Steven Havill - Bitter Recoil

“Don’t do it!” I shouted. Releasing my hold on Daisy, I made a wild grab at the little Colt. Finn swung toward me and pulled the trigger. The.45 bellowed, the explosion mind-numbing in the drift. The bullet passed harmlessly two feet over my head, crossed the main shaft, and thudded into a timber.

I locked my arm against the damp concrete, pointed the.380 toward the center of the shadow that was Finn’s torso, and pulled the trigger twice.

Finn staggered backward. The drift was filled with the crashes of the.45 as his finger jerked the trigger spasmodically. I cringed low, hugging Daisy to me. One of the fat, hollow-point bullets of the.45 glanced off an iron bracket and sang over our heads like a wasp. Finn had already lost his balance, the recoil of the gun adding to his backward dance.

Another sound became harmony to the big automatic. With a loud “whump,” a section of the wall just behind the timbers caved in, the mass striking Finn and carrying him to the other side of the drift. He screamed and went down. The dust billowed toward me.

I slapped the light switch on my helmet. In one desperate motion I stood up, pulled Daisy off her feet, and plunged the carabiner through the loop of my own harness. The spring snapped shut.

With the little girl hanging from my waist like a rag doll, I turned and waddled toward the vertical shaft.

Behind me, Finn screamed. “No! Listen to me!” he shrieked. The son of a bitch would have to talk to himself.

I fumbled with the mike switch on my collar. “Pull me up!” I bellowed into the mike.

Behind me, Finn continued to shriek and then he found the.45 again. Its last cartridge exploded. The flash illuminated the back of the drift, and the slug danced off the rock and dug into the dust. Even as the clip emptied, the rumble of the earth’s guts built, low and ominous.

A puff of air hit my face and with it came the acrid smell of fresh rock dust. A timber nearby cracked loudly and a shower of rocks clattered around my feet. I grabbed a fistful of Daisy’s jacket and reached the mouth of the drift just as the last of the rope’s slack snaked past. The rotten timbers above the pump station collapsed inward.

Something heavy struck my right foot and I spun sideways. “Son of a bitch!” I shouted and jumped into space.

The jolt of the rope damn near cut me in half. Daisy was a small child, but her weight pulled the harness off-sides.

Like a twisting, turning pendulum, we snapped out away from the drift and then crashed back against the side of the shaft, the iron of the ladder cracking my helmet. If Daisy screamed, I never heard it.

The rumble of the collapse died away in the drift even as we were lifted toward the surface. I hung limp, head back and eyes locked on the patch of light above me.

It was almost a relief to hang in the quiet shaft.

“Gastner, you copy?”

In order to key the mike, I would have had to release my hold on Daisy. That would have been a hell of a way to test whether or not the carabiner still locked her harness to mine. I didn’t have the strength to yell. Let ’em wait, I thought.

A thousand hands hoisted us out of the shaft. The ground under my feet was hard and firm-with nothing hanging over my head but the night sky.

“Be careful with the child,” someone said. Her eyes were tightly closed, with her arms drawn up tightly to her chest and her fists balled under her chin.

I struggled to my feet and saw Nolan Parris. The priest was trying to reach the child, trying to push his way past the medical team and the assisting cops. His face was as white as his Roman collar and his eyes wide with concern for the child…but he was heading for disaster.

“Parris!” I shouted at him. He jerked up and saw me. I wrenched my arm away from someone and staggered toward the priest. I caught him by the shirtfront and for a minute we both executed a slow, clumsy dance as I tried to keep my balance.

I shook Parris until he was looking me in the eye.

“Listen!” I shouted at him and then I lowered my voice. “Listen to me. Now’s not the time. You’re a stranger to her, just like the rest of us.”

“But I…”

I shook him, but it was a damn feeble shake. “Stay out of their way. She’s in good hands. And you’re not going to be able to just walk back into her life. She doesn’t know you. You’ll make matters worse.” He turned in my grip and watched the medics bundle the little girl toward the medivac helicopter.

Hell, I knew what he wanted. He’d made up his mind and now wanted to make up for four lost years. But he had no idea how tough that road was going to be. The little girl wasn’t going to run into his arms, shouting, “Daddy, Daddy!” I figured she’d had her fill of adults for a while. If I’d been her, I’d have wanted to stay catatonic for about a month until I sorted life out.

Camera lights bathed the helicopter as the reporters got what they had come for. A little, helpless, battered child made damn good copy.

I could see Nolan Parris wasn’t going to do anything stupid, and I released my hold on him. “Help me over to the chopper. We’ll ride into the hospital with her.”

***

Twenty hours later Pat Tate answered the telephone for me. I was standing in front of the small mirror that hung over the nightstand in my hospital room, trying to manipulate the electric shaver so I didn’t hack my chin wattles to pieces. Even over the buzz of the razor, I heard the caller’s ranting and knew right away who it was.

“You betcha,” Sheriff Tate said. He nodded and repeated himself, then added, “Here he is.” He held out the receiver, and I set the razor down.

“Holman?”

“Himself.”

Posadas County Sheriff Martin Holman was pissed. I got in the first word.

“Yup,” I said into the phone and the tirade began.

“What the hell is going on up there with you?” he shouted, and I held the receiver away from my ear. Tate grinned, tapped his watch, and mouthed that he’d be back in a few minutes. Holman was still barking, and I let him roll on until he lost some momentum.

“My God, all I see in the papers and on television is your mug, and for Christ’s sakes you don’t even work for them.”

“Those are the breaks,” I said.

Holman almost choked, and I listened to him cough for a minute before he got control. “Do you know how many times I’ve called?”

“No, sir,” I said. He was twenty years my junior, but what the hell. He signed my paychecks. “No one told me you’d called.”

“Three times yesterday,” Holman barked. He really was angry. “Three goddamned times. And shit…four times today, at least.”

“Sorry about that. Things were hectic though.” Pat Tate must have been having fun. And the son of a gun never had told me.

“They said you were asleep.”

“The docs wouldn’t let anyone in to see me. They were worried about me combining exhaustion with coronary stress.”

“Coronary stress, hell. You’ve got the next best thing to a new one. No one can kill you.” His tone modulated a little. “They could have at least told you I called.”

“I’m sure they were planning on it.” I saw an opening and took it. “And Estelle is doing well. I thought you might like to hear that.”

“I know that,” Holman said. “I talked with her husband. More than once,” he added pointedly. “He says she’s going to recover fully.”

“Yes.”

“So how the hell did you piece together that this character was wanted in Washington? Talk about grandstanding heroics. Jesus.”

“I didn’t piece it together. He saw an old newspaper I’d kept after we got the APB earlier this month. He thought I had nailed him.”