At the conclusion, Shreck handed over a map, a geodesic survey of the high Ouachitas, with the start point laid out, and a 40mm brass flare pistol.
“We don’t want the Nailer nailing us. We have to see him moving so we know he isn’t setting up somewhere above us to take us down from eight hundred yards.”
“Maybe you’ll have a guy to nail him,” Nick said.
“No way. We can’t nail him because he may not have the cassette and Annex B with him. He’s got insurance, I’ve got insurance. Mutual deterrence. It kept the world alive for fifty years. I’ll set it up so the final exchange is in the wide-open spaces, way beyond any rifle range.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And when the exchange is made, we walk away. It’s over. We’re out of business, but so is he. He has his woman and his freedom. The Feds think he’s dead. He can have his whole life back if he lets it lie. He’s had a hell of a war, but the war is over now. It’s time for him to go someplace in Montana, where beaucoup deer and antelope roam, and just shoot and fuck all day long.”
Toward late afternoon of that same day, a banal van left a motel and drove to a civilian hangar at a small airport twenty miles south of Little Rock. It contained three men: one of them was Eddie Nickles and another was a dour figure with the head and shoulders of a Greek god and a broken body, who sat alone with his rifle in a wheelchair in the back. He spoke to no one. It made Eddie Nickles nervous.
If Bob scared him, this guy scared him too, especially in that he wasn’t even whole. He had the aura of death to him, that was for sure; he was like a butcher or an embalmer.
“Guy fuckin’ scares the shit out of me,” Nickles said to his companion, one of the morose survivors of Panther Battalion’s assault on Bone Hill, another lad who’d lost his sand.
At the hangar, they pulled up next to a DC-3, glistening silver. ARKANSAS CENTRAL AIRLINES it said in green art deco print under the windows. A double cargo door had been opened two thirds down the fuselage toward the tail.
Nickles got out, went over and conferred briefly with the pilot. Then he leaned into the open cargo bay and saw the ATV, a three-wheeled Honda with soft fat studded tires for gobbling up the rough land and steep inclines of the wilderness; it had been staked to a board with heavy yellow rope; a bulky pack that he knew was a cargo parachute was lashed to it.
“Everything okay, chief?” he called to the cargo master still checking the rigging.
“Thumbs up, Bud,” said the man.
Nickles went back to the van.
“Sir, I’m going to load you now,” he said.
“Don’t touch me. Get the ramp down and stand aside.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nickles pulled the ramp out of the van. He stepped back and watched as the man leaned over and took the blocks out from under his wheelchair tires. Then he forcefully rocketed himself to the edge, shot down the ramp and headed to the plane.
The man wore a black baseball cap and had smeared his face with black and green paint. He wore black boots and a black and green camouflage tunic. The rifle, encased in a plastic sheath against the damp weather, lay in his lap; he had a Browning Hi-Power pistol in a black shoulder holster.
“Okay,” Nickles yelled up to the cargo master. “We need the winch now.”
The crewman swung out the device and with an electric purr, the wire descended from its pulley, bearing a hook.
“I have this harness for you, sir,” said Nickles.
The man looked at him and Nickles recognized with a stab the fury and humiliation in him; to be that helpless among all these robust men! But, uncomplainingly, the man slipped it on and cinched it tight. His jaw trim, his eyes set, he adjusted himself to the indignity of being loaded aboard the plane like a haunch of beef.
Lon was free. He fell in darkness feeling the wind pounding at him. For just a second he was a boy again, stalking the hills of Connecticut twenty miles west of New Haven with his father. The sun was a bronze smear; the earth leaped toward him.
Then with a thud, his chute opened, rustling in the wind like a sail. He remembered sailing when he was a boy on the Sound. His father had taught him to sail. Those had been wonderful times.
Hard Bargain Valley hit him with a bang. He lay in the grass. He struggled with the harness, and the chute fell away. He sat upright. He could see the ATV a few hundred feet away, its chute plump in the breeze that coursed along the valley floor. But no sign of Nickles.
He looked at his watch. It was almost five. And suppose Nickles had killed himself in the jump; his parachute hadn’t opened, he’d hit the ground at eight hundred feet per second?
Lon laughed. After all the planning he’d gone through in his life, wouldn’t that be a final joke?
He looked around, alone on the floor of the valley. To the east he saw the ridge, sweeping and grass covered; to the west a line of trees as the elevation fell away toward the forest below. He saw other mountains, too. It was completely quiet except for the popping and snapping of the chute on the ATV.
“Sir?”
He turned; Nickles was approaching him from the south, with the rifle in a sling over his arm.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“My chute opened early and I carried about a half mile away.”
Lon realized the boy had panicked, not trusting the altimeter device rigged to blow the chute out at six hundred feet, and had pulled the emergency ripcord. But it didn’t matter now.
“Okay. Get the ATV rigged, collect the chutes and let’s get the hell up the ridge.”
“Yes, sir.”
Payne woke Julie Fenn early in the back of the van, around four, yet when they drove through the dark town, the streets were crawling with men.
On the first day of deer season, the animals would be stupidest and least wary, and the hunters were moving into the woods to be in position by sunup for that first shot.
“You just keep your mouth shut,” Payne told her. “You got another day. Then it’s all over for you and you get to go home.”
But he was lying. She’d seen the other man’s face. She knew that doomed her. There was something secretly savage in his eyes; he could look at her and talk to her and plan to kill her all at once.
But she had difficulty concentrating these days. She wasn’t sure what the drug was: she guessed it to be something in the Amobarbital-B range, a powerful barbiturate that had the additional effect of eroding the will. They’d been gradually increasing the dosages, too, until on some days she couldn’t remember who she was or why this was happening. Always so tired, all she longed for was to go back to sleep and wake up back in Arizona. Very occasionally, she wished she had something to fight them with. But they had taken her only weapons.
They sat her in the seat behind them and drove the van up high mountain ridges, down dusty roads, passing hordes of other four-wheel-drive vehicles, watching as men clambered out in the glare of the headlamps, snorting plumes of hot breath in the night air, their rifles glinting and jingling as they headed out for their stands.
And after a while, the hunters thinned, and then ceased altogether. They drove on endlessly. She looked up dreamily, her head resting on the cool pane of the window: the stars above were bright like pinwheels of fire, the air brisk and magical. She could lose herself in them totally; she felt herself drifting through them and only the sudden sharp bounce of the tire on a rut in the road jerked her back to the present.
With effort, she fought her way toward a consideration of her circumstances. She wanted to kill them; she wanted to see them die, smashed into the earth. But it hurt to hold that thought in the front of her mind for very long; she felt the idea break loose from her brain and begin to drift away until it could no longer be grasped or recognized.
But just as it seemed to disappear forever, she had one last instant of clarity: I hope you’re there, Bob, she thought. I hope you make them pay.
“We’re here,” said Payne. “This is as close as we can get by vehicle to t
he first checkpoint. It’s about two miles and we’ve got a few hours yet. No sweat.”
“No sweat,” said Shreck. “Now let’s suit up.”
The two men got out of the van and Payne slid the cargo door open. Inside the woman sat passively while Payne bent to the floor, where two Kevlar Second-Chance ballistic vests lay. He retrieved one and handed it to the colonel.
“Thanks,” said Shreck.
They slipped their coats off and pulled the heavy vests on, securing the snaps.
“Heavy as shit,” said Payne.
“But it’ll stop goddamn near anything, including a .308 rifle bullet,” said Shreck. He fastened the last snap and said, “Get the woman.”
Payne stepped back inside. Julie sat there limply, a vacant look on that beautiful face.
“Come on, sweetie. Time to play with the big boys.”
Pulling her by the arm, he was again amazed at how light she seemed. And compliant now, after the spirit she’d shown in Arizona. She seemed to be in another gravity or something; you could launch her in a direction, and she’d sail on out in that direction until she was stopped or bumped into something. God, if Bob the Nailer knew what Shreck had done to her. But Bob wouldn’t be knowing anything after a few hours.
“Okay,” he said. “All set.”
“Fine,” said Shreck. Shreck had his rifle out; it was a bland little Marlin lever gun with a scope. He had on his baseball cap and an expensive camouflage outfit and he looked for all the world like a prosperous hunter, in case they should run into forest rangers or park service personnel, though that was highly unlikely. They didn’t like to come into the forest on the first day of deer season unless they had to.
Shreck led. Though the vests were heavy and the ground was rough and they were climbing, it wasn’t hard and they pushed the woman along when she dragged behind. Eventually, the sky turned orange and the sun rose. It looked to be a clear day, with one of those high, piercing skies, sweet blue, the wind brisk and moist and pure.
First day of deer season, thought Payne. A good day for killing.
A shot rang out far away, a crisp rolling echo. Somebody had drawn blood. It was a good omen.
“All right,” said Bob. “Last chance for questions? Any questions? We did it all a hundred times yesterday. You forget it all yet?”
Dobbler and Memphis looked at him. Nick was grave, stiff, but determined; Bob saw that Marine look, that Donny Fenn look, that said, Hey, I don’t want to be here, but I don’t see anyone else. He’d be all right.
Dobbler was something else. He was on the edge of panic. Bob could see him lick his lips, stroke his chin, his eyes shifting nervously. This was all new to him. He was cherry. Would he hang tough or bug out? Bob didn’t know and he didn’t like the gamble. But he had to play with the cards he had.
“Dr. Dobbler?”
“No.”
“Memphis?”
“This is so chancy. I still—”
“That it is. You have a better idea?”
“You should be on the rifle. Not—”
“Don’t you worry, Nick.”
“Bob, you know what I did the last time.”
“I know what you’ll do this time.”
“The whole thing turns on my—”
“You’re the man who found Annex B. You’re a goddamned FBI agent, one of the best. You can do it.”
“You’re the war hero, not me.”
“No such thing as a hero. You forget heroes, Nick. This is about doing the job and coming home. You do your job and you come home, I swear it.”
“But you—”
“Don’t you worry about me. None of your business about me. I got what I signed up for. Okay?”
“Okay,” Nick said sullenly.
The doctor tried to say something, but the words caught in his throat.
“Hey, Doc,” said Bob, “in three tours in Vietnam, I’ve been in some scrapes. It’s okay to be scared shitless.”
Dobbler cracked a wretched smile.
“If Russell Isandhlwana could see me now!” he finally said.
“I don’t know who he is, but he’d crap in his pants, that I guarantee you,” said Bob.
He winked, actually happy, and they set off.
“Okay,” said Shreck. “1000 hours. Set, Payne?”
“Let’s do it, sir.”
“It’s going to be a long day. Fire the first flare.”
Payne lifted the flare pistol, pulled the trigger, felt the crispest pop, and watched as a red arc of intense light soared overhead, caught on its own parachute, then began to drift flutteringly to earth. In twenty seconds it was out; in thirty seconds it was down.
They walked to the little silk chute and the blackened, sulfurous husk of the burned-out illumination round.
“Leave a round there,” said Shreck. “A green one.”
Payne threw a brass flare round into the furls of the parachute.
“Now, we move to our next position. They’ve got a long hard climb to make this one, and we don’t have very far at all. In fact we should be able to watch them come.”
They pushed the woman along, and walked the crest of the ridge. It was easy moving, because the ground was clcar and stony and the air bright. They covered a mile in fifteen minutes, then plunged downhill for a swift half mile. There, nestling in a grove, was a canoe that Payne had planted days ago. He righted it, plunged it into a stream, and the three climbed in. Propelled by Payne’s powerful strokes, they made three miles in the remaining time. Then, hiding the canoe, they came to another ridge. Payne bent into the underbrush, pulled out a lank rope, and yanked it tight so that it coiled and slithered under his tension, like an awakening snake. It extended halfway up the ridge to where it had been pinioned into the stone. At that point, Payne had dangled another rope from still higher on the ridge.
“All right, Mrs. Fenn. You just pull yourself up as you climb. You’ll find it’s much, much easier than climbing unsupported.”
At each stage, Payne coiled the rope and hid it.
When they reached the crest, none of them were even breathing hard.
“The telescope,” said Shreck. “They’ll be on the ridge soon enough.”
Payne pulled a case out of his pack and unlimbered a Redfield Regal VI spotting scope with a 20x–60x zoom lens, mounted it to its tripod and bent to its angled eyepiece, jacked the magnification up to maximum, and found a clear view of the ridge across the way.
“All set, Colonel Shreck.”
“Well, they’re late. This early in the game and they’re late. They’re losing it.”
“They had a long pull. They had four miles, over two ridge lines, with a stream to ford. They’d only just now be making it.”
Finally, with three minutes gone over the hour deadline, the green flare rose and floated down.
“All right, fire quickly. Don’t give them any time to rest.”
Payne fired a blue flare into the air and in the last moment of its arc, he saw a figure come straggling over the surface to take a fast compass reading.
Just barely made it, bubba, he thought.
A few minutes later three figures were visible on the crest line two miles away. Magnified sixty times, they were still ants, but recognizable ants.
And it became immediately obvious what the difficulty was.
It must have been Bob out front. He looked as if he could go for another ten years.
Too bad they don’t make a two-mile rifle, motherfucker, Payne thought. I’d have a snipe at you myself.
The middle one would be the younger guy, Memphis. He remembered Memphis. Memphis wore an FBI raid jacket, and its initials almost yielded their individual meanings before collapsing back into blaze-yellow blur. Memphis’s face was lost behind a mask of camouflage paint but his body language looked stolid and determined.
The problem was the third one.
Jesus, it was Dobbler. Face painted like a commando or not, he was still recognizable by his pansy body and that pris
sy lack of strength in his flapping limbs.
“It’s Dobbler!” Payne yelled. “Colonel Shreck, for Christ’s sakes, they brought Dobbler along and he don’t look happy.”
Dobbler had gone to his knees and his mouth was open—Payne imagined he could hear the ruckus even two miles away.
“I can see he’s yelling. Jesus, I can just hear him: ‘I can’t make it, I can’t go on, why did I ever do this,’ that kind of candy-ass shit.”
“Let me see,” said Shreck.
Payne moved to let Shreck at the scope.
“Swagger, you fool,” said Shreck, with a contemptuous snort as he watched. “You should have shot him.”
Eventually, they saw the other two get the abject figure to his feet.
“I wonder how long he’ll last,” said Shreck.
Payne would shoot Dobbler, just as he knew Shreck would. If you ain’t up to the field, you die. That was all. That was the rule. He himself had shot a captain once who’d fucked up so bad in an A-camp fight and was weeping piteously in the bunker. He’d bet Shreck had done it too.
But not Bob. Bob was a secret pussy. He didn’t have what Shreck had and what Payne had: he couldn’t do the final thing. He couldn’t get it done. That’s why now, at the end, when it came down to balls and nothing else, he’d lose.
Dobbler finally gave up around one o’clock. It was surprising that he lasted that long. They saw it happen, having extended their lead and now sited themselves on another ridge for a checkup.
“Look, Colonel Shreck, look!”
Shreck bent to the scope and saw what Payne had seen: a mile and a half away, Dobbler had quit. He lay in the high grass, clearly begging for mercy. Memphis appeared to be the angry one. They saw him try and pick Dobbler up but Dobbler simply collapsed. Dobbler would not rise.
And giving up had its dire implications. Who would come back for him? Shreck knew these two wouldn’t; in two hours they’d be under the gun of Lon Scott. Dobbler would perish in these mountains, though he couldn’t know this now. He’d wander, winding down further each day. Maybe he’d be lucky and run into a party of hunters, but they were so deep in the fastness of the Ouachitas now, that prospect seemed unlikely.