Wrath of God. Jack Higgins
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‘One too many.’
‘It always is, even when you think you’ve got an excuse for it like you and your politics. We’re a lot alike, you and me, Keogh, in our different ways, and I’ll tell you why. We’ve both got death in the soul, it’s as simple as that.’
Which was probably the most terrible thing anyone had ever said to me, mainly because it was the kind of remark that brings out into the open a truth one has always attempted to avoid.
‘What was it you called it?’ van Horne said. ‘The last place God made. That about sums it up. My old lady would say I’d ended up with what I deserved. She and my father were Dutch. Moved to Vermont when he opened a little printing shop in Altoona. Her religion was everything to her. Believe me, boy, nobody takes it more seriously than Dutch Catholics. When I walked out of that seminary on account of a stupid little bitch, who left me six months later, my mother laid it straight on the line. The Wrath of God and the Day of Judgement rolled into one. That’s what I’m going to get and any time now the way things are going.’
He rambled on in this way for quite some time, not drunk and yet it was the drink talking. Finally, it started to rain in great, heavy cold drops that hurt where they made contact. We got out quickly and put the top up and only just in time for the rain soon increased into a persistent downpour.
‘My God, this is all we needed,’ van Horne said.
I wondered if he appreciated the seriousness of this new turn of events. That by morning, half the ground we had to traverse would be quagmire and a hundred dry arroyos rushing torrents and quite impassable.
There seemed little point in going into that now and it certainly wouldn’t change anything so I pulled an end of the car rug around my legs against the cold and turned up my collar.
How many men have you killed, Keogh? It was a hell of a thought to go to sleep on.
The morning dawned grey and bleak, heavy rain still falling. We had stopped close to the edge of what had once been a dry stream bed. Water was rushing through it now in full spate like a moor-land burn on a November morning back home. The mountains were closer than I had expected and we got out the map and finally managed to place ourselves.
We had about ten or twelve miles of open country to traverse before reaching the trail we were seeking, the one which would take us up through the Nonava Pass. It was marked quite clearly on the map between two mountains, one a sugar-loaf and the other with three distinctively jagged peaks. We could see them both in the distance quite clearly in spite of the rain.
That magnificent engine fired without difficulty when van Horne pressed the self-starter and he took the Mercedes away slowly, working out his route as he went, for any remaining trace of the track we had been following had been washed out by the heavy rain.
It was still bitterly cold and the girl, Victoria, stayed muffled in the two car rugs she had used during the night and peered out into the morning, her face as serious and grave as ever. I asked her if she was all right and she nodded and actually smiled which was something.
Van Horne said, ‘How come you speak Spanish as well as you do?’
‘My mother was born in Seville.’
‘Is that so? Your old man must have got around. I picked mine up in Juarez one year, working as manager in a small casino there. I had to stay out of circulation for a while on account of the fact that I’d broken out of Leavenworth – that’s the Texas State Penitentiary.’
‘What were you in there for?’
‘Shooting a guy who was trying to shoot me, only he had friends at court and I didn’t.’
Strange, the change in him. The brash, confident manner, the excessive toughness in the voice as if he was trying to prove something, though whether to me or himself was debatable. I was thinking about that for want of something better to do when we went over a slight rise a couple of minutes later and saw Federal cavalry in the hollow below.
They were saddled up and grouped in a rough circle as if waiting to receive their orders after breaking camp. The surprise was mutual and the whisper of the engine at the slow speed at which we were moving combined with the heavy rain, explained why they had not heard our approach.
There was a single, excited cry as we were seen and as van Horne swung the wheel and slammed his foot hard down, a couple of shots whistled through the air. We went down the slope in a great sliding loop that took us through a patch of water a foot deep and out into the final stretch of open plain rising into the mountains.
By now, the hunt was up with a vengeance and the result was by no means a foregone conclusion for the federales, as usual, were superbly mounted and try as he could, there were stretches where van Horne had no option but to slow down considerably.
We were perhaps two hundred yards in the lead when he cursed and braked sharply as we went over a small ridge and found the way blocked by a flooded arroyo. By the time we had extricated ourselves, the gap had narrowed to no more than fifty yards. We started to climb steeply, cutting across a broad shoulder at the foot of the sugar-loaf mountain, the wheels spinning in the loose shale.
‘Once over the top there we’re certain to hit that trail,’ he shouted. ‘They don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of keeping up with us. The Thompson’s under your feet. Give them a little discouragement.’
I pulled out the celebrated Gladstone bag and found the sub-machine-gun inside resting on top of dozens of packets of crisp bank-notes. An interesting discovery, but I had more important things on my mind. I leaned out and loosed off a long, rolling burst well above the heads of our pursuers. It certainly started them reining in, but when I attempted to repeat the performance, the drum magazine jammed, a common fault with them at that time.
The federales urged their mounts up the slope, but a moment later, we were over the shoulder of the hill and saw the trail quite plainly no more than fifty yards below us. It was in much better condition than I had expected and the moment we reached it and the Mercedes started to climb, I knew we were home and dry.
Van Horne turned and grinned savagely at me, dropping a gear as the trail lifted along the side of the ravine and then, as he looked back, he gave a sudden exclamation and jammed on the brakes. A whole slice of mountain seemed to have broken away in a great wave of earth and rock, probably a result of the heavy rain during the night, wiping the trail off the map for all time.
He slammed the gear stick into reverse, and started to turn the Mercedes, but he was already too late as a dozen or so federales came over the rise and boiled around us like an angry sea.
The Enfield was ready in my hand and there was little doubt that I could have dropped a couple of them, but no more than that which seemed rather futile in the circumstances. I put it down on the seat and raised my hands as ostentatiously as I could.
4
The next few minutes could well have been my last and probably almost were. I got a boot between the shoulder blades as I stepped out of the Mercedes that put me down on my hands and knees. No place to be with a dozen horses doing their best to trample me into the ground. I was kicked twice, the second time with such force that I thought a rib had gone and then a grip of iron fastened on my collar and brought me to my feet.
Van Horne steadied me with one hand and swung a fist into the rump of the nearest horse with such force that it reared up, almost unseating its rider. Someone struck at him with a plaited leather riding whip. He allowed it to curl around his arm, then pulled the owner from the saddle with no apparent effort, the first hint I’d been given of the man’s enormous strength.
There was considerable confusion for a moment or two after that as the soldiers frantically hauled their mounts out of the way to avoid trampling their unfortunate companion. One or two of them drew sabres and for a moment things looked decidedly nasty and then a single pistol shot sounded and a young officer burst through the outer ring and reined in sharply.
He had a thin, sallow face, a dark smudge of moustache and wore the