Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers

The thought came to him that if, years before, in the Yokasuka geedunk, they had been able to see how everything would end, they would probably have done it all any way. Fun and games, amor fati . Semper fi.

“Peace,” he said to Hicks.

Turning away, he looked toward the mountains and saw a column of dust rising from the valley floor along the edge of the tracks. It rose at the wake of something that moved; the wind carried it upward and whirled it.

He stood for a moment fighting panic; then it occurred to him that one thing to do would be to button down the pack flap so that the dope would not blow away — so that it would be there for them. When he had buttoned it, he took a folded Kleenex from his pocket and tied it on the strap of the pack. Then he sprinted for the jeep and threw it in gear.

“We’re running, baby,” he told her. “The bastards are behind us again.”

He could not see what it was at the core of the cloud, but it moved slowly; in a few minutes he had put a comfortable piece of barrenness between themselves and the thing that came.

“If they come up,” Marge said, “if they have guns — if they say stop — we won’t stop. We’ll just keep going.”

“Right,” Converse said. He watched the cloud approach in the rearview mirror.

“Who is it?” Marge asked.

Watching it, Converse began to laugh as he pressed down harder on the gas. The column rose, a whirling white tower with a dark core, spewing gauzy eddies from its spout, its funnel curving to the shiftings of the wind — the gross and innocent measure of some drugged, freakish process. In the mirror it seemed to fill the sky.

“Look at it,” he said to Marge. “Look at it in the mirror.”

Marge leaned over to where she could see the mirror, turned to look behind them, then turned back to the mirror again. Her face flushed, her eyes grew wide.

“Oh God,” she cried. A burst of spitty laughter broke over her lips. “Oh my God, look at it.”

She leaned out of the window and screamed back at the column.

“Fuck you,” she shouted. “Fuck you — fuck you.”

When they reached the road again, the column had settled, the thing had stopped. There were still no cars in sight.

“Let it be,” Converse said.

ANTHEIL AND HIS COLLEAGUE ANGEL RODE ACROSS THE FLATS on a Michigan articulated loader. It belonged to Galindez and it had dug several of Dieter’s trails.

The loader was a reliable vehicle for rough country and very expensive but it had a speed of less than twenty miles an hour. It was no good for chasing anyone unless he was on foot.

Antheil swept the plain with his binoculars, perched, like Rommel, on the wing of the machine. When he saw the parked Land-Rover, he picked up his Mossberg and cocked the hammer but he did not fire — in the hope that its occupants might be asleep or stoned.

“As I said,” Angel told him.

It was Angel who had suggested that Hicks might walk out and who had found the loader.

As Antheil watched, the Land-Rover started up and sped southward toward the road, in a trail of white dust. It was not even worth a shot at the distance. Antheil became extremely upset, but he kept his temper in bounds because he did not want to seem undignified before Angel. There had been far too many lapses already.

He let his binoculars dangle and turned his gaze upward to see if there were any aircraft in view — but the morning sky was untroubled. When he scanned the flats again, he saw Hicks’ body beside the track.

He jumped down from the loader’s cab before Angel had parked it and ran to where Hicks lay. There was a pack on the corpse’s back with a little pennant of white tissue tied to it. He lifted the flap and saw that the heroin was inside.

He stood up with a tense smile.

The sight of Angel sitting above him on the loader’s seat made him a bit uncomfortable.

“It’s there?” Angel asked.

“Yes,” he said after a moment.

“Well, you bastard,” he said to Hicks, “you led us a merry goddamn chase.” He kicked the corpse’s shoulder. Angel nodded in sympathy.

He stood for a moment, staring after the Land-Rover’s dust, and then looked down at the pack again. Reaching down, he tore the rag of Kleenex from the strap.

“What the hell’s this?”

“Surrender,” Angel said.

Antheil wiped the sweat from his eyes.

“Is that what it is?” He crumpled the tissue and threw it away.

“These people are so fucked up, it devastates the mind. They’re utterly unpredictable — absolute mental basket cases. You have no idea what associating with them can do to you.”

He did not trouble to translate for Angel.

It was a bedlam, a Chinese fire drill. He would have to draw strongly on his reputation for efficiency and rectitude, and then leave the country at the very first practical opportunity. It was a bit untidy, but there was no compromising evidence and even if some entertained doubts, the agency might be content to let him withdraw gracefully. Others had left the service in circumstances as potentially compromising. In the place to which he planned to repair with Charmian, he might do them some service from time to time, should they discover him. He had many friends there, and no one would trouble him. It was a country where everybody did it.

In many ways, he thought, the adventure had been instructive. His heart filled with native optimism.

If you stuck with something, the adventure demonstrated, faced down every kind of pressure, refused to fold when the going got tough, outplayed all adversaries, and relied on your own determination and fortitude, then the bag of beans at the end of the rainbow might be yours after all.

The Converses were a sore, an itch — but he would have to live with them. It was not likely, being who they were, that they would undertake to spoil things.

He took the parcel of dope from the pack, showed it to Angel, and put it in the loader’s toolbox.

“The bag of beans,” he said.

“Beans?” Angel asked.

Angel was causing him some anxiety. It was a lonely place, and the dope was very valuable; he would have to be on his toes. With Mexicans, he reminded himself, and with people like them, it was command voice and assured presence that counted.

“We’ll bury him,” he told Angel.

“We can dump him over the line,” Angel said.

Antheil grimaced at the indolence and fecklessness such a proposal indicated. The mañana spirit.

“No, hombre . We can bury him in the hills. We have the very machine.” He looked at his watch. “Then we call for assistance.”

He leaned an arm against the loader’s tire and looked skyward.

“We have been holding the property under surveillance,” he informed Angel. “You and I — old friends from neighboring countries, working on our own time. A hunch. During our surveillance a ripoff ensued, a dispute among smugglers of dope. Some were killed, others escaped.”

“With the dope,” Angel said.

“Precisely,” Antheil said. “ Precisamente .”

They got Hicks aboard the loader, and Angel looked over the horizon for a suitable wash. The wind played hell with tracks, and in a day or so even the traces of a substantial dis placement would be obliterated. They could put thirty tons of desert over him.

Riding toward the hills, Antheil’s uneasiness about Angel began to dissipate. He slapped him on the back and Angel smiled in gratitude.

Angel, Antheil thought, was the sort of officer who was bent out of principle, so as not to be thought of as a fool. It was not venality that made him a crook, merely tradition. Antheil reflected that his service had brought him in contact with many peoples and cultures other than his own.