First Blood

He had trouble hooking the microphone back onto the radio he was so excited.

4

All the morning as he ran and walked and ran and walked, he heard a motor droning miles off and occasional muffled gunshots and a deep male voice murmuring through a loudspeaker. Then the motor was a few peaks over and he recognized the sound of the helicopters in the war and he started moving faster.

He had been dressed now for almost twelve hours, but after his climb naked into the hills in the cold night air, he was still enjoying the warm rough feel of clothes. He wore heavy old shoes that the son had brought around midnight to the hollow by the spring. At first the shoes had been too large, but he had stuffed leaves into the toes and that had made the shoes tight so his feet would not slide up and down inside and give him blisters. Even then, the leather was sharp and stiff against his bare feet, and he wished the son had remembered to bring socks. Maybe the son had forgotten them on purpose. The pants, though, were too tight, and guessing the son had brought them on purpose also, he had to laugh. Shoes too large, pants too tight, it was a good joke on him.

These looked like they were onetime dress pants that had been ripped in the seat and patched and now were work pants, light-colored, with dark oil and grease stains. The shin was white cotton, frayed at the cuffs and buttonholes and collar, and to go over top and keep him warm in the nights, the old man had even handed over his thick red-squared wool shirt. That had surprised him, the old man turning so friendly and generous toward the last. Maybe the whiskey had been what did it. After he and the old man had eaten the carrots and cold fried chicken the son had brought, they had heaved the jug of whiskey back and forth repeatedly, the son included, and finally the old man had gone as far as giving up his rifle plus a handkerchief tied full of cartridges.

'Had to hole up once in the hills a couple days myself,' the old man had said. 'Long time ago. When I wasn't much older than my boy.' He had not said why, and Rambo had been careful not to ask. 'Wasn't even a chance to go home and grab my rifle. Sure could've used it on them. You get out of this, you send me money for that rifle. I want your word. Not that it's the money I care about. The stuff I make, God knows I can afford another. But you get through this, I'd like to know how you made it, and I figure on the rifle reminding you to let me know. She's a good one.' And she was: a.30-30 lever action, the power to whack a bullet through a man a half-mile away as if close through a block of cheese. The old man had a thick pad of leather on the end of the stock to ease the recoil. He had a speck of luminous paint on the sight at the tip of the barrel to help aiming at night.

Then Rambo had done what he promised, backtracking down the stream away from where the old man might have his boiler and coils and jugs; soon he had pushed west, still pla

'This is the police,' the man's voice boomed from the copter's loudspeaker. 'You don't have a chance, give up. Anyone in these woods. A dangerous fugitive may be near you. Show yourselves. Wave if you've seen one young man alone.' The voice stopped, then started awkwardly, as if the words were being read from a card. This is the police. You don't have a chance, give up. Anyone in these woods. A dangerous fugitive may be near you.'

And on it went, and then it stopped and started again, and Rambo lay beneath the branches perfectly still, knowing the maze of needles hid him from the land, not sure he was covered from the air, watching the copter sweep over the trees toward the grass. It was near enough for him to see up into the glass-fronted cockpit. There were two men staring out the open windows on each side, a civilian pilot and a policeman, his uniform the gray of Teasle's men, and out his window he was aiming a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight. Ca-rack! the shot echoed, aimed at a tangle of rock and bush at the edge of the forest the copter had just flown over.

God, Teasle really wanted him bad, telling his man to shoot at likely hiding places, unafraid of hitting anyone i

Ca-rack! at another clump of brush at the edge of the trees, and now they were flying over the grass and they would be on top of him in seconds, almost certain to fire. He aimed his rifle through the branches, centering on the gunman's face as he flew nearer, ready to blast him to hell the instant he lowered his eyes to the gunsight. He did not want to kill anymore, but he had no alternative. Worse, if he did shoot this man, then the pilot would duck down to the floor of the copter out of his aim and fly away damn fast to radio for help, and everybody would know where he was. Unless he stopped the pilot by exploding the helicopter gas tanks, which he knew was foolish to think about. For sure he could hit them. But explode them? It was only in dreams that a man without phosphorus-tipped ammunition ever managed that trick. He lay rigid waiting, his heartbeat sickening, as the helicopter roared onto him. Immediately the gunman dipped his face to the telescope on his rifle, and he himself was just squeezing on the trigger when he saw what the gunman was after, and thanking Christ he had seen in time, eased off. Fifty yards to the left there was a wall of boulders and brush near a pool of water. He had almost hidden there when he first heard the copter coming up the draw, but it had been too far to reach. Now the copter was swooping toward it — Ca-rack! — and he could not believe it, he thought his eyes were playing on him. The bushes were moving. He blinked, and the bushes heaved, and then he knew it was not his eyes, as the bushes burst wide apart and a great, huge-antlered, massive-shouldered deer stumbled up clambering over the boulders. It fell, it rose up, leaping across the grassland toward the woods on the other side, the helicopter after it. There was a stream of deep rich blood glistening down the deer's one hip, but that did not seem to matter, not the way it was charging in those magnificent long bounding strides toward the trees, the helicopter after it. His heart pounded wildly.