“Let’s wait,” Kaiser said. “But I like the way you think.”
* * *
The approaching squads stopped behind cover forty or fifty yards down the hill, and a man in the center squad shouted, “Come out of there.”
Kaiser shouted back, “No. We got food, water, lots of ammo, and a hell of a lot better cover than you’ve got. We could kill all of you before you got to us.”
“We don’t want anyone to get hurt,” the man shouted.
“Come on up here and talk. We won’t shoot you. You can see how we’re set up here, what you’re up against.”
The man, who’d stuck his head up for the shouted exchange, ducked back down, and Ruiz said, “They are talking on the radio.”
They listened as somebody talked to a woman: probably Hawkes, Kaiser thought. The woman asked, “What can they do to us?”
Man’s voice: “There are only six or seven of them, I think, but they’re higher than we are, and they got real good cover. They’d shoot the shit out of us. No way to get at them from above, they’re set back in that cave. If we had grenades, maybe.”
“Don’t have grenades . . . You think the guy was telling the truth when he said he wouldn’t shoot you if you went up to talk?”
“Who knows?” the man said. “Probably . . . If he shot me, there’d still be nineteen more of us, pissed off. I think he wants to show me how dug in they are. Intimidate us.”
“Okay. Listen, go talk to him. See what you can see. Tell him if he shoots anyone, we’ll crawl up that mountain and drop grenades on them.”
A moment of ratiocination, then the man said. “I’ll try it.”
* * *
The radio talk stopped, then the man who’d been doing the talking shouted, “I’m coming up. Don’t shoot me.”
“Come up.”
A man stood up, raised his hands over his head, and shouted, “I’m not armed.”
“Come on,” Kaiser shouted. He turned to the others and said, “Veronica and Janice, get behind those rocks over there . . . Lean in to them, so this guy can only see your backs, and he might think you have rifles. Veronica, turn the radios off—we don’t want them to know we can hear them talking. Antonio and Doug, I want you out where he can see you. Point your rifles at him when he comes up. Harold, stand halfway behind that rock, hold that pistol on him, let him see it . . .”
The man down below said something to somebody out of sight, then began climbing the hill until he was standing fifteen feet from Kaiser, who stepped out with his shotgun.
“You made a bad mistake,” the man said. “Don’t make it worse. Give up, and I’ll guarantee your safety.”
“What about the trial for treason?” Kaiser asked. “That’s usually considered a capital crime.”
The man shook his head. “We weren’t gonna kill them, though they deserve it. We were going to find them guilty and then cut them loose.”
“That’s nice of you, but we’re safe right here,” Kaiser said. “Let me tell you something. There are only eight of us, but we’ve got six ARs and two combat shotguns full of number-three buckshot. Three of us are with the Department of Homeland Security and we spent years with Delta fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’d have no problem killing all of you and we’re very good at killing people.”
“You oughta be with us,” the man said.
Kaiser: “You’re all . . . deluded. Talk of treason, you’re the traitors. Anyway I’m not going to argue. We’re not coming down. If you look around, you’ll see that you can’t come up. The best thing for all of us would be if you walk back down the hill, get your men, and go on your way.”