Part 38 (1/2)

Her calm tone, perhaps, had some effect on him. She realized that he enjoyed baiting her to get her visibly upset. In this way he could continue to throw up to her her inherent weakness as a female of the species.

”All right, all right,” he said in a more normal tone of voice. ”I concede that Jake Maroc is not the normal objective. But on the other hand he is not invincible, Comrade General. No one is. He must have a vulnerable spot and it is up to you to find it, exploit it, and terminate him with all due dispatch. Is this clear?”

”Perfectly,” Daniella said, despising him more than she had despised anyone in her life.

McKenna drew his Magnum .357 and shot them each once through the center of their foreheads. They pitched forward, covering the steer they had so recently slit open.

That was how he thought about the incident now, even how he dreamed it, sometimes. But that was not how it had happened.

Bundooma. The Northern Territories of Australia. McKenna and Deak Jones on the trail of the trio of abos who had stolen six head of steer. The trail had led into the Simpson Desert.

The Simpson in January. It was a bleak, G.o.dforsaken place at the best of times. But in the height of summer it was something else again.

It was true that Deak had argued against going after them: Not in there, mate. Let the b.u.g.g.e.rs go. They II fry anyway in there. Squinting against the unrelenting sunlight reflecting in intense waves off the desert floor. They were starving. They stole in order to live.

But McKenna was the senior in rank and time of service. If he said, Go, they would.

It's our job, Deak, m'lad. If we don't have that, we don't have a b.l.o.o.d.y thing.

And afterward, Deak Jones had asked for a transfer. He could no longer bear to look at McKenna's face. Because McKenna had shot three thieving abos? Not b.l.o.o.d.y likely.

Sometimes, when McKenna dreamed of the incident, he dreamt the truth: It took them two days to get the scent and overtake the abos. Near dusk they topped a rise and found the trio and what was left of the cattle. By then they had been in the Simpson for close to fifty hours and it had taken its toll. Toiling mile after mile of scrub and thornbush, dry-backed lizards, piles of rocks like cairns, marking the resting places of those unfortunates who had traveled this path before.

Let's take them, Deak said through crusted lips. McKenna had headed down the slope, silent as a dog.

The aborigines looked up at the policeman's approach. As McKenna had predicted, they had slaughtered a steer. Its blood was pooled at its open belly.

Nothing was said. The aborigines made no move; there was no animosity on their faces, no remorse even. This inflamed McKenna. If they had sinnedand he was convinced that they hadthey should be made to feel remorse for their crime. Their absolute placidity filled him with unspeakable rage.

At other times, in other dreams, the trio was composed of three men. This was a function of McKenna's superego imposing itself on his id. The fact was that the trio was a family unit: a father, a mother and their eleven-year-old boy.

It was the boy who was holding the knife. The steer's blood dripped from its keen edge to the thirsty ground. The father, McKenna supposed, had been teaching his son how to survive in times of drought, All right, Deak said. He had pulled out his pistol and was aiming in the direction of the family of abos. They said nothing. None of them looked directly at the weapon. It was as if it did not exist forthem. He crouched in the universal marksman's stance. Both hands were white around the Magnum's grip. But he did not move. It was as if he were waiting for the abos to move first, or that he was afraid to get closer to them.

For McKenna's part, he saw only the boy. He crept closer, his hand on his bolstered Magnum. He blinked the rolling sweat away from his eyes. His gaze swept the face of the boy, certain now that this was the one. McKenna had seen him in Bundooma several times. But ever since the first glimpse, that face had haunted him until, eventually, sleep was but a memory for McKenna.

This was what had brought him into the Simpson in January. The criminal act was but a secondary thought. What was one more criminal act among many?

It wasn't until McKenna touched the boy that any emotion registered on the father's face. The man leapt up, c.o.c.king his arm to strike McKenna. That was what McKenna had been waiting for. He drew his Magnum and shot the father once through the center of his forehead.

The abo's mouth made an odd, clacking sound. Reflexive motion caused him to bite off the tip of his tongue, though he was beyond pain, beyond knowing.

His body leapt into the air, dancing a jig in the air, crashed to earth, head first onto the carca.s.s of the steer.

His wife screamed, her eyes opened wide with horror and fear, but McKenna showed her the working end of the Magnum and she shut up. Her hands trembled in her lap.

It seemed as if Deak were shouting directly into his ear. Christ Jesus! We were meant to take them back. Alive, mate. Ableedinglive!

Shut up, McKenna said, without turning around. Just shut up. If you cant take it, you shouldn't've come into the Simpson in the first place.

I didn't bleeding want to come. If you remember.

Now you're here, make the best of it. Who knows? Maybe you'll get a medal out of it. McKenna had laughed at that. He had not taken his eyes off the boy and, in the process, he had grown hard. Keep your gun trained on the woman, he said with a thick voice.

Christ, why? Deak said. What d'you think she's gonna do, jump two policemen with drawn Magnums?

Just do as you're f.u.c.king told, mate! McKenna said, swinging around and training the muzzle of his gun on Deak. Then he swung back, bolstered the gun. His hold on the boy tightened. He half-walked, half-dragged him away from the fire's flickering circle of light.

Where you taking him?

McKenna ignored Deak. In the semidarkness, he could hear the chittering of the desert insects. There was nothing else in the world. The bowl of the sky was enormous, containing all things and nothing at all. McKenna felt liberated, free of the fires churning inside him. He began to laugh.

Then he opened the buckle of his belt, unzipped his pants. They fell away from him, pooling around his ankles. With a fierce jerk, he turned the boy until he was facing away from him.

Takedown your pants, McKenna said in English. When he repeated it in dialect, the boy complied.

His heart bursting, McKenna stared down at the bare b.u.t.tocks. They seemed white, virginal, full of promise.

WhatIHis flesh lurched forward as if of its own volition.

in the name of bleedin' Christ are you doing!

He closed his eyes. The desert breeze fanning his cheeks. He began to pant.

Something slammed into him. He took one stumbling step, his big hand on the boy's shoulder. Half-turned and lifted the Magnum, shot the boy's screaming, clawing mother once through the center of her forehead.

When he was done, the shudders going on and on like echoes through his body, he pushed the boy roughly away from him. He felt nothing but revulsion for the eleven-year-old. He was dirty, polluted.

The boy sat where he had landed. He stared up at McKenna and stillstill!nothing registered on his face. It was as placid as it had been when McKenna had come upon it.

React! McKenna screamed, and shot the boy once through the center of his forehead.

Have you gone stark staring bonkers? Deak cried, McKenna said nothing, pulled up his trousers, buckled his belt.

Answer me, you b.l.o.o.d.y pig! Deak screamed.

We got what we came for, McKenna said as he went past him to where the rest of the steers were waiting with bovine patience a Was it any wonder that Deak Jones had asked for a transfer the moment they got back to civilization? That he did not want to look at McKenna's face ever again?

But that was hardly the worst of it. Though the incident itself would be enough for a haunting, there was more. There was the image of the great green-headed fly, bloated with blood, crawling across the boy's open eye. There were the nights in Bundooma when he could see the fires flung like giant eyes across the face of the Simpson, skysc.r.a.pers of sparks shooting upward into the black, starless sky.

And the chanting of the tribes. He could hear the chanting even in his bed, even with the curtains pulled, the covers over his head. The chanting had a power that could not be interfered with.

Because, McKenna knew, the chanting was directed at him. For what he had done on the bleak back of the Simpson. The aborigines possessed a kind of primitive magic. McKenna had seen it at work, though he had never believed in it. Not really. He had thought of it, rather, as clever illusion, a prestidigitator's trickery.

Until the chanting had come, infiltrating his nights, making him start, gasp, sit up in bed covered in sweat. Thinking of that fly with the metallic green head, crawling over the milky arc.

What right had creatures little more than animals to do this to him? Rage and terror battled for supremacy within him. He wanted to commandeer a jeep and race out into the Simpson, pump them all full of lead. He had seen the ”Mad Max” films.

He would do no such thing.

And in the end he left his command; left Bundooma, the edge of the brooding horror-filled Simpson, the Northern Territories, Australia itself. Came to Hong Kong to make a new life for himself. But here he was amid the b.l.o.o.d.y wogs again.