superimposed.
He could see the switching shed, but there was no indication that anything was happening. Because he was looking into a lamp beam, the problem of shadow?though it was green, not black?was disconcerting. He wondered if he should have done more work on the scope, getting a better sense of what was going on in the glowing puzzle that was his night vision through the eyepiece. Could men move into his firing range and he not identify them as men?
No, not really. He could, after all, make out the shape and size of the switching house, could see the little dip behind it, could see the hard steel struts of the power wire pylons. There was no background, because the power of the lamp didn't penetrate that far. He couldn't see what wasn't illuminated, which gave the universe a completely foreshortened perspective, as if the world were but 150 yards deep or so.
'Do you see?'
'Shut up, goddammit! Shut up and be still!' he commanded Owney, who was shaky.
Owney said nothing.
Then, far off, they heard the sound of a train approaching.
'It's time,' Johnny whispered softly.
'Ding-dong,' said Ding-Dong Bell. 'The party's about to start.'
Chapter 47
Crouched in the dark behind the switching shed, they watched as the train pulled into the yard. It looked like any other train, leaking steam, hissing, groaning, like some kind of large, complex animal. When it finally came to rest, it clanked, snapped, shivered and issued steam from a variety of orifices. A lot of the boxcars said JAX BEER but that meant nothing; trains were thrown together out of all kinds of cars, everybody knew.
In the center of the train there was one long, black car, with lights beaming through from little slots. It looked like some kind of armored car, the exact center of the contrivance, a dark, sealed, menacing blockhouse on wheels.
'That's it,' whispered D. A. to Earl.
'Yeah,' he said.
It was nearly 2:00 in the morning. Before them for hours had been black nothingness, only the incongruous sound of water running from someplace close at hand, the stench of kerosene. A yard bull had come their way, carrying a lantern, but he was so unconcerned he simply looked into the shed, saw no hoboes hunkered there and moseyed on. But now at last, the train.
'Should we move in?' asked D. A.
'Nah. Wait for them to make a play. It don't mean nothing if you move too early.'
'Yeah.'
'I'll check the boys.'
Earl separated from the old man, and slid almost on his hands and knees along the shallow embankment where each member of the team crouched, low and ready, each man locked in his own private drama.
'Okay?'
'All set, Mr. Earl. You give the signal.'
'It'll be a bit yet, you just wait calmly.'
'I'm ready.'
He gave each man a tap on the shoulder, feeling their aliveness, their vitality. This was it. It would be over after tonight. They all knew it.
The last guy was Carlo.
'You okay?'
'Swell, Mr. Earl.'
'Your mama okay?'
'She's fine.'
'You get the word from D. A.?'
'Yes sir. But I don't like it much.'
'I don't like it much neither but that's what the man says. When the men move out, you head on over to that shed and join up with me. We'll wait and see what happens.'
'I got it.'
'Good boy.'
Earl squirmed back to D. A.
'It's not too late. I can lead 'em. You can come in where you're needed.'
'No, Earl. This is my party. I've earned this one.'
'Yes sir, but?'
Suddenly, a hundred-odd yards away, a door flew open, throwing a slash of light across the yard. There were two quick shots. Figures seemed to scurry back and forth in front of the dark car in the middle of the train, and men climbed in. Another shot sounded.
'Jesus,' said D. A.
'That's it,' said Earl. 'They've done made their move.'
'We should go now?'
'I'd give it a few more minutes. Let 'em feel comfortable.'
'Yeah.'
The door slid closed, and the light went out. Time ticked by, nearly two minutes' worth. Finally, D. A. said, 'Okay. Let's do it.'
'That's good,' said Earl. 'You want to be set up when they come out.'
Earl scampered down the line.
'Time to move out,' he whispered to each man, until he got to the end.
'Come on, Henderson.'
'Yes sir,' said Henderson.
The men scooched forward, then rose. D. A. was in the lead. Visibility was limited to maybe twenty-five yards at most, but they formed up in good order, a skirmish line with ten feet separating them.
D. A. moved to the center of the line, gave a wave that passed as a sort of signal, and they moved out, crouched, each with his.45 clasped in two hands in front of him, as they had been instructed.
Johnny saw them rise in the green murk.
'Okay,' he said.
He felt Owney tense with anticipation.
Now they came. Seven men, like soldiers in the Great War, bent double, moving cautiously across no-man's- land. It reminded him of 1918 and the last big German attack, and the endless killer's ecstasy he'd felt experiencing the delights of the Browning.30 water-cooled, watching the bullets flick out and unleash a storm wherever they struck and in that turbulence knocking the advancing men askew like tenpins, so many of them, and the hot pounding of the gun, the furious intensity of it all, the star shells detonating overhead. This infrared thing: it was his own private star shell.
He tried to pick out Earl. Earl will be in the lead. Earl would be heroic. But the instrument couldn't resolve such details; he could only make out blurs moving with the sure, steady pace of human animation.
'Shoot 'em,' hissed Owney as he watched the carbine barrel tracking ever so gently off Johnny's hold, as the Irishman measured his shots.
But Johnny had nerves of tungsten. That's why he did so well at this business. He let them come onward because he knew that after the first burst, the formation would scatter, and he'd have to track them and take the survivors down running. That meant the further they were from cover, the more time he'd have and the fewer who'd make it back to the switching shed.
He let them come on another minute. Then another. It had a curious, almost blasphemous intimacy to it. The men felt unobserved, he could tell, secure in their darkness. Now and then they'd halt and gently regroup and
