Henry Metzger raised his head to stare at Chinese Gordon for a moment, then turned his attention to licking his genitals.
Chinese Gordon looked around him for something else to throw, but with the thought came the awareness that he’d strained his shoulder with the first throw. He leaned over the railing and yelled, “You’re purring, you son of a bitch!” Doctor Henry Metzger slowly stretched his body, then walked along the bench to the end, sprang to the windowsill, and stepped through the empty panel.
Chinese Gordon turned and stomped into the kitchen to make himself some coffee. It was a hell of a bad start, he thought. The burglary had been bad enough, but this was ridiculous. He couldn’t believe Doctor Henry Metzger could be so mean spirited. Sure, there was such a thing as a difference of opinion on tactics, or even a disagreement. This was nothing less than revenge. As he waited for the water to boil, Chinese Gordon contemplated the meaning of Doctor Henry Metzger’s gesture. To a cat, a man’s overalls must seem like a cat’s fur, a neck-to-ankle cat suit. What depths of contempt must be expressed by pissing on a man’s fur?
He decided not to brood about it. Today was too important to permit him to spend time distracted with personal problems. For months he’d been preparing for this, measuring and figuring, then grinding and drilling and shaping the steel, then oiling and polishing the parts, assembling and reassembling them, then cycling the whole machine by hand, sliding the flat cam forward and back to make the cylinder turn. Then he’d taken the whole thing apart and searched for the burrs or scratches that meant something was out of balance or fitted wrong. He’d done practically nothing else when he’d been alone for the best part of a year. Chinese Gordon was a master tool-and-die maker, a man who could make a thing like this in a matter of days, but he was making only one and it had to be right.
Chinese Gordon took his coffee downstairs to the shop, opened his van, and took a look at what he’d made. It was done right and he knew it. It had been an act of will to keep himself from making it perfect. He was accustomed to precise measurements, to machining parts to such close tolerances that they seemed to have grown together. This job was different—the parts had to be fitted loosely so that when it was operated the rapid buildup of grime and residue didn’t cause it to freeze up, and of course there was the heat expansion too.
He had no doubt about this piece of work. Once again Chinese Gordon had succeeded where others hadn’t even been crazy enough to try. As his eyes moved along it, part by part, he felt proud: the butt of the cam with its powerful return springs, the smooth cylinder, then down the long, black tube to the end. There was no question about it, he had reproduced it in every detail—a working M-39-A1 automatic aircraft cannon.
He reached in and checked the feeder again, jiggling one of the star wheels to line it up with the one beside it, then examining the belt stripper. Just for luck he flipped the extractor with his thumb before he closed the van door.
Even the pride of the craftsman and the pride of ownership together weren’t enough to drive out the feel of the cold cement floor on his bare feet. Chinese Gordon climbed upstairs to search for something to wear. As he reached the top he saw Doctor Henry Metzger slip back in through the window. When Chinese Gordon stopped, Doctor Henry Metzger stopped.
“That’s right,” said Chinese Gordon. “You’re better at this guerrilla shit than I am, because you’re an animal. But that’s also your flaw, Doctor Henry Metzger. You don’t even know it’s Saturday, you shithead. I don’t wear overalls on Saturday. If it had been me, I’d have pissed on your blue jeans and shirts.” He laughed as he walked into his bedroom to dress.
He reappeared, buttoning his shirt, just as Doctor Henry Metzger finished defecating on the overalls lying on the shop floor and began his pantomime of burying the droppings by scratching the pant legs over the pile.
CHINESE GORDON SANG “Old Dan Tucker” as he drove the van along the Pearblossom Highway. Then they swung onto Route 18 at Victorville. Just as they drove past the Roy Rogers Museum, where the gigantic statue of Trigger pawed the dry air of the Mojave Desert, Kepler poured Immelmann’s can of beer into Chinese Gordon’s boot, so it made a sucking noise whenever he lifted it off the gas pedal. Chinese Gordon launched instead into another favorite: “She lives on a cattle ranch,” he sang, “and she shits like an avalanche.” Kepler and Immelmann tolerated countless verses, but as they left Joshua Tree and moved toward Twentynine Palms, Immelmann began to glare at him, so Chinese Gordon switched to “Bongo, Bongo, Bongo, I Don’t Want to Leave the Congo.” This made Kepler glare at him. Chinese Gordon was puzzled until he remembered that Kepler had spent part of 1965 as a mercenary in the eastern territories around Lake Tanganyika. He drove on in silence, turning south again at Twentynine Palms into the Pinto Basin.
He didn’t slow the van until he neared Fried Liver Wash, where the Hexie Mountains jutted to the west and the country to the east stretched off into forbidding, empty flats that shimmered in the heat.
“This it?” said Immelmann.
Chinese Gordon didn’t answer. He swung the van off the highway and held onto the steering wheel as they bounced along the desert floor into the dry bed of the wash. They kept going until they reached the place Chinese Gordon had found weeks earlier. Two hundred yards up the wash there was the rusting abandoned hulk of a 1954 Ford F-100 pickup truck. When Chinese Gordon had found it he hadn’t been able to decide whether some fool had parked it there just before a flash flood or just driven it there, taken the tires off, and left it.
“This is the perfect spot,” said Chinese Gordon. “There’s nobody within fifty miles of us.”
“No argument there,” said Kepler, placing a cold beer can under each armpit. “A germ couldn’t live out here. Let’s get it over with so we can bury you before dark.”
Chinese Gordon wasn’t willing to be rushed. He turned the van around and lined it up on the pickup truck. “See?” he said, “I can aim the thing using this mirror on the dashboard with the crosshairs. All I have to do is steer the van so the target is lined up.”
“Clever,” said Kepler, suppressing a yawn. “Big fucking deal. You can line it up, but you can’t fire it or you’ll blow your own ass off the planet.”
“Not true,” said Chinese Gordon patiently. “I’ve got it all figured out.” He flipped a switch under the dash, and a panel in the rear of the van slid open to bare the muzzle of the M-39.
“Hold it,” said Immelmann. He and Kepler scrambled out of the van and stood a few yards off. “Go ahead,” said Immelmann.
“Really,” said Chinese Gordon, “I can do it.” He flipped a second switch, and the converted air conditioner fan added its hum to the purr of the van’s engine. “See,” he said, “this vents the gases and smoke. Now the generator.” He flipped a third switch, and there was a whining sound. “The firing voltage is 310 AC, so I couldn’t use batteries.”
The others nodded and looked at each other. Immelmann took a long swallow of the beer and burped thoughtfully. Then he said, “We should have come in two cars. We must be two hundred miles from Van Nuys.”
Chinese Gordon ignored him. He put on his earphones and picked up the hand switch that was dangling at the end of a telephone cord. He moved the van forward a few inches, steering so that the crosshairs of the mirror were on the center of the cab of the derelict pickup truck, then put the van in neutral and gently pressed the hand-switch button.
There was a roar that lasted almost a whole second. It sounded to Chinese Gordon like
Before his head snapped back he saw that he hadn’t missed the target. The pickup truck had sat palpably and clearly in the crosshairs, then it had disappeared in fire and flying dirt. It looked as though the earth under it had exploded.
Chinese Gordon set the hand brake and looked back at his companions. Immelmann was sitting on the ground looking dazed, his hands still over his ears. Kepler was already running toward the place where the pickup truck had been. It was now just a charred and smoking hole with large pieces of twisted metal strewn about.
Chinese Gordon sauntered up to Immelmann. “I guess it works,” Chinese Gordon said. Immelmann’s mouth moved, but Chinese Gordon couldn’t hear anything. He wondered if he’d gone deaf, but then he remembered he still had the earphones on.
He snatched the earphones off and yelled, “What?” glad to hear his own voice.
“An elephant fart,” said Immelmann.
“What?” shouted Chinese Gordon.
“It sounded like an elephant fart,” said Immelmann. His eyes widened and he shook his head again. “Exactly.
