The Second Saladin

38

When would the boy return?

“He should have been back hours ago,” Trewitt said irritably.

“He probably stopped to steal a chicken,” Roberto said. “The little snotnose.” Roberto had taken over the Beretta, his proudest possession. He sat under a scrub oak polishing as obsessively as he’d once polished the glasses behind the bar at Reynoldo’s. He had already fired three of the remaining seven bullets for practice.

Trewitt shifted uncomfortably beside him. As he moved he bumped into his own armament, which had been propped against a log in front of him. He’d had some practice too; with the scope, it was like shooting at the star of a drive-in movie.

“No,” he said, “he’s had plenty of time. They left yesterday — in the postman’s Jeep they could have been back by one. It’s almost five now.”

“Forget it. What does a little snotnose know? He don’t know nothing.”

“He knows enough to get back in time. Dumb kid.” The kid was important because he was a kid and Trewitt liked him, but also because he carried another telegram for Chardy, care of the Resurrection. If this try didn’t work, Trewitt had resolved to go out in the open, the hell with the risk. He was done with waiting.

“Don’t wet your pants. He’ll be back. Little snotnose.”

Trewitt picked up the rifle, slid it back against his shoulder. They were two hundred yards upslope from the stone shack. The move had been Trewitt’s idea, arguing that if they were at any moment apt to be jumped they couldn’t just be caught in the shack; they had to have a plan.

Ramirez looked upon this strategic innovation with great curiosity, and then went back to his smart-alecky maid and her comeuppance.

But Trewitt insisted, and ultimately prevailed. Still, some plan. The plan was to blow the brains out of anybody who poked around.

And what if Chardy showed up? Well, Chardy wouldn’t show up. There’d been some kind of screw-up.

But Trewitt was determined. He’d get this Ramirez back somehow, whether he wanted to or not, back to Chardy. There, Chardy, what do you think of that? You decide, Chardy. Trewitt had no other chart to work by. His head was still packed with confusion. All espionage tends to end in farce, Malcolm Muggeridge had said, and boy, he sure had this one figured out. Trewitt was not certain whether he’d decided on this course of action or whether it had been decided for him. Things just happened, and here he was, halfway up a dusty mountain in a hot sun on a clear day with a sniper’s rifle in his hands.

Above, a hawk pirouetted, slid on a thermal, high, remote, coldly beautiful. Trewitt watched the bird with idle envy: the grace, the power, the freedom, the dignity commandeered his imagination. The lovely thing skidded back and forth brainlessly on the currents, wheeling into the valley, then soaring upward again.

Trewitt wiped a drop of sweat off the end of his nose and studied its dampness on the end of his finger, and did not see the car.

But when he looked up, there it was, a Mercedes 450 SL, gunmetal gray, sitting before the shack.

Roberto was squirming into cover next to him.

“Jesus Mary, now we going to see some stuff.”

Oscar Meza got out from the passenger’s side, held his hands wide to show that he was unarmed.

“Reynoldo,” he called to the mountain, “can you hear me? These people here want to talk to you. That’s all, a little talk. They sent me ahead. Come, have a little talk, and we will let the little one go. Don’t be no fool, Reynoldo, it’s just a little talk.”

There was silence.

“Reynoldo, think it over. Take your time. You got fifteen—”

The shot rang out crisp and clear. Oscar Meza sat back on his expensive fender, holding his middle. He breathed deeply. His sunglasses fell off. His knees cracked and he pitched forward on them. Then he fell the rest of the way.

“Goddammit,” bellowed Trewitt, “he shouldn’t have—”

“Right in the guts! Reynoldo sure can shoot a gun.”

Trewitt stared stupidly at the dead man by the car. For a long moment nothing happened. Then the car began to gently back up, leaving its fallen passenger. It moved as though it were pulling out of any suburban garage into any sane, pleasant street, turning as its driver swung its nose to bear in the right direction. Then, slowly, it began to descend the dirt road.

“Shoot! Shoot the whoreson. I cannot see him,” commanded Ramirez from his cover.

“What?” Trewitt said.

“Shoot him! Mother of God, shoot!”

Without thinking, Trewitt brought the rifle to his shoulder, throwing the bolt. He felt the press of the stock against his shoulder, the weight of the rifle in his hands. His eye went naturally to the scope and after a moment of blurred dazzle in which nothing made sense, he caught a glimpse of the gray car as it plummeted toward safety. Against the cross hairs, through the rear window, there now appeared, almost magically — a head. A man’s head, held low as he hunched in terror behind the wheel, holding the car in a straight line for the turnoff, gathering speed.

Trewitt readied himself.

“Shoot! Shoot!” Roberto commanded.

Only seconds remained until the car reached the turnoff and would be gone. Trewitt took a whole breath, released half. The head lay in the foreshortened reality of the scope, just beyond the muzzle. He felt he could touch it.

Shoot, Trewitt told himself. The 7-millimeter would burn into the skull, exiting, hugely, through the face, taking features and bones and eyes and brains with it, spraying them indiscriminately against the windshield. Trewitt felt a split-second’s nausea at what he was about to do. He took the slack out of the trigger —

“Shoot!” Roberto hooted.

The car swirled around the turnoff in a great rooster-tail of dust, and was gone.

“What is wrong with you? Are you sick, man?” asked Roberto.

“I–I didn’t have a very good shot,” Trewitt said. “I couldn’t see wasting a bullet.”

“You should have shot anyway.”

“Well, I didn’t want to throw a bullet away.”

The youth looked at him suspiciously.

Trewitt sat back.

“I don’t know why he shot that guy,” he said to nobody. “I don’t see what that accomplishes.” Oscar Meza lay a hundred or so yards down the slope on his stomach. Trewitt could now see that he was wearing an expensive suit and fine boots. He was a curiously formal figure in the litter of the yard.

“That son of a bitch kick me out of my job,” said Roberto.

But Trewitt now had to think about the boy. What about the boy?

“They’ll kill him now,” he said.

“Kill who?” Roberto asked.

Trewitt’s desolation was total. It became rage. He wished he’d shot the man in the car, blown his fucking head to pieces. “The little boy. Miguel.”

“He should have stayed with his mama,” said Roberto.

Trewitt sat back against the tree, the rifle next to him. Around him the bleak mountains lay in dusty splendor. He looked for the hawk but it had vanished. He looked about: he seemed to be on the face of the moon.

“Hey, patrón,” Roberto called to Ramirez, who ambled toward them, “the norteamericano wants to go down the hill for the little snotnose kid.”

“You just get killed, mister. Hey, how come you didn’t shoot? You should have shot him.”

“I couldn’t see him very well,” mumbled Trewitt.

“That’s a fine telescope on that gun. You should have been able to see him real good. Maybe you weren’t working it right.”

“He’s just a kid!” Trewitt screamed, leaping to his feet. “Come on, we can’t stay here. Let’s get going. Maybe it’s not too late.” He began to stride manfully down the slope. He turned when they did not move and fixed them in a steely glare.

“Let’s get going,” he commanded icily.

“You must be a real crazyhead,” said Ramirez. “Go down there? They just kill you. They’re going to kill you anyway, but why rush it?” He laughed. “I’m hungry. Let’s get some food. They’ll be back pretty soon.”

“We’ve got to save that kid!” boomed Trewitt again.

“He is a crazyhead, patrón,” said Roberto. Wonder filled his eyes.

The two Mexicans, laughing between themselves, walked past him to the shack.

Trewitt stood alone, the rifle tucked against his hip. He watched the fat man and the youth. They stepped over the body of Oscar Meza and ducked inside.

Then Trewitt started down the hill to the shack for some tortillas too.