“Missed. Virgin, you disappoint me. He drew back. Son of a whore.” He recocked, the spent shell popping out and rolling down to Trewitt, who hid beneath him in a gathering of rocks.
“I think maybe they’re going to rush us now. Why not? It’s light; they won’t shoot each other up. I’ll introduce you to them in a few seconds, Mr. Norteamericano. I’ll introduce you to Señor Machinegun and his friend Señor Other Machinegun, and his friend Señor Still Another Machinegun. And there’s Señor Telescope Rifle. I want them to meet my good friend over here, Señor Gringo Crazy Fool Who Wanted Adventures — Hey, what is your name? You must have a name?”
“Trewitt. It’s Trewitt,” Trewitt said, anxious to get the information into Ramirez’s brain for some reason.
“Mr. Crazy Gringo Trewitt Who Wants Adventures. Well, he sure got himself a hell of a one, didn’t he? In Old Mexico. Hey, Mr. Crazy Gringo Trewitt, I think they going to come any second now, oh, yes, any Mother-of-Jesus moment, and then we’ll see who the whores are, Hey you whores, come on, get it over with, whores, ha, they ain’t gonna stick their heads up, no sir.”
He carried on like that crazily for a while, imploring them to come at him, begging them, blaspheming their mothers and their fathers and their children and their pets. He finally seemed to run out of energy.
“Oh, Jesus,” moaned Trewitt.
“He won’t help you now, Mr. Crazy Gringo, no He won’t I don’t see no Jesus around. I don’t see no Virgin, I don’t see no priests, no sister, no nothing. No church up here, no Holy Mother. I’d like to get me that black whore’s abortion with the telescope rifle. Oh, Holy Mother, give him to your sinning child, Reynoldo, just give him to me so I may shoot his balls off, please, I’ll go to mass every day for the rest of — Hey!”
“Huh? Oh, I must have dozed off.”
“A fine time for a nap, Chico. Hey, mister, I don’t think you gonna get off this mountain. I don’t think Reynoldo Ramirez gonna make it off either.”
Another shot struck the ground.
“Close, he sure was close on that. Jesus, I never thought I’d end up on a mountain with no place to go. I figured I’d get it from some crazy woman. Women, they’re all whores, crazy as monkeys. They cut your kidneys out to eat, you let ’em. I figured one’d get me good. Never figured on no mountain with no gringo, no sir. Madonna, Give me more time, damn you, She’s such a holy bitch, that woman, She wants you to light Her candles, but then when you need a miracle She ain’t around. GIVE ME MORE TIME, VIRGIN. Oh, yes, sí, here he comes, one of our friends, yes, I think I have him” — he lifted the rifle — “yes, yes, so nice” — and fired — “missed, you whore, you son of a black whore, he just ducked back. I just miss him by a hair—”
“Oh, Jesus, I think I’m dying,” said Trewitt.
“I think you are too. I think I am too.”
Trewitt tried to bring himself to a sitting position. He was tired of lying down on the rough stones. But he couldn’t. His rifle skidded out of his grip. He coughed once and was amazed to notice a strand of pink saliva bridging the gap from his lips to the rifle, a scarlet gossamer, delicate and tense. Finally it snapped and disappeared.
“Oh, Mother. Mother. Mom. Jesus, I’m so scared.”
He tried to grab on to something.
“Hold it down, okay? Your mama ain’t around,” said Ramirez.
“Help me. Help me, please.”
“Sorry, Chico. I got worries of my own.”
Shock, golden and beautiful, spread through Trewitt’s body, calming him. It was a great smooth laziness flooding through him.
From the side came a sudden burst of automatic fire. It chewed across the rocks in which they hid, and Trewitt felt the spray of fragments as the bullets exploded against the stones and knew enough to shrink back. He heard the Mexican scream. Then Ramirez fired his rifle, threw the bolt furiously, fired again, screaming, “Black dark whores, flower of pus, human filth.” He paused.
“I think I got him.” He was breathing laboriously. “But he got me too. Oh, Virgin, forgive me. I want a priest. Virgin, forgive your sinning child.”
Trewitt heard the rifle land on the ground and begin to slide down the rocks.
The man with the automatic weapon sent another burst through the stones, kicking up dust and splinters. Trewitt shrank back.
“Hey,” shouted Ramirez, “come and kill us, abortions.”
“Mother. MOTHER!” shouted Trewitt, trying to jack-knife up.
Another burst ripped across the crest.
“I’m dying, oh fuck, I think I’m dying.”
“Here they come,” said Ramirez. “Here come our wonderful friends.” He was holding one bleeding arm awkwardly. He bled also from the scalp. “Oh, look at the whores. Whores. I spit on the whores. Soldiers. Look, Virgin, soldiers.”
They were quite brazen by this time. Six, it turned out. Six men, most with AK-47s and one with a Soviet Dragunov sniper’s rifle, coming up the slope. They wore tiger suits, baggy camouflage denim, and red berets. Professionals. Real commandos. Trewitt lay and watched them come.
“Hey, we fought them abortions pretty good, Mr. Crazy Gringo. Hey, I give you one hell of an adventure, one crazy hell of an adventure. We made ’em bleed some, we did. The whores. We took some whores with us. They had to bring in a fucking army to come take us away.”
The men were half up the slope, their assault rifles at the high port. They were not merry with triumph at all, but moved with vivid economy of line and gesture, impassive and implacable, hard-core military, in a hurry to be done with it.
“Whores,” Ramirez was saying. He was weeping too, and had fallen to his hands and knees but kept trying to stand. There was blood all over him. He kept trying to get a leg under himself but it would not work and he pitched forward. “They had to get an Army to get us. You whores! You bags of pus and shit. Virgin, I ask your forgiveness, for I have sinned. I seek to make a contrition. Accept your child Ramirez. You whores! Come ahead, whores, and be done. Ramirez is not frightned. I am so frightened. Lord Jesus, I am frightened. You BAGS OF SHIT!”
But his imprecations could not speed them — they came at the same grim pace, picking their way through the rocks.
Trewitt sat upright in a sudden spasm. He had the feeling of being in several worlds at once. His wound had opened and he bled profusely. He sat in a puddle and felt dirty. He wanted his mother. He mourned Miguel. A big bird flew overhead, its dark shadow skipping across him. It roared, a big flapping bird, huge as anything he’d ever seen in his life.
“Mother, OH, MOTHER, PLEASE!” he shouted.
The black bird hovered above him; it was a helicopter and it caught the assault team in the open. It had come from nowhere — from below the peak, hurtling up the sheer wall behind Trewitt and Ramirez. A Huey, painted black, no insignia, its roar like a bottle fly’s, slow-moving, insistent. Trewitt’s vision blurred and he could not track the details in the sudden commotion of dust and gunfire, but he saw a long burst cutting across the slope after the scattering commandos. Tracer bullets pursued the running men and took them down. The chopper swung after two who escaped the kill zone, pausing atop each to blow him away. The last man — he had the Dragunov — threw his weapon far and raised his hands. Above him the bird circled, then hung. The commando stood in an oval of whirring dust thirty feet beneath the stationary machine. Suddenly the helicopter shot skyward. It rose free of gravity, as though escaping the soldier beneath. The man detonated in a startling clap and flash.