Again, Michael felt no need to respond. But he was listening, because he’d heard something different in the flyer’s voice.
“A hero,” Gantt repeated. “And I am, I suppose. No… I know I am. The letters and the newspapers…they say I am. Signal said it, in three issues. Yes, I am a hero. A shining light for the youth of Germany. For her future and her aspirations.” He once more looked to the empty sky.
“But let me tell you…let me please tell you,” he said quietly, “what the life of a hero is.” He swallowed grit and tried to gather saliva in his mouth. “It’s a hundred flash-bulbs going off in your face, but not one light on in your apartment when you get home.
“It’s vows of undying love, faithful loyalty and reckless sex, but not one plate of a home-cooked meal. It’s the look on a young man’s face when he tells you he too wants to be an eagle, and you have already seen so many faces of young men burned beyond human recognition.” Gantt was silent for awhile. The dice continued to click together in the boy’s closed hand.
“I am the hero,” he went on, quieter still, “who finds the weakness in weaker men. I am the hero who strikes from below, who gives no quarter and expects none. And to tell you the honest truth, Michael, I smile a little bit when the chutes fail to open. For the hero has done his work that day. He has done his work. But oh dear God, I do love the sky.”
Gantt shifted his position against the rock. Michael saw him lift his left arm and regard his wristwatch.
“Your Rolex,” said Gantt, with impudence returning to his voice. “A nice playtoy, but it can’t compare with a Breitling.”
“Is that so?”
“Absolutely so. Well, just look at the difference! Mine has a much larger face with clearer numbers, in my opinion, since yours does not have numbers but difficult-to-read bars where the numbers should be. Mine has an automatic winder and a chronograph. In fact, it’s been created specificially for use by aviators. I’ve had not a bit of trouble with any part of it in the four happy years of ownership. And your Rolex may be very handsome, if that’s what you feel you need to project, but it doesn’t have the pedigree of the Breitling.”
“Hm,” Michael commented.
“The Breitling brand dates from 1884. I believe the Rolex name was trademarked in 1908. If you care to calculate the difference between those years, you’ll find that Breitling has twenty-four years of experience on the Rolex. What do you say to that?”
“I’d say Rolex caught up very quickly to Breitling and surpassed that brand in short order. They learned from Breitling’s mistakes.”
“Oh, really? And how exactly has Rolex surpassed Breitling?”
“In the areas of waterproofing and shockproofing,” Michael answered calmly. “A Rolex was worn by the first British woman to swim the English channel, in October of 1927. You can imagine how cold the water was.”
“Yes, unfortunately I can only imagine,” said Gantt.
“After ten hours in the water, her Rolex was still performing perfectly,” Michael continued. “As for the area of shockproofing, my Rolex is still performing perfectly after—you may recall—this morning’s airplane crash.”
“Ah! Touché,” said the flyer, with a narrow-eyed smile. He held out his wrist for Michael to see. “But my Breitling still beats your Rolex. Beats it by far.”
“And why is that?”
“Because of the band. This leather band. You see it?” It was simply a brown leather band, nothing special about it that Michael could tell. “This band,” said Gantt, “is made from the leather on the instrument panel of my father’s Albatross fighter plane, from 1918. He died in action but he set his plane down first. A perfect landing, they said, and him shot full of holes. His wingman sent my mother a drawing of him that one of his squadron members had done. It was framed in the plane’s wing fabric and panel leather. After my mother passed away I decided I wanted my father to be closer to me than a picture on the wall. I decided I wanted him to fly with me.” Gantt turned his wrist before Michael’s face. “And here he is.”
Michael realized why Gantt feared the Dahlasiffa so much. They would certainly try to take the watch, and they would likely succeed. With it would go the band, which was actually the most valuable part of it to Gantt. And he would die knowing his father’s memory was lost to the hands of the Death Stalkers. Lost, never to be found. It was time, Michael thought, to start moving once more. He sat up and rubbed his injured shoulder. The boy’s hand kept shaking the dice, and occasionally he opened his fingers to see what the pips read. Gantt leaned back against the red rock, his face painted crimson by the setting sun, his eyes not on the gleaming watch but on the plain brown leather band.
Michael had never had such difficulty getting to his feet, but he made it. “I think we should—”
“Ow!” said Gantt, wincing. He had jerked his head away from the rock and grasped at the back of his neck. “Scheisse! Something stung me!”
Michael looked at the rock and saw a trace of movement in a shadow pool. Peering closer, he made out the three-inch-long black scorpion that sat there, king of its domain, its stinger coiled back and ready to deliver another strike.
“Scorpion,” Michael said. The poisonous kind, he did not say. The deadly kind, he did not say.
The kind whose venom could kill a man within several hours, he did not say.
He didn’t have to, because Gantt also saw the scorpion. Gantt drew the Walther and smashed its grip into the shadow pool until the scorpion was a mass of milky paste.
Then he looked at Michael with terror in his eyes.
The boy’s hand stopped.
“Razor,” said Michael.
Gantt pulled Michael’s straight razor from his pocket and gave it to him. He leaned forward. Michael opened the razor and found the sting just to the right of Gantt’s vertebrae. It was a small red puncture wound already becoming ringed with white.
Michael cut an X across the wound and squeezed the blood out of it.
“Did you get it all?” Gantt asked hoarsely, still leaning forward.
Michael didn’t know. He wasn’t sure how deep the stinger had pierced, or how much venom had been delivered. He got down on his knees beside the flyer. “Hold still,” he said, and he sliced another X into the flesh beside the first. Gantt made no sound. Then Michael put his mouth over the wound and sucked the blood like any good vampire in a Bram Stoker horror story.
He spat blood out and repeated the indelicate task. The smell and taste of it made the animal part of him salivate. He realized that the wolf could have a feast right here on this parachute dining-cloth. A third time he sucked at the wound and then spat out the fluid, and then that was all he could do.
“Thank you,” said Gantt. He put his fingers to the back of his neck and then held them, bloodstreaked, before his face. “Thank you,” he repeated.
“I don’t know if I got all of it.”
“All right. Thank you. You tried.”
“We’d better stay here awhile longer,” Michael decided. He noted that the boy had begun shaking his dice again. The boy’s eyes darted between Michael and Gantt. “Just be still,” Michael told the flier.
“Yes. As you say. Yes.” Gantt crawled away from the rock. He lay down on the parachute on his right side, trailing blood as it dripped. He curled up into a fetal position with his hands folded under his right cheek.
An hour passed, during which the sun dropped to the horizon. The light turned deeper red with blue shadows. The air cooled as night came on.
“I’m burning up,” Gantt suddenly said. His voice sounded thick. “Burning up,” he repeated. He sat up, and in the red gloom Michael saw the glistening of small beads of sweat on the man’s ashen face. “Can I have some water?”