Stephen Coonts - Combat

I didn’t know what to say. Three million dollars rated serious consideration, but I couldn’t tell if she had what it takes to make it work.

“I’ll think about it,” I said, and got up. “Tomorrow, we’ll have lunch again right here.”

She showed some class then. “Okay,” she said, and nodded once. She didn’t argue or try to make the sale right then, and I appreciated that.

My buddy, Gunnery Sergeant Bill Wiley, left the filling station at ten that night; I had to stay until closing time at 2 A.M. About midnight an older four-door Chrysler cruised slowly past on the street, for the second or third time, and I realized the people inside were casing the joint.

Ten minutes later, when the pumps were vacant and I was the only person in the store, the Chrysler drove in fast and stopped in front of the door. My ex-cash register man, Candy, boiled out of the passenger seat with a gun in his hand, a 9-mm automatic. He and the guy from the backseat came charging through the door waving their guns at me.

“Hands up, Charlie Dean, you silly son of a bitch. We want all the money, and if you ain’t real goddamn careful I’m gonna blow your fucking brains out.”

The guy from the backseat posted himself by the door and kept glancing up and down the street to see who was driving by. The driver of the car stayed outside.

Candy strutted over to me and stuck his gun in my face. He had a butterfly bandage on his eyebrow. He was about to say something really nasty, I think, when I grabbed his gun with my left hand and hit him with all I had square in the mouth with my right. He went down like he had been sledgehammered. I leaped toward the other one and hit him in the head with the gun butt, and he went down too. Squatting, I grabbed his gun while I checked the driver outside.

The driver was standing frozen beside the car, staring through the plate-glass window at me like I was Godzilla. I already had the safety off on Candy’s automatic, so I swung it into the middle of this dude’s chest and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Oh boy!

As I got the other pistol up, the third man dived behind the wheel and slammed the Chrysler into gear. That pistol also clicked uselessly. The Chrysler left in a squall of rubber and exhaust smoke.

I checked the pistols one at a time. Both empty.

Candy’s eyes were trying to focus, so I bent down and asked him, “How come you desperate characters came in here with empty pistols?”

He spit blood and a couple teeth as he thought about it. His lips were swelling. He was going to look like holy hell for a few days. Finally one eye focused. “Didn’t want to shoot you,” he mumbled, barely understandable. “Just scare you.”

“Umm.”

“The guns belong to my dad. He didn’t have any bullets around.”

“Did the driver of the car know the guns were empty?”

Candy nodded, spit some more blood.

I’ll admit, I felt kind of sorry for Candy. He screwed up the courage to go after a pint or two of revenge, but the best he could do for backup help was a coward who ran from empty pistols.

I put the guns in the trash can under the register and got each of them a bottled water from the cooler. They were slowly coming around when a police cruiser with lights flashing pulled up between the pumps and the office and the officer jumped out. He came striding in with his hand on the butt of his pistol.

“Someone called in on their cell phone, reported a robbery in progress here.”

I kept my hands in plain sight where he could see them. “No robbery, officer. My name’s Dean; I own this filling station.”

“What happened to these two?” Spittle and blood were smeared on one front of Candy’s shirt, and his friend had a dilly of a shiner.

“They had a little argument,” I explained, “slugged each other. This fellow here, Candy, works for me.”

Candy and his friend looked at me kind of funny, but they went along with it. After writing down everyone’s names and addresses from their driver’s licenses while I expanded on my fairy tale, the officer left.

Candy and his friend were on their feet by then. “I’m sorry, Mr. Dean,” Candy said.

“Tell you what, kid. You want to play it straight, no stealing and no shortchanging people, you come back to work in the morning.”

“You mean that?”

“Yeah.” I dug his father’s guns from the trash arid handed them to him. “You better take these home and put them back where they belong.”

His face was red and he was having trouble talking. “I’ll be here,” he managed.

He pocketed the pistols, nodded, then he and his friend went across the street to Burger King to call someone to come get them.

I was shaking so bad I had to sit down. Talk about luck! If the pistols had been loaded I would have killed that fool kid driving the car, and I didn’t even know if he had a gun. That could have cost me life in the pen. Over what?

I sat there in the office thinking about life and death and Julie Giraud.

At lunch the next day Julie Giraud was intense, yet cool as she talked of killing people, slaughtering them like steers. I’d seen my share of people with that look. She was just flat crazy.

The fact that she was a nut seemed to explain a lot, somehow. If she had been sane I would have turned her down flat. It’s been my experience through the years that sane people who go traipsing off to kill other people usually get killed themselves. The people who do best at combat don’t have a death grip on life, if you know what I mean. They are crazy enough to take the biggest risk of all and not freak out when the shooting starts. Julie Giraud looked like she had her share of that kind of insanity.

“Do I have my information correct? Were you a sniper in Vietnam, Mr. Dean?”

“That was a war,” I said, trying to find the words to explain, taking my time. “I was in Recon. We did ambushes and assassinations. I had a talent with a rifle. Other men had other talents. What you’re suggesting isn’t war, Ms. Giraud.”

“Do you still have what it takes?”

She was goading me and we both knew it. I shrugged.

She wouldn’t let it alone. “Could you still kill a man at five hundred yards with a rifle? Shoot him down in cold blood?”

“You want me to shoot somebody today so you can see if I’m qualified for the job?”

“I’m willing to pay three million dollars, Mr. Dean, to the man with the balls to help me kill the men who murdered my parents. I’m offering you the job. I’ll pay half up front into a Swiss bank account, half after we kill the men who killed my parents.”

“What if you don’t make it? What if they kill you?”

“I’ll leave a wire transfer order with my banker.”

I snorted. At times I got the impression she thought this was some kind of extreme sports expedition, like jumping from a helicopter to ski down a mountain. And yet … she had that fire in her eyes.

“Where in hell did a captain in the air farce get three million dollars?”

“I inherited half my parents’ estate and invested it in software and internet stocks; and the stocks went up like a rocket shot to Mars, as everyone north of Antarctica well knows. Now I’m going to spend the money on something I want very badly. That’s the American way, isn’t it?”

“Like ribbed condoms and apple pie,” I agreed, then leaned forward to look into her eyes. “If we kill these men,” I explained, “the world will never be the same for you. When you look in the mirror the face that stares back won’t be the same one you’ve been looking at all these years — it’ll be uglier. Your parents will still be dead and you’ll be older in ways that years can’t measure. That’s the god’s truth, kid. Your parents are going to be dead regardless. Keep your money, find a good guy, and have a nice life.”