was Miller. Jones stood only a few feet from the tracks left by Kier and Jessie. Running through a last cluster of madrone, Kier kept low, hoping Jones wouldn't look his way. Sixty feet to go. The man seemed occupied with the traces of Kier's earlier passage. He turned as if to follow the imprints in the snow.
Uh-oh. Jones was using his radio again. Already it might be too late.
Kier bounded the last three steps straight at Jones. The man turned, pointing his gun. Kier willed himself to keep the automatic across his chest, his eyes riveted to the black, round bore of Jones's M-16. Jones stared, cocking his head.
He's trying to decide. He's spooked.
Kier swung the butt of his rifle at Jones's jaw. Jones fired. The rifle butt connected with a firm thud as, missing Kier by inches, the shot echoed through the forest, shockingly loud. Kier cringed, knowing the sound would make things infinitely more complicated. Even so, he was sure Jones had not got a good look at his face, obscured as it was by the fur-lined hood under the helmet.
'Jones, say status. Jones, say your status.'
The man's radio lay in the snow. Jones had alerted the others, and now Jones wasn't answering.
'Switch Delta, Switch and answer Delta,' came the radio command.
They would be scrambling frequencies, Kier knew. And the way it worked, Delta code would not be available on either Jones's or Miller's radio card. Checking Miller's card, Kier saw a series of names down the left side, in alphabetical order. Numbers followed most of the names. Delta was blank. No doubt the printed list was also in electronic form on the phone. Both these radios would now be useless unless they wanted to talk to him.
Kier dropped to the snow, scanning the trees, using Jones's unconscious body as a half-shield. In seconds, another man approached, moving low and fast, obviously casting about for his comrade. Kier slumped forward, lying atop Jones. Like a pointer, this new attacker froze, staring through the snow-laden air. His gun came up. Surely he wouldn't shoot downed men in the snow-especially when they gave every appearance of being his own kind. Kier slipped his hand over the butt of his pistol. From the corner of his eye he watched the man cautiously approach.
'Help, I'm hit,' he groaned as the man got very close.
Nudging Kier with his gun barrel, the man bent over, apparently trying to see his face. Kier kept it buried in the other man's parka and moaned. He waited until he felt the man lifting his shoulder. Kier rolled and at the same time delivered a hard kick squarely to the man's chin. He was on his stunned enemy in an instant, choking him to unconsciousness, keeping him silent until his body slumped.
Visibility was improving slightly, but steady polka-dot sheets of frozen moisture still blurred the landscape. Kier did not want to kill. If only these people had not brought their destruction to this place.
Once again his mind went over the facts like a watchmaker sorting the parts of an old-fashioned timepiece. Even if he didn't understand the nature of the power that the scientists had given Tillman or the extent of Tillman's plans, he knew that these men were capable of wanton killing. Common sense told him that escape would require a profound subterfuge. He needed to make them think they had solved the puzzle of their disappearing comrade.
He took Jones's automatic, fished out the rest of his ammo clips, grabbed his radio, his light, and took his money. Then he turned to the second man, leaving his weapons, but taking his money, his knife, his light, more ammunition, and his grenades. Pulling off Miller's field pack, he quickly loaded the booty.
Cringing even as he did it, he turned the second man over onto his belly and aimed the M-16 at the fleshy part of the man's buttock, taking care that the shot missed bone. The single shot blew out a chunk of fatty flesh a little smaller than a walnut. It bled profusely, allowing Kier to smear blood over the back of the man's outer coat. He fired off some more rounds.
'Miller has turned, Miller has turned,' Kier said into the radio in the whispered growl of a dying man.
'Code nine, say status, Jenkins. Code nine, say status, Jenkins.'
In response Kier fired his automatic and made an ugly gurgling sound into the mouthpiece.
'Code Zulu, switch and answer Zulu.'
Again they were scrambling.
He was reaching to pick up Jones's body when a flurry of snow from overburdened branches cascaded to his right, and out from a wall of frosted evergreen boughs stepped another of his tormentors. The man was a good distance away and looking in the wrong direction. Striding directly back up Jenkins's trail for at least twenty paces, Kier heard no shots until he was almost out of sight. He dived for an elderberry thicket, shooting a volley as he flew. Though wild, the bullets made his quarry duck. Kier crawled desperately for cover. Already rounds slammed into the brush around him, missing him by what he knew must be inches. Finding a log, he climbed over it and hunkered down. A tremendous explosion directly behind him numbed his ears and tossed the bushes around him like salad. Somebody was using hand grenades or a mortar. There was no sound but the pounding of his heart; his ragged, too-fast breath came not from fatigue. Panic pooled in him like a reservoir trickling through the cracks of a dam. He needed to calm his mind. Now he would need another unconscious captive to carry out his plan.
'I've got him at sector seven. He's near the northeast corner, south and east of the corner maybe twenty or thirty feet. Repeat. Sector seven. Northeast corner, south and east of the corner approximately twenty to thirty feet.'
The man was actually shouting. Kier felt a different kind of chill as he heard the enemy radioing his position. In minutes, there would be armed men everywhere. He dropped and crawled into a dense windfall of criss-crossed fallen trees shot through with Pacific bayberry and overgrown with salal. In this thicket he was all but invisible. But he had not been there ten seconds before he discovered that he shared the spot with one of the enemy.
It was the heavy sound of Kier checking his clip that gave him away. Only a few feet of heavy brush lay between him and the man who now, in panicked tones, reiterated Kier's position. Kier had no illusions. He was in a deadly spot.
Panic in the man's voice meant he was rattled and might do anything, even something that could kill them both, like tossing a grenade in tight.
Lying flat, Kier squirmed forward a foot, sticking his head in the brush, peering through the crystalline corridors formed by snow on branches. Nothing. He couldn't see more than three feet. Again he elbowed forward. An almost imperceptible rabbit trail appeared in front of him. Without thinking, he had been crawling down it. Off to his right the shooter lay waiting. If Kier continued on his current path, he would crawl into the enemy's sights.
He pushed slowly to the right and detected nothing. It was not until the second move that he spied a small patch of white fabric, distinct from the snow because of its flat texture. Squinting, he turned his head right and left, trying to see more, to at least identify the torso.
The man a few feet away would be wearing Kevlar body armor that could easily be pierced by the combat rounds in the M-16. But the silenced pistol he had shagged from Jones would be much quieter. If he could bring himself to shoot this man, he would take a chance on the pistol to gain a soundless assault. Aiming the long, lanky handgun, he rose even higher, carefully discerning the white fabric from fallen snow.
Slowly he moved off his elbows to a crouch. Now he could feel his own fear like a hand on his throat. At any moment he could be seen. His eyes roved. Nothing. With his head buried in the brush, he rose still higher. Oh yes! There was his shooter, just six feet away, his legs under a massive Douglas fir log, his body flat to the ground. Incredibly, the man had removed his helmet, probably to listen. Kier aimed at the man's hooded head.
It was a useless gesture. He would not kill a man who lay unaware and frightened in the bushes. Without another second's hesitation, Kier uncoiled his body from its crouch and dived at the man, aiming the butt of the pistol at the man's temple. If it hadn't been for the tough fibrous vines, the strike might have landed before the man could roll.
As it was, he struck the man's shoulder. Recovering, Kier drove the palm of his left hand into the man's chin, then swung the butt of the pistol into the man's temple with such force he hoped he hadn't killed him. Kier watched the body quiver, waiting for more fight. Then there was no movement. Flopping him onto his back, Kier felt for a pulse and found it. The man was young, maybe early thirties, handsome, with a moon-shaped baby face.
Bullets raked the brush in time with the staccato chug of an M-16. Kier flattened himself.
'Cease fire, goddammit. Crawford, you in there?'
It was quiet. Kier felt blood under his fingers. His eye followed it to the man's chest and a lethal wound. They had hit their own man through an arm hole. At least he had the body he needed, albeit a dead one.
Crawford's radio crackled again. 'Crawford, say your status.'
He knew what he would do. If it worked, he might live.
