‘I set three fire bombs,’ Salsa told him. ‘They will go off in a very few minutes.’
‘Where? Where are they?’
‘The exact locations are hard to describe. It might take half an hour to give you the precise idea.’
Baron said, ‘Steuber. Find out.’
While the two who had brought Salsa up held him, Steuber and his hands began to ask the questions. Salsa closed his eyes at once, went limp, and said no more, no matter how strenuously Steuber asked him.
Five after ten. Eight minutes after; the phone rang. It was Rudi again, and he was excited, too excited to talk. But two things came through clearly; Grofield had killed Bud and Arnold and had disappeared, and the casino was on fire.
‘Get it out,’ Baron said. ‘Find Grofield. Get the fire out, and find Grofield.’
‘But the people,’ Rudi kept saying. ‘But the people.’
It took Baron a minute to understand what Rudi meant, but then he got it. The fire wasn’t really bad, not yet, was only in a back corner of the casino, but the casino had been full of people, all of whom were panicking, milling about, trying to get out of the building all at once, making it impossible for Rudi and the other staff men to get through and do something about the fire.
Then Rudi said, ‘The cockpit! The cockpit, too! Fire,
on fire!’
Baron threw the phone across the room. ‘The third one,’ he said. He spun around and grabbed Heenan by the shirt-front and dragged him to his feet. ‘The third one!’ he shouted. ‘Parker! Where is this bastard Parker?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know, how should I know?’
Baron threw him away as he’d thrown the phone and ran across the room to where Salsa still hung limp in the arms of the two staff men, with Steuber waiting patiently to one side.
Baron grabbed Salsa by the hair, held his head up. ‘Where’s Parker?’ he shouted. ‘Where’s your other man?’
Salsa didn’t open his eyes, but he smiled.
Baron raged around the room, furious with doubt and fear. There was an onyx desk set on his desk and he yanked it up, spilling out the pens. He rushed back to Salsa and slashed at his head with the desk set, hitting him till blood streamed down over Salsa’s face and the staff men finally dropped him and stepped back, looking whitefaced and confused.
‘Guns!’ shouted Baron. ‘Guns, guns, where are the guns?’
It was ten minutes after ten. Steuber moved stolidly across the room, pulling his keys from his pocket, on his way to unlock the guns.
5
FOR the first time in his life, there was no background music.
Grofield sat against a treetrunk in pitch darkness, examining himself as best he could with half-numb fingers. So far as he could tell, he had been shot four times, but none of them serious; he didn’t seem to be carrying any of the bullets with him. One had sliced through the fleshy inner part of his upper arm, a few inches above the elbow, leaving a strong ache like a Charley horse in its wake. Another had drawn a line across the top of his left shoulder, barely breaking the skin and leaving behind it a faint stinging feeling. The third had gone in his right side at the waist, through the spare tyre he kept meaning to exercise off, and out again, with a burning sensation where it had gone in and a dull ache where it had come out. And the fourth had gone through the fatty part of his left leg, a couple of inches below the groin, causing more bleeding than all the other three wounds combined, but with practically no pain at all.
These were the first four times in his life he’d been shot. The experience took some getting used to.
But slowly he was getting his equilibrium back. He touched himself all over, stretched his arms and legs and found that everything was working all right, and then grinned in the darkness. ‘If that’s the best they can do,’ he whispered, ‘then, what the hell.’
The background music started again as he climbed up the tree to a standing position. Sombre music, portentous. Would he get through? Would he get to the cavalry in time to save the settlers from the Indians?
His left arm was stiff and his left leg was slightly numb, but he could still navigate. He moved through the tangled growth back the way he had come, and for the first time he noticed the new flickering quality of the light ahead of himself.
The place was on fire! Salsa had done his part, the fires were started.
What the hell time was it? If Parker and Ross tried to land, and Baron’s men were in control at the boathouses
Grofield hurried the rest of the way back to where he’d left the two guys who’d shot him they’d come out worse than him, they were still lying there on their faces and went past them towards the boathouses; up ahead of him he could hear the sounds of gunshots.
No good. He didn’t have a weapon on him.
He went back to the two guys he’d killed, and found their guns, both Colt automatics. There were three rounds left in the clip of one of them, and five in the other. Carrying them both, Grofield headed towards the boathouses again.
A cabin boat was in towards shore, bobbing in the waves as though there were neither a man at the controls nor an anchor out. Three guys on shore, protected behind the walls of the boathouses, were firing at it, and occasionally there was a flash of a gunshot from the boat.
Grofield picked his spot, steadied his right hand with his left, and picked them off one two three, doing it so fast the third one didn’t even have time to turn all the way around. Then he hurried on down to the water’s edge and called, ‘Parker! Come on in!’
