First Blood

Teasle had been a long while expecting this from Kern. Now it came. 'I don't know,' Kern said. 'It's getting too complicated. I don't know what I had better do. Suppose he didn't think like that. Suppose he didn't realize there was a break in the line and just stayed where he was between the line and the road. Then if I order those men farther inland, I'll ruin the trap.'

Trautman lifted his hands. 'Suppose whatever the hell you want. It's no matter to me. I don't like helping in the first place. All the same I am. But that doesn't mean I have to explain over and over what I think should be done and then goddamn beg you to do it.'

'Wait, don't misunderstand. I'm not questioning your judgment. It's only that in his position he might not do what's logical. He might feel closed in and run in a circle the way a flushed rabbit does.'

For the first time the pride in Trautman's voice was completely open. 'He won't.'

'But if he does, if he just possibly does, you're not the one who answers for sending the men in the wrong direction. I do. I have to look at this thing from every angle. After all we're just talking theory here. We have no evidence to go on.'

'Then let me give the order,' Teasle said, and the truck seemed to drop three feet, jolting, as a new more serious constriction seized his chest. He struggled to go on talking, braced his body. 'If the order's wrong, I'll gladly answer for it.' He stiffened, holding his breath.

'Christ, are you all right?' Trautman said. 'You'd better lie down quick.'

He gestured to keep Trautman away. Abruptly the radioman said, 'A report is coming through,' and Teasle fought to ignore the racking misbeats of his heart and listen.

'Lie down,' Trautman told him. 'Or I'll have to make you.'

'Leave me alone! Listen!'

'This is National Guard leader thirty-five. I don't figure this. There must be so many of us that the dogs have lost their sense of smell. They want us to go up into the hills instead of toward the road.'

'No, they haven't lost their sense of smell,' Teasle said, clutching himself, voice strung out with pain, to Kern. 'But we've lost a hell of a lot of distance on him while you tried to make up your mind. Do you think now you can bring yourself to give that order?'

9

As Rambo started up the slope of shale toward the mine, a bullet whacked into the rocks a few yards to his left, the rifle report echoing through the forest back there. Staring at the mine entrance, he hurried stumbling up the slope into the tunnel, shielding his face from chips of stone that two more bullets blasted off the right side of the opening. Far down the tunnel, out of reach of more bullets, he stopped exhausted, slumping against a wall, gasping. He had not been able to maintain his distance from them. His ribs. Now the Guardsmen were barely a half mile behind him, coming fast, so taken up in the hunt that they were shooting before they had a clear target. Weekend soldiers. Trained for this but not experienced, so they did not have the discipline and in the excitement might do anything. Rush in stupidly. Spray bullets down the shaft. He was right to have come here. If he had tried giving up at the stream, they would have been too quick, would have shot him. He needed a buffer between himself and them so they would not shoot before he explained.

He returned up the dark tunnel toward the light at the mouth, studying the roof. When he found where it was dangerously cracked, he pushed away the support beams, lurching back before the ceiling could cave in on him. He was not worried by the risk. If the collapse was so great that it buried the entrance and blocked off his air, he knew that they would dig him out before he died. But when he pushed away the beams, nothing happened, and he had to try the next beams ten feet farther down, and this time when he pushed, the roof did collapse, barely missing him with a crash and rumble of falling rock that made his ears ring. The passage was filled with dust and he was choking, standing back coughing, waiting for the dust to settle so he could see how much rock had fallen. A faint beam of light was radiating through the dust, and then the dust was clouding to the floor, and there was a foot of space between the barrier of rocks and the nearly demolished roof. More rocks dislodged, and the space dwindled to six inches. The reduced breeze that was coming through wafted some of the dust down the tunnel. It became colder. He slid down the wall to the damp floor, listening to the roof crack and settle, and very soon he heard the dim voices out there.

'Do you think it killed him?'

'How would you like to crawl in and find out?'

'Me?'

Some of them laughed then, and Rambo smiled.

'A cave or a mine,' another man said. His voice was loud and deliberate, and Rambo guessed that he was talking into a field radio. 'We saw him run inside, and then the place dumped in on him. You should have seen the dust. We have him for sure. Wait a minute, hold it a second.' And then as if to someone outside, 'Get your dumb ass away from the entrance. If he's still alive, he might be able to see to shoot at you.'

Rambo inched up the rockfall, his knees pressing hard on the blunt tips of stone, to peer through the space at the top. There were the sides of the entrance which framed the shale slope and the bare trees and the sky outside, and then a soldier ran into view from the left to the right, his canteen thumping on and off his hip as he ran.

'Hey, didn't you just hear me say to keep clear of the entrance?' the one man said, out-of-view on the right.

'Over there I can't hear what you're saying on the radio.'

'Well Christ.'

He might as well get this finished. 'I want Teasle,' he called through the small opening. 'I want to give myself up.'

'What?'

'Did you guys hear that?'

'Bring Teasle. I want to give myself up.' His words rumbled in the tunnel. He listened carefully to the ceiling in case it might crack and drop onto him.

'In there. It's him.'

'Hold on, he's alive in there,' the man said into the radio. 'He's talking to us.' There was a pause and then the man spoke much closer to the entrance, though still out of sight. 'What do you want in there?'

'I'm tired of saying it. I want Teasle out here and I want to give myself up.'

They were whispering now, then the man was talking into the radio, repeating the message, and Rambo wished they would hurry and get this over. He had not believed that surrendering would make him feel this empty. Now that the fight was over, he was positive that he had exaggerated his fatigue and the pain in his ribs. Surely he could have gone on longer. He had in the war. Then he shifted position and his ribs bit and he had not exaggerated.

'Hey, in there,' the man called, out-of-sight. 'Can you hear me? Teasle says he can't come up.'

'Dammit, this is what he's been waiting for, isn't it? You tell him to get the hell up here.'

'I don't know anything about it. All they said was he can't come.'

'You just told me it was Teasle. Now it's they. Have you been talking with Teasle or haven't you? I want him up here. I want his guarantee that nobody shoots me by mistake.'

'Don't you worry. If one of us shoots you, it won't be by mistake. You come out of there careful and we won't have any mistakes.'

He thought about it. 'All right, but I need help pushing away these rocks. I can't do that all by myself.'

He heard them whispering again, and then the man said, 'Your rifle and knife. Throw them out.'