''You're a sixteenth of an inch from having your head blown off.'
'Don't shoot,' he croaked.
'Don't move,' she said, continuing to cut him. 'Call your boys and tell them you found me. Make it convincing or the knife goes right into your kidney.'
'Get on over here, boys!'
'Now turn and face me; stay on the trail. Keep your mouth shut or you're a dead man,'' she said, stepping behind the stump to hide.
Soon the men came to the clearing. 'Hey, Greg, whatcha doin'? You're bleeding. Did you see her?'' Both men walked toward their boss, curious as to his silence.
'You're not pissed, are you?' one man said in a worried voice.
When the two men were within twenty feet of their boss, Corey stepped out from behind the stump. ''Drop the guns or he takes a bullet right in his fat ass.'
Startled, the two men dropped their guns.
'Get over by him.'
They moved to their boss's side.
'What a sorry bunch of losers. You look like you walked into a meat grinder.'
'Fuck you,' the leader said. Slowly she approached him. Faster than a rattlesnake, she stabbed his thigh, then removed her knife.
'Oh shit,' he groaned, holding pressure on the bleeding puncture wound.
'Did she get one of your guns?' Corey demanded.
'She got an AK-47 from me, but she dropped it. We found it in the brush.'
'You got knives or guns hidden on you?'
'No,' said the one with the bloody hand.
'Likewise,' said the swollen face.
'You're going to strip,' Corey said. 'If you lied, I'm gonna slit your bellies. Now take 'em off.'
'Uh, ma'am,' said bad hand, eyeing the boss's bloody shirt and pants.
'What do you want?' she replied.
'I forgot about a knife on my leg and a gun in the small of my back.'
'Me too,' the other said.
''Get 'em out and throw them on the ground. I don't think you assholes take me seriously.' Then without warning, she stabbed their boss in the same leg, eliciting a louder scream. 'Don't fuck with me,' she said, twisting the knife.
'Please, Holy Jesus.' He was gasping in pain.
The two men hurriedly began taking off their clothes.
'Forget the strip show. I haven't got time.' She frisked them both.
'How many more trip wires you got?' Corey asked.
'Four on the slope and five on the ridge,' one of them answered, quickly pointing out various landmarks.
''OK. Two of you will pick points on the hill fifty yards away from one another. Boss man here will stand in the creek bottom down there at the narrowest spot. We can only cover the bottom portion of the hillside, but that's where she ran from you morons. The odds are she's hunkered down. If she went past this area, she probably would have hit one of the wires. If she stays put, she'll eventually die from exposure. Move in slow circles around your point. Don't get more than twenty-five yards from your spot. If I hear you moving in the brush, or catch you leaving your station, boss man here gets it in the other leg. So don't let me hear you. When she moves, we'll hear her. Now get moving.'
Just then, the helicopter buzzed low overhead. Seconds later, it circled away.
'When she is dead, you can get back to your plants. Not a second sooner.'
29
As the likelihood of rescue dimmed, it became easier to give in to the seduction of the cold. But Maria was stubborn. She had forests to save. She had Dan to contend with. Nate to apologize to. She looked down at herself. Clearly, she had stopped sinking. No quicksand, just deep mud. She decided to move.
Using her arms like stiff oars, she pulled herself ahead. She seemed stuck. She threw herself forward, then rocked back, loosening the mud. Throwing herself again as hard as she could, she began to come loose. At first, she could barely move but soon she discovered that she could crawl on her belly. Downstream twenty yards, the mud was knee-deep in thigh-deep water and she could walk. Within a hundred paces the ground became firmer. Then she rounded a bend and saw a man, standing. Although she could climb the canyon wall on either side, she would be exposed, and it would be very slow and noisy. Despair flooded her. She stopped, hiding in the rocks. Soon the gray light of evening would give way to bone-deep cold and the pitch dark of night in a wilderness canyon. Then she turned, and not fifty yards back and fifty feet up, she saw someone with a rifle.
Dan and Frank were getting frustrated. They could see little in the trees, and the pilot was running out of fuel. Only twenty minutes' worth remained. They were way beyond safe reserves. They would have to return to the airport, and then it would be dark.
'Let's run down the river drainage one more time before we land,' Dan said.
'We gotta go,' the pilot said.
'I still think she followed the creek,' Dan replied. 'Fly down it on the way back. Get down low and let me out.'
'It's getting dark,' Frank said.
'I know, but she's out there. I can feel it.'
'Can't let you do it. After we try the creek again, we're outta here,' Frank added.
The pilot banked the copter and aimed at the drainage. Looking back up the mountain, they could see foresters' trucks and sheriffs' vehicles pouring onto Jack Morgan's property. Dan prayed.
Frustrated that they were finding nothing, Corey went to the leader's position down in the creek. 'Did you search the entire creek bottom?'
'Dutch looked down here,' he replied.
'How exactly did he do that?'
'He went down next to the rock face and tried looking around the corner. There were no tracks. No sign of her.'
Corey was not convinced. Making her way back up and over to the bluff, she looked for the best spot to approach the precipice. After traversing a steep rock shelf fifty yards long, she located a portion of the slope that appeared to have good handholds. She began the climb down, clinging to the rock surface as she approached the edge of the sheer drop. Lodging her fingers and toes in cracks as she went, she barely managed to avoid a precipitous slide. Reaching the drop-off, she could tell there was a considerable overhang. And no easy way to look down over the lip and maintain a good handhold. She dug her fingers into the only two available cracks and peered over the edge, half-expecting to slide out of control and over the cliff.
'Morons,' she said as she saw the obvious trail in the mud along the rock wall.
Dan looked so hard his eyes hurt, but they saw nothing save Shane, who walked head down as if following a track.
'Put me down,' Dan said, sounding more determined than he'd ever been.
'All right,' Frank said, shaking his head.
Within seconds the copter was diving for the creek at a point where the brush patch and meadows began. Going down into the bowels of the ravine, they flew heart-stoppingly close to the steep hillsides, just 200 feet off the water. Slowing the copter to forty miles per hour, the pilot soon located a small clearing.
The landing point was a brushy spot just ahead of Shane, right by the creek. In seconds they had plummeted
