Moondogs - Alexander Yates [23]
“That’s impossible,” Brig Yapha says, taking the field glasses back from Reynato and gazing down at the distant, bloodsoaked child. Charlie looks as well, though not for long.
“It’s cold, and it’s twisted,” Reynato says. “But clearly, it’s been done, so it isn’t impossible.” He takes the cigar out of his pocket, plants it between his teeth but does not light it. “You don’t even know, do you, Tony? What you’ve got on your hands here isn’t just skill. This boy’s a bruho.”
Everybody is silent. Finally Charlie says: “You mean … like the others you got? One of them?”
“No doubt,” Reynato says. “Talent just oozes out of him. Caught my eye all the way from the jeep. It’s kind of sad, when you think about it. You’ve been sitting on this resource for years, Tony.”
“He never told me he could do that,” Brig Yapha says, still not back to breathing normal.
“No surprise,” Renato says. “In my experience, few bruhos go around advertising.” He turns back to Efrem and the proud smile on his face enters the running for the highest point in the young soldier’s life. “So, Mohammed, are you exaggerating when you say any distance, all icy like that?”
Efrem shakes his head.
“Well then, humor us just one more time. I got word last night that the barangay sentinels in Davao City picked up a suspect in the Silivan rape case. Any chance you could hit him?”
“If you know his name,” Efrem says. “And where he is.”
Reynato hesitates, only briefly, and then leans in close, lips brushing Efrem’s ear. He tells him the rapist’s name and gives him directions to a jailhouse on the outskirts of the city, the way you’d give a friend directions to a restaurant you like. “So, Mohammed, just how magical are you?”
The men on Efrem’s island agreed that he’d been sent by God—sent for a reason. The Holy Man, someone who knew a lot about God, said it first. Efrem would take the world apart, so they could build it better. The gift was nothing to be afraid of. The angel of death was still an angel.
Efrem’s eyes widen as he raises his Tingin rifle over the puppy’s distant corpse, over the dripping trees, taking a straight aim at the sun. His pupils dilate. Out past iris, past white, they spill like oil to the rim of his open lids. Through shimmering black eyes he sees holes in the clouds, birds weaving through them, seeds of a storm still two days off. He sees sunlight bending over endless banana and palm. He rides the bend like a swell of seawater. Shirtless men move like ants through fruit plantations. An old woman does laundry outside while a young one wrings a hen’s neck. Policemen direct traffic at the outskirts of the city, their orange batons pointing the way. The roof of the jailhouse is missing tiles. The windows all face west. A big man sticks his bruised face against the bars. He smokes a cigarette and looks out at a pair of barn swallows flitting to and from a mud nest in the eaves above his cell. For a moment he and Efrem almost make eye contact.
Efrem squeezes off a single round. He watches the bullet as it speeds up and over the trees, down onto the plantation roads, between the legs of traffic police. Reynato reaches into his pocket and takes out a bright pink telephone. He flips it open, dials and speaks impatiently with the answerer. “I don’t care how recently. Check him again. Right now, and take