It was a very still morning, the first day without wind since I had arrived. Welcome to the New Year. The temperature was up, the snow beginning to melt. It made for bad footing. I knew I couldn't risk going too fast. Too many chop blocks in the old days had stretched the knee tendons almost to the point of surgery. I could land on something under the snow that would shift or turn, and from then on I could be caught by a reasonably spry turtle.
My plan was to get down the road as fast as Icould, cut off at the last bend, and come up behind the lean-to. I was fifteen yards from the beginning of the road when there was a yell behind me. I ned and saw Barry back near the kitchen building, alone and unarmed. So I began to move a lot faster, hoping for the best. I had made a slippery hundred yards down the hill when I heard three spaced shots behind me and a long screeching blast
The Green Ripper on Chuck's whistle. I knew that would alert whoever was at the gate, so that plan was shot.
I turned off the road at an angle to the right, hoping to make a wide half circle around the gate and come back onto the public road. I soon realized I wasn't going to give them much trouble. It was very rough country. I couldn't try to brush away my tracks. The snow was too soggy. I couldn't go as fast as they would. They had good knees. I couldn't wait for the hymn snow to melt. The only thing I could possibly try would be to make a circle, intercept my own trail, and ambush them. With snowballs, perhaps. And they would realize that this was my only option and would be careful to take the elementary precaution of spacing themselves a hundred feet apart and searching the snow on either side for tracks.
While thinking, I was making as good time as I dared. And I studied the terrain, trying to evolve some kind of plan. There would be at least two, and they would probably be Barry and Chuck, and they would have those little Uzis. I slid down a steep bank into a tumbling brook and scrambled up the rocky ten-foot slope on the other side, picking up a rock a little bigger than a baseball and tucking it into the slit pocket of the poncho, where it proceeded to chunk me on the hip every third step. But it was better than a snowball.
I came to a second, smaller creek. It was shadow enough, so I went downstream, stumbling on the stones, splashing water up to my knees. It dipped downhill abruptly, spilling over the rocks in a mini- waterfall. I had to sit down to negotiate the drop. Around two curves I came upon a place where the racing water had gouged a chunk out of the bank and toppled a big pine across the brook. It had happened many months ago. The pine had wedged itself against two large living trees on the other bank and rested at about a 20-degree angle, crossing the brook fifteen feet above my head.
I stopped and studied it a few moments, then hurried on down the creek and around two more bends, climbing out on the right-hand bank, making no attempt to disguise my exit across the fresh snow. In fact, I purposely went down to my knees and left them a clear handprint to give them confidence. I made a circle back upstream, and when I was away from the rushing water, I stopped and lis- tened. I could hear distant shouts. Then I heard the van and assumed it was going down past the gate, to take up a position on the public road to cut me off if I went that way.
As I neared the fallen tree, I tried to conceal my footsteps as much as possible. I stepped close to the base of trees. I took long slow stretching strides. I crept out along the fat trunk of the fallen tree on my hands and knees, trying to dislodge as little of the snow as possible. The thick dead limbs started at mid-creek, sticking out at right angles from the trunk. I was able to settle myself against two of
-The Green Ripper them, my chest resting on one, my thighs on another, out of sight behind the trunk from anybody coming downstream. By lifting my head I could look upstream. I dislodged a little snow on the trunk so I would not have to lift my head any far-~ ther than necessary.
I changed position enough to find a limb I could hook my anldes over. It helped. The position was uncomfortable. I could expect that they, if there were two of them, would both come downstream. It was my logical escape direction. I hoped they would be well spread out. I hoped the one in the lead would not stop and turn around, once past the tree, look back for his friend, and glance upward.
It seemed certain they would come down the creek itself. The terrain was so difficult they would be endlessly slow if they tried to walk beside it, each taking a bank and staying opposite each other. I guessed the temperature had moved up into the high 40s. The woods dripped. Clots of heavy snow fell off the pine boughs. I rehearsed my drop, thinking out each move. There was no time to practice.
It was taking longer than I expected. Suddenly I heard the heavy splashing sound of somebody walking swiftly down the creek. He passed under me. Brother Chuck. He moved well, knees slightly bent, keeping his balance, holding the Uzi in his right hand by the trigger assembly, swinging it to point at one bank and then the other as he swiveled his gaze back and forth. I did not breathe until he was out of sight. I waited for the next one. I hoped there was a next one. Then I heard the screech of Chuck's whistle. Two long blasts, carrying well in the morning stillness, piercing the sounds of the brook, the sounds of dripping from the trees.
So either he would be off and running along my trail, or he would wait there to be sure his number two didn't miss it. I wished I had made it more difficult to see.
Along came the splashing, more rapid than before. I couldn't risk a look. I jacked my feet up onto the limb on which my thighs had rested. I braced myself with my left hand against the limb which had been under my chest. I held my comforting rock in my right hand. When I caught the first glimpse of Chuck's number two emerging from under my tree, I slid my feet off the limb and dropped. I had turned slightly to my right, hoping to land with my feet on the back of his shoulders and pitch him forward into the water. I landed behind him and slammed the rock squarely on top of his skull. I went down, floundering to get up, expecting him to be ready to CUt me in half. When I came up gasping, he was face down in fifteen inches of black water, the current slowly turning his feet downstream. I saw the glint of metal and picked the weapon out of the icy water, wondering if it would fire. My right knee would barely support my weight. I shifted the weapon to my left hand, grabbed Barry by the tough clothing at the nape
The Green Ripper of his neck, and dragged him out of the brook and up the bank to the left.
I had no idea how fast Chuck would be in getting to my tree. I knew he would be thinking as he ran, and as soon as he saw where my trail was gm ing, he would think ambush. When I climbed up on the high bank, he wasn't in sight. Not yet. I looked at Barry. He had an ugly jellied depression half the size of my rock in the crown of his head. But I had no time for Barry. I saw movement. Chuck was coming fast through the trees. Too fast for me to risk jumping up and trying to hobble to shelter. Barry was at the top of the bank, on his back. I sat him up and lay prone behind him. I held him in position with the fabric between his shoulder blades bunched in my left hand. I checked the Uzi. It seemed to be on full automatic. I shoved it forward, under Barry right arm, and found I could line up the sights.
Chuck disappeared behind the uplifted root structure of the big tree, then came back into view, very tense, crouched, swinging the muzzle from side to side. He looked over and saw his partner sitting on the bank, head on his chest, soaking wet, and I knew his first impulse would be concern, but his second reaction would be to jump back into the cover he had just left. He was quicker than I expected. I caught him in mid-jump and apparently hit him quite high as he began a back flip before disappearing. I scuttled to my rear and hid behind a tree. When I let go of Barry, the body pitched forward and slid down to the edge of the creek.
I counted up to a reasonable number twice, and then once more for good measure. I circled, went back and crossed the creek above the little waterfall, came around, and finally saw Chuck on his face in the melting snow, his weapon a yard away from his right hand, resting against a rotting stump, as naturally as if he had placed it there.
I moved close enough to have seen him breathing, had he been. I moved in and rolled him over. One high on the right shoulder, two high on the right chest. Probably not instantaneous. He had probably faded away while I was counting.
"The iceman," I said aloud, and the sound of my voice starded me. No need to lose your wits, McGee. No need to talk to yourself in the forest deep. It was a pleasure to be McGee again. McGraw had been a tiresome fellow. Dogged and unresponsive.
I searched them both. I switched weapons. I kept Barry's small pack, Chuck's ammo belt, grenades, intricate wristwatch, whistle cord and whistle, all the clips, both sets of keys, and their combined treasury of forty-two dollars. Though the dead seem to shrink in size, it is hard to get into their pockets. They seem to offer a stolid resistance to personal invasion.
I kept a close watch upstream while robbing my brothers. My knee was coming back. I had
The Green Ripper progressed from a hobble to a "imp, and from experience I could tell that if I kept moving, it would work itself out the rest of the way.
There was an assumption to be made. Somebody had probably been near enough to the area to hear the distinctive net drumming of the Uzi in a wasteful burst of about ten. It would be reasonable for them to suppose that Brother Chuck and Brother Barry had come upon Brother Thomas and cut him down in the snow. Since they had been trained in exactly this sort of thing, pursuit and murder, it was not reasonable to suppose the murderee had turned the tables. And I had given them cause to feel a certain professional contempt for the abilities of Brother Thomas. So now they would be waiting for Brother Chuck and Brother Barry to come back out to the road and report. Persival, Alvor, Ahman, Haris, Sammy, Nena, and if they had found her and untied her~tella
Assume somebody on the gate and one person way down the road in the van or off in the van to pick somebody up. Four left on top of the hill. Five counting Stella. So go in the least likely direction. Back to camp. The hard way. Up the slopes, well away from the road.
By now there was such a confusion of tracks, I doubted they could be easily read. Also, in places where the snowfall on the ground had been light because of the trees, it was melted enough to show the brown carpet of needles.
After a time I came to familiar terrain where we had been on the exercises, on the training missions. I stopped and listened for a long time and heard nothing. Then I heard five spaced shots well below and behind me, very probably from where I had left the bodies. Five was Brother Chuck's emergency signal on his whistle, taken, no doubt, from the marine emergency signal, five quick ones on the ship's horn.
Probably two down there, one at the gate, one in the van, three on top of the hill, counting Stella. One with, as Persival himself had pointed out, very bad wheels. Alvor, Persival, and perhaps Stella.
All of them were convinced of the absolute correctness of their training, their dedication, their mission. A true zealot can be a fearsome engine of destruction. I worked my way up the slope. The small shattered trees were off to my left. I stretched out and inched forward until I could see all the way down the length of the small plateau. It was seven or eight hundred feet long, three or four hundred wide, with the structures grouped at the far end.
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As I watched, I heard a motor. It was the van, coming up the hill, approaching rapidly. The road came out onto the plateau a hundred feet to my right. It bounced up over the final ridge so quickly I could not tell if there was one person in it or two.
It rolled to a stop near Persival's motor home and, as Sammy or Ahman got out of it I couldn't tell which one it was at that distance, close to six hundred feet Persival and Alvor came out of the motor home. They stood and talked. I could guess that it was excited talk. The newcomer was waving his arms and pointing back the way he had come.
I had the general idea of using the keys to get into the big warehouse building and then making as much all-around hell as I could with whatever I might find there. But my chances of doing that would be improved if I could keep the locals indoors.
There didn't seem to be too much danger in loosing a single shot in their direction. I set my little machine to Single Fire, to the logo by the small knob. I did not know how much accuracy I could expect. But it did seem a useful idea to make a serious attempt to wing one of them. Alvor struck me as being the most ominous of the three. I aimed as carefully as I could at a spot six inches over his head and squeezed the trigger. The one who was Ahman or Sammy, three feet to Alvor's right, bent over abruptly and fell to the ground. The other two ducked into the motor home. The figure on the ground struggled to get up, then hitched along like a broken bug until he was out of sight around Brother Persival's dwelling. Splendid shooting! Aim at one, hit another. The slug flew three feet low and three feet to the left. I had had no real expectation of knocking anybody down at that range. The flat little smacking sound of the shot had seemed inadequate and potentially ineffective.
How now? I didn't want to lose my luck. It goes like that, like a giant crap table. One day in a firelight, you never see anybody. You keep falling down, jamming the weapon, drawing fire, and if you do see people, you're convinced you couldn't hit within fifteen feet of them. And a week later,
