Blood Trail

guys get back.”

“I can shoot,” Conway said weakly. “I’ve hunted all my life. I can help out any way you want me to.”

Lothar looked away as if he had nothing to do with the quarrel.

“I’m just wondering about our strategy here,” Joe said to Lothar. “There’s just four of us. I was thinking we might want, you know, an overwhelming show of force.”

Lothar shook his head. “That’s old school. We’re going for a small, deadly force here. Matching wits with the bad guy and taking him down with as little fuss as possible. Isn’t the idea here to get this guy before he makes the news? Isn’t that what Pope and your governor want most of all?”

Joe grimaced. “Yup.”

“Then let’s do it this way,” Lothar said. “We can always apply overwhelming force later if we need to. Your governor can fill the trees with the National Guard and the sky with helicopters. But in my experience, and we’re talking fifteen years of it on just about every continent, it’s better to go light and smart instead of dumb and big. If we can find this guy before he knows we’re on him, we lessen the chance of unnecessary casualties. Plus, if we get him, we’ll look damned good and maybe you can send this Klamath Moore guy home.”

Joe looked at Robey and Conway. “You sure you don’t want to call for backup?”

“I’m sure,” Robey said.

Conway nodded, deferring to Robey.

Against his instincts, Joe let it lay.

FAR ENOUGH AWAY from the vehicles not to be overheard, Joe pulled out his cell phone. Despite what Pope had said about signals fading in and out, he had all bars. “Pope . . .” Joe hissed, as if it were a swear word. He punched the speed dial for home. While he waited for someone to answer, he saw Lothar showing Robey and Conway how to arm and fire an AR-15. Robey was sighting down the open sights as Lothar talked him through it.

Sheridan answered.

“Hi, Sherry,” Joe said. “Is your mom around?”

I DON’T WANT to come out again, but I have no choice. When I saw him in the airport and found out why he’s here and what he’s doing, I knew I had an opportunity I may never get again. He has forced my hand. The question is whether or not he’s doing it deliberately as part of his plan or it’s something that just happened. But when I saw his face, heard his voice, saw that his attitude hadn’t changed, I knew at that second that I would be out again, despite the fact that I’m physically tired and my absence may be noted.

I’m out of my vehicle and into the forest as the sun drops behind the mountains. I move much more quickly than before, more recklessly than I am comfortable with. I skirt the path I blazed but once again I have no choice but to walk right through the middle of the elk hunters’ camp on the trail. Luck is with me because the hunters aren’t back yet and the camp is empty. Luck is also with them.

My objective is to get to the saddle slope where I made my statement yesterday and isolate my target and kill him before he knows I’m back.

I know the terrain so well now. It seems to flow under my feet. I feel like I’m gliding . . . .

11

IN THE opaque blue light of the full moon, Joe saw what Lothar meant when he said it all comes out at night. Joe stayed back, giving Lothar room to work, nervously rubbing the stock of his shotgun with his thumb, watching the master tracker work while keeping his ears pricked to sound and peering into the shadows of the forest for errant movement.

Lothar started at the single good boot print they’d found earlier. As the moonlight fell on the short grass it created shadows and indentures that couldn’t be seen in the day. Using a slim flashlight held inches above and parallel to the ground, they could detect more now-visible footprints going up the hill toward the knoll. Lothar placed the tip of the tracking stick on the depression where the ball of the shooter’s foot had pressed into the grass, and telescoped out the instrument to the ball of the second. With a twist of his wrist, he locked the tracking stick into the exact length of the shooter’s stride.

“Thirty inches,” Lothar whispered to Joe. “He has a normal stride for a man in good shape. At that rate, even weighted down with a weapon and a light pack, we can expect him to travel at a normal pace of a hundred and six steps per minute, four to eight miles a day. A healthy and well-fed man can sustain this pace for four days.”

Joe nodded.

“We’ll use moonlight as long as we can,” Lothar said, twisting the flashlight off. “We can see his footprints in the moonlight—”

“Which amazes me,” Joe said.

Lothar grinned. “It’s all about the ambient light. It strikes at a different angle and in a different way and it brings the shadows and depressions of a footprint out of the ground. It gives the ground a whole different texture. And now that we know the shooter’s stride length, if we lose the track—like if he was walking on solid rock or something—we can estimate where he should have stepped and maybe find a dislodged stick or a mud transfer or something.”

“Since we’ve got his track, why aren’t we using the dogs?” Joe asked.

“Too loud,” Lothar said, shaking his head. “Dogs might run him down, but of course he’d know we were behind them. This way, if we’re able to find him purely on our own, we might catch him totally by surprise.”

THERE WAS nothing left behind in the knoll they could see with the red flashlight lenses, no spent rifle cartridges, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, or definitive markings to reveal the shooter’s height or weight. But Lothar had no doubt this was where the shot was fired by the way the grass was still pressed down in places and the clear view it afforded of the granite outcropping where Frank Urman was hit. They picked up the track as they cleared the top of the ridge, and in the moonlight it was so obvious even Joe could see it with his naked eye. Only once did Lothar need to use the flashlight and his tracking stick to find it again.