I jumped up and ran out. I had both pack straps over my left shoulder, so I could reach into the pack as it dangled under my arm. I reached in for one of those grenades, pulled the pin, and hurled it, trying to lead the airplane, trying to get the grenade out in front of it. I think the pilot saw it and knew what it was. He swerved and lost a little momentum, then picked it up again. The plane bounced one last time and lifted off the rocky stretch.
If I had to guess what happened, I would say that the pilot decided he had lost just enough speed and lift so that he wasn't going to clear the tops of the pines which grew on the downslope beyond the far end of the plateau. The grenade made a harmless cramping sound and a small cloud of dingy smoke far behind the plane. Perhaps it made
The Green Ripper the pilot nervous, and he started his turn too soon. He wanted to turn left, toward an opening in the trees. Maybe a gust of wind came along just then. The wing tip touched the ground, and that changed the flight attitude of the aircraft. The tail came up a little. He yanked the wing back up, but the plane went down and almost touched wheels again before he tried to lift it over the pines. At the last minute he tried to slip it through but, in slow motion, he sheared the right wing, thick strut, and right wheel off the machine, and it went plunging through the trees, turning, disappearing, then making a pro- longed thudding, grinding sound far down the slope. I waited for the sound of gasoline igniting, but it didn't come. If he had the presence of mind, he would have had time to cut the switch.
Alvor had run out of the motor home. I dropped and rolled over and over and over, hugging my weapon in my arms, over the edge of the plateau and down the slope, hearing the fading banshee scream of a ricochet as I came to a stop.
I did some scuttling of my own, moving to my right toward the road. I heard a shouted order, unexpectedly close. I moved beyond a thick tree and stood up. Ahman, Haris, and Alvor were runDing toward the spot where I had rolled down the slope. They were spread out, about twenty feet separating them, but they were converging. Alvor was making excellent time. They all had weapons at the ready. I guessed they had come up the road just in time to see Alvorfire at me. I clicked my riffle piece of machinery to full automatic fire. There was enough snow left on the slope so they could track me. I didn't like the idea of lighting out at a dead run for the buildings, hoping to make it. And I had a very brief moment to do some shooting without being shot at. I put as little of me as pos sible outside the protection of my tree and sprayed them, as with a garden hose, Ahman, the nearest, went down at once, falling hard, losing his weapon. Haris, beyond him, wavered, staggered, and turned, firing in short bursts in my general direction, firing toward the sound before he spotted me. I got behind my tree, snapped a new clip into the weapon, leaned out again, and found Hans shockingly close, lurching like a drunk but firing as he came. A very ballsy performance for a thin man with at least one slug in him. My burst took him squarely in the chest, hammering him back up the few feet of slope and onto the flat, where he fell backward, dead be" fore he could comprehend that finality. A far more authoritative projectile chucked into my tree, and I could imagine that Alvor had one of the assault rifles. I looked around the other side of my tree, a very quick look indeed, but time enough to see A1 vor running like a fullback toward the buildings, cutting, feinting, fooling the tacklers. I was moving out to take a chance at him with a long high burst when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and fired at it immediately, with no pause for conscions thought. Ahman had retrieved his weapon and had been bringing it to bear on me, with every good chance of sending me to join Haris. The burst took him in the higher shoulder, and out of momentary panic I kept the weapon on him, rolling him over and over, a ragged bundle spraying blood and tissue.
A lot of it was luck. A lot of it was having a John Wayne day. But some of it was that old training which eliminates the last hesitation. Death comes while you are struggling with your application or lack of application of the Judeo-Christian ethic. While you work out the equation which says, If I don't kill him, he will kill me, so even if I have been taught not to kill, this is an exception while you are working that out, he is blowing chunks of bone out of your skull. The quick and the dead is an: ancient allusion. They were quick and I was quick and lucky. There was some cunning involved, of course. Being able to see how I might use that tree over the water. Coming back here instead of heading off at a full run. Remembering to scuttle far away from the place where I had rolled out of sight off the plateau. Using Barry as a shield, to shock Chuck momentarily into inaction. So they were gone. Chuck and Barry. The almost-forgotten Nicky. And Persival and the two who had arrived in the plane probably all dead, from the sound of the impact. Now Haris and Ahman too, leaving only Alvor and the two women. A veritable mas
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John MacDonald sacre. A bloodbath. Butchery. I kept the horror bottled away. There would be time to examine that later on. Right now there was the high-riding pleasure of doing some difficult thing far better than you expected to be able to do it. I had been as slow and clumsy as I dared during the exercises. How many of them had died with a feeling of disbelief, frur,tration, anger? With the ghastly toothy grin of tlie skull-head of death looking over my shoulder, I was intensely alive. I was alive in every thready little nerve fiber, every capillary. I was tuned to quickness, the world all sharp edges around me, my ears hearing every small sound in the world.
Push the luck. Keep pushing. But the women? I somehow did not think I could open fire from ambush on them, as I had on the others. Had I been as hesitant about the others, I would now be as dead as they were.
I moved along to the head of the road, discarding the nearly empty clip, mounting another. I wanted to be in better position to kin the Dodge van if Alvor should decide to hop in and make a run for the gate. I could guess that he was reasonably certain there was more than one of me. He'd heard the report to Persival about the kiting of Clinck and Barry. And he knew the airplane had gone down. Ahman and Haris lay on the thin wet skin of the last of the snow. Rivulets of water ran off the plateau.
The Green Ripper
I moved across the head of the road and took shelter on the other side. I tried to sort out the people, guess at their assignments. If Ahman and Haris had gone looking for Chuck and Barry, then Sammy was the one I had knocked down with the single slug meant for Alvor. And if they had left somebody on the gate, it would have to be Nena. It was possible Stella was still tied up, that nobody had looked for her in T-6. It was possible that Sammy was waiting for me, armed. Make it four to one, two of them women. But no special advantage to me there they were as quick and well-trained and toughened as the men had been.
I heard a sudden motion, a slipping sound, then a heavy thud and a grunt, and then a woman said, venomously, "Sonnabitchl" I moved farther back. Sister Nena I recognized her voic~-had been coming up the road and had slipped and fallen. My luck was holding. Water was running down the road through slush and mud. She was watching her footing, but she held the weapon at the ready as she rounded the final bend. I could have shot her then. I held on her and thought of the savage slaughter of the innocent she was quite willing to undertake. I thought of the connection between her and the silvery little sphere which had been used to slay my woman.