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.
It would not stop pounding. They would be back. The deer was just a toy. As soon as it leapt into the trees out of sight, they would be back. Since there had been something hidden in those bushes by the pool, then there might be something underneath this fallen tree. He had to get out fast.
But he had to wait until the copter's tail was pointed toward him, the men watching straight ahead at the deer they were chasing. He strained waiting, and finally he could wait no more, rolling out from under the branches, racing where the grass was shortest and would not leave a trail. He was nearing the bushes and rocks. Too soon the noise of the copter changed, roaring higher. The deer had made it to the woods. The copter was circling back. Frantic, he ran stooped toward the cover of the boulders, tumbling under the bushes, bracing himself to shoot if they had seen him make his run.
Ca-rack! Ca-rack! the first shot as the copter came upon the fallen pine tree, the second as it hovered over, lingering, slowly pivoting to continue up the draw. Leaving him. 'This is the police,' the voice was booming again. '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.' A mouthful of undigested carrots and chicken bolted sourly up from his stomach, and he spat it on the grass, the bitterness soaking into his tongue. This was the narrow end of the draw. Cliffs on both sides closed in farther up, and weak from having vomited, be watched through the bushes as the copter swept over the trees that way and then rose up, skirted the top of a cliff, and settled into the next draw, its roar slowly dying away, the voice from the loudspeaker going muffled.
He could not stand, his legs were trembling too much. Because he was trembling, he trembled even more: the helicopter should not have frightened him so. In the war he had been through action far worse than this, and had come out of it badly shaken, but never so extreme that he could not make his body work. His skin was clammy, and he needed to drink, but the pool among the bushes was green and stagnant, and it would make him sicker than he was.
You've been away from fighting too long, that's all, he told himself. You're out of condition is all. You'll get used to it in a while.
Sure, he thought. That has to be the answer.
Gripping a boulder, he forced himself to stand, slowly, and head above the bushes, he turned to see if anyone was near. Satisfied, he leaned against the boulder, his legs yet unsteady, and brushed pine needles from the firing mechanism of his rifle. Regardless of anything, he had to keep his weapon in repair. The smell of the kerosene he had doused on his clothes was gone, in its place the faint acrid smell of turpentine that the pine tree had left on him. It mixed with the bitterness in his mouth, and be thought he might be sick again.
