Dark Full of Enemies(24)

Ollila shrugged. “You have seen snipers before. Imagine my story, and tell it two hundred times.”

McKay laughed. “Damn.”

Ollila smiled his boyish smile. McKay dry-fired his Thompson and returned it to his gear. He stood and walked to the door, opened it, and stopped.

“Two hundred?”

Ollila did not turn around. “They tell you one hundred fifty, eh?”

“Yeah.”

Ollila shrugged. “No one believes the number. I know one man, he killed seven hundred Russians. I killed two hundred and five. Now I kill Nazis. Is all the same.” He stopped brushing for a moment, then turned and looked McKay in the eye. “I have one story, and I enjoy it very much.”

McKay nodded and walked out. That was another man he admired.

He went to the head, where he took his time and finished his apple, which had browned at the bite marks. He moved aft again, heard Treat talking to another officer in the curtained booth, and entered the control room. He wandered aimlessly back and forth through the confines of the boat and watched the British at work, the greatest navy in history going through the mundane daily tasks that allowed it to operate in every ocean on earth. He could not let the boredom take over—boredom was the enemy of all success. He stopped to thank Hopper again for guarding their discussion, and continued aft. Graves and Stallings both lay full back on their racks now, still talking about hunting.

“No, we ain’t got anything that dangerous,” Stallings said. “Just bears, mostly. Supposedly there’s painters in the mountains—”

Graves sat up. “Painters?”

“Panthers,” McKay said.

“Painters, panthers—shit. Anyways, I don’t think it’s true. McKay—uh, Captain, any painters up your way?”

McKay hauled himself into the rack and picked up Thucydides. “Not in living memory, I don’t think.”

“But there used to be?”

“That’s what I’ve always heard. Loggers probably killed them off. Course, everybody knows someone who knows someone who’s seen one, but I think they’re long gone.”

“My granny says she seen one, but so has everybody’s granny.”

“A panther,” Graves said. “Like a leopard? Bagheera?”

McKay understood, but if Stallings did, he did not show it.

“Naw, a catamount. Mountain lion. Come to think of it, it does look like a lion without a mane.”

“Hm.”

“Don’t listen to him,” McKay said. “Everybody’s granny’s seen a painter.”

“You hush. Sir. Anyway, I’ve hunt bears once or twice. Didn’t really like it. They look too much like folks.”

Graves and McKay laughed.

“Don’t have that problem in the bush,” Graves said. “Only thing there looks like a man, is a man. He might be naked and black, but a man.”

“I hunt deer more often than not,” Stallings said. “The only thing I don’t like about deer hunting is getting up so damn early. I know some boys hunt hogs, but I didn’t like that neither. Scare the shit outta me. I kindly prefer something that’s not going to hunt me back.”

Graves laughed.

“Now, that is a problem we have on the veldt. Everything there will hunt you back. What you said about deer, rising early? You know, we go out in the day and hunt. You ever think about why we get back in before dark? That’s their time to hunt us, mate.”

McKay had put Thucydides down again.

“Hadn’t thought of it just that way,” Stallings said.

“The last lion I bagged before I left South Africa was a male,” Graves said, and McKay grinned—another story. “A lion, mate. Lionesses do most of the hunting, you know. But we’d had a big veldt fire and I suppose this lion and his lionesses had got cut off from most of their food, maybe their prey had run north from the fire and they had made south and rum luck for them, you know. But we had four hundred head of cattle in our kraal and slaughter was just a week off. They were fat and slow as you please, laziest buggers you’ve ever seen. So what’s a lion to do when the quick stuff he’s used to has scarpered and the slow, fat stuff, the stuff he gets shot at when he skulks about it, is all there is?” He paused, as if in thought. “God, I wish I could have a fag. Captain?”

“Smoking lamp’s out. Sorry, Graves.”

“Eh, soon enough.” He lay back and seemed to drift away, somewhere over southern grasslands. “Well, lions hunt at night, you know. It’s a funny thing, night. Everything wants to hunt but everything’s on its guard. Everything except cattle, dumb, fat buggers. That’s what we’re there for. Well, before that lion came about a lioness got after the cattle. Probably one of the lion’s ladies, we figured later. One of our Boer lads shot her. Next night, the same thing. Bloody middle of the night, black as pitch, and we shoot down another lioness. Now, lions are always about, and you have to be aware of them, right? But two in two nights—well… The next night the big fella came.

“When the second lioness got after the cattle we doubled the guard, you know. I was out with the Boer lad who shot the first one and a colored lad. All of us raised in the bush—dead shots, eyes like hawks, and good ears. But not good enough. We had a good fire going and were on our guard, but the next thing we knew that big hairy bastard had got that Boer boy and dragged him off into the night. He’d just got up to make water. We could hear him out there eating him in the dark.”