I ignored him. It seemed that my luck had finally run out. I expected no help from Dox. There was a bag with five million dollars in it being contested in front of his position. I couldn’t reasonably expect him to abandon it. I was alone now, fittingly enough, and I had no good options.
“Tell me how you have been tracking me, and I promise to kill you quickly. If you don’t, I will make you suffer.”
My mind began to drift. I barely heard his questions. The urgency of his tone seemed strange to me, irrelevant. I wondered at some level whether I was suffering from the effects of blood loss.
“I will ask you a final time,” he was saying. I noticed that he had picked up the razor. “Then I will slice your face apart.”
I looked out at the harbor and had the oddest sense that I was connected with it somehow, that my spirit was leaving my body and expanding outward. I was vaguely surprised at how unafraid I was. Death catches everyone eventually, and I had never harbored any illusions about its ability to catch me. That it had hesitated so long to do so seemed born more of a desire to mock me than of any real inclination to wait. Death had tired of that game, and had finally moved in to collect what we all owe.
Well, come and get it, I thought. Go ahead, take what’s yours. Choke on it.
There was a strange sound, softer than the pop of a champagne cork, louder than the fizzing of a seltzer bottle. I looked over and was surprised to see a fine mist erupting out of one of the yakuza’s heads. Probably I should have done something about that. But the event seemed to have little to do with me.
The other yakuza had turned to look at his partner, whose body was sliding straight to the ground like a suddenly liquefying pole. The yakuza’s mouth was hanging open, as though in shock or incomprehension. But only for a second. Because then his head was erupting, too.
Even in his battered condition, Belghazi recognized what had happened. He was able to process it, and somehow to react. He turned and began to run. But something unseen knocked him down. He landed on his face, and immediately pulled himself to his feet. He staggered for a second, then got an unsteady foot in front of him. Something knocked him down again. This time he didn’t get up.
I looked out at the harbor again. Wherever I was going, I was already halfway there. All the commotion around me seemed trivial, even silly. I wished it would stop and leave me alone.
I heard soft footfalls to my right. I sighed and looked over. It was Dox. He had approached through the hole in the fence and was moving smoothly toward us, the rifle shouldered and pointed downrange.
Maybe he’d recovered the five million. If so, it would be time to tie up loose ends. Belghazi. Then, I supposed, me. Game over.
I looked out at the harbor again, feeling myself slipping toward it, into it. The water was warm. The feeling was not at all unpleasant.
“You all right?” I heard Dox ask. I looked over. I saw his eyes move to Belghazi’s prone form, then scan left and right, then back again.
I didn’t answer. The question might have been cruel, given what he was about to do to me, yet somehow it struck me as almost funny. I looked at him and smiled.
“That mean yes?” he asked, pulling abreast of me now. He raised the rifle to eye level. There was a soft crack and a flash from the end of the suppressor.
I looked over at Belghazi. He was totally still. Dox had put a last round into his head.
I felt tired, so tired. The ground underneath me was soaking wet and warm, and for a moment I thought I was back near the Xe Kong river, where I had killed that young Viet Cong. He, too, had been lying on earth saturated with his own blood, and in that instant it was as though I was seeing the world through his eyes. As though he was calling to me from across time, from across the grave.
Dox was looking at me now. I saw concern in his expression. He lowered the rifle.
Suddenly I was confused.
“I thought I was dead,” I said, trying to explain. My voice sounded odd to me, slow and unnaturally low.
“Well, you don’t look so hot, but I’m pretty sure you ain’t dead. I would say, though, that we ought to get out of here.”
“Mmmmmm,” I said, looking past him at a dark and suddenly retreating shape that flickered at the edge of my vision. Only teasing, Death seemed to be saying over his shoulder with a rictus smile, with good humor and an oddly paternal affection. Take care of yourself, okay? We’ll play again.
Dox stooped and got his head under my arm, then straightened. We started walking toward the fence.
“What about… what about the money?” I asked, not understanding what was happening.
“Well, it was a heartbreaker, I won’t deny it, but I had to abandon the big payday and come to your rescue. I meant to get here sooner, but there was a lot going on back at the ranch and I had a fair amount of ground to cover. Plus these PSG/1’s are heavy, even for musclemen like me.”
“You just… you just let it go?” I asked, trying to take it in.
I felt him shrug. “I don’t give a damn about money if my buddy’s in trouble, partner, and I know you feel the same.”
I didn’t respond. “What about… what happened in front of the gate? That other car?”
I lost my footing for a second, but Dox’s arm, tight around my waist, kept me going. “Now there’s one nobody would believe if I were to tell ’em,” he said. “I don’t know who Belghazi’s pal is, the white fella, I mean, but he’s quite a shooter. He dropped one of the men in that Toyota, and then, when the two Arabs who came in the van got up from humping the ground, he capped them both point-blank. They seemed a bit surprised at the time. He and the other fella from the Toyota had each other pinned down after that. They both had good cover, and I couldn’t wait for a shot ’cause I thought you might need my help. Too bad, too. If I’d been able to take them both down, that bag would be waiting for us right now. Well, it might be, still. We’ll see in a minute.”
“Hilger… he was shooting them all?”
“Hilger? Ah, the white one. Yeah, he sure was. I don’t think that boy wanted anyone around to contradict the story he was making up about how all this carnage occurred and his role in it. He’s a resourceful one, and cold-blooded, too. Hell, Kanezaki ought to hire him for the shit we do.”
We got to the street and paused. I heard gunshots from in front of the gate, then return fire from inside the Toyota.
“Damn, those boys haven’t killed each other yet,” Dox said. “Looks like we’re shit out of luck. Here we go.”
He pulled me across the street fast. If Hilger or the Arab noticed, they gave no sign of it. They had each other to worry about.
A few seconds later we were on the other side, heading upward, enveloped by darkness. I lost my footing again and this time couldn’t find it. For a moment I felt I was floating on water, that some sea creature had risen up beneath me and lifted me onto its snout. My head cleared, and I realized Dox had picked me up over an enormous shoulder and was carrying me.
“Wait,” I said. “Put me down. The money’s right there, if you can drop those two.”
“Partner, you are bleeding out,” I heard him say from under me. He didn’t even break stride. “Don’t worry about the money. We’ll get another chance.”
I drifted away again. When I came to, we were back at the van we had rented. Dox laid me out in the rear and slammed the door. The engine gunned and we drove off. A moment later, I heard him on the cell phone. His tone was urgent but I was fading in and out again and couldn’t make out what he was saying. Something about a doctor, maybe.
“Come on, man,” I heard him bellowing from somewhere in front of me. It seemed that his voice was coming from a great distance. “Stay with me now. Kanezaki’s scrambling a doctor and I need to know your blood type.”