Dean Koontz - Blood risk

In the distance the sound of a helicopter rattled through the still morning air.

"Got to hurry," Tucker said.

It had occurred to him that the gunman downstairs would hear the copter and might go outside where he could, at such close range, make an attempt to kill the pilot.

Shirillo was the first onto the roof, making the move with little trouble, and, with Harris assisting him from below, managed to get Merle Bachman outside just as Norton brought the chopper in low over the house. The girl went next, looking back only once at the three bags full of money, and she did not require any aid. Tucker followed her, his shoulder blazing with pain as he bumped it on the beveled rim of the trap door, requiring Shirillo's help to make the last part of the trip. Pete Harris handed out the suitcases one at a time, almost as if they were filled with nitroglycerin, then followed them.

The time was 7:38.

"Fantastic!" the girl said, looking up at the chopper.

Tucker said nothing.

An automatic rope ladder wound slowly out of the passenger door of the helicopter, a feature which Paul Norton had installed for the benefit of his string of less than legitimate customers. In a half minute from the time it had begun to unroll, the ladder's final hemp rung scraped against the mansion roof.

"Who first?" Shirillo asked, grasping the ladder and turning to look at the others. He wasn't having any trouble keeping his balance on the gently slanted roof, though to Tucker the angle seemed precipitous and the shingles seemed to move under them.

Harris said, "I'll take Merle up first. I don't think any of the rest of you can manage him on that ladder."

"Go," Tucker said.

He longed to sit down and rest, even to sleep, but he knew that sleep was a dangerous desire right now.

Harris gave Shirillo his Thompson submachine gun and said, "If you need it, do you know how to use it?"

The kid checked it out, nodded, said, "Yes."

Harris turned, gathered up Merle Bachman as if the smaller man were a child, slung him over his shoulder and held onto him with his left hand. He wasn't even bowed by the weight. Now, Tucker realized, despite the danger he'd posed throughout the operation, Harris was doing his share and had become as valuable as any man on the team. He gripped the rope ladder with his right hand, stepped onto the bottom rung and held tight as Norton drew them up toward the open copter door.

A gentle wind swept over the mansion and, in conjunction with the copter's wallowing motion, caused the ladder to swing back and forth in a wide arc that threatened to dump both of the men clinging to it. However, Harris held on, and the sway declined as the ladder shortened. Then the ladder stopped; Harris climbed the last few steps, worked Bachman into the open door and followed the wounded man.

The ladder raveled downward once again.

"You next," Tucker told the woman.

She was on the ladder the instant it fell before her, and she didn't wait to ride it while it retracted. As it pulled up into its mechanism, she climbed and gained the copter door in short order. Tucker wondered what Norton would think, whether he'd be nonplused by her unexpected appearance. He was relieved when, after she'd been inside the craft a moment, the ladder dropped swiftly again.

The copter bobbed but stayed pretty much in one spot, riding the back of the wind.

Shirillo shouted, "What about the suitcases?"

Tucker looked at them. "Give me the 'Thompson. You take the bags up one at a time."

Shirillo handed over the gun, lifted the smallest case, gripped the ladder and rode upward as it retracted. Harris, who was waiting for him, took the suitcase out of his hands. S'hirillo started back down.

A rifle cracked from below, the sharp noise muffled by the heavy thumping of the chopper's blades but nonetheless frightening and recognizable, like an ax splitting wood.

Tucker edged farther down the sloping roof until he could see the gunman on the lawn. Bracing the Thompson between his knees, weaker than ever now, his head swimming back and forth and his vision too blurred to take good aim, he clenched his teeth and let go a long, rattling burst of fire.

Down there, where bullets were plowing up the grass like rain, the gunman turned and ran, dived for cover behind a cement flower planter a hundred yards out from the house.

Tucker looked at Shirillo, saw the kid was just stepping onto the ladder with the second suitcase in hand.

"Move!"

Shirillo couldn't make the ladder operate any faster than it was doing now, and he couldn't very well climb it while carrying the luggage, but Tucker couldn't repress the shout. His calm facade was cracking, his carefully cultured composure slipping away. It had been one hell of an operation, and it mustn't go bad now because of one gorilla with a rifle, one punk out to impress the boss with his bravery.

The man behind the concrete planter stood up long enough to aim and take a shot at Tucker.

The bullet tore across the shingle two feet on Tucker's right, spraying chips of tarry fabric.

He loosened a chatter of machine-gun fire, chipping the cement all to hell.

Shirillo picked up the third suitcase and started up the ladder again, jerked as the man behind the planter got him in the thigh.

Son of a bitch, Tucker thought. His weariness and dizziness flopped over and were anger on the other side, anger enough to bring him into sharp, fast movement. He pulled hard on the Thompson's trigger and was rewarded with the sight of the gunman stepping frantically backward out of the way of a line of dancing bullets.

The man turned and ran, the rifle on the lawn where he'd dropped it, darting this way and that, seeking the shelter of shrubbery.

You dumb bastard, Tucker thought. I could have killed you, and what percentage would have been in that?

Everyone seemed anxious to die, as if they couldn't wait for it, like this man and the man he'd wounded on the promenade earlier in the evening. And like Baglio, ready to take a beating rather than tell where Bachman was. Of course, in this business you took a blood risk, because you worked with dangerous men at dangerous times. But a risk should be reasonable, the chances of success greater than the chances for failure. Otherwise you were no better than a fool.

"Hey!" Shirillo called down, breaking Tucker's reverie. He'd gotten the last suitcase into the chopper and had followed close behind it.

Strapping the Thompson around his chest, Tucker got to his feet, almost fell, almost lost it all right there, grabbed desperately for the rope ladder, caught it, jerked as the device began to draw up into the hovering aircraft.

A blood risk: he'd taken it, and he'd won.

Harris leaned out of the open door, reaching for him, grinning broadly. He said, "Been waiting for you," and he took Tucker's hands to pull him the rest of the way. Tucker noted that Harris hadn't added "friend."

Dr. Walter Andrion was a tall, slim, white-haired gentleman who wore tailored suits and fifty-dollar shirts, drove a new Cadillac and traveled in the fastest social circles. He was married to Evanne Andrion, a black-haired, blue-eyed lovely thirty years his junior, a young lady with incredibly expensive tastes. When Junior called him, he dropped everything and came out to the airfield right away, carrying two heavy bags instead of one, for he had long ago learned that he should meet any such call as fully prepared as he could be. This was not orthodox medicine by any means. He worked fast and was clean, bored out wounds, flushed away clotted blood and dirt, stitched the men up as well as they could have been in a hospital. He didn't speak, and no one spoke to him as he worked. He had made it abundantly clear to Tucker three years ago that he did not want to have to hear anything about the origins of such wounds and that he wanted these sessions to be terminated as rapidly as possible. When he was done, he insisted on taking Merle Bachman back to his clinic for a couple of weeks' rest and recuperation, enough time to have his entire mouth rebuilt as well. He accepted two thousand dollars from Tucker in fifties and hundreds, tucked this into an already fat wallet, helped Bachman into his Cadillac and drove away.