'It sounds stupid, saying you taped somebody to a tree, but only if you never had it done to you. Enough of that shit wound around you, and you might as well forget it. Strapping tape is strong. You're going to be where you are until someone comes along and cuts you loose.
You can't break it and you sure as shit can't untie it.'
Ginelli cut off the bottom half of Lemke's T-shirt, stuffed it into his mouth, and taped it in place.
'Then I turned over the cassette in his machine and stuck the phones back on his head. I didn't want him to be too bored when he woke up.'
Ginelli now walked up the side of the road. He and Lemke were of similar height, and he was willing to take the risk that he would be able to stroll right up to another sentry before being challenged. Besides, it was getting late and he'd had no sleep but two short naps in the last forty-eight hours. 'Miss enough sleep and you goof up,' he said. 'If you're playing Monopoly, that's all right. But if you're dealing with fuckers that shoot people and then write discouraging words on their foreheads in chicken blood, you're apt to die. As it happens, I did make a mistake. I was just lucky enough to get away with it. Sometimes God forgives.'
This mistake was not seeing the second sentry until he was walking past him. It happened because the second man was well back in the shadows instead of standing at the edge of the road, as Lemke had been doing. Luckily for Ginelli, the reason was not concealment but comfort. 'This one wasn't just listening to a Walkman,' Ginelli said. 'This one was fast asleep. Lousy guards, but about what you expect from civilians. Also, they hadn't made up their minds that I was serious long-term trouble for them yet. If you think someone is seriously on the prod for your ass, that keeps you awake. Man, that keeps you awake even when you want to go to sleep.'
Ginelli walked over to the sleeping guard, picked his spot on the guard's skull, and then applied the butt of the Kalishnikov to that spot with a fair amount of force. There was a thud like the sound of a limp hand striking a mahogany table. The guard, who had been propped comfortably against a tree, fell over in the grass. Ginelli bent and felt for a pulse. It was there, slow but not erratic. He pressed on.
Five minutes later he came to the top of a low hill. A sloping field opened out and down on the left, Ginelli could see the dark circle of vehicles parked about two hundred yards from the road. No campfire tonight. Dim, curtainscreened lights in a few of the campers, but that was all.
Ginelli worked his way halfway down the hill on his belly and his elbows, holding the assault rifle out in front of him. He found a rock outcropping that allowed him to both seat the stock firmly and to sight down the hill to the encampment.
'The moon was just coming up but I wasn't going to wait for it. Besides, I could see well enough for what I had to do – by then I was no more than seventy-five yards from them. And it wasn't as if I had to do any fine work. Kalishnikov's no good for that anyway. Might as well try to take out a guy's appendix with a chain saw. Kalishnikov's good to scare people with. I scared them, all right. I bet just about all of them made lemonade in the sheets. But not the old man. He's as tough as they come, William.'
With the automatic rifle firmly set, Ginelli pulled in a deep breath and sighted on the front tire of the unicorn camper. There was the sound of crickets and a small stream babbling somewhere close by. A whippoorwill cried out once across the dark field. Halfway through its second verse, Ginelli opened fire.
The Kalishnikov's thunder ripped the night in two. Fire hung around the end of the barrel in a corona as the clip – thirty .30-caliber bullets, each in a casing almost as long as a king-size cigarette, each powered with a hundred and forty grains of powder – ran out. The unicorn camper's front tire did not just blow; it exploded. Ginelli raked the bellowing gun the length of the camper – but low. 'Didn't put a single goddamn hole in the body,' he said. 'Tore the hell out of the ground beneath it. Didn't even cut it close, because of the gas tank. Ever see a camper blow? It's like what happens when you light a firecracker and put a can over it. I saw it happen once, on the New Jersey turnpike.'
The camper's back tire blew. Ginelli popped the first clip and slammed another one in. The uproar was beginning below. Voices yelled back and forth, some angry, most just scared. A woman screamed.
Some of them – how many of the total number, Ginelli had no way of telling – were spilling out of the backs of campers, most in pajamas and nightgowns, all looking confused and scared, all trying to stare in five different directions at the same time. And then Ginelli saw Taduz Lemke for the first time. The old man looked almost comic in his billowing nightshirt. Straggles of hair were escaping from beneath his tasseled nightcap. He came around the front of the unicorn van, took one look at the flattened, twisted tires, and then looked directly up toward where Ginelli was lying. He told Billy that there was nothing comic in that burning glance.
'I knew he couldn't see me,' he said. 'The moon wasn't up, I had lampblack on my face and hands, I was just another shadow in a whole field of them. But … I think he did see, me, William, and it cooled off my heart.'
The old man turned toward his people, who were beginning to drift in his direction, still babbling and waving their hands. He shouted at them in Rom and swept an arm at the caravan. Ginelli didn't understand the language, but the gesture was clear enough: Get under cover, you fools.
'Too late, William,' Ginelli said smugly.
He had loosed the second burst directly into the air over their heads. Now a lot of people were screaming – men as well as women. Some hit the ground and began to crawl, most of them with their heads down and their butts waving in the air. The rest ran, breaking in all directions but the one from which the fire had come.
Lemke stood his ground, bellowing at them, bullthroated. His nightcap fell off. The runners went on running, the crawlers crawling. Lemke might ordinarily rule them with an iron hand, but Ginelli had panicked them.
The Pontiac station wagon from which he had taken the coat and sneakers the night before was parked next to the van, nose out. Ginelli slammed a third clip into the AK-47 and opened fire again.
'There wasn't anyone in it last night, and the way it smelled, I guessed no one would be in it tonight, either. I killed that station wagon – I mean, I annihilated that motherfucker.
'An AK-47 is a very mean gun, William. People who have only seen war movies think that when you use a machine gun or an automatic rifle you end up with this neat little line of holes, but it ain't like that. It's messy, it's hard, and it happens fast. The windshield of that old Bonneville blew in. The hood popped up a little. Then the bullets caught it and tore it right off. The headlights blew. The tires blew. The grille fell off. I couldn't see the water spraying out of the radiator, it was too dark for that, but when the clip ran out I could sure hear it. When the clip ran out that son of a bitch looked like it had run into a brick wall. And during all of it, while the glass and chrome were flying, that old man never moved. Just looked for the muzzle flash so he could send the troops after me if I was stupid and waited for him to get his troops together. I decided to split before he could.'
Ginelli ran for the road, bent over low like a World War II soldier advancing under fire. Once there, he straightened up and sprinted. He passed the inner-perimeter sentry the one he had used the gun butt on – with hardly a glance. But when he reached the spot where he had taken Mr Walkman, he stopped, catching his breath.