Carrion Comfort (88 page)

Saul breathed in the scent of sun-baked soil and pine needles and thought of another time and place. After his escape from Sobibor in October of 1944, he had run with a Jewish partisan group called
Chil
in the Forest of the Owls. In December, before he began working as an aide and orderly for the group’s surgeon, Saul was given a rifle and put on sentry duty.

It had been a cold, clear night— the snow blued by light from the full moon— when the German soldier staggered into the clearing where Saul lay in ambush. The soldier was little more than a boy and carried neither helmet nor rifle. His hands and ears were wrapped about with rags, his cheeks white from frostbite. Saul knew instantly from his regiment insignia that the youth was a deserter. The Red Army had launched a major offensive in the area the week before, and although it would be ten more weeks before the Wehrmacht was to be totally beaten, this youth had joined hundreds of others in headlong retreat.

Yechiel Greenshpan,
Chil
’s leader, had given explicit instructions on what to do with solo German deserters. They were to be shot, their bodies thrown in the river or left to rot. No effort at interrogation was to be expended. The only exception to this execution order was if the noise of the shot would reveal the partisan band to the infrequent German patrols. Then the sentries were to use knives or let the deserter pass.

Saul had called out a challenge. He could have fired. The band he was with lay concealed in a cave hundreds of meters away. There was no German activity in the area. But he had challenged the German instead of firing immediately.

The boy had dropped to his knees in the snow and begun weeping, imploring Saul in German. Saul had worked around behind the boy so that the muzzle of the ancient Mauser was less than three feet from the back of the blond head. Saul had thought of the Pit then— of the white bodies tumbling forward and of the sticking plaster on the Wehrmacht sergeant’s cheek as he took a cigarette break with his legs dangling above the horror.

The boy wept. Ice glinted on his long lashes. Saul had raised the Mauser. And then he had stepped back and said “Go” in Polish, watching as the young German stared over his shoulder in disbelief and then crawled and stumbled from the clearing.

The next day, as the group moved south, they had found the boy’s frozen body lying facedown in an open spot in a stream. That was the same day that Saul had gone to Greenshpan and asked to be made an aide to Dr. Yaczyk. The
Chil
leader had stared at Saul for some time before saying anything. The group had no time for Jews who would not or could not kill Germans, but Greenshpan knew that Saul was a survivor of Chelmno and Sobibor. He agreed.

Saul had gone to war again in 1948 and in 1956 and in 1967 and, for only a few hours, in 1973. Each time he had gone as a medical officer. Except for those terrible hours under the Oberst’s control when he had stalked
Der Alte
, Saul had never killed a human being.

Saul lay on his stomach in the soft bed of sun-warmed pine needles and glanced at his watch as the helicopter landed. It was in a bad place, on the far side of the clearing, partially obscured by the deputy’s Bronco. The deputy’s rifle was old— wooden stock, bolt action, with only a notched sight. Saul adjusted his glasses and wished it had a telescopic sight. Everything about this was wrong according to Jack Cohen’s advice— a strange weapon that he had never fired, a cluttered field of fire, and no avenue of retreat.

Saul thought of Aaron and Deborah and the twins and used the bolt to slide a round into the chamber.

The pilot got out first and moved slowly away from the he li cop ter. This surprised and bothered Saul. The man waiting in the right side of the bubble was armed with an automatic rifle and wore dark glasses, a long-billed cap, and a massive vest of some sort. At sixty yards, with the glare of the setting sun on the Plexiglas, Saul could not be sure that the man was Richard Haines. Saul held his fire. He felt a sudden nausea rise in him along with a certainty that this was the wrong thing to do. He had heard Haines’s call to Swanson on the deputy’s radio when he was retrieving the rifle. This
had
to be Haines. But all the FBI man had to do was sit and wait for the others to arrive. Saul set the deputy’s bullhorn next to his left hand and sighted down the barrel again. The man in the flak jacket moved then, running in a combat crouch to the cover of the Bronco. Saul did not get a clear shot, but he did see the strong jaw and carefully trimmed hair under the cap. He was looking at Richard Haines.

“Where is he?” whispered Natalie. “Shhh,” whispered Saul. “Behind the van now. He has a rifle. Stay low.” He set the bullhorn on the ground in front of his face, made sure it was on, and braced the rifle with both hands.

The pilot called something and the agent behind the van shouted back. The pilot moved slowly toward the helicopter and five seconds later the other figure appeared, moving swiftly.

“Haines!” shouted Saul and the amplified boom made Natalie jump and came echoing back from the opposite hillside. The pilot ran for the trees as the flak-jacketed figure swiveled, dropped to his right knee, and began raking the hillside with automatic fire. Saul thought the popping sound tiny and toylike. Something whined through the branches eight or nine feet above them. Saul squeezed the oiled stock against his cheek, took aim, and fired. The recoil slammed the butt against his shoulder with surprising strength. Haines was still up and firing, sweeping the M-16 in small, deadly arcs. Two bullets struck the boulder in front of Saul and another buried itself in the fallen log above him with the sound of an ax splitting wood. Saul wished he had handcuffed the deputy deeper under the woodpile.

Saul had seen the pine needles jump ahead and to the left of Haines. He raised his sights up and to the right and was vaguely aware in the periphery of his vision that the pilot had turned and run for the trees. Saul could see the muzzle flashes from the M-16 as Haines blazed away. A final rattle of bullets struck the boulder where Natalie was curled in a fetal position, the firing stopped abruptly, the kneeling figure threw a rectangular clip away while pulling another from his vest pocket, and Saul took careful aim and shot Haines.

The special agent seemed to be pulled backward by the tug of an invisible cable. His sunglasses and cap flew off and he landed on his back, legs spraddled, the rifle six feet beyond his head.

The sudden silence was deafening.

Natalie was up on her knees, peeking around the side of the boulder and breathing heavily through her mouth. “Oh, Jesus,” she whispered.

“Are you all right?” asked Saul. “Yeah.”

“Stay here.”

“Forget that,” she said and stood with him as he got up to descend the hillside.

They were forty feet down the slope when Haines rolled over, scrabbled onto his knees, retrieved the rifle, and bolted for the opposite tree line. Saul dropped to one knee, fired, and missed. “Damn! This way.” He pulled Natalie to their left, through thick brush.

“The others will be coming,” panted Natalie. “Yes,” said Saul. “No noise.” They continued moving left, from tree to tree. Across the clearing, the hillside was too bare for Haines to move clockwise ahead of them. He would have had to stay where he was or be moving toward them. Saul wondered whether the pilot was armed.

Saul and Natalie moved as quickly as possible while staying behind trees and keeping back from the edge of the clearing. When they were approaching the point where Haines had entered the trees, Saul waved Natalie to a stop in a thick copse of second growth while he moved forward in a crouch, looking to the left and right after each step. Extra cartridges jingled in the pockets of his sports coat. It was getting dark under the trees. Mosquitoes were coming out, buzzing by Saul’s sweaty face. He felt like hours had elapsed since the helicopter had landed. A glance at his watch told him that it had been six minutes.

A horizontal band of light on the forest floor caught something bright against dark needles. Saul dropped to his stomach and wiggled forward on his elbows. He stopped, gripped the rifle in his left hand, and extended his right hand to touch the blood that had splattered needles and dirt. Other spatters were visible to the left, disappearing where the trees grew thicker.

Saul was edging backward when the roar of automatic fire began to his left and behind him, anything but toylike now, loud and frenzied. He pressed his cheek to the soil and tried to will his body and backbone into the dirt with him as bullets ripped branches, stitched tree trunks, and whined into the clearing. He heard at least two strike metal there, but he did not raise his head to see which vehicle was hit.

There was a terrible scream not forty feet from Saul and then a moan that started low and seemed to ascend into the ultrasonic. He jumped up and ran to his left, catching his glasses as a branch batted them off, almost falling over Natalie where she crouched behind a rotten stump. He threw himself down next to her and whispered, “You all right?”

“Yes.” She gestured with her pistol toward a thick growth of young pines and spruce where the hill bent toward a ravine to their left. “The noise came from over there. He wasn’t firing at us.”

“No.” Saul looked at his glasses. The frames were bent. He tapped at his sports coat pockets. Cartridges clinked. The pistol was still in his left pocket. His elbows were a muddy mess. “Let’s go.”

They crawled forward, Natalie three yards to Saul’s right. As they approached a small stream running out of the ravine the undergrowth grew thicker, sporting tender young spruce and fir, stands of low birch, and clusters of ferns. Natalie found the pilot. She almost set her forearm on his chest as she moved around a thick juniper bush. He had been cut almost in half by rapid fire from the M-16. His abdominal wall hung in loose flaps of red striated muscle, and his fingers were clenched around the white and gray ropes of intestines as if he had tried to tuck himself back in. The small man’s head was thrown far back and his mouth was wide open in an unfinished scream, the clouded eyes fixed on a small patch of blue sky between branches far above.

Natalie turned and vomited silently into ferns. “Come on,” whispered Saul. The noise of the stream was loud enough to cover soft sounds.

There were tiny asterisks of blood on a fallen log behind a wall of spruce saplings. Haines must have crouched there minutes before until he heard the sound of the pilot moving through the bushes seeking his own shelter.

Saul peered through the spruce. Which way had Haines gone? To the left, across twenty-five feet of open space, the mature forest began again, filling the valley and rising over the low saddle to the southeast. To the right, the ravine was filled with young trees, narrowing forty yards above to a narrow gap filled with three-foot-high juniper.

Saul had to decide. A movement either way would expose him to view to someone who had gone the other way. It was the psychological barrier of the clearing to the left that made him decide that Haines had gone to the right. Saul slid backward and handed the rifle to Natalie, putting his mouth almost against her ear as he whispered to her. “Going up there. Tuck in right under the log. Give me exactly four minutes then fire the rifle into the air. Stay low. If you don’t hear anything, wait one more minute and fire another round. If I’m not back in ten minutes, get back into the van and get the hell out of here. He can’t see the road from up here. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“You still have the passport,” whispered Saul. “If things go bad, use it to get to Israel.”

Natalie said nothing. She was very tense, but the line of her lips was thin and firm.

Saul nodded at her and crawled through the barrier of soft firs, staying close to the stream as he moved uphill.

He could smell the blood. There was more of it now as he crawled through tunnels of low juniper. He was moving too slowly; three minutes had passed and he was not far enough up the ravine. His right hand was sweaty around the grip of the Colt and his glasses kept slipping down his nose. His elbows and knees were very sore and his breath rattled in his chest. Flies buzzed up from another bright spattering of blood and batted against his face.

Half a minute left. Haines could not have gone much farther unless he had been running. He could have run. Ten yards would make all the difference. The M-16 had twenty times the range of Saul’s pistol, including the extra bullet he had loaded after racking a round into the chamber. Saul had eight shots. His pockets were filled with the heavy cartridges for the deputy’s rifle, but he had left the three extra magazines for the pistol neatly arrayed back where the deputy was handcuffed.

It didn’t matter. Twenty seconds until Natalie fired. Nothing would matter unless he got close enough. Saul lunged forward on his elbows and knees, panting audibly now, knowing he was making too much noise. He fell forward under an overhanging branch of juniper and gasped through his open mouth, trying to regulate his breathing.

Natalie’s shot echoed up the ravine.

Saul rolled onto his back, holding his forearm to his mouth so the sound of his panting would be muffled. Nothing. No answering shots or movement from above.

Saul lay on his back, pistol alongside his face, knowing that he should move forward, get farther uphill. He did not move. The sky was darkening. A ripple of cirrus caught the last pink light of evening and a single star gleamed near the edge of the ravine. Saul raised his left wrist and looked at his watch. Twelve minutes had passed since the helicopter had landed.

Saul breathed in the cooling air. He smelled blood.

Too much time had passed since Natalie’s first shot. Saul had raised his wrist again to check the time when Natalie’s second shot rang out, closer this time, the ricochet tearing at rock thirty feet up the side of the ravine.

Richard Haines rose out of the shrubbery not eight feet from Saul and poured automatic fire down the ravine. Saul could see the muzzle flashes above him and smell the cordite. Bullets ripped apart the shrubbery he had just crawled through. Young trees two inches thick were sliced off as if harvested by an invisible scythe. Bullets struck rock on the east side of the ravine, screamed again on the west side, and kicked up dirt far below on the east wall. The air filled with the scent of sap and cordite. The firing seemed to go on and on and on. When it paused Saul was too numbed to move for two or three seconds. He heard the metal click of one clip being ejected from the M-16 and the tap of another one going in. Twigs snapped as Haines rose to his feet again. Then Saul rose, saw Haines standing less than ten feet away, extended his right arm, and fired six times.