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more goats to barbecue heaven and hitting the one visible body a second time so hard it landed in two pieces.
    Then, when they got to the kill zone an hour later, after a slow, tactical approach, no fucking second body.
    “You see blood?”
    “A few spots down here, Mick. But clearly, not a big, huge gut wound; he won’t be bleeding out.”
    “I saw him go bye-bye from midair,” said Tony.
    “Even a glancer from a motherfucker like this will send a guy off like a V-2. I hit a guy in Bagra once at just the right angle and it actually blew him out of the windshield of his car and about thirty feet down the road. Man, that was one surprised dude.” It was a nice warm memory and Mick cherished it.
    Thus the conclusion: one of the marines had gotten away.
    “It’s time to cut to the chase,” said Crackers.
    “Wait a minute,” said Tony Z. “See, we’re already
on
the chase. This
is
the chase. So how can you cut
to
the chase
from
the chase?”
    “Fuck you,” said Crackers.
    “Knock it off,” Mick said. “We got a pursuit on our hands. Guy has to have been hit, he can’t move fast. He’ll probably lay up in a cave. We have to track him and take him out.”
    “Mick, I didn’t sign up for an adventure movie. I’m just here for the hit and the grins.” That was crazy Crackers, like Mick, once a soldier, and young.
    “We are getting top dollar to deliver two heads. We will deliver two heads. Crackers, with your forces background, you’re the jock, why don’t you run the man down for us.”
    “I left my track shoes at the motel,” said Crackers.
    Now, nearly a day later, at nightfall, they knew they had to be close.
    But Tony Z said, “I’m thinking we ought to deviate, go around him, and let him come to us. He’s been pushing hard and I saw him fly, so I know he’s hurting beaucoup from a glancer. He’ll have to hunker down. He’s only a marine. He ain’t Superman.”
    Mick wasn’t ready to commit.
    “Let’s think about this a little while. I want this thing done up right.”
    One of the hadjis—he had three, Taliban boys whom on other days Mick might have blown away without a thought, but his passport to safety in the tribal areas depended on this one—spoke his gibberish and Tony Z, who understood it, told Mick, “Mahoud says there’s a path low around this set of hills, mostly flatland. We could probably get ahead of him that way.”
    So tempting. No more chase shit. No more waiting for Marine Hero to get the first shot off and go for him, he-man with Barrett. Mick was a soldier, as he’d been a football hero, because he was so big. He’d known from childhood that he had the strength to make people obey, and he didn’t mind, rather enjoyed it, ultimately becoming addicted to hitting people to get their attention. Alas, it was a hard habit to break, which is why each of the various colorful entities that had paid him to do violence on their behalf had grown tired of his disciplinary problems, his thief’s axiomatic greed, and the way he subverted every team he ever joined to his own ends. He was finally even cashiered out of Graywolf for shooting a surrendering hadji on CNN, a bad career move if ever there was one; now he had another client, less picky about certain moral distinctions.
    He checked his big gizmo Suunto watch, that Finnish bubble of high tech that could almost predict the future it was so complex, and saw he had just a few minutes until he could get a position fix.
    “We’ll wait here till I call MacGyver. We’ll see where he is.”
    The dark advanced shadows across the raw land, and a little night breeze kicked up dust or sand. One of the hadjis began to chew some suspicious weed or other, maybe for night vision, maybe for martyr’s frenzy. Tony Z hung next to Mick, crouching, lovingly fingering his AK. Tony was a gun guy; he had a Wilson custom .45 in a shoulder holster and a Ruger .380 plastic pocket pistol with a laser sight floating around in his cargo pants