Dead Aim

CHAPTER 32

As soon as Mallon found the tool box, he set to work. Getting a way out of this building was his first task. He sorted through the pile of lumber, selected the few pieces he needed, and laid them out on the floor. He did not want to risk doing any hammering, so he used a hand drill and some screws to attach eight short pieces to one board and construct a crude ladder that was long enough to reach from the floor to the hole in the roof. He leaned it there to keep it out of his way, then examined the row of rifles.

There was a chain that had been run through the trigger guards to the metal rack and attached with a padlock, but the padlock was too small to present much resistance. He set a big screwdriver at the end of the loop, hit it once with the hammer, and popped it open. Mallon took two of the rifles out of the rack, then poured the boxes of bullets into his trouser pockets. He took the last three rifles from the gun rack, removed each of the bolts, hid them on a shelf behind some paint cans, extinguished his lantern, and carried it with his two rifles up onto the roof. He pulled his ladder up after him, ran it down the outside of the building, and climbed down to the grass with his finds.

When he reached the ground he dragged the ladder off into the nearest wooded area and hid it in the brush. Then he kept going, climbing the low hill that overlooked the camp. He kept at the edge of the trees, where he would be difficult to see, and moved along the ridge until he had found a spot behind some bushes where he could stare directly down the long driveway, see the front entrance to the main lodge, the gym, and the sides of the six barracks.

He released the box magazine from each of his rifles, loaded it with four rounds, and pushed it back in. Next he tested his night scope by turning away from the lighted buildings and scanning the woods. The world glowed eerily bright and greenish, and he could see clearly defined shapes of trees and bushes. He turned it off and left it around his neck.

He checked his watch. It was two-thirty A.M. He had only about three hours of darkness left, and there was a great deal to do. He took one of his rifles and his lantern, and stepped quietly down to the row of barracks. He leaned close to the first window, cupped his hands beside his eyes, and looked in. It was a small bedroom.

There was a sudden, loud pop and the glass beside his head shattered, spraying a shower of shards inward onto the polished wooden floor of the room. Mallon dropped to the ground, snatched up his rifle, and stared into the dark brush on the hillside above him. Somebody had shot at him. Either they had heard him coming down here to the barracks or they had seen him as soon as he had driven up the road, and had followed him. He strained his eyes to distinguish shapes in the dark brush, then remembered the night-vision scope. It was hanging from his neck, but he had not had the presence of mind to use it. He held it to his eye, and gazed up the hill at the brush. He could clearly see a man, crouching in a clump of bushes about a hundred and fifty feet away. As Mallon watched, the man raised his pistol to take a leisurely aim.

Mallon rested his left elbow on the ground, quickly cycled the bolt to bring a round into the chamber, and stared through the rifle’s telescopic sight. The feel of the rifle was familiar-the weight, the shape of the stock. The only part that he had not felt before was the grainy texture of the polymer stock. He moved the rifle slightly, unable to find the man’s shape again in the narrow field of the sight. Then the man fired, the round kicked up dirt beside Mallon, and he flinched involuntarily. But the muzzle flash had been bright, placed directly in the center of Mallon’s sight. Mallon fired, enduring the long-forgotten kick of the recoil on his right shoulder and cheek. He lowered the rifle and raised the night-vision scope to his eye. In the bright green, he could see that the man had collapsed backward, but his torso was held upright by the branches of the bush he had hidden in. He recognized the face now. It was the young man with red hair from the hotel in Los Angeles. Mallon could see dark blood flowing from a big wound in his chest. The man was dead.

Mallon scrambled to his feet and ran toward the cover of the woods, then turned down the slope, away from the living quarters. He ran down the hill to the side of the gym and stood with his back to the wall. He used his night scope to study the six cabins, waiting for someone to emerge from a door. But after a few minutes, he still had seen nobody coming after him. Now and then he would lean outward from the side of the big building to see if there was any movement visible in the main lodge. When he could not detect any, he would return his attention to the cabins.

There was little to them but a two-by-four frame, half-inch plywood nailed on, and a layer of rough-cut vertical slats on the outside to serve as siding to keep the weather out. The one he’d broken into to steal the lantern and matches had been finished on the inside by having cheap wallboard tacked in to hide the studs, but the sheets had been left with their joints showing, not even taped and painted to make them look like plaster. He wasn’t even sure whoever had built them had bothered to insulate them. No wonder someone inside had heard him prowling around.

Mallon kept moving his gaze from one to another, but seeing nobody come out, then turning around to look at the main lodge, where the shades still covered the windows. Maybe he could get down there, past the lighted area, and reach his car. But then he saw the shade of a window at the near end of the main lodge pushed aside, and half of a face-one eye, part of a nose and mouth-appeared, then vanished. There were quick dark shadows behind the window shade a moment later: the man was resting a rifle on the windowsill, searching for a target. Mallon aimed his rifle so he could see through the telescopic sight, and held himself still. The shade came up quickly, and Mallon could see two heads, figures in dark clothes, leaning toward the window to see what was happening. Behind them there was more movement.

Mallon tried to interpret what he saw. After a moment, he knew. They were scurrying around arming themselves, preparing to slip out into the dark to come for Mallon. The one with the rifle was going to cover them, wait for Mallon to shoot, and then fire at his muzzle flash. Mallon had to try to keep them inside, where they couldn’t get to him. He steadied his aim, took two deep breaths to clear his lungs of the carbon dioxide that would make his hands shake, and squeezed the trigger.

The bang of the rifle’s report tore the air; the recoil made the stock brush his cheek, kicked his shoulder, and raised the barrel. He lost his aim for a moment, but he brought the barrel down and cycled the bolt to chamber another round.

The window was empty again, but he believed he had hit the man. The others, he decided, must be cowering somewhere out of sight. Tonight, ducking down below or beside the window was not going to be an effective tactic. Mallon was aware that if the construction of the main lodge was anything like what he had seen in the cabins, the wall would not even slow a rifle bullet appreciably. His second shot had brought back to him the familiar feel, sound, and smell of a rifle, and he was more comfortable as he aimed to the right of the window frame and a foot above the floor, and fired again. He had no idea whether the shot hit flesh, but he knew there were still no heads up.

He fired his fourth shot, then removed the box magazine and pushed bullets from his pocket into it. He kept watching the doors and the row of windows along the side. The people inside should be trying to scatter into the darkness, he thought. They should be trying to spot his muzzle flash, so they could aim at it and kill him. He clicked the magazine back into the rifle, then used his night scope to scan the ground near the lodge and the woods beyond it. There were still no human beings visible, but he knew they must be watching for his muzzle flashes to find him, so it was time to move. He raised the rifle again and fired a round through the wall high on the left side, trying to place it near the front door to keep them in.

He ran as hard as he could into the woods to make his way up the slope of the hill without being in the open, where he might be seen in the moonlight. He reached the trees, then stopped to reload and fired another round through the back of the building, turned, and continued uphill, just inside the line of trees. It was difficult to run up the hill as quickly as he wanted to, and after another two hundred yards his chest was heaving, and there was a burning sensation in his lungs. He knelt down, fired two more shots at the building, and ran again.

Mallon reached the crest of the hill, flopped down on the grass behind the bush where he had left his second rifle and his lantern, and raised his night-vision scope to his eye. There was no human figure outside the main lodge. Mallon looked at the window. He was much farther away now, but his higher vantage let him see the legs of the first man he had shot, still lying on the floor.

Mallon concluded that he must be dead. He tried to decode what he was feeling about it. For a second, he was almost fooled into imagining that what he felt must be remorse. Then he realized that it was something else: simple distaste for killing. He felt angry that he had needed to do this, that his life had come to this. He cycled the bolt of his second rifle, switched the safety off so he could lift it quickly and fire, then took the magazine out of his first rifle and began to reload it.