Wilson waited five minutes to be certain she wouldn’t call back. The phone didn’t ring again. His rudeness had evidently made her mad enough to ignore him for the rest of the night
Fine. He went into his bedroom and unlocked a chest he kept in his closet. Inside were a number of highly illegal weapons—a sawed-off shotgun, a WWII vintage BAR in working order, and an Ingram M-11 Automatic Pistol. He pulled the automatic pistol from its case and got a box of shells. Carefully he worked the pistol’s action, then hefted it in his hand. Its balance was a pleasure to feel. It was unquestionably the finest automatic handgun ever designed, lightweight, sound-suppressed, with a 20-round-a-second punch. It was not designed to frighten, slow down, or confuse, but purely and simply to kill. One bullet would blow a man’s head apart. The best automatic weapon ever made. The fastest. The most murderous. He opened the ammo box and snapped a clip of the special .380 subsonic velocity bullets into the gun. Now it was heavier but the balance hadn’t changed. Only three and a half pounds of weapon, it could be hefted nicely. And aimed. The sights were precise. For a handgun, its range was almost incredible. You could shoot a man at a hundred and fifty yards with this weapon. A burst of three or four bullets would get him even if he was on the run.
He laid the pistol on his bed and put on an overcoat he rarely wore. When it was on he dropped the M-11 into a pocket which had been especially tailored to fit the nine-inch pistol. Wilson had had the coat modified when he had acquired the pistol. The pocket carried the M-11 almost invisibly. Despite the size and weight of the pistol only a careful observer would note that he was carrying a piece at all. His hand felt the weapon in his pocket, his thumb triggering the lever that moved the mechanism from safe to fire. A single press of the trigger could now deliver from one bullet to a full clip in a matter of seconds. Good enough. Now he got out his winter hat, old, wrinkled, perfect for both protecting the head and hiding the face. Next the shoes—black sneakers, surprisingly warm with two pair of socks, surprisingly agile even in the snow. They had been winterized with a polyurethane coating, and the soles scored to provide traction. The sneakers gave him the advantages of quiet and quick movement, most useful on an icy winter night. The last item was a pair of gloves. These were made of the finest Moroccan leather, softer and thinner than kid. Through them he could feel the M-11 perfectly, almost as if the gloves weren’t there at all.
As a final precaution he took out the pistol and removed fingerprints. Not even a gold shield policeman goes around printing up a weapon like the Ingram. There isn’t anything in the rule book about policemen carrying machine pistols, but that’s only because there doesn’t need to be. You need a special permit to own one, and permission to move it from one premises to another. As far as carrying one around in the street fully loaded, that is illegal for policeman and civilian alike.
He replaced the M-11 in its pocket and stood for a short time in the middle of the room. Mentally he checked himself out. He was ready to move. Too bad his plan to de-scent himself had been wishful thinking. Now the M-11 was really his only advantage. That and the fact that hunters aren’t used to being hunted. Or at least he hoped they weren’t. His logic seemed strong—how suspecting would a human hunter be if the deer suddenly turned on him, or a lion if it was attacked by a gazelle?
While he saw the danger of what he was doing he nevertheless felt that he had to act to give Becky some kind of a chance of survival. She deserved to live, she was young and strong; as for him he could take a few chances. And it was a hell of a long chance he was taking. The thought of being killed—by things —made clammy sweat break out.
But he knew that he and Becky had to have help if either of them was going to live much longer. And to get the kind of support they needed, they had to have a specimen. Irrefutable, undeniable evidence that would force Underwood to act, to assign this problem the kind of manpower it demanded.
Wilson was going to get that evidence if he could. And if he got killed trying—oh. God, he wanted to live! No matter how old, how beat-up, he still wanted to live! But he was going after a carcass anyway. Had to.
He left his apartment after making sure all the lights were on. He triple-locked his door and moved quickly to the rear of the dim hallway, where a fire escape was barred by an accordion gate. He unhooked it and pulled it back, then raised the window and stepped into the winter night. He took some putty out of his pocket—carried for just this purpose—and pressed it into the locking mechanism so that when he closed the gate again the latch fell into place but could be raised if you jiggled it just right. If you yanked at it or shook it hard the putty would give way and the lock would secure itself. Then he closed the window and moved his bulky body down the ice-covered fire escape to the street.
The snow was becoming heavier. Not good, impeded his vision but not their sense of smell. Perhaps the muffling effect would reduce the acuity of their hearing a little.
He put his hand in his pocket, closing his finger around the trigger of the M-11. It was a mean weapon, designed for anti-guerrilla work, the kind of police work where you killed it if it moved. Right now it felt good. It was the right pistol for this hunt—the bullets would knock a man ten feet. A hundred-pound animal should go considerably farther.
He set out to find his quarry. He reasoned that the creatures would be more likely to hit Becky first because she was younger and presumably stronger, therefore more dangerous to them. Wilson, slow, old, sick, would be second in line. His theory was borne out by the fact that they had gone to such great lengths to get to Becky and had left him pretty much alone. Of course they had come in the basement window, Wilson was well aware of that. He had left it ajar as an invitation. His dusting of the basement of the rooming house last night had revealed two sets of pawprints as distinctively different as human fingerprints. They had gone up the basement stairs to the door. There were marks on the lock where they had tried to spring it with their claws.
But they had reserved their best effort for Becky, of that he felt reasonably sure. If he was wrong, if they were around him now… with luck he would take a few with him.
He walked through the deserted late-night streets with his hand in his pocket clutching the M-11. Despite the gun, he kept close to the curb, away from any trashcans and shadowy entranceways, out from under overhanging fire escapes. And every few steps he stopped and looked behind him. Only once did he see another human form, a man bundled against the snow and hurrying in the opposite direction.
When he reached the lights of Eighth Avenue he felt much better. He was safer out here under the bright sodium-arc lamps, with the passing cars and the more frequent pedestrians. Somehow he felt more anonymous taking the bus, so he waited at the bus stop instead of hailing a cab. Ten minutes passed before a bus came. He got on and rode it far uptown, to Eighty-sixth and Central Park West. Now all he had to do was cross the park and he would be in Becky’s neighborhood. Upper East Side cardboard box neighborhood… well, if that’s what she liked…
He thought better of crossing the park on foot— in fact he never really considered it at all. To the danger of the creatures he would add the dangers of the park, very foolhardy indeed.
After what seemed an hour a crosstown bus appeared, moving slowly in the deepening snow. Wilson got on, glad for the heated interior. He let himself relax in the bus, but he never took his hand out of his pocket.