The Ambushers

XXIV

I ALMOST GOT HIM with my first real lunge, and I saw again that little start of surprise and disapproval as he escaped the point with a wild parry that left him open for a cut to the shoulder or face that I passed up. I didn't want to chop him to bits, I just wanted to finish him; and I had the answer now.

It was very simple. He'd never used the point or had it used against him. They fight for the scars and the honor over there; and there's no honor in a scar that starts at the front of the chest and comes out behind. They fight for blood only, not for death. The edge is sharp but the point is blunt. The idea that a man with a cutting weapon in his hand might use it for sticking, too, was not part of his experience. It had probably been outlawed by the rules he'd fought under, to keep them from losing too many students.

I was afraid I'd tipped him off, and I contented myself with slashing and chopping for a while, carrying the fight to him. The sand made it tough for both of us, but his legs were older than mine. He fought cunningly and defensively, however, giving ground upstream past the cottonwoods and the missile, sparing himself for another major effort. Then it came, and he drove me back with a flashing attack, turned, and ran for the bank, shelving 'here.

He held that rise for a minute or two. I couldn't drive him off it, but I could work my way upstream to where there was no longer any bank to amount to anything. There were no shots from above. There was no sign of life at the top of the cliff. I should have left her in Tucson, I thought. She'd be safe now.

Von Sachs almost took my head off with a savage cut. The parry jarred the machete in my hand. It was no time for regrets. We were in the cottonwoods, fighting at the base of the Rudovic III, slugging it out with ancient tools and techniques in the shadow of the weapon of the future.

He was tiring. I had him now, and I looked towards Catherine so she'd know I was making her a present of him. If I'd had any doubts of her treachery-.-Whatever the details might be-the fact that she was standing alone, unguarded, but making no effort to run for the truck as we'd arranged, would have convicted her. Her guards had forgotten all about her, seeing their jefe driven back. The men watching were all silent now. There would be a kind of sigh when a weapon failed to reach the mark, that was all.

I went in for the head, let von Sachs break up my attack, and gave him an opening. He was slow in taking advantage of it, but he came along nicely at last, and I teased him by retreating, and still he came, and I let myself falter as if my foot had slipped. I let my weapon swing wide as I caught myself. I heard the sigh of the men, and I saw the light come back into the German's eyes, and his machete made a whistling sound as he changed his attack from left to right to take advantage of the unguarded side.

In the middle of 'his cutover, while his hand was still high, I lunged, driving the point in hard and straight. He was coming to meet it. The blade went in clean and didn't stop until the hilt was against his shirt.

I heard the groan of the men. I saw von Sachs' face change and die. The machete dropped from 'his hand. I braced myself and pulled my own weapon free. As he fell towards me, I caught him and got the pistol from his holster left-handed. Then I was standing at the base of the missile with the bloody machete in one hand and the cocked automatic in the other, facing the leaderless army that had been going to conquer an empire, for all the world like Errol Flynn playing Custer's Last Stand, or something.

It took them a moment to make up their minds. I noticed that Catherine was missing. Looking over the heads of the crowd I saw her stealing away downhill. When she realized she was away clear, she started to run. For a girl, she ran very well.

I wasn't at all sure what she was up to, but I held the picture in my mind as something nice to die with, and shot a man in the face as he came in to split me in two. I shot the next one in the chest so close it scorched his shirt, and I pushed the machete into a third, and they fell back, but only for a moment. They were all yelling now. They came in again and I emptied the.45 into them and swung the machete like a scythe, using both hands, hacking and slashing to keep them off me.

Down the canyon, I was vaguely aware, something was adding to the general confusion by making a raucous, squawking noise, like a raven with the croup. It meant nothing to me. I was just trying to stay alive for another second or two, although it was beginning to seem hardly worth the effort. I lost the machete and went down on one knee, and a familiar figure loomed up out of the melee: the tough little sergeant. He drove the butt of his machine pistol at my head, and I caught the weapon and yanked him down and got my hands on his throat and dug my thumbs in where they'd do the most good, or harm.

He took a little while to die. I scrambled for the squirt-gun 'he'd dropped and pointed it in a general outward direction and pulled the trigger and rose, spraying the weapon like a hose, only to discover I was shooting at nothing at all.

They were all running, and I was coughing, and smoke was curling out from under the bird against which I stood, and I could hear the hissing sound of the engines warming up. The damn thing was about to blast off. The squawking down the valley, I realized at last, was the warning siren of the control truck.

I ran for the creek. Behind me, the Rudovic had begun to whistle like a tea kettle; there was a funny sort of earthquake vibration. I leaped down into the wash and threw myself back under the overhanging bank, drew three long breaths, buried my face in my arms, and closed my eyes.

The canyon was full of thunder. Part of the bank shook loose and fell on top of me. There was a moment of intense heat, as if a giant blowtorch were playing on the dirt that covered me. Gradually the heat and noise died away. I suppose I should have waited a discreet interval for the fumes to disperse, but I wasn't quite sure I wasn't buried alive, and it made me panicky.

When I came out of my shallow grave, I got a lungful of chemical fumes that set me coughing again. The stuff was all around me like a fog. I climbed up the bank where it had crumbled, and sunlight hit me, although I was still standing in white smoke to the shoulders. It occurred to me to look up and there was the bird, a small, gleaming, splinter in the blue sky at the end of a long, arching white trail of smoke.

The rocket engines were still firing, I saw. Pretty soon they would – cut out and leave the missile to follow its trajectory to the target. El Paso, von Sachs had said.

Nothing could stop it now, I thought; and then there was a silent puff of smoke up there, and the tiny pencil of death broke up into a graceful rain of fragments. Belatedly, the sound of the explosion that had destroyed it hit me like a clap of thunder. I couldn't 'help ducking although it was obvious that the nearest piece was going to hit miles away.

The Volkswagen was a bit scorched, but it had been out of the area of the direct rocket blast. None of the dazed men wandering around made any attempt to interfere as I started the little car and drove down the canyon to the control truck. Catherine appeared at the door of the cab, and made her way over to me, limping as if her feet hurt. She still hadn't managed to get her blouse buttoned. Von Sachs would 'have got an eyeful, had he been alive. I didn't give a damn, and neither, apparently, did she.

She got in and slumped wearily in the seat beside me. There was a little pistol in her hand. "It was one of the bearded technicians," she said. "One ran but the other hit the firing button before I could shoot. Luckily the other button was marked. The one to destroy it."

"Sure," I said. Smoke was curling out of the truck. As I watched, the whole vehicle burst into flames. "That wasn't necessary, now," I said.

Her voice was dull and tired. "You said to burn it."

"So I did. Give me the gun." I held out my hand. After a moment she put her automatic into it. Just what part she'd played still wasn't exactly clear to me, but I said, "If you sold out Sheila, I'm going to kill you."

Catherine glanced at me quickly' but didn't speak. I put the car into gear and drove on down the canyon. The firing of the missile and apparently drawn off any sentries stationed along the trail. We met no one. Emerging from Copala Canyon we crossed the open valley beyond, parked the car out of sight, and went on foot to where Sheila and I had cached the luggage. It was still there, undisturbed.

Something else was there, too. I walked forward slowly, looking at the small figure huddled against a rock. Hearing me approach, Sheila looked up. Her face was scratched and dirty and streaked with tears. She'd apparently run hard and heedlessly to get here so fast; her hands were cut from falls and the knees of her pants were torn.

"I couldn't do it," she whispered. "I had him in the sights. My finger was on the trigger. It was a beautiful, easy shot, like on the target range. But I simply couldn't do it!"

"Sure," I said. "That's what happened in Costa Verde, isn't it? You didn't have any trouble with the grip safety of El Fuerte's automatic. You simply couldn't bring yourself to shoot him."

I should have known, of course. I remembered another time she should have shot and hadn't. There was nothing to be bitter about. It's a well-recognized phenomenon. It has nothing to do with marksmanship. Half the boys in Korea never fired their weapons in combat or fired to miss. Of course she might have told me, but to hell with that.

I said, "Well, some people can kill people and some people can't. It looks like you're just in the wrong line of business, Skinny."

"Eric, I-"

"Think nothing of it," I said. I hoped my voice sounded nice and reasonable. "Everything worked out swell anyway, doll. Let's get out of here before the road fills up with exempire-builders going back to their farms…"