the Hunted (1977) (20 page)

"Then what?" Rosen said.

Davis looked at him a moment. "See if they're al
l dead."

"Jesus," Rosen said.

The Marine touched Rosen's shoulder an
d walked away with the shotgun. He walked acros s the street. Rosen watched him. He didn't hunch hi s shoulders or run, he walked.

Davis looked back when he was on the othe
r side, then stepped through a doorway, into a hous e with plaster ripped from the walls and only part o f a roof, a house he had been in before in Phu Ba i and Hue.

Rashad pulled closer to the buildings on the right
, still in the square, and stopped. His hand droppe d to the Beretta, 9mm, that was on the seat next t o him. Teddy Cass's Uzi submachine gun lay acros s his lap, the clip sticking down between his legs.

Valenzuela had taken his Uzi out of the attache cas
e and held it so that the barrel stub rested on the bac k of the front seat.

"Go on a little more," Valenzuela said. "Up t
o the street."

Rashad put the Mercedes in gear and eased it
, creeping forward, past the building on the corner.

They saw the pile of rubble halfway down the sidestreet.

"What's going on?" Valenzuela said. "Okay
, they went down that way. What're we supposed t o think about it? Does the street go somewhere else?

You see any dust?"

"Looks like a road way down there," Rasha
d said. "They could be gone by now."

"Or they could still be here," Valenzuela said.

"Maybe that's what they want us to do," Rasha
d said. "Waste some time."

"Fucking Marine," Valenzuela said. "He's go
t no fucking business in this."

Davis watched them advancing: the heavyset guy
, Valenzuela, on this side of the street, and the thi n guy with the hair on the other side, both with Uzis , banana clips, thirty rounds each, both of them staying close to the walls of the houses, coming to doorways and windows and poking the machine guns in as they took a look. The Mercedes was creepin g along, staying even with them. Half a block, they'
d get tired of it. They'd be anxious, realize soon the y were wasting time. Clear the stuff out of the roa d and get moving--look for the car, find the car first , that would be the way to do it.

If he had an M-16 all three of them could b
e dead in the time he thought about it and picture d himself doing it. They thought they were bein g careful, but they didn't know shit about entering a village.

Across the street, Rosen was watching them
, pressed against the wall, inching his bearded fac e past the corner, then pulling it back. Twice Rose n looked over his shoulder at the Camaro, makin g sure it was still there.

Davis held the Kreighoff cradled in his arms, hi
s back to the front wall of the house, looking on a n angle through the open window. He'd have t o shoot left-handed. The shotgun had a nice balanc e and feel--the checkered walnut stock, the delicate , thin little gold-plated triggers. Twelve gauge: i t would hold a shot pattern two fists wide from th e window to the pile of rubble. Put both of the m through the windshield of the Mercedes as th e smoke cleared and go out with the Colt, if it wa s necessary to finish up.

Rosen was peeking again, holding the Beretta a
t his side. The rear end of the Camaro was shin y though filmed with dust. Rosen was still watchin g them.

They were about three houses from the rubble.

The heavyset one, Valenzuela, was coming out int
o the street, in front of the Mercedes, saying something to the one with the hair. Now the one with the hair was coming over. Then Valenzuela motione d for the car to come on, follow them. They wer e walking toward the pile of rubble, tired of foolin g around.

Walking into it. Davis watched them. Tw
o houses from the rubble. He glanced over at Rosen , across the street. About thirty seconds more.

Rosen was pressed to the corner of the building.

No--he was turning away, moving quickly t
o the Camaro and getting in . . .

Davis couldn't believe it. Not yet! Wait!

. . . slamming the door.

Actually slamming it. Christ, he could hear i
t across the street. They heard it too, both of them , down the street past the pile of rubble, looking up , raising the machine guns this way.

The claymores went off as Rosen turned the ignition key--two of them did--with a hard, heavy, ear-splitting BA-WHAM-BA-WHAM, and th e Coca-Cola sign and the lumber and concrete exploded in gray smoke and fragments of junk and metal, fanning out in the arc-shape of the oval claymores, blowing the shit out of the pile of rubble but missing--Davis knew it--the two guys flat in th e street now and the black guy safe in the car. Shit.

He brought up the Kreighoff and gave them bot
h loads, knowing it was too far, knowing it was tim e to get the hell out--and ran across the street wit h the shotgun, digging the Colt out with his fre e hand, letting go at them, snapping shots as they go t up--one of them still on his knees--firing burst s from the Uzis, trying to catch him, spray him wit h the dry chattering sound, taking out cement fro m the corner of the house as he got past it and lande d hard against the trunk lid of the Camaro.

When he got around to the side, there was Rose
n behind the wheel, looking up at him.

"I get 'em?"

"Shit," Davis said. "You got shit."

They drove out of there, straight out across th
e desert, bounding over holes and washes, tearin g through the scrub, beating the hell out of Raymon d Garcia's hot setup in a wide wide arc that shoul d bring them to the highway.

"Well, for Christ sake," Rosen said. "A nois
e like that, Jesus, why didn't it kill them?"

Davis hung on to the wheel. He wouldn't sa
y anything to the man for a while. He'd be looking a t the rearview mirror again. Shit. He was tired o f looking at the mirror, but he'd be looking at it no w all the way to the Red Sea.

THEY SAID TEDDY CASS, before he turned freelance
, had done beautiful work in the precision application of explosives. He made destruction a work of art.

With Universal Demolition, Inc., Teddy had tor
n down at least a dozen major structures. He'd tor n down, for example, the Broadmoor Hotel in Atlantic City, twelve stories, in less than twelve seconds, not even rattling the windows in a building twenty feet away--using, Teddy had once said, "
a little dynamite and a lot of gravity."

The pay had been good, but it hadn't compare
d to what he could make working contract jobs o n his own, and he'd done several for Val and Mr.

Manza. (He'd gotten a grand for the first one: letting Val tie up a guy on the top floor of the Huron Hotel in Saginaw before he blew it down.) Thi s one, five grand plus expenses. Good wages. Probably a grand or fifteen hundred more than Clarence "Rashad" Robinson was making. But the contrac t hadn't said anything about taking on the fuckin g Marines.

Teddy told Valenzuela--in the Mercedes agai
n going south--that it was time to renegotiate. H
e didn't mind discussing it in front of Rashad, because he knew Rashad would be on his side and it would be two of them Val would have to kee p happy if he wanted a job done.

They were somewhere behind the green Camaro.

They knew it hadn't doubled back north, they'
d seen enough of its dust trail to be sure of that. Bu t the Camaro wasn't in sight now--even with Rasha d hitting ninety on clear stretches of blacktop--an d they didn't know what the problems would be locating the Camaro in Eilat or at points south.

Valenzuela was not a man who became excited.

He took things one at a time and looked at them.

He said, "I agree, it's different than it was on paper. We told you Ross, Rosen, never packed but was likely to now. Or he might've hired somebod y who packed. But, no, we never saw something lik e this, a guy who carries fucking grenades in his ca r or whatever it was he used. So all right, you fee l you're entitled to combat pay, whatever you wan t to call it. Let me know what you want. Harry o r myself, we're not gonna argue with you. Harr y wants it done, so do I."

Rashad, holding his gaze on the road and th
e sweep of desert, said, "Something you might consider. The man has money. He's living on something. And we know his lawyer come to give him some more. If we was to get our hands on tha t money and cut it up--" Rashad said. "Hey, sigh t unseen, I'd go for a share, not even knowing ho w much we talking about."

"That's a possibility," Valenzuela said. "Whe
n you take Ross, I doubt we'll have time to ask hi m where his money is. But Mel, that's something else.

I'm agreeable to, as you say, renegotiating. Th
e thing is, if we keep after him we're gonna get him, I k now that. We're too close to blow it now and hav e to start over. We're gonna agree--whatever yo u want and think is fair. I just don't want to stop an d talk it over. The other thing--"

Valenzuela looked down at his map. "Wher
e they going? How far? Well, they could go to Eila t and try and hide there--it looks like a pretty goodsize place, a resort town, the Miami Beach of Israel--or they could keep going south, down t o the southern tip of the Sinai. Then what? Go bac k up the other side? They keep going they'll be i n Egypt. So I don't know where the fuck we're going.

All I can tell you is, don't worry about the expense.

Okay? Shit, we're this far. You got something els
e you'd rather do?"

They passed army vehicles going north and
a road that pointed west, to the Timna Mining Company. About three miles from Eilat, they approached a security checkpoint: a shed at the side of the road with yellow markings and two Israel i men in khaki clothes--though not army uniforms--
w ith submachine guns slung over their shoulders.

Rashad said, "Uh-oh."

Teddy Cass pushed his Uzi under the front seat.

Valenzuela's lay across his legs, beneath the ope
n map of Israel. He put his hand on the weapon a s the car crept up to the two security men studyin g them, one with his hand raised. The hand move d then, waving them past. Rashad began to accelerate. Valenzuela said, "No, hold on. Stop."

Rashad braked. One of the security men walke
d over to the open window on Teddy's side. "Ask hi m about a green car," Valenzuela said.

"Yeah, say," Teddy said to the security man
, who was middle-aged and weathered and ha d probably been in several wars, "did a green American car go by here a few minutes ago? Some friends of ours, we're supposed to meet them down here."

The security man was nodding, saying yes an
d waving his arm, yes, it went by.

"Thank him," Valenzuela said.

They came to Eilat feeling better about thei
r prospects--to the desert town on the side of a hill , a boom town of new houses and young trees an d children--young people everywhere--the tow n spreading up the hill from the gulf, down the sout h coast into the Sinai, with its airport right in th e middle.

Valenzuela studied his map and made a plan.

They dropped Rashad off at the airport to wai
t there, which was fine with him, get out of the ca r for a while. Teddy slid behind the wheel and the y circled around the airport to drive through th e parking lots of the half dozen hotels lining th e curve of the gulf that was called the North Beach.

No green Camaro. Rosen and the Marine couldn'
t have taken the road east, because it didn't go anywhere. The road stopped at the border, at Aqaba, and you couldn't get into Jordan from Israel without a visa. You couldn't sneak in farther north because of the mine fields. There was nothing west but desert and mountains all the way to Suez.

So they drove south, winding along the shore o
f the gulf, past the port facilities and oil storag e tanks, slowing down at a couple of motels, stopping at the Laromme to inspect the parking area, and then going on another five or six miles, between the mountains and the coral beaches on the edge of the sea--to another security checkpoint.

Valenzuela, in the front seat now, said, "Yo
u wouldn't happen to've seen a bright green American car go by here, would you? With a white stripe?" A Z-28 Camaro? the security man wit h the M-16 asked. "Yeah, that's the one," Valenzuel a said. No, the security man said, he had seen that ca r one time and heard its engine and liked it ver y much, the sound, rrrrrrruuuuum, but he had no t seen it today. He wanted to know if the owner wa s a friend of theirs and how many liters the engin e was and if the owner wanted to sell it. Christ, discussing a hot rod, with the mountains of Jordan and Saudi Arabia over there across the gulf and a Bedouin going by on a camel.

It was worth it. Rosen and the Marine were i
n Eilat.

"Now what?" Teddy said.

"We'll check with Clarence," Valenzuela said.