Jungle Of Steel And Stone (22 page)

"Veil . . . ?"

"Shhh. Just stay there."

Almost ten minutes passed. Then the door of the car across the street opened. Nagle stepped out and began walking casually down the middle of the street, toward the building skeleton. In one hand he carried a powerful flashlight, and in the other what appeared to be an Uzi submachine gun equipped with a custom-made silencer. He stepped up on the sidewalk and vanished through an opening in the fence surrounding the construction site.

"Nagle's gone into the building," Veil continued as he opened the door and got out. "You stay put. Lock the doors."

"Veil?" Reyna cried out as she sat up and reached for him. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to kill the son of a bitch," he replied evenly as he blew Reyna a kiss, then closed the door.

Veil, moving as silently as death, ran down the street and across the intersection to the construction site. He waited, pressed back against the fence next to the opening, listening. When he heard nothing, he darted through the opening, angling across to the opposite side. There he crouched low in the darkness, listening again. This time he heard the faint, shuffling sound of footsteps on wood scaffolding.

Suddenly a bright cone of light from Nagle's flashlight pierced the darkness on the second floor of the steel skeleton. There were more shuffling footsteps, then the clatter of loose boards. Veil thought he heard a faint, low rumble, as if Nagle were talking to himself.

Veil straightened up and moved off to his right. At the corner of the building he reached up and gripped a steel girder, then began to climb up the grid work. Suddenly he heard a can clatter, back near the entrance. He turned his head in time to see the unmistakable figure of Reyna—a master tracker undone and made careless by her terror of the monster that was Carl Nagle—trip and fall through the opening in the fence. A moment later she cried out in pain.

Veil immediately released his grip on the steel and dropped back to the ground. He landed, then sprinted through the rubble-strewn darkness toward where Reyna lay at the bottom of a wedge of dim light cast by street lamps. Without slowing his pace he ran through the light, reaching down as he did so and grabbing a handful of Reyna's jacket, jerking her off the ground and carrying her to the other side of the opening just as a burst of fire, sounding like nothing so much as a person spitting watermelon seeds at an impossibly fast clip, raked across the fence just above Veil's head. He fell on top of Reyna to shield her with his body, holding her head down with his hand, burying his own head in her thick hair and waiting as the
pfft-pfft
sound of bullets striking wood slowed in tempo—then stopped.

Veil got up on his hands and knees and, pulling Reyna along with him by her belt, scurried forward to the shelter of a wide support girder.

"Shh, shh," Veil intoned to the whimpering Reyna as he held her tight. Her eyes were wide with horror, and her breath came in short, panting gasps. "You have to control it, Reyna. Shh."

Finally Reyna was able to control her sobbing, although she continued to breathe in gasps. "Wh-what in—God's name?"

"It's called a submachine gun, sweetheart," Veil said, peering around the girder and looking up. Nagle's light was out. "Unfortunately, that particular model fires up to three hundred rounds a minute."

"He plans to use that on
Toby?"

"Obviously, he'll use it on anyone who gets in his way— he'd use a cannon if he had one. There's no time now for details, but Nagle's on the outs with both the cops and the crooks. He's out of his head but not so crazy that he isn't thinking. He needs the heroin in the Nal-toon to finance an escape out of the country. I didn't tell you before because I didn't want you more frightened than you already were. Now—what the
hell
are you doing here?"

Reyna clung to Veil as she shook her head in fear and frustration. "I got to thinking that Nagle had a gun and you didn't."

"I don't need a gun to kill Nagle, Reyna."

"But there's also Toby to consider. I'm not sure you fully appreciate how dangerous he is. The man can almost literally see in the dark; to him you're probably just another enemy. If you passed him in the dark, he might kill you. It was just you against both of them."

"Didn't it occur to you that I'd considered that?" Veil whispered angrily. He swallowed his irritation, took a deep breath. "Thank you, Reyna. I know how you feel about Nagle. Coming in here took a lot of guts."

"I wanted to call out to Toby, explain to him what was happening."

"Who's there?"
Nagle's voice was right above them.

Veil signaled with his hand for Reyna to crawl along the foundation to the next girder. "Somebody who's going to take that toy away from you, Nagle, and shove it up your ass. Just be patient. I'll be up there in a few minutes."

"Kendry?!
Is that you, you fucker?"

"Get out of here, Nagle," Veil said in a casual tone, his voice carrying easily in the steel-amplified darkness. "Unless all your brains have run out your ears, you have to know this play is over. Somebody's bound to hear that thing, even with a silencer, and you must have sprayed at least a hundred rounds into the street. Your ex-colleagues on the force are probably on their way back here right now. My advice is to split and try again another day."

He could almost feel Nagle straining to hear in the darkness, and Veil listened with him. There was no wail of police sirens.

Nagle's answer now came—a burst of fire. But the angle was wrong, and the bullets plowed harmlessly into the dirt a few feet from where Veil was standing. Veil moved in a crouch along the foundation to where Reyna was waiting.

"Veil," Reyna whispered urgently, "I have to talk to Toby. He has to understand what's happening."

"You're not going to talk to anyone," Veil whispered back in a firm voice. "Nagle may think it was me who stumbled in through the entrance. We're going to take our time and work our way very carefully around the building, and then you're going to scoot your cute ass right back out the way you came in."

"No," Reyna answered in a tone filled with quiet determination. "You don't know everything, Veil Kendry. Believe me, you need me to protect you from Toby. We're in this together, and I'm not leaving here without you."

"Reyna—"

Reyna suddenly released Veil, turned, cupped her hands to her mouth, and called out in the clicking language of the K'ung. Her lilting voice rose and fell, eerily beautiful as it echoed back and forth inside the steel shell.

"That you, Alexander?!"
There was a burst of fire, fifteen yards wide of the mark. "Oh, kid, if you think what I did to you before was something, wait until I get my hands on you this time!"

"What did you say to Toby?" Veil whispered.

"I kind of introduced you, said that you were with me and trying to help him too. I asked him not to harm you and told him that the other man was his enemy and wanted to kill all of us. I asked him to trust us and to try to escape when he had the chance. I told him where we'd
parked the car, then asked him to go there and wait for
us."

"Do you think he'll do it?"

"No," Reyna answered after a pause. "But I didn't think it would hurt to try."

Suddenly a powerful beam of light cut through the darkness and swept across the fence in front of them. There was a clatter of loose scaffolding, and Veil peered around the edge of the girder to see the light descending a ramp.

Nagle's rumbling voice was stretched taut with madness. "You ain't carrying, Kendry. If you were, you'd have used your piece by now. I'm going to shoot you in half, you fucker, and then I'm going to fuck that girl's brains out— literally. I'm going to kill her with my cock."

Veil put his fingers to his lips to warn Reyna into silence. He motioned for her to lie flat on the ground, then reached down to his boot for his knife. Back against the steel, Veil again peered around the edge of the girder. Nagle was three quarters of the way down the ramp, flashing his light around the ground floor.

Suddenly there was a thud, then a clatter that sounded like wood against steel.

"What the fuck?!"

Veil watched as Nagle rubbed his forehead, then put his hand into the light. There was blood. He cursed again, then shined the light into the darkness above him. Something that looked like a line of night flashed down through the light, and Nagle cried out in pain as he shined the light on the inside of his right bicep, where a featherless arrow hung loosely from the flesh. He pulled out the arrow and flung it away, then fired a burst of gunfire up into the darkness.

"I'm gonna get you, you black bastard!" he shouted as he started back up the scaffolding.

"Now I'm going to take him," Veil said, starting to step out from behind the girder.

"Wait!" Reyna hissed as she grabbed hold of the back of his jacket.

Veil turned and was startled by the expression on Reyna's face. Her eyes gleamed, and her lips were set in a crooked grin that had no laughter in it. She was trembling all over, but Veil did not think it was from fear. "What's the matter?"

"Nagle isn't going to find Toby," Reyna answered through bloodless lips that barely moved. "I don't want you to go up there."

"I can take care of myself, Reyna. You know that. Nagle has to be killed."

"No," Reyna said, the word punctuated by gunfire from above. Bullets ricocheted off the steel girders, whining in the night and shooting off sparks. "If Nagle kills you, then he'll have me—and I can't describe the horrible things he'll do to me. You promised he'd never hurt me."

"He can't hurt you if he's dead, Reyna. The best way for me to protect you is to kill the bastard."

"No. I'm afraid. Toby will get out of here on his own.

He'll go into the next cemetery and go to ground to rest. I want you to take me out of here, Veil."

"Reyna—"

"You promised, Veil. I'm afraid."

He studied Reyna's face for a few moments, then abruptly took her by the hand and led her back the way they had come. He paused at the edge of the building, listening. Nagle had apparently forgotten all about them, for he was now up on the third floor, cursing and flashing his light around.

Veil pushed Reyna through the opening in the fence, then followed her as she walked quickly, body stiff and hands clenched into fists at her sides, to the car. She got into the car, slamming the door shut behind her.

Veil slid in behind the wheel, turned, and studied Reyna. Her face was still clenched into a grim mask that seemed ready to break at any moment, and Veil felt certain she was on the verge of hysterical laughter.

"Reyna?"

"Mmm. I'm all right."

"The safari's going to take a break for a few hours. You say Toby will rest; we need to rest, and I have to make a couple of phone calls. I'm going to check us into a hotel."

"Mmm."

"Reyna, what's the matter?" Veil asked as he started the engine and pulled away from the curb.

"Nothing," Reyna replied curtly.

Veil was approaching the intersection when Carl Nagle suddenly walked through the opening in the fence. Veil floored the accelerator and yanked the wheel hard to the left. The car shot forward, bumped up over the curb, and shot down the sidewalk only inches from the fence. Nagle glanced around. His mouth dropped open and he half fell, half stumbled back through the opening as Veil sped over the spot where he had been standing only a moment before.

"Win some, lose some," Veil said as he braked, bucked down off the curb, and turned left at the corner.

They drove in silence for a few minutes as Veil headed toward the business section of Sunnyside. Reyna sat as rigidly as if she had been skewered with a metal rod.

"God forgive me," the woman said in a voice just above a whisper.

Veil reached over and gently stroked the back of her neck. "What was that business back there all about, Reyna?"

Reyna reached over her shoulder, found Veil's hand, and squeezed it. "I knew you could kill Nagle. I'm beginning to think that Archangel—"