Hot Springs (Earl Swagger)

by Stephen Hunter

  • • •

  Herman waited and waited. Nothing seemed to be happening. He decided to move on the oblique and come on the cowboy’s position from another angle.

  Ever so slowly he moved out, angling wide, edging ever so gently through the high grass, keeping his eyes on the area where the man had to be. Once in a while he’d shoot a glance up the ridge that ran up the hill for signs of Red and Ding-Dong. But he saw nothing.

  The sun was high now. A bit of wind sang in his ears, and the grass around him weaved as it pressed through, rubbing against itself with a soft hiss.

  The grass seemed to be thinning somewhat as he drew near to the beginning of the incline. He slowed, dropped to his knees, and looked intently ahead. He could see nothing.

  Where was the bastard?

  He wiggled a little farther out, staying low, ready to squeeze off a burst at any moment. The silence that greeted his ears was profound.

  He planted the gun’s butt under his right arm, locking it in the pit, and stepped boldly out, its muzzle covering the beaten zone where haze still drifted. He expected to see a body or a blood trail or something. But he saw nothing. He saw a log ahead on the left and in the deeper grass some kind of bush and he directed his vision back, looking for—

  Something to the left flashed. In the instant that his peripheral vision caught the motion, Herman cranked hard to bring his muzzle to bear on the apparition; it was a living bush and as it rose, fluffs of grass fell off it, the bush itself fell away and then Herman saw it was a man.

  • • •

  Earl fired five tracers into the big man in one second. They flew on a line and he absorbed them almost stoically in the center body, then sank to the earth, toppling forward, then trying to prevent his fall with the muzzle of the Browning Automatic Rifle, which he jammed into the ground. So sustained he paused, as if on the edge of a topple, his face gray and his eyes bulging, the blood running everywhere.

  Earl didn’t have time for this shit. He put seven more into him, knocking him down. The tracers set his clothes aflame.

  Earl turned as fire broke out behind him. Two men with tommy guns lay at the crest of the ridge, and fired at him. But of course they had forgotten to adjust their Lyman peep sights for the proper distance, so while they aimed at him, the extreme trajectory of the .45s over two hundred downhill yards pulled their rounds into the ground fifty feet ahead of him.

  Earl slid back to the earth, making a range estimation as he went. Bracing the gun tight against himself, he hosed a short burst high in the air, watched as it arched out, trailing incandescence visible even in the bright air. At apogee the consecutive quality of the burst broke up and each bullet spiraled on a slightly different vector toward the earth. Earl watched them, and saw that they hit just fine for windage but too far back. He needed more elevation. He corrected in a second, fired two shots and watched them rise and fall like mortar shells. They fell where he wanted. He pressed the trigger and finished the magazine, dumped it, quickly slammed another one home, found the same position in his muscle memory and this time squeezed off the entire thirty rounds in about four seconds. The gun shuddered, spewing empties like a brass liquid pouring from its breech, and the tracers curved through the air, riding a bright rainbow. Where they struck, they started fires.

  • • •

  It was Red who saw what was happening first. He felt okay, ducking back behind cover as a rainbow of bright slugs lofted high above him and descended, but without precision. It was absurdly raining light. Still, there was no real chance that any of the rounds could hit a target, as they dispersed widely as they plummeted.

  Then he felt a wall of heat crushing over him, and the heat’s presence seemed to distend or twist the air itself. To the right a wall of flame seemed to explode from nowhere. He’d never understood how fast a brushfire can burn, particularly on a hillside where the wind blows continually and there is no shelter.

  The fire was a crackling enemy, advancing behind them in a human wave attack, throwing out fiery patrols of pure flame and crackling, popping menace. It sucked the air from them and its smoke closed on them quickly. They turned to run, but the fire was all around them and suddenly a lick of it lashed out and set Ding-Dong’s sleeve afire.

  He screamed, dropped his weapon and went to his knees to beat it out. But more flame was on him and soon he was lit up like a Roman candle, and if the power of the fire would drive him to run, the pain of it took his energy from him, and he fell back, his flesh burning.

  Red didn’t want that happening to him. He had just a second to decide, and then he scrambled up the ridge and leaped over it, escaping the hungry flames, but before he could congratulate himself, a fleet of tracers rose from nowhere and crucified him to the ground.

  • • •

  Earl spun, changed magazines again, and looked backward for another target. He could see nothing. If there was another man moving in on him from behind he was moving stealthily. Earl didn’t have much cover here and in fact there was very little cover anywhere. He emptied another magazine, then another, hosing down the area where another man would be if he existed. That was sixty rounds in about ten seconds, and the tracers sprayed across the area before him like lightning bolts seeking the highest available target. They churned through the grass, setting small fires when they encountered dryness, but generally just ripping up earth and drawing a screen of dirt into the air.

  He changed magazines a third time, moved out a little for a slightly different angle and squirted another batch out in another bright fan of searching bullets.

  • • •

  Johnny was too far to shoot when the thing started happening. Then it happened so fast and so unpredictably he was uncertain what to do. He watched the tracers arc out and descend behind the ridge. Smoke rose so fast in the aftermath it was astonishing. The ridgeline caught fire.

  But by that time he had gone totally prone and begun to crawl, crawl desperately forward in the highest grass there was, hoping he could get so close he could count on his superior reflexes to carry the battle. He squirmed like a man aflame, whereas it was others who were aflame. Then the cowboy started shooting wildly. He listened as the man pumped out magazine after magazine, but behind him, where he’d been, not where he was now and where he was headed.

  He crawled and crawled until the firing stopped.

  By his reckoning he was now just twenty yards or so away, and the cowboy had no idea where he was.

  He peered through the grass, rising incrementally higher for visibility and suddenly beheld a wondrous sight.

  The cowboy had a jam. His empty magazine was caught in the gun and he tugged it desperately to get it free, his hand up toward the receiver. Then suddenly whatever it was gave, he pulled the magazine out, and dropped it, his hand reaching into his suit pocket for another.

  “Hold it!” said Johnny, covering him with the muzzle.

  The cowboy whirled but what could he do? He had an empty gun in one hand and a fresh magazine in the other. He was a good two seconds from completing the reload.

  “Well, well,” said Johnny, walking forward, his muzzle expertly sighted on the big man’s heaving chest, “look who we’ve caught with his pants down. Jam on you, did it? Them damn things is tricky. You’ve got to baby them or you’ll regret it, lad. Come now, let’s have a look at you.”

  The man regarded him sullenly. Johnny knew he’d be thinking desperately of something to do. Caught like this, with no ammo! Him with the big fancy gun, him who’d shot all them other fellers, and now him with nothing.

  “Cut me a break, will you, pal?” said the cowboy.

  “And live the rest of me life looking over the shoulder? I should think not.”

  “I just want Maddox. I don’t give a fuck about you. Just walk away and forget all this. You can live.”

  “Oh, now he’s dictating terms, is he?” Johnny laughed. He was now about fifteen feet away, close enough.

  “I didn’t have to kill your boys. The
y were here, that’s all.”

  “I should thank you for that, pally. Now the take’s so much bigger. You’ve made me an even wealthier man. I’ll drink many a champagne toast to you, friend, for your fine work. You are a game lad. You’re about the gamest I’ve ever seen.”

  Earl just stared at him.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Maybe you can get the magazine into the gun and get the gun into play and bring old Johnny down. Why do I think not? No, old sod, you’ve been bested. Admit it now, you’ve been handled. Ain’t many could handle the likes of you, but by God I’m the one man in a million who could do it.”

  “You talk a lot,” said the man.

  “That I do. The Irish curse. We are a loquacious race. Maybe I should walk you across the field and let Mr. Owney Maddox himself put the last one into you. He’d probably pay double for that pleasure.”

  “You won’t do that. You won’t take the chance.”

  “Well, boyo, that’s the sad truth. But I won’t be long. I’ll just—”

  His eyes lit.

  “Say,” he said. “I’m a sporting fellow. You’re holding an empty gun.”

  “Let me load it.”

  “No thank you. But here’s what I’ll do.” He reached under his coat and removed a .45. It was one of the Griffin & Howe rebuild jobs with which D.A. had armed his raid team.

  He threw it into the dirt in front of Earl.

  “That one’s nice and loaded,” he said with a smile.

  “But it’s five feet away.”

  “It is indeed. Now I’ll count to three. On three you can make a dive at the gun. I’ll finish you well before, but I might as well give you a one-in-one-thousand chance. Maybe my tommy will jam.”

  “You’re a bastard.”

  “Me mother said the same. Are you ready, fellow?”

  He let his gun muzzle drift down until it pointed to the ground. He watched as Earl looked at the gun on the ground five feet in front of him.

  “See, here’s the thing,” said the cowboy. “Fights sometimes ain’t what you want ’em to be.”

  “One,” said Johnny.

  He meant to shoot on two, of course.

  The cowboy’s tommy gun came up in a flash and there was a report and for just a millisecond it seemed a tendril of sheer illumination had lashed out to snare him.

  The next thing Johnny knew, he was wet.

  Why was he wet?

  Had he spilled something?

  Then he noticed he was lying on his back. He heard something creaking, like a broken accordion, an air-filled sound, high and desperate, a banshee screaming out in the bogs, signifying a death. He blinked and recognized it as a sucking chest wound. His own.

  He could only see sky.

  The cowboy stood over him.

  “I slipped one cartridge into the chamber before I shucked the magazine,” he said.

  “I—I—” Johnny began, seeing that it was possible. The gun looked empty. It wasn’t.

  “Think of the railyard, chum,” said Earl, as he locked in the new magazine, drew back the bolt and then fired thirty ball tracers into him.

  65

  “Twelve,” said the doctor.

  “Yes sir,” said the nurse.

  “Mrs. Swagger, you are dilated twelve centimeters. You have another four or five to go. There’s no need to endure this pain. Please let us give you the anesthesia.”

  “No,” she said. “I want my husband.”

  “Ma’am, we’ve tried but we can’t raise him. Ma’am, I’m afraid we’ve got a problem. You would be so much better off with the anesthesia.”

  “No, you’ll take my baby.”

  She felt so alone. She could only see the ceiling. Occasionally the doctor loomed into view, occasionally the nurse.

  The two put her gown down.

  “We do have a problem with the baby,” said the doctor. “It may be necessary to make a decision.”

  “Save the baby. Save my baby! Don’t hurt my baby!”

  “Mrs. Swagger, you can have other babies. This one is upside down in your uterus. I can’t get it out, not without cutting you horribly and, frankly, I’m not equipped to do that and I don’t know if I could stop the hemorrhaging once it got started, not here, not with two nurses and no other doctors.”

  “Can’t you get another doctor?” someone asked, and Junie recognized the voice of her friend, Mary Blanton.

  “Mrs. Blanton, please get back into the waiting room! You are not permitted back here.”

  “Sir, somebody has to stay with Junie. I cannot let her go through this alone. Honey, I’m here.”

  Good old Mary! Now there was a woman! Mary couldn’t be pushed around, no sir! Mary would fight like hell!

  “Thank you, Mary,” Junie said, as another contraction pressed a bolt of pain up through her insides.

  “Ma’am, there are no other doctors. In Fort Smith, yes, in Hot Springs, yes, at Camp Chaffee, yes, but you chose a small public hospital in Scott County to have your baby during a late-night shift and I am doing what I can do. Now please, you have to leave.”

  “Please let her stay,” begged Junie.

  “When we go back to delivery, she can’t come. You may stay here, ma’am, but do not touch anything, and stay out of the way.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The doctor seemed to leave, but instead he pulled Mary out into the hall.

  “Look,” he said, “we have a very complicated situation here. That woman may die. By my calculus, the baby’s life is not worth the woman’s life. The woman can have other babies. She can adopt a child. If it comes to it, I may have to terminate the baby’s life, get it out of her in pieces. That may be the only way to save her life.”

  “Oh, God,” said Mary. “She wants that baby so bad.”

  “Where is her husband?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  “Bastard. These white trash Southern hillbillies are—”

  “Sir, Earl Swagger is not trashy. He’s a brave man, a law enforcement officer, and if he’s not here, it’s because he’s risking his life to protect you. Let me tell you, sir, if someone broke into your house at night, the one man you’d want to protect you and yours is Earl Swagger. That is why we have to protect his.”

  “Well, that’s very fine. But we are coming up to decision time and I am not authorized to make this decision on my own and I could get in a lot of trouble. If I don’t terminate the baby, that woman will die a needless, pointless and tragic death. She needs your help to decide. You help her decide. That’s the best you can do for your friend.”

  66

  The screen of smoke blew across the valley, white and shifting.

  Owney had a hope that Johnny Spanish and one or two of his boys would come out of it, laughing, full of merry horseplay, happy to have survived and triumphed. But he was not at all surprised or even disappointed when the other man emerged.

  Out of the smoke he came. He was a tall man, in a suit, with his hat low over his eyes. He carried a tommy gun and looked dead-set on something.

  Owney saw no point in running. He was a realist. There was no place to run to and if he got into the forest he would be easy to track and he’d be taken down and gutted.

  It occurred to him to get into the station wagon and try and run the man down. But this cool customer would simply watch him come and fill him with lead from the tommy gun.

  So Owney just sat there on the fender of the old Ford station wagon. He smoked a Cuban cigar and enjoyed the day, which had turned nice, clear, with a cool wind fluttering across the valley. The sun was warm, even hot, and there were no clouds. In the background, the hillside burned, but it seemed to have run out of energy as the flames spread and died, leaving only cinders to smolder.

  The man seemed to come out of war. That’s what it looked like; behind him, the smoke curled and drifted, and its stench filled the air; the hillside was blackened. There were bodies back there. Five of them. He’d gotten Johnny Spanish and his crew. Nobody eve
r got Johnny, not the feds, the State Police, all the city detectives, the sheriffs, the deputies, the marshals. But this one got them all in a close-up gunfight. He was something.

  The cowboy was finally within earshot.

  With a certain melancholy and an idea for his last gambit, Owney rose.

  “Lawman!” he screamed. “I surrender! I’m unarmed! I’ll go back with you! You win!”

  He stood away from the car and took off his jacket and held his hands stiff and high. Slowly he pirouetted to show that he had no guns tucked in his belt. He rolled up his sleeves to show that his wrists were bare to the elbow.

  He had the bicycle gun stuck in its sleeve garter against his left biceps, on the inside, just above the elbow. He’d ripped a large hole in the inside seam of the shirt, invisible from afar, so that he could get at it quickly.

  Let him get close, he thought. Let him get close. Offer him respect. Show him fear. Relax him. Put him at his ease. When he lowers the tommy gun, go for the bike pistol and shoot him five times fast, in the body.

  He smiled as the man drew near.

  The cowboy was lean and drawn. His face had a gaunt look, exhaustion under the furious concentration. His suit was dusty, his eyes aglare, the hat low over them. He looked Owney up and down, taking his measure.

  “I’m unarmed,” said Owney. “You won! You got me!”

  It just might work.

  • • •

  Earl was not surprised that Owney Maddox awaited him with his hands high, his arms bare. What else could Owney do? He was out of options, other than killing himself, and Owney wasn’t that kind of boy. He was no Japanese marine, who’d cut his own guts out and die with a grenade under his belly so that when you turned the corpse over two days later, the grenade would enable you to join him in heaven. No, that was not Owney’s style.

  He stopped ten feet shy of Owney.

  “You win, partner,” said Owney, with a smile. “You are a champ. I’ll say that. You are a pro. You handled the best there is, my friend. I’m outclassed.”

  Earl said nothing.

  He raised his tommy gun, and holding it deftly with one hand let it cover Owney.

  “You’re not going to shoot me,” Owney said. “My hands are up. I’ve surrendered. You don’t have it in you for that kind of stuff. That’s the difference between us. You can’t make yourself squeeze on an unarmed man with his hands in the air. I know you. You’re a soldier, not a gangster. You won a war, but you wouldn’t last a week on an island with alleys and nightclubs.”