Росс Томас - The Mordida Man

“Shut up, Françoise,” Ko said wearily.

“They’re not going to kill me,” she said. “No. Not me. I’m not going to let them kill me like they killed Felix.”

There was a thump. Ko looked around. There was no light. He used a disposable cigarette lighter to see what Francoise was doing.

The thump had come from the lid of the suitcase that she had thrown back against a wall. She was pawing through the suitcase, looking for something. Her rifle lay discarded on the floor beside her.

“What the hell are you doing, Françoise?” Ko said, the weariness in his tone overlaid by disgust.

“They’re not going to kill me. I don’t want to die. I can’t die. I’m going out. Don’t try to stop me. I’m going out and then I’ll explain everything to them. They will understand.”

“Let her go,” Diringshoffen said from the window. “She’s crazy.”

“I’m not crazy. You’re the crazies. You can stay here and get killed. I’m going to live. That’s important — to live.”

She stood up. Even in almost total darkness, Ko could see the white blouse she held in her hand. It was her flag of surrender.

“I will explain everything,” she said. “They will understand.”

“They’ll kill you,” Ko said.

“No. Not me. I will surrender and then explain everything and they will understand. And I will live.”

She started toward the door. “So long, Françoise,” Ko said.

Dunjee watched as the farmhouse door swung open. Something white was being waved.

Reese put the bullhorn back to his lips. “We see your white flag. We will respect it. Just come out slowly with your hands high in the air.”

Jack Spiceman put his M-16 up to his cheek and took careful aim at the doorway.

“You think it’s a trick?” Dunjee said.

“Who knows?”

All five men watched as Françoise Leget stepped slowly through the farmhouse door, her arms straight up above her head. In her left hand was the white blouse.

She walked slowly toward the stone wall. When she was twenty yards away, Jack Spiceman shot her in the left knee. Francoise Leget crumpled to the ground. Then the screams began.

After Françoise Leget’s screams had gone on without interruption for nearly five minutes, Dunjee asked Franklin Keeling, “Why don’t you finish her off?”

“That’s what you’d do, isn’t it?” Keeling said.

“I don’t know,” Dunjee said.

“Well, the reason I don’t have Spiceman finish her off is because in about two minutes, they’re going to do something stupid.”

“Like kill their hostages?”

Keeling shook his head as he peered over the top of the stone wall. Next to him Spiceman had removed one of the stones after working it loose. It afforded him a perfect loophole through which he aimed his rifle.

“Tell him, Jack,” Keeling said.

Spiceman didn’t take his eyes from the sights of his rifle, which were aimed at the farmhouse door. He barely moved his lips when he spoke. “They’re not going to kill their hostages now. The hostages are their only way off this rock. But by shooting the woman, we shook ’em up. They’re confused. And because they’re confused, they’ll probably do something stupid.” Spiceman was silent for a moment until he added, “Of course, maybe they’ve already filled their stupidity quota for the day. Maybe they’ve already killed McKay and his girl friend. Before we got here.”

Keeling shook his head. “No way. If they’d already killed ’em, they wouldn’t still be here.” He looked at his watch. “She’s sure a screamer, isn’t she?”

Inside the farmhouse, Bernt Diringshoffen looked through one of the shuttered windows. “If you could keep their heads down for five seconds, perhaps six, I could get her.”

“No,” Ko Yoshikawa said.

“Five seconds, no more.”

“No.”

“It would work,” Diringshoffen insisted. “Two seconds out, three seconds back. I could drag her with my left arm, fire with my right. That’d help keep their heads down.”

“No.”

They listened to Françoise Leget scream. Diringshoffen turned to look at the dark shape of Ko kneeling by the other window. “It’s over, isn’t it?”

“Almost.”

“I’m not going to let her die like that.”

“You’re crazy,” Ko said. “You’re as crazy as she is.”

“I’m going,” Diringshoffen said. “Will you help?”

Ko sighed. “All right.”

“Two seconds out, three seconds back.”

“Sure,” Ko said.

Diringshoffen went out the farmhouse door fast. He was bent over low and firing as he ran. Everyone ducked down behind the stone wall as Ko Yoshikawa sprayed it with his own rifle. Everyone ducked but Jack Spiceman, who shot Diringshoffen nine times before he reached the screaming woman. There was a silence. Then Spiceman took careful aim and shot Françoise Leget twice through the head.

“She was getting on my nerves,” he said.

Franklin Keeling turned to Reese. “Give him a little more razzmatazz on the bullhorn, Reese.”

The bald-headed man put the bullhorn up to his lips, thought a moment, and said, “You in there. The last one left. You have one chance. Send out the hostages. I repeat, send out the hostages. It’s your only chance.”

Ko Yoshikawa listened as the bass voice rumbled out of the bullhorn. He thought almost indifferently for a moment about the hostages. He had grown to like Bingo McKay. He had liked his quick mind and his wit and his style. The one-eared man had had great style. But despite that, Bingo McKay had been the enemy. Not the real enemy, of course. The real enemy was out there in the dark behind the stone wall. But you could argue with Bingo McKay. And Ko had. Wonderful, wide-ranging arguments about politics and life and art and the future of mankind.

But it was useless to send out the hostages now. Completely useless. He wondered if those out there behind the wall realized that. It didn’t matter. It was almost over. All of it. Ko slapped a fresh magazine into his rifle and used its muzzle to bang open the shutters. He rested the rifle’s barrel on the sill and emptied the magazine at the stone wall. There was a silence.

Last words, Ko thought as he shoved a new magazine up into the rifle. Something memorable. No, not something memorable. Something their mentality can understand.

He cupped his left hand around his mouth and screamed at them, the American enemy. “Come and get me, copper!”

Behind the wall, Keeling turned to look at Dunjee. “What’d he say?”

“He said, ‘Come and get me, copper,’ I believe.”

“Well, now. I guess that’s what you’re going to have to do, hero.”

“Me?” Dunjee said.

“Sure. You.”

“What a splendid idea,” Timble said.

“We’ll give you plenty of covering fire,” Spiceman said. “He’ll never know what hit him.”

“No,” Dunjee said.

Keeling sighed and moved his rifle so that it was aimed at Dunjee’s chest. “You can either be a dead nobody here or a live hero inside the house. Which is it?”

“Well, shit,” Dunjee said and turned to look over the wall. He ducked back down immediately as Ko again raked the wall with a full magazine. Dunjee lay against the wall, trying to think of a way to keep from being killed.

Ko began screaming again. It was the scream of his ancestors. Dunjee turned to listen.

“Banzai, you motherfuckers!” Ko screamed from the open window. “Babe Ruth eats shit!”

“Jesus,” Reese said. “He’s gone crackers.”

Keeling turned to Dunjee. “All right, hero.”

Dunjee checked his rifle carefully. He hadn’t fired it yet. “I want you to keep him down behind that window,” he said. “I don’t want you to stop firing. I’m going in through the door. Just keep firing. Don’t stop.”