The Favor (36 page)

What? Little bunnies, flicking their
cottontails over endless clover patches? No predators, no more
carnage? No more pointless savagery? The gods smiled on cruelty and
left its victims to extinction. That was the morality of nature,
simply to be one of the survivors.

So he would try to survive. There were four
left, and he would try to kill all four, since that was to be the
price of survival, and he wouldn’t kid himself anymore with
fictions of revenge. He couldn’t settle up for Janine: there wasn’t
anything he could do that would make anything right again for her,
because she was one of the dead.

But he would kill Flycatcher. To see
Flycatcher dead was worth anything, anything at all. Just let him
kill Flycatcher, and he would consent to lay down on the ground
beside him and they could rot away together.

Three minutes later he was back at the edge
of the woods, at a spot about seventy yards from the front door
where the tree line had veered in sharply enough to put him at
about a forty-five degree angle to the house. He had an
unobstructed line of fire; nobody could leave the farmhouse from
that direction without his having a clear shot at them. He had even
found a log—not a fallen tree, something more on the order of a
utility pole, about a foot thick at the base—that for some reason
had simply been discarded there and that would make a dandy brace
for the rifle.

He would use Blondie’s—after using the other
on the big lummox’s skull, he no longer trusted it to be absolutely
in perfect shape, but he had the clips from both weapons, and each
of them contained about twenty rounds. It was enough. There were
only four men left, which was hardly an army. Sufficient firepower
was the least of his worries.

The operation had by now resolved itself into
two separate tactical problems. The first one, to further reduce
the odds down to, say, two to one, was fairly simple—it wasn’t
going to be forever before two more of Flycatcher’s bodyguard would
be sent out to relieve the two who, at that precise moment, were
lying flat on their backs at various points around the property,
getting used to their permanent retirement. There was no way of
saying what the drill was, but the second watch would be along
directly, if only to find out where the hell their friends were;
and when they came out the front door, Guinness was all set to blow
them away. That part was going to be easy.

The other part, however, was what to do about
the cars.

The little covered port, in which two dark
blue vehicles of considerable size but indeterminable make were
parked side by side, was on the other side of the farmhouse.
Guinness could only just see the front bumpers shining redly in the
last of the late afternoon sun. He had observed no back door when
he had been crawling around at the far end of the property, and,
since it seemed unreasonable to suppose that a dwelling would have
only a front entrance, he concluded that the house could be entered
or left from the carport.

It was a difficulty—how was he going to keep
Flycatcher from simply bolting to his presumably armor plated
chariot and taking off as he had in Mexico?

Two to one, in the pitch black of night, was
something you could work with, but you had to disable the cars. You
haven’t set much of a trap if, once you’ve sprung it, your mouse
still has a hole he can wriggle through.

And this wasn’t Mexico—you couldn’t simply
torch the damn things, even if somehow you could get close enough
to try. There were fire brigades, and watchful neighbors who might
notice the bonfire, and there were police. No, you had to keep this
a private party; you wanted no official interference. So you had to
hit upon something a little more tactful.

Guinness didn’t like it, but he supposed,
really, there was no other way. So once he had taken out the second
pair of guards, once he had declared himself, he would simply have
to head down toward the very narrow end of the cleared property,
where he could find a covered spot that looked straight up the
road, and wait there in the hope of disabling the car as it came
toward him. He could try for the tires, or spray the engine and see
if he couldn’t tear something up under the hood, but he still
didn’t like it. It was just too chancy—however, he couldn’t think
of anything better.

At a few minutes before eight, in the final
moments of the twilight, two men came out through the front door of
the farmhouse. They had rifles slung from their shoulders and they
let the screen door bang closed behind them, so they weren’t
expecting trouble. The lights inside the house were already on and
they stood there on the porch, simply stood there, as one of them
lit a cigarette. It was like a shooting gallery.

Should he wait and let them get a little
farther from the door? It would be nice if he could discourage
Flycatcher from retrieving the rifles, since there wasn’t any point
in his having more weaponry than necessary. No, the precise number
of rounds of ammunition wasn’t going to be a big factor—better to
be sure of these two, to take them out while they were being so
cooperative and standing so still and so close together.

Guinness chose the one closer to his side of
the door for first honors. There wasn’t any particular reason for
it, except for the fact that he was a slightly less perfect target
because he was facing toward his companion and was thus more in
profile. Better to leave the easier one till second; he wouldn’t
have as much time with him.

He had never, of course, fired this
particular rifle and had no idea for what distance it was sighted
in—or even if they had bothered to sight it in at all. That was
something else he would find out.

He chose a spot just under his man’s left
armpit, found it in the sights, took in a breath, let it out
halfway, held it, and squeezed the trigger. At first the guy didn’t
even move, and then, quite suddenly, he simply fell down, exactly
as if his whole body had gone slack all at once. When they fall
like that, they’re dead.

Number Two didn’t move either, apparently
slow to understand what had happened, and Guinness pressed the
little switch to convert from single-fire to automatic. He had no
idea how many rounds he let off in the one quick little burst;
there was just a blur of sound, and Number Two started jerking
around like a dancing marionette. The impact had thrown him back,
and he hit against the screen door with a crash that even Guinness
could hear. He was dead too, or he would die quickly enough. In
either case, Guinness didn’t waste another thought on him but
slipped quietly back into the trees—it wouldn’t take a genius to
figure out where the shots had come from, and he didn’t
particularly want to be right on the spot if somebody inside the
farmhouse decided he wanted to shoot back.

Once under the cover of the woods, he ran for
all he was worth, trying to make the two hundred fifty some odd
yards to where the trees closed around the narrow dirt road before
he heard the sounds of a car starting behind him. There was no
other escape for Flycatcher—he had to come that way and it was the
obvious thing for him to do. Guinness simply ran, desperate to make
the distance before Flycatcher pulled himself together enough to
see his chance—unless the man was a fool he would know he had to
make a break for it, and he wouldn’t try it on foot, not with
Guinness lurking around out in the darkness, so it would be the
car; there just wasn’t anything else for him to do.

When he had gone what he judged to be far
enough, Guinness thought there was a fair chance he might pass out.
He sank to his knees and then, when that didn’t seem enough, just
fell over on his face and lay there, waiting to catch his breath.
He noticed that his face stung and discovered that he had
apparently been cut across his nose and his right cheek by a tree
branch, but he was so tired he couldn’t bring himself to care. He
was forty-one years old and it had been a long day, and, obviously,
he was getting out of shape. He just wasn’t up to these mad dashes
anymore; he should confine himself to drawing room assassinations,
where a retreat down the fire escape would be about as strenuous as
things ever got.

He got back up on his feet and looked around
for a spot with a good clear view of the road, one where the car,
when it came, would be heading straight for him, and when he found
it he detached the half empty box clip from his rifle and replaced
it with the full one—you couldn’t know; having twenty rounds all at
once might make all the difference.

He lay there waiting, flat on his stomach
between a couple of bushes. In the course of only a few minutes the
last lurid rays of the sun had been extinguished and the sky had
turned to an almost perfect black. The only light anywhere was from
the farmhouse, which still seemed to blaze from its front windows.
Apparently Flycatcher wasn’t going to worry about the electricity
bill—he had other problems; he would just leave things as they
stood.

Eventually his breathing returned to normal,
and Guinness tried to listen for the sound of the car. There were
birds in the trees over his head, and apparently he had disturbed
their repose with his arrival because they were only just now
beginning to settle down again. But there was nothing else.

He waited, straining to hear the dull throb
of an engine, but there were only the birds and a faint whisper of
wind stirring the branches above him. The lights continued to burn
from the farmhouse windows, and the night was as quiet and still as
an untroubled conscience.

How long did he wait? Ten—fifteen minutes?
And Flycatcher didn’t come. There was no sign of life or movement;
Guinness might have been alone on the planet. And then the
farmhouse lights fell dark.

20

So Flycatcher remembered Mexico too. What did
he imagine, that Guinness was lurking behind the carport door,
ready to burn him down the second he set foot outside? Something
like that, apparently. Anyway, he wasn’t going to get caught in the
same trap twice. Such was the blindness of memory.

To test the proverb, Guinness held his hand
up. Well, yes, he could just see it—a dim outline perhaps a foot in
front of his eyes. Everything else had simply vanished. He might as
well have been blind. There wasn’t even a moon.

Through concentration of effort, he was
gradually able to distinguish the shapes of tree trunks, not as
themselves but as alternating bands of more and less opaque
blackness. That, however, seemed to be the absolute limit.

So, darkness. He wondered which of them it
favored more—himself, presumably, since it negated the possibility
of coordinated action. There were just the two of them now. Or, if
you trusted George’s figures and cared to count Flycatcher’s one
remaining bodyguard, there were just the three of them. Guinness
decided he had better not count out the bodyguard.

He tried to see things with flycatcher’s
eyes, which, presumably, were as blind at that moment as his own.
Flycatcher would know everything now—that the trap in Amsterdam
hadn’t held; that all four of his outside men were dead; that,
except for the one that was left, he was alone.

And he would know it was Guinness waiting for
him. Nothing would be hidden from him now.

Would he be tired of running? Was that,
perhaps, the reason why his car had remained where it was, why he
had apparently decided to forego escape? Was it caution or merely
weariness? Well, they were both tired then, he of running and
Guinness of chasing. They would let this be the end of it. It was
time to stop this nonsense, and either live or die.

At about that moment he became aware of a
faint crackling sound, no more than a texture of noise over the
silence, something you almost couldn’t be sure you were hearing at
all. But, as he listened, resting the palms of his hands on the
ground in a perfectly unconscious effort to focus its blurred
impression, he knew it was out there. There was
something—someone.

Two, or one? No, one. One man, somewhere
behind him, the moldering debris of fallen leaves and dead grass
crackling slightly under his feet. He was moving very slowly, with
almost painful care because he hadn’t found what he was looking for
and didn’t want it to find him.

Guinness stood up, not even moving his feet,
trying to gauge the distance. Whoever he was, he was close, but not
close enough, not close enough to try anything. Not yet.

He had left the rifle lying on the ground,
and now he took the beretta from his pocket. This would be work at
close quarters; the rifle would only get in the way and he didn’t
want something for which he would need both hands. The beretta
would be like simply pointing a finger. With as little noise as he
could manage, he began working his way farther back into the
covering woods. Somehow he felt certain that this new presence was
seeking him out along the border of the trees. When he felt he was
far enough inside, he dropped down to squat on his heels and
wait.

It seemed forever. Perhaps he really had only
imagined the sound—perhaps his mind was playing tricks on him and
he should just lie down for a little snooze. What he wouldn’t have
given, suddenly, for a quiet twenty minutes of sleep; twenty
minutes and doubtless he would wake up with his head wonderfully
clear again. Except that, of course, the chances were he would wake
up dead. Because he hadn’t imagined anything. Because there was a
man coming through the woods, with the object of killing him.

Because by then, of course, he had seen the
guy. He wasn’t so much a visible shape as merely a hint of
movement, something vague that moved from one spot to another and
then was gone. But he was there.

They weren’t more than twenty-five feet
apart. Guinness was quite sure the man hadn’t spotted him—he was
too wary; he was still searching, still feeling his way. It was
eerie to be so close to him and yet unseen. It was like being
invisible; it introduced into Guinness’s mind a brief moment of
doubt concerning his own bodily existence. But that passed. They
were both of them real enough.