Vickers came around the jeep, paused to step on the stub of his cigarette, looked up quickly as if to catch an unguarded expression on Watchman’s cheeks. “All right. What is it?”
“I’ve said this to you before. You’re not going to get this job done with armies and helicopters. Use your head-you got a make on them, you know they can take care of themselves in the woods. They’re not going to blunder into any traps. They’ve got a blizzard coming and they’ll use it.”
“If it pins us down it pins them down.”
“No. It gives them time to get ten thousand miles from here.”
Vickers just watched him with the patient attitude of a man giving him enough rope to hang himself.
Watchman showed his anger. “Do you have any idea of the size of the circumference of this range?”
“I’ve seen the map.”
“And you think you can seal it off with a cordon of troops?”
“Don’t be an idiot. We know the general area. We’re stringing lines of troops across the mountains ten miles east and ten miles west. We’ve got them boxed into a square, ten miles on a side.”
Watchman was unimpressed. “Forty-mile perimeter-how many troops, two thousand? Fifty men to the mile? A hundred feet between each man? And you don’t think five Green Berets can crawl through a hundred-foot gap in a blizzard without getting spotted?”
Vickers kept his face rigid with suppressed feelings. “Trooper, you’re in trouble with me.”
“Oh wow.”
“One. They’ve called out more like four thousand troops-so that narrows your gap a little, doesn’t it? Two. Our cordon won’t be standing still, it’ll be moving-and that means converging, the gap between men growing narrower all the time. Three. Even assuming somehow the fugitives did slip through the lines, they couldn’t get far on foot and if they tried stealing a car they’d be stopped by a police roadblock. Every road within forty miles of here is blocked at ten-mile intervals. No: let me finish. This is the last time you’re going to try and make a fool out of me. I don’t know what I’ve done to rub you the wrong way but you’ve thrown your last banana peel at me. Understand this: if I thought I was the wrong man for this job I’d step out. If the time does come, I’ll know before anybody else does. In the meantime I want no further interference from you. As far as I’m concerned you can go home right now and amuse yourself practicing your fast draw.”
“Not good enough,” Watchman said. “You’ve made a long speech. Fine. Now I’ll take equal time: One. They’ve got that man’s wife with them. What happens if they walk right up to your National Guard lines with a pistol at the woman’s head and use her as a hostage for safe conduct to the nearest Army helicopter? How many weekend soldiers do you know with balls enough to put up a fight when they’re using a woman for a shield? Two. Any Indian with a brain knows enough to get down on his belly and let a cordon walk right past him and then get up and fade into the landscape behind them. At least give your Green Berets credit for that much sense. Three. When the five of them get away scot-free and leave you with Mrs. Lansford’s dead body on your hands you won’t need any help from me to make a fool out of yourself. End of speech.”