First Blood

Rambo held the owl's soft pliant back, clutched a fistful of feathers on the belly, and pulled. They made a dull tearing sound as they came away. He liked the feel of the feathers in his hand. He plucked the carcass bare, cut off the head and the wings and the claws then pressed the point of his knife in at the bottom of the rib cage, drawing the sharp edge of the blade down to between its legs. He spread the flaps of the carcass, reached inside for the warm wet offal, and smoothly steadily drew it out, getting most of the entrails in a bunch on his first try, and scraping the inside with his knife to get the rest. He would have gone to rinse the carcass where the water was dripping from the roof of the mine, but he could not tell if the water had poisons in it, and anyway, rinsing the bird would just be another complication when all he wanted was to get this over, eat and get out. He had already wasted too much energy as it was. He took a long branch that was not in the fire, sharpened it and spitted the point into the owl, extending it over the fire. The bits of feathers and hair that were still on it sparked in the flames. Salt and pepper, he thought. Since the owl was old, it would be solid and tough. The smell of its blood burning was acrid, and the meat would probably taste like that, and he wished he at least had salt and pepper.

So this is what he had fucking come to, he thought. From camping in his sleeping bag in the forest, and eating hamburgers washed with Coke in the dusty grass at the side of a road, to this, a bed of fir boughs in a mine and the carcass of an owl and not even goddamn salt and pepper. Not all that different from camping in the forest, but living then on a minimum had been a kind of luxury, because he wanted to do it. Now, though, he might be forced to live like this for a long while, and it really did seem like a minimum. Soon he might not even have this much, and he would look back on this good night when he slept for a few hours in a mine and cooked this tough old owl. Mexico was not even on his mind anymore. Only his next meal and what tree he would sleep in. A day at a time. A night at a time.

Chest throbbing, he raised his two shirts and looked at his ribs, fascinated by how swollen and inflamed they were. It was like he had a tumor in there or something growing in him, he thought. A few more hours sleep weren't going to cure that. At least he wasn't dizzy anymore. Time to move. He built up the fire to make the bird cook faster. The heat from the fire touched his forehead and the stretch of his nose. Or maybe it was the fever, he thought. He lay back flat on the fir boughs, face turned sweating toward the fire. The mucus in his mouth was dry and sticky, and he wanted to drink from his canteen, but he had already drank too much from it, he needed to save some for later. But whenever he parted his lips, a thin web of sticky mucus clung between them. Finally he sipped and swirled the warm metallic water around in his mouth, collecting the mucus, debating whether he could afford the waste of spitting it out, deciding not and swallowing thickly.

The voice startled him. It echoed indistinctly down the tunnel, sounding as if a man were outside with a loudspeaker talking to him. How could they have known where he was? He hurriedly checked that his pistol and knife and canteen were attached to his equipment belt, grabbed his rifle and the stick in the owl, and rushed toward the mouth. The breeze coming down the shaft was fresh and cool. Just before the opening, he slowed, taking care that men were not out there in the night waiting for him. But he could not see anyone, and then he heard the voice again. It was definitely from a loudspeaker. From a helicopter. In the dark the motor was roaring over the rise, and throughout a man's voice was booming 'Groups twelve to thirty-one. Assemble toward the eastern slope. Groups thirty-two complete to forty. Spread out north.' Far down and away, the line of lights was still there, waiting.

Teasle wanted him all right. He must have a small army down there. But what was the loudspeaker for? Weren't there enough field radios to co-ordinate the groups? Or is this just noise to get on my nerves? he thought. Or to scare me, to let me know how many are coming for me. Maybe it's a trick and he doesn't have any men at all north and east. Maybe he just has enough for south and west. Rambo had heard a loudspeaker used like this by Special Forces in the war. It generally confused the enemy and tempted them to second-guess what Special Forces was about to do. There was a counter-rule: when somebody wants you to second-guess them, that's when you don't try. The best reaction is to go on as if you never heard it.