He eased around a corner into the security office and there saw on a screen his own empty cot and the door of his own cell half ajar. Alas, no one was awake to notice, for Ginger, the smartest of the Irishmen, lay sound asleep in a chair, his feet up on a desk under the TV monitor. No time for deliberation now, as Swagger’s trembly, weakened muscles were pumped by the pressure of adrenaline foaming into his bloodstream, and in three swift steps he was upon Ginger, had the man’s neck wrapped in the crook of his elbow, securing it, and with the other hand, drove the knife point into the delicate skin of the neck just tenths of an inch from the river of red blood known as the carotid.
“Wake up, you Irish fuck,” he said sharply, jerking on the neck as if to break it, for that was another of his options, given the leverage he had attained.
“Ggggg-kkk,” was all his crushed passages allowed Ginger to mutter.
“You listen to me, I’d just as soon cut you open”-he put pressure so that the tip of the butcher’s tool sank another tenth of an inch or so into skin entirely too fragile to offer it anything of an impediment-“and watch you bleed dry on the floor, but what’s going to happen is I’m going to roll you to the vault just like this and you’re going to open it. And if you pretend you don’t know the combination, I’m cutting your carotid clean through and you die vomiting blood and shitting and pissing, while I go upstairs and get myself another Irish artery to split. I will kill all night if I have to. I’m only letting you live because I want some dough, and you’re the messenger.”
The softness of surrender flashed through Ginger’s big body, and Bob rolled him on the strength of his shoulders, and in a few seconds they’d arrived at the heavy door. This time it was locked, but Ginger got his hands to the dial, a silver disk the size of a destroyer day-room clock, and spun and clicked the knob back and forth half a dozen times, and a vibration announced that he’d opened it, and then the door, of its own volition, unlinked and opened an inch.
Bob rode Ginger to his feet, not wanting to give the bigger, younger, stronger man any space to acquire leverage; Bob could not afford a fight now, even if he won it. When Ginger was upright, Swagger said, “Open it,” and the door flew wide, and Bob pushed Ginger in. He saw stacks of rifles, bins of ammo, and just where it had been, the film, safe in its cardboard package on the shelf.
“Knees,” said Bob, and Ginger went down.
Kill him, Bob thought. One fewer of the bastards. Murder his ass and send the message that this is to the death.
But cutting a half-strangled thug’s throat was not a thing he could do; instead, he released the clamp on the neck, quickly seized a rifle-it was a Remington 700-inserted the butt into the cleft between skull and shoulder against the neck, and forced Ginger facedown.
“Tell Anto I’m too old to give a fuck about honor. I want dough and lots of it. I’m sick of being poor and noble. But I want to be in control, not him. I want to get paid for my trouble. I want to get paid for that war in something other than nightmares. This is my chance and I won’t let him fuck me like everyone else. I’ll contact him tomorrow and we’ll rig an exchange somehow in the wilderness. And I want dough up front so they best get on the phone to Constable and get a big pile of cash here. You can remember that? Oh, and I hope you don’t suffocate.”
With that he withdrew the buttstock a few inches, then drove it hard into the back of Ginger’s skull, knocking the fellow either out or, more likely, into a grogginess so intense and a pain so heavy he could do nothing for minutes.
Swagger wished he had time to disable the rifles or at least twist all the knobs to hell and gone, but he didn’t. Instead, he snatched the film, slid out, and locked the heavy door behind him. Whether Ginger lived or died did not at this point seem an issue to ponder.
He went quickly to the shelf, plucked off a radio unit next to the blinking receiver by which the professional security people stayed in contact. He looked around until he saw a heavy ring of keys. Then he slipped out the door.
Piles of stars filled the western sky. A wind pushed cold air across the plains, fresh out of the mountains close by, whose darker bulk obliterated the low starlight. Vegetation, moved by that cascade of air from above, filled the sky with the sound of its own rustling. Far off, a coyote howled, and his mate responded.
Swagger sucked the cold air, glad of its plentitude, hoping for energy. Then his adrenaline took over.
He set out on a course to the vehicle compound next to the barn, stopped to retrieve a knapsack he had wedged into a culvert on the way down. He opened it, removed an ice pick.
At the compound, it took a second to find the right key, and then he unlocked the padlock and lifted the gate back. He walked past each vehicle-five four-wheeled all-terrain vehicles, two jeeps, a pickup truck, and a Cherokee-and thrust the penetrating needle of the ice pick into each tire. It sank without difficulty into the tires, and it produced in him a reverie of vengeance as he fantasized it was going into the thoracic cavities of his captors. In a very few seconds had disabled all the vehicles save one of the ATVs.
He knelt, used the grip of the tool to shatter the plastic housing of the ignition, found the wires tangled beneath, did some pulling and jiggling before he freed the leads up, then sparked the vehicle to life. Maybe it was loud enough to awaken the sleeping Irishmen, maybe not. It didn’t matter by now.
Throwing the ice pick in the knapsack, he threw the whole thing on his back and his leg over the saddle of the ATV, a thing built by Honda called a Foreman. It was essentially a broader, slower, but more agile four-wheel motorcycle, its broad base giving it stability, designed to negotiate the back country, the vehicle that made hunting fields accessible to lazy, out-of-shape suburbanites. He kicked it into gear and twisted the throttle at the handlebar’s end and peeled out of the compound, turned, and headed out into the wilderness. No noise arose behind him, and he roared onward in the dark, his pains forgotten, his angers quelled, his righteousness unstoked. He was only thinking one thing: time to get my rifle.
45
At five, Raymond’s alarm woke him and told him it was time to relieve Ginger. He rose, dressed, brushed his teeth, ran a wet comb through his hair, smiled at his cheeky beauty in the mirror, and thought of the many gals he’d had and the many more, with all that swag, that awaited. Then down he went, whistling and calling, “Is the coffee hot still, Ginger, or must I make it meself?” and first discovered that Ginger was missing, then saw the empty cell and open door on the security monitor, turned quick to check the vault, saw it locked, then heard the pounding from inside.