Why had she come up the stairs?
Why did I fire?
She came up because she was a mother.
I fired because I’m a policeman.
There: hubris, fete, kismet, karma, whatever. It was somehow written; it was inevitable; it had been decreed.
When he’d gotten back to her, there was nothing to do. Her daughter sat next to her, holding her hand. Soon the other little girl came out and sat on the other side and started to cry. Uckley just looked at them, and at the dead woman, and then went out and got into the car, while various medical people and cops and firemen and citizens rushed about. He yielded to anybody who seemed to know what they were doing.
“A tough break,” said Delta Three suddenly.
Uckley looked up, dazed.
“You okay, Sergeant?” he asked blankly.
The man was on crutches, his thigh heavily wrapped.
“I think I’ll live. Look, if there’s any trouble, I’ll tell ’em how it happened. Shit, Mr. Uckley, you went up there alone against a real bad customer who had two kids hostage, and you cleaned his clock. That’s a good day’s work.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t even do that right.”
“We went into a house where there were three hostages. We got two of them out. That’s a pretty damned good operation anyway you slice it. And that mother, she was a good mom, she’d have rather her kids made it out than herself. So, there you go.”
“The point was to take prisoners,” Uckley said.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but fuck taking prisoners. We put three assholes in the ground, and that’s what we get paid for.”
It was no help.
“Sir, you better report in. You know, at the mountain they’re waiting, and I bet it’s pretty tense there.”
“Yeah,” said Uckley.
With a grim sense of futility he took the radio mike off its arms, feeling his ribs knit up in pain with the effort, and pushed the send button.
“Base, this is Special Agent Uckley, can you give me a call sign and patch me into Delta command?”
“We read you, Bureau One. You’re all set for transmission, over.”
“Delta Six, do you copy? This is Bureau One, over.”
There was static and scrambled noise in the furriness of the transmission, but eventually a voice came out of it at him.
“Bureau One, Delta Six affirmative, we copy. Go ahead.”
“Assault complete. Two hostages freed. We lost one man killed, and two wounded but stable. Uh, we are in command of the situation now. We found three aggressors, heavily armed.”
“Prisoners?” came Dick Puller’s voice through the fog.
“Uh, negative, Delta Six. That’s a negative. Too much firepower. We, uh, we couldn’t get you any prisoners, Delta Six.”
There was silence from the radio.
Uckley rushed to fill it.
“Delta Six, I accidentally shot a civilian. I’d like to request a release. You ought to get yourself another —”
“Negative, Bureau One.”
“For Christ’s sake, I shot a woman to death. I’m no goddamned good to—”
“Bureau One, this is Delta Six. Civilian casualties are a necessary hazard of combat operations. Get a hold on yourself.”
“Colonel Puller, I shot a mother in the heart in—”
“Bureau One, stop feeling sorry for yourself and listen up.”
“Sir, I—”
“Listen up, Bureau One. This is combat operation, and you follow orders, or I’ll have you arrested, goddammit. Son, I don’t have time to screw around here with your delicate feelings. Do you copy?”
“Copy,” said Uckley through a knotted throat and blurry eyes.
“Collect their firearms, feed the serial numbers to the Bureau, and see if you can get a make on them. Then I want you to conduct an examination of the bodies. There should be a medical examiner or something there. Check out those bodies. And the clothes too. Check out the clothes. Do you copy, Bureau One?”
Uckley just looked at the microphone, a dead thing in his hand. He felt impossibly old and impossibly fatigued. It was almost night now and the streetlights had come on.
“I copy,” said Uckley, and got up to do what he had to do.
“End of story,” said Nathan Walls. “As in, end of
And so it was: their lights came up onto sheer wall, where the livid pick marks of the mining tools of fifty years or so back still gleamed in the light of the beam.
The tunnel called Elizabeth had simply ceased to exist. She yielded
“Son of a bitch,” said Witherspoon. “You mean that’s it?”
“‘Less you wants to start to
“Goddamn,” said Witherspoon, really pissed. All this way, all this low walking and crawling through this damn tomb, and here they were; they had come to nothing.
Walls sat down.
“Goddamn this bitch. Can’t never trust no white woman. You looks at ’em and they crosses they legs. Oh, except your old lady, of course.” He reached into his pocket, took out a cigarette, flicked a light from a Bic lighter, and inhaled.
“You smoke here?” asked Witherspoon.
“Hey, why not? Not nobody here but us spooks.” He laughed. “Man, I thought I was gonna be a muthafuckin’ hero. Man, now we just walk back, and that’s that. You know, Spoon, here’s what I was gonna do. I figure we run into some shit, man, smoke and lights and fireworks everywhere, man, old Walls just pull a fade. He go for a nice walk in the country. Not too bad, huh? I tell you, boy, only way old Walls going to get his ass a little quiet time to hisself.” He laughed again.
“Yeah, that’s real great,” said Witherspoon. “You’re really talking like a hero now. Your momma would be proud.”
“My momma be dead,” said Walls, laughing again.
Witherspoon slipped off his MP-5, his flak jacket, slid the night vision goggles off his head, and tried to arrange the angle-head flashlight upon them so that its beam fell on the end of the tunnel. Then he went to the wall and began to feel around. The light caught him and he cast a giant shadow.
But he could feel nothing. It was solid rock. His fingers, long and ebony, flew across it.
“Man, you wastin your time. Relax. Have a smoke. Then we go back to the world.”
In time Witherspoon gave up. There seemed no point. They were licked.
He fumbled with the Prick-88 strapped into the webbing of his vest, and picked up the earphones and put the hands-free mike in front of his lips.
“Rat Six, this is Rat Team Baker, do you copy?”
He listened intently. There was no answer.
“Shit,” he said, “we must be inside too far. They aren’t reading us.”
“Maybe they asleep,” said Walls. “You get an easy job like sitting on your butt while two niggers do all the shit work, man, you get a white man’s job, you fall asleep. Call their asses again.”
“Rat Six, Rat Six, this is Team Baker, do you copy? Do you copy?”
Silence.
