"Troy," Starkey said deliberately. "I repeat, Lion: Troy. Repeat back, please. Over to you."
Silence. A faraway mumble of static. Starkey was fleetingly reminded of the walkie-talkies they made as kids, two tin Del Monte cans and twenty yards of waxed string.
"I say again - "
"Oh Jesus!" a very young voice in Sipe Springs gulped.
"Repeat back, son," Starkey said.
"T-Troy," the voice said. Then, more strongly: "Troy."
"Very good," Starkey said calmly. "God bless you, son. Over and out."
"And you, sir. Over and out."
A click, followed by heavy static, followed by another click, silence, and Len Creighton's voice. "Billy?"
"Yes, Len."
"I copied the whole thing."
"That's fine, Len," Starkey said tiredly. "You make your report as you see fit. Of course."
"You don't understand, Billy," Len said. "You did the right thing. Don't you think I know that?"
Starkey let his eyes slip closed. For a moment all the sweet downers deserted him. "God bless you, too, Len," he said, and his voice was close to breaking. He switched off and went back to stand in front of monitor 2. He put his hands behind his back like a Black Jack Pershing reviewing troops. He regarded Frank D. Bruce and his final resting place. In a little while he felt calm again.
Going southeast out of Sipe Springs, if you get on US 36, you are headed in the general direction of Houston, a day's drive away. The car burning up the road was a three-year-old Pontiac Bonneville, doing eighty, and when it came over the rise and saw the nondescript Ford blocking the road, there was nearly an accident.
The driver, a thirty-six-year-old stringer for a large Houston daily, tromped on the power brake and the tires began to screech, the Pontiac's nose first dipping down toward the road and then beginning to break to the left.
"Holy Gawd!" the photographer in the shotgun seat cried. He dropped his camera to the floor and began to scramble his seat belt across his middle.
The driver let up on the brake, skirted the Ford on the shoulder, and then felt his left wheels start to drag in the soft dirt. He matted the gas pedal and the Bonneville responded with more traction, dragging back onto the blacktop. Blue smoke squirted from beneath the tires. The radio blared on and on:
Baby, can you dig your man,
He's a righteous man,
Baby, can you dig your man?
He tromped the brake again, and the Bonneville slued to a stop in the middle of the hot and deserted afternoon. He drew in a ragged, terrified breath and then coughed it out in a series of bursts. He began to be angry. He threw the Pontiac into reverse and backed toward the Ford and the two men standing behind it.
"Listen," the photographer said nervously. He was fat and hadn't been in a fight since the ninth grade. "Listen, maybe we just better - "
He was thrown forward with a grunt as the stringer brought the Pontiac to another screeching halt, threw the transmission lever into park with one hard thrust of his hand, and got out.
He began to walk toward the two young men behind the Ford, his hands doubled into fists.
"All right, motherfuckers!" he shouted. "You almost got us f**king killed and I want - "
He had been in the service, four years in the army. Volunteer. He had just time to identify the rifles as the new M-3A's when they brought them up from below the rear deck of the Ford. He stood shocked in the hot Texas sunshine and made water in his pants.
He began to scream and in his mind he was turning to run back to the Bonneville but his feet never moved. They opened up on him, and slugs blew out his chest and groin. As he dropped to his knees, holding both hands out mutely for mercy, a slug struck him an inch over his left eye and tore off the top of his head.
The photographer, who had been twisted over the back seat, found it impossible to comprehend exactly what had happened until the two young men stepped over the stringer's body and began to walk toward him, rifles raised.