First Blood

'Easily,' Trautman said. 'When those Guardsmen heard the shots behind them, a group broke from the main line to go back and investigate. When they did, they left a hole more than big enough for him to slip through and up into the hills. Like you, they all expect him to keep moving away from the line anyhow, so they wouldn't have been alert to sight him when he came near and slipped through. You had better tell them to continue into the hills before he gains more distance.'

Teasle had been a long while expecting this from Kern. Now it came. 'I don't know,' Kern said. 'It's getting too complicated. I don't know what I had better do. Suppose he didn't think like that. Suppose he didn't realize there was a break in the line and just stayed where he was between the line and the road. Then if I order those men farther inland, I'll ruin the trap.'

Trautman lifted his hands. 'Suppose whatever the hell you want. It's no matter to me. I don't like helping in the first place. All the same I am. But that doesn't mean I have to explain over and over what I think should be done and then goddamn beg you to do it.'

'Wait, don't misunderstand. I'm not questioning your judgment. It's only that in his position he might not do what's logical. He might feel closed in and run in a circle the way a flushed rabbit does.'

For the first time the pride in Trautman's voice was completely open. 'He won't.'

'But if he does, if he just possibly does, you're not the one who answers for sending the men in the wrong direction. I do. I have to look at this thing from every angle. After all we're just talking theory here. We have no evidence to go on.'

'Then let me give the order,' Teasle said, and the truck seemed to drop three feet, jolting, as a new more serious constriction seized his chest. He struggled to go on talking, braced his body. 'If the order's wrong, I'll gladly answer for it.' He stiffened, holding his breath.

'Christ, are you all right?' Trautman said. 'You'd better lie down quick.'

He gestured to keep Trautman away. Abruptly the radioman said, 'A report is coming through,' and Teasle fought to ignore the racking misbeats of his heart and listen.

'Lie down,' Trautman told him. 'Or I'll have to make you.'

'Leave me alone! Listen!'

'This is National Guard leader thirty-five. I don't figure this. There must be so many of us that the dogs have lost their sense of smell. They want us to go up into the hills instead of toward the road.'

'No, they haven't lost their sense of smell,' Teasle said, clutching himself, voice strung out with pain, to Kern. 'But we've lost a hell of a lot of distance on him while you tried to make up your mind. Do you think now you can bring yourself to give that order?'

9

As Rambo started up the slope of shale toward the mine, a bullet whacked into the rocks a few yards to his left, the rifle report echoing through the forest back there. Staring at the mine entrance, he hurried stumbling up the slope into the tunnel, shielding his face from chips of stone that two more bullets blasted off the right side of the opening. Far down the tunnel, out of reach of more bullets, he stopped exhausted, slumping against a wall, gasping. He had not been able to maintain his distance from them. His ribs. Now the Guardsmen were barely a half mile behind him, coming fast, so taken up in the hunt that they were shooting before they had a clear target. Weekend soldiers. Trained for this but not experienced, so they did not have the discipline and in the excitement might do anything. Rush in stupidly. Spray bullets down the shaft. He was right to have come here. If he had tried giving up at the stream, they would have been too quick, would have shot him. He needed a buffer between himself and them so they would not shoot before he explained.