CHAPTER 81

The farm

 

Midnight brought a full moon and a bitter cold to south Georgia.

William Parker turned up the heat in the cab, looking at the digital clock on the dash display of the Sierra truck. It showed 5:46 A.M. The sun would be breaking through the darkness soon.

It surprised Parker how his body had regained its energy. Most of the trip had been spent sleeping, taking in calories, and building his strength. Stewart’s magic combination of antibiotics had worked their miracle.

Only a buzz in my ear. Not bad.

The doctor told him the tinnitus might never go away. It was a small price to pay for surviving NM-13. He was getting stronger. The shoulder was sore, but it was only a flesh wound. He felt his adrenaline starting to kick in again as he neared his land.

My land.

There was something about it being his land. Without a survey, Parker knew exactly where the property line was. A large white oak marked it.

A shape moved in the shadow at the edge of the road.

Parker turned his headlights on high, only to see the large ears and green glowing eyes of a doe standing at the edge of a pine forest. She stared directly at his lights, frozen in fear, as he slowed down.

The doe was fat. The rains during the summer had provided a forest full of thick clover. Her coat was gaining a darker, grayer look, so as the days became shorter and the sunlight decreased, she could absorb more of the sun’s energy. Soon she would be chased by the buck, pulling him out of the deep woods.

The yellow clay road forked away from the highway just a mile beyond the white oak. He hadn’t improved the beginning of the road so as not to attract any visitors. It would be more than a hundred yards into the road before it turned into gravel and another hundred yards to the gate. From the gate it would turn into asphalt, where it would wind around the airfield and then start to climb up the ridgeline.

Odd.

Clark rarely left the gate open.

The dawn had broken through the night. Even in the valley, the light was starting to reach the ground.

Something isn’t right.

The road turned past the airfield. The hangar was closed. There was no sign of life, no movement whatsoever. After the airfield, the single lane of asphalt cut a path up the hillside to the top of the finger of rock. Parker followed the road as it climbed up the grade where on top it was level all the way to the lodge.

Jesus, what is that?

A deputy sheriff’s car straddled part of the road, with the nose of the car buried into the base of a pine tree. The white-and-black patrol car, with its gold lettering, still had the engine running. The driver’s door was open, and the uniformed leg of its owner was outside, in an odd, twisted angle with the shiny Corfam shoe barely touching the ground.

Parker pulled up his truck to the side of the road behind the cruiser. He moved carefully, scanning the tree line, looking down the road to the lodge at the far end. A bullet hole was in the center of the driver’s front windshield. The deputy sheriff might have seen the flash the instant before his death. Parker checked Mack’s pulse just above his collar. The skin was slightly cool. His eyes were fixed, wide open. Dead.

Parker reached over only to find the deputy’s holster empty. If he had a shotgun, it was missing as well. The radio mike’s wire was cut just below the mike.

“Damn.” Parker glanced toward the lodge again. “Clark.”

He glanced at the truck. If he took off, it would be thirty miles to the nearest gas station. She may already be dead, but he wasn’t leaving without finding out. The one thing he knew for sure was that the killer was looking at him at that very moment. Parker could feel the sights of a rifle pointed in his direction.

Why am I not already dead?

The shooter must not be sure of his target. This meant one of three things. Either Clark was dead, or she wasn’t cooperating, or she had gotten away. If she had gotten away, he had a fairly good idea of where she was. It would be the one place the shooter wouldn’t go to.

Parker looked to the tree line, walked back to his truck, and just before getting to the door he dropped to the ground. As he did, a silenced bullet ripped through the glass of his driver’s door.

He dashed to the tree line, jumping over a downed limb, and as he did a second silenced bullet tore through his right leg, causing him to tumble into the bushes. Parker felt the warm blood gurgle through the blue jeans. The bullet had only grazed the flesh, but it was still bleeding like a knife wound. It did, however, give him a chance. He scrambled up to his feet, moving to a line of pine trees, following them across the slope. He cut down the hill, trying to get to the deeper brush, like the buck moving to cover.

Whap. Another bullet struck the tree just above his head.

Parker ducked, turned, and landed on his other leg. He glanced back, then rolled down the hill toward the brush.

A .223.

Parker glanced at the man who came toward him.

Who is this son of a bitch?

The worst of it was that the man’s face showed no emotion. He was moving through the woods methodically. Parker only had one advantage. He knew the land.

“There’s no point in running,” Umarov yelled from above. “You’re wounded. I can see your blood.”

Parker moved along the side of the ridgeline, staying in the trees just above the deep brush. He tried to move toward the lodge, but the hunter kept the high ground, moving along in a parallel path, staying between Parker and the lodge.

The blood from the wound started to saturate the jeans. Parker cut farther down the hill, stopping behind a rock that was surrounded by the pines. He tore off a strip of his shirt and wrapped it several times around the wound, cinching it tightly until the bleeding stopped.

“I have plenty of time.” The voice projected above the pine trees.

No weapon and the lodge were becoming unreachable with the wound. Parker’s foot was tingling either from the blood loss or nerve damage of some sort. And time was running out. For him and possibly Clark.

How can I go on the offensive?

“Your girl is dead.”

The killer was trying to get Parker to say something, anything. It would help locate his target. Parker hoped the bastard was bluffing, frustrated at losing both his targets.

Parker moved across the hillside, not climbing nor descending. He worked his way to the north of the lodge. The killer followed, sounding like a bull, through the brush and trees.

Whap, whap.

Two more rounds cracked just above Parker’s head. He stopped, exposing himself in an opening, seeing the killer put the rifle up to his shoulder.

Whap.

The bullet knocked several small tree limbs to the ground.

That’s it! He’s in blue jeans.

Parker knew just what to do.

Blue jeans!

And it was getting light by the second.

Parker ran, favoring his hurt leg, down the path. His lungs started to burn, his mouth becoming dry.

Shock.

He put fingers to his neck, gauging his pulse. It was becoming rapid and weak. He was starting to see stars. Time was running out.

He hobbled into another opening on a ledge and fell to the ground. His head was swimming.

The man stood just above Parker on the path, rifle to his shoulder.

Parker tried to get up on his one knee, the wounded leg stretched out straight. His hand closed around a sizeable rock.

“Get up. It’s over,” said the big man, clearly relishing the words.

“Not hardly.” The voice came from above and behind Parker’s pursuer.

Parker moved only his eyes to gauge the new arrival. To his surprise, he recognized the man: the same Marine who’d been hunting illegally on the property. He had returned to the ledge to hunt the buck in the valley. In fact, he had the same Remington 700, trained squarely on a very different target.

“What?” Abu Umarov turned, pointing his weapon at the hunter. At the same moment, Parker’s rock struck the Chechen again squarely on the temple where he had received the same blow just a few days before. The blow caused him to squeeze the trigger of his weapon prematurely, sending a round into the dirt. The young hunter also pulled the trigger, but his round didn’t miss. The deer rifle lifted the Chechen off his feet, blowing him back against the rocks and leaving him lying in a growing pool of his own blood.

 

 

“You still with us?”

James Scott stood over Parker on a stretcher.

“Clark?”

“Yeah, we found her where you said she would be. On the running trail. She’s lost some blood, but they’re bringing her out now.”

The airfield looked like a military encampment, with several Huey helicopters parked on the tarmac. All of the aircrafts were black, with FBI in large white letters on their sides.

“Colonel, I’m Tom Pope.”

A man in a dark blue suit stood over the stretcher.

“He followed us home?” Parker tried to lean up on the stretcher.

“Yeah. Everyone has been wanting this guy for a very long time.”

“I had another chance and thought he was dead.”

“Well, this time you thought right.” Pope smiled.

Parker did the same.

“Lucky about running into that friendly, eh?” said Pope. “In the middle of nowhere.”

Parker took a swig from a bottle of water, trying to rehydrate himself. “Not entirely luck,” he said.

Pope raised an eyebrow. “How’s that?”

“Were you ever a deer hunter?”

“No.”

“Deer hunters never wear blue jeans. The one color a deer can recognize is blue. Mike Hendley would have known that this guy was not a hunter and should not have been there. Period!”

“Damn.”

“Are you a baseball fan, Mr. Pope?” Parker continued.

“Yeah,” said Pope. “The Cubs,” he added, almost apologetically.

“Imagine being offered a chance to throw out the first pitch on opening day at Wrigley.”

“Okay?”

“Would you miss it?”

“No.”

“It’s deer hunting season and our young friend had a personal invitation from me to come here and try to get himself a trophy deer. There was no way he wasn’t coming back.”