Good Behavior (19 page)

“Green armbands, whatever rags and patches they might be wearing.” Pickens still held up the flag. “Our friendly forces down there are
very
irregular, boys, stand well back if they decide to fire on something.”

That produced the comfortable laugh of the professional thinking about amateurs, which Pickens ended, in his carefully paced presentation, by balling up the Guerreran flag, hurling it offstage in the same direction as the rifle, and showing another assault rifle lying on the card table. He picked this one up, held it out in front of him, and said, “Gentlemen, the Valmet.”

“That's that Finnish fucker!” cried a voice.

“Very good,” Pickens told him, grinning as though he didn't at all mind having his surprise spoiled. “That's just what this is, the Finnish M-60 Valmet. Essentially, this is the design of the AK-47 adapted to the needs of Finland. It's
like
an AK-47, but it
isn't
an AK-47, so it isn't as familiar as you might think, and if you don't keep the differences in mind, the head you blow off may be your own.”

He had their attention now. Weapons, travel and money were the only things these fellows cared about, probably in that order. Holding the Valmet out, pointing to its features, Pickens said, “In the first place, you'll notice it's all metal, much of it plastic-coated, it doesn't have the AK's wooden stock or handguard. That's fine in a cold country like Finland, but we're going to a hot country, so keep this thing in the shade. The other thing, you'll notice it doesn't have any trigger guard, just this little piece of metal out in front here and nothing down under the trigger at all. The later model, the M-62, they added a skimpy little guard on the bottom, and some of you'll have those, but mostly we've got the original, the M-60. And you see also there's almost no curve to the trigger itself. Now, the reason for all that is, the Finnish troops have to be able to fire this thing with big heavy mittens on, because of the cold you got up there in Finland. And what it means to
you
is, you don't have that guard there where you're used to it, to protect you if your mind wanders. And your finger wanders.”

A voice from the auditorium called out, “Why the fuck are we taking some fucking North Pole fucking weapon to the fucking tropics?” A lot of other voices growled agreement with the sentiment.

“Well, now, that's The People Upstairs,” Pickens said. “They make the decisions, I just implement them. They didn't want to use Warsaw Bloc weaponry because they don't want anybody saying the revolution's Cuban supplied. And they didn't want to use NATO weapons because they don't want anybody saying we're fronting the CIA. And maybe they got a price on these Valmets, I don't know.”

“It's always the same fucking thing,” cried a disgusted voice. “They want us to fight the wrong fucking war with the wrong fucking weapons on the wrong fucking terrain at the wrong fucking time of the year.”

“You're goddamn right!” several voices cried, with variants. More and more of them got into the thing, some rising in their places to make their points, shaking their fists, yelling out their professional opinions.

It was becoming bedlam out there. Pickens hunched his head down into his shoulders, and waited for the storm to subside.

It wasn't easy, dealing with homicidal maniacs.

29

Dortmunder's mouth was dry. His hands were wet. So far, the seat was dry. He was up here looking for a nun, and all of a sudden he's in this absolute army of killers. Attila would be happy to come back and hang out with these guys; all Dortmunder wanted them to do was disappear.

They were an excitable crowd, too. Almost anything might set them off; disliking the weapon they were supposed to use in their upcoming slaughter, for instance. There was no telling how excited they'd get if they found out there was a noncombatant among them; a sheep, in wolf's clothing.

Dortmunder did his best not to think about any of the various things that might happen to him if they found out the truth. He tried very hard not to visualize himself being torn limb from limb, and then the limbs being gnawed on by a lot of guys with heavy jaws and big teeth. He tried and tried and
tried
not to imagine the burly man leaping off the stage, foaming at the mouth, M-60 Valmet swinging in the air above his head as he came charging up the aisle. He worked hard to avert his mental gaze from images of himself being tromped into a welcome mat under all these tight-laced paratrooper boots. He struggled and strained to keep these triptychs of his own martyrdom absolutely out of his mind. He failed.

The nearest desperado, two seats to Dortmunder's right, was now on his feet, shouting toward the stage and waving an arm decorated with a tattoo of a snake entwined with a woman in what appeared to be an improbable sex act. Suddenly this fellow stopped, glared over at Dortmunder, and yelled, “You
like
that fucking snowman weapon?”

Dortmunder looked around. His seat was on the aisle, three quarters of the way back, and from here he could see he was just about the only person still seated. Everybody else was up and yelling at the stage, or at least arguing with his neighbor.
Don't be conspicuous!
Leaping to his feet, “Heck, no!” Dortmunder told the guy with the snake and the woman. “I mean,
hell
, no! I mean,
shit
, no!”

“Fucking-A well told!” the guy announced, and punched the air. When he made a muscle, the woman and the snake interacted.

Join in, Dortmunder told himself. Waving an arm with no tattoo on it at all, he yelled toward the stage, “Hell, no, we won't go!”

The snake-and-woman man reared back. “What the fuck you mean, we won't fucking go? We don't fucking go, man, we don't get fucking paid!”

“Right,” Dortmunder said. Waving his other arm—no tattoo on that one, either—he yelled, “We'll go, but we want a better gun!”

“Weapon,” the snake-and-woman man said.

“Weapon!”

The snake-and-woman man took a step closer to Dortmunder, eying him with a certain repelled curiosity. “Listen, fella,” he said. “Where do you—?”

Crash
.

Everybody stopped, including the snake-and-woman man. Silence fell. Dortmunder blinked, and looked toward the stage, where the burly man, evidently having had enough, had pounded his Valmet assault rifle like a gavel onto the card table, which had done the card table no good at all. It had crumpled, and the burly man had pounded the floor right through the table, making a racket bigger than the racket coming at him. Into the startled silence he'd created, he said, “Goddamnit, boys, I don't like The People Upstairs any more than you do, but they hired us for this thing, and we're taking their goddamn shilling, and that's
it
. This is the hand we've been dealt, and we either fold or play. It happens this is what I do for a living, so I'm gonna stay and play. You gonna fold?”

The raucous and colorful responses he got this time were generally along the lines that everybody intended to blankety-blank stay and play the blankety-blank hand. “I never fold a bad hand!” Dortmunder shouted, getting into the swing of things, and immediately felt the snake-and-woman man's eyes on him again. What did I do wrong
now?

Fortunately, there was another distraction, because the burly man followed up his challenge by saying, “Any more questions?” and somebody behind Dortmunder and off to the right yelled out, with a voice you could use to scour frying pans, “When do we get our hands on those fucking Finnish nose-ticklers?”

“As a matter of fact,” the burly man said, grinning as though he'd been waiting for this question, “how about right now?” Then he called, “You in the back there, open the door and let them in.”

A stir of interest, as everybody turned to look, and an extra stir of interest from Dortmunder, who suddenly saw a way out. I'm near the back, he told himself, and I'm on the aisle, and I'm already standing. Quick as anything, he turned and stepped into the aisle, happy to do the burly man's bidding right up to the point where he would step
through
the door he'd opened, and run like hell.

Except not. Somebody from the half dozen rows behind Dortmunder had also moved, and was already reaching for the door handle. Heck. Hell. Shit! Stepping back in from the aisle, pretending to be unaware of the snake-and-woman man's eyes on him, Dortmunder watched that other son of a bitch open the door.

Several building security men came in, neatly pressed and creased in their blue uniforms with their handguns in polished leather holsters on their belts. Never had legitimate authority—even fairly legitimate authority—looked so good to Dortmunder. I'll surrender to those guys, he thought, I'll throw myself on their mercy because they just might have some mercy to throw myself on. But even as he thought that and inhaled the deep breath prior to making a mad dash for capture, he heard the snigger going around the room, among all these suddenly grinning tough guys; the sound of leopards looking at house cats. Forget it; there'd be no safe harbor for Dortmunder there.

The security men sensed the atmosphere, too, and moved stiffly, frozen-faced, maintaining their dignity even though pushing large wheeled luggage carriers down the aisle to the front of the room. Wooden crates, their tops already pried off, were piled on the luggage carriers, and when they reached the front the burly man took a folded sheet of typing paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and said, “Okay, everybody sit down.”

Everybody sat down. They
do
obey, Dortmunder thought.

“I'll call off your names now,” the burly man said, “and when I do you come up and sign out your weapon, then stand along either side wall.”

Call off your names? Dortmunder stared at that piece of paper in the burly man's hand.
His
name wasn't on that paper. No name he'd ever used or could possibly answer to was on that paper.

Talk about slow death. Sixty people were now going to get their names called, one at a time. They were going to get up, one at a time, and walk to the front of the room and sign whatever name had just been called. One at a time they would get their assault rifles, and then they would go stand along the side wall, until every name had been called and every rifle had been given out and every seat had been emptied.

Except one.

Wait a minute. Stand along the side wall? How come? Dortmunder felt a sudden little trace of irritation, tucked away inside his larger and more pervasive sense of doom and destruction. Why did everybody have to stand along the side wall? If they all came back to their seats with their Valmets, at some point Dortmunder would simply pretend he'd already gotten his, and maybe, just maybe, just slightly possibly, he would get away with it. Even with the gimlet eye of the snake-and-woman man so frequently on him. But not if everybody's going to wind up standing along the side wall, holding their guns. Weapons.

Somebody else apparently had the same question, if not the same problem: “How come we stand against the wall?” came the shout.

The burly man shook his head, grinning almost fondly at these ruffians and rowdies. “I don't want you bringing your toys to your seats,” he said, “where maybe the guy next to you doesn't have his yet, he's a little impatient, he wants to look at yours. We're all gonna remain calm.”

That's what you think, Dortmunder thought.

Was there a way out, any way at all? Could he raise his hand and be excused to go to the bathroom? Not very likely, though, in fact, given his current situation he sort of did have to go to the bathroom. Well, how about this? In the middle of the weapons distribution, could he get to his feet as though responding to his name and then
back
up the aisle to the exit, pretending to walk forward toward the stage? No. Could he wait till most of the names had been called, and then quietly slide under his seat and crawl under the rows of seats to the exit and … open the door in full view of everybody? No.

A voice on the other side of the room called, “We get the ammo now?”

That drew a laugh, for some reason. The burly man smiled, and let the laugh work itself out before saying, “No, I don't think so, boys. You'll get cartridge clips on the plane, same time you get your green armbands.”

“When do we get to practice with the fucker?” the snake-and-woman man shouted.

“When you land in Guerrera,” the burly man told him. “Just shoot at people till you hit one; then you'll know it works.”

“Why don't we shoot at these little blue boys here?” somebody asked, and everybody else laughed deep in their throats, and the security men blinked a lot, looking as stern as they knew how and pretending they weren't dressed in blue.

“These are friendlies, boys,” the burly man said indulgently, but it was obvious to everybody in the room, including Dortmunder and the security men that the “boys” might just as readily as not rip these friendlies into little pieces just for the fun of it.

But now the burly man cried out, “Let's get on with it, boys,” and consulted his list, and called, “Krolikowsky!”

A guy with scars on his face and a missing ear got up and went forward to sign for his Valmet.

“Gruber! Sanchez!”

Maybe somebody didn't show up, Dortmunder thought, slumping in his seat. Why not? It happens. Some guy misses the bus, or forgot to set his alarm. You get any group together, you get somebody calling the roll, there's always some name that gets called and nobody at all says, “Yo,” and everybody looks around, and the person calling the roll makes a disgusted mouth and notes something on his clipboard and that missing guy is in trouble.

Well, not trouble. Not real
trouble
. Not like
this
trouble. But the point is, why wouldn't that happen now? (Probably because this group had already been assembled some time ago and everybody knew who was or wasn't here, but let's ignore that possibility.) If it
did
happen, if the burly man called out a name and nobody responded, then just as the burly man was looking around the room, ready to make a disgusted mouth and note something on that piece of paper, Dortmunder would leap to his feet and march forward and sign himself out an assault rifle.