First blood, p.19
First Blood, page 19
Dear God, what am I going to do?
Men were calling to each other off in the forest now. The underbrush was alive with the sound of branches snapping, men rushing. The pack of dogs that was near began barking toward him. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. The men would be everywhere. I’m through.
He was almost grateful that he had lost. No more running, no more pain in his chest, they would take him to a doctor, feed him, give him a bed. Clean clothes. Sleep.
If they didn’t shoot him here, thinking he still wanted to fight.
Then he would throw down his rifle and hold up his hands and yell that he was surrendering.
The idea revolted him. He couldn’t let himself merely stand and wait for them. He’d never done it before. It was disgusting. There had to be something more to do, and then he thought again of the mine and the final rule: if he was going to lose, if they were going to capture him, at least he could pick the place where it would happen, and the place that gave him the best advantage was the mine. Who knew what might change? Maybe as he went to the mine, he would see another way to escape.
The men were crashing closer through the underbrush. Not in sight yet. Very soon. All right, the mine then. No time to think about it anymore, and suddenly the thrill of going into action flashed through his body and he was no longer tired and he took off away from the stream deep into the woods. Ahead, he heard them charging through the thick bushes. He darted to the left, staying low. Far to his right, he saw them now, running loudly toward the stream. National Guardsmen he saw. Uniformed. Helmeted. In the night, watching the chain of lights miles off, he had joked badly about Teasle having a small army after him, but Jesus Christ, this really was the army.
8
The Guardsmen had been reporting descriptions of the country as they moved inland, cliffs and swamps and hollows that the deputy sketched onto the barren map, and now Teasle sank tired and empty onto the bench, watching him mark an X where the bodies of the two civilians had been found by the stream. He felt as if he were watching from far away, at last numbed by all the pills he had been swallowing. He had not let on to Trautman or Kern, but shortly after the report came in about the bodies stabbed and shot, he had experienced a sharp constriction near his heart so severe that it had scared him. Two more killed. How many did that make now? Fifteen? Eighteen? He jumbled the numbers in his mind, wanting to avoid a new total.
“He must have been heading for the road when he was discovered by those two civilians,” Trautman said. “He knows that we expect him near the road, so he’ll have to turn around and go back into the hills. When he thinks it’s safe, he’ll try a different route to another part of the road. Maybe east this time.”
“Then that’s it,” Kern said. “We have him trapped. The line is between him and the high ground, so he can’t go that way. The only direction open to him is toward the road, and we have another line there waiting for him.”
Teasle had continued looking at the map. Now he turned. “No. Didn’t you listen?” he said to Kern. “The kid is probably in the high ground already. The whole story is right there on the map.”
“But that doesn’t make sense to me. How is he going to make it up through the line?”
“Easily,” Trautman said. “When those Guardsmen heard the shots behind them, a group broke from the main line to go back and investigate. When they did, they left a hole more than big enough for him to slip through and up into the hills. Like you, they all expect him to keep moving away from the line anyhow, so they wouldn’t have been alert to sight him when he came near and slipped through. You had better tell them to continue into the hills before he gains more distance.”
Teasle had been a long while expecting this from Kern. Now it came. “I don’t know,” Kern said. “It’s getting too complicated. I don’t know what I had better do. Suppose he didn’t think like that. Suppose he didn’t realize there was a break in the line and just stayed where he was, between the line and the road. Then if I order those men farther inland, I’ll ruin the trap.”
Trautman lifted his hands. “Suppose whatever the hell you want. It’s no matter to me. I don’t like helping in the first place. All the same I am. But that doesn’t mean I have to explain over and over what I think should be done and then goddamn beg you to do it.”
“Wait, don’t misunderstand. I’m not questioning your judgment. It’s only that in his position he might not do what’s logical. He might feel closed in and run in a circle the way a flushed rabbit does.”
For the first time the pride in Trautman’s voice was completely open. “He won’t.”
“But if he does, if he just possibly does, you’re not the one who answers for sending the men in the wrong direction. I do. I have to look at this thing from every angle. After all we’re just talking theory here. We have no evidence to go on.”
“Then let me give the order,” Teasle said, and the truck seemed to drop three feet, jolting, as a new more serious constriction seized his chest. He struggled to go on talking, braced his body. “If the order’s wrong, I’ll gladly answer for it.” He stiffened, holding his breath.
“Christ, are you all right?” Trautman said. “You’d better lie down quick.”
He gestured to keep Trautman away. Abruptly the radioman said, “A report is coming through,” and Teasle fought to ignore the racking misbeats of his heart and listen.
“Lie down,” Trautman told him. “Or I’ll have to make you.”
“Leave me alone! Listen!”
“This is National Guard leader thirty-five. I don’t figure this. There must be so many of us that the dogs have lost their sense of smell. They want us to go up into the hills instead of toward the road.”
“No, they haven’t lost their sense of smell,” Teasle said, clutching himself, voice strung out with pain, to Kern. “But we’ve lost a hell of a lot of distance on him while you tried to make up your mind. Do you think now you can bring yourself to give that order?”
9
As Rambo started up the slope of shale toward the mine, a bullet whacked into the rocks a few yards to his left, the rifle report echoing through the forest back there. Staring at the mine entrance, he hurried stumbling up the slope into the tunnel, shielding his face from chips of stone that two more bullets blasted off the right side of the opening. Far down the tunnel, out of reach of more bullets, he stopped exhausted, slumping against a wall, gasping. He had not been able to maintain his distance from them. His ribs. Now the Guardsmen were barely a half mile behind him, coming fast, so taken up in the hunt that they were shooting before they had a clear target. Weekend soldiers. Trained for this but not experienced, so they did not have the discipline and in the excitement might do anything. Rush in stupidly. Spray bullets down the shaft. He was right to have come here. If he had tried giving up at the stream, they would have been too quick, would have shot him. He needed a buffer between himself and them so they would not shoot before he explained.
He returned up the dark tunnel toward the light at the mouth, studying the roof. When he found where it was dangerously cracked, he pushed away the support beams, lurching back before the ceiling could cave in on him. He was not worried by the risk. If the collapse was so great that it buried the entrance and blocked off his air, he knew that they would dig him out before he died. But when he pushed away the beams, nothing happened, and he had to try the next beams ten feet farther down, and this time when he pushed, the roof did collapse, barely missing him with a crash and rumble of falling rock that made his ears ring. The passage was filled with dust and he was choking, standing back, coughing, waiting for the dust to settle so he could see how much rock had fallen. A faint beam of light was radiating through the dust, and then the dust was clouding to the floor, and there was a foot of space between the barrier of rocks and the nearly demolished roof. More rocks dislodged, and the space dwindled to six inches. The reduced breeze that was coming through wafted some of the dust down the tunnel. It became colder. He slid down the wall to the damp floor, listening to the roof crack and settle, and very soon he heard the dim voices out there.
“Do you think it killed him?”
“How would you like to crawl in and find out?”
“Me?”
Some of them laughed then, and Rambo smiled.
“A cave or a mine,” another man said. His voice was loud and deliberate, and Rambo guessed that he was talking into a field radio. “We saw him run inside, and then the place dumped in on him. You should have seen the dust. We have him for sure. Wait a minute, hold it a second.” And then as if to someone outside, “Get your dumb ass away from the entrance. If he’s still alive, he might be able to see to shoot at you.”
Rambo inched up the rockfall, his knees pressing hard on the blunt tips of stone, to peer through the space at the top. There were the sides of the entrance which framed the shale slope and the bare trees and the sky outside, and then a soldier ran into view from the left to the right, his canteen thumping on and off his hip as he ran.
“Hey, didn’t you just hear me say to keep clear of the entrance?” the one man said, out of view on the right.
“Over there I can’t hear what you’re saying on the radio.”
“Well Christ.”
He might as well get this finished. “I want Teasle,” he called through the small opening. “I want to give myself up.”
“What?”
“Did you guys hear that?”
“Bring Teasle. I want to give myself up.” His words rumbled in the tunnel. He listened carefully to the ceiling in case it might crack and drop onto him.
“In there. It’s him.”
“Hold on, he’s alive in there,” the man said into the radio. “He’s talking to us.” There was a pause and then the man spoke much closer to the entrance, though still out of sight. “What do you want in there?”
“I’m tired of saying it. I want Teasle out here and I want to give myself up.”
They were whispering now, then the man was talking into the radio, repeating the message, and Rambo wished they would hurry and get this over. He had not believed that surrendering would make him feel this empty. Now that the fight was over, he was positive that he had exaggerated his fatigue and the pain in his ribs. Surely he could have gone on longer. He had in the war. Then he shifted position and his ribs bit and he had not exaggerated.
“Hey, in there,” the man called, out of sight. “Can you hear me? Teasle says he can’t come up.”
“Dammit, this is what he’s been waiting for, isn’t it? You tell him to get the hell up here.”
“I don’t know anything about it. All they said was he can’t come.”
“You just told me it was Teasle. Now it’s they. Have you been talking with Teasle or haven’t you? I want him up here. I want his guarantee that nobody shoots me by mistake.”
“Don’t you worry. If one of us shoots you, it won’t be by mistake. You come out of there careful and we won’t have any mistakes.”
He thought about it. “All right, but I need help pushing away these rocks. I can’t do that all by myself.” He heard them whispering again, and then the man said, “Your rifle and knife. Throw them out.”
“I’ll even throw out my handgun. I have a revolver that you don’t know about. Now I’m being honest with you. I’m not stupid enough to try fighting my way past all of you, so tell your men to keep their hands free of their triggers.”
“When I hear you throw that stuff out.”
“Coming.”
He hated to shove them through. He hated the feeling of helplessness he would have without them. Peering through the space at the top of the rockfall, looking at the bare forest and sky out there, he liked the cool breeze on his face as it came in and down the tunnel.
“I don’t hear that stuff yet,” the man said out of view. “We have tear gas.”
So. And that sonofabitch wouldn’t bother himself to come up.
He was pushing the rifle through. He was just ready to let go of it when he understood. The breeze. The breeze down the tunnel. This strong it had to be going somewhere. It was blowing down to the fissure at the end, and from there it was being sucked away, sucked out another passage in the hill. Another way out, that was the only explanation. Otherwise the breeze couldn’t move and circulate. Adrenalin scalded into his stomach. He had not lost yet.
“Where’s the guns, I said,” the man outside told him.
Up your ass, Rambo thought. He slipped the rifle back in and heart pounding excitedly, he hurried down the darkness of the tunnel. The coals of his fire were dead, and shortly he had to grope to find where he had camped. He grabbed the fir boughs and the unburned sticks of wood and carried them down the remainder of the tunnel until, head stooped against the low ceiling, he heard the water dripping and bumped into the final wall. A new fire to guide him as far as it could.
Smoke from the fir boughs to help him spot the direction of the breeze after that. Christ, maybe.
10
The pain came again, and Teasle bent forward on the bench, squinting at a dark oil stain in the wood floor. He knew he could not keep going much longer. He needed sleep. Oh how he needed it. Something from a doctor. There was no telling how much he had strained and damaged himself. Thank God this was almost over.
A little while, he told himself. That’s all. Just hold on a little while more and he’ll be caught.
He waited until Trautman and Kern were looking somewhere else and then fumbled to swallow two more pills.
“That box of them was full last night,” Trautman said and surprised him. “You shouldn’t be taking so many.”
“No. I upset it and lost some.”
“When was that? I didn’t see.”
“When you were asleep. Before dawn.”
“You couldn’t have lost that many. You shouldn’t be taking them so much. Not with all the coffee.”
“I’m fine. It’s a cramp.”
“Will you go to a doctor?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Then I’m calling a doctor out here.”
“Not until he’s caught.”
Now Kern was walking over. Why wouldn’t they leave him be? “But he is caught,” Kern said.
“No. He’s just cornered. It’s not the same.”
“He might as well be caught. It’s a question of time is all. What’s so damn important about sitting there in needless pain until they actually put their hands on him?”
“I can’t say it right. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Then call a doctor,” Trautman told the radioman. “Get a car to take him back to town.”
“I won’t go, I said. I promised.”
“Who? What do you mean?”
“I promised I’d see this to the last.”
“Who?”
“Them.”
“You mean your posse? This man Orval and the rest who died?”
He didn’t want to talk about it. “Yes.”
Trautman looked at Kern and shook his head.
“I told you that you wouldn’t understand,” Teasle said.
He turned to the open back of the truck, and the sun coming in was sharp on his eyes. Then he was afraid and it was dark and he was flat on his back on the floor. He remembered the boards rumbling when he hit.
“I’m warning you, don’t call a doctor,” he said slowly, unable to move. “I’m just down here resting.”
11
The blaze lit the fissure, smoke wafting down it from the breeze. For a moment Rambo hesitated, then slid his rifle between his belt and his pants, handled a torch and squeezed between the two walls, the strip of rock under his shoes wet and slippery, tilting down. He pressed his back against one wall so that his ribs would not scrape much against the other wall, and the farther in and down he went, the lower the top of the fissure came, and then the orange reflection of his torch glistening on the wet rock showed him where the roof and the walls tapered into a hole directly down. He held his torch over the hole, but the flames radiated only part of the way, and all he could see was a widening funnel down in the rock. He took out a rifle cartridge and dropped it, counting to three before it struck bottom, the echo of a faint metallic ring. Three seconds wasn’t deep, so he eased one leg into the hole and then the other leg and slowly squirmed himself down. When he was in as far as his chest, his ribs wedged and he could not go down more without great pain. He stared at the fire up at the entrance to the fissure, smoke enshrouding it, irritating his nostrils, and there were noises off in the mine. Another rockfall, he thought. No. Voices, shouts that merged and rumbled down to him. Already they were coming. He drew in his chest, sweating, forcing his ribs into the hole, closed his eyes, pushed, and then he was through.
The spasm in his chest nearly made him drop. He could not let himself. He had no idea what was below him. His head still above the hole, he persisted in supporting himself by his arms and elbows on the rim while he shifted his feet down there to find a ledge or a crack. The funnel was slippery and smooth, and he let himself down a little more, but still there was no place to rest his feet. The weight of his body stretched his chest, ribs cutting. He heard the men shouting indistinctly in the mine, and eyes watering from the smoke of his fire, he was about to release his grip and drop the rest of the way anyhow, hoping there were no rocks down there to break him, when his feet touched something slender and round that felt like wood.
The upper rung of a ladder. From the mine, he thought. It must be. The guy who worked the mine must have explored here. He lowered himself gingerly onto the rung. It bent but held; he stepped gently onto the second rung, it split and he snapped through two more rungs before he stopped. The sound of his fall drummed through the chamber, startling him. When it faded, he listened for the shouts of the men but he could not hear them now, his head below the rim of the hole. Then as he relaxed, the rung that held him bent, and fearing that he would crash through to the bottom, he quickly waved his torch to see what was below. Four other rungs and then a rounded floor. When it rains, he thought, water from outside must drain down here. That’s why the smooth worn rock.
