He’d peeled off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, but he was still hot. He’d checked the laces and straps of his boots — tight — and tossed aside his cap and taken the bars off his collar. There wasn’t much else to do.
He checked his watch again. The seconds seemed to drain away. They seemed to fall off the Bulova and rattle to the grass. He tried to feel good about what would probably happen next. Instead he felt puke in the bottom of his throat. His breathing came hard and his legs were cold and stiff and his mouth was dry.
He glanced about and saw the day opening pleasantly, a pale sun beginning to show over the mountain, a pure sky. A few fleecy clouds unraveled overhead. He knew he could catalog natural phenomena until the year 1957 if he didn’t watch himself. Goddamn it, he was thirsty.
He looked at the Bulova again and it gave him the bad news: almost time to go. Seconds to go.
He eased his way up to a crouch, checking for the thousandth time the tommy gun: magazine locked, full auto, safety off, bolt back. The forest was a long way off.
Don’t blow it, Roger, goddamn you, he thought.
And he thought of Susan once again. “Everything you touch turns to death,” she’d said. Susan. Susan, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean it. He did not hate her. He wished she were here and he could talk to her.
And he thought of Repp, behind his rifle in the trees.
The Bulova said it was time and Leets ran.
Repp watched the American break from the wall. He’d picked him up minutes ago — the fool kept peering out, then withdrawing. He couldn’t make his mind up, or perhaps he was enchanted with the view.
It didn’t matter. Repp tracked him lazily — such an easy shot — holding the sight blade just a touch up, leading him, drawing the slack out of the trigger. A big, healthy specimen, unruly hair, out of uniform: was this the chap that had been hunting him these months? He wobbled when he ran, bad leg or something.
Repp felt the trigger strain against his finger.
He let the fat American live.
He did not like it. Too easy. He felt he could down this fat huffing fellow anytime. He owned him. The man still had 400 meters of rough forest climb ahead of him, and Repp knew he’d come like a buffalo, bulky and desperate, crashing noisily through the brush. At any moment in the process, Repp could have him.
But as the American perched at his mercy on the sight blade, it occurred to him that he’d been blind for hours. Suppose in that time another American had moved into the trees? It turned on their knowledge of the flaw in Vampir. But they had consistently turned out to know just a touch more than he expected them to. Thus: another man.
A theoretical enemy such as that could be anywhere down the slope, well within machine-pistol range, grenade range, waiting for him to fire. Once he fired, he was vulnerable. So he recommitted himself to patience. He had the fat one off on his left, coming laboriously up the hill. He could wait.
Now, as for another fellow. Where would he be? It seemed to him that if such a fellow in fact existed, then he and the fat one would certainly make arrangements between themselves, so as not to fall into each other’s fire. So if the big one was to his left, then wouldn’t this theoretical other chap be on the right? He knew he had four or five minutes before the big man got dangerously close.
He began methodically to search his right front.
What now? wondered Roger.
Guy must be gone. He would have plugged the captain for sure.
From where he was, he’d had a good view of Leets’s slow, lumbering run. He’d seen him go and turned back quickly but couldn’t see much, the dense trees fighting their way up the slope, stone outcroppings, thick brush.
Leets had been so positive the German would fire. But nothing. Roger scanned the abstractions before him. Sweat ran down his arms. A bug whined in his ears. Looking into a forest was like trying to count the stars. You’d go nuts pretty soon. The patterns seemed to whisper and dazzle and flicker before his eyes. Shapes lost their edges and melted into other shapes. Fantastic forms leapt out of Roger’s imagination and took substance in the woods. Stones poked him, filling him with restlessness.
Should he move or stay put? Leets hadn’t said. He’d said wait, wait, but he hadn’t said anything about if there was no shot. He probably ought to still wait. But Leets hadn’t said a thing. Repp was probably gone. What the hell would he be hanging around for? He was no dope. He was a tough, shrewd guy.
On the other hand, why would he have taken off when he held all the aces in the dark?
Roger didn’t have any idea what to do.
Leets had gotten well into the trees, deep into the gloom. He rested for a moment, crouching behind a trunk. The slope here was gentle, but he could see that ahead it reared up. The footing would be treacherous.
Squatting, he tried to peer through the trees. His vision seemed to end a few dozen feet up: just trees woven together, trees and slope, a few rocks.
He hoped Roger had the sense to stay put. Surely he’d see that the game hadn’t changed, that it was still up to Leets to draw fire.
Don’t blow it, Roger.
He’ll kill you.
Leets gathered his strength again. He wasn’t sure there’d be any left, but he did locate some somewhere. He began to move up the slope, tree to tree, rock to rock, dashing, duck-walking, slithering, making more noise than he ought to.
Roger looked around. A few shafts of sunlight cut through the overhanging canopy. He felt like he was in an old church or something, and light was slipping in the chinks in the roof. He still couldn’t see anything. He imagined Repp sitting in a café in Buenos Aires.
Meanwhile, here I sit, breaking a sweat.
If only I could see!
If only someone would tell me what to do!
Cautiously, he began to edge his way up.
The other American was perhaps 150 meters down-slope, rising from behind a swell in the ground, half obscured in shadow. But the movement had caught Repp’s experienced eye.
He felt no elation, merely lifted the rifle and replanted it on its bipod and drew it quickly to him.
The American was just a boy — even from this distance, Repp could make out the callow, unformed features, the face tawny with youth. He rose like a nervous young lizard, eyes flicking about, motions tentative, deeply frightened.
Repp knew the big man would be up the slope in seconds. He even thought he could hear him battering through the brush. Too bad they hadn’t climbed closer together, so that he could take them in the same arc of the bipod, not having to move it at all.
Repp pressed the blade of the front sight, on the young man’s chest. The boy bobbed down.
Damn!
Only seconds till the big one was in range.
Come on, boy, come on, damn you.
Should he move the gun for the big one?
Come on, boy. Come on!
Helpfully the boy appeared again, cupping his hands to shade his eyes, his face a stupid scowl of concentration. He rose right into the already planted blade of the sight, his chest seeming to disappear behind the blurred wedge of metal.
Repp fired.
A split second may have passed between the sound of the shot and Leets’s identification of it: he rose then, hauling the Thompson to his shoulder, and had an image of Roger — Roger hit — and fired.