When the Killing Starts (11 page)

About a hundred yards past the rock I moved back to the east again, heading for the shore of the northern lake. The going was harder here; the trees were smaller and tighter together than I was used to in my own area, northern jack pine mostly. I found it hard to walk and ended up on hands and knees, keeping down under the worst of the branches. I wondered what the group's agenda was for the day. Would they be on an exercise, reds versus blues, one group stalking the other with blank ammunition? Or would they be getting weapons training? Whatever they did, I hoped it marched them away from their base. I had a little sabotage in mind, something that would save me a lot of trouble if I was seen.

About thirty yards north of the rock, in a clearing they had slashed from the trees, I found the messing area. They had built a fireplace of rock slabs, and beside it was a big supply tent and two smaller tents, two-man jobs. Wallace and Dunphy lived there, I guessed, with perhaps the two men I had missed on my recount. Perhaps those two were the group's cooks, inferior to the two principals but important enough to warrant separate accommodation. I waited for a couple of minutes within a hundred yards of the tents, but nobody stirred. They were all out together on the morning's work.

At six forty-five precisely, the shooting started. Riflerange practice by the sound of it. In every case there was a shout of command and then a crash of rifle fire, always in the distinctive triple-burst patterns. It sounded as if the men were being trained two at a time, each man firing a full magazine in those efficient b-b-bub bursts, then waiting for a report from the range officer.

The sound was coming from two hundred yards north of me. At first I wasn't sure of the direction in which they were firing. It figured to be away from their camp, so I was safe from stray bullets, but it was reassuring after a minute or so to hear the whine of a ricochet off a rock to the east of me. They were firing across the lake at targets set up on the far shore.

Now I had to work, carrying out the only project that would buy me time and safety if they saw me and started pursuit. I edged on down toward the water, and there, about twenty yards from the lake, tied to stout trees, I found their boats. There were three of them, inflatable rubber dinghies, each with a twenty-horsepower Mercury outboard.

I worked quickly, opening the cap of each fuel tank and tipping in a handful of sand, wiping the top of the tanks carefully so that there was no trace of the sand on the outside. It meant they would start and run for perhaps a minute before the fuel filters or even the carburetors choked up. With any luck they would be stranded out on the lake, paddling to beat hell while they swore and tried to clear the engine. It would give me a chance to get away in my canoe.

The shooting was still going on, but I didn't linger. Instead, I ducked back the way I had come, rounding their camp on the west side. Only this time I didn't pass it. I squirmed in close, checking again for guards, and when I didn't see anybody, I went into the center of it and flapped up the end of Jason Michaels's hooch. It had a pack inside it and his mess tin. I opened the lid of the tin and placed the photograph that his mother had given me inside it, face up. I wasn't sure how smart the kid was, but if he had any brains at all, he would know it meant his mother had sent somebody to look for him. It would alert him to be on the watch for me. It was a gamble, but it was one I had to take.

Then I was through for the morning. Now I had to wait for nightfall, keeping alert in case they started moving out around the camp on an attack-and-defense exercise. To be sure I wouldn't be spotted, I retreated all the way back to where I had spent the night and crawled under cover in my thicket. If they did play games, they wouldn't be looking for me. Their attention would be on the campsite.

The day dragged as I lay still, listening to every sound in the bush, expecting any moment for a man to come creeping through the trees and point his assault rifle at me. I've done it before, plenty of times, but always for real, armed and ready to kill if I was seen. This time was different. I was walking the very boundaries of the law, able to defend myself if I had to but not by killing. These men might be misguided losers, but they hadn't committed a capital offense, yet. I had the feeling they would if Dunphy caught me. I had humiliated him in Toronto, and with his record, I didn't think I would survive if I was captured.

As the hours slowly passed, I listened for activity of any kind. Around nine the shooting stopped, and the men doubled back into camp. I guessed they were stripping and cleaning their rifles, but I was too far away to see. Then, promptly at ten, they broke into another chant, which faded as they doubled away to the north. And then I heard the first sound that made me anxious. They ran down to the water, six at a time, carrying their rubber boats.

I listened as Wallace shouted instructions for them to splash out into the water and climb aboard. Then they started paddling. That was a relief. If they tried to use the motors, they would soon work out that they had visitors, and the rest of the day would be spent clearing the area. I would have to abandon my canoe and back off, going as far west as necessary to bypass the swamp I'd noticed on the map. Probably it wouldn't be possible and I would have to swim it—dangerous. But necessary. I'd be forced out and wouldn't have any other choice.

For hours they paddled up and down the lake. Every twenty minutes they would head for shore and make a mock attack, beaching their craft and crunching up through the bush. If they were practicing stealth, they were earning about three points out of ten. The noise they made would have alerted an enemy in seconds.

Through it all I could hear Wallace shouting, hectoring, keeping up the kind of DI pressure that makes recruits hate. He was good at his job, I had to say that much for him. Even his mother would have hated him. By late afternoon they had improved enough that I could no longer hear any splashing as they paddled, and I was shocked to find them coming ashore just a hundred yards south of me, on the point I had noticed on my map.

The crashing came closer. I swallowed quickly and waited, huddled tighter to the earth than I would have been under incoming fire, waiting for the shout of recognition that would alert me to get up and run, not sure what good that would do me, anyway. Then I heard a man swear, the angry shout of someone at the end of his patience. And then another man laughed. They were thirty yards from me, and I raised my head and checked them. One was holding his face, swearing over and over in a weary monotone while the other one said, "Why don't you look where you're goin', faggot!"

"Goddamn trees," the first one said. He took his hands down from his face, and I could see blood on his cheek. "Why're we working out here, anyway? We'll be in the jungle or rice paddies or something."

Then the second one said, "If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined." The standard soldier's response to trouble. And the youth in his voice made my neck tingle. It was young Michaels, weary but proud. It wasn't his face that had been gouged, and he was certain it was because he was the better man. And he was only twenty-five yards from me.

I watched him as he stood stretching his aching back. Then the other man turned away, and Michaels called out, "Wait up. I'm gonna take a leak."

The other man was angry, following the party line. "Can't you do that on your own? Need the goddamn butler to undo your zipper or what?" Then he moved back the way he had come.

I lay still, breathing very shallow. I'd lucked out. Twenty guys in camp. Two of them had come close to me, and one of them was Michaels. If I could count on this kind of luck, I could clean up at the tables in Las Vegas.

Michaels unzipped and relieved himself, and I took my chance. I slithered out of the bush, coming up ten yards behind him. He was fastening his pants when I hissed at him, very low. "Jason."

He lifted his head and glanced around, not seeing me. He wouldn't have lasted a day in 'Nam. I hissed again. "Over here. Keep quiet."

Now he saw me, and he raised his gun. I left my rifle on the ground and held one finger to my lips. He stared at me, but he didn't cover me with his rifle, and I moved closer.

"I'm here to see if you're okay."

"Who are you?" Not the response I'd been looking for.

It sounded as if he had confidence in himself. That could be trouble.

"A friend of your family." I didn't narrow it down to his mother. That might have given him all the prompting he needed to raise his gun and hold me.

"How'd you get here?" His mother was right. He didn't take kindly to adult interference. Either that or he was bemused by his training. I began to wonder if I'd moved too soon.

"That's not important. I followed you to see if you're all right. If not, we can get out of here. I've got a plane coming for us."

He lowered his rifle all the way to the ground, resting the butt and holding the tip of the barrel at arm's length from him as if the whole thing were a burden.

"Who sent you? Who are you?"

This wasn't a time for explanations. I decided to lie. I could explain later when we were flying out together in the floatplane. "Wallace is out to get you killed," I told him. "He hates your guts because you're from a wealthy family. You've got to get away while you've got the chance."

His lip lifted in a sneer. "Who the hell are you?" he asked contemptuously. "You talk like my mother sent you to try and scare me into going home."

"Wallace is wanted for attempted murder." Just a small exaggeration. "And Dunphy is a psychopath. He did a year in military prison for assaulting one of his own men. I'm telling you, these are bad people."

"And now I'm one of them," he said, and raised his rifle.

He'd left it too late. He had to hoist it by the muzzle before he could aim it at me, and before he had it halfway up, I had my .38 out of my pocket and jammed into his face. "Move and you're gone," I said. "Now listen." His eyes rolled helplessly, and he let the rifle drop. I nodded. "Good. I'm going to leave the gun on you to remind you what you've gotten yourself into as a mercenary. People will be trying to kill you. No flowers, no flags. Just a bullet in the head if you're lucky and tossed aside for the village pigs to disembowel."

He licked his lips. I could see that he was trembling. Good. With any luck my twenty-five grand was within reach. "This Freedom for Hire is a scam. Dunphy doesn't have an army. He's a clearinghouse for recruits. He gets the hiring pay. It's an embarrassment to him if anybody comes back to claim it. On top of which you're rich and he's not. I'm warning you, you're dead if you go with them."

He still said nothing, and I lowered the gun. "Now I can get you out of this. All you have to do is come back here tonight. Sneak out of camp and join me here. Clear your throat quietly and I'll hear you. I'll get you out, and if you still want to play soldier, you can join the regular army. Okay?"

He nodded so quickly that I knew it was the fear in him making the decision. So I added the clincher. "And don't think you can go back and get the rest of them on your side. If you say you saw a man in here and didn't stop him, they'll say you were too chicken to bring me in. And if I'm caught, I'll tell them about this meeting."

His lips were dry, but he nodded again and whispered, "Okay."

I handed him his rifle, and he backed away, watching me fearfully. I was the first real threat he had ever encountered.

 

 

 

EIGHT

 

 

I lay hidden, listening for the sounds of men coming back into the bush, wondering whether Michaels was more afraid of me than he was of Wallace. My meeting with him hadn't been as clean as I would have liked. I had expected anger. Well-adjusted young men don't skip out on their family to go and kill people. But I hadn't expected the hatred he showed for his mother. It was warped, and I didn't know which way he would bend under pressure, whether the new resentments he was building up against Wallace would be enough to make him duck out and come with me or whether he would see me as a hireling of his mother's and hang me out to dry. All I could do was to lie low and wait. It was tense.

The only sounds I could hear were encouraging—shots and whistle blasts from farther down the lake, as if the men were off practicing their attacks in other areas. But I knew Wallace was smart. Even if Michaels had told him about me, he might carry on, lulling me so I would be off guard if he sneaked back with the kid at night.

Eventually I relaxed enough to pull out some of my dog biscuits and gnaw on them. They were some nationally advertised brand that promised to keep your pet young forever. The makers had been generous with the beef flavor, and they went down not badly, although my dentist wouldn't have liked the strain they put on my teeth and they did make me thirsty.

Around dusk I heard the men returning to their camp. Fortunately, Wallace had kept them using the paddles, so they still didn't know they had problems with their outboard motors. That was my ace in the hole if things fell apart later.

I heard them splashing ashore on the rocks at the north end of the lake, and then there was a command, from Dunphy, judging by the crisp English intonation, and a chorus of shouts, and they all hurled themselves into the water. Good training. They had worked all day and were looking forward to a rest and some chow, but he had sent them swimming, in their clothes, I guessed, from the speed with which they hit the lake. Dunphy was a professional. He was teaching them about the real world of patrols and attacks and perpetual discomfort. I listened while they spent ten noisy minutes in the water before doubling back to their messing area, chanting all the way.

It was half an hour later that they returned to their hooches. I guess they'd been given permission to light a fire and dry their clothes, because I soon caught a smell of woodsmoke and was able to pick out a glow in the treetops around their campsite. There was some laughter and the occasional half shout of men at horseplay, but these died away within an hour, and then the glow vanished, and they settled down for the night.