James Burke - Feast Day of Fools

“Go back on your own if you don’t like our mission.”

“I will never leave you.”

“Then do as I say.”

“And what is that? To let the Russian’s friends hunt us down? We’re gonna kill them all, right? If we kill them all, why not take what should be ours? All of this land belonged to our ancestors. Now it is owned by everybody except us.”

“You are a logical man. But we do not have an issue with anyone but Josef Sholokoff. I do not want his possessions. We avenge Minister Cody. We made fun of his manhood, but it was he who set the souls of my children free. For that I honor his memory. Do not intrude upon my purpose here.”

Negrito raised his big hands and turned in a circle like a baboon attempting a pirouette. “Then let’s kill the Russian and be gone. I am tired of this place. Do you want me to do it? I would do it with great pleasure. I am tired of talking about baptism and souls while we don’t get paid for the work we do. I am not a mystic. I believe in the knife and gun and dealing seriously with my enemies.”

“You also believe in the shovel.”

“You speak of my cemetery? I signal our adversaries of our potential.”

“You keep a museum under the ground for your pleasure. As a ghoul would. Vamonos,” Krill said. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and walked off through the brush and started down the incline, Negrito’s close-set pig eyes slipping off the side of his face.

As Krill approached the stone house, he forgot about Negrito and began to think about the challenge at hand. When the two guards Negrito had killed did not report in, others would be sent outside to find them. In the meantime, Krill had to find a spot that would allow him a clean shot through the front window. He thought he could hear the sound of a television coming from the front of the house, but in the wind he couldn’t be sure. His informant had told him that Sholokoff was staying at the house with no more than four men. Two of those were already taken care of. If Krill could get a clear shot at Sholokoff and kill him instantly, he might not have to kill his men, too. Few hired killers were willing to risk their lives for a dead employer. But if they chose to avenge their employer’s death, they would share the fate of their comrades on the hillside, Krill thought, and the choice would be theirs, not his.

He stayed in the shadow of the mountain and found a flat place up on a bench behind a rock, perhaps thirty yards from the front of the house, with an unobstructed view through the picture-glass living room window. He removed a small pair of binoculars from a pouch on his web belt and focused them through the glass. A diminutive, gray-headed, wizen-faced man in a belted scarlet robe was watching television from a reclining chair. His wiry beard and angular features made Krill think of a ferret or a toy constructed of Popsicle sticks and glue. How could one so small possess so much wealth and exert so much power over others? Krill wondered. Why did the gringos allow this tiny man to do so much damage in their country? The narcotics he sold were the poor man’s hydrogen bomb. But that was their business and not his. Krill wrapped his left forearm in the rifle sling, fitted his right hand in the pistol grip, and looked through the iron sights. Behind him, he could hear Negrito breathing in the darkness, an aura of dried sweat and tobacco and wood smoke emanating from his body.

“?Que bueno, hombre!” Negrito said.

“Do not talk,” Krill said, shifting the bipod on the rock, depressing the barrel slightly so the hood on the front sight formed a perfect circle around Sholokoff’s tiny head. He tightened his finger on the trigger, letting out his breath, his cheek flush against the dull black finish of the rifle stock.

“ Chingado, go ahead!” Negrito said. “Burn the whole magazine. It’s time we got out of here. I want to fuck my woman tonight.”

Krill had released his finger from the trigger and was staring numbly down the incline at the window. Two little girls and a little boy had just run from a side room and climbed into Sholokoff’s lap. Negrito leaned over Krill’s shoulder to see better, his loins brushing against Krill’s buttocks, his body odor and the smell of onions and garlic and fried meat on his breath enveloping Krill in a toxic cloud.

“Fuck, man, do it,” Negrito said. “I hear a plane. Them hunters come in and out of here all the time. They got a landing strip on the other side of the house.”

“Shut your mouth,” Krill said.

“You ain’t thinking straight. We already killed two guys. You got to finish the job, man. Sholokoff has many friends. We cannot have this man hunting us. Do it now, jefe.”

“Take your hand off my shoulder.”

“Then shoot.”

“You will not give me orders.”

“Then give me the rifle.”

“Remove your hand and take your odor out of my face.”

“Look at the plane. It’s dipping out of the sky. You have to choose between our families and these worthless people. You worry about my odor? What is wrong with you, man?”

“You are like an empty wagon rattling across a bridge,” Krill said. “You speak craziness and nonsense. You are like the demoniac babbling among the swine. We do not kill children. Have you learned nothing? Do you understand nothing except killing?”

“We did not put the children here. This is not our fault. Lupa and Mimo and me will do everything that is necessary inside the house. You will not have to see or hear anything that happens down there. One day you will be right in the head, but now you are not. So we will do these things for you and forget the bad words that you have spoken.”

“You will do nothing without my permission.”

“Take the shot, Krill. Please. You can do it. I’ve seen you shoot the head off a dove at a hundred meters. Concentrate on the Russian and don’t worry about the children. They will be all right. But we cannot leave this man alive.”

Krill’s head was pounding, his ears filled with whirring sounds that were louder than either the wind or Negrito’s incessant talking. Had it been like this for the soldiers in the helicopter who had machine-gunned the clinic built by the East Germans? Had they seen Krill’s children playing in the yard and wondered if they should not abort their mission? Had they fired on the building in hopes that they would not hit the children? Or had they given no thought at all to what they were doing? Did they simply murder his children and fly back to their base and eat lunch and drink warm beer under a palm-shaded table, staring idly at a smokeless blue volcano in the distance? Was that what happened when they slew the innocent children he had loved from the first breath they had drawn?

He bent over the rifle again, feeling the sling tighten on his left arm, his mouth filled with a taste like pennies, a brass band thundering in his head. The little boy was seated firmly in Sholokoff’s lap, watching the television. Krill raised the rifle barrel until the hood on the front sight circled Sholokoff’s head like the frame on a miniature photograph. He took a breath and waited a split second and then exhaled slowly, slowly, slowly, his left eye squinted shut, his right eye bulging like a child’s marble, his index finger tightening as though it had a life of its own.

Suddenly, he stood erect, pulling his hand from the trigger guard as though it had been shocked with a cattle prod. His teeth were chattering, his breath catching in his throat. Murderer, he thought he heard a voice say. Assassin! Man who brought death to his own children . He stared wide-eyed at Negrito.

“You look sick, cabron. You look like your mind has flown into the darkness,” Negrito said.

“We go back through the grass and out the fence,” Krill said. “We are through with this. We will deal with Sholokoff at another time.”