First Blood (1990) (12 page)

But he knew that the gunman would have to see it.

His fingers were dug bleeding into a slit in the cliff. The toes of his shoes were pressed hard onto an inch-wide ledge; his throat shuddered involuntarily as one shoe slipped off the ledge. The close whack of the bullet into the cliff by his right shoulder dazed him, and so startled that he almost lost his grip, shaking his head to clear it, he began groping frantically down.

He managed only three more toe holds and then there were no more. Ca-rang! the second bullet ricocheted off the rock, striking higher, nearer to his head, startling him as much as the first one, and he knew he was as good as dead. The jiggle of the copter was all that had saved him from being hit so far: it was throwing off the gunman's aim, and the pilot was bringing on the copter fast, which made the jiggle worse, but it would not be long before the pilot understood and held the copter steady. His arms and legs trembling from the strain, he grasped down for a handhold and then another and then let down his feet, taking a chance, dangling again, scraping the cliff with his shoes for something, anything, to step onto.

But there wasn't anything. He hung by his bleeding fingers, and the helicopter swooped toward him like some grotesque dragonfly, and sweet Jesus, keep that damn thing moving, don't let it hang still so he can get a decent shot. Ca-rang! Chips of stone and molten bullet ripped burning into the side of his face. He peered at the rocks a hundred feet below. Sweat stinging his eyes, he barely made out a lush fir tree that rose up toward him, its top branches maybe ten feet under him. Or fifteen, or twenty: he had no chance to figure.

The helicopter looming huge, wind from the rotors rushing over him, he aimed his body at the top of the tree and let loose his pulpy fingers and dropped. His stomach gushed up, his throat expanded in the sudden emptiness, and it was so long, so endless before he slammed past the first branches, plummetted through the clutching boughs, cracked to a stop against a stout limb.

Absolutely numb.

He could not breathe. He gasped, and pain flooded his body; his chest throbbed sharply, and his back, and he was certain he had been shot.

But he hadn't, and the din of the copter above the tree and the slash of a bullet through the branches got him moving. He was high in the tree. His rifle was still between his belt and his pants but the impact when he hit had rammed it violently against his side, half-paralyzing him. In agony, forcing his arm to bend, he clutched the gun and tugged, but it would not come. Above, the helicopter was circling, returning for another shot, and he was tugging at the gun, wrenching it free, the release so strong that the branch he was on started swaying. He slipped off balance, scraping his thigh along sharp bark, desperately hooking his arm around the branch above him. It made a crack; he quit breathing. If it broke, it would send him falling outward past the ends of the boughs down onto the rocks deep below. The branch made one more crack before it held firm, and he breathed again.

But the sound from the copter was different now. Constant. Steady. The pilot was getting the idea, keeping it still. Rambo didn't know if they could see him in the tree or not, but that didn't matter much - the area at the top of the tree was so small that if the gunman sprayed it with bullets he was sure to be hit. He didn't have time to switch to a stronger branch; the next bullet might finish him. Hurried, desperate, he pushed away needles and light boughs and sought where the helicopter hung there whipping in the air.

Across from him. A house distance high. And craning his head out the open cockpit window was the gunman. Rambo saw his round, big-nosed face quite clearly as the man prepared to fire once more; a glance was all Rambo needed. In one smooth instinctive motion, he raised his gun barrel to the branch above him, steadied it there, and aimed out along it at the center of the round face, at the tip of the big nose.

A gentle squeeze on the trigger. Bull's-eye.

Inside the cockpit the gunman clutched his sunken face.

He was dead before he had a chance to open his mouth and scream. There was a moment when the pilot went on holding the helicopter steady like nothing had happened, and then at once Rambo saw through the glass front of the cockpit how it registered on the man that there were bits of bone and hair and brain everywhere, that the top of his partner's head was gone. Rambo saw him gape down in horror at the blood that was spattered across his shirt and pants. The man's eyes went wide; his mouth convulsed. The next thing he was fumbling with his seat belt, clutching his throttle stick crazily as he dove to the cockpit floor.

Rambo was trying to get a shot at him from the tree. He could not see the pilot, but he had a fair idea where the man would be huddled on the floor, and he was just aiming at that part of the floor when the helicopter veered sharply up the cliff. Its top section cleared the ridge nicely, but the angle of the copter was so steep that the rear section caught on the edge of the cliff. In the roar of the motor, he thought he heard a metallic crack when the rear section struck: he could not be certain. The copter seemed interminably suspended there, and then with an abrupt flip over backward, it plunged down directly against the cliff wall, screeching, cracking, blades bending and breaking as the explosion came, a deafening ball of fire and zing of metal that flashed up past the tree and died. The outer branches of the tree burst into flame. A stench rose up of gasoline

and burning flesh.

Straight-off Rambo was on the move, scrambling down the tree. The branches were too thick. He had to circle the trunk to find where he could squeeze down. The dogs were barking louder, fiercer now, as if they were past the barricade up onto the ridge. That boulder should have taken longer to clear away; he couldn't understand how Teasle and the posse had climbed up so fast. He held tightly to his rifle, scraping down past the branches, through the pointed needles pricking at his hands and face. His chest was throbbing from his drop into the tree - it hurt like some ribs were cracked or broken, but he couldn't let that bother him. The dogs were yelping closer; he had to climb down faster, twisting, sliding. His outside wool shirt caught on a branch and he ripped it loose. Faster. Those sonofabitch dogs. He had to go faster.

Near the bottom he reached thick black smoke that choked his lungs, and saw indistinctly through it the twisted wreck of the helicopter burning and crackling. Twenty feet from the bottom he could not climb down any farther: there were no more branches. He couldn't spread his arms around the trunk and shinny down: it was too wide. Jump. No other way. The dogs yelping up on top, he checked the rocks and boulders underneath him and chose a spot where dirt and silt and dry brown needles were gathered in a pocket between the rocks, and without realizing, smiled - this sort of thing was what he had been trained to do - the weeks of leaping from towers at parachute school. Holding his rifle, he grabbed the last bough with his free hand and eased down hanging and dropped. And struck the ground perfectly. His knees buckled just right and he slumped and rolled just right and came to his feet as properly as he had done a thousand times before. It wasn't until he left the choking smoke around the shelter of the tree and scurried over the rocks that the pain in his chest got worse. Much worse. And the smile disappeared. Christ, I'm going to lose.

He charged over the rocks down a slope toward the forest, legs pounding, chest heaving painfully. There was grass ahead, and then he was out of the rocks and into the grass, racing toward the trees, and then he heard the dogs insanely loud on top behind him. They had to be where he tried climbing down the cliff; the posse would be shooting at him anytime now. Out in the open like this, he didn't have a chance, he needed to get to the trees, dodging, ducking his head, using every trick he knew to make himself an awkward target, tensing himself to take the first bullet that would blow his back and chest apart as he burst through the bushes and scrub into the woods, pushing farther on, stumbling over vines and roots until he tripped and fell and stayed flat, gasping on the damp, sweet-smelling forest floor.

They hadn't shot. He couldn't understand it. He lay there gasping, filling his lungs to capacity and exhaling and breathing deeply again, ignoring the pain in his chest each time he swelled it. Why hadn't they shot? And then he knew: because they had never been on top of the cliff in the first place. They were still getting there. They had only sounded like they were on top. His stomach retched, but this time nothing came up, and he flopped onto his back, staring past the autumn-colored leaves toward the deep sky. What was the matter with him? He had never misjudged like that before.

Mexico. The image of a warm, wave-lapped beach flashed inside his mind. Get moving. Have to start moving. He struggled to his feet and was just trudging farther into the forest when he heard men shouting behind him, dogs barking, and the posse was undoubtedly on top of the cliff now. He stopped and listened, and still gasping for breath, he turned back the way he had come.

Not the exact same path. The grass into the forest had been long, and he knew he had left a track through it that would be quite plain from on top of the cliff; the posse would be studying that part of the forest where he had entered, and as he came back, he might make some sign that would show them where he was. So he headed to the left approaching a part of the forest's edge where they would have no reason to expect him. When the trees began to thin out, he sank low and crawled to the edge, and crouching behind some brush he saw something beautiful: a hundred yards off, clear as could be on top of the cliff, were the men and the dogs. They were all running toward where he had climbed down, the dogs barking, one man behind the dogs hanging onto a master leash, the rest of the men rushing up behind, all stopping now and staring down at the smoke and fire of the helicopter. They were the closest Rambo had seen them since the hunt began, the sun stark on them, making them seem very close, strangely magnified. Six dogs, he counted, and ten men, nine in the gray police uniform of Teasle's men and one in a green jacket and pants, that one holding the dogs' master leash. The dogs were sniffing at where he had climbed over the edge, circling to check if the scent went anywhere else, returning to the edge and barking in frustration. The man in green was older than the rest and taller; he was soothing the dogs, patting them, talking to them gently in words that came across to him muffled. Some of the policemen were sitting, others standing to look down at the blazing helicopter or else point toward the forest where he had entered.

But he wasn't interested in those, only in the one pacing back and forth slapping his hand against his thigh. Teasle. There was no missing that short chunk of a body, that puffed-out chest, that low head that darted side to side like a fighting rooster. Sure. Like a cock. That's what you are, Teasle. A cock.

The joke made him smile. It was shadowed where he lay under the bush, and resting was luxurious. He lined up Teasle in his rifle sights just as Teasle spoke to the man in green. Wouldn't Teasle be surprised to find that in the middle of a word a bullet had gone in and out of his throat. What a joke that would be. He became so fascinated he almost pulled the trigger.

It would have been a mistake. He wanted to kill him all right; after his scare being caught between the helicopter and the posse, he didn't care what he had to do to get away, and now that he thought about the two men he had killed in the helicopter, he realized he wasn't bothered as he had been after he had killed Galt. He was getting used to death again.

But there was a question of priorities. The cliff wouldn't stop Teasle; it would just put him behind an hour or so. And killing Teasle wouldn't necessarily stop the posse; they would still have the hounds to keep them tracking fast. The hounds. They weren't vicious like the German Shepherds he had seen in the war, but just the same they were natural hunters, and if they ever caught him, they might even attack instead of merely cornering him as hounds were schooled to do. So he had to shoot them first. After that he would shoot Teasle. Or the man in green, if he showed before Teasle. The way the man handled the dogs, Rambo was sure he knew a lot about tracking, and with both him and Teasle dead, the others likely wouldn't know what to do, they'd have to drift back home.

For sure they didn't seem to know much about this kind of fighting. They were standing or sitting in plain view up there, and he sniffed in disgust. Evidently they had not even considered that he might still be around. The man in green was having trouble getting the dogs quiet; they were bunched together, tangled, in each other's way. The man separated the master leash and handed over three dogs to a deputy. Rambo lay beneath the cool underbrush and aimed at the three that the man in green had kept and shot two of them just like that. He would have hit the third dog with

his next shot if the man in green had not yanked it back from the edge. The policemen were shouting, jumping low out of sight. The other set of dogs was acting wild, howling, straining to get away from the deputy who held them. Rambo quickly shot one. Another shied and slipped off the cliff, and the deputy holding the leash tried to pull it back instead of letting go, lost his balance and dragging the last of his dogs with him, he went over the side too. He wailed once just before he thumped on the rocks far below.

Chapter 8

There was an instant when they lay flat paralyzed, the sun glaring on them, no wind, nothing. The instant stretched on and on. Then in a scramble Shingleton aimed down at the forest, shooting along its edge. He had four shots off when another man joined him, and then another, and then except for Teasle and Orval, everyone was laying down a heavy line of fire, the gun reports rattling off together, as if a bandoleer of ammunition had been thrown into a furnace and the heated cartridges were exploding in a steady roll.