Relentless

Baraclough walked over to him and peeled his lips back from his teeth. “Hanratty, you drag ass just one more time and I’ll feed you to the birds. Now get on your feet.” Baraclough said it in a sibilant whisper; turned on his heel and went back to pick up his duffel burden. When Baraclough straightened and looked at Hanratty the man was on his feet. Hanratty turned to the Major and grabbed the Major’s sleeve and began to say something in his whining voice; the Major said, very soft, “You want that arm broken?” And Hanratty dropped his hand. The Major had spoken without heat but he had a driving, elemental thrust of hard personality and competent brutality and you knew he could have broken that arm without half trying.

Walker was sweating lightly in the cool air. He stayed out of it, to one side, not wanting anyone’s attention: he didn’t trust any of them. Least of all the Major. Because the Major no longer had any real need for him except as a beast of burden to help carry the money. There was no plane for him to fly and that was all he’d been recruited to do. Fortunately the rest of them were still too angry with Hanratty to think about Keith Walker but when they got around to it he wouldn’t be surprised if they started thinking about his expendability.

It wasn’t greed Walker sensed in the leader. Hargit wouldn’t murder him for his share of the loot. Hargit wasn’t that kind of doublecrosser. It was just that three could move faster than five, especially when the three were all ex-Green Berets accustomed to long fast treks through wilderness country in all kinds of lights and weathers. Walker didn’t fit into the group.

The only thing he saw in his own favor was that he was a lot less expendable than Hanratty: Hanratty was past fifty, he was out of condition, he was a whiner, and he had made irrevocable trouble for all of them by shooting that God-damned guard.

Hanratty didn’t care. He was an ex-con with nothing to lose—a three-time loser. The Baumes Act: one more conviction and Hanratty would get put away in hock for good, regardless of whether the charge was armed robbery or felony murder. They’d throw away the key: no chance for parole. So it hadn’t made much difference to Hanratty, killing the guard. But it made a lot of difference to the rest of them and even though Hanratty sometimes acted as though he’d been taking stupid pills he wasn’t dense enough to be ignorant of the way the rest of them felt. Baraclough had made it clear in a dozen ways. And the fact that Hanratty was Eddie Burt’s ex-brother-in-law didn’t cut any ice, not even with Burt.

Hanratty was on his feet now with the bag across his shoulder and his free hand locked around the grip of the big revolver in his waistband. He hadn’t taken his hand more than six inches from the gun since they’d left the plane. Maybe it made him feel a little safer. Walker knew it didn’t matter much to the rest of them: the Major could take the thing away from Hanratty without blinking an eye whenever he got ready to. But it made Walker nervous, Hanratty clutching the gun all the time. Hanratty had already proved he was a triggerhappy fool.

“Let’s move out,” Baraclough murmured, and they started walking.

2

They lay in a line at what the Major called the military crest of the hill—just below the top so they wouldn’t be skylined. They moved forward on their bellies. Like some kind of exercise in Basic Training. The Major had studied the maps and had said the place was just over this hill and he was right: they’d seen the glow of its lights in the air above. Now Walker reached a point from which he could see it.

The dirt road came up from the south and dead-ended in the yard. There were lights on in one building and half a dozen buildings dark. He could make out the lines of corral fences. There was a grove of trees behind the main house. Wires came in along the road on poles—electric power, telephone, or both. There was the faint sound of a motor pulsing: probably a water pump for the well. Windows in the main house splashed enough light around the yard to show the arrangement of buildings: a row of dark cabins, probably tourist accommodations, and a scatter of outbuildings—barn, tack shed, smithy lean-to, a three-car garage with half a dozen roofed carports extending out from one side of it. No cars in sight. One of the downstairs windows in the house showed a bluish reflected glow—possibly a television set. There was a tall spidery aerial on the roof.

Someone touched his ankle. He jerked.

It was Baraclough. The rest of them had already slid back off the hilltop. He crawled backwards down the slope and sat up.

They were gathered in a little knot. The Major spoke in an undertone.

“They know we’re in the area so we have to assume they’ve posted cops in the place to ambush us. So we go in light and take care of them. No noise. Sergeant Burt stays here with the money. Hanratty, you’re on me—if you drift more than six feet from me I’ll garrote you and I don’t want a single word out of that mouth of yours. Walker, stick to Baraclough.”

It was clear the Major had thought it out and taken the least undesirable option. The Major didn’t trust Hanratty and didn’t wholly trust Walker; that was why he refused to leave them near the money. He wanted both of them along where he could keep watch on them. Burt could be trusted with the money; no one else could, except possibly Baraclough, but Baraclough was needed if there was trouble below.

The Major said to Baraclough, “You go down first and check out the garage. I’ll come through the barn and meet you at the back porch—the dark corner on the northeast side. Then we’ll take the windows.”

They had probably had plenty of practice in Vietnamese hamlets. Walker hadn’t; he’d been an airman to whom the face of the ground war had been remote.

Baraclough touched his arm. “Move.”

3

It seemed to have been a long night but when he looked at the luminous dial of his watch he saw it was only a little past ten o’clock. They’d been walking since, what, half-past three? Quarter to four? He had been by no means a physical wreck but there was a blister now on the back of his left heel and he felt flatfooted and weak, his back was like a boil from carrying sixty-odd pounds of canvas and paper money, there was a twitch in his right shoulderblade and he had developed kinks in his fingers from holding the duffel bag across his shoulders and back. The Major had set a hard pace. Remotely he knew how Hanratty must feel by now—very old, very weak, sick.

Baraclough seemed alert and energetic. To him, as to the Major, it must have been. a stroll. Walker followed Baraclough’s narrow back, sticking close; they went around the long way, around the end of the hill, down the little valley toward the ranch, keeping that grove of planted trees between them and the buildings. At the edge of the trees Baraclough stopped and drew the automatic pistol out of his belt. Walker felt it pressed into his hand.

“How good are you with one of these?”

“Just fair.” It was an Army issue, 9-mm. Smith & Wesson. The Green Berets preferred them to the big forty-fives. He had used one only two or three times on the qualification range every six months or so, but he’d carried one just like it every time he’d flown a plane in Indochina.

“Don’t use it unless you have to.”

“What about you?”

“I won’t need one,” Baraclough said. “Keep it quiet now.”

Well that was something. At least Baraclough, unarmed, trusted him with the gun.

A stupid thought. If there were cops around here and he used a gun on Baraclough he wouldn’t get far. Baraclough must know that—must be counting on that.

Following Baraclough into the woods, silent as he could, he wondered if he was being paranoid about it. Maybe it was all in his mind. Maybe they owned a lot more loyalty than he thought: they weren’t commonplace thieves. He’d held up his end of it. The Major had been angry for a little bit back there but it wasn’t Walker’s fault the storm turbulence had busted that filler cap loose. The Major had to see that. In fact they owed him their lives: it had been a good landing. A very good landing. Nine out of ten pilots would have killed everybody on board trying to set down with a shoehorn in soft clay like that.