"What, do I look stupid? That would run down the batteries. I turn it on when the woman wants to talk to me."
"When she contacts you on your beeper?"
"Yeah. I already told you that."
"And you carry your beeper with you all the time?"
"Sleep with it under my pillow, carry it with me to the crapper. Those are my orders. What was that shit you were saying about the CIA?"
I reached under the table and disconnected the cables linking the radio to the dry cell batteries. When I peered through the vent again, the blue light was still on. The radio had its own internal power source, and this was not good. I glanced at my watch; forty-five minutes had passed since we'd entered Paul Piggott's cabin.
"Bad news, Brother," I said tersely. "It's like Kranes's offices. The radio and beeper are bugged. Our company friends have known where we are from the moment we walked in here. They're not going to like what they've heard. I suggest we depart henceforth."
"Or sooner," Garth said, abruptly stepping close to Piggott and clipping him under the chin with the palm of his left, ungloved hand. Piggott slumped to the floor, unconscious.
Together we scurried out into the night, sprinted around to the back of the cabin, and began clawing and scrambling our way back up the mountain.
Fear is a powerful motivator, and we made it back up the mountainside in twenty minutes, not much longer than it had taken us to climb down, but the all-out exertion was wasted, and we would probably have been better off fleeing on foot in a different direction. Now it was too late.
We heard the THWOP- THWOP- THWOP of the helicopter rotors a few seconds before the unmarked Apache rose like some giant, malevolent bird of prey over the crest of the mountain. Mounted searchlights probed the dark mountainside, and one finally caught us in a blinding glare. We scrambled to the copse of trees, where I snatched loose the reins of our horses from a tree limb, handed Garth's to him. The horses were frightened, rearing.
Garth hesitated. "We'll be easy targets on horses, Mongo!" he shouted over the thrashing roar of the helicopter, which was hovering just above the tree line, raising a cutting, abrasive cloud of broken branches, needles, and leaves all around us.
"Not if we keep to the trees!" I shouted back, vaulting into the saddle of my horse, which immediately reared. I wheeled the animal around and brought it under control, then reached out and grabbed the reins of Garth's horse, which was wide-eyed with panic. "It's our only chance! They can contact the compound by radio. There'll be a dozen of those people after us in a few minutes, and more dozens of searchers by dawn. I don't recall the locals as being too friendly."
Garth looked at me, then at his horse with its flaring nostrils. "Mongo, I can't ride like you! I'm not sure I can stay on in these conditions. You go! I'll keep them busy here. The helicopter can't follow both of us!"
"Just talk to her in John Wayne and you'll be fine! Now get on the fucking horse! Remember what I told you about posting!"
"You're on, Pilgrim!" Garth shouted as he put a foot in a stirrup, and lunged up and onto the back of his horse.
I immediately dug my heels into my horse's side, and the animal responded, lurching forward as I ducked under a limb, heading through the trees. I rode a hundred yards, then sensed something was wrong. I reined in the horse, turned to look back, and knew we were going to have a problem.
In my years with the circus I had ridden on the backs of everything from Bengal tigers to Asian elephants, so, even under these conditions, riding a well-trained horse in a well-fitted saddle was a walk in the park, in a manner of speaking. Not so with my brother, who wasn't used to riding anything that didn't come with four wheels and a motor. He had barely gone ten feet. His horse, sensing the nervousness and lack of confidence of a novice rider, was now even more panicked. He was rearing, bucking, and corkscrewing, and threatening to throw off Garth, who had dropped the reins and had his arms wrapped around the horse's neck, at any moment. In addition, the backwash from the helicopter's rotors was surrounding us in a storm of debris that was not only blinding but could also literally put out an eye. We could not go back the way we had come. When we had ridden in during the day, I had noticed dried-out stream beds leading down the other side of the mountain to a broad, forested valley, and other mountains in the distance where there appeared to be narrow canyons and washes where it would be difficult for the helicopter to maneuver. If we were going to escape, that was where we would have to go. I wheeled my horse around, rode back.
"Change of plans!" I shouted as I grabbed the reins of Garth's horse and brought the animal under control. "Just hang on to the pommel with both hands! We're going down the other side of the mountain! When we head down, let go of the pommel, grab the edges of the saddle, and lean back as far as you can! The horse will take care of the rest!"
Garth released his grip on the horse's neck and grabbed the saddle pommel. Gripping the reins of my horse with one hand and the reins of Garth's horse with the other, I urged my mount forward, out of the trees and onto the bare ground of the mountain's crest. There were perhaps three hundred and fifty yards of open ground to cover before we reached what I remembered to be a reasonably negotiable slope down the other side, and now I spurred my horse forward at a full gallop. The helicopter followed directly overhead, one searchlight turned downward and bathing us in a moving pool of bright white light. I wouldn't hear the report of a gun over the deafening roar of the helicopter rotors, but I cringed as I expected at any moment to feel a bullet ripping into my back. It didn't come, perhaps because the angle was bad, or the pilot figured he had plenty of time to run us down and give his gunner a better shot. We reached the spot I had been riding for, a rocky but negotiable dry wash that had been carved out by spring water.
I couldn't control my mount and lead Garth's at the same time, and it would have been dangerous for his horse if I tried to do so. I pulled the second horse after me over the crest and into the wash until it had reached a point of no return, then flung away the reins and shouted over my shoulder, "Here we go, Duke! Lean way back and hang on!"
I relaxed my horse's reins and leaned back, posting in the stirrups and letting my mount pick its way between and over rocks and hard-baked rills. We were over a quarter of the way down the mountainside, still with no shots being fired, when I began to think we actually might make it to the cover of a copse of trees a hundred yards further down, where we would be shielded from view and the decline was less steep. Then I sensed, rather than heard, Garth's horse stumble and go down, and my brother soared, none too elegantly, over my head and landed on his back in a clump of thorn bushes growing out of the right wall of the wash. His horse recovered, shot past me, and disappeared into the trees below.
I reined in my horse, jumped to the ground, and scrambled up the bank of the wash to the clump of thorn bushes where Garth, dazed and struggling feebly, was entangled. I drew my Beretta and fired blindly at the white light and roaring cascade of sound above my head, groping through the cloud of dust thrown up until my fingers wrapped around Garth's shirt. Still firing my gun overhead, I pulled with the other hand, trying to help Garth out of the bushes.
"Mongo, get out!"
"You get out of the fucking bushes! Come on!"
"I'm stuck! It's important that one of us get away from here! Go!"
"It's important to me that both of us get away from here! Come on, goddamn it!"
I emptied my gun and stuck it back into my shoulder holster, then worked my way deeper into the thick vegetation. I grabbed Garth's shirt front with both hands, dug my heels into the rocky soil, and tugged. Finally he broke free, and we both tumbled back down the wall of the wash to the bottom. I was reaching for my horse's reins when suddenly a net dropped down through the cloud of dust and settled over both of us. Cursing mightily, I struggled in the net. I managed to get the Seecamp out of my ankle holster, but it was a wasted effort. I felt a sharp, burning sensation in my right shoulder-not the smashing, tearing impact of a bullet, but something more along the lines of a wasp sting. I turned my head, saw a dart sticking out of my flesh near the collarbone.