plane was approaching from the west.
'There are no airports around here set up for night takeoffs and landings,' Worde said quietly, 'and no one would use them if there were. Also, I recognize the sound; it's a big, two-engine job, and one of the engines is pitched slightly lower than the other. It's the same plane that's been flying around here for four days-since about the time when you say you showed up in Colletville.'
'Goddamn,' I breathed, fighting back the panic I could feel rising in my chest like a hot tide. All the time Garth and I had been traveling up the Thruway and looking back over our shoulders, we hadn't once thought of looking in the right direction-up; and we probably wouldn't have thought anything of it if we had seen a plane. Orville Madison's men had known where we were all the time.
Garth and I picked up our backpacks, slipped the rifles from their sleeves, then followed Gary Worde outside and stood in the moon shadows beside the cabin. The plane finally came into view, flying low on the horizon, and the sound of its twin prop engines grew louder. It was a good-sized cargo plane, and as it passed over the top of a mountain in the distance it began to bank and turn, heading straight for us. Putting out the fire hadn't helped; the pilot obviously knew exactly where to find us, and his instruments would have allowed him to pinpoint our location even if there wasn't a full moon.
The plane gained altitude, then started to bank in a circle around us. The first figure dropped from its cargo bay as it flew across the moon. A few seconds later the man's black chute billowed open and he started to drift toward the ground. Clearly silhouetted against the moonlit sky, the figure looked decidedly lumpy; our guest dropping into the night forest was a serious commando with some serious equipment.
Orville Madison had decided to end the waiting game; whether or not Madison knew about Gary Worde and what the hidden veteran had to tell, he had decided that Garth's and my taking the time to find a man living in total isolation could bode him no good. Henry Kitten would undoubtedly be very angry and disappointed, and we would be very dead.
Soon the first commando had company. As the plane continued to describe a large, high-altitude circle around our position, five more lumpy figures leaped out into the night, opened their chutes, and began to float to the earth. We were caught in a deadly circle perhaps two or three miles in diameter, and the circle would begin to close on us as soon as the men landed.
'Brother,' I said, 'I do believe it's time we split.'
'Outstanding idea, Mongo. Gary-?'
We both turned around to find that Gary Worde had disappeared. Garth and I were alone.
17
Our first thought was that Gary Worde had panicked at the sight of the commandos and abandoned us-but he was gone only long enough for Garth and me to work up a little panic of our own. When he reappeared, he had a huge bowie knife in a metal scabbard strapped around his waist.
'Gary, I can't tell you how sorry I am that we drew these people here,' I said as Garth and I quickly smeared dirt over our exposed flesh. 'We thought we'd been careful to make certain no one was following us, and we wouldn't have come here otherwise.'
'Don't worry about it, Mongo,' Worde replied in a low, breathless voice. I could only guess at the nightmares that were going through his head at the moment; he was clearly frightened, but controlling it. His reaction was called courage. 'Veil made clear to me from the very first time he came up here that any kind of association with him was extremely dangerous and that something like this could happen. It was one reason he told me the whole story of what had happened to him. I accepted the risk because Veil was the one person whose company I enjoyed-and needed.' He straightened up, hefted the packet. 'I also accepted this.'
'What's in it?' Garth asked.
'I don't know,' the bearded veteran replied as he slipped the packet inside his coat.
'When did he give it to you?'
Worde thought about it. 'It's hard for me to say. It was quite a few years ago; I don't know how many. I remember that it was in the fall. He brought it to me on one of his visits. He asked me just to bury it someplace and keep it for him; he said he might need it someday. I'm thinking now may be that time.'
I glanced at the luminous dial on my wristwatch, saw that four minutes had passed since the figures had begun to drop from the sky. 'Gary, do you think you can get us out of here through that ring of commandos?'
'You just follow me,' Worde replied in a low voice that trembled with both fear and anger. 'I don't care how well trained or equipped those jokers are; they don't know these mountains, and I do. They don't know we're on the move, so don't do any shooting except as an absolute last resort. If we can break through the circle without being detected, I think we'll be home free. We'll walk in single file, and you should try to step exactly where I step. Okay?'
Garth and I nodded.
'Then let's do it.'
Garth and I followed Gary Worde as he walked down to the stream. He picked up his rifle from the chopping block, then started back the way we had come. After a hundred yards or so he cut to his right and headed up a fairly steep embankment. As we had been instructed, Garth and I tried to step exactly where he stepped, and as a result found ourselves avoiding dead sticks and loose stones. Worde obviously had excellent night vision, for we were moving at a fairly brisk pace through a densely wooded patch of hillside where little moonlight filtered through the trees. We tried as best we could to imitate his silent walking-a curious, rolling gait that Veil had showed me and which enabled Worde to move silent as a ghost through the night forest.
Suddenly Worde stopped, and I almost bumped into him. He motioned for us to be silent, then cupped both hands to his ears. I listened, but could hear nothing but the sound of our own raspy breathing. After a few moments we moved off again, but we had gone less than a hundred feet when Worde stopped again and listened. After watching him pluck from silence the sound of the approaching plane, I had a great deal of respect for Worde's hearing; still, judging from the positions of the commandos when they had dropped from the sky, I didn't think any one of them would yet be close enough for us to hear his passing.
'Veil?' Gary Worde called in a low voice that was just above a whisper, and which sounded curiously like the soughing of the wind.
Suddenly, behind us, there was an explosion that shook the ground. We spun around in time to see a column of white and orange flame shoot up into the sky from the site where Gary Worde's cabin had been.
'Shit,' Garth said. 'One of those sons-of-bitches moves fast.'
'Satchel charge,' Worde murmured. 'Whoever made it to the cabin knows we're not there. Now we'll see what kind of communications they have.'
As if in response to Worde's thought, the cargo plane came flying in low from the south, gained altitude, and then banked into a tight circling pattern with the flaming cabin as its epicenter. Then flares began to fall, incandescent balls of fire that stripped the cloak of night from us.
We were in trouble; although the hillside was covered with trees, there was no foliage. There would be a spotter up in the plane equipped with high-powered binoculars to search for us, or signs of our passing. We threw ourselves to the ground next to the trunks of trees and froze as the plane flew off into the distance. Finally the flares winked out, and night rushed back in over the mountain. We waited, listening, but could hear nothing but the drone of the airplane circling somewhere out of our line of sight. After more than two minutes passed, I began to dare hope that we hadn't been spotted.
Then the plane came into view; it banked against the moon, then began to descend rapidly, coming directly at us.
