David Morrell - First Blood

'Nobody pushed him into killing a policeman with a razor. Let's get that straight.'

'I'll put it differently: I have a conflict of interests here.'

'You have what? Dammit he's —'

'Let me finish. Rambo is a lot like myself and I wouldn't be honest if I didn't admit that I sympathize with the position he's in, enough so that I'd like to see him get away. On the other hand, Christ, he's gone wild. He didn't have to chase after you once you were in retreat. Most of those men didn't have to die, not when he had a chance to escape. That was inexcusable. But no matter how I feel about that, I still sympathize. What if, without knowing it, I work out a plan against him that allows him to escape?'

'You won't. Even if he escapes here, we still have to keep hunting him, and someone else is bound to be shot. You've already agreed that's your responsibility as much as mine. So if he's your best, then dammit prove it. Put every obstacle against him that you can dream of. Then if he still breaks free, you'll have done everything you could and you'll have double reason to be proud of him. In a couple of ways you can't afford not to help.'

Trautman looked at his cigarette, drew deeply on it, then flipped it out of the truck, sparks showering in the dark. 'I don't see why I lit that in the first place. I gave up smoking three months ago.'

'Don't avoid the question,' Teasle said. 'Are you going to help now or aren't you?'

Trautman looked at the map. 'I suppose none of what I'm saying matters. In a few years a search like this won't even be necessary. We have instruments now that can be mounted on the underside of an airplane. To find a man all you have to do is fly over the spot where you think he is, and the machine will register his body heat. Right now there aren't enough of those machines to go around. Most of them are in the war. But when we come home from there, well, a man on the run won't have a hope. And a man like me, he won't be needed. This is the last of something. It's too bad. As much as I hate war, I fear the day when machines take the place of men. At least now a man can still get along on his talents.'

'But you're avoiding the question.'

'Yes, I'm going to help. He does have to be stopped, and I'd rather the person who manages it be someone like myself who understands him and goes through his pain with him.'

Rambo held the owl's soft pliant back, clutched a fistful of feathers on the belly, and pulled. They made a dull tearing sound as they came away. He liked the feel of the feathers in his hand. He plucked the carcass bare, cut off the head and the wings and the claws then pressed the point of his knife in at the bottom of the rib cage, drawing the sharp edge of the blade down to between its legs. He spread the flaps of the carcass, reached inside for the warm wet offal, and smoothly steadily drew it out, getting most of the entrails in a bunch on his first try, and scraping the inside with his knife to get the rest. He would have gone to rinse the carcass where the water was dripping from the roof of the mine, but he could not tell if the water had poisons in it, and anyway, rinsing the bird would just be another complication when all he wanted was to get this over, eat and get out. He had already wasted too much energy as it was. He took a long branch that was not in the fire, sharpened it and spitted the point into the owl, extending it over the fire. The bits of feathers and hair that were still on it sparked in the flames. Salt and pepper, he thought. Since the owl was old, it would be solid and tough. The smell of its blood burning was acrid, and the meat would probably taste like that, and he wished he at least had salt and pepper.

So this is what he had fucking come to, he thought. From camping in his sleeping bag in the forest, and eating hamburgers washed with Coke in the dusty grass at the side of a road, to this, a bed of fir boughs in a mine and the carcass of an owl and not even goddamn salt and pepper. Not all that different from camping in the forest, but living then on a minimum had been a kind of luxury, because he wanted to do it. Now, though, he might be forced to live like this for a long while, and it really did seem like a minimum. Soon he might not even have this much, and he would look back on this good night when he slept for a few hours in a mine and cooked this tough old owl. Mexico was not even on his mind anymore. Only his next meal and what tree he would sleep in. A day at a time. A night at a time.

Chest throbbing, he raised his two shirts and looked at his ribs, fascinated by how swollen and inflamed they were. It was like he had a tumor in there or something growing in him, he thought. A few more hours sleep weren't going to cure that. At least he wasn't dizzy anymore. Time to move. He built up the fire to make the bird cook faster. The heat from the fire touched his forehead and the stretch of his nose. Or maybe it was the fever, he thought. He lay back flat on the fir boughs, face turned sweating toward the fire. The mucus in his mouth was dry and sticky, and he wanted to drink from his canteen, but he had already drank too much from it, he needed to save some for later. But whenever he parted his lips, a thin web of sticky mucus clung between them. Finally he sipped and swirled the warm metallic water around in his mouth, collecting the mucus, debating whether he could afford the waste of spitting it out, deciding not and swallowing thickly.

The voice startled him. It echoed indistinctly down the tunnel, sounding as if a man were outside with a loudspeaker talking to him. How could they have known where he was? He hurriedly checked that his pistol and knife and canteen were attached to his equipment belt, grabbed his rifle and the stick in the owl, and rushed toward the mouth. The breeze coming down the shaft was fresh and cool. Just before the opening, he slowed, taking care that men were not out there in the night waiting for him. But he could not see anyone, and then he heard the voice again. It was definitely from a loudspeaker. From a helicopter. In the dark the motor was roaring over the rise, and throughout a man's voice was booming 'Groups twelve to thirty-one. Assemble toward the eastern slope. Groups thirty-two complete to forty. Spread out north.' Far down and away, the line of lights was still there, waiting.

Teasle wanted him all right. He must have a small army down there. But what was the loudspeaker for? Weren't there enough field radios to co-ordinate the groups? Or is this just noise to get on my nerves? he thought. Or to scare me, to let me know how many are coming for me. Maybe it's a trick and he doesn't have any men at all north and east. Maybe he just has enough for south and west. Rambo had heard a loudspeaker used like this by Special Forces in the war. It generally confused the enemy and tempted them to second-guess what Special Forces was about to do. There was a counter-rule: when somebody wants you to second-guess them, that's when you don't try. The best reaction is to go on as if you never heard it.

Now the voice was repeating itself, dimming with the helicopter over the rise. But Rambo didn't care about anything it said. For all he cared, Teasle could bring men into these hills from every side. It wouldn't matter. Where he was going, they would pass right by him.

He glanced east. The sky was gray now over there. Sunup in a while. He eased down on the cold rocks at the entrance to the mine and tested the bird with his finger in case it was too hot to eat. Then he carved off a strip and chewed, and it was just awful. Worse than he had expected. Stiff and dry and sour. He had to force himself to bite into another piece, and he had to chew and chew before he could swallow.

Teasle did not sleep at all. An hour before dawn, Trautman lay down on the floor and closed his eyes, but Teasle kept sitting on the bench, his back against the wall, told the radioman to switch the sound from the earphones to the speakers, then listened to the position reports coming in, his eyes seldom leaving the map. The reports soon came in less frequently, and the radioman leaned forward onto the table, head on his arms, and Teasle was alone again.