Authors: Randy Wayne White
Hawker had pressed for all Smith knew about Jason Stratton, the young man who, in Barbara Blaine's opinion, had been murdered.
Stratton was an outsider. Something of a hermit. Lived in a mountain cabin on a secondary road that led to Kyle Canyon. Liked classical music, good books and intelligent talk. Stratton pieced together a livelihood by operating a backroom biological specimens wholesale business.
He collected insects, snakes, fossils and sold them to the universities.
Stratton also made a little money as a watercolor artist and as a pulp fiction writer.
It was an odd love affair: an intellectual recluse and the proprietor of a whorehouse.
Hawker doubted there was anything to gain by visiting Stratton's cottage. The local cops had already gone over itâbut not as carefully as they probably would have if there'd been a corpse involved.
Stratton had been listed as a missing person.
In Las Vegas, people turned up missing every day of the year. Usually by choice.
So Hawker doubted if the cops had given the place a thorough search. At least he hoped they hadn't, because it was really the only thing he had to go on.
At State Route 157, he turned southwest, then left again onto a dirt road. According to Captain Smith's directions, Jason Stratton's cabin wasn't far.
The mountains were ahead of him now, cool and smoky blue in the distance. He had passed no cars for some time, so he noticed immediately when the black Datsun 280Z came charging out behind him, blasting a plume of red dust.
The Datsun surged right up behind him, disappearing in the dust wake of Hawker's Jag.
Hawker backed off on the accelerator, figuring it was some teenager who wanted to race. Some acne-faced kid who, like too many adult male drivers, used the gearshift as an extension of his libido.
He expected the Datsun to pass, but it didn't. Instead, it edged right up behind and nudged the Jag's bumper.
Hawker's face tightened and he swore softly. He glanced at the speedometer. He had slowed to forty-five. Even at that speed, the nudge on the bumper caused him to fishtail slightly.
He slowed even more, pulling off the dirt road to the right a little to give the Datsun one more chance to pass.
Instead, it smacked him in the rear bumper again.
Hawker knew then. He knew it was no teenager out for a joyride. He knew that somehow the mob had found out about his arrival, and about his plans to search Jason Stratton's cabin.
This was no childish encounter on a mountain road. This was an assassination attempt. A matter of life and death.
Calmly Hawker reached beneath his jacket and placed the Walther PPK in the bucket seat beside him. He glanced over his shoulder to see how many men were in the Datsun, but the dust squall thrown by the Jag made it impossible to tell.
Once again the Datsun rammed him, and Hawker had to fight to keep the British sports car on the road.
Somehow he had to get behind them. Or beside them. But first, he had to get ahead of them. Way ahead of them.
Then, if he could, he would find some way to get them out of their car and force information out of them.
Information was what he needed now. Not corpses.
The corpses would come later.
four
James Hawker downshifted into second and put the Jag into a controlled drift to make a solid dust screen across the road. Then he straightened the car on the weedy shoulder, where traction would be best, and accelerated.
Hawker was no stranger to high-performance automobiles. He owned a classic Corvette fastback, a gem he had rescued from the police auction table and had refurbished by a master mechanic friend of his, Big Nick Clements.
But even the Vet didn't compare to this XKE for sheer power and handling ability.
When he touched the accelerator, the Jag seemed to flatten itself over the road as the tires struggled for purchase. When the treads caught, the car lunged forward at a velocity beyond Hawker's imagination. The G-force pinned his head to the neck brace.
Holding the steering wheel at the ten and two position, he glanced at the speedometer when he was sure he had the vehicle under control.
He had gone from forty to ninety miles an hour in a matter of only a few seconds.
He checked the rearview mirror.
The 280Z was a hundred yards behind, but gaining on him.
The dirt road was narrow but relatively smooth. Hawker was grateful for that. At high speed, a single pothole could prove fatal. He concentrated on reading the road, his left foot riding lightly midway between the brake and the clutch.
Hawker was aware that the road was climbing steadily. These would be the foothills near Kyle Canyon. Off to his left, he saw a small brown cabin near a river flash past. He wondered if it was Jason Stratton's cabin.
But he didn't have long to think about it. Ahead, the yellow road sign told him he was about to enter a series of hairpin curves.
The bank of mufflers roared as he downshifted into third, then second. The Jag skidded and held as he accelerated his way through the S turns.
Off to his left now was the beginning of the canyon. A short piece of corrugated guardrail was all that separated the road from the sheer drop to the rocks below. Three white wooden crosses were planted near the rail; people had died here before.
Coming out of the hairpin curves, Hawker mashed the accelerator flat and held it on the long straightaway until the speedometer hit 130 miles an hour.
The road was asphalt here, and the Jag seemed to absorb the white dividing lines ahead. Trees and telephone poles streamed past in a blur. Beyond the straightaway, Hawker could see that the road ribboned its way up the mountain.
He swore softly.
Somewhere there had to be a turnoff. Some place he could lose his attackers and reappear behind them.
The Datsun was about seventy yards behind now and no longer gaining. Without the dust haze, he could see that there were at least two people in the car. Two men.
The next bank of curves appeared with less warning. But at 130 miles an hour, everything happens with less warning.
Hawker touched the brake the moment he saw the yellow sign and prepared to downshift. His concentration was broken momentarily when a rock apparently flew up, shattering the Jag's windshield.
But then he realized it was no rock.
It was a bullet.
A man was leaning out the window of the 280Z. A man with a rifle.
Hawker knew it would take a phenomenally lucky shot to hit him at that distance from a moving car.
Even so, it didn't make driving any easier.
Now more than ever he had to put distance between the two cars and find a turnoff, a place he could lose them.
But first, he had to make it off this road alive.
Hawker hit the curves faster than he wanted to. He downshifted, brakedâand was fully prepared for the Jag to flip and begin the long and deadly slow-motion tumble down the mountain.
But the Jag handled as if bolted to rails. The tires screamed briefly as he drifted through the first curve, then held fast as he accelerated into the next swing to the left.
Another right bank, then a swing left, another curve to the right, and he was working the Jaguar through the gears again, powering hard down the straightaway.
There was no warning for what happened next. Highway departments do not post warning signs for hills. Only yellow no-passing lines.
As Hawker came to the top of the hill, he found himself slowing slightly through sheer habit. Only fools top a hill without slowing, for there is no telling what is on the other sideâa car stalled, some idiot passing. Hawker had been a cop too long and seen too many lives wasted through sheer carelessness and childish bravado not to have good driving habits.
And it was the little bit he slowed that saved him.
As he topped the hill, he immediately saw the man with the flag. An old man in coveralls waving a red towel on a stick.
The old man was driving a herd of sheep from one pasture to the next, his black-haired collie nipping at the heels of the animals; a flock of a couple of hundred.
At the bottom of the hill was a curve. A guardrail cupped the asphalt from the rocky gorge below. To the right was a low rock ledge, on top of which was a pasture fenced by wire paling. The sheep covered both lanes of the road, with the old man trailing behind.
Hawker hit the brakes immediately, but with controlled pressure so the wheels did not lock. The old man was waving his arms over his head frantically. The collie paid no heed, tending to the business of guiding the sheep.
It was the dog that gave Hawker his opening. It cut outside the herd, and the sheep flushed toward the right lane. It was a small opening, but Hawker had no choice. The old man was directly in his path now.
He downshifted, hit the accelerator and the Jag jumped through the narrow opening between the dog and the guardrail, throwing gravel.
The opening widened momentarily after he passed, then closed again.
Hawker was on a straightaway now, and he watched through the rearview mirror to see how the driver of the 280Z handled the roadblock.
The Datsun topped the hill at such tremendous speed that all four wheels temporarily left the asphalt. When the car touched down again, the driver appeared to brake briefly and downshiftâbut too late.
The 280Z hit the herd of sheep going about forty. Hawker saw the old man sag slightly as the collie was knocked high in the air, somersaulting like a rag animal. The car skidded left, then right, leaving a wake of screaming, kicking sheep behind.
The driver of the car brought the 280Z under control again, accelerating toward Hawker. Then Hawker was into the next curve and he could see no more.
It had been a sickening thing to witness, and Hawker sped on grimly.
Ahead was another straightaway climbing toward another hill. He was well into the mountains now, more than two miles above sea level. Below were the moonscape crags of the canyon.
Hawker held the accelerator to the floor, and the speedometer touched 155 before he backed off for the hill. He was about a quarter-mile ahead of the Datsun now. It was all the room he needed to make a move.
At the top of the hill, he slowed to sixty. An eighth of a mile down the hill, he hit the brakes and stopped the Jag in a controlled skid. To the right was a dirt lane that climbed back into the mountains. It was a blind intersection, shielded by a high rock ledge.
It was just what Hawker was looking for.
He punched the Jaguar into reverse and backed into the lane far enough so that he was hidden from anyone passing on the main road. It was his plan to come out behind the Datsun, force it off the road, then beat some information out of the two goons inside.
But then he had another idea.
Hawker edged the car back onto the main road, blocking both lanes. In front of him was a guardrail and a sheer five-hundred-foot drop onto the rocks below. Behind him was the dirt trail.
Hawker shifted the Jag into reverse and waited.
The driver of the 280Z hadn't learned anything from his disaster with the sheep. He flew over the hill at full speed. Hawker wondered what was going through the driver's mind as he saw the Jag blocking his path less than two hundred yards away.
The Datsun skidded wildly, fishtailing down the hill. Hawker waited until the last possible moment before gunning the Jag backward, out of harm's way.
It was too late to help the men in the 280Z.
The driver of the Datsun made the wisest possible choice. Rather than broadside the Jag or go over the cliff, he slowed his car by careening along the stone ledge on the inside edge of the road.
There was the nauseating scream of wrenching metal. A rocky outcrop caught the right bumper, spinning the car in a violent 360-degree turn. Then the Datsun flipped side over side, tumbling three times before finally coming to rest on its wheels just past the dirt lane.
Hawker grabbed the Walther PPK and trotted to the wrecked 280Z. One of the men was already climbing out through the shattered front window.
Hawker expected him to get dizzily to his feet, hands held high in surrender.
He didn't.
He was a lanky man with dark curly hair worn down to his shoulders. The yellow leisure suit didn't go with the face: thin, angular, ratlike. He got out from the passenger's side. He was the man who had been shooting at Hawker.
But he carried no rifle now.
He took two wobbly steps toward Hawker, his hands held low. “Does your car still run?” the man asked groggily.
“Yeah. But some asshole shot out the window.”
“That's good. We'll have transportation.”
Hawker thought it was an odd thing to say until the stainless-steel stubnose .38 materialized in the man's right hand, lifting toward Hawker's face.
Hawker was so taken by surprise that the only thing he could do was drop backward to the ground.
The gunshot and the vacuum Hawker felt near his head were simultaneous.
Hawker rolled hard to his left and came up firing. The little Walther snapped twice in his hand.
The man in the yellow leisure suit twisted sideways, his face contorted in shock and pain. There were two red pockmarks on the lapel of the suit. The left lapel. Then the pockmarks became soggy black stains, and the man fell dead, clutching his chest.
In the sudden silence, Hawker could hear the steady hiss of steam coming from the wrecked Datsun and the trickle of liquid. And something else, too. A low moan. A man's voice:
“Hey? Hey! Louie! You out there? Get me the hell out of here, for God's sake!”
Hawker walked around to the driver's side of the 280Z. The driver looked to be in his early thirties. He was stockier than the other man, Louie. Heavy, swarthy face. Blue shadow of beard. A cut on his forehead dripped blood down over his left eye. Even so, both eyes grew wide when he looked up and saw Hawker.
“Hey! Where's my partner? Where's Louie?”
Hawker brought the Walther into view as if in explanation. “Dead.”