Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

Donny remembered that once upon a time, even Crowe had given him the same advice. Roll over on me in a second, Donny, if it ever comes to that . Somehow Crowe had known it would.

“Okay,” he finally said.

“Do your duty, Donny. But think about what it costs you. Okay. Think about how you feel now. Then when you get out, do me one favor, okay? No matter what happens to me, promise me one thing.”

Trig winced as if in pain in the hot light of the headlights, though perhaps something had just gotten in his eye. There was an immense familiarity to that look, the strain on his face, the set of it, the clearness of vision. And … And what?

“Sure,” Donny said.

“Open your mind. Open your mind to the possibility that the power to define duty is the power of life and death. And if people impose duty on you, maybe they’re not doing it for your best interests or the country’s best interests but for their own best interests. Okay, Donny? Force yourself to think about a world in which each man got to set his own duty and no one could tell anyone what to do, what was right, what was wrong; the only rules were the Ten Commandments.”

“I—” stammered Donny.

“Here,” said Trig. “I have something for you. I was going to mail it to you from Baltimore, but this’ll save me the postage and the fuss. It’s no big deal.”

He went over to some kind of knapsack on the ground, fished around, and came out with a folder, which he opened to reveal a piece of heavy paper.

“Sometimes,” he said, “when the spirit moves me, I’m even pretty good. I’m much better at birds, but I did okay on this one. It’s nothing.”

Donny looked: it was a drawing on a creamy page trimmed from that sketchbook Trig was always carrying, incredibly delicate and in a spiderweb of ink, that depicted himself and Julie as they stood and talked in the trees at West Potomac Park.

There was something special about it: he got them both, maybe not exactly as a photograph, but somehow their love too, the way they looked at each other, the faith they had in each other.

“Wow,” said Donny.

“Wow, yourself. I dashed it off that night in my book. It was neat, the two of you. Gives me hope for the world. Now, go on, get the hell out of here, go back to your duty.”

Trig drew him close, and Donny felt the warmth, the musculature, and maybe something else, too: passion, somehow, oddly misplaced but genuine and impressive. Trig was actually crying.

Over the shoulders of the two FBI agents, Peter saw Donny and Trig embrace, and then Donny stepped out of the light and was gone. He’d head to his car, which Peter now saw was but fifty or so yards away. He was screwed. Donny would see him here with the two feds, who showed no sign at all of moving, and he would have made an ass out of himself.

He felt despair rising in his gorge.

“I have to go,” he said to the larger of the two plainclothes officers.

“No,” the man said back, and the other moved to embrace Peter, as if to wrestle him to the ground. Peter squirmed out of the man’s grip, but he was grabbed and thrust to the ground.

The two men loomed over him.

“This is ridiculous,” he said.

They seemed to agree. They looked at each other foolishly, not quite sure what to do, but suddenly one of them pointed.

Then the engine of Donny’s car came to life and its lights flashed on.

The man with the camera pulled away from Peter, leaving the other, the bigger, to lean on him, and ran toward the gate.

“Well, did he help?” said Julie as they walked through the dark.

“Yeah,” said Donny. “Yes, he did. He really did. I’ve got it figured out now.”

“Should I go meet him?”

“No, he’s in a very strange mood. I’m not sure what’s going on. Let’s just get out of here. I’ve got some things to do.”

“What did he give you?”

“It’s a picture. It’s very nice. I’ll show you later.”

They walked through the dark, up the hill. Donny could see the car ahead. He had an odd tremor suddenly, a sense of not being alone. It was a freakish thing, sometimes useful in Indian country: that sensation of being watched. He scanned the darkness for sign of threat but saw nothing, only farmland under moon, no movement or anything.

“Who was that blond guy?” she asked.

“His pal Fitzpatrick. Big Irish guy. They were loading up to spread fertilizer.”

“That’s strange.”

“He said they decided to do the hard part of the job in the cool of the night. Hell, it was only fertilizer. Who knows?”

“What was going on with Trig?”

“I don’t know. He was, uh, strange is all I can call it. He had the same look on his face that the Time photographer got, when he was carrying that bleeding kid in from the cops in Chicago and his own head was bleeding too. He was very set, very determined, but somehow, underneath it all, very emotional. He seemed like he was facing death or something. I don’t know why or what. It spooked me a little.”

“Poor Trig. Maybe even the rich boys have demons.”

“He wanted to hug. He was crying. Maybe there was something weirdo in it or something. I felt his fingers in my muscles and I felt how happy he was to be hugging me. I don’t know. Very weird stuff. I don’t know.”

They reached the car, and Donny started it, turning on the lights. He backed into the grass, turned around and headed down the road to the gate.

“Jesus,” he said. “Duck!” For at that moment a figure suddenly rose from a gulch. A man in a suit, but too far away to do anything. A camera came up. Donny winced at the bright beam of flash as it exploded his night vision. Fireballs danced in his head, reminding him of nighttime incoming Hotel Echo, but he stepped on the gas, gunned up the road and turned right, then really floored it.

“Jesus, they got our picture,” he said. “A fed. That guy had to be FBI! Holy Christ!”

“My face was turned,” said Julie.

“Then you’re okay. I don’t think he got a license number, because my rear plate illumination bulb is broken. He just got my picture. A lot of good that’ll do them. A fed! Man, this whole thing is strange.”

“I wonder what’s going on?” she said.

“What’s going on is that Trig’s about to get busted. Trig and that Fitzpatrick guy. We were lucky we weren’t rounded up. I’d be on my way to the brig.”

“Poor Trig,” said Julie.

“Yes,” said Donny. “Poor Trig.”

The man let him up. He brushed himself off.

“I haven’t done anything,” Peter explained. “I’ve come to see my friends. You have no right to detain me, do you understand? I haven’t done anything.”

The man stared at him sullenly.

“I’m going now. This is none of your business,” he said.

He turned and walked away. The agent had seemed genuinely cowed. He stepped away, awaiting a call, but none came. Another step filled him with confidence, but he didn’t see or hardly feel the judo chop that broke his spine and, in the fullness of his tender youth and in the ardor of his love for his generation and its pure idea of peace, killed him before he hit the ground.

Donny reached DC around four in the morning, and he and Julie checked into a motel on New York Avenue, in the tourist strip approaching downtown. They were too tired for sex or love or talk.

He set the cheap alarm for 0800, and slept deeply until its ungentle signal pulled him awake.

“Donny?” she said, stirring herself.

“Sweetie, I’ve got some things to do now. You just stay here, get some more sleep. I paid for two nights. I’ll call you sometime today and we’ll decide what to do next.”