The hairs on a Tilok neck are better than a friend's warning.
' It wasn't confirmed,' the authoritative voice said.
Kier listened to Tillman tell his men about the way Oregon had phrased his last radio call. And of course, Oregon wasn't answering any longer.
'Target One wants us to think he's headed down the mountain without the Fed. Oregon's either dead or useless. He's probably dead. Do we have one man with the boy?''
''Negative that. Somebody came and got the boy; left California unconscious.'
'Say again!'
Kier could hear the shock in Tillman's normally smooth voice.
'California is unconscious, the boy is gone. Only one set of tracks came into camp. We can't figure out how they jumped him. Whoever it was just walked right up to California.'
'You are saying some unknown person walked into camp and left with this boy?'
'That's affirmative, sir.'
''Tell California to stay at the cave. They may come back,' Tillman said quietly. He had obviously reacquired his grip.
'This is California,' a voice cut in. 'I can't walk. They cut me.'
'All the more reason to stay put,' Tillman replied.
'Nevada and Arizona are on a track. By the look of it, it's Missy the Fed,' another voice cut in.
Kier's jaw clenched and his fingers went tight around the automatic.
'Switch and answer after colors. Switch and answer after colors.'
Colors? Kier shook his head. Another radio scrambling code.
'Red. Magenta. Green. Yellow.'
There was a pause. 'Black. Red. Blue. Orange.'
No more talking. They had changed frequencies and he couldn't follow. Switching quickly back to the channel on which he had last spoken to Tillman, he waited to see if he might try to contact him. In seconds, he did.
'Medicine man, are you there?'
He debated answering, but reminded himself again that the signal could be triangulated, and that any broadcast would enable them to locate his whereabouts.
'You should be sensible and talk to us. You were exposed to almost every deadly virus and bacteria known to man. I know you must have figured that out. You and the woman need treatment.' It puzzled Kier that Tillman admitted to having the disease organisms. But then Tillman's men were logged onto a different frequency. Perhaps he was trying to get Kier's trust by appearing candid.
Kier had moved away from the stripped body of Texas to listen to the radio and wait for the mercenaries that he knew would arrive. Crouching now in a dense grove of young red fir fifty feet from their grenade-riddled comrade, Kier could hear men coming.
Above him was a tan oak that was outgrowing the fir. Eventually, Kier knew, that in the fight for sunlight the fir would overwhelm the broadleaf. But able to survive in shade, the tan oak would still stand after it lost the race. Kier hoped for a fate at least as good as that of the tan oak.
Near the tan oak, a wild onion had found a little bare soil, and there was just enough of a root to make a walnut-sized tuber. The first bite took half. It had the crunch of a fresh apple but no sweetness and the dry, stinging tang of the most potent domestic varieties.
Then he heard the bang, bang, bang — like a fast vibration- of automatic-weapons' fire from farther down the ridge. They had found Jessie. Forcing himself to wait, he knew the soul-wrenching pain of being helpless.
As luck would have it, the two men were beyond the trail on the side opposite the grove where Kier hid, making it impossible for him to see them. All he could do was follow and wait for his chance. It was getting late. More than two hours had passed since he left Jessie. He would need to find her soon.
Moving quietly through the trees was almost impossible, even for Kier. Branches heavy with snow dumped their loads when he brushed by, making sound. Worse yet, he was leaving a trail that a half-blind man could follow. He had to stay away from them, and behind them, so they wouldn't accidentally cross his track. It was spooky, and very dangerous. If one of them got behind him, it would be a simple matter for them to follow, guess at his direction of travel, and use radios to trap him. If they got him before he got them, Jessie would be next.
The man code-named California sat with his head hanging almost to his chest. A sizable gash gaped open across the back of his scalp. His brown hair was matted with blood, and his hands shook as they continually touched the wound as if exploring the damage would make it better. Blood oozing from a severed Achilles tendon spread in a huge crimson stain through the fabric of his camouflage suit. Tillman strode back and forth in the snow, filled with rage at the neutered soldier in front of him.
'You gotta get me back down the hill,' California said.
'You're a damn coward. What happened?'
'I never saw him. I'm telling you he came out of nowhere. I was doin' the kid like Brennan told me, but I was bein' careful and lookin' around. Then Oregon called. He sounded scared. Said I had to stop or he was gonna die, then wham! — something hit me. Then he cut me. I can't walk. I'm gonna die up here.'
The soldier's voice was cracking. No dignity remained in the man. The intensity of Tillman's feeling stemmed as much from this man's cowardice as the collective failure to capture Kier. He continued pacing, conjuring his next move. Occasionally, he directed an icy gaze at the man in front of him.
'I was looking around. I swear.'
Tillman cursed himself for getting so far from the cave. He had been making a circle, figuring he would cross Kier's track as Kier came to save the boy. Then Oregon had called on the radio, panicked. Within seconds, California's attacker had come like a quiet breeze in the night. From the mark in the snow it was obvious that only one man had crawled here on his belly after dropping from the rocks above. If it was Kier who had held Oregon hostage, then he could not have gotten the boy. And if Kier rescued the boy, he couldn't have captured Oregon. The FBI bitch was way down the ridge dispatching two of his other men, so she couldn't have done it.
Someone besides the Indian and the woman was out playing in the snow. And that someone was intimately familiar with the wilderness.
'Please, you gotta get me off this mountain,' California said. Tillman noticed the man had unconsciously moved to his knees. Then he was literally clinging to Tillman's boots.
Revulsion filled Tillman. Ridding himself of this soldier would be like weeding a garden. Like General Patton, he had no appetite for coddling cowards. The Romans killed them outright. Alexander the Great made men brave or made them dead. He reached down and took the man by the hair. A calm came over him as he reminded himself that this man was the only one who could place him on this mountain. The others believed he was in Johnson City speaking through a relay transmitter at Elkhorn Pass.
There was no equivocation on Tillman's part as he sank his knife an inch into the man's neck, making sure to take out the vocal cords.
Kier and the woman were near, and he would hunt them down.
A battleship-gray rock scarp the size of several high rises protruded from the mountain at the place Kier thought to undertake his ambush. Where the granite was vertical and smooth, little grew except lichen. Here and there, where the stony surface was flat enough to hold a sprinkling of soil, there were dabs of deer fern, five-finger fern, bleeding hearts, and huckleberry. Now the plants were mere lumps in the snow. The top of this massive rock formation was overgrown with evergreens.
Kier positioned himself on a high ledge under a dwarfed wind-sculpted pine. From his vantage point, he looked out across a shallow canyon with steep sides going to ridges five hundred feet above him on the opposite side. Most of the canyon was covered in forest. Fifty feet below him, there was the shadow of the trail on which the men would come. They would move slowly and watchfully. They would be spooked by the booby traps and fearful of ambush. Down the trail a short way was the small cave in which he and Jessie had taken their shelter.
