Hunted (11 page)

“I suggest we stay together,” Lew said.

“Yeah,” Johnny agreed. “This is real bad, people.”

“And it could get a lot worse,” Jay said, a grim note behind his words.

* * *

When the faint sounds of the twin battles reached the twelve mercenaries, they immediately hit the ground and stayed low.

“What the hell is all that?” Bobcat Blake threw the question out.

“It's gunfire,” Ike Dover said with a smile. “How soon we forget.”

“Knock it off,” Mike ordered. “Two major firefights, about two miles from us in either direction.”

“Do we assemble our heavy weapons and make a stand?” Al asked with a grin, pointing to his cased tranquilizer gun.

“That's not funny,” Billy Antrim replied. “We could be in real deep shit here.”

Mike Tuttle's face held an odd expression. Nick Sharp picked up on it. “What are you thinking, Mike?”

“I am thinking that we abort this mission and get the hell out of here,” the team leader said. “We cache these side arms and dart guns and split up into pairs. We'll attract less attention that way. We make our way back to the vehicles and head for motels. We don't return until this... whatever it is ... is over.”

“I agree,” John Webb said.

“I will stay,” George Eagle Dancer said. “The rest of you go.”

“That's not smart, George,” Mike told him.

“Go,” George said. And with that, he stood up and walked off, leaving his cased tranquilizer gun on the ground, hidden from view by weeds.

“Strange duck,” Nick remarked.

“Let's get gone,” Mike said. “George can take care of himself.”

* * *

Darry whistled for Pete and Repeat, and they came running across the clearing to flop down beside him in the timber. Darry looked behind him and motioned for the women to come forward.

“The cabin is secure,” he told them. “But I don't know for how long. Both of you wait right here with the dogs. I'll get your gear and some of mine and we'll clear out. The feds are sure to visit this place. Stay put.”

He was back in less than fifteen minutes, after turning the horses loose and gathering up some supplies. “The shooting over there”—he pointed—“came from around Jody Hinds' cabin. Jody's got a bad temper. He's no troublemaker, but he is a man that is best left alone. If the feds struck his cabin—although I don't know why they would—he put up a fight. Bet on it. Let's go check it out. Now listen to me, ladies. You stay behind me, and you do exactly what I tell you to do, the instant I tell you to do it.”

“This is the work of our government,” Stormy said. Darry suspected she was still in some sort of mild shock. “We're not supposed to be afraid of our own
government!”

“Wake up and smell the coffee, Stormy,” Ki said, adjusting the straps on her pack. “We just witnessed federal agents shooting down unarmed men and women. Worse yet, they know I got part of it on film. You think those hot dog cowboys are going to risk, at the least, loss of careers, and at the worst, long prison sentences or maybe the gas chamber? No way. They've got to shut us up, Stormy. And that means they've got to kill us.”

Stormy shook her head. “That's . . . unconscionable. It's unthinkable. I . . .” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes glazed over. She looked lost.

Ki slapped her. It was a hard, open-handed blow that rocked the taller woman and left a red mark on the side of her face. Stormy's eyes flashed.

“Don't lose it now, Stormy,” Ki said. “I'm sorry I had to do that, but you've got to come back to reality and stay with it. You've got to understand that we're in greater danger here in the good ol' U S of A than we ever were in Bosnia or Beirut or Central America or Somalia. Those goddamn government jerks out there”—she waved a hand—“are hunting us. And what they've got in mind sure as hell isn't flowers and chocolates. They're going to kill us, Stormy. We're going to have a tragic accident out here in the wilderness. So you get mad, Stormy. Right now. You get mad and you stay mad. And we'll stay alive and blow the lid off this thing. Okay?”

Stormy slowly nodded her head. “Okay, Ki. Okay. Let's do it.”

“Let's get out of here,” Darry said. “I think we've worn our welcome a little thin.”

“We don't have any choice in the matter,” the team leader of this op was saying. “I don't like it any better than any of you. But we just don't have a choice.”

“Makes me sick,” one agent muttered.

“You want to go to prison?” another asked.

“What about the prisoners?” a young federal marshal asked.

“It's their word against ours,” an older man said, walking up. “Who the hell is going to believe anything they say?”

“Wilson said that Jody Hinds guy got away.”

“He won't last long. I just spoke with Washington and told them what happened out here.” He smiled. “Sort of. I told them about our own dead and got a free hand in dealing with this situation. As for the others . . . we got this area blanketed. We'll find them.”

“Max?” a young agent said. “What if . . . ?”

The team leader cut him off. “There is no ‘what if,' Jerry. It's the only way. As soon as those reporters understand what we can do to them, they'll hand over the film. We can intimidate the guy with them—we're running a make on Darry Ransom right now. Don't worry. We've got a hundred and twenty-five people out there looking and more coming in. The roads are being watched. It's just a matter of time before we find them.”

“Santo's body was just found,” the call reached the knot of agents. “He took one through the armpit. Whoever did it took his weapon.”

Max Vernon kicked at a rotten limb on the ground. “Five people dead. Two missing.” Jack Speed and Kathy Owens had not been found. “All because of a bunch of goddamn survivalist crap.” He cussed for a moment. “Has that nose candy arrived yet?”

“We got three kilos of cocaine coming in, Max. Be here late this afternoon.”

“All right. Peter, you tell those guys over at the Hinds' cabin to leave everything just as it is. Preserve the scene. Have all the weapons in this camp been found?”

“We think so.” He was wrong. There was a hidden cache of weapons and ammo and food and water under the floor of the barracks where Sam Parish and his people were being held. “Pretty standard stuff. Mini-14s and AR-15s. Nothing illegal,” he added softly.

“Hey, fuck that!” Max yelled. “These people are subversives and seditionists. We were sent in to secure this area, and by God that's what we're going to do.”

* * *

Sam Parish and those able to fight had opened the cache of weapons and armed themselves. Very heavily.

“Shirley just died, Sam,” a woman told him, pulling the blanket up to cover the dead woman's face.

“Those ass-kissin' government goons!” Sam cussed softly. “They'll get theirs. This is war, people. War!”

Outside, the agents were getting into gear and preparing to move out. Twenty-five teams of five each. Every road and trail had been blocked off. There was no escape for those inside the armed circle. Rick Battle knew nothing about what was going on. A young couple had been reported lost in the far northern reaches of his area, and he was up there, directing a search party of volunteers.

* * *

“Oh, my God!” Kevin whispered. He lay on the crest of a small hill, overlooking Jody's cabin. He could make out what he thought was the body of Linda, sprawled in the doorway. The bodies of four dead men were lined up in a row in the front of the house, covered with ponchos. Using the binoculars taken from the man he had shot, Kevin pulled the scene closer.

It was Linda lying still in the doorway.

“Shit!” Kevin said.

He backed away and headed for his cabin and his friends. He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that his family and their friends were next on the list. He also knew who had done this: government agents. Kevin had been aware that he and his friends had been under surveillance for some time.

On the trail back to what was left of the commune, Kevin carefully wiped his prints off of the weapon taken from the dead agent, and the binoculars, and cached them. Then he returned to his cabin and broke the news to his wife and daughter and his friends.

* * *

“Hello, the cabin!” Dr. Ray Collier called.

The remaining rubber raft had been pulled onto shore, tents pitched, and a small fire built. Dr. Collier knew there was a hiking trail that ran along the river bluffs here, and hoped to find someone who could point the way to the ranger station, some miles away. Then he'd spotted what appeared to be a cabin set back several thousand feet from the river. What Ray was not aware of was that the hiking trail had been closed and this area sealed off by federal agents.

Dr. Collier looked rough. He had not shaved in several days, and his clothing was wrinkled and, unfortunately for him, army surplus. Ray Collier was not a small man. He was a shade over six feet and through regular exercise was in very good physical condition. While normally a very even-tempered and easy-going man, Dr. Collier could, when angered, have a very short fuse. He played football in high school and college, had his share of fistfights—until he learned that it was very unwise to strike a solid object with one's bare hand. Lots of little bones in there that were easily broken and very painful and slow in healing. For the past fifteen years, Dr. Collier had been working out twice a week in an unarmed combat class. He was black belt certified. But he had not deliberately hurt anyone in two decades.

All that was about to change.

“Get on the goddamn ground, you asshole!” the hard voice sprang out from a shed beside the cabin. “We're federal officers.”

Ray looked around him. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said, belly down on the ground, you ass-wipe! Do it, goddamn you!”

Dr. Collier's fuse suddenly shortened and was lit. His eyes found the cammie-clad and ski-masked man, holding what appeared to be some sort of machine gun in his black-leather gloved hands, and he very slowly and evenly said, “I don't know what kind of game this is, buddy. And I don't believe you're federal officers. I don't have very much money on me, but you're welcome to it.”

Ray did not see the man rush up behind him. He heard him just at the last second and started to turn. Then his world went black as the butt of a rifle slammed into the back of his head, and Dr. Collier fell to the ground, unconscious.

* * *

“I say,” Nick Sharp said with his best smile, approaching the five-man team with his hands raised. “What is all this to-do about?”

“Get on the goddamn ground, buddy.”

“Oh, I think not,” Nick said. “I've done nothing wrong.”

“You either get on the ground or we'll put you on the ground. Both of you.”

Nick and Dennis Tipton exchanged glances. The federal agents had no way of knowing it, but they were about to tangle with one of the toughest men on the face of the earth. As a matter of fact, they were about to anger a number of the toughest men on the face of the earth.

Nick Sharp and Dennis Tipton had been friends for years. Each of them had enlisted in the French Foreign Legion before his sixteenth birthday. After serving their hitches, Nick had joined Britain's SAS, and Dennis had returned to the States and joined the American Army, finally ending his career as a sergeant in 7th Special Forces. They had spent the last ten years as mercenaries, fighting all over the world. They were extremely difficult to impress, and these agents standing before them did not inspire much confidence in them at all. They looked to be sloppy in appearance and handled their weapons very loosely and unprofessionally.

“Might I ask why we are being so rudely accosted?” Nick inquired.

A federal marshal and a young BATF man both cursed, then made another very bad mistake. Their first mistake was in sticking guns in the faces of men who had done nothing wrong (that tended to piss off a certain type of person), their second mistake was in cursing the men (that also tended to piss off a certain type of person), and then they got too close to the pair of mercenaries.

The federal marshal suddenly found himself unable to breathe because of a crushed larynx, and the BATF agent could not see because Nick had used his fingers to blind him. The other three feds had only a micro second to react, and they blew that chance.

When the smoke cleared away from the guns that had five seconds before been in the hands of federal officers, Nick looked at Dennis with a slight smile on his lips. “I say, Denny, do you suppose the shit's in the soup now?”

Dennis laughed. “I reckon it is, Nick.”

“Help me!” the blinded agent cried.

“Not likely,” Nick told him; then he and Dennis took all the weapons and walked away.

* * *

“We stay here,” Darry told the women.

“Here” was a cave midway up a rocky ridge, the front of the cave brush-covered. Even people who had lived in the area for years did not know of its existence. The cave wandered for about a hundred yards, ending at a small pool of cold, pure spring water.

Stormy and Ki sank wearily to the cave floor. Pete and Repeat drank from the pool of water and then returned to lie down beside the women. Darry bellied down at the pool and drank (neither woman could see that he lapped at the water like an animal), then filled the canteens and went back to the mouth of the cave.

“I wonder what that brief bit of shooting just a few moments ago was all about?” Stormy asked.

“Bad luck for somebody,” Darry replied.

“What if they bring in tracking dogs?” Ki asked, after taking a sip of water.

Darry smiled. “They won't bother us.” He uncased his binoculars, slipped outside, and bellied down behind the thick brush that covered the front of the cave entrance. He wriggled through the brush and scanned all the terrain that he could see. He could spot nothing. He slipped back into the cave and sat down.

“What do we do now?” Stormy asked.

“We wait.”

* * *

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Richard,” the agent said, after taking Ray's wallet out of the small plastic bag Ray used to keep it dry. “The guy's a doctor from Los Angeles.”

“He should have followed orders,” Richard said. “Done what he was told to do. Besides, what is a doctor from L.A. doing out here, dressed as he is. Fuck him. He's a goddamn survivalist. He's tied in somehow with all these armed groups living and training out here.”

“Ransom's gone,” an agent called from the front porch of the cabin. “Looks like he grabbed some supplies and split.”

Richard nodded. “Let's get out of here. We've got to find that damned reporter and get that film.”

“What about the doctor?”

“Leave him. He didn't see our faces.”

* * *

“I'm blind!” the agent screamed into his handy-talkie. “I'm blind. All the rest of my team is dead. Come in, come in.”

“Hang on, Ron,” the welcome reply finally came out of the tiny speaker. “We're on the way. Just don't move from your location. Who did it, Ron?”

“I don't know,” Ron said, calming down. “Two guys. Bad-looking men. One of them spoke with an English accent.”

The rescue team members exchanged glances. Two guys took out five agents? Surely they must have ambushed them?

* * *

Army, Navy, and CIA came up on the body lying a few feet off the trail. “I saw this guy over at Darry Ransom's cabin,” Johnny McBroon said, kneeling down beside the body. “Said he was a government agent.”

Johnny removed the wallet and opened it. “He's National Security Agency. Al Reaux.”

“Don't shoot, boys.” The voice spun the men around, guns in their hands. “The man stood with his hands in the air. I'm with Air Force Intelligence. Pete Cooper. ID's in my back pocket.”

That was verified, and the four spooks stood in silence for a few heartbeats.

Pete said, “I came up on the body just before you guys arrived. There isn't a mark on him. But I think his neck is broken.”

“His weapon's gone,” Johnny said. “Al seemed to me a pretty tough customer. I wonder who took him out?”

* * *

Jody Hinds.

Wild with grief over the loss of his wife and friends, Jody was killing mad and on the prod. He'd come up on Al's tracks and trailed him. When Al stopped to rest, Jody had slipped up behind him and snapped his neck as easily as breaking a toothpick. Jody had been part of a very elite air force group, innocuously called Combat Controllers, and he'd been well trained in the art of unarmed combat.

Jody had made his peace with God and was fully prepared to die. But he was going to take out a lot of federal agents before he met the Man.

* * *

Just before twilight darkened the land, Sam Parish and his bunch made their move. They suckered the guards in close and poured on the lead from automatic weapons. They left no one alive. They quickly prepared packs and made ready to take off. Racists and separatists they might be, but they were well trained and had planned for such an eventuality.

“You all know what to do,” Sam told them. “We don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting out of here alive. By now the government is pouring in agents. There'll be several hundred of those bastards in this area by dawn. We go down shooting, people. They'll not get away with this cover-up. Let's make damn sure of that. Good luck and God be with you. Power to the white race!”

The others shouted their slogan and split up, taking off in all directions.

* * *

“Mother! Come quick!” Paul shouted down from the bluff. “It's Daddy. He's been hurt.”

When Ray Collier had not returned, Paul had gone looking for him. Karen grabbed the first aid kit and took off at a run, Terri right behind her.