The Hunter From the Woods (22 page)

“Pardon me?” The Walther pointed at Michael’s midsection.

Behind him, Michael heard the dice clicking together in the boy’s hand. What numbers were coming up? What pips of fate? Lucky sevens, or snake-eyes?

Michael had made his decision. If he could not overpower Rolfe Gantt, he was going to die here in this desert. It would be a death of his own choosing, at least a freedom of sorts, and not a miserable wasting-away behind coils of barbed wire. Besides, when they found out what he was they would likely fly him directly to Berlin, give him over to some bald-headed mad doctor with magnified lenses for eyeglasses and a thirst for dissection, to find out how the creature ticked. He would not tick for anybody. He listened to the dice, and then he spoke.

“Use the gun or put it down,” he said. His voice was calm and even, perhaps a little weary, but strong with the resolve of a man who does not fear the end. “I’m going with this boy to find a well. Maybe there’s one out there, maybe not. But I’m not going to let you walk me into a POW camp. Yes, I thought I could get away. Now I know I can’t trick you, or beat you. My compliments. But my time is running out. Yours also.” He paused to let that settle. The Walther did not move an inch.

Michael said, “I suggest you take the last of the water and continue your course. You might find a patrol or an outpost later this afternoon, or tonight, or tomorrow. You might run right into the Dahlasiffa. You have two guns, you can hold them off for awhile. Or you might run into a British patrol and then you can sit out the rest of the war but unfortunately the sky will not wait. Whatever you decide to do, Rolfe. It’s
your
day.” Michael dared to glance quickly up toward the sun. “Isn’t it
lovely
?”

“You’re out of your mind,” Gantt answered.

“I’ve come to my senses. No man will force me to do anything. Certainly not on what may very likely be the last day of my life. So, as they say: lead…follow…or get the hell out of the way.” Michael turned his attention to the boy:
The well. Take me
there.

The boy looked from one man to another. The dice kept clicking together in his hand. Then he stopped shaking them, opened his palm and regarded the number of pips revealed there. Michael thought that he too knew the great and mystic meaning of Fate in the lives of human beings.

The boy began to walk toward the southwest.

Michael followed.

Gantt stood at a crossroads, though beneath him there was only shifting and uncertain sand.

He watched the two figures, the small and the tall, walk away from him. He gazed along his present course, further to the northwest where he hoped he might find his brothers-in-arms. He looked at the canteen, and putting it alongside his ear he listened to the meager amount move within. Hardly enough to fill three thimbles.

It was a huge desert. Sometimes an eagle who flew so high could not realize the immensity of the earth below, for he was fixed on sky and currents of air and the desire to remain in that beautiful realm forever.

But he was fallen now, and he was just a man.

He let the pistol drop to his side.

His thought was: If they run into the Dahlasiffa, they’re going to need me.

Because he was a man of action.

He drew in a long breath from the furnace. Then he began to follow the two figures, the small and the tall, across the golden dunes toward the far horizon.

Three

In the shadow of a rough mound of red rock carved by the Sahara’s wind into a spidery shape more suited for an exhibit of Picasso’s bronze sculptures, the three wanderers rested.

The sun sat at the position of late afternoon. It, too, was turning red, and the desert landscape itself had taken on a bloody tinge. Silence reigned, but for the soft clicking that came from the dice in the boy’s left hand.

“Does he have to do that?” Gantt asked irritably, as he sat with his back against the rock. He had removed his head covering to let the sweat dry from his face. He was aware that he’d stopped sweating so much. Their water was gone.

Michael didn’t reply. They were all arranged in various positions on the parachute, which had been laid down to shield their bodies from the heat radiating off the hard surface beneath. Michael, lying on his back with his eyes closed, saw no point in answering. He thought the boy might be a little insane.

He, too, had removed his keffiyeh. The boy, sitting a distance away with his knees up to his chin, stared straight ahead through his slit of brown cloth, the tam on his head pale with dust.

There was no longer a need for Gantt to brandish a gun. The Colt had gone into his parachute pack and the Walther into his waistband. They were all equals now, and all equally tired and thirsty.

Gantt scanned the sky once more, as he had so many times. Searching for the aircraft—preferably German—that were never there. Then he focused his attention on the landscape, looking for six men on camels. Thankfully, they were never there either.

“Hartler was a good man,” said Gantt. His voice was husky, his throat scratched raw by the fine grit that had gotten through his undershirt and into his mouth a few grains at a time. This was the third time he’d said Hartler was a good man. Gantt closed his eyes, his head lolling. “He was a very efficient wingman,” he said, repeating himself. “Trust is an important quality, isn’t it, Michael?”

“Yes, it is.” Michael’s eyes opened; this was a new avenue of approach.

“I trusted Hartler with my life. Many, many times. He had a wife and two beautiful daughters. I told him…Hartler, give this up and go home. Tell them you have a family that you wish to live for. And do you know what he answered?” Gantt’s eyes, as bloodshot as the sun, opened to take Michael in. “He said he would go home when he was as big a
hero
as me.”

Again, Michael felt no need to respond. But he was listening, because he’d heard something different in the flyer’s voice.

“A
hero
,” Gantt repeated. “And I am, I suppose. No…I
know
I am. The letters and the newspapers…they say I am.
Signal
said it, in three issues. Yes, I am a hero. A shining light for the youth of Germany. For her future and her aspirations.” He once more looked to the empty sky.

“But let me tell you…let me please tell you,” he said quietly, “what the life of a hero is.” He swallowed grit and tried to gather saliva in his mouth. “It’s a hundred flash-bulbs going off in your face, but not one light on in your apartment when you get home.

“It’s vows of undying love, faithful loyalty and reckless sex, but not one plate of a home-cooked meal. It’s the look on a young man’s face when he tells you he too wants to be an eagle, and you have already seen so many faces of young men burned beyond human recognition.” Gantt was silent for awhile. The dice continued to click together in the boy’s closed hand.

“I am the hero,” he went on, quieter still, “who finds the weakness in weaker men. I am the hero who strikes from below, who gives no quarter and expects none. And to tell you the honest truth, Michael, I smile a little bit when the chutes fail to open. For the hero has done his work that day. He has done his work. But oh dear God, I do love the sky.”

Gantt shifted his position against the rock. Michael saw him lift his left arm and regard his wristwatch.

“Your Rolex,” said Gantt, with impudence returning to his voice. “A nice playtoy, but it can’t compare with a Breitling.”

“Is that so?”

“Absolutely so. Well, just look at the difference! Mine has a much larger face with clearer numbers, in my opinion, since yours does not have numbers but difficult-to-read bars where the numbers should be. Mine has an automatic winder and a chronograph. In fact, it’s been created specificially for use by aviators. I’ve had not a bit of trouble with any part of it in the four happy years of ownership. And your Rolex may be very handsome, if that’s what you feel you need to project, but it doesn’t have the pedigree of the Breitling.”

“Hm,” Michael commented.

“The Breitling brand dates from 1884. I believe the Rolex name was trademarked in 1908. If you care to calculate the difference between those years, you’ll find that Breitling has twenty-four years of experience on the Rolex. What do you say to that?”

“I’d say Rolex caught up very quickly to Breitling and surpassed that brand in short order. They learned from Breitling’s mistakes.”

“Oh,
really
? And how exactly has Rolex surpassed Breitling?”

“In the areas of waterproofing and shockproofing,” Michael answered calmly. “A Rolex was worn by the first British woman to swim the English channel, in October of 1927. You can imagine how cold the water was.”

“Yes, unfortunately I can only imagine,” said Gantt.

“After ten hours in the water, her Rolex was still performing perfectly,” Michael continued. “As for the area of shockproofing, my Rolex is still performing perfectly after—you may recall—this morning’s airplane crash.”

“Ah!
Touché
,” said the flyer, with a narrow-eyed smile. He held out his wrist for Michael to see. “But my Breitling still beats your Rolex. Beats it by far.”

“And why is that?”

“Because of the band. This leather band. You see it?” It was simply a brown leather band, nothing special about it that Michael could tell. “This band,” said Gantt, “is made from the leather on the instrument panel of my father’s Albatross fighter plane, from 1918. He died in action but he set his plane down first. A perfect landing, they said, and him shot full of holes. His wingman sent my mother a drawing of him that one of his squadron members had done. It was framed in the plane’s wing fabric and panel leather. After my mother passed away I decided I wanted my father to be closer to me than a picture on the wall. I decided I wanted him to fly with me.” Gantt turned his wrist before Michael’s face. “And here he is.”

Michael realized why Gantt feared the Dahlasiffa so much. They would certainly try to take the watch, and they would likely succeed. With it would go the band, which was actually the most valuable part of it to Gantt. And he would die knowing his father’s memory was lost to the hands of the Death Stalkers. Lost, never to be found. It was time, Michael thought, to start moving once more. He sat up and rubbed his injured shoulder. The boy’s hand kept shaking the dice, and occasionally he opened his fingers to see what the pips read. Gantt leaned back against the red rock, his face painted crimson by the setting sun, his eyes not on the gleaming watch but on the plain brown leather band.

Michael had never had such difficulty getting to his feet, but he made it. “I think we should—”

“
Ow
!” said Gantt, wincing. He had jerked his head away from the rock and grasped at the back of his neck. “
Scheisse
! Something stung me!”

Michael looked at the rock and saw a trace of movement in a shadow pool. Peering closer, he made out the three-inch-long black scorpion that sat there, king of its domain, its stinger coiled back and ready to deliver another strike.

“Scorpion,” Michael said.
The poisonous kind
, he did not say.
The deadly kind
, he did not say.

The kind whose venom could kill a man within several hours
, he did not say.

He didn’t have to, because Gantt also saw the scorpion. Gantt drew the Walther and smashed its grip into the shadow pool until the scorpion was a mass of milky paste.

Then he looked at Michael with terror in his eyes.

The boy’s hand stopped.

“Razor,” said Michael.

Gantt pulled Michael’s straight razor from his pocket and gave it to him. He leaned forward. Michael opened the razor and found the sting just to the right of Gantt’s vertebrae. It was a small red puncture wound already becoming ringed with white.

Michael cut an X across the wound and squeezed the blood out of it.

“Did you get it all?” Gantt asked hoarsely, still leaning forward.

Michael didn’t know. He wasn’t sure how deep the stinger had pierced, or how much venom had been delivered. He got down on his knees beside the flyer. “Hold still,” he said, and he sliced another X into the flesh beside the first. Gantt made no sound. Then Michael put his mouth over the wound and sucked the blood like any good vampire in a Bram Stoker horror story.

He spat blood out and repeated the indelicate task. The smell and taste of it made the animal part of him salivate. He realized that the wolf could have a feast right here on this parachute dining-cloth. A third time he sucked at the wound and then spat out the fluid, and then that was all he could do.

“Thank you,” said Gantt. He put his fingers to the back of his neck and then held them, bloodstreaked, before his face. “Thank you,” he repeated. 

“I don’t know if I got all of it.”

“All right. Thank you. You tried.”

“We’d better stay here awhile longer,” Michael decided. He noted that the boy had begun shaking his dice again. The boy’s eyes darted between Michael and Gantt. “Just be still,” Michael told the flier.