This would have been Schaefer’s chance, while Baby was reloading, if he’d been somewhere he could have gotten at her. He wasn’t. He didn’t have a gun, and Baby was on the other side of two aisles of kitchen gadgets.
By the time the fresh clip was in place he had already planned his course; he slithered behind shelves full of pot holders and place mats, out of her sight, working his way behind the counter.
”Yoo hoo,” Baby called. “Come on out and play, Detective Schaefer! I know you’re in there.”
Schaefer knew that as the echoes of gunfire and falling crockery faded and Baby’s hearing recovered, she’d be able to track him by sound-there was no way he could move silently in this place, not with all the crap that had fallen off the shelves. That meant he had to move fast. He looked for a weapon.
There wasn’t any. Plenty of merchants kept a gun behind the counter, the Sullivan Act notwithstanding, but all Schaefer saw under the register here were boxes of creditcard slips and the empty shelf where the. 45 had been.
An idea struck him. There weren’t any weapons under the counter
…
He kicked the wall and said, “Damn!” Then he swung himself quickly into a squatting position, braced himself, and set the heels of his hands under the edge of the counter.
”I heard that, Schaefer!” Baby called. “I know where you are-now, come on out! Don’t make me come in after you!”
Schaefer held his breath.
”All right, you son of a bitch, be like that!” she barked. “You’re just making it hard on us both. Christ, a woman’s work is never done.” She strode over to the counter and started to lean over, finger tightening on the trigger…
And Schaefer straightened up from his squat, hard and fast, putting all the strength of his massive thighs into shoving the counter up into Baby’s face and sending it toppling over onto her.
A moment later he stood over her, kicked the M-16 aside, then reached down and yanked the. 45 from her belt. He pulled the clip, then tossed that aside as well.
He glanced around quickly. The interior of the shop was a shambles; spent cartridge casings, broken glass, and battered merchandise were scattered everywhere. Cold winter air was pouring in from the street. The dead man called Arturo was sprawled just inside the remains of the main display window; the unconscious punk Schaefer had crowned with the frying pan lay nearby.
And a dazed but still conscious Baby lay right in front of, him, glaring up at him.
”You’re under arrest,” he said. “You have the right to remain silent…”
The crunch of glass alerted him; Schaefer turned to see Smithers and three other men in black suits and overcoats standing in the shattered window.
Two of them held assault rifles of a design Schaefer didn’t recognize, and Schaefer suddenly realized who’d shot out the front window- and Arturo.
”Come on, Schaefer,” Smithers said. “You’re coming with us.”
”The hell I am,” Schaefer replied.
”We’ve got our orders,” Smithers said. “And all the authorization we need. I tried asking nicely; now I’m telling you. You’re coming with us.”
”And I’m telling you I’m not,” Schaefer replied. “I’m taking Baby and her little playmate in, and I’m calling the meat wagon for Arturo there, and then in a day or so, when the paperwork’s all squared away, I’m going to sweat some information out of Baby.”
Smithers signaled to the man who didn’t have a rifle; that man drew a 9mm handgun from a shoulder holster, stepped over Arturo’s corpse, then neatly, unhesitatingly, put a bullet through Baby’s head.
She hadn’t had time to realize what was coming; the expression on what was left of her face was mere puzzlement, not fear.
”Christ!” Schaefer exclaimed, staring down at the body in shock.
”Him, too,” Smithers said with a nod, and the shotgunner’s brains were added to the mess on the carpet.
”Smithers, you bastard!” Schaefer shouted.
”Just one less drug-dealing bitch to worry about,” Smithers said. “We’ve got more important things to discuss.”
”Like your funeral,” Schaefer said. “You asshole, we’ve been tracking Baby for months! She could have delivered names, dates, suppliers…”
”Oh, for…” Smithers began. Then he caught himself. “You still don’t understand, do you;
Schaefer?” he said. “We have a problem, a big problem, much bigger than any drug network. We need your help, and you’re going to give it to us, no matter what.”
”I understand well enough,” Schaefer said coldly. “I understand that I liked Baby a whole lot more than I like you, Smithers.”
”We’re up against something a lot more important than drug dealers, Schaefer,” Smithers said. “Something a lot worse.” He nodded to his men. “Take him.”
”You’re worse than the dealers!” Schaefer shouted as the men with machine guns stepped up on either side and trained their weapons on Schaefer’s head. Schaefer froze.
The other man holstered his 9mm, buttoned his jacket, then stepped forward, toward Schaefer, reaching in a pocket of his overcoat as he did.
”You’re worse than all of them,” Schaefer said as the agent pulled out a black case and snapped it open, revealing a loaded hypodermic needle. “At least the people I bust know they’ve done something wrong.”
The man in the black coat slid the needle into Schaefer’s arm and pushed down on the plunger.
”You, Smithers, and the rest of you,” Schaefer said, “you just don’t give a shit about right or wrong…”
The sedative, or whatever it was, hit fast; Schaefer stayed on his feet for several more seconds before keeling over, but was unable to get out any more words or construct a coherent thought.
Even so, he thought he heard Smithers saying, “You’re right, Schaefer. We don’t care about right or wrong, or any kind of philosophy. What we care about is the country.”
He wasn’t sure, though; he decided that he might have imagined it.
As he began to fall to the floor he was just conscious enough to notice that the callous bastards weren’t even going to catch him.
Chapter 10
“Looks like he’s coming around, General.”
Schaefer heard the words, but it took a few seconds before he could attach any meaning to them or to the thunderous beating sound that almost drowned out the voice.
Then his mind began to clear. He knew he was in a helicopter, that someone was talking about him, and they’d noticed he was waking up.
”There will be some initial disorientation and minor dizziness from the drug, Detective Schaefer, but that will pass,” the voice said. Schaefer blinked and saw that a man in a U.S. Army dress uniform was kneeling over him-an officer. A captain, to be exact. The man looked genuinely concerned, which Schaefer didn’t believe for a minute.
He was, he realized, lying on a stretcher aboard a military transport copter-he couldn’t be sure what kind from here, with the pilot’s compartment curtained off. The captain was probably a doctor, and Schaefer was now awake enough to spot the medical insignia-yes, an army doctor.
Schaefer turned to look to either side. Two other men were crouched nearby-more medical personnel, in whites rather than military garb. Two others, soldiers who looked like guards, sat farther back.
And at his feet sat General Philips.
Schaefer stared at the general for a moment.
He had dealt with Philips before, when those things from outer space had come prowling the Big Apple. Philips was a bastard, no question about it, but he wasn’t such a robot as Smithers or the others. Schaefer’s brother Dutch had actually liked Philips, and Schaefer himself had seen signs of humanity in the old warhorse.