She watched them walk down the path with the rocket launcher, trading it back and forth to get the feel of it. She’d made them repeat the firing procedure back to her before they left and they seemed to recall it. Men were intuitive when it came to weapons, she thought. Maybe it was the only thing they were intuitive about. She recalled how Chase was with his handguns, like they were an extension of him. She got edgy even looking at one, and rarely handled the .38 she kept hidden away in her knitting bag.
She had given them the drawing so they wouldn’t fire at the wrong place.
Johnny and Drennen were in view for five minutes before they found the trail that would lead them down into the canyon. She’d been assured that it wouldn’t be booby-trapped on the top half of the trail, so she didn’t even mention it to them.
When they were out of sight, she knitted furiously, waiting for the explosion.
She was looking forward to feeling cleansed.
10
“Faster, faster,” Nate said to Alisha, who was throwing her clothing into her bag.
She looked up with fear in her eyes and swept her arm around the interior of the cave. “What about all this? You can’t just leave it.” She meant the furniture, gear, books, and electronics he’d amassed in his three years there.
He shrugged as he took his shoulder holster and the .454 down from a peg in the wall and put them on the table. “All I need is this,” he said. Then: “And my birds. In fact, I’m going to go get them hooded up so we can take them with us.”
She rolled her eyes. “You need more than a gun and your birds.”
“And you,” he said, misunderstanding.
“No,” she said. “You need clothes. And your satellite phone. Here,” she said, grabbing an empty duffel bag and placing it on the table. “I’ll pack them while you get the birds ready.”
He nodded, and turned for the opening. As he did, the receiver for one of his motion detectors chirped. Nate froze and stared at it. It was the uppermost sensor.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ve got to hurry.”
Johnny said, “I think I see it.”
“Where?”
“Over there. On the other side. Follow my arm.”
Drennen stood shoulder-to-shoulder to Johnny and bent so he could rest his cheek on Johnny’s bicep. He squinted down the arm, past the pointer, across the canyon.
“It’s kinda dark,” Johnny said. “It looks like a half-moon behind some bushes. It don’t look like one of those caves in the cartoons. It’s more like a slash in the rocks.”
After a beat, Drennen said, “Okay, I think I see it.”
“Keep your eye on it,” Johnny said. “Let’s move down the trail a ways. If we can see the cave, that guy can see us. So let’s move until we can get hid.”
Johnny carried the AT4 by a handle that swung up from the top of the barrel. He crouched and picked up his pace, his cowboy boots clicking against loose rocks. Drennen ducked and followed, keeping his hands out in front of him in case he slipped on the loose gravel. He plucked the beer bottle from his back pocket, twisted off the cap, and threw the cap aside.
Johnny didn’t slow down until there was a thick wall of sharpsmelling brush on the left side of the trail that obscured the view from the cave entrance. When Drennen caught up and joined him, Johnny put the AT4 down and gently parted two stiff boughs. “See it?” he asked.
“I lost it,” Drennen said, then took a long drink that made his eyes water.
“Put that beer down and use your binoculars. That’s what they’re for.”
“Fuck you,” Drennen said, but he did as he was told and placed the bottle between his boots. He raised the glasses to his face.
Johnny waited while Drennen adjusted the focus on the binoculars. He watched his friend, trying to read him.
“Okay,” Drennen said finally. “I found it again.”
“What do you see?”
“Well, it looks like the top of the cave. There’s a bunch of brush hiding the lower half, but the hole looks tall enough for a man to walk in and out of without bending over. I can’t see inside—it’s dark—but it looks like there are blankets or some such thing tied back on each side.”
Johnny nodded and drew out the map from his back pocket. He unfolded it and held it out in front of him, matching the features in the drawing to the canyon itself.
“Yeah,” Johnny said, “Where we see that opening is where Patsy has the X.”
“Hot damn,” Drennen said, chuckling. “This is gonna be the easiest fifteen grand we ever made.”
“We ain’t made it yet,” Johnny said. “Keep your eyes on that cave. See if you can see him. I’ll get ready, and if you see that son-of-a-bitch, you tell me. We may not get another chance.”
The mews for Nate’s falcons was eight feet tall and six feet deep and was located twenty yards west of the cave opening. It was constructed of dried willow branches gathered near the river, and although it was in the open, the construction material rendered it almost perfectly camouflaged. Inside, he started with the peregrine while the eagle watched imperiously. He slipped a leather-tasseled hood over the hooked beak of the bird and fastened it in back. The hoods inured the raptors from reacting to outside stimuli and blinded them so they wouldn’t try to fly while being transported. Each bird had a custom hood sized for a tight fit.
He paused after the peregrine was hooded to glance through the willow branches toward the opposite cliff face. He could see no movement, and he knew how often a wandering deer or bobcat unknowingly strolled through the motion detector. Unfortunately, there were several dense stands of mountain juniper hiding portions of the trail. He watched for a few seconds to see if anyone—or anything—emerged from them. Nothing. But his sense of urgency didn’t diminish and the hairs on the back of his neck were pricked.
Nate turned back to his birds and hooded the red tail. She didn’t object and it took less than a minute. He looked at the eagle, who was sizing him up as well, and sighed. The eagle didn’t take to a hood, and it was often a struggle. He said, “Cooperate just this once.”
The eagle shifted its weight back and forth on the thick dowel it perched on. Its talons were black, long, and diabolical. Even through the thick welding glove Nate wore when he carried the eagle, she was capable of clamping down with power that practically took him to his knees. Now, he thought, is not the time for any foolishness.
He raised the large hood to her head deliberately, so she could see what he was doing. “Come on,” he said gently, “come on . . .”
Outside the mews, Alisha called to him. “Nate, another one of these boxes went off.”
Sensor number two, he thought. Jesus. “Get back inside,” Nate called back. “I’ll be there in a second. Stay out of sight, Alisha, please.”
“Okay,” she said, chastened.
“Oh shit,” Drennen squealed. “I see somebody.”
Johnny took a deep breath. He was both excited and more than a little nauseous.
“Make sure,” Johnny said, raising the rocket launcher to rest on his right shoulder. He snapped the sights into place and leaned his cheek against the tube. He could see the top of the cave in the distance, and when he fit the scope against his eye, it leapt into view. There was movement, but he couldn’t make out what it was. Whoever had been at the opening had gone back inside.
“I saw somebody move,” Johnny said.
“I can see better,” Drennen said. “He’s in the shadow of the cave, but I can make him out. Long hair, Patsy said. Long black hair. It’s him.”