standing upright if it hadn’t been busy growling into the mouth of a small cave.
“Hateley, are you in there?” Bulatt called out.
“Sergeant Bulattus — is that you?!”
“Not exactly; I’m Special Agent Gedimin Bulatt of the Fish and Wildlife Service. What the hell are you doing in there?”
“The damned thing chased me in here. I — ”
At that instant, a. 50-caliber bullet streaked up the hillside and exploded into a big Douglas Fir midway between Bulatt and the strange bear, sending chunks of bark and heartwood flying in all directions; followed almost immediately by the echoing roar of two distant and concussive gunshots.
Sixty yards below Bait Pile 1
Crouched down in front of a large boulder some sixty yards below the ridge line of where Bulatt, Hateley and the bear were located, Marcus Wallis was still staring the walkie-talkie he held in his left hand — amused by the defiance in Archna Kulawnit’s voice — when a fifty-caliber bullet suddenly streaked through the air just above his left shoulder and exploded into the huge rock a few inches from his face.
The violent impact of the Mark 211 650-grain. 50-caliber military bullet traveling at twenty-eight hundred feet-per-second against an immobile mass of granite sent shards of rock and fragments of copper, aluminum and tungsten steel flying in all directions.
Several of the shards and fragments ripped into Wallis’ exposed night-vision goggles, face, neck and arm; sending him and the M40A1 sniper rifle tumbling backwards into the deep snow drifts.
Bait Pile 1
Bulatt dropped down behind the trunk of another Douglas Fir, aiming the. 44 Magnum Smith and Wesson down the hillside, and waiting for some sign of a target; but he heard and saw nothing.
“What was that?” Hateley yelled from inside the nearby cave.
“Hard to tell,” Bulatt called out, still keeping his night-vision-enhanced eyes on the downhill slope. “Maybe the cavalry, maybe not; just stay where you are.”
“You think I’ve got a choice?”
The bear had spun around and bared his fearsome teeth at the sound of the. 50-caliber bullet’s impact against the tree. But then, when nothing else happened, it went back to its position in front of the cave, apparently indifferent to Bulatt’s presence.
Bulatt waited another minute or so, then slowly came back to his feet. This time, apparently warier now, the bear turned his head to follow Bulatt’s movements, exposing cuts on his nose and muzzle — presumably from Hateley’s spear.
“I’m going to get you out of that cave, Mr. Hateley,” Bulatt called out as he slowly approached the cave, trying to keep as little of his body exposed to the downhill slope as possible, “and then I’m going to take you into protective custody.”
“Why would you want to do a damn fool thing like that?” Hateley demanded in a weak voice.
“Because Marcus Emerson and his friends have every intention of killing you; so that you can’t testify as to your presence — and theirs — at the Khlong Saeng Preserve the night four Thai Rangers were executed while trying to do their job.”
“But — but I didn’t — !”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t, Mr. Hateley,” Bulatt said calmly as he continued to slowly approach the bear that had now risen up on its hind legs. “But they did, and that makes all the difference.”
“But how are you going to — ?”
“First I’m going to try to scare this fellow away,” Bulatt said, “and then I’m going to — ”
The rifle shot exploded in the cold night air, sending Bulatt and the bear tumbling to the ground.
“You should know you can’t scare a big fellow like that away, Agent Bulatt,” the voice of Marcus Wallis — sounding different now, as if he was in severe pain — called out from the darkness. “Not when Mr. Hateley is sitting in his cave, and hording the poor fellow’s food cache.”
Bulatt could hear the bear snarling and thrashing around in the snow, and then go quiet.
“That’s one more charge against you, Emerson,” Bulatt called out, “not that it’s going to matter much where you’re going.”
“Oh, and where would that be, Agent Bulatt?”
“Thailand.”
Marcus Wallis’ laugh echoed in the darkness. “I don’t think that will be happening, mate.”
“Really, why not?” Bulatt was watching the downhill slope carefully for the first sign of movement. “Time’s on my side, you know. You and I can trade shots out here all night — or, at least, until the cavalry arrives, which won’t be all that long now — and then you go down. Dead or alive; either way is fine with me.”
“And Mr. Hateley?”
“He’s going to testify against you and your associates. Isn’t that right, Mr. Hateley?” Bulatt called out toward the cave.
“Yes, I will, I — ”
A second rifle shot detonated in the darkness, somewhere below, causing Hateley to scream out in fear and pain.
“You’re right, Agent Bulatt, time is on your side; but distance is very much on mine. Are you really going to try to stop me from hanging out down here, and plinking away at Mr. Hateley’s lair, with that piss-ant forty-four? Have to be a lucky shot, indeed, mate; and a lot luckier than the one the little lass almost pulled off — God bless her conniving little soul.”
“Hateley, are you okay?” Bulatt yelled out.
“He — he shot at me! My arm, I’m — ”
“Probably just nicked you, judging from all that whining up there. What kind of ‘merchant of death’ are you, anyway, Hateley? Scared by a little ricochet shot? Well, get yourself hunkered down in there, lad, because there’s a lot more just like that one coming your way.” Wallis’ pained laugh echoed in the darkness again. “Bound to hit a vital spot eventually, you know; and then — ”
A sound somewhere between a gasp and a scream echoed out of the darkness; and then silence.
Bulatt waited for a count of sixty.
Still nothing.
Bulatt was in the process of deciding how long it would take him to move to the next tree down — and how long such a move would put him in the cross-hairs of Emerson’s rifle — when a hulking figure suddenly became visible in the falling snow as it slowly trudged up the hill.
Bulatt started to sight on the figure; and then watched, hardly able to believe his eyes, as the huge and horribly swollen figure of Borya staggered up to the top of the hill with M40A1 sniper rifle in one hand and a bloodied obsidian-bladed knife in the other. He stopped beside the fir tree and stared at Bulatt for a long moment.
“Did you kill him?” Bulatt finally asked the misshapen man whose facial features now looked far more Neanderthalish than Homo sapien, keeping the. 44-Magnum revolver down at his side.
Borya smiled and nodded his head slowly as he held the rifle and bloodied-knife up on display for a brief moment. Then he dropped them to the snow-packed ground, and continued walking toward the cave where the bear lay still on the ground.
Borya was kneeling beside the bear, his huge hands pressing against the bloody hole in the creature’s chest when Bulatt came up beside him. Both of them could see small, ragged puffs of air coming from the animal’s blunt and bleeding snout. They ignored Hateley who was staring out at the macabre scene from the mouth of the small cave.
“You can’t do anything to help him,” Bulatt said softly.
Borya looked up at Bulatt, nodded his head slowly in agreement, slowly lumbered up to his feet, smiled again, slapped a muscular hand onto Bulatt’s shoulder, turned, took two steps toward the woods, and then collapsed face down in the snow.
Bulatt was kneeling beside the horribly disfigured Russian, feeling for a pulse and finding none, when he
