“You Goddamn stupid idiot! What the hell you shooting at?”
Smith’s fingers loosened. “I guess I spooked.” His voice was even and controlled. He set the gun down, leaning the muzzle against the wall. The dead rat was splashed over a square yard of wood. Smith wiped his face with his handkerchief. He watched the fur and flesh of the mangled rat until a gunshot drove a path up through the window and put a second eye in the ceiling. Smith picked up the gun and went back to the window, standing beside it and moving his face cautiously until he could see down into the garden.
Now there were four of them, standing foolishly in a group talking among themselves. “Why don’t they take cover?”
Hooker said, “They would, if you took a shot at them.”
“Come over here a minute. Let’s finish them off.”
“Why not?”
Hooker came over, taking his submachine gun down off his back. He put his back to the wall immediately across from the window. For a moment Smith heard his own breathing above the noise of the flames. Dry, hot smoke scraped his face. Hooker said, “A Goddamn shooting gallery.”
“I wonder why they don’t take cover?”
Smith put the gun to his shoulder, cheek to stock — no, the recoil would bruise his cheek; he lifted his head. Barrel up, now, and allow for shooting downhill. The targets were large and motionless, talking. All his muscles were relaxed; he felt good. “Now, Hooker?”
“Now.”
The battering of the two guns sounded out of tune. The barrel became hot against his fingers, and he moved his grip to the forestock and fired a second burst. The four soldiers fell against each other like a collapsing tent. One of them jerked in spasmic dance. They fell in a single inseparable mass. Smith was thinking about the splattered rat.
His gun ran out of ammunition. He took it down and put his last loaded magazine into it. Down in the garden, the arms and legs moved now and then. A helmet on a bush showed a dark moist spot exactly in the center.
Smith said, “How could anybody be so Goddamn stupid?”
Hooker went back across the platform to his machine gun. A big fire truck was coming up the road, and Hooker fired a belt of ammunition into the tires. The truck scraped to a stop, blocking the road.
“Okay,” Hooker said. “Time to get out of here.” He was laughing.
They ran down the treacherous stairs, leaving the machine gun behind. Smith almost lost his balance. Concussion from the exploding gasoline storage tanks had knocked down part of the lower wall and the narrow stair; they had to jump the last eight feet to the floor.
They went back through the cobwebs to the rear of the pagoda and slipped out into the garden. Hooker said, “Wait a minute. Somebody coming.”
“I don’t hear—”
Hooker slapped his mouth gently. Smith closed it; his lips stung. Hooker turned his gun toward the corner. A man’s shape broke into view, running. Hooker fired a short burst. The soldier staggered, dropped his rifle, and stumbled back around the corner.
“Crap,” said Hooker. “Come on.”
Sirens advanced not far away. Smith ran along behind Hooker, leaping tangled vines. They plunged through the back of the garden and ran down a little dirt path, still puddled with mud. Wind plunged in and out of Smith’s chest. They reached the head of a little street.
The hill blocked sight of the fire, but the clouds were red. The glow glistened on the moist cobblestones. Smith dropped to his knees and could not stand up. He could not make his voice cry out.
Half a block ahead, Hooker looked back over his shoulder. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Smith could not shake his head. He stared open-mouthed at Hooker. Hooker’s face went out of focus. Smith dropped his gun, and Hooker, a vague drifting outline, ran back to him through a clinging mist. Hooker’s big meaty hand came out of it and smote Smith across the face like the flat of an ax against a side of beef. The slap tilted Smith’s precious equilibrium — he fell against the soft mattress of the street. He saw the round toes of Hooker’s combat boots, sideways to the plane of his vision.
He saw the remains of the dead rat in the corner of the room. It scuttled forward; its eyes glowed. He could feel the rat’s hot breath.
Hooker slung his machine gun across his back and reached down to pick up the Corporal, but Smith pulled away, got on his feet, and ran off like a cyclone, shrieking. Hooker went after him, cursing. Smith ran up the street, zigzagging at amazing speed until he bounced off a wall and reeled for a bit. At the head of the street, a group of men appeared from the pagoda gardens. Hooker stopped and settled down coolly on one knee to shoot. Smith weaved back and forth across the field of fire. He ran right up to the top of the street, and the soldiers shot him down.
It was while Smith was still falling that Hooker swept the hill with his gun. The soldiers fell back into the garden, taking cover. One of them crawled, dragging a limp leg. Hooker dived for the nearest building and slid along the wall, sprinkling the head of the street at intervals with bullets. He got away into an alley and heard the rattling steel of an armored car advancing up the hill. Hooker cursed. “Stupid Goddamn idiot,” he said. “Jesus H. Christ.” He went down into the city with a disgusted expression. A dozen blocks below the hill, he stopped at an intersection in the protection of a deep doorway.
A jeep went by at high speed. Hooker flattened himself back into the door. The jeep was overloaded with troops. It went up the hill, and Hooker said, “Too late, guys.” He laughed.
The staff car came out of a side street and stopped in the intersection; he heard the engine gun three times. He stepped out of cover and walked over to the car. Sergeant Khang held the door open. Colonel Tyreen said, “Where’s Smith?”
“He didn’t make it,” Hooker said. He got in, and Tyreen drove up the street. “He cracked up. Went crazy. I couldn’t stop him. The damn fool bastard ran right up the hill, and they shot him all to pieces.”
Tyreen said, “He saw it coming a while ago.”
In the back seat Saville said, “Anyhow, nobody can hurt him now.” He had someone across his lap, wrapped in a raincoat. Hooker could not make out the man’s face.
Tyreen drove into a wagon barn and turned off the ignition. He threw the keys into a pile of straw. “We walk from here. They’ll have half the battalion looking for this car as soon as they get that fire under control.”
Hooker said, “That was a damn pretty fire, Colonel.”
Saville hoisted the unconscious man in his arms. Sergeant Khang went to the door to scout the street. Saville said, “What now?”
“It’s a few blocks to the garage. We’ll get back to the truck.” Tyreen wiped his mouth raggedly. “Breaking him out was the easy part. Getting away — that’s the rough patch.”
Chapter Thirty-five
1245 Hours
Strange air pressures built up in the clouded skies; at this particular instant McKuen’s altimeter read twelve thousand feet. “Ridiculous,” McKuen said. “Mister, we have been banging around up here for more than an hour, and I’d just like you to be knowin’ that we have twelve minutes’ fuel in the tanks and I dinna ken where the bloody hell we are, if you’ll be kind enough to pardon me Scottish. We should have been over the briny Goddamn deep twenty minutes ago, if the compass is anywhere near right. But we just passed a bloody mountain peak. Either we have been fighting a forty-mile-an-hour head wind or we are flying at ninety-five miles an hour, which perhaps you know is quite improbable, not to say bloody impossible.”
After a moment’s droning silence, McKuen said, “Of course, being dead, Mister Shannon cannot well be expected to reply. Mister, you are Goddamn bloody well lucky.”