Jungle Of Steel And Stone

hands against the dashboard,' he said evenly.

Reyna's face was bloodless, but her mouth was set in a determined line. 'What will he do if he sees you chasing him?'

'Nothing, I hope. He'll probably assume I'm another cop. In any case, he's not going to stop for us.'

The deadly popping of gunfire had resumed; it was closer now, somewhere in the streets off to their right. Veil kept the accelerator to the floor as he sped across a bridge. The car hit the peak of a shallow crown, soared through the air, then slammed back to the ground. The gap separating him from the police car had narrowed to a few yards, and the back of the driver's head was now clearly visible.

Suddenly Reyna clutched at Veil's arm with both hands, almost causing him to lose control of the car. 'Oh, my God,' she said with a gasp. 'That's Carl Nagle!'

Veil, who had been focusing on the car's trunk, now shifted his gaze to the driver's head—and saw that Reyna was right. Questions flashed through his mind and were instantly dismissed. It seemed doubtful that Nagle would be riding around in a stolen police car, yet the flasher— and the police radio he undoubtedly had inside the car— could have been stolen, or purchased, some time before he'd fallen out of favor with all the various powers that had ruled his existence. For the first time Veil saw beneath the thuggish exterior of the man to what had to be a keen, if hopelessly twisted, mind; an outlaw, hunted by both the police and the Mafia, Carl Nagle had managed to wire himself into everything the police did. Veil debated whether or not to tell Reyna that Nagle was on his own, running from everyone, then decided that it would serve no purpose other than to frighten her even more than she already was. Gabriel Vahanian was dead, he thought, and now he was the one looking up the ass of the tiger.

'Lie down on the seat,' Veil said calmly, gently squeezing Reyna's knee. 'I won't let him hurt you. I promise.'

Reyna did as she was told, ducking down and curling into a ball on the seat, but both hands continued to grip Veil's leg.

Nagle suddenly turned hard to the left. Veil stayed with him, narrowly missing a parked car. At the next block Nagle turned right; Veil followed, expertly keeping the car under control as the rear end fishtailed. In the block ahead he could see a milling knot of people and the flashing lights of police cars.

The brake lights on Nagle's car came on as he abruptly pulled over to the curb. Veil reacted instantly, again planting his hand on Reyna's chest and bracing her as he slammed on the brakes. He eased up to prevent the brakes from locking, slammed them on again, and brought the car under control, stopping it at the curb across the street from, and slightly behind, Nagle's car.

Veil immediately ducked down and peered over the dashboard at Nagle; the man was sitting rigidly in his car, radio microphone in his hand, staring down the street. Imprisoned in his own world of desperation and madness, apparently he had never even noticed the car pursuing him.

'Veil . . . ?' 'It's all right. Nagle doesn't know we're here. You stay right where you are.'

Reyna's voice was a croaking whisper. 'Toby?'

'No sign of him, but a lot of men are pointing toward a building under construction. He must be in there someplace.'

'Thank God he's still alive,' Reyna said in a small voice. 'Are there police?'

'Yes.'

'Veil, maybe we should talk to them now. This is getting pretty hairy.'

'Hang in there, sweetheart. Remember, if Toby is taken into custody, the odds are overwhelming that he'll die— and his tribe along with him.'

'I just don't want him to die now.'

'There's still time. Nobody's gone into the building yet, and Nagle's still in his car. I want to see what he's up to.'

Veil waited, and after another minute Nagle began speaking into his microphone. Down the street, a uniformed officer leaned into his car, obviously listening to his radio. Nagle released the transmit button on his microphone, waited a few seconds, then pressed it and spoke again. The patrolman suddenly began shouting orders to the other police on the scene as he pointed to his left.

'Veil . . . ?'

'Nagle's working on his own, Reyna. He's feeding phony information to the police down the street now.'

Even as Veil spoke, there was a flurry of activity among the group of policemen by the building; they ran to their cars, got in, and drove off. The crowd that had been milling in the street and on the sidewalk gradually began to disperse. One man reached down into a garbage bin and retrieved a shotgun from where he had hurriedly thrown it at the approach of the police. He and six other men walked halfway up the block, then disappeared into a bar.

'Veil . . . ?'

'Shhh. Just stay there.'

Almost ten minutes passed. Then the door of the car across the street opened. Nagle stepped out and began walking casually down the middle of the street, toward the building skeleton. In one hand he carried a powerful flashlight, and in the other what appeared to be an Uzi submachine gun equipped with a custom-made silencer. He stepped up on the sidewalk and vanished through an opening in the fence surrounding the construction site.

'Nagle's gone into the building,' Veil continued as he opened the door and got out. 'You stay put. Lock the doors.'

'Veil?' Reyna cried out as she sat up and reached for him. 'What are you going to do?'

'I'm going to kill the son of a bitch,' he replied evenly as he blew Reyna a kiss, then closed the door.

Veil, moving as silently as death, ran down the street and across the intersection to the construction site. He waited, pressed back against the fence next to the opening, listening. When he heard nothing, he darted through the opening, angling across to the opposite side. There he crouched low in the darkness, listening again. This time he heard the faint, shuffling sound of footsteps on wood scaffolding.

Suddenly a bright cone of light from Nagle's flashlight pierced the darkness on the second floor of the steel skeleton. There were more shuffling footsteps, then the clatter of loose boards. Veil thought he heard a faint, low rumble, as if Nagle were talking to himself.

Veil straightened up and moved off to his right. At the corner of the building he reached up and gripped a steel girder, then began to climb up the grid work. Suddenly he heard a can clatter, back near the entrance. He turned his head in time to see the unmistakable figure of Reyna—a master tracker undone and made careless by her terror of the monster that was Carl Nagle—trip and fall through the opening in the fence. A moment later she cried out in pain.

Veil immediately released his grip on the steel and dropped back to the ground. He landed, then sprinted through the rubble-strewn darkness toward where Reyna lay at the bottom of a wedge of dim light cast by street lamps. Without slowing his pace he ran through the light, reaching down as he did so and grabbing a handful of Reyna's jacket, jerking her off the ground and carrying her to the other side of the opening just as a burst of fire, sounding like nothing so much as a person spitting watermelon seeds at an impossibly fast clip, raked across the fence just above Veil's head. He fell on top of Reyna to shield her with his body, holding her head down with his hand, burying his own head in her thick hair and waiting as the pfft-pfft sound of bullets striking wood slowed in tempo—then stopped.

Veil got up on his hands and knees and, pulling Reyna along with him by her belt, scurried forward to the shelter of a wide support girder.

'Shh, shh,' Veil intoned to the whimpering Reyna as he held her tight. Her eyes were wide with horror, and her breath came in short, panting gasps. 'You have to control it, Reyna. Shh.'

Finally Reyna was able to control her sobbing, although she continued to breathe in gasps. 'Wh-what in— God's name?'

'It's called a submachine gun, sweetheart,' Veil said, peering around the girder and looking up. Nagle's light was out. 'Unfortunately, that particular model fires up to three hundred rounds a minute.'

'He plans to use that on Toby?'

'Obviously, he'll use it on anyone who gets in his way— he'd use a cannon if he had one. There's no time now for details, but Nagle's on the outs with both the cops and the crooks. He's out of his head but not so crazy that he isn't thinking. He needs the heroin in the Nal-toon to finance an escape out of the country. I didn't tell you before because I didn't want you more frightened than you already were. Now—what the hell