The Hit and The Marksman

Conrad says, “And who the hell are you? Some hired two-bit hit-man!”

“It’s my trade. I’m a craftsman … At least I know what I am.”

The room is an office-library. Lots of high-polished woodwork. Radford stands just inside a kicked-open set of French doors. He’s looking at the display case beside him and the framed photographs on the leather-topped desk. Photos of Vickers in uniform getting medals pi

Radford has the nutcracker in one hand, a revolver in the other. He looks all around, ready for anything. Nothing stirs. He rams forward out of the room.

His charge takes him through a hallway into a big kitchen; all the mod cons. The stove is a gas range. There’s a center-island counter. Nobody in the room until Radford reels in from the hall. He looks around, picks a direction arbitrarily, plunges through a door …

Conrad drives a luxury sedan down the blacktop highway; Vickers and Wojack are in it with him. The other guys—Gootch, Curly, Larry, Moe—are in the Humvee four-by-four behind them. And there’s something ominous simply in the way the two-vehicle convoy rolls relentlessly forward, not speeding at all but somehow implacable, as if they’d run right over any i

Radford prowls into a dining room. He hears a sound of approaching vehicles so he goes to a window and looks out and sees the two vehicles approach, crunching their way up the driveway, in no hurry. From this angle he can see the smashed-open French doors of the house, so he’s not surprised when the car and the Humvee stop some distance short of the place and seven guys get out. Radford recognizes Vickers, who examines the place with field glasses, then makes hand signals and leads the other six in a spreading-wide skirmish line, converging toward the house on foot, most of them carrying automatic weapons except for one Ivy League–looking man who hangs back, holding a 308 rifle at the ready but not joining in the war-game maneuvering. That one watches the troops with a pose that conveys sardonic bemusement.

Radford fades back into the house.

Vickers sends Conrad around one end of the house. Conrad goes, walking straight up as if invulnerable to enemy bullets—he knows Radford’s not going to shoot him without warning.

Vickers looks back, sees Wojack ambling forward with his rifle ready, and angrily waves Wojack toward the opposite end of the house. Wojack shrugs and turns that way, watchful but not enjoying this part of the game.

Radford squeezes himself into a narrow space so confining and so completely dark that he can hardly breathe. He begins to sweat—claustrophobia …

Without making a sound Gootch appears in the den, gun first, framed in the smashed-open French doors, and comes in, watching everything at once. Behind him the others curl into the room and fan out fast—Larry, Moe, Curly. Then Vickers enters behind them. Vickers signals with his automatic weapon toward the far door, and Gootch sidles out through it …

In the kitchen Gootch and Curly and Moe poke under counters and table, nobody making a sound.

In his narrow dark enclosure Radford is really starting to come unglued, but with a tremendous effort of will he remains absolutely motionless.

At one end of the house Conrad eases up to a window and looks in. He doesn’t see anything exciting.

At the opposite end of the building Wojack hangs back in the shade of a tree, studying the turf. He’s a sniper, not a close-quarters brawler; far as he’s concerned, snooping in closed quarters where you could get ambushed is not included in the price of his ticket. He stays by the tree.

Moe is stooping to pull a door open and look in the cabinet space under the kitchen sink when behind him a broom-cabinet pops open and Radford plunges out, gasping for air. Radford whacks Moe’s wrist with his nutcracker.

“Hey—!”

The nutcracker loosens Moe’s hold on the Uzi and whips the weapon away before Moe can figure out what’s happening.

Gootch and Curly wheel—Curly opens fire with his automatic weapon before he’s had time to see who he’s shooting at, and his bullets cut Moe in half.

Radford levels the Uzi; Curly ducks down behind the island counter … Gootch, facing the muzzle of Radford’s Uzzi, backs out into the hallway … Radford pulls the fridge door open and uses it for armor-plate while Curly shoots at him from behind the counter. Radford returns the fire. Bullets chatter and scream.

In the dining room Gootch comes windmilling back. Larry and Conrad run forward to join him. Vickers comes in from a hall door, seeing it all, understanding it instantly. Gootch yells desperately, “He’s a banana truck!” while in the kitchen Curly, on his knees, dodges around the end of the island counter, looking for a shot—and suddenly Radford comes vaulting over the counter, kicks the submachine gun out of Curly’s hand and slams Curly upside the head with the free-swinging end of his nutcracker. It lays Curly out cold.

… Gootch returns into the kitchen, followed by Conrad and Larry; and now suddenly Radford from behind the door is all over them—uses his nutcracker as a flail, holding one stick and swirling the other, bashing Gootch and Larry, not wanting to use the submachine gun that’s in his other hand; but Conrad is very fast—deflects the nutcracker by parrying with his gun, then (as Radford lifts the Uzi, ready to use it) wheels back outside with Gootch and Larry.

From the dining room side, Conrad slams the door. Immediately he and Larry and Gootch start firing bursts through the closed door. In no time at all their bullets splinter it, turning it into kindling.

Radford crouches behind the counter. Bullets come in through the closed door, busting the kitchen all to hell. Curly, dazed on the kitchen floor, groans and stirs; bullets are busting him all to pieces. The bullets also tear up Moe’s body.

Vickers yanks open a window—shouts outside: “Wojack—get your ass in here.”

Outside Vickers’ house several police cars arrive fast. Wojack, seeing them, dodges away from the tree with his 308 rifle and hurries into the house.

As Clay, Dickinson and cops spill out of the cars, they hear a brutal racket of automatic fire from inside the house. Dickinson says, “The hell?”

Vickers, having seen the approaching cops, shouts at the three guys but Gootch and Larry are still blazing away through the shattered door and Conrad is reloading and they don’t hear him. Behind them, Vickers slips quickly out of the room.

Gootch and Larry stop to refill their weapons. That’s when—in the abrupt silence—Conrad glimpses Radford—a faint movement beyond the barrier of the island counter—and Conrad opens fire viciously and—the bullets bust up the gas range.

The range explodes—and the fire rapidly begins to spread.

Radford, trapped behind cover against the counter, looks up and around, seeking a way out.

Wojack comes into the den through the busted French doors and stops to consider his options.

Through a kitchen window Radford comes hurtling out of the fire, falls to the ground, lands rolling, picks himself up, runs for cover. He’s still got the nutcracker but not the Uzi.

Behind him, inside the kitchen, Conrad kicks down what’s left of the door and bursts in, crouching, spraying bullets in an arc. The place is on fire. Gootch and Larry are right behind him. And they see there’s nobody here except the bodies of Curly and Moe. Conrad wheels to the busted-out window—and sees several cops ru