Wild Country

Chapter Sixty-Eight

It takes time to change direction when running full tilt in normal footgear. It also takes time for interlocked masses of fibrous plastic disguised as brick and stone to fall three stories into a street. Quantrill covered the necessary fifteen meters across a curiously yielding rubbery sidewalk in less than two seconds and was missed by the complete windowframe that cartwheeled past. But he was knocked sprawling amid the thunder of hollow masonry, sideswiped lightly by a hunk of fiberglass cornice that rebounded from that sidewalk composition. Had it been solid stone, it would have mashed him like a beetle. A cloud of grayish dust roiled up from the slithering roar of debris, and Quantrill smelled rye flour in the air as he regained his feet.

And now the sound of heavy footfalls issued from that stairwell as Sorel raced down to see the result of his handiwork. Quantrill continued almost to the face of the rubble that blocked the street but knew he could never clamber over it without giving Sorel an absurdly soft target.

He ducked into the last doorway, fumbling stupidly for that master key, and went through the door sideways cursing the squall its hinges yielded. He found himself in a room with no rear door, but with an open stairwell leading below. The room stank faintly, pungent with a once common odor, and the dust on the floor showed the passage of many feet to and from that stairwell. This corner of Soho might be off-limits to tourists, but it saw a lot of use. Felix Sorel stood in the street with his sidearm drawn, looking the other direction down Wardour, wheeling in a crouch as he heard that telltale squeal of hinges. Now he was studying storefronts across the street, moving silently, his motions fluid as an otter's as he addressed every prominence that might hide anything of Quantrill's size. Pleasure to watch you, damn your eyes. If I close this door, it'll screech like a tomcat, and if I don't, you'll see it ajar. I'd best leave it as is, and make every second count.

Quantrill tested each footfall for creaks, squatting below the front windows as he retreated to the stairs. He thanked a capricious providence for providing a welded steel stair that did not protest, and descended in search of something he could use as a weapon.

The basement floor was concrete, its gloom dispelled by narrow clerestory windows set at sidewalk level. Quantrill could see Felix Sorel twenty meters away, searching storefronts, listening. Moving in a crouch, Quantrill made his way around what looked like a remotely run furnace, with pipes running through the wall and a huge connected blower. A barrel-sized tank nearby sat high on metal legs, with a copper feed line to the furnace. Set into the rear wall was a door that seemed to offer hope of an exit.

It lied. The door opened silently on well-oiled hinges, and Quantrill found himself staring into a volume hardly larger than a bathroom. A row of ancient five-gallon containers stood against one wall. He opened one, damning the noise, and felt a certain satisfaction. He did not know that this basement housed the mechanism that provided Soho with its spectacular fireball during the Heinkel's "crash" just outside the compound, but he knew what he had in that metal container.

He was pulling his boots off, standing beneath the stairs, when he heard Sorel's footfalls above. He tugged at a sock, then hurriedly thrust his second spare magazine of Chiller ammo into it. If Sorel did not come down on his own, he must be enticed down. But getting Sorel down those stairs was no problem; the Mexican came down cautiously, spotted the door to the storage room, and stood assessing the place.

It had to be said just exactly right, if either of them was to live. "Don't shoot, Sorel. I'm your only hostage." His words were calm, and from his crouch behind the steel stair he was still invisible.

Just as calmly, from three meters away: "Show me empty hands."

Quantrill thrust the loaded sock into a hip pocket and stuck out his hands, very slowly, where they could be seen. "Coming out." He was coughing, tears gathering in his eyes, as he stood up with hands elevated to the height of his head.

Something like relief, and sadness as well, crossed Sorel's face as he trained the muzzle of his sidearm at Quantrill's belly. "Up the stairs," he said, pointing with his free hand, stepping back with care, coughing softly. Quantrill stepped to the stair, blinking and coughing. Yes, he might still get out of this hole without more bloodshed, but only as a hostage, bested by Felix Sorel. In any case, he had already begun to play his own hand, and Sorel seemed unaware of it.

Quantrill stood on the first step and turned. "Put the shooter away, Sorel, you can't use it here. And you won't get past me, but you're welcome to try."

Sorel, too, was now blinking watery eyes as he frowned. "Go upstairs before you suffocate, fool."

"That's gasoline fumes you smell, ol' buddy." He coughed. "Lots of it, spilled across the floor, and a hundred gallons more in storage. One muzzle flash and this whole building will be scattered from here to Faro."

Sorel looked around him, saw the puddles and the metal jerry can standing in full view near the storage room. His face clouded. "Idiota, this is not the way men fight."

"There's a better way. I'm betting you'll take it." Quantrill lowered his hands to his hips, gambling, trying to make his grin a taunt even though he was now a bit light-headed from the fumes. "If you throw that H and K and it strikes a spark, they'll hear it in Austin. Got nails in your boots? Take 'em off. Believe me, I'll wait."

Slipping the little automatic into its holster, Sorel managed a glacial smile. His confidence seemed unshaken, though for the first time, Quantrill saw in his face the squint of a duped man. "I love to beat a clever Anglo," he said. He stood on one foot, then the other, wrenching his boots off as he coughed. "And you would bar my way, mono a mano!” He might have risked hurling one of those boots if he'd had the chance.

Quantrill knew he presented a sad spectacle with blood covering one side of his face. But he was through talking, already whipping out that loaded sock, springing forward, hoping his bare feet offered purchase for maneuver as he swung at Sorel's head.

Sorel was too quick, lashing out in a footsweep that caught Quantrill's thigh and knocked him off-balance. Darting toward the stairs, Sorel felt his left hand caught by both of Quantrill's and whirled to avoid a shoulder dislocation, bringing the heel of his free hand up toward Quantrill's nose, hoping his fingers could reach those hard eyes while he shattered the septum.

Quantrill avoided the blow, his right hand forcing Sorel's arm to continue its upward sweep as he lunged forward and butted the Mexican under the jaw in a favorite move. That eight-penny nail, still embedded at his hairline, tore a gouge under Sorel's chin. Unlike Jer Garner, Sorel knew that it would be followed by a dozen more; the burst of light behind his eyes said that he could not afford them. Arching backward on the stairs, he pulled his legs up, aiming at Quantrill's groin.

Quantrill harbored no illusions about the power of those trained legs; sidestepped the ferocious kick but had to release Sorel's wrist to do it. His own heel caught Sorel's left knee at full extension, not quite at the edge of the patella, but tearing at the adjacent ligaments, and Sorel twisted away in agony instead of facing his antagonist. Instantly Quantrill fell on him, scissoring those legs between his own, grasping Sorel's left wrist with his own blood-slicked left hand while reaching for his hair with the right. Both men were panting dizzily now, locked together in a gut-churning embrace.

It is easier to snap a man's head forward than to push it to one side. Quantrill bounced Sorel's forehead against a steel riser twice before the Mexican managed to thrust up and back, lifting Quantrill's weight as he came to his knees and crashed over. Quantrill lost his slippery handgrip as they rolled, and then Sorel's left elbow caught him in the rib cage with the man's weight behind it.

As Quantrill's torso rebounded from the stair, Sorel gathered his feet under him and leaped away. He glanced behind him as Quantrill, face now streaming with gore from that scalp wound, vaulted up to follow. The distance was right, and Sorel was certain this Anglo hellion did not expect his next maneuver. It had killed more than one man.

An upward left-footed sweep, then the follow-through with his right as Felix Sorel began a bicycle kick, a backward flip with a whiplash foot that could fire a soccer ball seventy yards, or crush the skull of the man following. Sorel's glory, and much of his confidence, lay in his ability to use these skills as killing techniques.

Yet Sorel had failed to account for the synaptic edge honed into the tissues of Ted Quantrill. That murderous flashing kick missed Quantrill's head, and before he struck concrete Sorel felt a hand grip his left ankle to wrench him sideways in midair. He completed three-quarters of his flip, striking the floor on his belly, and this time Quantrill's backward heel kick against Sorel's knee found its target. The snap was audible, and the follow-up against the back of his head knocked him all but unconscious against the concrete floor.

There might be time, Quantrill thought groggily. to hammer Sorel to mush. Or time to weave up those stairs for lungfuls of fresh air. There would not be time for both. Nearly blind, lungs aflame, nauseated from the fumes, Quantrill reeled up the stairs gasping. He did not look back. If Felix Sorel chose to fire that H&K, it would make no difference where his slugs went.

Quantrill stumbled from the upper room to the sidewalk, missed his footing, and fell to his knees, retching. His fit of explosive coughs made it worse, robbing him of air, his throat muscles at last beginning to convulse from the deadly fumes. He lowered his bloody forehead to the street cobbles, shuddering, his breath whistling through a larynx that seemed to be on fire. Dimly, he imagined Felix Sorel navigating those stairs, hobbling to the street, raising that handgun. And there was not one — goddam — thing — Quantrill could do about it. He'd been breathing those fumes a half minute longer than Sorel. Coughing, fighting down his gut spasms, he waited for the sound of footsteps.

No pursuit. Too shaky to stand, Quantrill moved on hands and knees within arm's length of a clerestory basement window. He snapped his palm against the thin pane and heard shards of glass strike the concrete inside. Near fainting, he put his forehead against the sidewalk and closed his eyes, breathing deeply now. He kept down, aware that the sight of him might tempt Sorel to fire regardless of the consequences. God, how that man could move! That bicycle kick had come within a finger's width of taking his head off. "Sorel? You there?"

A disembodied voice issued from the basement. "Do you need to ask?" Then a fit of coughing.

Even from that broken window the fumes were overpowering. You were the worst, and the best. Can't let you suffocate. "I can see the stairs, Sorel. Toss your jacket in that patch of sunlight, and the pistol on the jacket."

More coughing. "No. This weapon is my freedom."

"Goddammit, I won't come down there for you unless you do."

"If I fired now, the result would be the same." The sounds of a tortured stomach stifled the voice.

"Why haven't you?"

"Cannot walk; the game is yours. My rules. My decision."

"Game, shit! You're goddam dying down there."

"Correct, in good time. Leave me. I will not say this again." Still more coughing.

"I can't, you crazy bastard. I liked you."

"Odd," said the voice from below. "We are much the same, but could never understand each other."

"We're not that complicated, Sorel. I'll visit you in Huntsville Prison and prove it, if you like. Don't ask me why."

"Prison." It was a snort. "Have you ever known the loss of all hope?"

Quantrill recalled the tiny mastoid implant that had once compelled his obedience on pain of instant death; felt again the helpless rage at learning that his lover lay dead at the hands of his own agency. But years ago. Worlds ago. "Yes. But we always get it back, somehow."

"Not the loss of youth and freedom."

"Everybody loses those. One gets taken away, the other we give away," Quantrill answered.

"Not I."

"Sure. We give away some freedom to friends, wives, kids — everybody who knows they can depend on us."

A terrible mirthless laugh, then spasmodic coughs. Then, growling it: "Not I."

"Have it your way," Quantrill said. "But when you pass out, I'll have you. You'll feel different after a spell in the slammer."

So faintly that Quantrill almost failed to hear it: "Not I. If you love me so much, then go with me."

Because the H&K's safety would make no audible click, Quantrill rolled and staggered to his feet, trying to put some distance between himself and that fume-filled hell. There was something hideously final about Sorel's final comment.

The shot was muffled, and Quantrill blinked in astonishment as he realized that it had not caused a vast explosion. The reason was not hard to find; a man's mouth will sometimes contain a muzzle flash.