Dan Simmons - Hard as Nails

Baby Doc looked at his oversized wristwatch. "Any questions or second thoughts before we take off?"

"Let's shut up and do it," said Angelina. "I'm beginning to feel like I'm in a Jerry Bruckheimer movie."

Gonzaga's bodyguard, Bobby, barked a laugh at that but shut up quickly when no one else laughed.

"Kurtz," said Baby Doc, "you come sit up front with me."

"Why?" said Kurtz. He hated helicopters—he'd always hated helicopters—and he'd just as soon not sit where he could see better.

"Because," said Baby Doc, "you're the only one who really knows where we're going."

People climbed aboard and the powerful jet turbines fired up again.

The man with the terribly burned face was staring across the dark parking lot at her.

Arlene didn't know how he could see her without binoculars—and she could see through her own binoculars that he had none—but she was sure that he saw her. She leaned her head back against the Buick's headrest, deeper into the shadows, making sure that there was no glint of the sodium-vapor lamps reflecting off her binocular lenses.

The burned man kept staring at her from the pest control truck. His rapt but blind attention reminded Arlene of something but she couldn't think of what for a moment. When she did remember, it wasn't reassuring.

Like an animal—a predator—that can't see its prey but smells it .

She thumbed her cell phone on and held that thumb over the fifth pre-set fast-dial button. Earlier in the evening she'd looked up the number for the Niagara Falls precinct house closest to the Rainbow Centre Mall… sometimes direct dial brought help faster than 911.

The burned man stared her way for another minute but then pulled his scarred face back into the shadows of the van. Arlene couldn't see even a silhouette.

Is he back in the van? Did he get out the other side ? The overhead cab light hadn't gone on in his vehicle, but Arlene was sure that this man had long since broken or removed that bulb. Whatever else he was, he was a stalker. He loved the night.

Arlene licked her lips and considered her options. She assumed that the burned man was also waiting for Aysha, although there was no evidence for that yet. But like her boss, Arlene DeMarco very rarely believed in coincidence.

If the man started across the parking lot on foot toward her—and she was still about eighty yards away from his truck and parked in the shadows here by the Dumpsters—she'd simply start the Buick and drive like hell.

If he pulls a weapon?

She'd get her head down, steer by instinct, and try to run over him.

If he starts that obscene pest control van and drives it my way?

Outrun him. Alan had always kept their Buicks well maintained and Arlene had continued the practice after her husband's death.

But what if he just sits there and waits until Aysha's dropped off?

This was the contingency she didn't have an answer for. The burned man was much closer to the mall doors than Arlene was. The Yemeni girl, Aysha, had been told she'd be picked up by her fiancé—the man Joe had killed—or by someone who'd take her to her fiancé. She'd get in the first vehicle that drove up.

What then?

Let her go. Let them both go. That was the obvious answer. Could this be so important , Arlene thought, that she should risk her life to pick up this strange girl ?

Joe asked me to. We don't know how important it might be.

The burned man was still invisible in the darkness of the van's shadowed interior. Arlene had the image of the man pulling a rifle from the back of the van—of him sitting in the darker shadows of the passenger seat, invisible to her binoculars, and sighting through a scope at her this very second.

Stop it . Arlene resisted the urge to sink down out of sight or to start the Buick and drive off at high speed. He's probably here to pick up his girlfriend who works on the janitorial crew

"Uh huh," Arlene whispered aloud. "And if you believe that, dearie, I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might want to buy."

She desperately wanted a cigarette, but there was no way that she could light one without showing the burned man that someone was in the dark, silent car out here in the shadows by the Dumpsters.

It might be worth it. Light the Marlboro. Enjoy it. Make him tip his hand.

But Arlene didn't think she wanted to tip the burned man's hand. Not right now. Not yet. Arlene looked at her watch—almost 11:20.

She was peering through the binoculars again, trying to decide if that darkness within the darkness there might be the shapeless silhouette of the man behind the wheel of the van, when her phone rang.

They lifted off and flew southeast out of Buffalo, past the few tall downtown buildings, past the twin goddesses atop twin buildings holding their twin shining lamps high toward the last low clouds, south along Highway 90—the Thruway toward Erie, Pennsylvania—then banking east and swooping south again along the four-laned Highway 219. Baby Doc was keeping the Long Ranger at an altitude of about five thousand feet for this first part of the flight to Neola. The remaining clouds were fewer and higher now and the view of the city, the great dark mass of Lake Erie to the west, the hills and villages to the east, was beautiful.

Kurtz hated it. He hated being in a helicopter—even the helicopter pilots he'd known in Thailand and at army bases in the States years ago had admitted, almost gleefully, how treacherous and deadly the stupid machines were. He hated flying at night. He hated being up front in the left seat where he could see more easily—even through bubble windows under his feet in this infernal machine modified for tourists. He hated the bulk of the Kevlar vest under his windshell and the fact that he hadn't shifted the Browning enough on his hip to keep it from digging into his side. Most of all, he hated the sure knowledge that they were going to be shot at in a few minutes.

Other than that, he was in a good mood. The little blue pills were keeping him awake, alert, and happy, even while he was busy hating the hell out of a lot of dungs. But the problem with pills for Joe Kurtz was that he was always Joe Kurtz there behind whatever curtain of pharmaceutical emotion or relief that was being granted by random molecules, and the Joe Kurtz behind the curtain usually couldn't stand the blue-pill condition of Kurtzness in front of the curtain.

Or at least this was his analysis as the seven of them flew south toward Neola five thousand feet above Highway 219.

Baby Doc had been making cryptic but pilot-sounding comments into his microphone, and now Kurtz shouted at him over the roar of the rotors and turbines—"Are we flying legally?"

Baby Doc looked at him and made arcane motions.

Kurtz repeated the shout.

Baby Doc shook his head, tapped his earphones, covered the microphone in front of mouth with his large fist, and shouted back, "Put on your cans."

It took Kurtz only a blue-pill second to realize that the pilot was talking about the bulky earphones and attached microphone on the console between them. He looked back to where four people sat on the side seats, the little Yemeni doctor sitting alone on the cushioned rear bend that could hold three more, and he realized that Gonzaga and Angelina were already wearing their earphones and mikes.

Kurtz tugged his on. He asked the question again, into the microphone this time.

"You have to click that if you want to be heard on the intercom," came Baby Doc's voice in his earphones. The pilot pointed to a button on the control stick that he'd referred to as the cyclic.