“I have told you, I know nothing.”
“And I’ve told you, I’m not the one you have to convince.”
“But —”
“But nothing. A pro doesn’t use a .17 to kill a man. It’s not enough gun. The only reason why that lad down there is using a small-caliber rifle is to…” Charlie drifted into silence. A hypothesis was tickling the back of his consciousness. Yeah, that’s the question. That and his marksmanship. That evil little mongrel is one of Johan’s people, and Johan’s people simply do not miss their targets. All at once — same as usual because that was the way it always happened — his hypothesis crystallized. He felt a grin form on his face, and knew it was the kind of grin that showed his teeth.
Good news: I’ve got a theory. Bad news: there’s only one way to put it to the test.
Charlie stood, straight and tall, an easy target in plain view.
Irina gasped. “Get down, Charlie! Get down! He will —”
Three quick shots, one left, two right. Neither of them close enough to make him blink. “No, he won’t.” He ducked back down, hypothesis confirmed. “That man is under orders to not hit us. If he wasn’t, right now I’d be using your tweezers to pick the bullets out of my hide.”
“I do not carry tweezers.”
The very thought seemed to offend her. “Didn’t think you did. Okay, let’s do a little creative thinking. When I watched that guy you shot through my binoculars, I saw he had a long gun slung on his back.”
“They both did. I saw them through my scope.”
“No magazines jutting out the bottom, though?”
She closed her eyes, visualizing what she had seen. “No. I do not think so.”
“Me either. You can buy a forty-round banana clip for any small-caliber rifle, but only gun nuts do that. A man who knows what he’s doing wouldn’t be caught dead with one. So let’s make a little guess here. Let’s guess he’s got a built-in bottom-loader trapdoor magazine like my…our…Savanna Gun. And let’s guess that it takes…hmm…how many?…let’s guess seven rounds.” He lifted the binoculars over his head, passing them to her. “I want you to spot for me. I’m the sniper. You’re the partner. You know the moves, correct?”
“I know all the moves, Charlie.”
“I never doubted it for a moment.” He smiled at her, pure affection. “All right, get ready. When I give the word, stand up, find that sinner, and tell me where to aim.” So saying, Charlie raised his head above the rock. A bullet’s whine welcomed him. He ignored it. Head and chest visible to his enemy, he scuttled left. The shooter fired again, high and to Charlie’s right. Charlie kept moving. Another round exploded in front of him, this time at eye level about three feet ahead. No question about it, Schmidt’s gunman was trying to send him a message.
Charlie bent over, duck-walking a few steps, then raised his head again. That produced two more shots, his enemy trying to persuade him that he was facing triangulating fire and had better lie low. Charlie knew better. He bobbed his head down, then back up. Two more bullets slapped home. Unless I’m wrong about the seven-round magazine, now’s the time.
“Do it, Irina! Do it!”
Tall and proud and straight and fearless, she stood with the binoculars at her eyes, weaving a zigzag search across the canyon floor. Charlie silently counted a seven-round magazine being recharged. One bullet. Two bullets. Three bullets. Four bullets. Five —
“Five o’clock.” She was calm about it, exactly what you wanted from your sniping partner. “The ruined cabin. Left corner.”
Ah, yes, there you are, you sweet thing. He was damnably well concealed, prone against heavy foundation stones. Nothing showed except the thinnest ribbon of a blue-and-white-checkered shirt, a hard target but it would have to do. Charlie caressed the trigger and felt the sweet bounce of the butt against his shoulder.
“A hit.” She kept her voice low, doing her job just the way it was supposed to be done. God, he loved the way she handled herself.
Deep breath, Charlie, and level the barrel, squint through the telescopic sight, get the crosshairs on your mark again because one bullet is rarely enough.
There he was and he was arched with pain. Distant, distant, you could barely hear it, although the man no doubt was shouting at the top of his lungs, “Aw, fookin’ hell!” I creased his side. Maybe skipped my shot across his ribs. Won’t even slow down a tough guy like that.
Charlie’s second shot shattered his enemy’s elbow. That boy is out of the game.
“Charlie,” Irina said, no little awe in her voice, “Charlie, that was amazing.”
Yeah, well, yeah, it was. On the fly. One hundred and fifty yards. A snap shot from the shoulder. Who’s king? I am king! “All in a day’s work, darling. Now let’s get our fannies out of here before the posse shows up.” Did I just call her darling?
They scrambled away from the slab. The next few minutes’ climbing were easy — easy being a relative term because it largely was hand over hand, using outcrops as rungs on a crazy man’s ladder. Charlie didn’t like it one little bit. They were too visible, their backs inviting targets, no cover anywhere. The sweat on his forehead had little do to with exertion.
Made it. What’s next? If memory serves, a short run through that dry wash. He was feeling pretty good about things right now.
There were boulders everywhere, a whole nation of boulders, giant fathers and three-foot-high toddlers, this was the place where boulders came for their holiday vacation.
Charlie scrambled around them, picking his route so that, most of the time, he and Irina were shielded from being seen by anyone beneath them. Once they had to shin a mottled grey pillar like a tree trunk — a short climb, but uncomfortably exposed. Charlie’s back itched while they ascended, and he detected a certain hastiness in his movements.
Next they scrabbled up a fall of gravel, this one steeper than the scree at the bottom of the cliff. Treacherously unstable rocks rolled beneath their feet; Irina gave a little cry as she slipped, but Charlie was fast, and he had her hand, and they were past it.
Indeed, they were past almost all of it, agonizingly close to the canyon rim, when a fusillade of many guns rattled the canyon walls. Charlie looked up hungrily. Sixty or seventy feet — little more than the height of an ordinary telephone pole. It was infuriating; another minute and they would have been up and safe and screw you, Johan Schmidt.
He angrily threw the Brown to his shoulder. Cold, wholly indifferent to the clap of bullets all around him, he picked out his man, drew a line down his torso, leveled the crosshairs on his groin, and sent him screaming to the ground. There was another one racing forward, a chunky brute; he looked like a football tackle charging the quarterback. Charlie castrated him and took satisfaction in a scream easily heard, even at this distance. One more, oh, God, give me just one more.
“Charlie,” she was spotting for him again, bless her, “Are you doing that on purpose?”
“Get down!” He dropped as he spoke, reaching a hand for her belt. She didn’t need the help. As the rocks around them exploded, she flung herself to the ground. “Yeah. We’re up against seasoned fighters, blooded men. They’re used to seeing their buddies take a bullet. It goes with the territory, and they really don’t give a damn. Kill a few, and the rest just shrug it off. But if you hit a couple of them in the privates — well, that makes any man reconsider his career alternatives.”
She grinned like a wicked child. Her blood was up, no different from his, a killing glint in both their eyes. He and she were two peas in a pod; mortal danger had the same intoxicating effect on them both; and it was hard, damned hard, not to roar like a hunting lion and make as many corpses as you could.
None of that. I’ll have none of it. Neither will she. Charlie held himself rigid until it passed, and until cool sanity returned.
He emptied a box of cartridges, filling his shirt pocket and feeding three fresh rounds into the Brown. At times like this you preferred a detachable magazine. Empty it, eject it, ja
ck another in, and keep up continuous fire. No use wishing for what you don’t have, he told himself.
The reports of enemy gunfire echoed through the canyon. Charlie hated that. It desecrated a place dear to his heart. Another reason to paint a few more of the bastards red.
He knew his best chance of nailing them was while they were still scurrying for cover. Besides, they were aiming to keep him pinned down. Right now, right at this very moment, the punks were just tin ducks in a shooting gallery.
He started to rise.
“Charlie, No.”
“No choice. Schmidt’s people have radios. They’ll be calling for help. Cars and trucks and helicopters. We have to get out of here now.” He rolled left, pulling himself erect, rifle at the ready, telescopic sights searching for a target, searching for…I’ll be damned. Dark glasses. Lean and loping like a tiger. It’s the big boss himself, pleased to see you, you hyena, and I think a head shot is in order…. “Jesus!” A thunderbolt burst up his leg. The pain of it, raw and electric, was unimaginably shocking.
Charlie’s world went white.
When he opened his eyes — it could only have been a minute or two later — Irina was bent over him, fumbling a water bottle to his lips.
Aiming to keep us pinned down? So much for that theory. He accepted the water gratefully. “How bad’s the damage?” he asked.
“It is your upper thigh, Charlie. There’s an entrance wound but no exit wound. To stop the bleeding, I packed it with tissue paper, Kleenex. I had some with me in case —”
She blushed. Talking about having to go to the bathroom made her blush. If he wasn’t hurting so badly, he might have smiled. “Twenty-two caliber, I bet. Feels like it’s drilled into the bone.”
“It must hurt.”
“Nah,” he lied, “not much.” Screwed up again. Cocksure again. Goddamn me, I’ll never learn.
“Stay there. I will take the rifle —”
“Like hell.” She suddenly had that expression on her face. Yeah, that one. Charlie appreciated the emotion behind it, but it simply wouldn’t do. “Look at that slope,” he growled. “Do you think I can get up it with a slug in my thighbone?” You’re not paying for my mistakes, sweetheart. I’m never letting anyone else pay, never again, you least of all.
Irina studied the short ascent, straight up between layered red walls. She saw the same thing Charlie saw: a route that would have to be climbed like a chimney, no handholds but for precarious-looking juniper shrubs clinging to the rock. Turning to him, iron in resolve, she replied. “I will not leave you.”
Oh, hell, Charlie thought, now I’m in a Hemingway novel. Me and Robert Jordan. He spoke rapidly, his words tumbling over one another. If he slowed down, she’d hear his pain. “You have to. Schmidt’s gorillas are going to be arriving topside on the double. If you stay here, both our gooses are cooked. If you get away, then best case Johan’ll leave me where I lie. I’m not the one he cares about.” Lie, you old bastard, lie like you never have before.
“What is the worst case, Charlie?”
She would ask that. “It’ll involve some humiliation, but not much else. He can’t lay a hand on me. If he so much as tries, I’ll dump a garbage truck full of muck on his boss’s head. I’ve got insurance, Irina. The guy who hired Schmidt is dismally certain that if anything happens to me, his dirty linen gets shipped to every newspaper in the world.”
“Charlie —” Her voice was soft and soothing. Listening to her, letting her talk, just plain basking in the way she spoke was damned tempting. He gritted his teeth. Who played Robert Jordan? Cooper. Yeah, Gary Cooper.
“No way. You’re out of here. When you get up that notch you’ll be right at the end of an airstrip. There’s a plane waiting. Pilot’s a bush doctor named David Howard. Once you’re in the air, he can radio his clinic. They’ll get a couple of medics out here to help me — that is, if he has a radio in that beat-up antiquity he flies, which he may not.”
Now you are going well and fast and far….
Charlie closed his eyes, a wave of pain almost tumbling him into safe unconsciousness. He could see…could see…the Three Turkeys airstrip…a pasture with scrawny cows…a stained white tank for aviation fuel…a faded orange windsock fluttering in the wind…that silly adobe building someone built as a tiny passenger terminal, hummingbird feeders dangling in front of every nicotine-stained window….
“I cannot leave you like this.”
Next thing, I’ll be calling her my little rabbit. He shook himself awake. “Insurance. You need insurance, too. Something to bargain with, a gun you can hold to their heads.” He chewed his lip, making his decision. “I’ll give you the disk, the Whirlwind disk. Hide it somewhere. As long as it’s out of their hands, they don’t dare —”
“I have the disk, Charlie.” Soft words, shy and slightly embarrassed. “I picked your pocket while we were in the car.”
“The disk in my pocket was a decoy.” He unzipped his fly, gingerly fingering a pouch sewn into the crotch of his slacks. “If you’d tried to filch the real one, I’m pretty sure I would have felt it.”
Her expression transformed from chagrin to a blushing smile. “I would have made sure you felt it.”
As he handed her the disk, Charlie forced a faint laugh.
Her last words to him were, “I will come find you, you. Wherever you are, I will come to you.”
It was a lie, probably, one of those things you say to make someone who feels bad feel better. Charlie doubted he’d really brought her around to his side. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that he’d been fooling himself — just another old man fooling himself about a pretty young woman, and we’ve all seen that before, haven’t we?
She didn’t give a damn about him.
Which wouldn’t stop him from protecting her, no sir, it wouldn’t stop him at all.
By the time she’d backed out of sight, Charlie had crawled forty feet or so left of where he had been. Every inch was agony. He didn’t know how he’d kept from blacking out. I guess I’m not awfully good at pain.
Tumbled boulders formed a shadowed firing niche. The canyon lay nearly five hundred feet below; such beauty; a willow-lined creek, a dappled apple orchard, sand the hue of old gold. Men — a dozen of them, or there-abouts — dodged from tree to rock to bush, the classic tactics of a platoon advancing on a fortified redoubt. No one was in the open for more than seconds. Everyone moved fast and low.
Advantage: Charlie. He could see them; they couldn’t see him.
He waited patiently for his first target, a soldier in a sweatshirt and phat pants concealed behind an oak. Patience paid off. The man broke his cover, scurrying for a sand bunker. Charlie shot and missed and cursed.
That first shot had been the signal to Irina. She sprinted toward the cleft. Its deep walls provided shadow and concealment. Schmidt’s mercenaries wouldn’t see her easily. They’d have to search for her through their scopes and binoculars. Charlie didn’t plan to let them do that.
He snapped off another round, this one aimed at a declivity where a mercenary might — or might not — have been crouching.
The point wasn’t to hit any of them — although that would be a welcome bonus. Charlie’s goal was to keep them down, cowering in fright — fear being an appropriate emotion when confronted by a marksman who aimed for the testicles.
He fired again.
Not that he was a marksman. Not any longer. His hands shook, sweat drenched his shirt, and his wounded leg was a nauseating pillar of agony. His nerve endings were on fire; if screaming would have helped, he would have screamed.
Instead he forced himself to look for a target, look close, look hard, concentrate then pull his trigger. Nuts, missed again.
The Savanna gun’s magazine clicked dry. He flipped the rifle over, one hand feeding fresh rounds to the trapdoor magazine, the other extended through his firing niche holding a Browning automatic aimed blindly as he worked the trigger. At this distance he hadn’t a hope in
hell of hitting anything with a pistol. He fired only to keep his pursuers — Irina’s pursuers — lying low, and not, most definitely not, searching the shaded crevasse where a nearly invisible young woman climbed.
He rolled back, rifle ready, and started seeking targets again. By now someone had worked out his approximate location. That someone’s bullets whined in the air above him. Charlie couldn’t find the shooter. Bright yellow spots danced in front of his eyes. Hard to spot an enemy with clown balloons cluttering up your vision.
Empty again.
The pistol again.
Back again.
His mind had shut down, mostly. He was on autopilot, a fleshy robot programmed to do a very few, very simple things. That was all that was necessary. Anything else would have been superfluous — and, in any event, beyond his nearly depleted powers.
Somewhere along the line he heard the buzzing rasp of an airplane engine. That surprised him because he didn’t think he’d been shooting long enough for Irina to get to the top and make her way to safety. But then again, both boxes of .30-’06 ammo seemed to be empty, so he supposed he’d been doing this for longer than he thought.
How many rounds left? Five in the palm of his hand.
He looked at the ground: two empty water bottles at his feet; he didn’t remember drinking them. He’d given Irina, he supposed, all the time she needed.
Charlie’s world no longer contained colors; it wasn’t even monochrome. Satisfied that he’d done his job, he faced the waiting darkness, sighing as he sank into its welcome embrace.
Sam was late to the party. It had taken two of Schmidt’s big boys to hoist him out of that canyon, and neither of them had been polite about it.
Now filthy and exhausted he limped toward where the survivors of this expedition — this failed expedition — clustered at the ass end of Dogpatch International Airport.
He couldn’t hear what was going on because Schmidt seemed to have a ghetto blaster with him. One of his underlings must have hauled the thing all the way down the cliff, through the canyon, and back up again. Creepy — no less creepy than Schmidt himself.
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