Cutter stopped them and made hand motions. Ross took his two men into the forest and led the way with great caution, well back below the perimeter of the yard; only now and then could he catch a wink of the lamps. The footing was soft and quiet-a half-rotted carpet of needles. He touched one of the FBI men in the chest and pointed; the FBI man nodded and moved uphill and Ross waited until the man blended into the darkness. Then he took his remaining companion on with him, crossed another seventy-five yards and left the man posted in the trees and continued alone. He keened the night with eyes and ears, breathing silently with his mouth open; he shifted the flare pistol again to his left hand, dried his right hand and brought out his. 38 revolver.
He crossed into a stand of younger growth; there had been a fire here at some time, there were no big trees. Younger growth had sprouted and some of the saplings were ten or twelve feet high, no more. But they were close together and he had to move by inches to avoid sound. Above and to the left he could see the lamps of the house more clearly. Every two or three steps he stopped bolt still to scan the shadows. There was a racket of insects, and he heard water running somewhere-a creek or a river.
He came to an opening that swathed irregularly from left to right. It began above him in a tangle of dead brush and it disappeared below him into heavier forest growth. He knelt and saw that some of the saplings had been sawed off close to the ground. Man-made then. For what purpose?
It was a puzzle he couldn’t solve without more evidence and in any case it probably didn’t matter. He studied it in both directions and then stepped across into the trees beyond and moved on, angling closer toward the house now. Cutter would be some-where not far to his right, having come around the opposite way. This would be about right. He settled down to wait.
He was down on one knee sweeping the yard with his eyes when he heard or felt something but he didn’t have time to move; a hand clutched his mouth and jaw, something rigid jabbed his spine and in his panic he heard a whisper:
“Freeze.”
The man was behind him, it was probably a gun in his back and no amount of hand-to-hand instruction at the academy could prepare a man to counter that. Ross didn’t stir; he hardly even breathed.
“I’m taking my hand off your mouth. Yell and you’re dead. Understand me? Nod your head.”
He nodded his head. The hand dropped away from his jaw and relieved him of his revolver.
He still had the flare pistol. The whisper anticipated him: “Don’t even think about it. Drop it easy, right by your foot.”
He let go. There was the slightest thud when it hit the pine needles.
“Hands behind you now.”
He obeyed, felt something harsh against his wrists and judged it to be heavy wire of some kind-possibly coat-hanger wire. He drew breath but then something plunged into his mouth and he sucked for breath in panic before he realized the man was gagging him with a wad of cloth. He felt a strip of fabric go around his face and then the man was knotting it tight at the back. An abstract corner of his mind appreciated the economy with which it had been done.
He kept in mind what Cutter had said. He’s not a killer. It would be an unfortunate time for Cutter to be wrong.
Then something dropped to the earth; the man stoped to pick up Ross’s flare pistol. He saw two things: Kendig’s profile and a short piece of half-inch galvanized pipe. He’d been bluffed-it hadn’t been a gun at all.
There was the scrape and growl of cars coming up the drive. He felt the pressure of the gun-his own-against his back. The two cars rolled into sight, high beams jiggling across the porch; the cars swung wide and stopped nose-out in tandem and the drivers slid out and hunkered against the fenders; Ross saw Greiff lift the bullhorn. The metallic voice was magnified and unreaclass="underline" “FBI. Come out of the house with your hands empty. You’ve got one minute.”
The FBI man with Greiff lofted a shotgun and cocked its slide with a good deal of racket.
There was a whisper in Ross’s ear: “Where’s Joe Cutter?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
Greiff said on the bullhorn, “Thirty seconds. Then we fill the house with tear gas. Come on out-we’ve got you surrounded.”
“Stay put,” Kendig whispered and Ross thought of making a run for it when the gun pulled away from his back but Kendig was still right there; Ross saw the flare pistol rise past his shoulder. For a moment he thought Kendig was going to crown him with it and he flinched involuntarily but there was no blow. The flare pistol hung in the air above and behind his left shoulder.
“Ten seconds,” Greiff roared.
Simultaneously there was a whump close in Ross’s ear. It took him a moment to realize what it was: Kendig had fired the flare pistol, using Grieff’s racket on the bullhorn to mask the sound of the discharge.
Then the flare ignited. High in the air above the woods across the yard-probably not far from where Cutter was posted. It bathed the trees in harsh brilliant white light and suddenly men were crashing through the forest and Ross heard voices calling across the night in harsh tones… Then Kendig was spinning him with a hard grip on his arm: “Come on-move.” And Ross was being propelled through the saplings, stumbling, yanked upright and pushed on by Kendig’s powerful grip.
He skittered through the trees and suddenly they were out in the open swath he’d discovered before and Kendig was shoving him down the steep pathway; he slid and stumbled his way, eyes on the ground, avoiding stumps, trying to keep his balance with his wrists wired behind him. It was getting hard to breathe through his nose but Kendig kept shoving and yanking. He caromed down into the heavier forest and then Kendig slowed them down and they were walking, following a broad path among the trees, still hearing the hunters baying up at the far side of the yard; he heard Cutter’s distinct voice, louder than the others, calling for order and after that the racket diminished.
Abruptly there was a heavier mass in front of him in the deep forest shadows. He didn’t realize what it was until Kendig pulled the door open and shoved him into the passenger seat of the car. The door slammed against his right elbow and before he had time to react to it Kendig was behind the wheel flicking a switch and pushing a button. The engine roared and immediately they went bucketing forward, crashing through loose brush which he now saw had been piled there on purpose. It was a thin tangle of deadwood and it gave way easily before the thrust of the powerful car; Kendig spun the car onto the blacktop and the rear wheels bounced from side to side before they dug in and propelled the car forward, pinning Ross back painfully against his trapped forearms.
When he twisted around to look back he saw a car pulling out, coming after them-the one Cutter had left at the foot of the driveway.
Then he looked at Kendig. It was the first real look he’d had at his captor.
Kendig was smiling-gently and happily.
The FBI car wasn’t gaining but it was keeping up, maybe two-tenths of a mile behind them; he kept looking back for it and saw it intermittently on the straightaways. This was an old car but it must have had a souped-up mill and heavy-duty suspension for the bends; Kendig was treating it like a sports car and it was holding the road like one. It was all pretty damned neat, Ross conceded.
Kendig curled the car onto a straightaway and then his right hand came across the back of the seat and Ross ducked away but Kendig was only untying the gag and when he realized that he stopped flinching. He spat the gag out and Kendig said, “What are you, FBI or Agency?”