Chapter Thirty-Seven

 

 

 

Three-quarters of an hour later, the black-clad figure of the General appeared at the glass door to the Visitors' Center. He was hatless, showing a small crown of baldness as he made a mock bow toward the watching group, standing around sixty paces from the doors. His silver-topped cane had vanished, and he looked disheveled and dusty.

 

"I should have known, amigos," he called. "Maybe waited for a week or a month in that ghostly labyrinth and then you would have gone away."

 

"Not in a thousand years, butcher," Jak shouted.

 

"Ah, you must be the one who has an interest in that woman and the little one. I see."

 

"Drop the blaster," Ryan said.

 

"I think not," the General replied. "Thank you for the suggestion, Cawdor. But I will need it for a short moment or two longer."

 

"Looks like a Smith amp; Wesson," J.B. commented. "Seven forty-five Model. Eight round."

 

"Take him out with the Steyr, Dad," Dean suggested, recoiling at the way Jak spun around to face him.

 

"No fucking way, kid!" he spit with a bitter and ferocious venom. "I chill him. Nobody else!"

 

"Sure, Jak. Sure. Be a hot pipe that way. Let it swing, Jak, all right."

 

The General watched the exchange with a casual interest. "Dissension in the ranks? Strange that after this time I am ended because of a dead baby and a useless, crippled woman. Me, like that. For such a trivial and pointless reason. But I am forced to admit that you and your team are very good, Cawdor. Trader taught well. I had some passing pride in my men and women. Trained them hard and, I thought, enough. Yet, they have all been sent ahead to that limitless room in the basement. Now, I shall be joining them there. But first"

 

He drew the automatic from its holster, and they all heard the click as he worked a round under the hammer.

 

"Down," Ryan said.

 

"No need." J.B. pointed.

 

The General had leveled his blaster at the serene sky above him and fired it in a burst of noise.

 

"Was that eight?" Dean asked.

 

"Eight," J.B. confirmed.

 

The General stood, legs spread, holding the blaster in his right hand. "One for the money and one for the show, is what I believe was once said. One for the baby and another one for the road."

 

He brought up the Smith amp; Wesson and placed the muzzle beneath his chin. Jak started to move quickly forward, but J.B. called after him. "It's empty, Jak. He can't"

 

"Goodbye cruel world."

 

They heard the sharp sound of the hammer dropping on an empty chamber. The General lowered the spent handblaster very slowly, seeing the albino closing on him. He threw the weapon into the dirt and opened his arms, like a smiling priest receiving a candidate for benediction.

 

Ryan watched the final scene, a vague unease sliding across his mind. It was a rare business, pursuing a swift and evil bastard like the General, hardly even coming face-to-face with him. Most of the men and women that Ryan had chilled in the past couple of years had been people that he'd eventually gotten to know something about. But this was different.

 

He didn't even know the General's name.

 

Jak was twenty feet away from the man, and the unease became certainty.

 

"Hideaway, Jak!" Ryan yelled.

 

It was a .32 over-and-under derringer, hidden in the sleeve. From the speed of its appearance in the General's right hand, it was probably held there in a quick-release rig.

 

Ryan winced, waiting for the shot, powerless to do anything to stop it.

 

But it never came.

 

In the space of a single heartbeat, Jak had thrown two of his concealed knives, one with his left hand and the other with his right.

 

The first knife sliced into the General's right hand, severing the tendons in the wrist, so that the fingers opened spasmodically and the derringer slipped away to the ground.

 

But the blaster hadn't even begun to fall when the second throwing knife struck home.

 

At the last moment the General saw the blades glittering in his direction. An uncontrollable reflex closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. But the knife cut through the closed lid, driving through the dark pupil, into the optic nerve that was a direct channel into the brain.

 

The General had no time even to realize he'd been cut on the wrist, before feeling a punching blow in the face.

 

In the eye.

 

" Quien ?" he began.

 

Something streamed down his face, warm, dripping off his chin, and clouds veiled across his mind.

 

Jak watched the man drop slowly to his knees, hands reaching out blindly in front of him. A pink mixture of blood and aqueous liquid trickled from the taped hilt of the knife that protruded from the socket of the right eye.

 

The albino pursed his lips and spit in the dying man's face. Twice. "For my wife and my baby, you bastard," he said with an infinite gentleness.

 

The General slid forward onto his face and lay still.

 

Jak stooped and retrieved his knives, wiping them on the man's black shirt.

 

"Shame so fast," he said, turning to the others, managing a grim smile. "Now go home."