Hidden Prey

“Grandpa?”
    “We should talk some more,” Grandpa said to the other man. He glanced toward Carl, but he never said the words. “You should know that we are not interested in Russia, per se. We are Communists, and we are proud of it, and the party will come back. When that happens, we’ll be waiting.”
    “The party,” the other man said contemptuously. “The party is . . .”
    They never found out what the party was, because Carl, in one smooth motion, lifted the gun from his belt, leveled it, and fired a single shot through the back of the other man’s head. The other man dropped straight down and his gun clattered on the blacktop.
    “Good,” Grandpa said. He smiled and rubbed his hands together. “Quick now, put him in the back. And get that gun. We’ll find a place . . .”
    Carl dragged the man to the back of the Taurus, popped the hatch,picked him up, and threw him inside. They took one minute to look at the other man’s car: took the keys, took a briefcase, looked in the trunk. The trunk was empty. Carl scooped up the other man’s gun.
    “Move, move,” Grandpa said.
    Carl hurried around the car, got inside, pulled the door shut. “I know where there’s a hole in the mine fence. We could throw him off the side. He’s in a black raincoat, they might not find him, you know, for a long time.”
    “Good as anything, if we can get there with a car,” Grandpa said.
    “We can get close enough,” Carl said. Grandpa was touching his own face, looking at his fingers. “What?”
    “I don’t know.”
    They were backing out, then out to the road. Carl risked flicking on the interior lights, looked at Grandpa. “Oh, Jesus, you’ve got blood all over your hair. Must’ve come out of the guy.”
    “I need, I need . . .” Grandpa scuffed open the center console, got out a travel pack of Kleenex, and began wiping his hair. “Just drive.”
    They were moving again, down the dark roads. Grandpa said, “Much farther?”
    “A minute. Did he tell you anything?”
    “Yes. They don’t know who we are. Not our names. They only know the Spivaks, and they’re not sure about them. But this Oleshev called me. So there must be an Oleshev group that has my name, and an official group that has the Spivaks’ names.”
    “It wasn’t possible to make a deal?”
    “No. He had seen our faces, he’d seen this car, he would have seen more before he left. He no longer had to make a deal; he had the information he wanted. He had to be erased. When in doubt, erase.”
    Carl, nodded, eased his foot off the gas, and said, “This is close. It’s right up over that hump, by the curve sign.”
    “I don’t see anybody. We must be quick.”
    Carl pulled to the side, got out, popped the hatch, grabbed the otherman by the back of his raincoat. He dragged him up through the bushes, the other man a dead weight, his feet bouncing over the loose rock. Once away from the car, the night was almost perfectly dark. This wouldn’t work. Carl let go of the body, found his way back to the car.
    Grandpa: “What?”
    “Isn’t there a flashlight in here?”
    “Glove compartment.”
    Grandpa fished out a cheap plastic flashlight, tried it, got a thin, pale light. “Will this work?”
    “Have to,” Carl said.
    “Hurry.”
    Carl took the flashlight, went back to the body. Took the man by the collar, dragged him to the break in the chain-link fence, then across. The Rust-Hull mine was an open-pit mine, with vertical rock walls hundreds of feet high. Carl, like most kids, knew it reasonably well; and knew he didn’t want to fall in.
    The flashlight worked just well enough to pick out the ground a few feet ahead, and then the downslope that led to the vertical wall of the pit. He pulled the man down the slope, braking him on the steeper parts, onto a shelf. He edged up to it, then peered over the side of the shelf with the flashlight. He could see nothing at all. Nothing but air.
    He pulled the body around, ready to launch it over the edge, and as he did, the man moaned.
    Carl was so startled that he dropped the man’s collar, staggered backwards, and nearly went over the edge himself. “Whoa,” he muttered. He took the gun out of his belt, shined the flashlight on the man’s face. His eyelids flickered in the light. Carl leveled the pistol and shot the man between the eyes.
    “Jesus.” He should have checked to make sure the man was dead; but now, there was no question. He was dead, and in another ten