Jungle Of Steel And Stone Part 13

"He has a few city blocks to cross before he gets there."

"Yes, but it's dark. It will be dawn in a couple of hours. He knows that, so he'll go to ground at the first opportunitya"when he reaches the cemetery. What concerns me is the fact that if Toby has crossed the expressway, it means he's not paying any attention to either me or the totems I left." She paused, shrugged. "There's nothing to be done about it now. You must be hungry."

"A little," Veil replied distantly, still distracted by the overlap between the near accident in his dream and its real-life counterpart.

They walked back to their original position. Veil took a sandwich out of the bag, uncapped a container of cold coffee, then sat on the wall and began to eat. He ate in silence for a few minutes, thinking, then slowly became aware that Reyna was staring at him.

"I talked to my friend again," Reyna said when Veil glanced over at her.

Veil sipped at his coffee. "What friend?"

"The one I told you about; the one who's writing a history of the Vietnam War."

"Oh, that friend. The one who half believes in fairy tales."

"He says he's now convinced that this story about Archangela"the yellow-haired soldier and CIA agent I told you abouta"is true, and he's really excited about it." "I thought we weren't going to talk about this subject anymore."

"As I recall, you asked me not to stalk you. Unless you're Archangel, I can't see what harm it does to talk about him. Does it bother you to have me talk about him?"

She was getting cute, Veil thought as he took another bite of his sandwich, drank more coffee, and said nothing.

"Are you?"

"Am I what, Reyna?"

"Are you Archangel?"

"I"m a painter."

"Were you Archangel twenty years ago?"

"Now you're stalking me again, Reyna."

"My friend says this Archangel had developed a reputation as a real crazy man, willing to do anything. He also happened to be the U.S. Army's best martial-arts expert. It seems that the Pentagon wanted toa""

"Reyna, are you very attached to this friend of yours?"

"Yes," Reyna answered after a pause. The sly, coquettish tone she had been using was gone, replaced by a note of confusion brought on by the sudden coldness in Veil's voice and eyes. "I like him very much."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Why, Veil?"

"Because he's going to be dead very soon." Orville Madison would kill anyone he suspected of knowing about Archangel. And then the Director of Operations would kill him. And he would let Sharon die.

They stared at each other in silence broken only by the sound of the tape loop on the recorder and the faint drone of the small transistor radio in Reyna's pocket. When Reyna finally spoke, her tone was filled with reproach. "Oh, Veil, that's a terrible joke."

"I'm not joking," Veil responded curtly. From the moment Reyna had again brought up the subject of Archangel, Veil's mind had been working rapidly, sorting through options available to him. He'd decided that the researcher had to be stopped, if possible, and that Reyna was the most likely candidate to stop him. If Reyna were to perform this task, she first had to be convinced of its necessity; she had to be thoroughly shaken, and he could think of nothing more terrifying than the truth.

Reyna had involuntarily taken a step backward. "Veil," she said in a small voice, "after all you've done for Toby, I'm almost ashamed to tell you thisa"but I have to. Sometimes you frighten me. You can go through these sudden changes; when you do, something projects out from you that another person can almost feel. This is the second time you've frightened me."

Veil shifted his position slightly so that the light from a nearby street lamp fell across his face and eyes. He knew very well what was projected there, and he wanted Reyna to feel its full impact; he wanted her frightened. "You don't have to be frightened of me, Reyna," he said in a low, flat voice. "But the story I heard about this Archangel is pretty scary. If it's true, it explains why your friend doesn't have too much longer to live. Would you like to hear the story?"

"I'm not sure, Veil. I . . . don't think so."

"Oh, but I think you should. If the story is true, it could be that you're the only person who can save your friend's life. I don't have the slightest idea how you'd get him to stop his research on this Archangel story, because he's obviously hyper about it, but that's what you'd have to do if you want to save his lifea"and others'."

"Veil, please stop. Now you're frightening me very much."

"Oncea"and only oncea"this Archangel's company commander gave him what might be considered a compliment; actually it was a half compliment. The man called Archangel the finest warrior he'd ever met, and the worst soldier to ever make it out of boot camp; apparently, Archangel didn't like to take orders. I've heard those stories about him being mad. Who knows? He may have had emotional problems caused by a handicap no one knew about. The rumors were that he was h.e.l.l on wheels in battle because he was too crazy to fear death, and he loved violencea"probably because it freed him from the pain caused by this peculiar handicap. No matter. Because he didn't give a d.a.m.n about anything but killing the enemy, he managed to ama.s.s more honors than any other man fighting in Vietnam. Since he was also CIAa"and had been since his days in boot campa"as well as an Army captain, he was chosen by the agency to go into Laos and organize the Hmong tribes that were fighting against the Pathet Lao. Since Archangel's activities were strictly illegal, they were also, of necessity, top-secret; thus the need for a code name.

"Archangel continued his winning waysa"if you can call them thata"in Laos. He learned the language. He was very effective, not only as a combat fighter but also as a technician and planner. The people of the Hmong became fiercely, even obsessively, loyal to him, and he to them. In fact, he became so effective that the Pathet Lao put what amounted to a five-thousand-dollar bounty on Archangel's heada"a small fortune to any Hmong, not to mention just about any native of Southeast Asia. It was never collected by anyone, although hundreds of people had opportunities. Now, that's how legends grow about madmen.

"In the meantime, Archangel was having a grand and glorious time. In fact, freed of virtually all constraints imposed by military discipline, free to do nothing but go around killing the enemy, he wasa"if you'll pardon the crudenessa"happy as a pig in s.h.i.t. And, of course, during the time all this was taking place, it was clear to everyone except a few generals and politicians that we were losing the war.

"Now, enter the villain of the piece: Archangel's CIA controller. As the story goes, this man coulda"if one wanted to be excessively charitablea"be called a s.a.d.i.s.tic son of a b.i.t.c.h. He was a controller in every sense of the word; he not only wanted to control his operatives' actions, but he also wanted their souls. He enjoyed gutting people. He and Archangel didn't get on well.

"Back in the United States, a few generals and politicians had decided that all that was needed to boost public morale and rally support for the war was a bona fide heroa"someone like Sergeant York in World War I, or Audie Murphy in World War II. This person's war record would be made public, a tremendous media blitz would be unleashed, and our hero would spend the rest of the war running back and forth across the country making public appearances, talking up the war effort, that sort of thing. Archangel was the man chosen to play this public-relations hero. Understanda"he wasn't chosen because he was the best candidate. True, he had the best war recorda" if one reduces that to counting medals, which is what was done. Also, he was deemed photogenic. But he was indeed crazy and, for the most part, uncontrollable. Archangel was chosen because his controller had done a truly heroic job of lobbying. The controller did this because his own career would be enhanced if one of his men did the job, of course, but the most important reason for the lobbying effort was the controller's knowledge that Archangel would truly detest the part. Archangel belonged in the jungle, not on television, and the thought of putting Archangel on television and the lecture circuit pleased the controller immensely.

"Archangel wasn't in a position to refuse, so he had to accept the a.s.signment. The controller brought in a South Vietnamese colonel to replace Archangel with the Hmonga"a very strange choice, Archangel thought at the timea"and Archangel was sent off to Hawaii for six weeks of rest, recreation, and intensive drilling on how to become a comic-book hero. In the United States everything was being geared up for our hero's entrance onstage. It was insane, by the way, because Archangel would have lasted about a week on this trip before he broke some talk-show host's neck. But that's neither here nor there."

"He was never put in place, was he?" Reyna asked, her voice breaking slightly. In the pale light cast by the street lamp her face looked as ashen as it had when Veil had first seen her.

"Obviously not," he replied dryly. "If he had been put in place, your friend wouldn't have anything to dig for, would he?"

"What happened, Veil?"

"The story goes that Archangela"who never slept wella" was walking the streets of Saigon a few hours before his early-morning flight back to the United States was scheduled to take off. He was approached by a pimp who offered him a young boy and girl for his s.e.xual pleasure. Archangel knew the children; they were from the Hmong tribe he'd fought with."

Reyna uttered a tiny gasp, but Veil spoke through it. "When that plane landed in Washington, the entire Washington press corps, the Joint Chiefs, dozens of politicians, and no less than the president of the United States were waiting to greet Archangel. The problem was that Archangel had never boarded the plane. At the time the plane had taken off, he was in a small office in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the United States Emba.s.sy in Saigon breaking the bones of his controller.

"You see, it seems that, two months before, the controller had been approached by the South Vietnamese with a problem they wanted the controller to help them solve. There was this South Vietnamese colonel who'd just about cornered the Saigon markets in drug dealing, racketeering, and p.o.r.nography. He'd become a considerable embarra.s.sment to the government, but he was from an important family; they couldn't just put him in prison. The controller was asked to find someplace to put him, and the controller thought it would be a great idea to put the colonel in charge of Archangel's Hmong tribe."

"To gut Archangel," Reyna whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "To s.n.a.t.c.h his soul."

"Ah, yes. The controller knew what would happen and didn't care. Within a week this colonel had begun selling Hmong children to pimps in Saigon; within a month the entire village had gone over to the Pathet Lao. Now, in a beautiful stroke of irony, the South Vietnamesea"led by the colonela"were about to make their first commando foray over the border. They planned to wipe out the village.

"After busting up his controller, Archangel stole a heavily armed helicopter and took off for Laos. He intended to warn the village; if necessary to save the village, he intended to fight with the Pathet Lao against the South Vietnamese. He'd turned traitor. Archangel stopped the raid and saved the Hmong, but his helicopter was shot down. Like any legend, he had more lives than a cat; he survived the crash, eluded capture, and a week later came crawling out of the jungle, crossed back over the border, and turned himself in to the Americansa"who now had one very large problem. Archangel was thrown into the stockade while everyone put their heads together and tried to figure out what to do with him.

"You see the problem. Literally overnight, the war heroa"for whom a tremendous publicity campaign has been planneda"turns up a traitor, not to mention a potential source of considerable embarra.s.sment to the United States if he ever tells what he knows. His real ident.i.ty officially hasn't been made public, but there are enough people who know it to enable some ambitious reporter to track it down. Naturally Archangel could have been put in the stockade for the rest of his lifea"or even shot. But then, there would be the danger of some reportera"or some historian, like your frienda"taking an interest and starting to ask questions. What everyone really wanted was for Archangel to disappear off the face of the earth. And be forgotten.

"It was the controller, obviously a man with a silver tongue, who finally came up with a solution that was acceptable to the Pentagon: Simply let Archangel goa" with a few strings trailing behind him. All of his military records are drastically altered, and all of his honors taken away. Then he's given a medical discharge as a psycho. His end of the deal involves keeping his mouth shut and thus avoiding summary execution on some street corner. Needless to say, the whole public-relations idea was dropped."

"Oh, Veil." Reyna sighed.

"Oh, but there's more. As always, Archangel's controller has his own angle. Archangel has just about ruined this man's career, as well as put him in the hospital. The controller wants revenge, anda"with the Pentagon's acceptance of his plan to set Archangel freea"he thinks he has it. He knows just how crazy and violent Archangel is, and he thinks that the worst punishment that can be inflicted on Archangel is to set him free, to cut him loose from the armed forces. As a civilian, Archangel will have no franchise to wreak destruction. With no way to calm his demons, Archangel will self-destruct, end up killing himself with booze and drugs, or simply die in some alley. And to make certain that Archangel understands the name of the game, the controller imposes his own private penalty: Archangel is given an indeterminate sentence of death. He will be placed under constant surveillance by the controller's men, and he's informed that if the day ever comes when he finds peace of mind or true happiness, that will be the day he takes a bullet through the brain."

"Veil," Reyna whispered as she took a tentative step forward, "that's a terrible story."

Veil held up his hand, stopping her. "It's a story that can't be told, Reyna. After all that's come out since the end of the war, the story of Archangel wouldn't seem like such a big deal. But it's still a very big deal to the controller, who survived the damage to his career and now occupies a very high, and very sensitive, post in the CIA's Operations Division. He can't afford even to be identified, much less embarra.s.sed. All the old rules, including Archangel's death sentence, still hold, even after all these years. Without realizing it, your friend has been busily tripping any number of invisible alarm signals. Believe me, the controller knows exactly what your friend is up to, and your friend is d.a.m.n lucky he isn't dead already. In any case, he soon will be if he doesn't drop the projecta"and that includes burning his ma.n.u.script and any research records he's kept. The ma.n.u.script and records will be destroyed in the end, anyway; it's a question of whether he does it himself or lets his a.s.sa.s.sins do it for him."

Reyna drew in a deep breath, then threw her head back and defiantly brushed a strand of hair away from her face.

Then she pushed Veil's hand aside, stepped forward, and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist. "You are Archangel, aren't you?"

"If I were," Veil said quietly as he stroked the woman's raven-black hair, "it means that your friend can get me killed too. And you, since he's got such a big moutha"and these people hear everything. Do you understand?" He waited until he felt Reyna's head nod. "Good. We're going to have to find a way of convincing your friend to stop writing about Archangel if he wants to save his a.s.s. And my name can't even be breathed."

"Yes, Veil. I do understand."

"Let me think about the problem. You'll do the groundwork, and I may follow up by scaring the s.h.i.t out of hima" without hurting him or letting him know who I am."

Reyna lifted her head and parted her lips slightly. Veil was about to lean over and kiss her when the shots rang out.

Veil immediately leapt to the ground and listened. There were more shotsa"rifle fire and what could have been the cough of a shotgun. The sounds were carrying on the night air from somewhere across the expressway, to the southeast.

"It's Toby!" Reyna screamed.

"Take it easy," Veil said, holding her tightly. "It may not be. The police wouldn't just start shooting like that unless they were returning fire, and Toby wouldn't know what to do with a gun if he had one."

"They're vigilantes, Veil! I know they've got Toby down there! They're killing him!"

"Not yet, they haven't," Veil said flatly as he started to lead Reyna out of the cemetery and toward the car. "If they'd killed him, they wouldn't still be shooting. Don't panic. If he's dead, there's nothing we can do about it. If he's alive but in trouble, it won't help him if we panic. We'll get in the car and head over there. Turn up that radio."

Veil quickly led Reyna the half block to where the car was parked. He eased Reyna into the pa.s.senger's seat, then slid in behind the wheel and started the engine. The firing had stopped abruptlya"something Veil regretted, for he now had nothing to guide him to the site. He pulled out onto Fifty-third Street and turned right, heading for the overpa.s.s that would take him to the other side of the expressway. As he approached the intersection, an unmarked police car with a portable flasher on its roof sped through the intersection from Veil's left, barely missing the front of his car.

With his right hand Veil reached across the seat and braced Reyna as he floored the accelerator and twisted the wheel to the right. The well-tuned car responded instantly, screaming around the corner on two wheels. The car bounced down, fishtailed, then straightened out as Veil sped down the street after the police car.

"Good grief," Reyna murmured through clenched teeth.

Veil glanced at the speedometer; they were going sixty miles an hour and still gaining speed. "Brace your hands against the dashboard," he said evenly.

Reyna's face was bloodless, but her mouth was set in a determined line. "What will he do if he sees you chasing him?"

"Nothing, I hope. He'll probably a.s.sume I'm another cop. In any case, he's not going to stop for us."

The deadly popping of gunfire had resumed; it was closer now, somewhere in the streets off to their right. Veil kept the accelerator to the floor as he sped across a bridge. The car hit the peak of a shallow crown, soared through the air, then slammed back to the ground. The gap separating him from the police car had narrowed to a few yards, and the back of the driver's head was now clearly visible.

Suddenly Reyna clutched at Veil's arm with both hands, almost causing him to lose control of the car. "Oh, my G.o.d," she said with a gasp. "That's Carl Nagle!"

Veil, who had been focusing on the car's trunk, now shifted his gaze to the driver's heada"and saw that Reyna was right. Questions flashed through his mind and were instantly dismissed. It seemed doubtful that Nagle would be riding around in a stolen police car, yet the flashera" and the police radio he undoubtedly had inside the cara" could have been stolen, or purchased, some time before he'd fallen out of favor with all the various powers that had ruled his existence. For the first time Veil saw beneath the thuggish exterior of the man to what had to be a keen, if hopelessly twisted, mind; an outlaw, hunted by both the police and the Mafia, Carl Nagle had managed to wire himself into everything the police did. Veil debated whether or not to tell Reyna that Nagle was on his own, running from everyone, then decided that it would serve no purpose other than to frighten her even more than she already was. Gabriel Vahanian was dead, he thought, and now he was the one looking up the a.s.s of the tiger.

"Lie down on the seat," Veil said calmly, gently squeezing Reyna's knee. "I won't let him hurt you. I promise."

Reyna did as she was told, ducking down and curling into a ball on the seat, but both hands continued to grip Veil's leg.

Nagle suddenly turned hard to the left. Veil stayed with him, narrowly missing a parked car. At the next block Nagle turned right; Veil followed, expertly keeping the car under control as the rear end fishtailed. In the block ahead he could see a milling knot of people and the flashing lights of police cars.

The brake lights on Nagle's car came on as he abruptly pulled over to the curb. Veil reacted instantly, again planting his hand on Reyna's chest and bracing her as he slammed on the brakes. He eased up to prevent the brakes from locking, slammed them on again, and brought the car under control, stopping it at the curb across the street from, and slightly behind, Nagle's car.

Veil immediately ducked down and peered over the dashboard at Nagle; the man was sitting rigidly in his car, radio microphone in his hand, staring down the street. Imprisoned in his own world of desperation and madness, apparently he had never even noticed the car pursuing him.

"Veil . . . ?" "It's all right. Nagle doesn't know we're here. You stay right where you are."

Reyna's voice was a croaking whisper. "Toby?"

"No sign of him, but a lot of men are pointing toward a building under construction. He must be in there someplace."

"Thank G.o.d he's still alive," Reyna said in a small voice. "Are there police?"

"Yes."

"Veil, maybe we should talk to them now. This is getting pretty hairy."

"Hang in there, sweetheart. Remember, if Toby is taken into custody, the odds are overwhelming that he'll diea" and his tribe along with him."

"I just don't want him to die now."

"There's still time. n.o.body's gone into the building yet, and Nagle's still in his car. I want to see what he's up to."

Veil waited, and after another minute Nagle began speaking into his microphone. Down the street, a uniformed officer leaned into his car, obviously listening to his radio. Nagle released the transmit b.u.t.ton on his microphone, waited a few seconds, then pressed it and spoke again. The patrolman suddenly began shouting orders to the other police on the scene as he pointed to his left.

"Veil . . . ?"

"Nagle's working on his own, Reyna. He's feeding phony information to the police down the street now."

Even as Veil spoke, there was a flurry of activity among the group of policemen by the building; they ran to their cars, got in, and drove off. The crowd that had been milling in the street and on the sidewalk gradually began to disperse. One man reached down into a garbage bin and retrieved a shotgun from where he had hurriedly thrown it at the approach of the police. He and six other men walked halfway up the block, then disappeared into a bar.

"Veil . . . ?"

"Shhh. Just stay there."

Almost ten minutes pa.s.sed. Then the door of the car across the street opened. Nagle stepped out and began walking casually down the middle of the street, toward the building skeleton. In one hand he carried a powerful flashlight, and in the other what appeared to be an Uzi submachine gun equipped with a custom-made silencer. He stepped up on the sidewalk and vanished through an opening in the fence surrounding the construction site.

"Nagle's gone into the building," Veil continued as he opened the door and got out. "You stay put. Lock the doors."

"Veil?" Reyna cried out as she sat up and reached for him. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to kill the son of a b.i.t.c.h," he replied evenly as he blew Reyna a kiss, then closed the door.

Veil, moving as silently as death, ran down the street and across the intersection to the construction site. He waited, pressed back against the fence next to the opening, listening. When he heard nothing, he darted through the opening, angling across to the opposite side. There he crouched low in the darkness, listening again. This time he heard the faint, shuffling sound of footsteps on wood scaffolding.

Suddenly a bright cone of light from Nagle's flashlight pierced the darkness on the second floor of the steel skeleton. There were more shuffling footsteps, then the clatter of loose boards. Veil thought he heard a faint, low rumble, as if Nagle were talking to himself.

Veil straightened up and moved off to his right. At the corner of the building he reached up and gripped a steel girder, then began to climb up the grid work. Suddenly he heard a can clatter, back near the entrance. He turned his head in time to see the unmistakable figure of Reynaa"a master tracker undone and made careless by her terror of the monster that was Carl Naglea"trip and fall through the opening in the fence. A moment later she cried out in pain.

Veil immediately released his grip on the steel and dropped back to the ground. He landed, then sprinted through the rubble-strewn darkness toward where Reyna lay at the bottom of a wedge of dim light cast by street lamps. Without slowing his pace he ran through the light, reaching down as he did so and grabbing a handful of Reyna's jacket, jerking her off the ground and carrying her to the other side of the opening just as a burst of fire, sounding like nothing so much as a person spitting watermelon seeds at an impossibly fast clip, raked across the fence just above Veil's head. He fell on top of Reyna to shield her with his body, holding her head down with his hand, burying his own head in her thick hair and waiting as the pfft-pfft sound of bullets striking wood slowed in tempoa"then stopped.

Veil got up on his hands and knees and, pulling Reyna along with him by her belt, scurried forward to the shelter of a wide support girder.