It turned out all right. Shake my hand on it?"
"Yeah, sure," said Donny, who always found it impossible to hold a grudge.
He took the other lance corporal's hand, shook it.
"How's Featherstone?"
"He's cool. He's down to one and days, he'll rotate back to the world. Me, too. Well, two and days, then my ass is on the golden bird."
"You may not even have to make it that far. I hear the ARVN are going to take over Dodge City, and you guys'll be rotating out early. You won't even have to see your
DEROS."
"Yeah, I heard that too, but I don't want to count on anything the Marine Corps wants to give me. I'm still locked onto DEROS. I make DEROS and I'm home free.
Back to city streets, NYC, the Big Apple."
"Cool," said Donny, "you'll have a good time."
"I'd ask you what it felt like to be so short and I'd buy you a beer, but I know you want to go to bed and make tomorrow come earlier. All that processing out." It was company policy that no man went into the field on his last day.
"Well, sometime back in the world, you can buy me a beer and we'll have a big laugh over this one."
"We will. You're staying in, right? You're not going out with Swagger tomorrow."
"Huh?"
"You're not going out with Swagger tomorrow?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I saw him hunched up with and Brophy and a couple of the lifer NCOs in the S-2 bunker. Like he was going on a mission."
"Shit," said Donny.
"Hey, you sit tight. If they didn't ask you, you don't got to go. Just be cool. Time to take the golden bird back to the land of honeys and Milky Ways."
"Yeah."
"Go in peace, bro."
"Peace," said Donny, and Mahoney dipped out of the hootch.
Donny lay back. He checked his watch. It was 2200 hours. He tried to forget. He tried to relax. Everything was cool, everything was calm, he was home free.
But what the fuck was Swagger up to?
It ate at him. What deal was this?
It bothered him.
He can't go out. He promised.
Shit.
He rose, slipped out the hootch and walked across the compound to the dark bunker of the S-2 shop, where he found Bob, Feamster and Brophy bent over maps.
"Sir, permission to enter," he said, entering.
"Fenn, what the hell are you doing here? You should be checking your gear to turn in to supply tomorrow," said Feamster.
"Is something going on with Sierra-Bravo-Four?"
"Sierra-Bravo-Four is going back to the world, that's what's going on with Sierra-Bravo-Four," said Bob.
"Looks like a mission briefing to me."
"It ain't nothing that concerns you."
"That's a map. I see route markers pinned on it and coordinates penciled in. You going on a job, Sierra-Bravo?"
"Negative," said Bob.
"You are too," said Donny.
"It ain't a goddamn thing. Now, you git your young ass out of here, got that? You got work you should be doing.
This ain't no time for screwing off, even if you're down to a day and a wake-up."
"What is it?" Donny said.
"Nothing. No big deal."
"Sir?"
"Sergeant," said Feamster, "you ought to tell him."
"It's a rinky-dink recon, that's all, a one-man thing. We haven't covered the north in a couple of weeks. They could have infiltrated in, gone through the trees and have set up in the north, a few klicks out. I'm just going to mosey out to see if I cut tracks to the north. A couple klicks out, a couple klicks in. I'll be back by nightfall."
"I'm going."
"My ass, you are. You have to spend tomorrow processing out. Nobody goes into the field on the last day."
"That's right, Fenn," said Captain Feamster.
"Company policy."
"Sir, I can process out in an hour. Just this one last mission."
"Christ," said Swagger.
"I'll worry about it all the way back."
"Man, can't you take no slack at all? Nobody goes out with just a wake-up left. It's a Marine Corps policy."
"It is, my ass. It's the same deal, a guy to spot, a guy to talk on the radio. A guy to work security if it comes to that."
"Christ," said Swagger. He looked over at Feamster and Brophy.
"It really is a two-man job," said Brophy.
"If we go, we go. Full field packs, Claymores, cocked and locked. I would hate to get caught short on the last day."
"Cocked and locked, rock and roll, the whole goddamn nine yards," Donny said.
"When did you take over this outfit?"
"I'm only doing my job."
"You are a stubborn crazy bastard and I hope that poor girl knows what a hardhead she's looped up with."
At O-dark-30, Donny rose and found Bob already up.
He slipped into his camouflages for the last time, pulled the pack on. Canteens ready. Claymores ready. Grenades ready. He painted his face jungle green and brown. Last time, he told himself in the mirror. He smiled, showing white teeth against the earthy colors.
He checked his weapons: .45, three mags, M14, eight mags. There was a ritual here, a natural order, checking one thing then the next, then checking it all again. It was all ready.
He crawled from his hootch, went to the S-2 bunker, where Bob, similarly accoutred except that he had the Remington rifle instead of an M14, waited, sipping coffee, talking quietly with Brophy over the map.
"You don't have to go, Fenn," said Bob, looking over to him.
"I'm going," said Donny.
"Check your weapons, then do a commo check."
Donny examined his M14, pulling the bolt to seat a round in the chamber, then letting it fly forward. He put the safety on, then took out the .45, ascertained that the mag was full but the chamber empty, as Swagger had instructed him to carry the piece. He ran the quick commo check, and all systems were functioning.
"Okay," said Bob, "last briefing. Up here, toward Hoi An. We go a straight northward course, through heavy bush, across a paddy dike. We should hit Hill 840 by 1000 hours. We'll set up there, glass the paddies below in the valley for a couple of hours, and head back by
1400 hours.
We'll be in by 1800 at the latest. We'll stay in PRC range the whole time."
"Good work," said Brophy.
"You all set, Fenn?" Bob asked.
"Gung ho, Semper Fi and all that good shit," said Donny, at last strapping the radio on, getting it set just right. He picked up his M14 and left the bunker. The light was beginning to seep over the horizon.
"I don't want to go out the north," said Bob.
"Just in case. I want to break our pattern. We go out the east this time, just like we did before. We ain't never repeated our-self, anybody tracking us couldn't anticipate that."
"He's gone, he's dead, you got him," said Brophy.
"Yeah, well."
They reached the parapet wall. A sentry came over from the guard post down the way.
"All clear?" Swagger asked.
"Sarge, I been working the night vision scope the past few hours. Ain't nothing out there."
Bob slipped his head over the sandbags, looked out into the defoliated zone, which was lightening in the rising sun. He couldn't see much. The sun was directly in his eyes.
"Okay," he said, "last day-time to hunt."
He set his rifle on the sandbag berm, pulled himself over, gathered the rifle and rolled off. Donny made ready to follow.
How many days now? Four, five? He didn't know. The canteen had bled its last drop of water into his throat yesterday before noon. He was so thirsty he thought he'd die. He hallucinated through the night: he saw men he had killed, he saw Sydney, where he won the gold, he saw women he had fucked, he saw his mother, he saw Africa, he saw Cuba, he saw China, he saw it all.
I am losing my mind, he thought.
Everything was etched in neon.
His nerves fired, his stomach heaved, he had starvation fantasies. I should have brought more food. Something in his blood sugar made him twitch uncontrollably.
This would be the last day. He could stand it no more.
The days were the worst. There was no shield from the sun and it had burned his body red in slivers, between the brim of his soft cap and his collar. The backs of his hands were now so swollen he could hardly close them.
But the nights were no better: it got cold at night and he shivered. He was afraid to sleep because he might miss the Americans on their way out. So he stayed awake at night and slept during the day, except that it was too hot to sleep well. The insects devoured him. He'd never leave this cursed chunk of bare ground in the most forgotten land in the world. He could smell his own physical squalor and knew he was living beyond the bounds of both civilization and sanitation. He was putting himself through the absolute worst for this job. Why was he here?
Then he remembered why he was here.
He looked at his watch: 0600. If they were going on a mission today, this was the time they'd go.
Wearily, he brought the binoculars to his eyes, and peered ahead. He had to struggle with the focus and he lacked the strength to hold it steady.
Why didn't I take that shot when-Movement.
He blinked, unbelieving, feeling the sense of miracle a hunter feels when after the long stalk he at last sees his game.
There was motion down there, though it was hard to make out in the low light. It looked like the movement of men from the bunkers toward the berm but he could not be sure.
He abandoned the binoculars, shifted left and squirmed behind the rifle, trying his hardest not to jar its placement. He poured himself around it, half mounting the sandbag into which the toe of its butt was jammed, his fingers finding the grip, his face swimming up toward the spot weld, feeling the jam of his thumb against his cheekbone.
He looked through it, saw nothing, but in a second his focus returned.
He could see motion behind the berm, a small gathering of men.
It was an unbearably long shot, he now saw, a shot no man had the right to take.
The wind, the temperature, the humidity, the distance, the light: it all said, You cannot take this shot.
Yet he felt a strange calm confidence now.
All his agonies vanished. Whatever it was inside him that made him the best was now fully engaged. He felt strong, purposeful. The world ceased to exist. It gradually bled away as he gave himself to the circle of light before him, his position perfect, the right leg cocked just to the right to put some tension in his body, tightening his Adductor magnus but not too much, his hands strong and steady on the rifle, the spot weld perfect, no parallax in the scope, the butt strong against his shoulder, it was all so perfect. He controlled his breath, exhaling most of it, holding just a trace of oxygen in his lungs.
Reticle, he thought.
His focus went to the ancient reticle, to the dagger point that stood up just beyond the horizontal line that bisected the circle of light, and watched now, in amazement, as, like a phantasm springing from the very earth itself, a man came over the berm, dappled in camouflage, face painted, but even from this far, far distance recognizable as a member of his own rare species.
He did not command himself to fire, one cannot. One trusts the brain, which makes the computations, one trusts the nerves, which fire the processed information down their networks and circuits, one trusts that little patch of fingertip that alone on the still body must be responsive.
The rifle fired.
Time in flight: one full second. But the bullet would arrive far before the sound of it did.
The scope stirred, the rifle cycled lazily, called another cartridge into its chamber and settled back, all before, ever so lazily, the green man went down.
He knew the second would come fast and that to hit him he had to do the nearly unthinkable. Fire before he saw him. Fire on the sure knowledge that his love would propel him after his partner, just hit, the knowledge that the bullet must be on its way before the man himself had even decided what he must do.
But Solaratov knew his man.
He fired just a split second before the second man jumped into view, arms extended in urgent despair, and as the man climbed, the bullet traveled its long parabola, rode its arc, rising and falling as the man himself was squirming desperately over the berm, and when it fell, it met him exactly as he landed on the ground and lurched toward his partner and it took him down.
PART III
HUNTING IDAHO
The Sawtooth Mountains Earlier this year
CHAPTER twenty-five.
The black dogs were everywhere. They yipped at him at night, preventing him from sleeping, they haunted his dreams with their infernal racket, they made him wake early, crabby, bitter, spent.
Were they dreams from bad old times? Or were they just the generalized melancholy that attends a man who begins to understand he can never be what he was before he reached fifty, that his body and eyesight and gift of feel and stamina were on the decline? Or were they from some deep well of grief, once opened impossible to shut down?
Bob didn't know. What he knew was that he awoke, as usual, with a headache. It was not yet dawn, but his wife, Julie, was already up, in the barn, saddling the horses. She clung to her habits even during his dark times. Ride early, work hard, never complain. What a woman! How he loved her! How he needed her! How he mistreated her!
He felt hungover, but it was a dream of post-alcoholic pain. He had not allowed liquor to touch his lips since 1985. He didn't need it. He'd lost close to a decade and a half to the booze, he'd lost a marriage, a batch of friendships, half his memories, several jobs and opportunities, he'd lost it all to the booze.
No booze. He could do it. Each day was the first day of the rest of his life.
Lord, I need a drink, he thought today, as he thought every day. He wanted it so bad. Bourbon was his poison, smooth and crackling, all harsh smoke and glorious blur.
In the bourbon, there was no pain, no remorse, no bad thoughts: only more bourbon.
The hip hurt. Inexplicably, after many years of near painlessness, it had begun to ache all over again. He had to see a doctor about it, and stop gobbling ibuprofen, but he could not, somehow, make himself do it.
"It hurts," his wife would say.
"I can tell. You don't complain, but your face is white and you move slowly and you sigh too much. I can tell. You have to see somebody."
He answered her as he answered everybody these days: a sour grimace, a furious stubbornness, then wintry retreat behind what she once called the wall of Bobness, that private place he went, even in the most public of circumstances, where nobody, not even his wife and the mother of his only child, was admitted.
He went and stood naked under a shower, and let its heat pound at him. But it did not purify him. He emerged in as much pain as he had entered. He opened the medicine cabinet, poured out three or four ibus and downed them without water. It was the hip. Its pain was dull, like a deep bone bruise, that throbbed, and lighted the fire of other pains in his knees and his head and his arms. He'd been hit in so many places over the years: his body was a lacework of scars that testified to close calls and not a little luck.
He pulled on ancient jeans and a plaid shirt, and a pair of good old Tony Lamas, his oldest friends. He went down to the kitchen, found the coffee hot and poured himself a cup. The TV was on.
Something happening in Russia. This new guy everybody was scared of, an old-fashioned nationalist, they said. Like the czars in the nineteenth century, he believed in Russia over everything. And if he got control, things would get wobbly, since they still had so many rockets and atomic warheads, and were only a few hours' work from re targeting America's cities. There was an election coming up in a couple of months, it had everybody worried.
Even the name was scary. It was Passion. Actually, it was Pashin, Evgeny Pashin, brother of a fallen hero.
&
nbsp; It made Bob's headache worse. He thought Russia had fallen. We'd stood up to them, their economy had collapsed, they'd had their Vietnam in Afghanistan, and it had all fallen apart on them. Now they were back, in some new form. It didn't seem fair.
Bob didn't like Russians. A Russian had hit him in the hip all those years ago, and started this run of bad luck that, just recently he thought he'd beaten down, but then it had returned, ugly and remorseless.
Bob finished the coffee, threw on a barn jacket and an old beat-up Stetson and went out of the bright warm kitchen into the predawn cold, looking like an old cowboy who'd been to his last roundup. A grizzle of beard clung to his still sunken jaws and he felt woozy, a beat behind, his mind filled with cobwebs and other junk.
Just enough of the mountains were visible in the rising light. They stirred him still, but only just. They were so huge, caped in snow, remote, unknowing, vaster by far than the mountains he had grown up in back in Arkansas.
They promised what he needed: solitude, beauty, freedom, a place for a man who went his own ways and only got himself into deep trouble when he got involved with other men.
He saw the barn, heard the snuffle and rasp of horses, and knew that Julie and Nikki were saddling up for their morning ride, a family ritual. He was late. His horse, Junior, would be saddled too, so that he could join them at the last second. It was not right: to earn the right to ride a horse, you should saddle it yourself. But Julie let him sleep for those rare moments when he seemed to do so calmly. She just didn't know what nightmares lay inside his calm sleep.
He looked about for his other enemy. The landscape, high in the mountains but still a good mile from the snow, was barren. He saw only the meadows, where some cattle drifted and fed, miles of dense trees, and the rugged crinkles of the passes as they led to openings in the peaks that were the Sawtooths.
But no reporters. No agents. No TV cameras, Hollywood jockeys, slick talkers with smooth hair and suits that fitted like cream on milk. He hated them. They were the worst. They had exiled him from a life he had loved.
It began when Bob, at the insistence of a good young man who reminded him a bit of his wife's first husband, Donny Fenn, had urged him to return to Arkansas to look into the matter of the death of Earl Swagger, his father, in 1955. Things got complicated and hairy fast, some people tried to stop him and he had to shoot back. No indictments were ever handed down as no physical evidence could be located and nobody in Polk County would talk to outsiders. But some rag had gotten wind of it, linked him to another set of events that took place a few years before that, and taken a picture of him and his wife, Julie, as they'd walked out of church back in Arizona some months later. He woke up the next Wednesday to discover that he was america's deadliest man and that he had struck again. Wherever ex-Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger hangs his hat, men die, it pointed out, relating his presence to a roadside shootout that left ten men, all felons, dead, and the mysterious deaths of three men, including an ex-Army sniper, in the remote forest, and recalling that some years earlier he had briefly been a famous suspect in the shooting of a Salvadorian archbishop in New Orleans, until the government dropped the charges for reasons that were to this day unclear. Why, he had even married the widow of a Vietnam buddy, the paper reported.
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