"How shall I get out of here. And where will I meet you?"
"I would advise staying right here for ten minutes or until you hear a gunshot, whichever happens first. Best to get out of here when they're distracted. And they'll be distracted."
A dark look crossed her face.
"I'm going to do it without killing anybody," he added, attempting to reassure her. "I need his knife, his radio card, and his watch."
She slapped the items into his hand with a concerned frown.
"Why?"
Kier handed her Miller's silenced pistol after chambering a round. "Safety is off. How about I borrow yours?"
Jessie now pointed both pistols at their prisoner as if she didn't trust just one and told him to roll onto his belly. Then, holstering her own pistol and keeping the silenced weapon, she unlocked the cuffs.
"Lie on your gut with your arms around that tree."
He cursed elaborately as she fastened his wrists on the side of the tree opposite his cheek, which was now pressed against the rough bark.
"I love you too, sweetie," she whispered in his ear.
The other man, the one called Jones, had completely disappeared. Circling around, Kier supposed. Jones would be looking for tracks. Soon he would discover their trail. Their tracks would be visible for a good hour or so before they became misshapen impressions that only a careful eye would detect.
Kier took her aside. "You saw the bio-packs in the tail section. It could be-"
"We might have a disease. Or several diseases. I know, I know."
"If we've been exposed to something dangerous-"
"I won't go near Claudie or the kids."
"Or anyone else."
"I understand contagious."
"We don't have time to go all through this. You've got to keep Miller cuffed and backtrack his trail so you aren't obvious. I'm sure you'll be angling sharply away from Claudie's. Eventually, you should come to the stream. Turn and head down it. Stay in the water and don't leave a single track. You'll come to the bridge at Claudie's driveway and our vehicles. Don't wait for me. Hopefully, all these soldiers will be converging on the plane. Give Claudie and the kids the truck. Take the Volvo and go as far as you can to the north, away from Johnson City. They won't expect that."
"Where are you going?"
"After you-as soon as I can. I'll find something to drive." Then, carrying the M-16 across his chest just as Miller had done, Kier trotted away with more misgivings than he let show.
He was a healer trying to do a warrior's job at a time when he had hoped the world had outgrown warriors.
Chapter 5
To catch a rabbit watch his hole, not his track.
" Stubborn damned Indian."
Jessie watched him run, marveling at the way he let the brush slip past him with long sure strides, even in the snow. Except for the obvious trail in the drifted mounds, he was as elusive as a wild creature in the forest gloom. He disappeared from her sight after running just forty or fifty feet.
She shuddered with cold, then fear. Putting together all that she had heard, and the little that she had seen, the man was the oddest mixture of scientist, mystic, and naturalist that she had ever met. Unfortunate that he lacked so in people skills.
Claudie said that when Kier was young he turned wild for a short time, running with a group of Indian radicals who undertook the survivalist way of life. They were socially aloof, a law unto themselves, fascinated with guns and knives and living off the land. They even plotted to take over the county seat, but it never got that far, despite the fact that Kier and his friends had obtained a frightening array of military hardware. Kier's rebellious phase had something to do with his father's death years earlier, but Claudie never understood the details. Fortunately, before Kier and his band did any irreversible damage, Kier's grandfather convinced him to break away from the group. If Claudie was to be believed, the only vestige of that experience that lasted was Kier's practice of the martial arts.
Beneath the forest canopy it was almost dark, the waning light turning everything a somber gray, which would linger in deathly, freezing, colorless, joyless tones. A purgatory if ever there was one, she thought, until the sun went down and it turned to hell.
Letting memory comfort her, she could almost feel her gray cashmere sweater, see the pearls that lay across it, smell the coffee, feel a yellow pad under her hand, and hear the soft hum of her computer, as soothing as a mother's heartbeat. She lived in seventy degrees, with carpets and Coke machines, bottled water, potpourri air freshener, ionizing filters, the gentle humor of intelligent colleagues, great challenges, but no danger. This freezing forest was not her world.
There were of course things that seemed worse than physical danger. Take Frank, her boss. A man you thought you could respect, a strong guy, a guy who by some miracle seemingly hadn't let the system, or criminals, steal his sensitivity. A man who was clever by anybody's definition, and wise about pain and cynicism and people, beauracratic or otherwise. Someone you could trust-someone she had trusted. Someone so smooth that he could explain how it was that he could have adulterous sex with another Bureau employee and still be the pillar of the office. Someone who could promise Gail marriage with his blue eyes brimming with sincerity-just before leaving on a trip for Hawaii with his wife.
The beauty of this hellish forest was that she didn't need to think about Frank and his threats to end her career-there was enough happening here without digging up that skeleton and worrying it some more. In fact, she'd stay alive longer if she dropped it, before she got to the really horrible part. Before she started in on all the whys. Why did her best friend behave so stupidly? How could Frank be so evil? Why did I have to discover it? And she slogged on.
Glancing back at Miller, she wondered what his name really was, where he came from, and what his mother was thinking at this moment. Did he believe he would die? For the second time in her life she thought she might.
One thing she knew for sure. She had to get to a phone and contact law enforcement right away, before anything worse happened to her sister, the boys, or even Kier, a man who might start a small war. In addition, there was the threat of an epidemic of some sort from that disease menagerie in the plane.
Only two hundred feet from where he left Jessie the ground became firmer. Sword fern gave way to bracken fern, like miniature tree stems with fronds atop, growing in every little opening, interrupted by dense clumps of Scotch broom and manzanita. Kier ran in a great arc, staying low, parting foliage by angling himself, letting his shoulders shrug off the clingy tendrils. Ahead a natural opening, dominated by grasses, left a blanket of snow that showed their old tracks like soil on white satin.
Kier knew that he needed to get close-very close-before Jones saw him. With luck, the man would believe he was Miller. Jones stood only a few feet from the tracks left by Kier and Jessie. Running through a last cluster of madrone, Kier kept low, hoping Jones wouldn't look his way. Sixty feet to go. The man seemed occupied with the traces of Kier's earlier passage. He turned as if to follow the imprints in the snow.
Uh-oh. Jones was using his radio again. Already it might be too late.
Kier bounded the last three steps straight at Jones. The man turned, pointing his gun. Kier willed himself to keep the automatic across his chest, his eyes riveted to the black, round bore of Jones's M-16. Jones stared, cocking his head.
He's trying to decide. He's spooked.
Kier swung the butt of his rifle at Jones's jaw. Jones fired. The rifle butt connected with a firm thud as, missing Kier by inches, the shot echoed through the forest, shockingly loud. Kier cringed, knowing the sound would make things infinitely more complicated. Even so, he was sure Jones had not got a good look at his face, obscured as it was by the fur-lined hood under the helmet.