Potshot (23 page)

Ratliff appeared to have left without taking anything, by means unknown, for reasons unknown. At least, unknown to me.

It was just after sunrise. We were at breakfast. Like our ancestors. No television. No night life. We went to bed early and got up early. Bernard had cooked up hash and eggs. Sapp was already on his third coffee.

‘When you think the Dell will come?’ Sapp said.

He didn’t sound apprehensive. He seemed simply curious.

‘They come before we’re through solving his murder,’ Hawk said, ‘we got something to think about. There about forty of them and about seven of us.’

‘Which is about six to one,’ I said.

‘I’da never figured that out,’ Hawk said.

‘Is it a genetic thing?’ I said.

‘Yeah. We good at tap dancing, though.’

‘I figure we need to find a way to make it more even,’ I said.

‘Try to force them to split up?’

‘Something like that. So we can end up, say, seven on six, our favor.’

‘I been thinking the same thing,’ Chollo said. ‘’Cept for the numbers. We no good at numbers either.’

‘So what are you good at?’ I said.

‘Playing the guitar, singing sad songs.’

‘Just what we need.’

‘Sí.’

‘That’s what cavalry is for,’ Sapp said.

‘Cavalry,’ Bernard said from the stove. ‘I can’t ride no fucking horse.’

‘Get you a pony,’ Sapp said.

He looked at me.

‘You get what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Bring a lot of force to bear on a small section of the enemy by moving a small force around rapidly.’

Sapp shot me with his forefinger and thumb. He nodded several times.

‘Mobility,’ he said.

‘That what you meant whyn’t you say so?’ Bernard said. ‘Stead of that pony shit.’

‘Who we got for cavalry?’ Vinnie said.

‘Us,’ Chollo said.

‘So,’ Hawk said, ‘we don’t figure out what to do with them. We figure out what to do with us.’

I put some more ketchup on the hash. You can’t have too much ketchup on hash. I ate some and had a bite of toast and a swallow of coffee. Balance is important. I didn’t say anything. One of the things I’d learned from Susan was the creative use of silence.

‘How about you, Kemo Sabe?’ Chollo said to Bobby Horse. ‘You got any Kiowa battle secrets?’

‘Get them to circle the wagons,’ Bobby Horse said. ‘And ride around and around them.’

‘I got firing points laid out,’ Vinnie said. ‘So the field of fire covers all the approaches to the house.’

‘But we stay in the house we still back to six on one,’ Hawk said.

Vinnie nodded. My breakfast wasn’t coming out even. I took another piece of toast from the platter Bernard had put on the table.

‘So we need to get out of the house,’ Chollo said.

‘We probably in better shape than they are,’ Hawk said. ‘We get higher than them, they going to be laboring they have to chase us uphill.’

‘Especially,’ I said, ‘if they have to chase us a lot.’

I was alone on the front porch when Dean Walker pulled his cruiser up in front of the house. Hatless, he got out and came up the front walk, his eyes masked behind his aviator shades.

‘Holding the fort?’ he said.

‘Valiantly,’ I said.

‘You still got troops?’

‘Yep.’

‘Handy?’

‘Yep.’

‘Good,’ Walker said. ‘You’ll need them.’

‘Because?’

‘Because today’s the day,’ Walker said.

‘For?’

‘For the Dell to come down on you.’

‘How many?’

‘All of them.’

‘When?’

Walker smiled.

‘Can’t say for sure,’ he said. ‘But they aren’t early risers.’

‘But you know it’s today.’

‘Yeah.’

‘How would you know that?’ I said.

‘I’m the police,’ Walker said.

‘And where do you stand?’ I said.

‘Out of the way,’ Walker said.

‘So why’d you warn me?’

‘Civic duty,’ Walker said.

I nodded. We looked at each other for a moment. Then Walker turned and walked back to his car and got in and drove off. I watched him go. Then I picked up my Winchester and walked up the hill behind the house. The desert was empty, sprawled in harsh metallic silence under the oppressive sun.

Bobby Horse was on lookout with binoculars around his neck and his BAR leaning in the shade of a rock.

‘Where’s Hawk?’ I said.

‘Down near the road. They’re running things through.’

I said, ‘The Dell’s on its way.’

Bobby Horse scanned the landscape with his binoculars.

‘Don’t see them,’ he said.

I picked up the walkie-talkie from the shade beside the BAR.

‘Hawk,’ I said.

He answered.

‘Bring everyone back up to the lookout,’ I said. ‘Dell’s coming.’

‘’Bout time,’ Hawk said.

‘After Bobby Horse spots them with the glasses,’ I said when we were gathered, ‘it’ll take them about fifteen minutes to arrive.’

‘What if they come another way?’ Bernard said.

‘There isn’t another way,’ I said, ‘except over the mountain behind us. They’re not that industrious.’

Hawk nodded.

‘We put Vinnie on the right, Chollo in the center, and Bernard Whosis on the left.’

‘Fortunato,’ Bernard said. ‘Goddamn it, Bernard J. Fortunato.’

‘Right,’ Hawk said. ‘You on the left. Me and Sapp and Bobby Horse start in the center, behind Chollo, and bust our ass left or right, depending on what’s going down.’

‘Like in
Zulu,
’ Sapp said.

‘Tha’s where I learned all my military tactics,’ Hawk said. ‘Spenser?’

‘I’ll freelance,’ I said.

‘I sort of guessed that,’ Hawk said. ‘We already have water and ammunition stashed at each firing position.’

He had forgotten his jive accent again.

‘Drink a lot of water,’ I said.

‘That way,’ Chollo said, ‘we run out of ammunition we can piss on them.’

‘What you gonna do freelancing?’ Vinnie said.

‘I thought I’d hide under the bed until you guys won,’ I said.

‘We’ll let you know,’ Vinnie said.

‘But in case I’m not under the bed,’ I said. ‘I’ll be down below the house, behind them if they come in.’

‘And?’ Sapp said.

‘And I want to be the first one to shoot.’

‘If possible,’ Hawk said.

‘If possible.’

I turned and started down the hill. After ten steps I turned and said to Hawk, ‘Good hunting.’ To my ear I sounded amazingly like Stewart Granger.

Hawk grinned and gave me a thumbs-up.

‘Gringos watch too many movies,’ Chollo said.

‘African Americans, too,’ Hawk said.

‘Sí.’

I went on down the hill.

They came in a long, relentless line of trucks and motorcycles. As they moved past me onto the dirt road to the house, dust lingered behind them, kicked up by their passage.

Mongol hordes
.

I lay behind my rock in a clump of cactus as they passed, with the sun pressing down on my back and the Winchester laid across the rock. I had a bag of ammunition and some water. I wore a Browning 9mm, on my right hip, and the Smith & Wesson .38 butt forward on my left side. The line pulled up in front of the house and spread into a wide semicircle, the motors still running. The thick smell of exhaust fouled the intense desert air. They were so used to intimidating people, and they had arrived in such numbers, that they were arrogant, and arrogance made them stupid. They put out no scouts, and paid no attention to the possibility of ambush. Their only concession to the possibility that we might put up a fight was to dismount their vehicles and stay behind them, except The Preacher. He sat upright and almost regal in the passenger seat beside the Mexican driver, while Pony threw a leg over the side and climbed out of the back seat of the Scout and waddled fearsomely to the front door, carrying an assault rifle. The collective motors grumbled in the silence.

‘Spenser,’ Pony said loudly.

Nothing.

‘Preacher’s here,’ Pony said.

Nothing.

The Preacher gestured and nine men moved out from behind the vehicles and clustered behind Pony. All of them had long guns.

‘You come out or we come in,’ Pony blared.

We didn’t come out. Pony jacked a shell up into the chamber of the assault rifle, kicked open the door and went in. The other nine guys crowded in behind them, bumping into each other and jamming up in the door before they got through. It didn’t appear that they’d given this a lot of planning. In three or four minutes they came back out, this time taking turns through the door.

‘Looks like they run,’ Pony said.

The Preacher began to look up the hill

‘They didn’t run far,’ he said. ‘Spread out. Look for them.’

I levered a round into the chamber of the Winchester. The Mexican driver heard the sound and jumped from the Scout with a long-barreled revolver in his hand, in a half crouch, looking toward my rock. I eased the rifle over the rock, aiming so that the Mexican driver was sitting on my front sight. He saw the movement, and snapped off a shot that spanged off the rock. I shot him in the middle of the chest and he fell straight backward and lay on the ground beside the Scout. The remainder of the Dell surged toward my rock, and my colleagues opened up from the hillside. The Preacher sat bolt upright in the Scout.

‘Pony,’ he said, ‘take five men and clean up behind the rock. The rest of you spread out up the hill. Don’t bunch up.’

With my ammo and my water I moved down from behind my rock, and crossed the road behind them and took new shelter in a small wash behind the house.

The gunfire from the hill badly damaged the center of the Dell advance. Stalled, the survivors pinned down behind whatever cover they could find. I could hear the fast boom boom of Bernard’s street sweeper. Then the firing stopped. The silence was startling. From the wash I could see Pony and his team moving carefully up behind the rock where I had been. From the hillside the gunfire erupted again, and the right flank of the Dell line washed back and hunkered down. But the left flank surged forward as if responding to the ebbing of the right, and now their gunfire was on the top of the hill. From behind my former rock I heard Pony yell to The Preacher.

‘He’s not here.’

‘Then get your asses up the hill,’ The Preacher said.

The gunfire was dense, and almost entirely from the left. My guys must have clustered up on that flank. The Dell line in the center began to move again, and the right side surged back as if having reached low tide. It was making its natural rebound. There were too many of them. We were in danger of getting overrun.

I squirmed along the wash and scuttled, bent nearly double, up the hillside on the right. Twenty yards behind the advancing Dell troops, I took up residence behind another rock and began to snipe the advance. I knocked two of them down before they realized where I was shooting from. I saw four of them peel off and head cautiously back down the hillside, looking for me. I had a map of the area in my head. I’d walked it days ago. I knew where every rock was, every depression in the ground, every growth of arid vegetation sufficient to hide behind. I picked off one of the people looking for me, and dove and rolled into a little gully with a fringe of brush along the lip. Gunfire scattered around the rock. The smell of it hung heavy in the stifling air. My eardrums hurt. From the other side of the line, behind the advancing left flank of the Dell forces, I heard the crack of a rifle, close enough to me to be sharp against the general din of arms. Somebody had gotten behind the Dell lines on the left and was picking them off from behind as I was on the right. It was as if everything were balanced precisely until the second sniper showed up. He was too much. The balance teetered. The Dell assault held for a moment, hanging on to the top of the hill, and then broke. These were not professionals. It started as a hesitation, then a halt, then a withdrawal, and, as the withdrawal moved back down the hill it picked up speed, and turned very quickly into a running away. Two guys ran right past me as I lay in my gully. They were intent on leaving. They paid no attention to me. I didn’t shoot them. I stood and ran through the rout, weaving among the running men like a kick returner. I was looking for The Preacher.

I found him standing stiffly upright beside the Jeep, as his troops flowed past him. He was making no attempt to stop the rout. He seemed frozen by it. I stopped beside him holding the Winchester muzzle-down but cocked.

‘Now you know how Custer felt,’ I said.

The Preacher turned his head and stared at me. He didn’t say anything. The retreat tumbled past us and then it was gone. My ears rang from the firing. The smell of the gunfire was everywhere. My shirt was soaked with sweat and clung to my back. I could hear my breath heaving in and out. Up the hill there was movement. My side. The first person I saw was Tedy Sapp. He was shirtless, carrying Bernard J. Fortunato in his arms, as if Bernard weighed no more than a puppy. Bernard’s right pant leg was wet with blood and a piece of a shirt, presumably Tedy Sapp’s, was tied around his thigh. Hawk was behind him, one arm around Bobby Horse, who leaned on him heavily as they edged down. Vinnie came behind them with Chollo. Chollo was bleeding on one side of his neck.

‘They shot me,’ Bernard said, as they came up to where I stood. ‘Fuckers shot me right in the goddamned leg. In the fucking leg. Hurts like a bastard.’

‘Great shooter,’ Sapp said. ‘Hit a target as small as you.’

‘Bobby?’ I said.

‘Tore up my left knee,’ he said.

Chollo stood in front of The Preacher for a moment and then grinned at him.

He said, ‘We deal in lead, friend.’

The Preacher showed no sign that he’d heard Chollo, or that he knew we were there. He was still rigid beside the ratty Scout. Tedy Sapp put Bernard down in the shade of the Scout and let him lean on the front right tire. Hawk helped Bobby Horse onto the ground beside him. Bobby didn’t lean. He lay flat on his back and stared straight into the pain. I looked at my watch. The whole fight had taken twenty minutes.

‘What about your neck?’ Vinnie said.

‘A piece of rock,’ Chollo said, ‘chipped off and nicked me.’