Gray gave the sniper the thumbs-up salute. Trusov returned it.
"I know you can't understand me, Mr. Trusov" — Gray laughed as he crossed to the door—"but I owe you one for the bat story."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gunnery Sergeant Arlen Able poured two fingers of Jim Beam into the range master's glass, then into his own. "Can you believe I was ever that young, Bud? I look like I'm twelve."
Sergeant Bud Blackman held up the photograph. "You and Gray look like you should be carrying squirt guns, not real guns."
The photograph dated from 1969 and showed Arlen Able and Owen Gray kneeling on a dusty patch of ground, each holding a rifle, the butts resting on their thighs and the barrels pointing to the sky. Both were wearing olive T-shirts, field pants, and boots. Their heads were shaved to the skin along the sides and burr cut on top. Both Marines' smiles were broad and engaging. Their eyes were slanted with amusement and their heads were cocked at the camera in confident angles. These were the guileless, hopeful faces of youth, faces that belonged in a high school album.
"Don't let the dummy grins fool you, Bud." Able sipped his drink. "We were already proven headhunters."
Sergeant Blackman had been in the range tower during Owen Gray's visit. Blackman swirled the whiskey, staring at the snapshot. He had seen it before. Early in any friendship Arlen Able trotted out his photograph of himself kneeling next to the legend. Blackman had a miser's face, with a pinched mouth and suspicious slits for eyes. He had started going bald early in life, and rather than tolerate a horseshoe of hair he shaved his entire scalp every morning. He was wearing field khaki. His cap and binoculars were on the desk. "He must've left it all behind in Vietnam. He looked like any other lawyer."
"I ever tell you he saved my life?" Able asked.
"No, but I can't believe there isn't a story left about Owen Gray you haven't told me."
"Maybe I never mentioned it because it makes me look a little goofy," Able said. "Owen was even a better tracker than a shooter, if you can believe it."
"We're all good trackers," Blackman said, taking another small swallow of Jim Beam and breathing in a soothing draft of air through his teeth. "It's part of our training."
Able shook his head. "I don't mean like you and I can track. Owen had a sixth sense about it. Sometimes the ground and the vegetation seemed to be speaking to him. Before he joined the Marines, he and his old man would often be asked by the county sheriff in Idaho to track lost hunters and climbers. Rescued quite a few over the years. He rescued me, too. One day in October 1969 near Tu Lun hill I took a mortar blast to the face."
"That explains a lot of things." Blackman chuckled.
"You laugh because it wasn't you, goddamnit. When a shell blew me down, I got right back up, climbed out of the hole, and moseyed into the field."
"You were ordered forward?" Blackman asked.
"No, hell no. I was blacked out on my feet. Concussed. To this day I have no memory of it. I got up — shells landing all around, machine gun fire overhead — and strolled into the forest. None of my mates saw me. It wasn't until dawn, after the firefight ended, that I was reported missing."
"I gather you weren't killed by the enemy." Blackman helped himself to another shot.
"Nobody could follow me, because I had wandered into NVA territory. I could've been out there picking daisies for all I remember. But Owen Gray figures out two things: one, that I'm addled, and two, where he can find me."
"I'll bite. How'd he figure them out?"
Sergeant Able leaned back in his chair and lifted his feet to the desktop. "He knows nobody goes into the field in a firefight without a lot of equipment. Not just a sniper rifle, because a sniper rifle is as worthless as tits on a goat in a firefight. No, if I'd been going anywhere with all my senses I'd have been carrying heavy armament and a pack and kit. But my footprint tells him my hands are empty and there's nothing on my back."
"I'll bite again."
Able said with satisfaction, "A person carrying some weight rolls his foot out on the big toe side as he walks. My register didn't show that. Plus, a walker carrying equipment takes shorter strides and has light heel pressure and a deep toe pushoff. I wasn't leaving any of these signs, so Owen knew I was out there damn near naked."
"Which meant you were acting wacko."
"Concussed, not wacko." Able added a splash of Jim Beam to his glass. The desk lamp was the only illumination in the office except for the tiny infrared light in the corner, which blinked on and off irregularly, detecting the sergeants' motions. The bloody remains of sunset were visible through the bars of the west windows. "Owen knew that if I survived my stupid walk I'd wander to a certain spot in the Vietnam wilderness. He met me there."
"He must've been guessing."
Able shook his head. "He knew that I would gradually circle to the right."
"How?"
"Right-handed people take a slightly larger step with their left foot. They walk in a big clockwise loop. By my bootprints Owen determined how fast I was ambling along, how tired I was, and then determined when I'd get to the half circle point. He met me there."
Blackman protested, "He couldn't have known precisely where you'd show up."
"He listened for me. Someone wandering lost in the wilderness makes a lot of noise."
"What'd he do? Put his ear to a stump like Sacajawea?"
"He used an anti-sapper parabolic listening dish. He took the dish to where his calculations suggested I'd appear. When he heard me thrashing around in the bush from about a quarter mile away, he came and retrieved me."
Sergeant Blackman threw back the last of his Jim Beam. "If Gray's so smart, why didn't he wait until you had walked in the full circle right back to your foxhole?"
"That would've doubled the time I was out there wandering, and the place was infested with NVA."
"Gray would've saved himself a lot of trouble," Blackman said.
"And he might've missed me. It has something to do with the margin of error of the angles."
"I would've just sat on an old artillery shell, sipped some Tiger Beer, and hoped you showed up, having walked a full circle."
Sergeant Able wagged his head with resignation. "Bud, arguing with you is like wiping my butt with a hoop. It's endless."
Blackman laughed.
Able lowered the bottle into a lower drawer, then rose from his chair. "I'll see you tomorrow bright and early."
Blackman stepped toward the door. "Bright and early is what the Marine Corps is all about."
Pulling his ring of keys from a pocket, Sergeant Able snapped off the desk lamp. The room was shadowy, with only the last shards of daylight coming through the windows. He stepped toward the burglar alarm pad. The code was the last four numbers of his service serial number.
Able spun to the hollow sound of a blow, a dull and sickening report followed by a soft groan. A whirling blur swept in through the door, a man dressed in black and moving so quickly in the half light that his image would not fully form in Abie's mind. The club swept down again, and Able heard Blackman's other collarbone break, sounding like a lath snapped over a knee.
Bud Blackman collapsed back into the room. He landed hard on the floor, an arm bent under his body and his legs buckled under him.
It was a baseball bat. And it soared high as the intruder rushed into the room toward Able. The dark demon under the bat was hidden behind a veil of dark clothes and dusky light and swift motion. Abie's service 9-mm was in his drawer. He stumbled toward it in the dark but made only a few steps before the intruder was on him. Able reflexively raised a hand, a futile gesture against the bat that slammed into his nose.