Стивен Хантер - G-Man

Finally, it was moving on toward the appointed hour, so he paid his bill, went to his car — still hot, but maybe not as much — and started back down Wolf Road.

It was a twenty-minute drive, with no traffic oncoming or trailing, and with hypnotic regularity the darkened outposts of civilization passed on either side. His headlights illuminated the dash-dash-dash painted line at highway’s center dividing it into north and south lanes. A mile out from the Miller intersection, he turned his lights off, confident that no cars were headed his direction on the long straightaway ahead, and eased along at about thirty, orienting on the painted line but peering up every few seconds to look for the big Standard Oil billboard.

He saw it, and in the light of the half-moon, saw the intersection, saw the silver band of road running off to the right, slowed to stop, and then heard the unmistakable spasm of a burst of machine-gun fire.

The car halted just short of Carey’s vehicle, the last in the line. Crouching behind Carey’s rear fender, sure that he was invisible even in the moonglow, Les saw the marking ILLINOIS STATE POLICE on the car’s white door. He could make out motion inside, identifying two shapes moving without urgency or suspicion in the dark containment of the front seat. The driver rolled down the window, switched on a searchlight mounted on the fender, and guided it to the three cars.

“Everything all right, folks?” came the cry.

Les stepped from behind the car.

“It’s just fine, Officers,” he said, and then fired.

The gun of course fought him, being small and light against the force of twenty-two hardballs spitting out of it jackrabbit fast, and its flash was a genie emerging from a bottle, leaping crazily into the sky above the muzzle in a slithering, flickering undulation, the superfast thrust and recoil of the slide pulling the muzzle up and to the right as the gun ate its ammunition, the hot spray of ejected empties flying to the right like a squad of pursuit planes climbing to apogee, then diving to attack. But his left hand, locked solid onto the Thompson front grip Mr. Lebman had welded on the dustcover, kept the fire stream steady into the police cruiser. The fleet of slugs all found glass to pierce, web, and atomize, and the two silhouettes yanked and twisted and shuddered as the bullets tore into them.

Then it was over. The machine pistol had gobbled its magazine in less than a second. The sweet smell of gun smoke drifted to Les’s nose and he sucked at it through his nostrils like an aphrodisiac. He had to have more. It smelled so good. He felt so slick, man-with-a-smoking-automatic-gun triumphant, this was the moment he so loved, he lived for, it was so GREAT! Coolly, he thumbed the mag-release catch, felt the empty slide out and caught it with his off hand, as he didn’t have too many of them, welded up so skillfully to take three times the normal number of cartridges, and couldn’t afford to discard it. Pocketing it, he fished another one out, slid it into the grip, where it disappeared with oily slickness until the mag catch snapped, locking it in. Then he pulled back on the locked-back slide, unlocking it, and it shot forward with a determined metal-on-metal clack, signifying the machine pistol was fully loaded and ready to go again.

He started to walk around the car. Had to finish them off. A burst in each body, no doubt about it, and they were food for vultures, and his war against those symbols of authority whom he had hated and feared his whole life had claimed two more definite kills. He circled around back of the car, aware that while one of the cops slumped over the wheel, the other had collapsed in his seat but had enough left in him to open the door, spill out, and begin a bloody crawl to the ditch.

Too bad for you, Mr. State Policeman, with your saddle-shoe cruiser, with your black uniform and tie, all spic-and-span, too bad for you but I’m going to saw you in half.

Suddenly a puff of dirt erupted at his feet, and in the same split second the crack of a heavy pistol reached his ears. He turned, and on the crest a hundred yards away, silhouetted against the glow of the city, isolated and stoic, erect and unflinching, stood a man with a gun, the last thing Les expected. The man fired again.

Charles stepped on it, the Ford spurting ahead, squealed through the right turn onto Miller, chewed up a ton of dust as his tires fought the surface of the country road for traction, and went like a dart to the crest of the hill.

He braked and spilled out. Maybe there were ten mobsters with Thompsons down there, and he didn’t want to drive into that kind of a mess. Instead, he stood on the crest, and since his eyes were already accustomed to the darkness, he had no trouble seeing what lay perhaps a hundred fifty yards beyond him, which was three cars pulled off to the side of the road, a black-and-white State cruiser, and a fellow hunched and bent with a gun walking around the back of the car with, by his posture, a depraved heart. The .45 came to Charles’s hand with raw speed, and he locked knees, hips, torso, elbows, shoulders, hands, after snicking off the safety, for an impossibly long shot.

He held off and high to the moving figure, and when his internal machinery told him he was on, it also fired the pistol. The crack, the flash, the jump of recoil, the trajectory of spent shell, and back on target, before time in flight had ended for the bullet. He saw the dust kick up maybe five yards this side of the mark, and a man ahead, and so quickly calculated adjustments, but by this time the man had stopped moving, considered, and bent in to his weapon. He and Charles fired at the same time, but where Charles fired once, Mr. Gangster fired ten times in half a second, the flash rising off the gun muzzle a gigantic blot of white heat.

Dust floated into the air as the burst dashed against the ground, erupted, and released the debris in rows of geysers, all neat and pretty unless it hit you. Charles didn’t care; he was shooting, and the only thing in the universe was the front sight, now adjusted a third time — two and a quarter men high and half a man forward — and he fired, seeing a splinter of a second later the man take a ragged step back as if hit.

The gun came to Les naturally, and without thinking he jacked off half a magazine. His good instincts at flash shooting rained lead on the statue-like figure assaulting him from afar. He saw the dust kick, and expected in the next second to see a lurch, a spin, at the least a sprint, to cover. Instead, he saw a flash and felt the sting of dust way too close for comfort.

Knows what he’s doing came to his mind, even as a wave of astonishment hit him. The guy hadn’t buckled and run, hadn’t sought cover, but stayed hard and straight, calculating without fear the way to a hit.

He fired: flash, crack, the bullet hit the brim of Les’s hat, twisting it on his head, shredding the knitted straw.

Les pressed off another burst, emptying his piece into lock-back, and again, off his sound instinct for hip-shooting, the rounds seemed to straddle the guy even as they struck, and again they yanked dust into the air in spumes of grit, and again the fellow didn’t — wouldn’t? couldn’t? — move.

That was enough. Les launched himself, before a fourth round, perfectly adjusted for range and wind, would have caved in his skull, and sprinted back to his car. It seemed his pals had already departed the scene; J.P. was behind the wheel of the Hudson, Helen hiding on the backseat floor, and Les all but flew through the open window, at the last moment opening the door and diving in.

“Go! Go! GO!” he shouted, but J.P. had already put the pedal to the floor, and the great vehicle roared from the battleground, distributing tons of dust behind it as it hit highest velocity in a matter of seconds, and plunged into the already gushing dust the first car had ripped up in its own flight. Six fast shots erupted from the side of the road, where one of the Highway Patrol men had wildly emptied his revolver, but to no effect. Les looked back.