Panic!

Lennox followed her pointing arm with his eyes. Near the foot of the long slope falling away into the flatland was a pair of faintly discernible wheel ruts, obliterated in spots, grown over with brush in others, but ruts nonetheless, coming from around the rocks to the west, hooking eastward to parallel a wide arroyo cut deeply, like a jagged scar, into the dry, desolate plain. They would lead somewhere, they would lead to Cuenca Seco or to another road, they would lead out.

Lennox felt a surge of wild hope. He saw the same relief mirrored on Jana’s face, the sudden brightness of her eyes, and she said, “Oh, Jack, a road, a road!” and then they were running down the slope, unaware now of the rocky, treacherous soil and the gleaming cactus needles and the multiple, clutching arms of the mesquite and ocotillo, forgetting the danger of exposure on the open flat, seeing nothing but the wheel ruts, the path to safety ...

Four

The pain in the lids and sockets of Vollyer’s eyes had become excruciating, and the shadows were back at the edges of solid objects, distorting them slightly, putting them vaguely out of focus. The edge of the sun had crawled above the eastern horizon now, and the glare of daylight wavered over the landscape, contracting the pupils, intensifying the agony.

They were coming on a long rise, and he stopped to catch his breath, to rub gingerly at the swollen pits with his pocket handkerchief. Di Parma said, “You sure your eyes are okay, Harry? Jesus, they don’t look too good —”

“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes!”

“Harry, listen, we’ve got to call it off pretty soon. We can’t stay out here much longer, Harry, not without food and water. We may have gone too far as it is, it’ll take us a full day or more to get back to the car—”

“Shut up, will you shut up?”

Di Parma caught his arm. “Listen, I’m telling you, I don’t want to die on this desert!”

Vollyer pushed him away savagely and swung the binoculars up. At first he could not see anything but blurred images through the lens, and he thought: I can see, I can see, my eyes are all right and I can see, clear up now, you bastards, clear up so I can see! He blinked frantically, and the blur lessened and there was substance, there were shapes; he tried to swallow into a constricted throat, fighting the double vision that would not completely dissipate, moving the glasses in a wide are, west to east, along the top of the rise—

They were there, Lennox and the girl, standing there at the crest and looking down to the other side, just standing there, five hundred yards away.

Vollyer jerked the glasses down, and the Remington scope-handgun was in his right hand. He began to run up the slope. Di Parma hesitated and then ran after him, reaching his side. “Harry, what is it, did you see them?” but even as he said the words, Di Parma was looking up at the crest of the rise and the two figures standing there, looking at them for a brief instant before they jumped forward to disappear on the other side. He had been carrying his jacket, and he fumbled the .38 out of the pocket, flung the garment down; his lips pulled away from his teeth, and the fingers of his huge hand were spasmodic on the sweating metal of the belly- gun.

They ran diagonally across the slope, toward the spot where Lennox and the girl had been standing. Vollyer gagged on each breath, running on legs that were like jagged edges of bone, and sweat poured acid agony into his eyes. He fell once and Di Parma slowed automatically and pulled him to his feet, and then they were at the crest and looking beyond and Lennox and the girl were almost to the bottom of the slope on that side, running to the west. Vollyer pawed away sweat, pawed away some of the shimmering blur, but he was still too far away for an accurate shot, he had to get closer, a little closer, and he plunged downward with Di Parma at his heels, slipping, sliding wildly on the incline, moving in a diagonal again to cut off the targets at the bottom.

Vollyer became aware, through the stinging obscurity of his vision, that there was some kind of road or cart track down there—that was what they were running for and they were looking at that, only that, they did not know that he and Di Parma were up here behind them and that was all the edge he needed, the game was definitely over now, no mistake now. The gap was closing, closing, two hundred yards, less, near enough, one bullet for Lennox and one for the girl, and he skidded to his knees on the slope halfway down, bracing himself, washing away sweat with the palm of his free hand, bringing the Remington up into the crook of his arm and sighting with the scope. Two of Lennox and two of the woman, oh you goddamn bastard eyes, blink, blink, concentrate, clear up, there now, there, finger closing on the trigger, steady, steady—

The first shot.

Pause.

And amid rolling vibrations of sound that filled the yellow-gold morning like distant thunder, the second shot ...

Five

With the window rolled down, and the cruiser’s speed held to a crawl, Brackeen heard clearly the deep, hollow reports and knew immediately what they were.

Reflexively, his foot bore down on the accelerator and the patrol car responded with instant power, rear tires spewing dust and pebbles. He clung grimly to the wheel, body tensed, eyes probing the flaming distance, trying to see beyond the line of rocks just ahead. The shots had come from somewhere on their far side, somewhere close, and he knew with the intuitive sixth sense of a born cop that it was not a kid potting at jackrabbits or quail, or one of the local settlers target-practicing at an early hour; he knew that this was it, that this was the showdown, that the waiting had come to an abrupt end and there would be no need for the helicopters any longer, no need for Lydell and his search party, knew that he would find all of them—Lennox and Jana Hennessey, dead or alive now, and the professional sluggers—waiting for him just a few seconds away ...

Brackeen remembered the bullet he had found in the dashboard of the wrecked yellow Triumph, too badly mutilated for accurate identification but obviously of a high caliber; remembered, too, the dead body of Perrins/Lassiter and the six bullet holes within a five-inch radius on the upper torso, testimony to a deadly marksmanship. One man, possibly both, with a high-velocity weapon of some kind and more than likely the smaller handguns they had used on the hit, revolvers or automatics ... automatics ... automatics ...

And Brackeen’s mind was suddenly filled with a vivid reproduction of the rain-slick fire escape and the frightened white face of Feldman and the heavy automatic leveled upward, the huge black bore of the gun, the explosion and the destructive impact of the bullet which had seemed so real and yet had only been illusion; Coretti’s face, alive and dead, smiling and bloodily pulped, alternating like shuffled Before and After photographs across the surface of his mind. Sweat flowed thickly, hotly over his face and under his arms and into his crotch, and there was fear in the center of his belly now, fear twisting at his vitals, the same kind of fear he had felt staring at Feldman’s gun that night, staring at death and the terrible black void beyond.

I can’t face a gun, he thought. I can’t let it happen again!

And then he thought: But I have to, there’s nobody else, if I back off and radio for Gottlieb and Sanchez, for help, it might be too late by the time they got here and Lennox and the Hennessey girl could still be alive right now, no, I’ve got to see it through, I can’t crap out on them now ...

The back of Brackeen’s neck grew cold and bristling, then, and his thoughts became very clear and sharp. Understanding flowed through him, taking the edge off the building panic in his belly, quieting the stutter of his heart. He had to see it through. That was the way it had to be all right, that was the only way it could be. Because the commitment and the resurrection of Andy Brackeen had to be full and complete or else there was no real commitment and no true resurrection at all. You couldn’t start living again halfway, with half-knowledge, and subconsciously he had known this from the very beginning. He had known there was a good chance it would come to this, to a confrontation, a showdown, and he had wanted it to be that way. Jesus Christ, he wanted to face the gun or guns out there, he had to face them—that was why he had come out alone this morning, that was why he had been so nervous with the waiting last night and today; he wanted it because without it he would still be half a man, and he had to know what Andy Brackeen really was, he had to know.

He caught up the hand mike on the cruiser’s radio and called the substation. Demeter was there. Brackeen