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at Philips-though he had gone so far as to loosen his tie.
"Where is he?" he repeated. "What happened to him?"
Philips didn't answer. He looked down at his drink, took a puff on his
cigarette, then looked back at Schaefer.
Schaefer had that same stubborn streak Dutch had always had, no doubt about
it.
"This meeting is off the record," he said. "It never happened. You got that?"
Schaefer didn't answer; his expression made it plain that he was still waiting
for an answer to his question and didn't give a shit about any record.
"I'm not here, I'm not telling you this, you never saw me, all that crap,"
Philips said, "but I owe you this much, for Dutch's sake. Drop this one, son.
Just back away from it. Forget about it."
"I can't do that," Schaefer said. "You saw that shooting range. Those were
cops. Those were my men."
"You've got to drop it," Philips replied. He reached for his hat. "You've got
to, understand?"
He didn't dare stay any longer; he'd let something slip if he stayed.
He was tempted to tell Schaefer all of it, but he didn't dare.
So he had to leave, and leave quickly. He didn't trust himself if he
stayed-and he didn't trust Schaefer. He'd read about some of Schaefer's
stunts.
Schaefer studied Philips. "You already know who these killers are, don't you?
You know who was behind both those slaughters. You came to New York to check
them out, maybe to cover them up, didn't you? And you know Dutch, he worked
for you, there's some connection there? These killers are somehow connected to
Dutch?" He started to rise. "Who the hell are they?"
Philips was on his feet, straightening his hat. He didn't answer.
"Who are they?" Schaefer demanded. He stood, clenched fists at his sides,
towering over Philips. "What the hell are they doing? What do they want in New
York?"
Philips shook his head. "I can't tell you anything, Schaefer. Drop it."
"Why now?" Schaefer asked. "Dutch has been missing for years-why are these
murders happening now? Who is it killing both cops and punks? What is it
killing them?" He started to reach for Philips.
The general stepped back, out of reach.
"I can't tell you," he said.
"What the hell can you tell me? Don't say you can't tell me anything,
Philips-give me something."
Philips hesitated. "They like the heat, dammit," he said uneasily. "They want
the sport. Look, leave 'em be, and in two, three weeks they'll be gone.
Mess with them, and God only knows what might happen." He hesitated again,
then added, "And that's all. I've already said too much."
He turned and walked toward the door.
Schaefer stood, his hands still clenched into fists, and watched.
In the doorway Philips turned.
"Believe me," he called, "it's got to be this way"
Then he was gone.
Rasche stood up; he hadn't said a word the entire time. Whatever was going on,
it was obviously between Philips and Schaefer.
He almost missed Schaefer's muttered, "It's got to be this way? The hell it
does."
7
They couldn't get back into the firing range, and Rasche figured there
wouldn't have been anything to see there anyway. They couldn't get anything
more from Philips, even if they'd followed him. Rasche figured that was the
end of it, at least for the moment.
But when they were rolling again, Schaefer didn't take the turn for the bridge
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to take Rasche back home to Queens; instead he headed straight downtown.
Rasche looked at the expression on Schaefer's face and decided not to argue.
He remembered how he had been thinking earlier that he'd never seen Schaefer
really angry, and suspected that that was in the process of changing. .
"So," he said, in hopes of lightening the atmosphere, "just what kind of . .
. of work did your brother used to do for this General Philips?"
"Rescue operations," Schaefer said. "Covert stuff. Their dirty jobs, the stuff
they couldn't do themselves. When they fucked up and needed someone to pull
their asses out of the fire, they called Dutch."
Rasche didn't need to ask who "they" were.
"He kept it as clean as he could, though," Schaefer said. "That was why he
worked freelance, so he could turn down jobs he didn't like. He'd had enough
of that `do as you're told' crap in 'Nam. Worked his way up to major and still
had to put up with it until he went out on his own."
Rasche wondered where Schaefer had got his fill of that "do as you're told"
crap-he pretty obviously wasn't any fonder of taking orders than his brother
had been, even though he'd stayed in the army longer.
"There were still screwups sometimes," Schaefer said. "He told me about a bad
one in Afghanistan once."
"Afghanistan? Did it have anything to do with these killers?"
No.
For a moment Schaefer drove on silently.
Then he said, "There was another thing, though."
Rasche waited.
"Last I heard from Dutch," Schaefer said at last, staring straight ahead as
they left the avenue and turned into the narrow streets of lower Manhattan,
"was when he was passing through, - on his way from nowhere in particular to
somewhere else. He and I went out drinking. You have any brothers, Rasche?"
"No. Two sisters."
"That wouldn't be the same. Dutch and I, we didn't need to talk much."
Rasche nodded.
"So I wasn't expecting him to tell me all the latest shit about what he was
doing or anything. It was enough to be sitting there with him drinking,
watching the TV over the bar-you know. But that last time it was kind of
weird. Something was different."
Rasche knew what Schaefer meant; he also knew he didn't need to say so.
"We sat there drinking for a long time," Schaefer said, "and he started in
telling me stuff after all, not in any particular order, you know, we were
both feeling the booze by then, and he just said whatever he was thinking
about, whatever was bothering him, as he thought of it."
"What'd he say?" Rasche asked.
"He told me about this job he'd had," Schaefer replied, "leading his squad
into Central America on another rescue mission where some half-assed CIA stunt
had gone wrong somehow He didn't tell me any details of what it was about or
what he did there-he never did. Wasn't supposed to, it was all top-secret
bullshit, and besides, who cared? Anyway, he told me that this time it had
gone bad, he'd lost his whole team. That was rough, and I figured that was why
he'd been weird-they were good men, all of 'em."
"Yeah," Rasche said, to show he was still listening. He'd never met Dutch or
any of his men.
"Then he stopped talking about that and started talking about hunting,"
Schaefer said. "Just a bunch of crazy stuff. Talked about when we hunted deer
as kids. Asked if I'd ever thought about what it would feel like to be hunted.
Talked about how if you and your equipment were good enough, it'd take the
sport out of it, and you'd want to make things harder for yourself sometimes,
to give the prey a chance-but not much of one, you'd still want to kill it in
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the end, that the whole point is to show you're better than it is by killing
it. But you might take on a whole pack at once. Or you'd only tackle the ones
that could fight. You'd find the toughest game you could. You'd want a
challenge. I mean, you don't go after squirrels with an elephant gun.
"And then he started talking about stuff a hunter might have someday-some sort
of camouflage that would make you damn near invisible, say. Guns and knives,
faster reflexes, be able to mimic sounds.
"I didn't know what he was talking about, I thought he was just drunk."
"You think you know now?" Rasche asked.
Schaefer shook his head. "No. But maybe there's some connection. That was the
last time I saw Dutch, seven years ago. I haven't heard from him since. No one
has. He disappeared. Never heard another word, from Dutch or anyone else."
"Shit," Rasche said. He tried to imagine what that would be like, losing the
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