down quickly from the chair, putting it back
beside the table and sitting down. The judas window slid aside and
he saw someone look in.

Then keys ratted in the
lock. The door swung inwards and Denniston stepped into the
room.

‘Well, Mr. Angel,’ he said.
‘I see you’re up and about.’

The prisoner said nothing.
He just looked at Denniston expressionlessly.

‘Well,’ Denniston said,
unabashed by the silence, ‘I thought I would bid you farewell. I’m
afraid I shall not be able to witness your execution.’

‘You’re breaking my heart,’
Angel said. ‘What execution is this?’

‘Tomorrow, at sunrise,’ he
was told, ‘you will be taken from here and shot. I have no further
use for you. It is mere chance that you were not killed in your
foolish escape bid. Since, however, you were not, then we shall
execute you according to military procedure.’

Angel sneered, letting the
contempt he felt for this nonsense show on his face. He desperately
wanted to put Denniston off-balance, jar the man into
self-exposure. But Denniston wasn’t having any.

‘Think what you like,’ he
said. ‘You’ll be shot anyway.’

‘First Wells, now me,’ Angel
said. ‘You think you can take on the entire United States
Department of Justice?’

Denniston threw back his
head and laughed, and for the first time Angel caught the note of
incipient madness in it.

‘You stupid fool!’ Denniston
snapped. ‘You have no conception of the size of my
plans!’

‘Tell me, then,’ Angel said
softly. ‘What exactly are your plans?’

Denniston looked at his
prisoner for a long moment and then nodded, as if coming to a
decision.

‘I suppose you ought to have
some recompense for dying so young,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I shall tell
you.’ His burning eyes fastened on Angel’s, there was a haunted
look far back in them.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘were
you in the War?’

‘In a way,’ Angel
said.

‘But not the
Army?’

‘No. Not the
Army.’

‘Ah,’ said Denniston, as if
that explained everything. ‘Then you have never seen a man being
drummed out of camp?’

Angel shook his head. ‘That
what they did to you?’

The burning eyes widened a
fraction, and then a wicked smile touched Denniston’s
lips.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said softly.
‘You’d know about that, of course. The knowledge seals my intent
more strongly than ever, now you have to die, Angel.’

‘We all have to die,’ Angel
said. ‘Even you, Denniston.’

The man shook his head, the
evil smile lingering at the corners of his thin lips.

‘I have been dead for many
years,’ he said. ‘Many years. Let me tell you about how I died,
Angel. It was not the physical death that all men seem to fear, oh,
no. It was the death of the spirit that is more cruel, more
agonizing than any wound inflicted by bullet or knife. The death of
the spirit,’ he repeated. His eyes were vacant, as if his thoughts
were far away. ‘You see, what they do if you show you are afraid in
battle is so obscene, so vile, that you can hardly understand what
is happening to you. They assemble all the officers, and strip your
uniform off you, button by button, badge by badge. They snap your
sword. They revile you openly, disavow you publicly. Then four
soldiers with fixed bayonets are placed behind you as guards and
they march you through the camp, the fifes and drums playing. The
fifes and drums playing.’ He faltered, hearing in his mind the
drone of the ‘Rogue’s March’ and feeling the rough poking pricks of
the bayonets in the hands of the jeering soldiers, stumbling across
the camp ground with his eyes blind with tears, every man in the
entire regiment hooting, jeering, cursing.

‘The fifes and drums?’ Angel
said softly.

‘Uh?’ Denniston’s head
snapped up. ‘Oh. Yes. No matter. I prefer not to discuss it
further. Let us simply say that I could never, ever forgive the men
who disgraced me that day. The man who above all others was
responsible for treating me — me, who had ,fought with honor a
dozen major battles, more — like a slinking cur. I was drummed out,
Mister Angel. Drummed out. A West Pointer. Do you know what kind of
death that is?’

Angel shook his head. The
kind of pride the military had was one he had never attempted to
understand. It had to do with passing examinations and family
connections and knowing the right people and never getting your
copybook blotted and seemed anyway like a hell of a way for a man
to spend his life. He said none of this, however.

‘Now I have my own army,’
Denniston said. ‘Trained men. You have seen the results of their
training.’

‘The raids on the Army
posts,’ Angel said. ‘The ambush of the wagon train? You could have
used renegade Apaches and got the same result. Trained men only
kill when they have to, not gratuitously like mad dogs.’

‘No, no,’ Denniston held up
his hand in remonstrance. ‘No, they killed those men under my
orders. It was imperative that no one who had seen us, no one who
threatened our eventual mission was to be allowed to live. That is
why your colleague was killed. Why you will be killed. Why anyone
who stands in my way will be killed.’

His voice had risen
slightly, and he was breathing faster, as if angered by his own
words, moved by a sort of self-hypnotism.