Operation Fireball (2 page)

Conversation lapsed while we did justice to the steaks. Over coffee and cigarettes afterward I returned to the same subject. “What kind of kids can break an animal’s leg in five places with an iron bar?”

“At least a few we have around here. Not many, but a few. God knows what they’ll graduate to from that.”

I hate cruelty to animals. A man can look after himself, up to a point, anyway, but an animal is almost helpless against deliberate sadism. “I’d like to catch them at it once.”

“So would Pa.” Hazel rose from the table. “Have another cigarette while I rinse off the dishes.”

She refilled my coffee cup while I lit up again. I leaned back in my chair and watched her rubber-gloved assault upon the dirty dishes. The only sounds in the ranch kitchen were the swish of sudsy water and the muffled clink and clatter of china and cutlery. I noticed that it was dark outside.

I watched Hazel putting the dishes away. She was a big woman, but she had the quick, lithe movements of a girl. It wasn’t at all hard to recall the good times we’d shared in her Florida cabin. We’d struck sexual sparks from each other in that isolated oasis. It had never been so good for me, and I had hated to see it end.

Not that Hazel would have let it even after I nearly burned to death, but I couldn’t let her get involved with the part of my life that she certainly suspected but about which she knew nothing factual. And it was so long before I was sure I was going to make it again as a human being that there was all the more reason for not involving her.

Hazel stripped off her rubber gloves finally and came over to my chair. She didn’t say anything. She took my hand and we went upstairs. Her bedroom was large and airy, furnished in an unfrilly, no-nonsense style. A moose head was on one wall. I’d never seen a moose head in a bedroom. Hazel sat down and pulled off her boots.

I stood in the center of the floor and watched while she straightened up again and whisked the belt from her Levis. She skinned them down over her big hips and kicked them to one side. Her panties followed, and from her socks to the bottom edge of her buckskin vest there was just Hazel. Warm-looking ivory with a bushy-red exclamation point in front. Large, sleek, and glowing amplitudes behind.

I went to her and took her in my arms. She removed my tie and unbuttoned my shirt while I filled my hands with her velvety bare flesh. She unbelted my trousers and dropped them, then stooped swiftly to unlace and remove my shoes. I nudged the trousers away from us with my foot.

I removed her vest and bra when she stood up again. She did the same for my undershirt and shorts. She traced with a curious finger the multicolored patches on my chest, back, and thighs caused by the removal of the skin grafts that had rebuilt my face. I ran my palms lightly over the silken cheeks of her big bottom, then took handfuls of sleek flesh and kneaded it.

Clad in our socks, we adjourned to the oversized bed.

I loosened the tabs above my ears and lifted up my wig. Hazel ran her palm lightly over my skull, still serrated from the transplants. “You look like Yul Brynner’s younger brother,” she whispered, then kissed me.

“Thanks for the ‘younger’ part of that remark.” I replaced the wig. Hazel rolled onto her back and pulled me down on top of her. I played with her for a moment, but I could feel her restlessness. I moved her with my hands, and she wriggled into position eagerly. Her big arms enfolded me as I sank down comfortably upon that most solid of platforms.

I didn’t have to think, plan, or worry.

It was really like coming home.

• • •

We talked later while sharing a cigarette. “What comes next, horseman?” she asked, using her pet name for me.

I knew she didn’t mean what came next in her bed that night. “I don’t know,” I answered. “I’ve been spinning my wheels in San Diego for a month. I can’t seem to get off dead center.” I thought about it for a moment. “Maybe I’ve lost my nerve. I never used to feel this way.”

“Why don’t you bunk here for a while?” she suggested. “It’s not as though you had a train to catch in San Diego, is it?”

“No, but—”

“Relax,” she urged. “You’re as bad as Pa.” Her head came up from the pillow. “That reminds me—” She slipped from the bed. I heard the pad-pad of her footsteps, and then silence. When I looked to see what she was doing, her bell-shaped bare behind was pointed right at me as she stood doubled over at the bedroom window, staring out.

“What is it?” I asked when she remained there.

“There’s no light in the barn.” Her tone was troubled. “I don’t think Pa’s come back from the feed shed yet.”

I sat up in the bed. “D’you think—?”

“I don’t know. It’s probably nothing, but—”

I swung my legs onto the floor. “Let’s take a look. You’re worried. We can replay this scene later. Blow by blow.”

We dressed hurriedly and left the bedroom.

OUTSIDE THE HOUSE
Hazel headed for the vehicles in the old stable. The night air was bracingly chilly after the heat of the bedroom. Its effect was to dash cold water upon my first reaction to Hazel’s alarm. I reached for her arm to slow her down. “Don’t you feel you’re just imagining—”

She stopped so suddenly I ran into her. We both stared at an orange glow haloing the crest of a distant hillock. The shrill neigh of a frightened horse and the thunder of pounding hooves echoed through the darkness around us. “Those damned kids have let the horses loose and set fire to the feed shed!” Hazel cried. “And Pa’s still out there!”

She started to run toward the stable. “With you in a second!” I called after her. I sprinted to my car, opened the passenger-side door and the glove compartment, took out the .38, and slipped it inside my belt. I snatched up a handful of loose cartridges from a box in the glove compartment and dropped them into my pocket. When I reached the stable, Hazel had the pickup backed out.

“Have to use this instead of the Corvette,” she said as I climbed into the front seat. “This is a cross-country run and there’s a deep gully between us and the shed.” She rammed the pickup ahead after spinning its rear wheels in the loose dirt of the yard.

The orange glow ahead of us seemed even brighter. The pickup bounded from high spot to high spot, throwing me around in the cab. “How do they get away with this kind of thing?” I asked as the headlights picked up a yawning split in the earth. Hazel dragged the wheel hard over and the straining pickup slewed as it paralleled the gully, whose bottom I couldn’t see. “These kids can’t intimidate everyone in the county, can they?”

“Nobody will testify against them.” Hazel was hunched down over the wheel. “The sheriff says the only thing he can do is catch them at it. I don’t think he tries too hard. Some of them are from influential families. Their folks take the attitude that boys will be boys.” The pickup ran across the flattened-out bottom of the gully and boomed along through what looked like the remains of an orchard. “We’ll come up behind them and do a little catching of our own.”

If we get there, I thought. Twice we just missed trees. A low-hanging branch slapped the windshield with an explosive sound like a fistful of hard-driven hail. There was no orange glow ahead of us now. I sensed that we were circling the hill I had seen from the ranch yard. Then we burst through a scattering of scrub brush, made a hard right turn onto a short straightaway, and spurted ahead toward a scene straight out of hell.

The fire wasn’t in the feed shed. It was in a pile of logs off to one side, obviously to illuminate what was taking place. The firelight and our headlights picked up the figure of a man suspended by bound wrists from a spike more than head-high on the side of the shed. A tall boy in rodeo costume stood near the bound man, apparently talking to him. Another half-dozen kids were fanned out in a loose semicircle, watching.

Hazel scattered the watchers with the pickup. She braked to a sliding stop and we piled out the doors on either side. She ran toward the limp, dangling figure, which at close range I could see was the old man. I moved a few feet closer to the shed and then stopped. Gunnar Rasmussen’s white head lolled loosely on one shoulder. From the waist down his overalls and underwear were in tatters. His welted arse hung out of the overalls like fresh-butchered beef in a freezer, marbled and veined. The gang had whipped the overalls right off him.

Our sudden appearance had frozen the action for an instant. Then the rodeo-type standing near the old man moved toward Hazel as she tried to remove the old man’s bound wrists from the spike. He was a big kid, almost good-looking. He had a manila rope in his right hand. Its end was frayed and discolored. He reached for Hazel. I started to draw the .38, but at his touch she turned and belted him with a left hook to the chest that moved him back three feet. The kid started to raise the rope-whip. “Hold it!” I rapped at him.

He turned in surprise. When he looked back at Hazel, she had eased the bound wrists from the spike and lowered the old man to the ground. It was so quiet I could hear the crackling of the burning logs. The flamboyantly dressed tall boy smiled at me. “You picked a poor night to come sightseeing,” he said. His voice was soft. Almost pleasant. “Because I think he’s dead.”

He motioned with his left arm, and the scattered semicircle began to close in on us. “So we just can’t let you walk away from here, can we?” the boy continued. His smile widened as he returned his attention to Hazel. “Nice of
you
to come along and make our evening complete. Eh, gang?” There was a muttered chorus from the group—whether of assent or not, I couldn’t tell.

The kid stared at the old man’s prostrate body. When he first spoke to us, there had been a touch of uncertainty in his voice, but he had regained his confidence. “He must have had a bad heart,” he said.

“How’s your heart, sonny?” I asked him.

His tone sharpened. “Take him, Van!” he barked to a bushy-haired husky. The semicircle surged toward me.

Even with the evidence of my own eyes, I guess I still didn’t believe it. I hesitated long enough before pulling the .38 that I had to duck the first charging teen-ager. I had to pull it with my left hand because I had been facing the speaker instead of Van. The second kid hit me with a fullback block that rolled me over in the dust. A pair of boots landed on my hand. I felt fingers breaking, but I didn’t lose the gun. I switched it to my right hand as I came up on my knees. The kid in the rodeo clothes was a dozen yards away. He was standing there, laughing.

I put a slug into his upper lip, right under his nose. Lip, nose, and teeth disappeared in a red blotch. He went backward into the shed wall, rebounded, spun around, and flopped on his back in the dirt. A thin scream filled the night air while his heels drummed the ground, kicking up dust.

The flat crack of the .38 had again frozen movement around me. “He—he shot Wally!” a voice said incredulously.

“Your friend can dish it out, but he doesn’t seem to be so good at taking it,” I said to the bushy-haired Van as Wally’s screams continued to furnish a high-pitched background. My left hand was throbbing, but I didn’t look at it. I was watching Van.

The sound of my voice brought him out of his state of shock. “You bastard!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “You’re for it!” He started toward me again. I put a bullet into his left shinbone. He went down as though ax-stroked. Another of the group was in motion. I snapped a shot into his right collarbone. He pitched heavily to the ground.

The four still on their feet had halted again in grotesque poses of arrested movement. I climbed erect and walked toward them, reloading as I went. The left hand hurt like hell, but I managed. For a second the clickity-click of metal on metal drowned out the crackling of the burning logs. Closest to me was a skinny, mean-faced character with a scraggly beard. “Still think your fun was worth it?” I said to him. He swallowed hard but said nothing. His eyes were on the gun. I held it out and showed it to him more plainly. “Arm or leg?” I asked him. He didn’t answer. “Arm or leg?” I repeated.

“Arm or leg what?” he asked. His voice was a rasping whisper.

“You’re going to take one in an arm or a leg. Like a souvenir of the occasion. Take your pick.”

His features contorted in frustrated fury and his voice thickened to a screech. “Fuck you, you goddamn—!”

He gasped and then shrieked as the bullet smashed his right kneecap. He crawled in the dirt, dragging the leg, his continuing screams blending with Wally’s. I turned to the next closest. “Arm or leg?”

“Arm!” he got out in a choked gasp. I ticked off his left upper biceps. He yelped and pivoted in a tight, doubled-over circle before he plunged to the ground.

The other two were running. I got the first in an ankle. The crack of the gun seemed to elevate him from a springboard. He did a one-and-one-half forward somersault before he plowed up the dirt with his face. The last one was beyond accurate placement range. I let go at his arse, and he slid on his side, wailing, both hands grabbing at his buttocks. He’d run far enough so that he ended up almost outside the perimeter of light.

I looked around. No one was going anywhere. I walked over to Hazel, who was just getting to her feet. She had been cradling the old man’s head in her lap. Her face was white. “He’s gone,” she said tonelessly. “Reload that thing again and give it to me. I’ll give each one myself.” I shook my head. “Give me the gun!”

“No gun, Hazel. You’ve got to live here.”

“The hell I’ve got to live here!” Her mood changed swiftly. “Your hand’s broken, isn’t it? It’s a good thing it wasn’t your right hand, or we’d have been dead, too. Unpleasantly.”

I didn’t say so, but it wouldn’t have made that much difference. My left-handed shooting isn’t all that bad.

Her mind was ranging ahead. “You’ve got to get away from here before the sheriff comes.”

She was right about that. Even if the kids didn’t talk, my staying around to answer police questions could open up a nasty can of worms. The gang could hardly talk without incriminating themselves, but neither could I, and not only about what had just taken place. My visit was definitely over. I went to the pickup and backed it up as close as I could to the old man’s body. Hazel and I slid him into the back of the truck, and I chained up the tail gate again.

“What about these creeps?” Hazel asked, gesturing at the battlefield. The various screams had died down to moans.

“They’ve got a car out in the brush somewhere. Let them get themselves to a hospital. What are you going to tell the sheriff?”

She flared up like a roman candle. “That I’ll see to it that he’s beaten at the next election if I’m still around here! And that’s all. He can draw his own conclusions.” She had seen me favoring my left hand when we lifted Gunnar Rasmussen’s body into the pickup. She took my hand and examined it, shook her head, removed a kerchief from her throat, and bound the fingers together. “That’s all I can do. I know something’s broken.”

“I’ll get it set,” I promised.

We got into the pickup. I took the wheel and drove back to the ranch house at a much slower pace than Hazel had set en route to the feed shed. During the first part of the return trip she spoke only once. “Where do they get the hate?” she asked quietly.

I didn’t answer because I didn’t know.

We were almost at the house when she spoke again. “I suppose this means I won’t see you again?”

I’d been thinking about that. “When things quiet down here and you’re sure they’re paying no attention to you, why don’t you come down to the city for a visit?”

“I’d like that,” she said promptly. “When?”

“I’ll call you.”

“Just be sure you do.” She was silent for a moment. “Go ahead and tell me it’s none of my business …” She hesitated, then resumed. “Earl. Damn it, I’ve got to get used to that name.” She turned to face me squarely as I parked the pickup in the ranch yard. “How are you fixed for cash?”

“Fine,” I lied.

“You know that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to spend even the income from what Lou Espada left me?”

“I know. I’m saving you for my old age.”

She put her hand on my arm. “Why don’t you … retire?”

“Retire? Retire to what?”

“To a life of peace and quiet!” she said spiritedly. “Damn all men, anyway! Always running against the bit—”

I opened the pickup’s door and slid out from under the wheel. “I’ll call you,” I repeated. “Take care, now.”

“Be careful,” she called after me. I was already moving toward my car.

I drove out the ranch road to the highway.

At the gate I stopped and painfully reloaded the .38 again, then put it back into the glove compartment.

I remained in Ely only long enough to have my fingers set. Two were broken. “If you hadn’t told me you’d dropped a tire on the back of that hand, I’d have said it looked like the imprint of a bootheel,” the doctor said.

“You M.D.'s have vivid imaginations, Doc,” I told him.

I got back out on the road and headed for San Diego.