The Vulcan Disaster

Corbin was a lot bigger than the dossier had led me to believe. When he jumped, over two hundred pounds slammed into me. His savage rush would have done justice to a pro linebacker. He nearly tore my head off.

His heavy shoulder hit me amidships, knocking me off balance through the door, over the edge of the narrow staircase, end over end down the first flight of stairs that stretched out below me. It was all I could do to get one hand free and grab hold of his collar, just above the knot on his tie, and hang on for dear life. If I was going down that flight of stairs, I thought, he was damn well going with me.

I hit painfully on one shoulder, five steps down, and rolled. Instinct alone saved me; I should have had a broken neck. Instead, I tucked my head in and concentrated on letting Walter Corbin tumble over me headfirst, hoping he’d try kissing the far wall of the narrow well with all that weight behind him.

I went over once, twice, and flattened out on the third roll, back to the stairs, hands beneath me to cushion my fall. And I watched Corbin come out of the tight ball he’d become, carom off the wall, and come at me with a ferocious yell, as cool as if nothing had happened.

He led with a left that went past my head like a bullet. I could feel the brute strength in it even as he missed me. There was iron in that arm. And, I reflected, it wouldn’t do to close with him just yet. I feinted with a left of my own and then gave him a straight right to the Adam’s apple. Then I backed up to the edge of the next flight, giving myself a little room to maneuver.

It wasn’t enough. Corbin was made out of solid steel! A look of cold rage on his heavy features, he looked up and then took another swing at me. I sidestepped and chopped him on the kidney. It was a good heavy blow, with lots of weight behind it. I was damn near behind him by the time the blow landed and I’d followed through. That kind of punch ought to make a man walk with a cane and pass blood for a week.

Instead, it barely bent him over. The breath came out of his flared nostrils, harsh and phlegmy. He gave me a look that showed me he was in pain, all right, but swung a roundhouse right just as I was reaching for Wilhelmina, tucked away under one arm.

He was fast for a big man. Too fast. The gun went spinning over my shoulder, down the flight of stairs. And a left that Rocky Marciano would have been proud of caught me right over the heart.

I’ve never been hit harder and for a moment he had me. The strength suddenly went out of my legs as the wind went out of me. I crumpled, down... down... and over the edge, down the next flight. And this time I didn’t have the presence of mind to tuck and roll. There was a sharp blow at the back of my head, and the last thing I saw was Corbin, leaning over, preparing to jump down on me, to land with both feet and two hundred pounds of weight...

And then something shook me awake.

A concrete stairwell is an acoustic horror. It carries the lows, shoots down the highs. You wouldn’t want to hear what a big French MAB P15 pistol chambered for the 9mm parabellum cartridge, sounds like in there. I heard it, and I don’t want to hear the likes of it again... unless I find myself in similar circumstances again. I was sensitive to loud noises for a week afterward. The P15 has the largest magazine of any handgun in the world — fifteen rounds — and I heard all fifteen of them go off up the staircase from me, from behind Corbin’s unprotected back. I thought it’d never stop firing.

Just take my word for it; you wouldn’t want to see what it does to a man when all fifteen rounds hit him above the groin.

Walter Corbin simply came apart. The first round, I figured out later, may well have been enough to kill him; it hit dead center, in the small of his back, and destroyed enough vital organs to do the job. But Corbin was a big man, big enough to take some time to fall. And as his body slowly crumpled above me, I saw the next eight shots rip through him, carrying bone and guts with them. Three went through his belt and simply opened him up like somebody gutting a fish. Another ripped through the spinal column at the back of his neck; the head swung high, and the neck opened wide, spewing red. Then came another volley of blasts, and Corbin’s head was smashed in like a rotten pumpkin. The face simply disappeared. The parabellum makes a hell of a hole when it comes out in front, poured into a man’s back at short range like that.

At the fifteenth round the sound quit. The marksman above me had been counting, the same as I’d been; he hadn’t even pulled the trigger that sixteenth time to get an answering click. He’d simply stopped shooting.

And then the body slid heavily down to my feet. It splashed. In spite of myself, I drew back a little. And then I looked back up again.