Superb long-range shooting by Lonsdale with a. 50 Barrett at over 1,800 meters had saved the lives of both Fitzduane and his son, Boots. Subsequently, Lonsdale had fought beside Fitzduane and Chifune Tanabu on a counterterrorist action in Japan.
It was a relationship born and tempered under fire, and as a consequence, Lonsdale was a natural choice for the Mexican mission. But whether he could be persuaded to join the team was another matter. Al's leaving Delta had been unexpected. His appointment as Chief of Police of the tiny city of Medora had compounded the surprise.
Fitzduane had tabbed Al Lonsdale as hard-core military through and through. A caliber soldier. A warrior. His reasons for abandoning a promising military career for the vicissitudes of the civilian world were unknown. Still, Fitzduane had faith in Al Lonsdale. There would be reasons, and they would be good. Well, he hoped they would be good.
People were people the world over. All were a little flaky. In its way, the consistency of the human factor was kind of reassuring.
"Mrs. Zanduski," said Chief of Police Al Lonsdale patiently, "what we're looking for here, ma'am is a certain dynamic tension. Simply put, your right hand holding the firearm pushes out and is braced against your left arm pulling in. The result is – or should be – a stable weapons platform."
"I don't want a weapons platform, Chief," said five-foot-two seventy-eight-year-old Mrs. Zanduski, her outstretched hands holding the. 357 Magnum with the six inch barrel hesitantly. "I want to hit the goddamn target. I want to blow the motherfuckers away."
"There is a relationship, ma'am," said Lonsdale quietly. "You point the weapon in the right direction and the round goes more or less the same way. It's a useful principle to keep in mind."
"Don't patronize me, young man," said Mrs. Zanduski sharply. There was a flash from the weapon's muzzle and a loud boom. The metal can she had been aiming at some twenty-five yards away was blasted off the wooden plank against the wall of sandbags.
The crowd cheered and whistled and clapped. "Way to go, Granny!" could be heard. Mrs. Zanduski looked up at Chief Lonsdale triumphantly.
"Very nice, Mrs. Zanduski," said Lonsdale, "but don't you think a smaller caliber might be better?"
Mrs. Zanduski's chin jutted out. "Clint Eastwood uses a large-caliber weapon, young man, and I would point out that he is now practically a senior citizen himself."
Chief Lonsdale sighed. Life and fantasy seemed to be getting increasingly intertwined these days. "Next!" he called.
Hiram Albertsen was an eighty-two-year-old retired accountant. He was not much taller than Mrs. Clara Zanduski, and carried a bull pup High Standard Model 10B shotgun equipped with a laser sight and a Choate magazine extension.
"Where is the target, young man?" he said.
Lonsdale pointed at the next can in a row of seven. This was supposed to be a familiarization lesson. One shot each and they would focus on weapons handling and get to serious shooting later. He was already forming the view that he had underestimated the senior citizens of Medora.
Mr. Albertsen adjusted his bifocals, held his weapon at his hip, and then activated the laser sight. A red dot hovered unsteadily around the target.
" BOOM! BOOM! The seven cans were near-simultaneously propelled into the air, and the plank on which they had sat reduced to matchwood. Lonsdale looked on in disbelief as slivers of wood and wood dust fluttered to the ground. The cans were shredded, most split right open.
Mr. Albertsen cackled. "That old hag's six-gun isn't worth spit."
The rivalry on all issues between Clara Zanduski and Hiram Albertsen was legendary. Rumor had it that it had started at the bridge table but had speedily spread to just about every aspect of life that could be remotely regarded as competitive. The consensus was that both were thriving on the endless confrontations.
"What in heavens are you firing, Mr. Albertsen?" said Lonsdale weakly.
Mr. Albertsen held up his weapon. The muzzle had been fitted with a duckbill diverter, which spread the steel darts in an elliptical pattern. "Loaded ‘em myself, young man," he said. "Twenty flechettes to a twelve-gauge. With the duckbill, at twenty-five meters, they'll clear everyone in a pattern of twelve feet wide and five feet high. And deafen' ‘em, too! Hot damn!"
"Hot damn indeed!" agreed Lonsdale. This police chief business was not working out quite as he had expected. The city of Medora was two-thirds a retirement community and loved being incorporated. City politics was what kept the adrenaline of the senior citizens flowing. But for all practical purposes there was no crime. And the citizens, armed to the teeth, intended to keep it that way.
Apart from being a pawn to be argued over at weekly meetings of the city council, Medora's four-man police department had almost nothing of substance to do except traffic control during the season when hundreds of thousands of tourists streamed through on the way to the Grand Canyon. Ironically, thanks to fines resulting from traffic violations, the police department even made a profit.
Pay and benefits were good, the scenery was superb, the air was clear, and his golf handicap was coming down, but Chief of Police Al Lonsdale was bored.
It was then that he saw Colonel Hugo Fitzduane standing apart from the gun crowd, looking fit and tanned and a little thinner than he remembered. And he knew things would start to happen the way they normally did when the Irishman was around.
Fitzduane was a charming man, but he was a magnet for trouble. Al Lonsdale knew he should know better, but he was very pleased to see him. He felt a stirring in the blood, a lust for adventure, for life on the edge. A mature man should have gotten over such feelings. The Chief was glad he still had some way to go.
Lonsdale lived five miles out of town in a valley that the local Indians considered sacred. He had built his own house in an as-yet-undeveloped area, but had consulted the local medicine men before commencing construction. They had consulted the spirits and then recommended a series of purification ceremonies that lasted on and off for a month. The rituals did not come free. Lonsdale did not break ground until they were completed.
"Did the ceremonies work?" said Fitzduane.
They were sitting on the raised deck of the house. A bloodred sun was setting in the V formed by the walls of the valley. The red rock glowed as if on fire. It was not hard to see why the Indians considered the location sacred. There was a special, almost spiritual quality about the place, and it was more than beautiful. It was spectacular. It was also isolated. The nearest neighbor was more than two miles away in the next valley.
Lonsdale grinned. "Sure." Earlier on he had raised the subject of Kathleen, and Fitzduane had frozen. The look in the man's eyes had said it all. Now Lonsdale steered the conversation to safer subjects. The man was on autopilot. He could function as long as he did not think of her except when absolutely necessary.
The Chief made a gesture encompassing the house. It was a large two-story adobe dwelling surrounded by a high wall that fit nearly perfectly into the landscape. In terms of the basic comforts it was completely modern, but externally it would not have seemed out of place when Arizona was part of Mexico. In truth, it was more like a small fort than a house.
"The last man to try building in this valley," continued Lonsdale, "dismissed the Indians' objections as superstition and an attempt at extortion. Medicine men don't perform their ceremonies for free."
"So what happened to him?" said Fitzduane.
"He was overseeing the clearing of the site when the bulldozer cut into a nest of snakes. One moment he was standing there shouting directions, and the next he was flat on his back on the ground under a whole mess of writhing snakes. They had antitoxin, but he was way beyond that. He was dead within minutes. They say he was bitten more than fifty times and most of his face was torn off. He had no eyes by the time they were finished and his skin was black from the venom."