Whirlwind (18 page)

Glancing over his shoulder, he walked to the door and turned the knob. “Okay then, I’ll see you this evening. Tomorrow morning at the latest.”

Her eyes flashed and her jaw jutted. “You will never see me again!”

Charlie chuckled as he left the room. Of course he’d see her again. He knew where she was going. Hell, he even knew when she’d get there.

iV furnace on wheels, the black Dodge pickup sponged up the sun. Irina drove with the air conditioner on high, the vents aimed at her face. Mitch, she imagined, did the same.

She smiled at the recollection of that gentle cowboy calm brown eyes, and an aura of comfort that fit him as well as his Stetson. He does not doubt himself. Like Charlie, he is wholly self-confident. But Charlie wears his confidence like a badge. Mitch has no such need. It is inside him, and is part of his honor.

Both were men of virtue: Charlie the proud knight who flaunts his valor; Mitch a man without pretense; both so different, but neither so conceited as to believe himself.… never wrong. No matter what the facts, he could never admit that he had made a mistake. If he so much as mis added a column of numbers, the fault lay not in him but in the illegibility of another person’s handwriting, a broken gear in an adding machine, the distraction caused by a little girl at play.

Error was easily explained. Its name was Irina.

She would be happier, she thought, if she could be so cheerfully self-assured as Mitch or Charlie. If she did not always have to prove her mettle, if she could lose gracefully, she would be the better for it. But she was her father’s child. Like him, she could not blame herself. Like him, she must always blame another. Like him, she blamed… I blame my father for faults that are only my own.

Bad thoughts, and a bad time to be having them. Doubting herself was a luxury she could not afford.

Shaking herself from her reverie hypnotic introspection triggered by a highway too straight, a countryside too featureless she wondered what the outdoor temperature was.

One hundred degrees? More? She did not know, knew only that this desert was deadly, and without mercy.

The land bordering the interstate was lifeless pepper and salt. Only distant cliffs relieved its barren hostility; they, sharply lined in crystalline air, were paint pots of ochre, cinnamon, and arsenic green. As for the rest dusty sage, saguaro cactus in fractal cruciforms, strands of ropy vine with tiny dead leaves it was a reptile nation, enemy to all that was human.

Her truck shuddered as a sixteen-wheeler roared by her. She was driving at a steady seventy-five miles an hour; the trucker was rolling at more than ninety. On this, the fastest route west, speed limits were ignored by drivers whose instincts warned them not to linger in a land that did not welcome the presence of man.

The dashboard clock read ten minutes after noon 11:10 in the Mountain time zone. Remaining on this highway any longer was foolish. She’d encountered three roadblocks in as many hours lean state troopers in peaked hats and gabardine uniforms. One had waved her past. Two had stopped her. May I see your driver’s license, ma’am? Certainly. Says here your hair is blonde. It was, but I tired of it and let it grow back natural. You don’t sound like you’re from these parts. Utah; I am going home. Well, you drive safe, ma’am, you hear? Yes, officer; thank you, officer.

Now a hundred and fifty miles into New Mexico, she should leave the interstate. Back roads would be less closely patrolled, and should danger present itself, finding a hiding place would be easier.

Glancing at the map spread out on the seat beside her, she decided to take the next secondary road, a meandering route north, hill country with towns few and far between.

North. Yes, that made sense. Although she could not say why, her intuition told her that the northern part of the state would be safer than the south. I shall turn west again once I am past Gallup. After I cross the Arizona border, there is nothing but Navajo villages and empty roads. I will be safer there.

Her fuel gauge’s needle pointed to one-eighth. She’d need to fill the tank before driving into the deserted uplands.

A green sign marked an approaching intersection, State Highway 24, the road she planned to take. A gas pump icon was directly beneath the sign.

She slowed, flicked her turn signal, and exited. A small town clustered at the crossroads, nothing remarkable, wood-fronted and adobe buildings, a handful of shops, a fire station, a small church.

Whenever father was at sea, mother took her to church. Together they would kneel in cathedrals thick with incense. Illuminated by constellations of candles, they prayed beneath gilded icons, chanted ancient hymns, accepted sacraments from priests robed swan-white, gold-threaded patterns woven in their sleeves.

She’d been eleven when he found out. That was the only time she’d ever known him to strike her mother, a light slap really, more rebuke than punishment. Punishment was reserved for Irina.

She averted her eyes, and drove on.

The service station was directly to her right Arco: AM/PM Market.

She knew the chain small tidy stores stocked with comfort food, pre wrapped sandwiches, and cold drinks. She and Dominik had often bought provisions for their night watch at such places. Dominik… she’d always laughed as he gravely compared AM/PM fare to 7-Eleven to Subway, as though he were a critic for Gourmet magazine, and she would never smile at his solemn joking again.

Stopping the Dodge beside one of the pumps, she spoke aloud, although no one could hear her. “When my father salutes me, Dominik, it will be your victory too.”

Mitch had left a duck-billed hunting cap tucked behind the driver’s seat. She pulled it over her head, tucking her long hair out of sight. Entering the blissfully cool store, she handed the clerk one of Charlie’s hundred-dollar bills. “A hundred on number five,” she said, using America’s cryptic commercial shorthand.

The clerk, a bored teenager in a checkered shirt, whisked the bill through a counterfeit detector. “Pump number five” is all he said, and he said it like he’d spoken the words a million times before.

Outdoors again, she topped off her tank with ninety-two octane premium. It seemed only right to pamper Mitch’s truck. She thought he would approve. The pump chimed full.

Back in the store, she idled down an aisle looking at cans of Pringles, bags of Lay’s, packages of Oreos. A cooler filled the store’s entire back wall-rows of overstuffed sandwiches and bottled beverages barely visible through glass wet with condensation.

“Forty on pump six.”

Irina froze at a voice she’d heard before.

“You handle the gas. I’ll get us some rations.”

“Miller’s fine just as long as it ain’t lite.”

Her every nerve ending screamed.

“No beer during duty hours. Cobra would have our balls.”

Two of them, muscles rippling beneath white Tshirts, necks like oxen, steroid al stupidity in their eyes. The first to speak … he was the one… the one in the Hilton lobby who smirked, I say we make the bitch take it every way she can, and all at once. Three on one is always fun. “Here’s another twenty,” he grunted to the clerk, pulling a crisp bill from a white envelope. “Ring it up to cover the chow.”

The clerk slid the bill into the counterfeit reader. “Sixty on number six.” His boredom was beyond imagining.

As his partner walked out the door, the second man started down the aisle, rolling his hips with cock-of-the-walk insolence. She faced him straight on. There was no alternative. Seen from the front, her heavily made-up face might conceal her identity. But in profile… ?

In profile, the makeup would not matter. He’d recognize the line of her forehead, the curve of her jaw, the tilt of her nose they’d have photos from every angle, and he’d know her in an instant.

The stolen Marriott towels she’d wrapped around her stomach to alter her waistline would not fool him. Nothing would fool him. If she turned sideways, he’d have her.

Snapping up a bag of tortilla chips and a package of chewing gum, she walked toward the exit. He bully-boyed forward, a man who would not step aside, no not at all, he’d make her push past him, rub against him, shrink but not escape his touch.

Her breasts brushed his upper arm. She caught the flicker of his smirk. As she slid by, his hand went down, caressing her buttocks. She fought the urge to lash out. It was better to let him have his sordid pleasure than to provoke a man like this.

Past him now, she hurried to the checkout stand. “Pump five,” she said, shoving her chips and gum across the counter. The boy didn’t seem to hear her. His face was tense, and his eyes blinked nervously at his counterfeit detector. “Pump five. Could I have my change now?” He jerked, muttered something she couldn’t hear, and rang up her sale.

He gave her ten dollars too much in change. Irina thrust the money into her shoulder bag and fled.

A white GMC Sierra was parked directly behind her truck. Its mud flaps displayed the silvered silhouette of a nude woman. Pulling her cap as if adjusting it, Irina walked toward Mitch’s truck. The man pumping gas did not look up.

Even though the air conditioning had been off for fewer than five minutes, the Dodge’s interior was scorching. She flinched as she gripped the wheel. Turning the ignition, she drove neither fast nor slow away from the station.

She should have realized that a skilled mercenary like Schmidt would never concentrate his forces. Some, but far from all, of his minions followed Charlie’s BMW on a wild-goose chase to Las Vegas. Others would disperse all across the countryside.

How many men were under Schmidt’s command? Charlie had said more than five hundred. If they traveled in teams of two, at least two hundred and fifty patrols were searching for her. Two hundred and fifty!

Fear is not cowardliness. Encountering those two killers in the store had frightened her. But she could not would not fall into panic’s eager grasp. Victory favors only those who master fear.

She assessed her position with ruthless objectivity. Outnumbered and on her own, she would never survive a confrontation. If she could not outfight her opponents, then she must outwit them.

What would they do? What was their best strategy for capturing her in this wasteland of too few roads?

Short patrols, she thought. Each team will be assigned a thin stretch of highway, perhaps no more than fifty miles. They will cruise abbreviated circuits, weaving a web of watchfulness, no team more than a hundred miles from the other, on average all teams closer than that.

With two hundred and fifty cars, they’d cover every road between here and California. She’d never pass unseen.

A chilling thought: she must have been seen already probably more than once. Her dyed hair and thick makeup had been sufficient to fool a driver glancing out his window at an oncoming pickup truck. Blind luck: no one had time to study her features.

Would her good fortune last? Perhaps for a few more hours. Certainly not for the two days it would take her to reach the one place where safety was certain: San Francisco and the West Coast Rezidentura. Eighteen hours of driving, every minute of it a peril, and she would need to stop and rest and … Something white.

In her rearview mirror, a white vehicle closing fast.

A GMC Sierra.

Wary of highway patrolmen and their radar guns, she’d kept within the speed limit sixty miles per hour on this two-lane blacktop. The Sierra was doing eighty.

A straight and empty highway lay ahead. No side roads, no places of concealment, naked desert all around.

A trickle of sweat burned into the corner of her eye.

She couldn’t outrun them. Schmidt’s trucks might look ordinary, but no mercenary’s vehicle would carry an ordinary engine beneath its hood.

The Sierra grew larger in her mirror, its driver and passenger shadows without face or feature. She imagined their wet smiles. She weighed her alternatives.

She’d scored well in her vehicular combat course. But they would be as well trained as she. If she tried to force them off the road, they would know how to counter her attack. It would be an equal match, and therefore a risky one. Engaging an opponent who is your equal is the last resort. Never engage without an advantage.

Now clearly seen, mere meters from her bumper, one wore sunglasses, the other did not.

Irina snapped open her handbag. The Tokarev old and black and ugly was comforting in her grip.

The mercenaries accelerated into the oncoming traffic lane. There was no oncoming traffic. On this road, only the hunter and the hunted drove.

Right-handed she was a superb marksman. Ninety-three out of one hundred shots in the center ring. Left-handed was another story. She’d never mastered ambidextrous shooting.

Tense but confident, she shifted the pistol to her left hand. A fusillade, the trigger snapped fifteen times to empty a fifteen-round magazine, precision was irrelevant, fill the air with enough bullets and her target would be hit. At this speed a disabling shot was as good as a killing one, and a wounded enemy would die in flames.

She glanced left. The Sierra was almost by her side. Keeping a finger loosely on the trigger, she rested her thumb against the Dodge’s window control. She inhaled, a shooter’s breath to be expelled halfway before firing.

She depressed the window button. Hot wind flooded the Dodge’s cabin.

Any moment now, in just a second, the Sierra’s driver would swerve, aiming his bumper at her fender. That time would be her time. As he began his run-up to ramming her, he’d be at his most vulnerable as she emptied her pistol, raking fifteen rounds into the face of a … The Sierra raced by, swinging back into the right lane, and gaining speed.

The distance between the two trucks grew. They hadn’t recognized her. They didn’t know. She was safe.

Her hands shook as she returned the pistol to her bag. She’d been wound tight as a spring, ready for the moment and perhaps even looking forward to it. That nothing happened was a relief, but also the admission worried her a disappointment. Was she so hard a person that escaping a killing fight… ?

A quarter of a mile ahead the Sierra fishtailed onto the shoulder. The driver spun a loop back onto the road, accelerating toward her.