Time to Hunt

by Stephen Hunter

  “You’ll get your will back, boyo,” said the giant Fitzpatrick heartily. “I’ll go get us a beer for the recharge. You wait here, Donny Fenn.”

  “No, no, I just had a thing I wanted to talk over with Trig.”

  “Oh, Trig’ll steer you right, no doubt about it,” he said, his voice light with laughter. “It’s a drink I’ll be gittin’, Trig. You lads talk.”

  With that he turned to the house and headed in.

  “So what is it, Donny?”

  “It’s Crowe … they arrested him. Violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I’m supposed to testify against him in”—he looked at his watch—“about seven hours.”

  “I see.”

  “Maybe you don’t. I was asked to spy on him. That was my job. That’s why I got close to him. I was supposed to report to them on his off-base activities and try and put him with known members of the peace groups. That’s why I was with him at the party that night; that’s why I came to your party. I was ordered to spy.”

  Trig stared at him for a while, then his face broke into the oddest thing: a smile.

  “Oh, that’s your big secret? Man, that’s it?” He laughed now, really hard. “Donny, wise up. You work for them. They can ask you to do that. If they say so, that’s your duty. That’s the game in Washington these days. Everybody’s watching everybody. Everybody’s got an agenda, a plan, an idea they’re trying to push or sell. I don’t give a damn.”

  “It’s worse. They have some idea you were Weather Underground and you planned the whole thing. I mean, can you imagine anything so stupid? He was feeding you deployment intelligence so the May Tribe could humiliate the Corps.”

  “Boy, their imagination never fails to amaze me!”

  “So what should I do, Trig? That’s what I’m here to ask. About Crowe. Should I testify?”

  “What happens if you don’t?”

  “They’ve got some pictures of me smoking dope. Funny, I don’t smoke dope anymore, but I did to get in with him. They could send me to Portsmouth. Or, more likely, the ’Nam. They could ship me back for a last go-round, even though I’m short.”

  “They’re really assholes, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But that’s neither here nor there, is it? This isn’t about them. We know who they are. This is about you. Well, then it’s easy.”

  “Easy?”

  “Easy. Testify. For one reason, you can’t let them get you killed. What would that prove? Who benefits from the death of Lochinvar? Who wins when Lancelot is slain?”

  “I’m just a guy, Trig.”

  “You can’t give yourself up to it. Somebody’s got to come out on the other side and say how it was.”

  “I’m just … I’m just a guy.”

  People were always insisting to Donny that he was somehow more than he really was, that he represented something. He’d never gotten it. It was just because he happened to be good-looking, but underneath he was just as scared, just as ineffective, just as simple as anyone else, no matter what Trig said.

  “I don’t know,” said Donny. “Is he guilty? That would matter.”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is: you or him? That’s the world you have to deal with. You or him? I vote him. Any day of the week, I vote him.”

  “But is he guilty?”

  “I’m no longer in the inner circle. I’m sort of a roaming ambassador. So I really don’t know.”

  “Oh, you’d know. You’d know. Is he guilty?”

  Trig paused.

  Finally he said, “Well, I wish I could lie to you. But, goddammit, no, no, he’s not guilty. There is some weird kind of intelligence they have at the top; I just get glimmerings of it. But I don’t think it’s Crowe. But I’m telling you the truth: that doesn’t matter. You should dump him and get on with your life. If he’s not guilty of that, he’s guilty of lots of other stuff.”

  Donny looked at Trig for a bit. Trig was leaning against the fender of the van. He lifted a milk carton and poured it over his head, and water gushed out, scraping rivulets in the dust that adhered to his handsome face. Trig shook his wet hair, and the droplets flew away. Then he turned back.

  “Donny, for Christ’s sake. Save your own life!”

  Peter was no good at waiting. He got out of the car and walked along the shoulder of the road. It was completely dark and silent, unfamiliar sensations to a young man who’d spent so much time OCS—on city streets. Now and then he heard the chirp of a cricket; up above, the stars towered and pinwheeled, but he was not into stars or insects, so he noticed neither of these realities. Instead, he reached the gate, paused a moment, and climbed over. He saw before him a faint rise in the land, almost a small hill, and the dirt road that climbed it. He knew if a car came over the hill and he were standing on that road, he’d be dead-cold caught in the lights. So he walked a distance from the road, then turned to head up the hill, figuring he could then drop to the ground if Donny and Julie returned.

  Gently, he walked up the hill, feeling as alone as that guy who had walked on the surface of the moon. He reached the top of the hill and saw the farmhouse below him. No sight of Julie but he saw Trig and Donny slouched on the fender of a van in the yard between the house and the barn, and they were chatting animatedly, relaxed and intimate. There was no sign of danger, no sign of weirdness: just two new friends bullshiting in the night.

  But then small things began to seem off. What was Trig doing way out here? What was this place? What was going on? It connected with nothing in Peter’s memory of Trig.

  Puzzled, he stepped forward and almost tripped as he bumbled into something.

  Two figures rose before him.

  Oh, shit, he thought, for they wore suits and one of them carried a camera with a long lens.

  Clearly they were feds, spying on Trig.

  They had the pug look of FBI agents, with blunt faces and crew cuts; one wore a hat. They did not look happy to be discovered.

  “W-who are you?” Peter asked in a quavering voice. “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t think I can sell him out,” said Donny.

  “Donny, this isn’t a Western. There are no good guys. Do you hear me? This is real life, hardball style. If it’s you or Crowe, do not give yourself up for Crowe.”

  “I suppose that’s the smart move,” said Donny.

  “So, there,” said Trig. “I made your decision easy for you. All you have to do is cooperate with them. Come on, when the war is over, they’ll reduce his sentence. He may never even serve a day. They’ll work some deal, he’ll get out and go on with the rest of his life. He won’t even be upset.”

  Donny remembered that once upon a time, even Crowe had given him the same advice. Roll over on me in a second, Donny, if it ever comes to that. Somehow Crowe had known it would.

  “Okay,” he finally said.

  “Do your duty, Donny. But think about what it costs you. Okay. Think about how you feel now. Then when you get out, do me one favor, okay? No matter what happens to me, promise me one thing.”

  Trig winced as if in pain in the hot light of the headlights, though perhaps something had just gotten in his eye. There was an immense familiarity to that look, the strain on his face, the set of it, the clearness of vision. And … And what?

  “Sure,” Donny said.

  “Open your mind. Open your mind to the possibility that the power to define duty is the power of life and death. And if people impose duty on you, maybe they’re not doing it for your best interests or the country’s best interests but for their own best interests. Okay, Donny? Force yourself to think about a world in which each man got to set his own duty and no one could tell anyone what to do, what was right, what was wrong; the only rules were the Ten Commandments.”

  “I—” stammered Donny.

  “Here,” said Trig. “I have something for you. I was going to mail it to you from Baltimore, but this’ll save me the postage and the fuss. It’s no big deal.”

  He
went over to some kind of knapsack on the ground, fished around, and came out with a folder, which he opened to reveal a piece of heavy paper.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “when the spirit moves me, I’m even pretty good. I’m much better at birds, but I did okay on this one. It’s nothing.”

  Donny looked: it was a drawing on a creamy page trimmed from that sketchbook Trig was always carrying, incredibly delicate and in a spiderweb of ink, that depicted himself and Julie as they stood and talked in the trees at West Potomac Park.

  There was something special about it: he got them both, maybe not exactly as a photograph, but somehow their love too, the way they looked at each other, the faith they had in each other.

  “Wow,” said Donny.

  “Wow, yourself. I dashed it off that night in my book. It was neat, the two of you. Gives me hope for the world. Now, go on, get the hell out of here, go back to your duty.”

  Trig drew him close, and Donny felt the warmth, the musculature, and maybe something else, too: passion, somehow, oddly misplaced but genuine and impressive. Trig was actually crying.

  Over the shoulders of the two FBI agents, Peter saw Donny and Trig embrace, and then Donny stepped out of the light and was gone. He’d head to his car, which Peter now saw was but fifty or so yards away. He was screwed. Donny would see him here with the two feds, who showed no sign at all of moving, and he would have made an ass out of himself.

  He felt despair rising in his gorge.

  “I have to go,” he said to the larger of the two plainclothes officers.

  “No,” the man said back, and the other moved to embrace Peter, as if to wrestle him to the ground. Peter squirmed out of the man’s grip, but he was grabbed and thrust to the ground.

  The two men loomed over him.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said.

  They seemed to agree. They looked at each other foolishly, not quite sure what to do, but suddenly one of them pointed.

  Then the engine of Donny’s car came to life and its lights flashed on.

  The man with the camera pulled away from Peter, leaving the other, the bigger, to lean on him, and ran toward the gate.

  “Well, did he help?” said Julie as they walked through the dark.

  “Yeah,” said Donny. “Yes, he did. He really did. I’ve got it figured out now.”

  “Should I go meet him?”

  “No, he’s in a very strange mood. I’m not sure what’s going on. Let’s just get out of here. I’ve got some things to do.”

  “What did he give you?”

  “It’s a picture. It’s very nice. I’ll show you later.”

  They walked through the dark, up the hill. Donny could see the car ahead. He had an odd tremor suddenly, a sense of not being alone. It was a freakish thing, sometimes useful in Indian country: that sensation of being watched. He scanned the darkness for sign of threat but saw nothing, only farmland under moon, no movement or anything.

  “Who was that blond guy?” she asked.

  “His pal Fitzpatrick. Big Irish guy. They were loading up to spread fertilizer.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “He said they decided to do the hard part of the job in the cool of the night. Hell, it was only fertilizer. Who knows?”

  “What was going on with Trig?”

  “I don’t know. He was, uh, strange is all I can call it. He had the same look on his face that the Time photographer got, when he was carrying that bleeding kid in from the cops in Chicago and his own head was bleeding too. He was very set, very determined, but somehow, underneath it all, very emotional. He seemed like he was facing death or something. I don’t know why or what. It spooked me a little.”

  “Poor Trig. Maybe even the rich boys have demons.”

  “He wanted to hug. He was crying. Maybe there was something weirdo in it or something. I felt his fingers in my muscles and I felt how happy he was to be hugging me. I don’t know. Very weird stuff. I don’t know.”

  They reached the car, and Donny started it, turning on the lights. He backed into the grass, turned around and headed down the road to the gate.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Duck!” For at that moment a figure suddenly rose from a gulch. A man in a suit, but too far away to do anything. A camera came up. Donny winced at the bright beam of flash as it exploded his night vision. Fireballs danced in his head, reminding him of nighttime incoming Hotel Echo, but he stepped on the gas, gunned up the road and turned right, then really floored it.

  “Jesus, they got our picture,” he said. “A fed. That guy had to be FBI! Holy Christ!”

  “My face was turned,” said Julie.

  “Then you’re okay. I don’t think he got a license number, because my rear plate illumination bulb is broken. He just got my picture. A lot of good that’ll do them. A fed! Man, this whole thing is strange.”

  “I wonder what’s going on?” she said.

  “What’s going on is that Trig’s about to get busted. Trig and that Fitzpatrick guy. We were lucky we weren’t rounded up. I’d be on my way to the brig.”

  “Poor Trig,” said Julie.

  “Yes,” said Donny. “Poor Trig.”

  The man let him up. He brushed himself off.

  “I haven’t done anything,” Peter explained. “I’ve come to see my friends. You have no right to detain me, do you understand? I haven’t done anything.”

  The man stared at him sullenly.

  “I’m going now. This is none of your business,” he said.

  He turned and walked away. The agent had seemed genuinely cowed. He stepped away, awaiting a call, but none came. Another step filled him with confidence, but he didn’t see or hardly feel the judo chop that broke his spine and, in the fullness of his tender youth and in the ardor of his love for his generation and its pure idea of peace, killed him before he hit the ground.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Donny reached DC around four in the morning, and he and Julie checked into a motel on New York Avenue, in the tourist strip approaching downtown. They were too tired for sex or love or talk.

  He set the cheap alarm for 0800, and slept deeply until its ungentle signal pulled him awake.

  “Donny?” she said, stirring herself.

  “Sweetie, I’ve got some things to do now. You just stay here, get some more sleep. I paid for two nights. I’ll call you sometime today and we’ll decide what to do next.”

  “Oh, Donny.” She blinked awake. Even out of sleep, with a slightly puffy face and her hair a rat’s nest, she seemed to him quite uniquely beautiful. He leaned over and kissed her.

  “Don’t do anything stupid and noble,” she said. “They’ll kill you.”

  “Don’t you worry about me,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”

  He dressed and drove the mile or so through the section of city called SE, passing Union Station, then left up the hill until he was in the shadow of the great Capitol dome, turning down Pennsylvania, then down Eighth. He arrived, found parking on a street just off the shops across from the barracks, locked the car and headed to the main gate.

  From across Eighth Street, the little outpost of Marine elegance seemed serene. The officers’ houses along the street were stately and magnificent; between them, Donny could see men on the parade deck in their modified blues, at parade practice, endlessly trying to master the arcane requirements of duty and ritual. The imprecations of the NCOs rose in the air, harsh, precise, demanding. The grass on which the young men toiled was deep green, intense and pure, like no other green in Washington in that hot, bleak spring.

  Finally, he walked across the street to the main gate, where a PFC watched him come.

  “Corporal Fenn, you’ve been reported UA,” the PFC said.

  “I know. I’ll take care of it.”

  “I’ve been ordered to notify your company commander of your arrival.”

  “Do your duty, then, Private. Do you call Shore Patrol?”

  “They didn’t say anything about that. But I have to call Captai
n Dogwood.”

  “Go ahead, then. I’m changing into my duty uniform.”

  “Yes, Corporal.”

  Donny walked through the main gate, across the cobblestone parking lot and turned left down Troop Walk to the barracks.

  As he went, he was aware of a strange phenomenon: the world seemed to stop, or at least the Marine Corps world. It seemed that whole marching platoons halted to follow his progress. He felt hundreds of eyes on him, and the air suddenly emptied of its usual fill of barked commands.

  Donny went in, climbed the ladder well as he had done so many hundreds of times, turned left on the second deck landing and into the squad bay, at the end of which was his little room.

  He unlocked his locker, stripped, slipped into flipflops and a towel and marched to the showers, where he scalded himself in water and disinfectant soap. He washed, dried, and headed back to his room, where he slipped on a new pair of boxers and pulled out his oxfords.

  They could be better. For the next ten minutes he applied the full weight of his attention to the shoes, in regulation old Marine Corps fashion, until he had burnished the leather to a high gleam. As he finished the shoes, the tough professional figure of Platoon Sergeant Case came to hover in the door.

  “I had to put you on UA, Fenn,” he said, in that old Corps voice that sounded like sandpaper on brass. “Do you want me to Article Fifteen your young ass?”

  “I was late. I had personal business. I apologize.”

  “You’re not on the duty roster. They say you’ve got some legal obligations at ten hundred.”

  “Yes, Sergeant. In the Navy Yard.”

  “Well, I’ll get you off report. You do the right thing today, Marine. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  Case left him alone after that.

  Though he hadn’t been so ordered, and in fact didn’t even know the uniform of the day, he decided to put on his blue dress A uniform. He pulled on socks and taped them to his shins so that they’d never fall, selected a pair of blue dress trousers from the hanger and pulled them on. He tied his shiny oxfords. He pulled on a T-shirt, and over it, finally, the blue dress tunic with its bright brass buttons and red piping. He pulled tight the immaculately tailored tunic, and buttoned up to that little cleric’s collar, where the eagle, globe and anchor stood out in brass bas-relief. He pulled on a white summer belt, drawing it tight, giving him the torso of a young Achilles on a stroll outside Troy. His white summer gloves and white summer cover completed the transformation into total Marine.