He could see through the wavering scope and watched as they came for him.
Somehow, they knew this was his hill: it was some hunter's very good instinct. Then he realized: they found the dead soldier in the gully and tracked me. As he had moved through the wet elephant grass, he'd probably left a pattern of disturbance, where the grass was wiped clean, where the turf was trampled. Good men could follow much less.
Now they had him on this goddamned hill, it would be over in a few minutes. Oh, these guys were good.
They had spread out, and were moving up very methodically, two three-men elements of movement, two of cover. No more than three men, too widely spaced for three shots, were visible at any one moment, and then only for seconds. They were willing to give up one of the three to find him and take him out. Soldiers.
He knew he had to get to his grease gun, if they got close, and he was stuck with the Remington with one cartridge in the spout and a bolt-throw away from another shot, he was done.
Now it was his turn to move, ever so slowly, ever so noiselessly.
Learn from them, he instructed himself. Learn their lessons: patience, caution, calmness, freedom from fear, but above all the discipline of the slow move. He had a complicated thing before him: without making a sound, he had to reach back under his rain cape, release the sling of the M3, draw it forward around his body, ease open the ejection port cover and finger hole the bolt back. Then and only then would he have a chance, but that destination was long minutes away.
The rain fell in torrents now, disguising his noise just a bit. But these were sharp, trained men: their ears would hear the sound of canvas rubbing on leather or metal sliding across flesh, or they would smell his fear, acrid and penetrating, or they would see his movement irregular against the steadier rhythms of nature.
Ever so slowly, he eased over to his side from his belly, an inch at a time, shifting his hand back over the crest of his body. Now he could hear them calling to each other: they spoke the language of birds.
'Coo! Coo!' came the call of a dove in a part of the south where there were no doves.
'Coo!' came the response, from the right.
'Coo!' came another one, clearly from behind. Now they knew he was here, for the trail had led up the hill but had not led down it, they had not cut across it. He was thoroughly cooked.
His fingers touched metal. They crawled up the grip of the grease gun, pawed, climbed up to the tubular receiver and found the sling threaded through its latch. His fingers struggled against the snap on the sling.
Oh, come on, he prayed.
These little fuckers could be tough, they could rust shut or simply be tightly fitted and need too much leverage to free up.
Why didn't you check it?
Agh!
Asshole!
He ordered himself to check the sling snap a thousand times if he ever got out of this fix, so that he would never, ever again forget.
Come on, baby. Please, come on.
With his fingers pulling, his thumb pushing, he battled the thing. It was so small, so absurd: twelve men were twenty-five yards away hunting him, and he was hung up on the cold, wet ground trying to get a fucking little-Ah!
It popped, with a metallic click that he believed could be heard all the way to China.
But nobody cooed and he wasn't jumped and gutted on the spot.
The gun slid free and down his back, but he captured it quickly with his hand, and now withdrew it, very slowly, bringing it around, drawing it close to him, like a woman to treasure for the rest of his life. He smelled its oily magnificence, felt its tinny greatness. A reliable, ugly piece of World War II improvisation, it probably cost a buck fifty to manufacture from hubcaps and sleds and bikes picked up in scrap-metal drives in the forties. That's why it had such a cheap, toylike, rattly feel to it. With his fingers he deftly sprung the latch on the ejection port, then inserted a finger into the bolt hole that he had just revealed. With the finger he pushed back, felt the bolt lock, then let it come forward. He dropped down and drew the gun up to him.
'Coo! Coo!'
CHAPTER fifteen.
The message came by radio to the hasty command post dug into the side of a hill. It was from the sapper patrol on the right flank.
'Brother Colonel,' gasped Sergeant Van Trang, 'we have the American trapped on a hill half a kilometer to the west. We are closing on him even now. He will be eliminated within the quarter hour.'
Huu Co nodded. Van Trang was a banty little north countryman with the heart of a lion. If he said such a thing was about to happen, then indeed it would happen.
'Excellent,' said the colonel.
'Out.'
'There are no shots,' his XO told him.
'Not since the unfortunate Phuc Go was martyred.'
Huu Co nodded, considering.
Yes, now was the time. Even if he couldn't get the whole battalion through the pass, he could get enough men through to overwhelm Arizona. But he had every confidence in Van Trang and his sappers. They were the most dedicated, the best trained, the most experienced. If they had the American trapped, the incident was over.
