Authors: Elmore Leonard
"I'm thirsty," Rosen said.
He heard someone calling then, from outside.
"The goddamn Marine," Valenzuela said. "He's i
n there, he's got no business being there. How much'
s he paying him? He could've left--you know what I m ean? He sees how it is, shit, he knows. But h e comes back here."
"He's paying him some thing," Rashad said.
"Man ain't doing it for the love of his country. Sa
y he shoots for money. We say to him how much doe s he want to quit shooting, walk away and mind hi s business."
"I don't know," Valenzuela said. "If it's like that
, if he's got a price, then maybe we ought to fin d out."
Teddy came in a crouch along the stone fence t
o the spot where they were sitting on the ground , near the open gate. Teddy had stayed out there , looking for a shot.
He said, "Well, what do you think?"
Valenzuela looked at him. "What do I think?
What do you think, for Christ's sake?"
"I'm pretty sure we got him," Teddy said.
"Didn't you see him? He stumbled, the Marine an
d the girl, it looked like both of them grabbed him."
"I didn't see him stumble," Valenzuela said. "I
s aw the Marine pull 'em into the house. Fuckin g Marine, I'll tell you."
"Listen, I know we hit him," Teddy said, "and I
t hink it was me. I had it right on his back. You sai d go, I pinned him, I know it."
"If he was dead," Rashad said, "it would b
e over. They wouldn't have no reason to stay in th e house."
"I didn't say he was dead," Teddy said. "No, bu
t I'm pretty sure I hit him. You know, it looks like a setup. They're in the hole, nothing they can do.
Trapped. But they got a place. They got food, water, whatever, and we're out here in the fucking rocks. What if somebody comes along? I mean w e don't have time to sit around. If he's still alive, the n we've got to finish it."
"Why don't you rush the house?" Rashad said.
"All he's got is a rifle, a shotgun, and some other shit.
He could even have the place mined. You know it?"
"We got to get him out of there," Valenzuel
a said.
"Or keep him busy," Teddy said. "Say if I coul
d get up there close enough to plant a charge. One o f you--how about this? One of you go up and talk t o him. See if he'd just as soon go home alive. I'll tak e some stuff, see what I can do. Put a hole in the plac e and we drive in."
"Let's do it," Valenzuela said. He looked a
t Rashad. "Call him. Tell him you want to talk."
"You want me to do it?"
"You're his buddy," Valenzuela said. "Go on."
Rashad moved to the stone fence on his knee
s and gradually began to pull himself up.
"Hey, Marine!"
The rifle shot sang off the rim of stone and ricocheted into the desert. Rashad was on the ground again. He looked up at the top of the fence and a t the sky.
"Hey, my man! . . . We not mad at you! We wan
t to talk!"
Rashad was waving something white, a handkerchief. Standing in the open gate now, testing him.
Or testing himself.
Davis put the front sight of the Mauser o
n Rashad's chest.
Now the skinny one with the hair was comin
g out, starting up the drive with Rashad, both o f them holding their hands out from their sides.
"No guns!" Rashad called.
Shoot them. It was in Davis' mind.
The third one appeared then, Valenzuela, standing up behind the stone fence that was waist-high on him. Valenzuela held his arms out.
Davis moved the rifle sight to the left a fe
w inches, held in on Valenzuela, then moved it bac k to the two figures coming up the drive.
"Come on out and talk," Rashad said. He bega
n to angle across the coarse grass toward the house , still holding the white handkerchief. The one wit h the hair continued up the drive, looking toward th e house, the three of them becoming more spread ou t as they approached. Maybe armed, but not wit h Uzis. Not Rashad or the one with the hair. Mayb e pulling something, but not, apparently, coming t o shoot.
Rashad said, "How's Mr. Rosen?" He waited.
"If you ain't gonna talk, my man, how we gonn
a have a talk?"
Valenzuela was still moving along the fence. Th
e one with the hair was approaching the rear of th e black Mercedes, still looking toward the house.
Davis glanced over his shoulder. "Tali! Com
e here!" He looked at Rosen and saw his eyes ope n with a startled expression, the glassiness gone.
"What is it?" Rosen said. His eyes began to rol
l back again.
Rashad, in front of the house now, thirty meter
s away, said, "Hey, David, we got nothing agains t you, man. We got no reason to hurt you."
Tali, coming into the front room, said, "What? I
s he all right?" Looking at Rosen, then seeing Davi s at the window with the rifle.
"Watch the one in the driveway," Davis said.
"Take the shotgun." The Kreighoff was next t
o him, leaning against the sill. "Can you shoot it?"
"I think so."
He watched her as she pushed a window ope
n and raised the Kreighoff, extending it through th e opening.
"Who's that," Rashad said, "Mr. Rosen? No
, hey, that ain't Mr. Rosen, is it? Where's he at?"
"Get down," Davis said to Tali.
"Look," Rashad said then, "we got nothin
g against you or her either. The two of you can get i n the car, man, and leave. But if you stay here . . .
s hit, you gonna die. You know that. For what?
Some money? How much he paying you?"
Valenzuela had stopped. Now he was movin
g along the fence again, almost even with the patio.
Fifty meters to Valenzuela.
Thirty to Rashad.
"David!" Tali's voice. "He's behind the car!"
Davis swung the Mauser. He could see the on
e with the hair through the side windows of the Mercedes. She should have fired and kept him back, but it was expecting too much. It would have happene d too quickly for her.
Davis aimed at the rear-door window and fire
d and saw the window and the window on the othe r side fragment in a web of lines, drilled cleanly b y the high-velocity 30-06, the figure back there suddenly gone. Rashad was running. Davis swung the Mauser on him, then went down as the window s exploded with the hard clatter of Valenzuela'
s weapon and pressed against the wall below the sill , seeing Tali on the floor with the shotgun, embracing it, holding on tight, her eyes squeezed closed.
The sound stopped.
Davis rose up. He saw Rashad running for th
e gate. He saw Valenzuela behind the fence with th e Uzi. He fired at Valenzuela, squeezing off tw o rounds, seeing him drop behind the fence, swun g the Mauser and tried to nail Rashad with the tw o rounds he had left, but not in time. Rashad wa s through the gate. There was no sign of the thir d one. He had run off into the scrub, beyond the car.
"I took a pretty good look," Valenzuela said. "I
d idn't see the hole we're supposed to drive a ca r through in the wall. In fact, I didn't hear any explosion at all."
"I changed my mind," Teddy said. "I think whe
n I saw the rifle sticking out the window, fucking elephant gun. I started picturing what this guy must look like in his uniform with the ribbons an d medals and I figured one of them said 'expert.' No t somebody throwing wild shots, expert. Fuckin g Marines, they got all that shit on them, all th e medals. But wait." Teddy had a cigarette in hi s hand and paused before lighting it, looking fro m Valenzuela to Rashad. "Did I come back emptyhanded? You bet I did."
"What'd you do with it?" Valenzuela said.
"I stuck a wad under the left rear fender. Th
e wire goes out into the bushes over there."
"What's that do for us?" Valenzuela said.
"Blow the car. Show 'em they're not going anywhere."
"Or wait and see if they try and use the car,"
Rashad said. "Thinking they can sneak out acros
s the desert after it gets dark. Man, if we gonna b e here that long--and I don't see why we won't."
It was a good possibility. Teddy left in the gra
y Mercedes--parked down the wadi from the ston e fence--to run into Eilat and get some supplies , some food and something to drink, like ice-col d beer. They'd never felt the sun press so hot. Go t them cornered, Rashad said, and we the ones dyin g of thirst.
He said to Valenzuela, after Teddy had left
, "They can stay in there a week, but we can't sta y out here. We can cut the electric wire, it wouldn'
t hurt them none. We can mess up their water pump , they probably got something else to drink. You understand what I'm saying?"
"We got to get to the Marine," Valenzuela said.
"Christ, I know that."
"Yeah, but with something he can see," Rasha
d said. "We tell him we don't want to kill him. Wha t does he think about that? It's not something he ca n see and say yeah, I want that. It's only driving awa y from here, having in his head he left Rosen. Yo u understand? But we offer him something good--
h ey, look at this--then he's got something else i n his head when he drives off. Or when he thinks he'
s gonna drive off."
"Offer him money," Valenzuela said. "Wha
t else?"
"No, that's it, money. But how much we got?
You gonna write him a check? But see, we offe
r him a whole pile of money, then his head start s working and he can give himself excuses for leaving, like, we gonna get Rosen anyway . . . he can'
t stay with Rosen the rest of his life . . . he's not responsible for the man. Things like that. He can take something from us and say why not, the man'
s gonna die anyway."
"Where's the pile of money?" Valenzuela said.
"I believe the lawyer's got it," Rashad said.
"How big a pile, I don't know, but the Arab ki
d said he had money, my buddy. See, after the mone y was supposed to've been delivered the lawyer's stil l here. Least he was yesterday. So I don't believe h e delivered it. I believe the lawyer's still got Rosen'
s money, waiting for Rosen to come get it."
"We don't know that," Valenzuela said.
"No, but there's a way we can find out," Rasha
d said. "How long's it take to drive to Tel Aviv, fou r hours?"
Valenzuela pulled the highway map out of hi
s coat pocket and, sitting with his back to the ston e fence, opened it to the mileage chart.
"Three hundred and forty-two kilometers."
Valenzuela began to nod, estimating time and distance. "Yeah, you could be back here in eight, nine hours. It's an idea. Maybe bring Mel wit h you."
"I was thinking that," Rashad said. "Use him t
o talk, so we won't be exposing our bodies. Standin g out there, man, playing the friendly nigger, tha t ain't my style."
Holding the Mauser on the stone fence fifty yard
s away, knowing they were there, behind the fence o r maybe in the shade of some scrub, he imagine d telling Master Sergeant T. C. Cox about it.
"See, they came up the drive with their hand
s held out from their sides, showing they were unarmed. The other one was over behind the wall."
T. C. Cox: The ones trying to kill you.
Davis: Yeah, trying to kill this Rosen.
T. C. Cox: Trying to kill you too, as I understand it.
Davis: Well, at this point it looked like the
y wanted to talk.
T. C. Cox: What was there to talk about? The
y wanted to kill you.
Davis: See, the girl was covering the one with th
e hair, but he got behind the car.
T. C. Cox: He got behind the car. What'd you le
t him do that for?
Davis: Well, the girl was watching him.
T. C. Cox: I thought you watched the both o
f them come up the drive.
Davis: I did.
T. C. Cox: Then why didn't you kill them?
Davis didn't hear himself say anything.
T. C. Cox: What were you waiting for?
Davis: All that sitting around the embassy like
a bank guard . . .
T. C. Cox: You had the chance. Why didn't yo
u kill them?
It scared hell out of him. How fast you could forget how to react.
DURING THE AFTERNOON he changed Rosen's dressing. There was very little blood now, but the woun d bubbled and sucked air when he uncovered it an d put on another compress. He knew Rosen hear d the sound.