Stars & Stripes (28 page)

Ty estimated they rode for roughly three miles before the tiger tracks started to get too faint to see from horseback. He dismounted and continued to follow the trail for another half a mile before he lost it completely.

Annie sat and watched him pace back and forth. He was going grid by grid, trying to pick the trail up again. While he performed the methodical search, Annie told him what she knew about tigers. Like many other predators, he’d studied them back when he’d been trying to learn everything there was to know about how to kill, but he listened anyway, recognizing her rambling knowledge dump as a sign of her nerves.

She told him that a tiger could hit a top speed of thirty-five miles per hour, but could only maintain it in short bursts. If the tiger caught the drop on them, it would take down a horse before they could outrun it. If they were alert, though, and stayed away from areas of easy ambush, the horses would be able to outrun and outdistance the big cat.

The problem with that was that out here, almost everywhere was an easy ambush for a tiger.

Ty found himself glancing around every few seconds. The fact that they usually hunted at night didn’t comfort him much, nor did the fact that Barnum and Bailey were tame and used to humans. A life in the circus being petted by kids didn’t mean they weren’t still tigers with the survival instincts of wild animals. He wasn’t fooling himself into thinking they weren’t in danger.

“Have you lost him?” Annie asked after a few minutes.

“I think so, yeah,” Ty admitted. They were atop one of the odd, knobby hills that peppered the land, sun-baked and windswept. It was nearly impossible to find a sign. Hopefully, he’d pick up the trail again on the descent, but he had to find the route the tiger had taken in order to do that.

The sun beat down, searing through Ty’s shirt and reminding him of the many days he’d spent on Recon missions, wishing he were in a pool.

“It’s impressive, what you’re doing,” Annie said.

Ty shrugged and continued his careful search. “My dad taught me to track in the mountains. It’s easier there—lots of underbrush to hold sign, and the ground is usually moist enough to retain a track. I picked up more in the military, learned new terrain. The desert is tricky. Hard-packed dirt is near impossible sometimes.”

“Yeah. I wasn’t talking about the tracking. Although I am impressed,” Annie added, a smile in her voice.

Ty peered at her, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun.

“The last time I saw my brother, he was . . . not my brother. Broken. Drinking and torn apart and hopeless. No one could reach him. His eyes were dead and I just knew he would be too, soon. But here he is.”

Ty smiled, but he shook his head. “What makes you think I’m responsible?”

“I’ve never seen Zane as happy as he is right now. Even when he was with Becky. You’ve been good to him, and you’ve been good for him. And no matter what Mother or anyone else has to say about it, or what Mark says about your past, I want you to know that I thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving my brother a reason to live again.”

Ty swallowed, surprised to find his throat tightening. “Well. He did the same for me.”

Annie smiled. “You’re not nearly the hard-ass you want everyone to believe.”

Ty rolled his eyes and waved at her. “Might as well get down, take a little rest. This might take me a while,” he said, voice still hoarse as he tried to stop thinking about Zane and start thinking about the tiger on the loose again.

Annie dismounted and stood beside him as he gazed out over the rolling terrain, mind churning. He glanced at Annie. “I love him very much.”

She smiled. “Good. I—”

Ty held up a hand, shushing her, and cocked his head at an odd buzzing sound in the air. He had the sense it’d been building for a while, but his conscious mind had only now taken notice. It was far off and echoing, so there was no way to tell where it was coming from. He peered out over the endless hills, and after a moment, he realized what it was.

“Engine.”

“You think it’s them?” Annie asked, looking around too.

Ty nodded. There was no way an animal control vehicle would have been dispatched this quickly, not this far out. It had to be the poachers, out looking for their escapee. Ty took a deep breath. If they came across a vehicle with three to six armed men in it, he was outgunned by a long sight. There wasn’t much he could do about it, and though they could hear the engine, it gave little warning to the vehicle’s presence because of the odd distortion of sound in the hills. It could be two miles away, or two hills away.

“The tigers liked you, Ty; try calling out for them.”

Ty hesitated, wondering if it would be imprudent to call out since they obviously weren’t alone out here. He decided it was worth the risk, though. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted the names of both tigers as loud as he could, and then stood listening to the echo fade across the hills. He strained to see movement, but there was too much real estate to cover.

He sighed and went back to his survey of the ground. He could find no trace of the tiger’s passing. It was as if the cat had mounted the hill and taken flight. It was frustrating, and not a little embarrassing after Zane had made such a fuss about his tracking skills. It also crossed his mind that they were too late. That engine may have been carrying both tigers away as they stood here.

He was on the verge of giving up when he found a divot in the earth, tiny trails where a few small pebbles had rolled from the edges of the depression. And on the lip of the innocuous circle was a tell-tale gouge. A claw.

“Got him!”

Annie came rushing over. She patted him on the back excitedly and then looked out over the land in the direction Ty was indicating. The hills made it hard to see far, and it made him uneasy that something as large and vicious as a tiger could be lurking behind the next knoll.

They picked their way down the hill, trailing their horses behind them. It would have been easier to let the horses find the way down, but Ty wanted to be certain he had the trail. They bottomed out into a wide arroyo, the first flat ground he’d seen that was longer than a football field since they’d left the preserve fence behind.

He stood and breathed out, trying to think. His horse jerked at his reins, then sidestepped and whinnied. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of vibrant color amidst the tan and green of the land.

He whipped his head around to see the tiger speeding toward them.

“Oh shit,” Annie gasped. She turned toward the panicking horses and fumbled in her saddlebag for the case of tranquilizer darts, and managed to jerk it out before the horses broke and fled back up the hill.

Ty’s hand was on his sidearm, but it was a last resort. They were here to save the cat, not kill him.

The tiger bounded over cacti and scrub brush, and every time he leaped into the air and came back down, the skin of his face would lift and reveal razor-sharp teeth. His deadly claws dug into the earth for traction.

Annie handed Ty the dart gun, her fingers trembling.

Ty was surprised he wasn’t flashing back to the last big cat who had charged him: the cougar in the mountains of West Virginia. But it had been dark then, and he hadn’t seen the cat coming. Now, he stood frozen, waiting for the tiger to come within range of the darts. He was oddly calm, his body not yet recognizing the danger.

It was unusual for the tiger to charge over open ground, in daylight no less, but Ty couldn’t guess at the behavior of an animal who’d been held captive all its life. He lifted the dart gun, his fingers less steady than they had been a moment before. Annie ducked behind him.

A gunning engine rent the silence, and the tiger made a sharp turn, retreating from the 4x4 tearing through the open end of the arroyo. The 4x4 careened to a stop, and a man hanging off the roll bar in the bed of the truck pointed a long-barreled rifle at the fleeing tiger.

The 4x4 displayed no markings. The men within it were armed, their faces covered. This was definitely not an official vehicle.

Ty dropped the tranquilizer gun and reached for his sidearm, drawing and firing with practiced speed. He hit the side of the truck, sending sparks flying. The shooter in the 4x4 shouted and turned his rifle on them.

“Shit,” Ty muttered as the other three men in the truck, all of them bristling with weapons, took notice of them. “Annie! Get down!”

Behind him, Annie screamed. Ty grabbed her and pulled, stepping in front of her to take the shot from the first man’s rifle.

It hit him in the chest, the shock of the impact knocking him backward into Annie. She caught him under his arms with another scream, but they both went tumbling backward.

Ty looked down at the dart in his chest. He grabbed it and yanked it out, surprised at how much it hurt. “Run. Go,” he panted, words harsh as he pushed himself to his knees and began firing. He felt Annie turn and run, hopefully after the fleeing horses where she could make a clean escape. His vision was already beginning to go dark, but he continued firing. He hit one man and saw him go sailing into the bed of the truck, rattling two large cages. Then he hit the windshield, and next a tire. He fired until his clip went empty and he sank back into the scrub grass. The world around him was turning a grayish purple.

He was distantly aware of the sound of retreating horse hooves and the truck’s engine idling. Several men stalked toward him. He fumbled for his other clip, but his fingers were numb.

“Used all my damn darts,” one man snarled as he pulled a gun. He sounded garbled, like he was speaking through a synthesizer.

“What do we do with him?”

“Take him. When he wakes up we’ll make him track down that damn tiger for us. Then we’ll use him as kitty chow.”

They drew near, one of them carrying what looked like a burlap sack. Someone knelt next to Ty, and though his face wavered and morphed, Ty didn’t have to see his expression to know he was in trouble. He pulled his knife from his boot—his last-ditch resort—and jammed it into the man’s thigh.

The man screamed.

A sound somewhere near them echoed it, a scream of anger and agony. Something primal in Ty knew what that was: the roar of an enraged predator. The men all stopped, looking up and around in a panic before turning and running back toward the safety of their vehicle, dragging the man Ty had wounded behind them.

And suddenly Ty’s vision was blue. It took him a moment to realize he’d fallen over and was on his back, staring at the cloudless sky. He couldn’t move. Not even his fingers would twitch. He was paralyzed, losing consciousness, in the middle of the desert. Alone.

He blinked, barely able to force his eyes open again.

From somewhere, a horse neighed, and hope rose in his chest. Perhaps Annie had seen the poachers retreat and had come back for him.

A blur of color entered his field of vision. For a moment he thought he was hallucinating, but then the figure made another chuffing sound, mimicking the neigh of a horse almost perfectly. Ty realized that he wasn’t hallucinating, and he wasn’t alone. He was merely staring into the black and orange face of a Bengal tiger with one floppy ear.

Zane was surprised when the trail they were following made an almost 180-degree turn. The truck had circled around, heading farther into the ranch and not off it, picking its way through the nearly flat gullies between the hills. The longer they tracked it, the more they began to realize that the truck hadn’t fled the scene, but rather had gone off searching for a passable route into the hills to follow the escaped tiger.

“Jesus, Ty and Annie are out there,” Mark said as they passed over one of the horse trails that crisscrossed the ranch. “Three to six men. How much ammo has he got?”

“As far as I know, just a knife, his service weapon, and an extra clip. It’s what he carries standard. Then they each have a rifle on their saddle and that dart gun.”

Mark wiped at his forehead, unable to sit still in his saddle as he grumbled and worried about his wife. Zane was worried too. But he had more faith in Ty than Mark did.

They kept following the tire tracks until Harrison paused, quieting the clopping of the horses’ hooves to listen. From the distance came an echo of gunfire and, not long after, the distinct roar of a tiger. The sound registered low, and the hairs on Zane’s arms rose with a prehistoric fear.