He was running up the hill through the forest, the branches slashing at his face and his breath coming in flashes of cold steam burning his chest and his throat, and below him the pursuers were shouting to one another, their voices high and excited, as they heard his gasping and his clumsy breaking of fallen limbs and crashing through the underbrush. And all the while a mechanical heart was buzzing in his breast pocket, calling to him. No time for that. He couldn’t stop. If he was caught he’d be killed, murdered. Forced to kneel with his hands bound behind his back and wait, cringing, for the blow.
Then he awoke. Like that, it was over. Edna was prodding him. She said, “The phone! The phone!”
“I’m awake,” he said, as calmly as if she hadn’t been nearly punching him in the shoulder. He reached out and picked up the phone. “Tucker,” he said.
“Vern? This is Max. I know it’s late, but I thought you’d want to know right away. I think we’ve found Ostropaki.”
“Alive? You’re kidding. Where?”
“Would you believe Brooklyn?”
Tucker felt a coldness he hadn’t experienced in some time, not since Vietnam. “When you say ‘we,’” he said, “exactly who do you mean?”
“Me and Aaron.”
“Does Aaron know you’re calling me?”
“He thinks I’m calling Barnes, the night controller. Which,” Max said, “I’ll be calling next.”
Tucker’s brain processed all the permutations of this information very quickly. If Ostropaki was in Brooklyn and had not contacted him, or the DEA … and Max Kravfurt was calling Tucker first, before he contacted his controller … then Max had been following some sort of lead and at the end of it was Ostropaki, whom Max hadn’t expected to see but whom he knew that Tucker would be interested in.
“Was this a tip?” Tucker asked. Max said it had been. “Let me guess,” Tucker said. “Anonymous? A phone call? To you, specifically, or just the department?”
“Me,” Max said. “I’ll make it quick, then I got to go. Caller asked for me, said a man would make a delivery at a parking lot. One individual would get in the car. The driver would cruise while the individual checked out the goods. They would be in cell-phone contact with another vehicle. Caller didn’t know where that car would be. If the goods were okay and if the party on the other end said the money was okay, the driver would stop at some prearranged point and the individual would hop out with the goods and get in another car, which would be going the other way. We barely had time to make the scene, but we spotted the car, followed, and the first stop he made was to pay a toll at the Triborough Bridge.”
“The guy with the goods got away,” the colonel said. “But you tailed the deliveryman? Have you arrested him, then?”
“For what?” Max said. “Giving a guy a ride?”
“So, you don’t have the goods and you don’t have the money, either. How do you know it’s—”
“Ostropaki? I saw him, once, remember?”
“And where is he now?”
Max gave the address in Brooklyn.
“What will your report say?” the colonel asked.
“Blown lead,” Max said. “It looks suspicious, but that’s all. We did the best we could. We didn’t know in time to set up anything. I’ll be asking Barnes if I should question him, pick him up, whatever. My guess is that Barnes will tip off the NYPD, they’ll watch him, pick him up sometime soon on some unrelated charge, and we’ll be notified and have a chance to talk to him. I imagine that, at that point, you’ll be notified.”
“I imagine I will,” Tucker said. “Well, thanks, Max. I appreciate the heads-up on this. It’s good not to have it sprung on one.”
“Just keep me in mind, Vern, if it works out for you.”
“I will Max. You’d better call Barnes now.”
When he set the phone down, Tucker lay back in the bed. Edna drew close, and he put his arm around her but continued to stare into the darkness of the bedroom. She didn’t say anything. It was her way. He was grateful. He was also tired. It was nearly four A.M. Out in Montana—he subtracted two hours—it was almost two.
“Get some sleep,” he said to Edna. He lay there until she fell asleep, then rose and went to the shower. Afterward, he left a note for Edna, explaining that he was going in to the office. He didn’t mention Ostropaki, only that he’d call later, that lunch might not be possible.
It was raining pretty steadily. Once in the car, he tried to call Jammie. The service said, after several rings, “The party you are trying to reach is either out of range or otherwise unavailable. Please try your call later.” As he was entering his office, however, the phone was ringing. It was Jammie.
“I was going to leave a message,” Jammie said. “What are you doing there at this hour?”
The colonel explained about Ostropaki.
“I thought he was dead,” she said.
“Apparently not. What do you know about him?” the colonel asked.
“He was a contract agent, wasn’t he?” Jammie said. “Or was he—”
“More?” the colonel broke in. “In a way. But this is not a good time to discuss it. What are you calling about? It’s pretty late there.”
“How about Max?” she asked.
“You know Max? He’s just fishing for a job. He hates working with Barnes and those guys. Are you in your car? What’s going on?”
“We may have found Bazok,” Jammie said. She explained that she was on her way to meet Joe Service, up some back road. The cell phones had some kind of interference. She had stopped to use a pay phone at the village en route. “He thinks he may have your man cornered.”
“Badger in the holt,” Tucker said. “This could be dangerous. Be careful. But what about Franko? Any word on him?”
“For all I know, Bazok may have found Franko,” Jammie said.
“Where did he go to ground?”
“The situation’s not clear to me yet,” she said. “Somewhere out in the boonies. Communication isn’t good. That’s why I’m on the road.” She didn’t mention the mine.
“Quite a morning,” the colonel said. “Raining here.”
“Dry and clear here,” Jammie said.
“You know … I’ve got a lot on my plate,” the colonel said. “I think I’ll leave this to you and Joe. I take it no local yokels are involved?”
“Really?” Jammie was surprised. “No, the locals don’t know anything about it, as far as we know.”
“That’s good,” the colonel said. “Let’s leave it to Joe. How are you two getting along? You three.”
“Joe was a little jumpy at first, but we’re cool. Helen is leery of me, but she’s okay.”
“Leery? Ah, girl stuff? Well, she’ll get over that. Now, you can offer your assistance with the badger, make suggestions, but let the decisions be Joe’s. Let me know as soon as it’s resolved. I’ll probably be at the office, at least for a while yet, but call my cell number.”
“As you say,” Jammie said. “Are you expecting to see Ostropaki?”
“At some point, I imagine,” the colonel said. “But probably not immediately, maybe not even today. It depends on how things turn out. Why?”
“I was wondering if you shouldn’t come out here,” Jammie said. “It may not be easy to get the badger out of his fort without involving the locals. You could be a big help with that. Bazok may know about Ostropaki.”
“I would think so,” the colonel said. “But it can’t be helped. Let Joe run this, but if the badger looks like he’s getting away … don’t let him.”
That was pretty clear. “Should I pass this on to Joe?” she said. “What about Franko?”
“Franko is Joe’s job. He’s got my instructions. Bazok … that’s a matter for our disposition—yours, as it happens. So, no, I don’t think it’s necessary to confide in Joe about Bazok. Joe has badgerlike qualities himself. They’re famous diggers, you know.”
Jammie almost laughed. “Badgers?” she offered in a comic accent. “We don’t need no stinkin’ badgers.”
Tucker was silent for a moment, but the best he could offer in response was, “Oh, dear.” Then, “All right, call me as soon as you can. I may need some help on this other business.”
“That might be a good idea,” Jammie said. “Maybe you should hold off on meeting with Ostropaki until we’re through here.”
“Well, we’ll have to see what develops,” the colonel said.
Jammie saw Joe on the road, well down the hill from the Seven Dials. He hopped into her car and told her to take it slow, with her parking lights only. “This road’s a little hairy for no lights,” she said.
“You can do it,” Joe said. He seemed in high spirits. “Did Paulie get the message? I couldn’t be sure how much got through. Damn these mountains and phones.”
“He said he thought you had Boz cornered, in this mine,” Jammie said. “Isn’t that right?”
“We haven’t seen him,” Joe said, “but Frank’s truck was parked up there. Luckily, Frank had a key, so I coasted it down to this turn-out here—logging trucks use it. Just pull in. We can hike up.”
The big Dodge Ram was parked next to the Durango. Before they started up the hill, Joe selected some armament. He took the H&K and offered Jammie an AK-47. “Have you ever used one of these?” he asked. She said she had.
As they made their way up the hill he explained the situation. He assumed that Boz had taken refuge with the old recluse Kibosh. The fact that the light had been on, then turned off suggested that Kibosh was aware that he was harboring somebody dangerous, but that Kibosh was still able to act with some freedom. They hadn’t noticed any activity since they’d arrived. Frank was still on watch. He was armed with one of Joe’s shotguns. Joe had decided that it would be the most effective weapon for Frank, who wasn’t a hunter, no kind of shooter at all.
“I don’t suppose you have some stun grenades or tear gas on you?” Joe asked her.
Jammie laughed. “Is that your plan?”
“It’d sure be handy,” Joe said. “Any other suggestions?”
“Let’s get a look at the situation first,” Jammie said.
Frank was relieved to see them. He was standing well back from the entrance to the mine, among some ponderosas. “No movement,” he told them.
Jammie sized up the situation. It seemed clear. The obvious solution was to wait for Bazok or Kibosh to come out as they normally would, in the morning. If one or the other showed in some reasonable time, they could easily position themselves on either side of the door, with another shooter in good cover back a ways to one side. With any luck, regardless of who came out, they’d be able to take that man. If it was Bazok, that would be all that was required. If Kibosh, it would remain to flush Bazok out, and there would be no reason for restraint. Kibosh, of course, would be able to inform them how well, if at all, Bazok was armed. Frank volunteered that Kibosh, at least, had a .30-06 deer rifle that fired a single shot at a time.
But, alas, the element of the tunnel system made it a different game. Frank explained to Jammie that Kibosh knew a route through the mountain with an exit at the river, not far from Frank’s place. Paulie, at the other end with Helen, knew the exit that Kibosh had used before. The question was, Where was Bazok most likely to be right now? Sleeping unawares here, or on his way to the other side?
“I think we have to assume the tunnel is in play,” Joe said. “Maybe Kibosh hasn’t told him about the route, and even if he has, it probably wouldn’t be Boz’s preferred approach to Frank’s place. But if he knows we’re out here, that’ll be his escape hatch.”
Jammie saw the point. They could wait here for hours, in the belief that Boz was unaware of their presence. Or they could force the issue, drive him toward the other exit.
“I hate to give up the easy option, by letting him know that we’re here,” Joe said, “but we could sit here until ten o’clock, maybe later, waiting for him to wake up and come out. Without easy communication with Paulie and Helen, someone has to go back, and pretty quick, to man the other end.”
Jammie agreed. The people on the other end would have to wait, too. The communication problem was critical. Also, where should they put their main guns?
What was needed was a SWAT team. “I think it’s time to call the colonel,” she said. Then she waited patiently while Joe argued her out of that.
“Okay,” he said, “that’s settled. Now, two reasonable assumptions: they don’t know we’re out here yet, and Kibosh is still alive. Boz will need Kibosh’s help to get through. Let’s say he is able to get that help, willingly or coerced. How long will it take them, Frank? The minimum?”
Frank said that the best he could recall, Kibosh had told him that he could get through in a couple of hours. Frank was skeptical of that figure—that had been a few years back. There was no telling what the tunnels were like now. Two hours would be the absolute minimum. More like three or four.
“Could they possibly make it in an hour?” Joe asked. “Just in theory?”
“No way,” Frank said. “If it were a straight path, it would take an hour to walk it.”
But he was not happy about Joe’s idea of starting the hare. He feared that Kibosh was in too great a danger that way. He was for waiting, on the chance that Kibosh would come out, probably quite early. “He’s an early riser,” Frank said. “For all we know, he and Boz are getting along fine in there. Probably snoring away. Kibosh is a friendly old cuss. He’d take in a wounded bear, I’m afraid.”
“That’s about what he’s done,” Joe said. “Face it, Frank: your friend is in mortal danger just sitting next to this maniac. You saw how he was at the house. The longer we wait here, the greater the danger becomes.”
Frank wasn’t sure. Waiting seemed such an ideal solution. “Let’s wait till dawn, anyway,” he said.
“It’s not going to happen,” Joe said firmly. “In about five minutes I’m going in. If Boz is in there we’ll have an exchange of fire. If all Boz has is the rifle, Kibosh’s main danger will be from us. I hope Kibosh isn’t hurt. The chances are … fair. The chance of us nabbing Boz by waiting is only slightly better. If we don’t get Boz—or, God forbid, Kibosh—then Boz will have a hostage and I don’t like your friend’s chances at all.”
Frank gave in.
“Here’s how we do it,” Joe said, glad the arguing was past. He was ready for action. He outlined his plan to them both. When it was clear and they accepted it, he told Jammie, “You stand on the near side of the entry, Frank on the far side. I’ll bring up the truck. You’ll be ready to fire at Boz, as soon as you’re sure of your target, Jammie.
“Frank, just fire in the air, make some noise. If they’re not in there and we can be fairly sure that they’ve made an attempt to get through, at least one of us will have to stay here to make sure they don’t double back. I guess that’ll have to be you, Jammie. Frank can stay, if you like, and I’ll have maybe a half hour to get to the other side.”
Jammie shrugged. “Let’s see what happens first; then we can figure out the rest. Somebody could get hurt.”
Joe accepted that. He saw them stationed, then ran back down the hill. He set the H&K submachine gun on the seat of the Dodge Ram and stuffed extra clips into his pockets, Boz’s Glock into his belt. Then he revved it up. “Here we go,” he said to himself, and started his run. He raced the big truck up the road, the lights on, and at the little clearing before the entrance to the mine, he swerved and floored the accelerator. The big truck plunged into the frame structure of the entry with a splintering smash. Just before impact, he had a glimpse of Jammie jumping out of the way.
The impact was greater than he had imagined. Having slipped the shoulder harness of the seat belt off so he could duck down to avoid any gunfire, he was thrown violently against the steering wheel. He could hear the shotgun blasting. Great! And there was, as yet, no fire from the AK-47. Momentarily dazed, he found the H&K and crawled out of the wreckage, incongruously thinking that the colonel was going to have to pay Frank for damage to his truck.
The dust was totally obscuring. He decided that the best thing was to crawl under the truck, with its high clearance. Jammie was calling, “Kibosh! Get down! Get down!” The shotgun was still blasting, then stopped. Joe crept forward. Through the wreckage of the room he could see no sign of any movement. One headlight was still on, but the truck’s engine had died.
He crawled on. Within a few seconds he was certain of what he had expected: the living space was empty. The entry into the drift was open. They had gone. But how recently?
“Okay!” he called out. “They’re running!”
Jammie appeared. She saw the situation. “They may not have gone far,” she said.
“You want to wait here?” Joe said. “Or pursue them? We’d be in trouble in a hundred feet if Boz is waiting for us.”
Jammie insisted on venturing at least a little ways into the tunnel. Unfortunately, they had only the single headlight of the wrecked truck for illumination.
“I’ve got a light in my car,” Jammie said.
“Well, get it,” Joe said. “Time’s wasting. I’ll stay here with Frank.”
She was back in ten minutes with the car. The light she brought was sufficient for them to venture into the tunnel far enough to convince them that Boz and Kibosh had bolted for the other exit. The tracks of the two men were easy enough to follow. Jammie was all for pursuing them.
“No,” Joe said. “For all we know, they’ve got an hour’s head start. That’s too much. I think you or I could hold this end, in case they double back. The place to wait is at the mouth, here. With any luck, we can maintain some kind of communication. But I’m for getting to the other end.”
Jammie conceded the point. She would stay.
Joe and Frank raced down the hill. While Joe drove recklessly down the mountain, Frank tried to call Paulie. He was unable to get through until they reached the freeway. “Keep a good watch,” Frank told him, explaining what had occurred. “We’ll be there as quickly as we can.”
In fact, it took them more than a half hour. Joe drove straight across the meadow, bouncing over rocks and hoping he wasn’t going to rip out the transmission. At last, however, he had to cut the lights, and he stopped. They piled out of the Durango and raced over the ridge and down to the river.
The river was freezing, much swifter and deeper than Joe had thought. It seemed only a foot or two deep, but once they were in the water it proved to have much deeper holes and was flowing quite fast. At one point, he lost his footing and was swept downstream, barely keeping the H&K aloft. But he regained his feet and saw that Frank was already on the bank.
“It looked like such a placid stream,” Joe said, shivering when he caught up to Frank.
“There’s places to wade, if you know the stream,” Frank said. He was wet only to his knees.
It was still very dark, but dawn was beginning to show in the east. Paulie appeared. “The entrance Kibosh used is up there,” he said, pointing at the cliff.
The entrance was little more than a dark spot, apparently seventy-five or eighty feet above the gravelly talus that sloped up from the river’s edge, here, to the base of the cliff.
“As soon as the sun gets up,” Paulie said, “in about twenty minutes, the rays will strike the ridge up there and then the edge of the sunlight will quickly begin to drop down, lighting up that whole cliff face. It’s quite a sight, just a blaze of red and gold.”
Morning mist was rising off the river. It was cold.
Helen was waiting in the sparse shelter of some low brush, about fifty feet downstream. She had the other Glock and Paulie had the little .410 shotgun. Joe wished he had thought to bring another gun; the guns were back in the Durango, across the river. He sent Frank back to get the other AK-47 and the Stoner rifle. “Be sure you get plenty of ammo,” he told him.
Boz had never been so glad to see anything like that pale patch of sky at the mouth of the tunnel.
“By God, Kibe, we found it!” he exclaimed. He ran to the opening and suddenly caught himself. “Jesus Christ!” There was a huge drop to the river. Another step and he’d have fallen to his death.
“Now what?” he said as Kibe came up beside him.
“Aw, don’t worry,” Kibe assured him, “there’s a path. Jist gotta take it easy.” He paused and looked out. He was dead tired, to say nothing of still being dazed from when Boz had knocked him against the rock back there. He felt a little shaky. “I believe I’ll set a spell,” he said, “till I get my bearin’s.”
“Might be better to wait till it gets a little more light,” Boz agreed. He looked dubiously at the narrow path. From up here he could make out the top of Frank’s house, beyond the ridge. Daybreak was a broad swatch of deep purple and red, staining the sky beyond the black silhouette of the mountains to the east, and growing redder by the minute—you could almost believe it was a massive conflagration over there, a forest fire. The sky above was lighter, especially toward the east, but many stars were still visible. Everything nearer at hand was in deep shadow. The path, what Boz could see of it, was at least a couple of feet wide, quite manageable. But like Kibosh, he was leery of trying an immediate descent. He didn’t feel all that stable himself.
He sat down by the opening and felt around for his remaining bottle of whiskey. He comforted himself with a long draught. He looked over at Kibosh, who was drinking from a jar of water. Now was as good a time as any, Boz thought, to get rid of this encumbrance. He unconsciously felt his pocket, where the Star automatic nestled. But then it occurred to him that he still had to get to the house. Kibosh might come in handy as a hostage.
“Kibe,” he said, warmly, “you’re a good man. You got us through. I thought I’d die in there. But we still got a ways to go.”
“Sun’ll be up soon,” Kibosh said. He’d noticed Boz’s gesture toward his pocket. He reckoned that his night of terror was not over yet. He wondered if he’d have a chance to push this bastard off the side. He would do it cheerfully. He was worried now, about his friends. Would they remember this exit? He hoped so. But what if they hadn’t come to Seven Dials last night, after all? There was a good chance that he and Boz had undertaken this trip through the mountain in the dead of night just from being spooked by a bear, or a curious nocturnal badger that had come snooping around the Seven Dials, drawn by the smell of the sausages in the smoker. It could have been nothing more than a curious skunk! Maybe no one had been outside the door of the Seven Dials at all. Maybe Frankie and Paulie were still sleeping over there, at the house.
The sun was rising quickly but hadn’t crested the mountains. Kibosh knew it would soon illuminate this cliff face, a grand sight if you were out there on the meadow. The morning fly hatch would be coming off along the river, which he could now see was blanketed with mist, below them. The trout would be rising. It would be a great thing to be down there with a fly rod, he imagined. Probably, at this time of year, some kind of Trico hatch, followed by some Baetis, maybe some caddis. He could weep.
“It’s getting pretty light pretty fast,” Boz said. “Time to go.” He hefted the deer rifle and gestured for Kibosh to lead.
So there goes that chance, Kibosh thought. He picked up the backpack.
“Leave it,” Boz said. “We don’t need it no more. We’ll have to move fast, once we get down from here.”
They stepped out into the still dim daylight. Above them, the sun was catching the top of the cliff. They began to move cautiously down the path.
Below them, Joe saw the two men leave the hole in the wall and set out on the path. At last! Until this second he had feared the worst. It occurred to him suddenly that he could have been wildly, completely wrong, that Boz might not have been in the Seven Dials at all. The only evidence was the presence of Frank’s truck, but Boz could have abandoned it for any number of reasons. He could have allies, supporters he had contacted, who had come and picked him up. He shook his head, marveling at his failure to take that into account. But here they were, moving along the cliff wall like silhouette ducks in a shooting gallery.
He hoisted the H&K. From this steep angle he could see only the head and shoulders of Kibosh and more of the upper body of Boz. The angle was miserable. It was too far for the H&K.
Paulie had explained that the trail came down to their right, then switched back and headed toward them. From their position among the jumbled rocks they had very good cover. The trouble was, as the two men approached, Kibosh would be in the line of fire for much of the time. The best thing would be to wait until the hikers reached a point about fifty feet from the very base, the talus. At that point, they would be no more than a hundred feet away. There was a path that led down to the river that angled farther to their left. Helen was down there, well hidden in the brush. If the two men got that far, they would pass within touching distance of her.
Joe looked at Frank, crouching nearby in the rocks. He was clutching the Stoner rifle gingerly, the tension evident in his face. “You okay?” Joe asked.
Frank looked up and nodded at him. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said. “Do we just wait for them?” It seemed too easy.
“He’s got the rifle,” Joe said. “If I can get to that rock there”—he pointed to a large rock at a point where the men on the path would pass, about three feet above—“I’ll be below him. I’ll shout for him to drop the gun. If he doesn’t drop it, I can take his legs out.”
“You’d be in my line of fire,” Frank said. “I’m not much of a shot and I don’t know this gun …”
“You’ll be all right,” Joe said. “Just remember what I showed you. When he gets to the farthest point of the descent, before the trail switches back, I’ll make a dash. If he sees me, Kibosh will be in our line. But maybe I can creep a little closer now. It’s worth the risk.”
To Paulie, crouched a little farther down the trail, Joe called softly, “Hold your fire. That shotgun will be as dangerous to Kibosh as to Boz. It could be useful later, though.”
Joe looked at the field of broken rocks between him and the covering boulder. It was in deep shadow. He crept out and began to make his way, in a crouch, across the space. Above him, now farther away than initially, he could see the two men carefully picking their way down the ramplike path toward the switchback. He scuttled forward, missed his step, and banged his knee painfully on a sharp rock. It was painful, but he didn’t cry out. Worse, however, the H&K had also banged against a rock. He saw Boz turn sharply, and Joe lowered his face to the rocks, afraid that the paleness of it would be visible. He waited.
Boz heard a metallic noise. “What was that?” he said to Kibosh, stopping and crouching.
Kibosh turned. “What was what? I didn’t hear nothin’.”
“You didn’t hear that clank?”
Kibosh shook his head. “Rock,” he said confidently. “The sun warms the rocks and they expand. They’ll be more falling.” He pointed upward. The sun was rapidly creeping down the cliff. As if in demonstration, a fist-sized rock came tumbling down, twenty feet away, struck a projection of the cliff, and spun out into space. “Little by little,” he said, “this mountain is falling down.”
But he had heard the clank, all right. His heart bounded within him. Boz seemed convinced, however. He leaned back against the cliff and drank from his bottle.
“Almost dry,” he said. “Hope they didn’t drink all my vodka back at the house.” He bared his teeth in his dirty, bristly face. It was a smile. He drank the last of the whiskey and then hurled the bottle out in a great arc. It smashed on the rocks below. He laughed. “No one there.” Suddenly a thought struck him. “You had another bottle in that pack, didn’t you? Damn! Go back and get it.”
“You want me to go back?” Kibosh asked.
Boz reconsidered. The narrow path had been quite scary when they were farther up. Now that they were only twenty feet or so from the ground below, as rocky and jagged as it looked, he felt much more secure. Even if he fell here, the worst that was likely to happen was a broken leg, not death. The thought of climbing all the way back up there, in his spacey condition, was not appealing. He figured he could cover Kibosh with the rifle, in case he tried to escape … but what if he ducked back into the mountain? There was no way he was going to go back in there after him.
“To hell with it,” he said. “I’ll get more at the house. Come on, let’s go.”
The bottle had crashed not far from Joe. It had startled him, then he’d realized what it was—just Boz heaving an empty bottle. He lay there, his face still down. Finally, he dared to peek upward. The men were moving. But they had made the turn and were coming his way. He was lying in the open, no real cover, just small rocks not much bigger than a bushel basket nearby. And the sun was racing down the face of the cliff. If it reached him he would be too obvious to be missed, unless the men had already passed. He lay still and begged Kibosh mentally to hasten, get past him.
A gentle breeze, stirred by the warming air above, began to shift the still dense mist off the river and toward the cliff. The cold fog rolled over Joe.
Oh, yes, he breathed. Now he could hear the men’s shoes scraping on the path. He glanced at the H&K. It was set on automatic fire. The clip would empty in a second. Did he dare to set it on the three-shot cycle? Would it make a noise? He decided against it.
The steps came closer. Somehow Joe kept his face down. The mist helped. They were abreast of him. Moved another step beyond. He scrambled to his feet.
“Drop it!” Joe yelled.
Boz spun, lost his footing for a second, and reeled back against the cliff, sitting down roughly. He hoisted the rifle to his shoulder, pointing in Joe’s direction—the scope was a nuisance at this range. Kibosh stooped, found a rock, and hurled it at Boz. It struck him on the shoulder as he fired, the shot going wild. Boz swore, racked the bolt back and forward to bring another cartridge into the chamber. Kibosh began to run down the ramp, toward Paulie’s position. Boz looked first in the direction of Joe’s voice, but all he saw was mist. He turned toward the running Kibosh and lifted the rifle.
Frank fired, a full clip of .223-caliber bullets. The rifle made a continuous string of flat punching noises. The bullets spanged off the rocks above and to the left of Boz.
When Boz slipped, Joe had found that his target was obscured by the rocks in front of him. He scrambled up, slipping and scraping his ankle and lurching against another sharp rock, desperately seeking an angle of fire.
Boz turned and raced back up the path, in a crouch. Joe twisted, off balance, and pulled the trigger on the H&K, spewing an entire thirty-shot clip into the cliff face in three seconds. In his haste, he’d forgotten the autofire.
He scrambled after Boz, ejecting the clip and finding another, stumbling, half-falling. He had to stop to jam the clip home. And now he discovered a further difficulty: how to get up onto the ramp? Above him, he could see that Boz had made the turn and was chugging rather more slowly up toward the cave entrance. He could even hear the man’s gasping breath.
Joe clambered onto a boulder, then hopped to another. The H&K was an annoyance, but he wasn’t about to abandon it. Behind him he could hear Frank, who had finally remembered Joe’s instruction of how to put another clip into the Stoner rifle, and also to switch to semiautomatic fire: he was firing slowly spaced shots—light, cracking shots, the bullets ringing off the rocks. His angle of fire would not provide much of a target, Joe knew. Then he heard a loud crack from above as Boz fired back, followed by the racking of the bolt.
Joe hauled himself onto the path, on his belly, swinging his leg up, confident that Boz couldn’t have a fair shot at him. He got to his feet and raced up the path.
He made the turn and started up the longer run of the ramp. Far ahead, he could see Boz laboring, crouching with one hand against the cliff face, the rifle in the other. Joe stopped and yanked out the retractable skeletal buttstock and took aim, taking care this time to move the fire selector to single fire. He fired four evenly spaced shots, to no visible effect. Then Boz disappeared.
Joe raced on, his breath tearing in his throat. When he reached the top he stopped short of the mouth of the opening. Oh, for a grenade, he thought. Boz was in an unassailable position. Joe had no idea how the tunnel lay, but he supposed that it ran straight back for at least a short distance. Boz could take his stand there, and if he could work the bolt fast enough, he’d be able to shoot three, four, maybe five attackers, who would have to enter more or less one at a time.
“Boz!” he called. “It’s no use. You might as well save us all some trouble. You can’t come out and you’ll never make it back. We’ve got the other end blocked.”
There was no answer. Joe hadn’t expected one. He listened. All he could hear was the breeze and an occasional stone rattling down the cliff from above. He leaned against the cliff to recover his breath and to rest his aching legs. He looked off at the view, the sun over the mountains to the east turning the trees to green from black, a raven soaring, the silvery thread of the river in the distance.
If I had a cowboy hat, he thought, I’d hang it on the barrel and extend it out to invite a shot. But he had no hat. He wiped his brow and waited for Frank, trudging up the path, followed by Helen. There was no need for them to hurry, they knew.
When Frank arrived he rested his back against the cliff and breathed for a minute, then straightened and said, “Sorry, Joe. I’m not such a good shot.”
Joe smiled wryly. “Ah, you know how it is … you take it out of a case, throw it in the back of the car, take it out … the sights get totally out of whack. Anyway, it’s a hell of a shot to hit a running target at that range. You did fine.” Joe knew that Frank was never going to actually fire at Boz, but any kind of fire was helpful.
He looked down at the H&K, moved the lever to the three-shot position. “I think he’s gone in deep,” he said. “Probably thinks he can walk all the way back. But we have to find out. I’m going to jump across to that opposite wall, low, firing bursts. When I go, you just stick the barrel in the entry and let a whole clip rip. Okay?”
Frank looked at him, his face streaked with sweat and dust, his glasses smeared. “Give me another minute,” he said. He breathed deeply, checking the clip. He took it out, decided to replace it with a full one, then delved in his pockets for cartridges to reload the partially depleted one. He stuffed that one in his shirt pocket. “Okay,” he said.
Joe nodded and dove for the opposite side of the opening, firing as he went, then flattening himself as best he could against the wall while Frank stuck the Stoner around the corner and emptied a full clip into the drift.
No response. Joe got to his feet and moved into the drift. He could see now that the drift angled upward. Their shots would have struck the floor perhaps twenty feet within. Frank entered beside him, inserting a fresh clip and racking the slide back and forward.
“Got our hands full now,” he said.
Helen arrived and peeped in. “Now do we call the colonel?” she said.
“No,” Joe said. “It would take a company of troops to get him out. The colonel won’t send them. But”—he smiled wearily at both of them—“at least we’re out here, and Bazok isn’t. We know where he has to come out. Don’t we?”
“Kibosh knows,” Helen said. “He’s down there, being comforted by Paulie.”
“You want to stay here?” Joe said to Helen. “I’ll go down and talk to him.”
“Take your time,” Helen said, “but someone better bring me some water, pretty soon, and maybe some coffee. A doughnut would be nice, although the thought of it gags me at the moment.”
Kibosh had recovered when Joe found him with Paulie. Joe explained the situation to them. They listened to Kibosh’s account of the nightmarish trek.
“I don’t b’lieve he’ll git very far,” Kibosh said. “He was awful scared in there, panicky. An’ he didn’ seem to have any notion of the signs I made. Been drinkin’ awful heavy, too, since we got up yesterday mornin’. Lord, I didn’ know if I’d see this mornin’. I’m grateful to ye.”
In response to Joe’s careful questioning, Kibosh opined that Boz might get no farther than a few hundred feet into the interlocked drifts and shafts of the mines. “He’s got a horror of it,” he said. “It’s a real hell to him. But the man’s got guts, ye gotta give him that. The thing of it is, he could stumble on one a them other passages and find his way out, on this side. I don’t know how many exits there could be. Probably not more’n a half dozen that a man could get through. I never explored the whole thing, not on this side. But I reckon he won’t find none a them. I reckon he’ll give out, afore too long. Did he snatch up that pack of mine?”
Joe said he hadn’t seen the pack. “What was in it?”
“About three a them packs of Twinkies,” Kibosh said, “a jug a water, a fif’ a whiskey—he’ll be glad a that—some rope. Lessee, what else?” He thought. “Oh, a can a sardines. A little jar a them pickles, whatcha call ’em, gherkins. Some matches, my good pipe, and some terbaccy. That’s about it.”
“Pickles?” Joe said.
“I jist grabbed ’em off the shelf,” Kibosh said. “An’ the flashlights, a course. Two of ’em.”
Joe asked which was the most likely alternate exit. Kibosh pointed downstream. There was a very old mine down that way that he had actually taken the time to investigate. He was pretty sure it closed off before it reached a drift that would communicate with the one Boz was in. But it was possible that if it wasn’t much of cave-in, a person could get through. If he was desperate enough.
“He’s desperate enough,” Joe said. “Come on, we’ll take a look.”
Kibosh sighed. “I’m dead beat,” he said. “I could use some grub. An’ we’d need some flashlights.”
Joe nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “We better regroup. Boz is in there, though, and aching to get out, I’m sure. I think you’re right—he won’t try to make it out the other side. Paulie, can you take Kibosh back to the house and get what we need? Helen and Frank and I will stay here, keep watch. Oh, and try to get through to Jammie, explain what happened. I think she can come on over. I’m with Kibosh … Boz won’t try to backtrack.”