move my assault troops up in two elements, and in a few minutes I’ll bring enfilading fire to bear, move my final assault team up, and bring you this man’s head.”
“I just want his corpse,” said Shreck.
He turned back to Scott.
“We’ve got his ass now.”
“I wonder what he’s thinking about,” said Scott. “It would be very interesting to know what such a man thinks about at such a moment.”
Shreck said, “I was once on a hill waiting to die. You don’t think about much. You think about how you wish you could get another day, that’s all. But this son of a bitch is probably thinking about how many of us he can take out before we nail him. Well, I have one last thing for him to think about.”
General de Rujijo was suddenly waving at him.
“
“One second,” said Shreck. He turned to Scott. “I want to send this bastard to hell knowing all the bad news.”
“Colonel Shreck,” said Scott. “You shouldn’t let it get personal. Hugh wouldn’t want it to become personal.”
“Fuck Hugh,” said Shreck, “it’s always personal.”
He raised the bullhorn.
Bob lay atop the hill. He was extremely winded. Below, about four hundred yards or so, he could see the house, Scott in his chair and some officers and several junior officers standing around the pool. Men moved through the trees below.
Suddenly, there came a voice vibrating through the air.
“
Shit, Bob thought.
“
Swagger sat back from the rocks.
He heard whistles as the troops began to move out.
Payne had no trouble at all. It went so easily, the flight to Tucson, the rental car, the hour or so drive to Ajo. He found the trailer without difficulty. He parked, and went up to the door and knocked.
When she answered he said, “Nurse Fenn?”
“Yes?” She was the kind of woman that Payne had never had. He’d had whores all the world over, listless women with shriveled tits, or young and stupid and poor and desperate. Having sex with them was nothing. It was like doing yourself and in time Payne lost interest in either, unless he was drunk.
This one was classy, somehow. It enraged him that Bob had once had such a fine woman and he’d had nothing like her.
“Aren’t you the one who was with him?” he asked.
“I’m not sure I – ”
“You know,
Her face lost its color; she was not a liar.
“I – Are you with the police?”
“No such fuckin’ luck, lady,” he said, and pulled out the Remington cut-down as he stepped inside. Standing, he felt his force overpower her. He advanced, driving her to the wall, and stood against her, squashing her, the huge 12-gauge muzzle against the flesh of her cheek.
“What is – ”
“Just shut up and listen. Your goddamned boyfriend is alive, in case you don’t know, but now he’s dead, I mean really
“I don’t – ”
“Shut up. Now, we’re gonna hang tight for a time. Don’t you try nothing. Believe me, I ain’t like any guy you ever met, and if I have to, I will shoot you in the head and walk away from it without looking back.”
“I understand,” she said.
“Swagger can’t help you now,” he said. “Some boys got him on a fuckin’ hilltop and they ain’t got no mercy in their hearts.”
She looked him in the eyes. Then she said, “He’s been on hilltops before, you fool. Don’t you understand it yet? He
The images were grainy, hard to make out. Soldiers, burning huts, people running every which way, all of it caught in the jumpy, ill-framed haste of the inexperienced cameraman.
Dobbler swallowed.
Then he saw Colonel Shreck and Jack Payne and a third man, a Latino officer, in a black beret with mirror sunglasses. All wore exotic camouflage uniforms and were heavily armed.
They were conferring over a map.
Dobbler hit FAST FORWARD.
The images hurtled by at warp-speed, made ridiculous, like vaudeville. The soldiers were burning the huts and it looked like the pictures he’d seen taken in the Ukraine in 1943, where the SS men had burned the villages as they retreated. But it was so different, because these soldiers were young and strong and having so much fun.
As the tape rushed along, the troops left the village and seemed to head down a slope. The camera panned and he could see what had drawn them. The village people had escaped to the water. They stood in the torrent of the river, but were blocked at both ends by small knots of soldiers with machine guns. They stood, shivering in the water. He could see that they were mostly women and children.
Dobbler watched as the hard young men walked to the water’s edge. His finger went off FAST FORWARD.
In real time, he saw Shreck and the powerful Latino officer in discussion.
He heard Shreck say, “Tell them to get it over with. Then let’s chopper the fuck out of here. No rapes. Just finish the job and let’s evac the hell out of here, General.”
The general gave an order and the camera shifted back to the water.
“No,” Dobbler screamed in the office, “no!”
But it did no good.
The machine gun bullets from
“No,” Dobbler repeated over and over, “no, no, no.”
Bob heard a voice.
“I didn’t think you were going to make it up that damn hill, old man,” Nick Memphis said.
Bob swiveled on his belly and saw him slithering toward him.
“Pork, I have a spry step or two left in these old bones,” said Swagger. “Now where’s my – ”
Memphis, in his black FBI SWAT uniform with the Mini-14 slung over his back, pushed a long canvas satchel over at Bob. Swagger unzipped it, reached in, then with a flick of the wrist sent the guncase scuttling through the dust as he unsheathed the Remington 700V with its Leupold 12? scope.
His finger snicked off the safety as he drew the rifle to him, knowing it contained five M852 7.62mm match cartridges, each sporting a 168-grain Sierra boattailed hollowpoint.
“Time to hunt,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
