| |
“Get Kyle and Dusty over here. And keep your eyes open! I’m runnin’ out of deputies.” — Sheriff Cobb, Silverado
Sam
“Gone? What do you mean, ‘gone’?” I looked around as if I expected Jade Stone to pop out of a bush and yell, Surprise!
Trees. Stream.
Rocks.
But no Stone.
When I asked Marlon where Jade was again, he mumbled something about his mama making him a peanut butter sandwich. Trooper Boggs had left the building. I squatted and held the back of my hand against his forehead. Warm but not flaming.
“Well, buddy, I sure figured that woman wrong,” I told him. “I never expected her to rabbit.”
Maybe she just went to take a leak again; women could be finicky about peeing in the woods. About peeing in general, in fact.
I stayed by Marlon and took another, longer, look around the vicinity. The river chuckled, and the wind whispered. No prisoner appeared. No bear with a full tummy wandered by.
I had bought some time with my rear-guard action; how much was anybody’s guess, though. Not enough, for sure. The baddies would be leapfrogging their way along our back trail with the eagerness of teenagers on a first date. “Damn you, Stone.”
Captain Marshall’s voice pounded in my head. “You gave the prisoner a what?”
“A gun.”
“And you left her unguarded?”
“Well... Trooper Boggs was there.”
Jesus wept a river, it’d be better if they killed me here and now.
Marlon weighed two hundred pounds, easy. Carrying him by myself, I might get half a mile before the federales caught up with us. I needed a place to fort up, make a final stand.
I patted Marlon on his good shoulder. “Wait here.”
“I don’t like playin’ piano,” he whined. His eyes were closed, and I hoped he was dreaming about better times. Piano lessons? I’d have to ask him about that later.
Downstream, the arroyo spread out, its banks transitioning into an expanse of gravelly soil before sloping upward to the tree line on my left. On the right, broken rock walls jutted into the forest, covered by shadows as the sun sank behind the ridge. The stream widened and slowed from a gurgling tumble to a lazy drift. A pine needle rotated atop the green water like a lost compass pointer.
I paused long enough to splash water on my face and take a couple of palmed sips. My legs sang the chorus to “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore” when I straightened, and vertigo fuzzed the edges of my vision.
The rocky embankment offered better concealment. The stream abutted the cliff, so I wouldn’t leave tracks going that way. If I could find a defendable place close enough to pack Marlon on my shoulder and hike to it, I could lay up and give them a good fight. I splashed through the shallow water along the stony face, looking for a crack big enough to hide in.
“Jade Stone, you rotten...” I used a word my mother would not be proud of. “I’m going to get through this, and when I do, I’m going to hunt your ass down and stake you to an anthill.”
I kept glancing over my shoulder, checking on Marlon and keeping an eye out for rogue BATF agents, so the person stepping from the rocks in front of me failed to register for a split second.
“Gah!” I snapped the rifle to my shoulder and had nine-tenths of the slack out of the trigger before my foggy brain caught up to my reflexes. “Jesus, Stone,” I breathed, lowering the weapon and very carefully letting my finger relax. “Where have you been?”
“Finding a place to hide.” Her reaction to nearly being shot? A small widening of the eyes. She waited, ankle-deep in chilly water, one hand braced against the rock, head cocked to the side. “Why? Miss me?”
“Not at this range. Let’s get Marlon. I don’t know how long we have before your pals show up.” I started back the way I came, hiding the relief I felt at seeing her again. “What do you mean, ‘a place to hide’?”
Jade sloshed up next to me. “There’s a split in the rocks back there. It leads to a ledge, which is a bitch to climb, by the way. You have to fight through some brush, but up against the next rise is an old mineshaft covered over with timber. It’s hard to see until you’re right up on it, and nobody would look twice once they see the mess you have to climb through to get there.”
“So why’d you go? Through the mess, I mean.” I glanced sideways at her, gauging her reaction. Her bare arms were scratched with red welts, supporting her story of fighting through the undergrowth.
“I’d already climbed the ledge.” She shrugged. “I thought I’d find a trail at the base of the ridge.”
When she said nothing else, I decided to drop it. We needed to move Marlon and get the hell out of sight. The pressure of waiting for the pursuit to show up weighed on me with the same sick dread as sitting in a dentist’s chair, watching the long needle loom closer to that joint in my jaw.
Besides, she’d come back. Did it really matter why she’d disappeared?
Stone cut her gaze at me. She must have seen something in my expression. “What’s the matter, big guy? Think I ran away?”
“Not for a second.” I moved in front and slung the rifle opposite Reuben’s backpack. I snagged Bragg’s pack from the ground and hooked that over my shoulder, as well.
We picked up the ends of Marlon’s carry pole and hefted him into place without a hitch. Practice, practice, practice.
“Let’s not piddle around,” I told Stone. “No telling how long until they figure out the back door’s open.”
“Try to keep up this time.” Stone threw the pole over her shoulder.
We slogged back into the stream and along the slab-sided rock face, to the point where I’d seen Jade emerge. Behind us, birds flitted through the trees and along the waterway but not in an agitated or startled way. Still, the itch between my shoulder blades swelled to a full-on skin-crawling rash, from neck to butt. Like a bunch of spiders with fat hairy legs would feel.
With an abrupt right turn, Stone led us into a gap in the rocks. We climbed out of the water and onto a rugged trail. The footing underneath was rough and uneven, and my shoulders brushed the sides of the narrow channel.
Stone’s harsh breathing echoed my own. The long hike down the mountain, spiked with gut-clenching terror and moments of deadly peril, had taken their toll on both of us. We scuffed and scrambled, panting along the cut, for a solid fifty yards or more, weaving through tight turns and climbing fallen slabs and rubble.
I lost track of time, working to put one foot ahead of the other and keep the wounded trooper from banging against the rock walls. I tried to think of something witty to lighten the tension, but my tank of funny had run dry.
Stone stopped moving, and I jarred to a halt. When I looked up, “You’ve got to be kidding me” was all I could say.
The cut ended at another ledge where two massive rock formations came together. The path had widened enough two people could stand side by side. We faced a flat, head-high wall. Beyond it, the slope angled upward into the forest and the thick undergrowth Stone had reported.
“I told you it would suck,” Stone said.
“Now who’s Ranger Obvious?”
I looked back the way we’d come, and my throat tightened. To say our backs were against the wall would be an understatement. On the bad side, if the rogue feds came this way, all they would have to do was poke their guns around the last bend in the trail and cut loose a magazine or two of blind fire. We would be chopped into bite-size pieces.
On the good side, if we could get Marlon on top of this little obstacle, we’d be in a pretty good position to guard our rear. No one, short of Superman, could mount the wall in the face of some full metal jacket discouragement.
“How’d you get up there the first time?”
Stone pointed to a wobbly stack of rocks piled against the base of the barrier. “I improvised.”
“All right, let’s think about this a minute.”
We lowered Marlon to the ground. He moaned and said something about doing an oil change on the Camaro.
“I’ll climb up first—”
“We’ll have to prop Marlon against the wall.”
“I was about to say that. I’ll have to drag him up by the shoulders while you lift from below—”
“And keep the pressure off his bad leg.”
“And keep the pressure off his bad leg.”
I looked at her, and she did that upside-down smile thing, where the edges of her lips crimped down. On anyone else it would be a smirk, but she made it cute.
I matched her smile and said, “Let’s do this thing.”
For the first time since the Cessna lost power, I felt like we had a good chance to get out of the woods alive. Climb this pesky little barricade, find a cave to hide in until we lost the federal pricks, then hike out on our own.
Easy.
Rita’s voice squawked in my head. “Don’t jinx it, you big doofus.”
“Shut up, Rita.”
Stone cocked her head and frowned. “What? Who’s Rita?”
“Nothing. Talking to myself. Let’s get Marlon situated.”
Lifting the trooper into a leaning position against the rock face turned out easier than I’d feared. We used the pine pole as a brace and propped Marlon up like a sack of laundry tied to a stick. Stone wrapped her arms around him to keep him from sinking into the bag and pressing against his broken leg.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Ten minutes ago.”
I tested the stack of stepping stones with one foot, achieved a sense of balance, and grabbed the top of the wall with both hands. Just one big chin-up, right? Nothing to it.
“Huhn!” I pushed off with my right foot.
Too hard.
The rickety pile of rocks gave out before I had a good grip on the ledge. The weight of the equipment on my back pulled me away from the wall. I clawed the sandy grit and found no purchase.
“Aw, shit!”
“Look out,” Stone urged.
There’s a point in every fall when a person knows gravity’s going to win. To avoid landing on Marlon, I twisted right as I went down. Like a plucked guitar string, something twanged in my knee.
I hit the ground hard, taking the fall on my left side, slamming my hip and hand into the granite. Electric, white-hot pain lanced through my wrist and up my forearm. My knee went cold. I grunted with the freight-train impact of the fall, air bursting from my lungs.
My head bounced off the ground. Light flashed in darkness. Gear clattered—the rifle!—and in the calm split second before all the pain hit, I cringed, knowing I had broken my best weapon.
~~~
Luksa
THE METALLIC ping echoed, dissipated, and was lost. Luksa froze. Where’d that come from?
Sounds bounced all around out here in the fuzzy end of nowhere, making a single noise difficult to pinpoint. Luksa crouched by the stream and scanned a complete three sixty, taking in all the input his senses would allow.
Somewhere to his left, Bartlett ghosted through the forest, fading in and out along the edge of the trees. Mack advanced along a parallel axis in the higher elevations to Bartlett’s left. Luksa had the most exposed position, down near the stream. The sound—though faint and hard to locate—didn’t strike Luksa as coming through the trees, more like the sound of metal on rock.
He keyed his mic and whispered, “I heard something. Metallic. You guys drop anything?”
“No,” Mack said, and a second later, Reeder said the same and barked, “Location?”
“Unknown. Stand by.”
Deep shadow covered the western bank, the sun having dropped behind the ridge. Luksa strained his eyes, scanning the darkness for any hint of something out of place. He was content to settle in and check every square inch before he moved. Ray and Reuben had set the example of what not to do, and damned if he would ignore the lesson.
A pair of frogs sang to each other, and something flopped in the water. Luksa caught the reflection of the spreading ripples from the middle of the stream. A fish. He flinched when a dark shape swooshed by his head—either a bat or an owl—and dipped away. Directly across the water, a darker shape materialized against the shadowed cliff when he focused on it. A gap? Or his eyes playing tricks on him?
“I have movement. Front,” Mack rumbled.
Luksa winced at the voice, loud in his ear after the stillness.
“Report,” Bartlett ordered.
“Unknown movement at my twelve, approximately your ten o’clock. Engaging.”
Luksa’s heart hammered a staccato beat. Excitement, coupled with relief that Mack was the one who’d found the Ranger and his friends first, rushed through his chest. He guessed Mack’s direction and took off at a slow jog, concentrating on solid footholds until he left the gravel streambed. With luck, they would wrap this thing up in a few minutes and be on their way.
The pop-pop-pop of semi-auto fire bounced from the mountainside, and Luksa slowed to a walk. If he timed it right, he would get even luckier and find Reeder and Mack had taken care of everything. Luksa slipped into the forest and followed the sound of gunfire.