Blood Risk.

by Dean Koontz.

They had decided that only four men were required to stop the big car on the narrow mountain road, hold the occupants at bay and remove the cash that was stuffed into the suitcases on the floor behind the front seat. At first Merle Bachman-who would be driving away, alone, in the blue Chevrolet with the money locked safely in the trunk-had insisted on a fifth man. Number five would have been stationed at the bottom of the private lane to work an intercept routine in the event that someone turned off from the main highway while the robbery was in progress. The others argued against Bachman, because the private road to the Baglio estate supported very little traffic, especially on the morning of a biweekly cash transfer. Also, no one wanted his share knocked to h.e.l.l by a fifth cut. Bachman clearly saw the economic sense of using a spare crew, though he insisted there was no other wisdom behind this detail of the plan, and he reluctantly agreed to go ahead with the job as a foursome. Now, the darkly dressed men waited in their prearranged positions as the time for action drew near.

Upslope, the macadam roadway on which the robbery would transpire made an abrupt appearance around a limestone outcropping, ran a hundred yards past a lay-by on the outside where two cars could pa.s.s if they should meet coming in opposite directions, went down for another four hundred yards before turning a second limestone corner and continuing out of sight to the main highway. The two sharp twists beyond which nothing was visible, and the still morning air, generated the feeling that all the rest of the world had vanished in some unexplained catastrophe.

If you faced upslope, the left side of the roadway was edged by a sheer stone wall slightly higher than a man and, above that, by a thick pine forest and underbrush as green as new money. Though the long gra.s.s at the brink of the woods stirred gently in the morning breeze, it made no sound at all, bending down and unfolding back up again in a graceful, mute ballet. Lying at the high corner above the first turn in the road, stretched out in the carbon-paper shadows of the big trees, oblivious of the dew-dampened gra.s.s and the quiet way it seemed to be reaching for him, Jimmy Shirillo watched the Baglio mansion through a pair of high-power field gla.s.ses. The long blades of gra.s.s had brushed Shirillo's face, leaving bright droplets of dew suspended on his fair skin, his only blemishes, giving him a vulnerable look that pointed up his youth. On the other hand, his own professional stillness, his economy of movement and the intensity with which he watched the mansion indicated the experienced professional beneath the tender exterior.

The binocular lenses were all that might have given Shirillo away to someone looking down from the great house, but they had been tinted to eliminate any telltale glare. Michael Tucker had thought of that, for he thought of everything.

A hundred yards below Shirillo, on the left, sitting in the brush along the top of the stone wall, Pete Harris cradled an old Thompson submachine gun, a souvenir from World War II. Harris had broken it down, oiled it, packed it in cloth and mailed it from Paris in five packages to his home address in the States. Back then, at the end of the war, that sort of thing was still quite possible. He had not contemplated putting the gun to any illegal use, or indeed to any use at all, for he thought he was finished with war. A civilian again, he had to face his inability to hold a nine-to-five job, and in desperation he launched his own war against the system, against boredom and respectability and enduring poverty. His inability to fit that system did not arise out of any great sensitivity or intelligence. Harris was only averagely perceptive. However, he was also stubborn, very much his own man, with expensive tastes. This would have led him into crime eventually, because he was only fit to be a clerk in any other field. He was the oldest of the four men here. At forty-eight he had ten years on Bachman, twenty on Mike Tucker, twenty-five on the Shirillo boy, though he didn't use his age and experience to usurp power within the group as others might have done. All he cared about was making the hit and getting the money, and he knew Tucker was a d.a.m.n fine operator.

Thinking about the money, he grew uncomfortable and shifted in the brush, stretching his long legs and working a cramp out of his thick, muscular thighs. When the vigil first began, he occupied himself by pulling burrs out of his clothes, his heavily callused fingers uninjured by the sharp points. Now, though his calluses remained inviolate, he was too nervous to fool with such minutiae, and he longed to be on the move.

On the right-hand side of the roadway, across from Harris, the gravel berm dropped abruptly into a rock-strewn ravine that bottomed out more than three hundred feet below. The only safe place on that side was the fifty-yard-long lay-by where the Dodge and Chevrolet, both stolen, were now parked facing slightly downhill. Tucker and Bachman waited there, the older man behind the wheel of the Chevy, Tucker shielded from the lane by the bulk of the Dodge.

Bachman carried a.32-caliber pistol in a chamois shoulder holster, as did Tucker. Unlike Tucker, however, he kept touching it, like a savage with his talisman. With damp fingertips he traced the Crosshatch pattern on the solid b.u.t.t, lifting the whole weapon slightly out of the holster, testing the way it fit, looking for potential snags- though he had worn this same piece for years and knew that it wouldn't snag, ever.

Though Bachman had only the one gun, Tucker held an additional shotgun with only seven inches of barrel; both chambers were loaded, and six spare cartridges were distributed in his jacket pockets. If Bachman had been carrying the shotgun, he would have been constantly patting his pockets to be sure the cartridges were there. Tucker, however, stood quietly, moving as little as he had to, waiting.

"They should be here by now," Bachman called through the open window of the Chevy. He wiped a slender hand across his face, more than covering his small, compressed features, pulled off something invisible-maybe his own impatience-and shook that off his fingertips. Right now he was jumpy, and he was talking too much, but when the time came for the job he would be all grease and oil, as Tucker had discovered on the other three jobs they'd worked on together.

Tucker said, "Patience, Merle." He was known for his serenity, for maintaining a cool facade that never cracked under pressure. Inside, though, he was all knotted up and bleeding. His stomach twisted this way and that, as if it were an animal trapped inside of him; perspiration gathered over his whole body, a symbolic film of his repressed terror.

He had not been born and raised to make his living this way, had never understood the criminal social stratum. That he was now a success at what he did was a testament to an almost fanatical determination to achieve what he set out to achieve, and he was usually the undisputed leader of any group simply because others saw and admired his single-mindedness.

At the top of the slope, Jimmy Shirillo dropped the field gla.s.ses and rolled onto his back, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Here they come!" His voice cracked on the last word, but everyone understood what he had said.

"Go!" Tucker shouted, slamming a flat palm down on the hood of the stolen Dodge.

Bachman stopped fiddling with the pistol cradled under his armpit and switched on the Chevrolet's engine, revved it a few times and drove forward, blocking the road diagonally. Without wasting a second, smooth and fluid, he put the car in park, pulled on the handbrake, opened his door and jumped out. He took cover at the very end of the rear fender, where, if he saw there was going to be a collision, he could leap to safety easily enough. As an afterthought he grasped the grotesque Halloween mask that dangled from an elastic band around his neck and slipped it over his head.

Halloween in June, he thought. It was the wrong time to wear a rubber mask, in this heat and humidity.

On the hilltop Jimmy had crept to the edge of the limestone outcropping, ready to jump into the lane behind the Cadillac the moment the big car had gone by. He fumbled with his goblin's face a moment, felt the dew on it and thought-inexplicably-that the water was blood. Fear. Green fear, pure and simple. Angry with himself, he got the mask in place.

Down at the lay-by, behind the Dodge, Tucker became a scarred old witch with one quick movement of his hand, grimaced at the odor of latex that he now drew with every breath, then looked across the road at the brush above the stone wall. Where was Harris? There. Maintaining good cover for a city boy, blending right in with the weeds. Cradling his Thompson, his face that of a grotesque monster, he seemed twice as big and dangerous as he had ever looked before.

Tucker raised his shotgun and propped the barrel on the fender of the Dodge, cautioning himself to stay loose. His stomach burned; gall stung the back of his throat. Behind the mask he could allow himself a wince, for none of the others would see it.

The roar of the Cadillac's engine was audible now. Tucker wondered if it was moving too fast to stop in time, and he tried to calculate all the possible moves he could make if it slammed into the barricade. Although the shock of the collision would delay Baglio's men's reaction time and ease the strain of getting them firmly under control, there was also the danger of jammed doors. And of fire. Baglio's men could burn-but what about the money, then? The building roar of the car's engine sounded in that moment like flames devouring stacks of crisp dollar bills.

The Cadillac came into sight.

The driver was quick. He hit the brakes, slewed the big chrome machine sideways, then let up so that he could correct a dangerous plunge toward the precipice, brought the car to a jerking halt six feet away from the Chevy's pa.s.senger door.

Clouds of blue smoke caught up with the Cadillac and swept past it.

As planned, Pete Harris let go with a burst of machine-gun fire, aimed well above everyone's head, before any of the others could move toward the limousine. The shots glanced around the hillsides like a series of hammer blows on an iron forge bed. The racket was almost certain to be audible the length of the slopes and would draw reinforcements from the mansion. In five minutes the site would be swarming with Baglio's gunmen. Still, this was the quickest, simplest way to let those inside the limousine know that this was serious business, rough business, and that they were hopelessly outgunned.

When the echo died, Tucker was at the driver's window, the stubby shotgun leveled at the old man's neck. A blast from the first barrel alone would shatter the window and fragment the chauffeur's skull before he could complete any dive for the floorboards. The old b.a.s.t.a.r.d knew it; he sat where he was, motionless.

The other man in the front seat was Vito Chaka, Baglio's trusted "accountant," forty years old, slim and almost feminine, graying at the temples. He cultivated a tiny mustache that covered a third of his upper lip like a smudge of paint. In the 1930s he would have driven the women wild, Tucker thought. And perhaps he still did, with the help of his position and his bankroll. Chaka looked at him, sizing him up, then nodded and slowly placed both hands on the padded dash in front of him, palms turned up, everything in the open, in recognition of their professionalism.

"Get out!" Tucker said. His voice sounded thick and mean through the slit of the rubber mouth.

The chauffeur and Chaka obeyed at once. When the two muscle types in the back seat hesitated, Jimmy Shirillo tapped on the rear window with the barrel of his pistol. He had climbed onto the trunk of the Caddy without making a sound, and his goblin mask seemed to grin at the gunmen when they jumped in surprise.

Shirillo was feeling good, better than he had antic.i.p.ated he would feel, less afraid than he had been before things got moving. He was sweating, and the full-head mask made his neck itch; but those were minor troubles.

Thirty seconds later Baglio's men were all lined up along the driver's side of the limousine, their hands flattened on the roof or hood, legs spread wide, leaning forward so they were off balance, heads tucked between shoulderblades, all very neat, very cla.s.sic. Only Chaka looked sure of himself, dapper even in this humiliating pose.

Bachman quickly opened the rear door on the far side. "Three cases," he said. No trace of his previous anxiety remained in his voice.

Jimmy Shirillo laughed triumphantly.

"Hold the celebrations," Tucker said. "Go help him."

Bachman lifted the heaviest suitcase and walked off toward the Chevy, severely bent by the dragging weight. He wouldn't have been content to pick up one of the smaller cases, of course-for the same reason that he wore high-waisted trousers: he didn't like anyone to think of him as a small man, even though he was a small man.

Jimmy went around and got the last two bags, carried them with little trouble, dropped them into the open trunk of the stolen Chevrolet and slammed the lid while Bach-man scurried for the front door.

"Relax," Tucker told the men lined against the car, though none of them had moved.

No one responded.

Bachman started the Chevy, raced the engine once, shifted into reverse, squealed backward, angling the car downhill.

"Easy!" Tucker shouted.

But he didn't need to caution Merle Bachman, for the small man always gauged the situation properly and performed at the optimum safe speed. He was a good driver.

Harris came off the stone wall, grunting, the sound of his heavy breathing magnified by the mask. While Bachman was backing the Chevy, Harris came around to Tucker and said, "Smooth."

Again Tucker said, "Hold the celebrations."

Bachman put the Chevy in gear, touched the gas lightly and started downhill toward the second curve, shimmering curtains of heat rising from the roof and trunk of the car.

"Get the Dodge," Tucker ordered Shirillo.

The boy went after it.

Pete Harris was the only one still watching the Chevy, thinking about all that money in the trunk, thinking about retirement, and he was the first to see that it was going to go sour. "Oh, s.h.i.t!" he said.

He had not even finished the exclamation when Tucker heard the hot cry of the Chevrolet's brakes and whirled around to see what had gone wrong.

Everything had gone wrong.

Before Bachman had covered little more than half the distance to the bottom curve, a Cadillac had rounded the limestone down there, coming up. It was a match for the Caddy they had just hit, and it was moving too fast, much too fast for these road conditions. The driver pulled the wheel hard to the left and tried to run the bank; that was hopeless, because the shoulder of the road down there turned swiftly into the stone wall that continued unbroken to the top of the rise. A tire blew with the force of a cannon shot. The car jolted, bucked up and down like an enraged animal. Metal whined as a fender was compressed into half the s.p.a.ce it had formerly occupied.

Still braking, the Chevrolet wobbled crazily back and forth as Bachman fought to regain control, veered suddenly and purposefully toward the outside.

"He can't get around a car as big as the Caddy!" Harris said.

Bachman tried it anyway. He was still in the middle of a job, still calm and greased, quick and calculating. He realized that he had only one chance of pulling this off successfully, and no matter how infinitesimal that chance was, he took it. The Cadillac had come to a complete halt now, pretty badly crumpled on the one side, and the Chevy plowed into its rear door like a pig nosing in the turf, reared up and caught its front axle on the top of the ruined door, simultaneously sliding to the left toward the three-hundred-foot chasm. The back wheels jolted off the berm and swung over empty air, spinning up clouds of yellow dust. For a second Tucker was sure the Chevy would break loose and fall, but then he saw it would hold, halfway up the other, larger car like a dog mounting a b.i.t.c.h. Bachman had tried it; he'd lost.

Completely undamaged on the pa.s.senger's side, the front door of the Cadillac opened and a tall, dark-haired man got out, dazed. He shook his head to clear it, turned and stared at the demolished Chevy angled crazily over him, bent forward with his hands on both knees to be sick. He seemed to think of something more important than that natural urge, for he straightened abruptly and looked into the front seat, reached inside and helped a young woman climb out. She appeared to be as uninjured as he, and she did not share his sickening intimation of mortality. She wore a white blouse and a very short yellow skirt: a big, lovely blonde. Her long hair flapped like a pennant in the breeze as she looked up the road at Tucker and the others.

"Here!" Jimmy Shirillo shouted. He had turned the Dodge around and was facing uphill.

"Get in the car," Tucker told Harris.

The big man obliged, the Thompson held in both hands tenderly.

"Don't force me to shoot any of you in the back," Tucker said, backing to the open rear door of the Dodge.

Baglio's men remained silent.

He slid into the car, still facing them, raised the shotgun and fired at the sky as Jimmy tore rubber getting out of there, slammed the door after they were moving and dropped onto the seat below window level until he felt the car swinging around the upper curve.

"Are we just leaving Bachman there?" Harris asked.

Tucker peeled off his mask and pushed his sweat-slicked hair out of his face. His stomach was bothering him worse than ever. He said, "We don't have the means to get him out and hold off Baglio's whole army at the same time." He belched and tasted the orange juice that had been his entire breakfast.

"Still" Harris began.

Tucker interrupted him, his voice tense and bitter. "Bachman was right-we did need a fifth man."

_.

"We're boxed," Shirillo said.

From here on out, the private road no longer hugged the edge of the ravine, struck toward the broad interior slopes of the mountain with land opening on both sides. Flanked by pines, it fed ruler-straight into the circular driveway in front of Rossario Baglio's gleaming white many-windowed monstrosity of a house only another mile ahead. Just exiting that drive, a black Mustang arrowed directly for them.

"Not boxed," Tucker said, pointing ahead and to the left. "Is that a turn-off?"

Jimmy stared. "Yeah, looks like it."

"Take it."

The boy wheeled hard left as they came up on the dirt track, braked, barely avoided ripping through several small, st.u.r.dy pine trees, slammed brutally across a series of wet-weather ruts, apparently unperturbed by all of it. Tramping down on the accelerator, he grinned into the rear-view mirror and said, "It's not my car."

Despite himself Tucker laughed. "Just keep your eyes on the road."

Jimmy looked ahead, straddled a large stone in the middle of the way and built more speed.

The wind hissed at an open wing window, and insects smacked against the gla.s.s like soft bullets.

"They're right behind us," Harris said. "Just turned in."

Both Tucker and Harris stared through the back window, dizzied by the green blur of trees and underbrush, brambles and gra.s.s that whipped by on both sides, waiting for the Mustang to bounce into view. They were startled, then, when Shirillo braked to a full stop three quarters of the way up the long hill. "What the h.e.l.l" Tucker said.

"There's a log across the road," Shirillo said. "Either we move it or we go on foot from here."

"Everybody out," Tucker said, pushing open his door. "We move it. Pete, bring the Thompson."

The log was the corpse of a once mighty pine tree fully thirty feet long and as many inches in diameter, with a couple of thick branches that had been chopped short with a sharp ax. It looked as if it had been put there to keep anyone from using the road beyond this point, though it was just as likely that it was spillage from a logging truck when the forests had served to feed a paper mill or planking factory. Tucker directed all three of them to get on the same end of the log, s.p.a.ced three feet apart, one foot on each side of the tree. Heaving together, stepping sideways in an awkward little dance, they managed to swing it around about a yard.

"Not enough," Shirillo said.

Harris said, "Where's the Mustang?"

"It can't move as fast on these bad roads as our heavy car can," Tucker said. He sucked in his breath and said, "Again!"

This time they moved the barrier almost far enough to squeeze the Dodge past, but when they stood to catch their breaths, their backs cracking with a pain like fire, Harris said, "I hear the other car."

Tucker listened, heard it too, wiped his bruised hands against his slacks to make them stop stinging. "Take your Thompson and get ready to meet the gentlemen, Pete."

Harris smiled, picked up the machine gun and trotted to the rear of the Dodge, where he sprawled in the middle of the dusty road. He was a large man, over six feet, more than two hundred and forty pounds; when he went down, the dust rose around him in a cloud. He raised the black barrel and centered it where the Mustang would be when it rounded the bend below. The large circular cannister of ammunition that rose out of the machine gun gave the impression of something insectoid, something that was somehow using instead of being used, an enormous leech draining Harris's body of its blood.

Tucker bent and slipped his hands around the log again, found as good a hold as he was going to get on the surprisingly smooth, round pine trunk. Perspiration ran from his armpits down his sides; his shirt soaked that up. "Ready?" he asked.

"Ready," Shirillo said.

They heaved, gasped as all their stomach muscles tightened painfully. Tucker felt his back pop like a gla.s.s bottle full of pressurized soft drink, perspiration fizzing out of him. But he did not let go, no matter what the cost in strained muscles, raised the log a few inches, sc.r.a.ped sideways a frustratingly short distance before they had to drop it. This time Shirillo sat down on the log to regain his breath, panting like a dog that has run a long way in mid-June heat.

"No loafing," Tucker said immediately.

He felt as bad as the boy did, perhaps even worse-he was, after all, five years older than Shirillo, five years softer; and he had twenty-eight years of easy living to put up against the boy's twenty-three years of rough ghetto upbringing-but he knew that he was the one who had to keep the others moving, had to generate the drive, share some of his fanatical determination to see them through. It was not the getting killed that Tucker feared so much. More than that he feared failure. He said, "Come on, Jimmy, for Christ's sake!"

Shirillo sighed, got to his feet and straddled the pine once more. As he bent to get a grip on it, Harris opened up with his Thompson, filling the woods about them with a manic chatter. Shirillo looked up, could not see anything because of the Dodge and the angle of the trail beyond that, bent again and took hold of the log, put everything he had into one final, frantic heave. Together they muscled the tree farther around than they had the last time before they were forced to let it go. Dropped, the tree landed in the baked roadway with a soft, dusty thump.

"Far enough?" Shirillo asked.

"Yes," Tucker said. "Move a.s.s now!"

They ran back to the car. Shirillo slid behind the wheel and started the engine. That was enough of an alert for Harris, who had not used the Thompson for almost a full minute. The big man jumped up and got into the back of the Dodge again. Tucker was sitting up front with Shirillo and was fumbling with his seat belt. He clicked it together as Jimmy pulled out, turned to Harris and said, "Get any tires?"

"No," Harris said. The admission bothered him, for he respected Tucker and wanted the young man to return his respect. If this job had gone right, it would have been his last; now, because they'd botched it, he would need to work again, and he preferred to work with Tucker more than with anyone else, even after this fiasco. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds caught on too quick, shifted into reverse before I'd nailed any tires." He cursed softly and wiped at his grimy neck, his voice too soft for Tucker to hear the individual words.