He was breathing hard. His heart was pounding and he was breathing too fast.
He turned off the light. In the darkness he got dressed, layering on sweaters and sweatshirts.
In the bathroom he tried to vomit and couldn’t. His stomach felt like he had swallowed a stone. He closed the door, stuffed a towel under it so light wouldn’t leak, and turned on the light.
The .45 automatic was loaded and had a round in the chamber. The hammer was back and the thumb safety on. Cocked and locked, the DI had called this condition, way back when.
He put the muzzle in his mouth and tasted it.
Go ahead. Save Freeman the trouble. You know that he didn’t decide to annihilate Willie Teal and not lift a finger to solve his biggest problem — you.
He saw himself in the mirror. So pathetic.
He put the gun in his waistband and sat on the commode and sobbed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
About two in the morning Harrison Ronald heard the fire door on the first floor of the stairwell being opened. It made a metallic noise that was clearly audible here on the third-story landing of the Quantico FBI dorm, where he sat in the darkness with the slab-sided Colt in his hand. Nobody had ever oiled the push-bars on the heavy doors, thank the Lord.
Harrison Ronald eased his head between the rails and stared downward into the darkness, trying to see. There was nothing. Not a glimmer of light. There should have been light, of course, but Harrison Ronald had unscrewed all the bulbs over two hours ago.
Somebody was down there.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on what he could hear. He even held his breath. Yes, a scraping sound. A shoe sole on the nonskid of the concrete steps.
Harrison Ronald pulled his head back and sat absolutely still, the automatic held firmly in both hands.
This is really it, he told himself. Anybody with a legit reason to use this stairwell would not try to be quiet.
This is really it!
He sat frozen. Any movement he made the other man was bound to hear. His feet were out of position and his butt was cold, ice-cold, on the hard concrete step. He sat listening, breathing shallowly.
A light! The man below was using a small pencil flash, looking things over. Now it was gone.
Somewhere outside a car horn honked. It sounded far, far away.
The man was at the second-floor fire door. The intruder would have to push down the thumb latch on top of the grip, then pull the door open. The thumb latch would require some serious pressure since it mechanically moved the push-bar on the other side.
The latch clicked and the sound echoed in the stairwell.
The man below stood for the longest time, also listening.
Harrison Ronald didn’t even breathe.
Then the door opened and the intruder went through. He let the door swing shut but stopped it before the latch clicked.
Was that right? That’s what it sounded like to Harrison Ronald. He eased himself upright, massaged his cold, stiff bottom, and still trying to make no noise, crept across the landing and down the stair to the second-floor door.
He felt the steel door, slid his fingers across to the jam. Yes, it was ajar.
He eased his eye to the window in the door and looked down the hallway. The man was outside his door. A thick figure, medium height, carrying a long weapon.
Harrison Ronald moved away from the window and stood in the darkness, trying to think.
The man might not come back this way although he had left the door ajar. Even if he did, he might be expecting Ford to be waiting here. If the man goes into the room, Ford asked himself, should I go down the hallway toward the room? Back up to the third-floor landing? Or down to the first floor?
He took another look.
The man was bent over, working on the lock.
What if there is more than one man?
That thought froze Harrison Ronald. No, not a sound here in the stairwell. Maybe another man coming from the lobby, using the elevator or the stairway beside it. If so, where was he?
He took another peek through the window. The stout man was going through the door. No one else in the hall.
The man would come out of there in seconds.
What to do?
Amazingly enough, the simple expedient of avoiding the man never occurred to Harrison Ronald Ford. He had lived with fear too long. He sought now to surprise his enemy, confront him in a way that maximized the slim advantage that surprise bestowed on the aggressor. For Harrison Ronald intended to be the aggressor. Growing up black in the blue-collar neighborhoods of Evansville and as a young rifleman in the Marine Corps, he had learned the lesson welclass="underline" attack — fiercely, ruthlessly, with iron-willed determination — always attack.
The door to Ford’s room opened silently. A head peeped out and surveyed the dimly lit hallway. Now the stout figure emerged, moving lightly for a man so large, and came along the corridor toward the fire door standing ajar.
He opened the fire door and slipped through.
Crouching on the second step, Ford swung the edge of his hand with all his strength at the man’s legs. The man pitched forward headlong. He made a sickening splat on the landing.
Ford was on him in seconds. His hands around the prone figure’s throat, squeezing with all his strength. After a few seconds he stopped.
The man under him was absolutely limp. Sitting on his back, Harrison Ronald felt the carotid artery. Nothing.
He rolled the body over and felt gently in the darkness. The forehead was smashed in, pulpy. No blood, or at least no slick, smooth wet slimy substance.
Still breathing hard, still pumped with adrenaline, Ford grasped the dead man’s arms and pulled the corpse up the steps. The weapon clattered away.
The body was heavy, at least two hundred pounds. Ford heaved and tugged with all his strength. He paused twice, but with one last mighty heave he managed to get the corpse to the second-floor landing.
He checked the hallway through the window in the door. Empty.
Wedging the door open, he tugged the body through and pulled it down the hallway, which, mercifully, was polished linoleum. He opened the door to his room and dragged the body inside, then raced back for the weapon on the stairs.
In his room, with the faint light from the parking lot coming through the window, he examined the man carefully. Even with his forehead smashed in, he was recognizable. Fat Tony Anselmo. There was a weapon in his coat pocket, a 9-mm automatic with a silencer as big as a sausage. The long weapon was a shotgun, a Remington pump with the barrel amputated just in front of the forearm. It was loaded.
Ford laid the shotgun on the bed and went through the man’s pockets. A wallet containing cash, no credit cards. A lot of cash, mainly twenties. Ford put the wallet back in Anselmo’s pocket. He quickly went through the other pockets. Cigarettes, lighter, a motel room key, some change, a small pocket knife, two wadded-up handkerchiefs. No car keys.
How had Anselmo gotten here?
Someone was outside waiting.
Ford checked the 9 mm. Loaded, with the safety on.
How long had Anselmo been in here? Five minutes? Four?
He stuffed the automatic in his belt. He was already wearing a jacket over a sweatshirt and sweater. The stairwell was unheated.
He opened the door slowly, checked the hallway, then slipped out. He headed for the stairs that led down to the lobby.
There was a man at the lobby desk, seated on a stool with his head down. Harrison Ford waited behind the fire door, watching him through the small window. The man was reading something on the desk in front of him. He turned a page. A newspaper.
A minute passed. Then another.
Come on! Don’t just sit there all night, you knothead!
The desk man picked up his coffee cup and put it to his lips. He frowned, looked into the cup.
He rose from his stool and walked to his right, Ford’s left.