Then he heard the music. It was a long way off, but between the squalls, fragments of it drifted to his ears. It was Jay, and he was singing that damned song. Reeve made towards the sound, but he took his time. He knew it wasn’t really Jay-it was the cassette recorder. Jay had recorded himself singing the song over and over again, his voice rising the longer the recording went on.
Reeve had to cross a wide valley between the two peaks, and knew he would be most vulnerable here. There was no sign of Jay, just the music, getting closer now. He edged around towards it, moving in a crouch, backwalking part of the way, staying to the shelter of slopes wherever he could. Until he came to the final slope. The music sounded just the other side of the ridge. Reeve crawled up the slope, hugging the ground.
There was a saucer-shaped dip beyond the ridge, and in the center sat the cassette recorder. Reeve lay there for a few minutes, until he could stand the music no longer. He took aim with the MP5 and hit the fat black box dead center.
The box exploded, flames shooting out radially from it. Booby-trapped. Maybe now Jay would come looking.
Suddenly there was another explosion, much closer to Reeve. The ground quivered, and divots showered down around him. For a split second he was back in the scrape in Argentina, and Jay was about to crack.
Now another explosion, very close. He realized what was happening. Jay was in hiding somewhere, and had guessed the direction of Reeve’s burst of gunfire. Now he was tossing grenades in that direction, and they weren’t landing far short of their target. Reeve stood up to see if he could spot the grenades in flight. Smoke from the explosions was being dispersed by the sharp breeze, but pungent tendrils still coiled up from the plastic remains of the cassette player.
Suddenly a figure stood up on the far side of the gully. Naked, body and face smeared with earth, white teeth grinning through the improvised face paint.
Jay.
Sixty feet away and firing from the hip.
Two bullets thudded into Reeve, pushing him off his feet. He rolled back down the slope, just managing to keep hold of his gun. He came to a stop on the gully floor, but knew he had no time to check the damage. He had to get out of the gully. He scraped his way up the other side, cresting the rise before Jay came into view. He just made it. Rain stung his eyes as he ran, feet slipping in mud. Another narrow valley, across a stream… he knew where he was going, knew where he’d end up. One bullet had caught him in the left shoulder, the other between shoulder and chest. They burned. The scabbard was still strapped to his right leg, but it slowed him down, so he undid the straps and drew out the dagger, discarding the scabbard.
“Hey, Philosopher!” Jay called, his voice manic. “You like hide-and-seek? You were always chicken, Philosopher! No guts.”
Reeve knew what Jay was doing: trying to rile him. Anger made you strong in some ways, but so weak in others.
But there was no pink mist now, nothing in Reeve’s heart but cool procedure and searing pain. He crested two more rises be-fore he found himself at the chasm, a rupture in the land which ran in a jagged tear to the sea. At high tide, the base of the cavity filled with gurgling, murderous water. But just now it was a damp bed of jagged rocks. It was dark down there, no matter what time of day, whatever the weather above. A place of shadows and secrets never brought up into the light. Reeve walked its edge. He wasn’t scared of it-it was too familiar to him-but he’d seen his weekend soldiers cower in its presence. He picked his spot and waited, taking time to examine his wounds. He was bleeding badly. Given time, he could create makeshift dressings, but he knew time was short.
“Hey, Philosopher!” Jay yelled. “Is this blood real?” A pause. “Tastes real, so I guess it is! Want to know something, Philosopher? I’ve done a lot of thinking over the years about Operation Stalwart. I’ve been wondering why they chose us. I mean, I was fucked up after that fiasco on the glacier. I should never have been allowed off the ship, never mind sent behind enemy lines. I wanted to kill those bastards so badly. And you… well, you weren’t popular, Philosopher. You had too many ideas in your head, including your own ideas. You were the Philosopher, reading too much, turning yourself on to anarchism and all that other stuff. As far as the brass were concerned, there was half a chance you were becoming the enemy. See, Philosopher, we were both of a kind-loose wires, expendable. That was always going to be a one-way mission, and it would’ve turned out that way if I hadn’t saved our hides.”
The voice sounded maybe a hundred yards away. Two-thirds of a yard per stride… Reeve started counting, at the same time snaking his way back up the slope, listening intently for any clue as to the line Jay was taking. He guessed he would simply follow the trail of blood.
Reeve was just below the crest now. Suddenly he heard a grunt as Jay started to climb. In a few seconds he would crest the rise, Reeve just the other side of it, hugging the land. Reeve stopped breathing. Jay was so close, not even six feet away.
Reeve concentrated all his energies, closing his eyes for a moment, finally taking a deep breath.
“Hey, Philos-”
He threw out his good arm with all his strength, plunging the dagger through Jay’s boot and into his foot. As Jay started to scream, Reeve yanked his ankles away from him, hurling him down the slope. Jay could see what was at the bottom of the slide and tried digging his heels, elbows, and fingers in, but the ground was slippery and he just kept on sliding. Reeve was sliding, too. The force of his momentum when he’d hauled Jay over the crest had sent him into a roll. His shoulder banged against the ground, almost causing him to pass out. Below him, he saw Jay slip three-quarters of the way over the precipice, his hands scrabbling for purchase. Reeve was rolling straight towards him. They’d fall into the ravine together.
Reeve struck out with his right hand, the hand which still held the dagger. The blade sank into the earth, but started to cut through it, barely slowing his descent. He twisted the blade so the meat of it was gouging into the wet soil. It was like applying a brake. He jolted to a stop, his legs hanging into space. He found the edge with his knees and started to pull himself up, but a hand grabbed one of his ankles. And now Jay’s other hand let go of the lip of the ravine, and he used it to gain a better grip on Reeve, hauling himself up over Reeve’s slippery legs while their combined weight started the dagger cutting through the earth again, so that as Jay climbed, Reeve slid farther over the edge.
He waited till Jay was preparing to slide farther up; while he was unbalanced, Reeve rolled onto his side, shrugging Jay off and at the same time lashing out at him with his feet. For an instant they were side by side, the way they had been that final night in Argentina, their faces so close Reeve could feel Jay’s breath against his cheek.
“Well,” Jay panted, trying to grin, “isn’t this cozy? Just the two of us, like it was always meant to be.”
“You should have died back in Rio Grande,” Reeve spat.
“If we’d stayed in that damned trench, we’d have died,” Jay hissed. “You owe me, Philosopher!”
“Owe you?” Reeve was clawing at the ground with the fingers of his left hand, feeling pain shoot through his shoulder. When he had a good handhold he started to ease the dagger out of the ground.
“Yes, owe me,” Jay was saying, readying to pull them both over the edge and onto the rocks below.
Reeve raised the dagger and plunged it into Jay’s neck. Blood gurgled from Jay’s mouth, his eyes wide in amazement as one hand went to the wound. He lost all grip and started to slide over the edge.
Reeve watched him go, the head disappearing last of all, eyes still wide open. He didn’t hear the body hit the ground. Reeve let out a roar which echoed down the chasm walls and up into the sky. Not a roar of pain or even of victory.