George Chesbro: In The House Of Secret Enemies

I was not at all sure I could even fire the gun with one arm, at least not with the accuracy I would need. Add to that the fact that any move I made would require exquisite timing and you come up with a situation that was not exactly favorable. Still, my adrenaline was running low and I had no desire to simply pass out at their feet. Besides, I hadn't come this far to fight a defensive action.

Now the men were about twenty-five yards apart, on opposite sides of the tree, and still moving. In going for an attacking position, I had crawled into a cul-de-sac; sooner or later the angle would be reduced to the point where one of the men would spot me. It was time to make my move.

I knew if I swung on one man the tree would protect me from the other, at least for a few seconds. I decided to go after the older, more experienced man first. He was the most dangerous. I braced the gun on my hip and swung to my right.

"Freeze! Both of you! Freeze, or this man dies!"

Of course, they were going to hear none of it. Bullets beat an obscene tattoo on the trunk behind me while the man in front of me tried to drop to one side.

I had anticipated it. I cut loose with a quick burst and the older man's body danced in the air like a bloody rag doll.

Immediately I pressed back against the tree, counted to three, and rolled around the back to the opposite side. The other man had done exactly what I had expected, running down the road to the other side of the tree. I stepped out on my side and pressed the trigger, catching him in the belly, blowing him backwards.

He was dead before he hit the fence but that didn't soothe my sensibilities. I shielded my eyes from the twitching figure stuck with electric glue to the deadly wire mesh.

It occurred to me that I had killed my first man-plus two others for good measure-in the space of the last ten minutes. Oddly enough, I felt strangely unaffected by the blood and death around me; I kept thinking of a young man struggling for life while a man plunged a needleful of eternity into his veins.

I figured the odds were better than even that one of the men I had killed had held that needle; the other two had probably held Tommy Barrett down.

But the man responsible for it all was still alive and free. I glanced in the direction of the farmhouse; it was perfectly quiet. I looked at my watch and found it had been shattered. I figured the time at around 9:30, which meant I had only a half hour before the plane landed. I had to get to Pernod before help arrived.

I reloaded one of the guns from ammunition I found in the older man's pocket, then went through the gate. I knew it would be safer to work my way down through the grain fields, but I figured I couldn't afford the time.

Keeping low, trying to ignore the pain in my left arm, I zigzagged down the rutted road to the house. I expected to hear-or feel-a volley of shots at any moment, but none came; there was only the lazy singing of crickets. I reached the house and came up hard against the side, just beneath a window. I rested a few moments, sucking air into my lungs, trying to right the landscape around me, which had a maddening tendency to spin.

I suspected a bullet between my eyes might be the reward for looking in that particular window so I resisted the impulse and crept around to the other side of the house.

There was another window. I counted slowly to one hundred, then looked in.

Elizabeth Hotaling was tied to a chair, a gag in her mouth. Her face was very pale, her eyes wide and red. Pernod was standing over her, a knife pressed against her throat. It looked as if the arsenal had been depleted.

"I'm here now, Pernod," I said quietly. "I just killed off your zoo." I kept the gun out of sight. I was curious to see if Pernod would move away from the girl. He didn't.

"Get in here, Frederickson," Pernod said tightly. "I want to see the rest of you. If I don't, I kill the girl."

"You're an idiot, Pernod," I said evenly, allowing myself a short laugh for effect. I cut it off quickly as I felt it building to hysteria. I didn't look at the girl. "That girl is the only reason you're alive right now. Besides, she's your girl friend, not mine.

Chop her head off if you want. In any case, the second her blood spills, you're dead."

Pernod smiled uncertainly. For a moment I thought he was going to drop the knife. I was wrong. Pernod pressed the point into the soft flesh of the girl's throat and blood blossomed. I groaned inwardly.

"I don't believe you, professor. I don't believe you'd let a young girl die if you could prevent it. But we'll compromise. If I can't see you, I want to see the gun I know you're carrying. I want to see it now! "

The knife point dug deeper, fractions of an inch away from the girl's jugular. I pressed the loading lever on the side of the gun and the magazine dropped to the ground. I tossed the rest of the weapon through the window. Pernod reacted as I'd hoped, leaping at the gun, picking it up and aiming it at the window.

It was a few seconds before he realized there was no magazine. By then I was over the ledge and into the room, standing in front of the girl. Once again, my left arm had come loose from its impromptu sling. I let it dangle.

Pernod laughed. Apparently he thought he was in charge of the situation. He glanced once at the knife he still held as if to reassure himself.

"All right, dwarf," Pernod said without a trace of the manners I remembered, "stick that good arm behind your back and lay down on the floor."

"If you put the knife down I won't kill you, Pernod," I breathed. I straightened up and smiled.

Pernod blinked in disbelief before rage gorged his eyes and he came at me. I ducked under the knife and kicked out at his knees. It was a glancing blow, not enough to cripple him. Pernod stumbled and sat down heavily on the floor, a stunned expression on his face. He stared at me stupidly.

"Stay down, Pernod," I said, fighting down my own blood lust. "Stay down."

I didn't really want him to, and he didn't. Switching the knife to his other hand, Pernod rose and lurched toward me. This time I let him get close, feeling the blade of the knife cutting through my shirt and slicing across the skin over my ribs.

But I had the shot I wanted. I brought the side of my hand down hard on the bridge of his nose, breaking it cleanly. In the same motion, my hand described a lightning arc and drove those shattering fragments of bone up behind Pernod's eyes and into his brain.

It was almost over, and almost was the key word. I couldn't let up now, not even for a moment. If I did, I would be finished but the job wouldn't. I quickly took the gag out of Elizabeth Hotaling's mouth and untied her.

"You-you're the man. He called you-"

"Mongo," I said. "Just Mongo."

She was in shock, which was just as well, because I had nothing to say to her. I felt completely empty, devoid of anything I could put into words. I covered her with a blanket and headed for the door, stopping just once to look back and meet her gaze. The look in her eyes stunned me, and I wondered, now, if that was how other people would also look at me.

A dwarf? Yes. But also a killer, a dangerous man. Never mind the circumstances. Never fool with Mongo. Once I had thought that look was what I wanted. Now I wasn't sure at all, and I wondered how much of myself I had paid for the look in the girl's eyes. And whether it was worth the price.

Clouds had eaten at the sun while I'd been in the house and it looked as if it would rain. I thought I heard the wail of sirens in the distance but I couldn't be sure. It was almost time. I crouched down in the morning to wait for the plane.

I'd been lecturing on Suzuki's technique of identifying individuals through lip prints and was turning to a chart I'd drawn on the blackboard when I caught a glimpse of the man standing just outside the door to my classroom. I stopped in mid-sentence, momentarily disoriented, suspended in that spiritual never-never land that appears when widely disparate worlds of the mind collide. It had been a few years since I'd seen Bruno Jessum.