The Hunted

by Elmore Leonard

  "Why don't you rush the house?" Rashad said.

  "All he's got is a rifle, a shotgun, and some other shit.

  He could even have the place mined. You know it?"

  "We got to get him out of there," Valenzuela said.

  "Or keep him busy," Teddy said. "Say if I could get up there close enough to plant a charge. One o f you--how about this? One of you go up and talk t o him. See if he'd just as soon go home alive. I'll tak e some stuff, see what I can do. Put a hole in the plac e and we drive in."

  "Let's do it," Valenzuela said. He looked at Rashad. "Call him. Tell him you want to talk."

  "You want me to do it?"

  "You're his buddy," Valenzuela said. "Go on."

  Rashad moved to the stone fence on his knees and gradually began to pull himself up.

  "Hey, Marine!"

  The rifle shot sang off the rim of stone and ricocheted into the desert. Rashad was on the ground again. He looked up at the top of the fence and a t the sky.

  "Hey, my man! . . . We not mad at you! We want to talk!"

  Rashad was waving something white, a handkerchief. Standing in the open gate now, testing him.

  Or testing himself.

  Davis put the front sight of the Mauser on Rashad's chest.

  Now the skinny one with the hair was coming out, starting up the drive with Rashad, both o f them holding their hands out from their sides.

  "No guns!" Rashad called.

  Shoot them. It was in Davis' mind.

  The third one appeared then, Valenzuela, standing up behind the stone fence that was waist-high on him. Valenzuela held his arms out.

  Davis moved the rifle sight to the left a few inches, held in on Valenzuela, then moved it bac k to the two figures coming up the drive.

  "Come on out and talk," Rashad said. He began to angle across the coarse grass toward the house , still holding the white handkerchief. The one wit h the hair continued up the drive, looking toward th e house, the three of them becoming more spread ou t as they approached. Maybe armed, but not wit h Uzis. Not Rashad or the one with the hair. Mayb e pulling something, but not, apparently, coming t o shoot.

  Rashad said, "How's Mr. Rosen?" He waited.

  "If you ain't gonna talk, my man, how we gonna have a talk?"

  Valenzuela was still moving along the fence. The one with the hair was approaching the rear of th e black Mercedes, still looking toward the house.

  Davis glanced over his shoulder. "Tali! Come here!" He looked at Rosen and saw his eyes ope n with a startled expression, the glassiness gone.

  "What is it?" Rosen said. His eyes began to roll back again.

  Rashad, in front of the house now, thirty meters away, said, "Hey, David, we got nothing agains t you, man. We got no reason to hurt you."

  Tali, coming into the front room, said, "What? Is he all right?" Looking at Rosen, then seeing Davi s at the window with the rifle.

  "Watch the one in the driveway," Davis said.

  "Take the shotgun." The Kreighoff was next to him, leaning against the sill. "Can you shoot it?"

  "I think so."

  He watched her as she pushed a window open and raised the Kreighoff, extending it through th e opening.

  "Who's that," Rashad said, "Mr. Rosen? No, hey, that ain't Mr. Rosen, is it? Where's he at?"

  "Get down," Davis said to Tali.

  "Look," Rashad said then, "we got nothing against you or her either. The two of you can get i n the car, man, and leave. But if you stay here . . . s hit, you gonna die. You know that. For what?

  Some money? How much he paying you?"

  Valenzuela had stopped. Now he was moving along the fence again, almost even with the patio.

  Fifty meters to Valenzuela.

  Thirty to Rashad.

  "David!" Tali's voice. "He's behind the car!"

  Davis swung the Mauser. He could see the one with the hair through the side windows of the Mercedes. She should have fired and kept him back, but it was expecting too much. It would have happene d too quickly for her.

  Davis aimed at the rear-door window and fired and saw the window and the window on the othe r side fragment in a web of lines, drilled cleanly b y the high-velocity 30-06, the figure back there suddenly gone. Rashad was running. Davis swung the Mauser on him, then went down as the window s exploded with the hard clatter of Valenzuela's weapon and pressed against the wall below the sill , seeing Tali on the floor with the shotgun, embracing it, holding on tight, her eyes squeezed closed.

  The sound stopped.

  Davis rose up. He saw Rashad running for the gate. He saw Valenzuela behind the fence with th e Uzi. He fired at Valenzuela, squeezing off tw o rounds, seeing him drop behind the fence, swun g the Mauser and tried to nail Rashad with the tw o rounds he had left, but not in time. Rashad wa s through the gate. There was no sign of the thir d one. He had run off into the scrub, beyond the car.

  "I took a pretty good look," Valenzuela said. "I d idn't see the hole we're supposed to drive a ca r through in the wall. In fact, I didn't hear any explosion at all."

  "I changed my mind," Teddy said. "I think when I saw the rifle sticking out the window, fucking elephant gun. I started picturing what this guy must look like in his uniform with the ribbons an d medals and I figured one of them said 'expert.' No t somebody throwing wild shots, expert. Fuckin g Marines, they got all that shit on them, all th e medals. But wait." Teddy had a cigarette in hi s hand and paused before lighting it, looking fro m Valenzuela to Rashad. "Did I come back emptyhanded? You bet I did."

  "What'd you do with it?" Valenzuela said.

  "I stuck a wad under the left rear fender. The wire goes out into the bushes over there."

  "What's that do for us?" Valenzuela said.

  "Blow the car. Show 'em they're not going anywhere."

  "Or wait and see if they try and use the car,"

  Rashad said. "Thinking they can sneak out across the desert after it gets dark. Man, if we gonna b e here that long--and I don't see why we won't."

  It was a good possibility. Teddy left in the gray Mercedes--parked down the wadi from the ston e fence--to run into Eilat and get some supplies , some food and something to drink, like ice-col d beer. They'd never felt the sun press so hot. Go t them cornered, Rashad said, and we the ones dyin g of thirst.

  He said to Valenzuela, after Teddy had left, "They can stay in there a week, but we can't sta y out here. We can cut the electric wire, it wouldn't hurt them none. We can mess up their water pump , they probably got something else to drink. You understand what I'm saying?"

  "We got to get to the Marine," Valenzuela said.

  "Christ, I know that."

  "Yeah, but with something he can see," Rashad said. "We tell him we don't want to kill him. Wha t does he think about that? It's not something he ca n see and say yeah, I want that. It's only driving awa y from here, having in his head he left Rosen. Yo u understand? But we offer him something good--h ey, look at this--then he's got something else i n his head when he drives off. Or when he thinks he's gonna drive off."

  "Offer him money," Valenzuela said. "What else?"

  "No, that's it, money. But how much we got?

  You gonna write him a check? But see, we offer him a whole pile of money, then his head start s working and he can give himself excuses for leaving, like, we gonna get Rosen anyway . . . he can't stay with Rosen the rest of his life . . . he's not responsible for the man. Things like that. He can take something from us and say why not, the man's gonna die anyway."

  "Where's the pile of money?" Valenzuela said.

  "I believe the lawyer's got it," Rashad said.

  "How big a pile, I don't know, but the Arab kid said he had money, my buddy. See, after the mone y was supposed to've been delivered the lawyer's stil l here. Least he was yesterday. So I don't believe h e delivered it. I believe the lawyer's still got Rosen's money, waiting for Rosen to come get it."

  "We don't know that," Valenzuela said.

  "No, but there's a
way we can find out," Rashad said. "How long's it take to drive to Tel Aviv, fou r hours?"

  Valenzuela pulled the highway map out of his coat pocket and, sitting with his back to the ston e fence, opened it to the mileage chart.

  "Three hundred and forty-two kilometers."

  Valenzuela began to nod, estimating time and distance. "Yeah, you could be back here in eight, nine hours. It's an idea. Maybe bring Mel wit h you."

  "I was thinking that," Rashad said. "Use him to talk, so we won't be exposing our bodies. Standin g out there, man, playing the friendly nigger, tha t ain't my style."

  Holding the Mauser on the stone fence fifty yards away, knowing they were there, behind the fence o r maybe in the shade of some scrub, he imagine d telling Master Sergeant T. C. Cox about it.

  "See, they came up the drive with their hands held out from their sides, showing they were unarmed. The other one was over behind the wall."

  T. C. Cox: The ones trying to kill you.

  Davis: Yeah, trying to kill this Rosen.

  T. C. Cox: Trying to kill you too, as I understand it.

  Davis: Well, at this point it looked like they wanted to talk.

  T. C. Cox: What was there to talk about? They wanted to kill you.

  Davis: See, the girl was covering the one with the hair, but he got behind the car.

  T. C. Cox: He got behind the car. What'd you let him do that for?

  Davis: Well, the girl was watching him.

  T. C. Cox: I thought you watched the both of them come up the drive.

  Davis: I did.

  T. C. Cox: Then why didn't you kill them?

  Davis didn't hear himself say anything.

  T. C. Cox: What were you waiting for?

  Davis: All that sitting around the embassy like a bank guard . . .

  T. C. Cox: You had the chance. Why didn't you kill them?

  It scared hell out of him. How fast you could forget how to react.

  DURING THE AFTERNOON he changed Rosen's dressing. There was very little blood now, but the woun d bubbled and sucked air when he uncovered it an d put on another compress. He knew Rosen hear d the sound.

  "I'm breathing out of both ends," Rosen said.

  He rinsed his mouth with water and spit it in the pan Davis had placed next to him. There was a milk bottle for when he had to take a leak, but h e hadn't used it yet.

  "I'm not supposed to drink, how about if I s moke?"

  "Your lung's got enough trouble," Davis said.

  "I won't inhale. No, it'd be a good time to quit.

  You know how many times I've quit in the last year? That goddamn fire--you know, I starte d smoking again right after that. Pack and a half a day . . . hey . . . what's gonna happen?"

  "I'm going out when it gets dark," Davis said.

  "Get help? The police?"

  "It'd take too long, a couple hours or more. I just want to look around. I've got some plastic in m y car, but not much wire and no way to fire it, unles s we hook it to a light switch. But that would be if w e were pretty desperate. Get them coming in. You r car's sitting out there. Tali says she left the key in it.

  Maybe that's a way, if we can get you to the car.

  Shoot out through the back. But I don't knows hit, there isn't any road back there. It's all rock s and gullies. The other thing, one of them was b y your car and he might've rigged it with a charge. I d on't know, but I better find out."

  "Or tell them okay, you'll leave," Rosen said.

  "Take Tali and get out of here. I appreciate it--listen, you don't know, but this doesn't have anything to do with you."

  "You want them to shoot Tali?"

  "That's what I'm talking about, if she stays here.

  If you stay," Rosen said.

  "You think we walk out there they won't shoot us? Alive, we're witnesses. Dead, we go in the sam e hole you do."

  "We're gonna get out," Rosen said. "Right?"

  Davis nodded.

  "I mean what I said--I'm gonna give you something," Rosen said. "In fact you can name it. Anything I've got, you can have." Rosen was silent a moment. "Listen, if I die . . ."

  "If you want to live, then live," Davis said.

  "That's what you do. You don't think about anything else."

  "It's funny the things you do think about."

  Rosen smiled. "Dr. Morris comes home--holy shit, what happened to my house? I keep seeing his face.

  Thinking about the expenses I'm gonna have, then it isn't so funny."

  "You need a couple of windows in your car,"

  Davis said.

  "And the other one, the gray one--Christ, how about those guys using my car?--I imagine it's al l shot up." Rosen shook his head. "It's funny wha t you think about. It's funny I'm not more scared.

  But I think, well, whatever happens--it's interesting because something like this, you can imagine, has never happened to me before. Like watching i t and not being in it. Is that how you look at it? I wa s thinking how it might be in combat. It's always th e other guy who's gonna get hit, isn't it? Well, okay , whatever happens. It's interesting . . . I know a gu y had a lung collapse on him. He said it hurt like a sonofabitch, something about the lining--I didn't understand that part--but he said they pumped i t back up. I guess I got some broken ribs, too. Well, I h ad that before in a car accident. Rear-end collision, I went into the fucking steering wheel. But they're all broken off, aren't they?"

  "The wound's clean," Davis said. "We keep it clean, everything else can be fixed."

  "I'm glad you know what you're doing," Rosen said. "You may not feel the same way, but I'm gla d you're here. As I told you once before--Christ, jus t last night, it seems like a week ago--you'll make it.

  You've got a nice natural style."

  "How do you spell it?" Mel said to the girl sitting next to him at the Pal Hotel bar. She was fairl y good-looking--dark skin, rosy makeup, and blac k black hair. Mel figured she would have a very heav y black bush. He liked that.

  When she had spelled her name for him he said, "That's Guela. Ga-way-la."

  "No, no," the girl said. "Geh-oo-lah. Say it."

  "Gay-woo-la," Mel said. "That's Jewish, huh?"

  "Yes, Hebrew."

  "I never heard it before. Isaac?"

  Itzak, the barman, came over. "Yes, please, Mr.

  Bondy."

  "Same way. Campari and soda. Give her one."

  The girl smiled and thanked him and moved a little closer, hanging her hip off the stool to touc h his thigh.

  "Save it," Mel said. "I'm buying a drink. We haven't agreed I'm buying anything else. Ho w much?"

  "Four hundred lira." Quietly, close to him.

  "Your ass."

  "Yes?"

  "That means you're high. It's too much."

  "Too much? The same as fifty dollar."

  "The same as fifty dollar is three hundred lira,"

  Mel said. "Today's rate of exchange at the Bank of Israel, determined by the devaluation of th e common-market dollar discount. And if you believe that, we can go upstairs and fall in love."

  "All right," the girl said. "Three hundred lira."

  "How many times?"

  "How many times? One time. How many times you good to do it for?"

  That's how it happened that Rashad found Mel with his white ass up in the air, his face buried in a pillow, and Guelah doing her routine, moaning an d gasping with her eyes open.

  Rashad pressed the barrel of the Beretta into Mel's left buttock and said, "Now, if you can kee p going, my man, that's savoir faire."

  Rosen said to Tali, who was sitting close to him in the darkness, "I'm gonna tell you something I neve r told anybody before."

  "Yes?"

  "I'm part Jewish." He waited.

  Tali said again, "Yes?"

  "Well, are you surprised?"

  "I always think you are a Jew," Tali said. "What does it mean part? Part of what?"

  "You thought I was? Why?"

  "I don't know." Tali shrugged.
"I always think it. Your appearance . . ."

  "Come on."

  "Your name . . ."

  "My name, I made up the name. You know who I really am? Baptized? James C. Ross. Jimmy Ross.

  But most people, even my wife, called me Ross."

  "It's a nice name, Ross. It's not Hebrew?"

  "I don't know, I guess some people named Ross are Jewish, but I didn't know that, because m y mother was Irish, her name was Connelly, and sh e was always talking about the Irish, like there wa s something special about them, a gift, or talkin g about her people coming from Cork. So I though t Ross was Irish almost all my life. Then when m y dad died--I was nineteen, I came home from th e service for the funeral--I found out our name originally was Rosen. My dad's grandfather changed it when he came over from England. But see, nobod y on my dad's side ever practiced the Jewish faith, s o I didn't know anything about it till I came here.

  And you know what? It's interesting. I don't buy all the kosher business, Christ, the diet laws. Wha t does Almighty God care if you eat butter wit h steak? He's got enough to think about, all the fuckups in the world. But the history and all, it's interesting."

  "My name, Atalia, is from the history time."

  "Is that right? I thought it meant from Italy."

  "No, it's from very far back, but I don't read about it in a long time."

  "See, you're the new breed," Rosen said. "You can't be bothered with religion, all the ceremony."

  "We have our meal together, the family, on Friday evening," Tali said. "I still want you to meet my mother sometime."

  "What do I want to meet your mother for? She fool around?"

  "No, of course not."

  "What do you mean, of course not. You probably don't even know her. You ever talk to her about what she feels and thinks, what you feel? Kid s don't know their parents. They grow up and star t thinking about them as real people after they'r e dead. People waste time, years, playing games wit h each other--who am I?--and never get to kno w anybody."

  "Is this true?" Tali said.

  "Yes, it's true," Rosen said. "I think I'm getting close to something, a truth about how to live lif e and not waste it or mess up. I'll get it clear in m y mind and tell you about it."