A shot rang out and Hauer ducked. He held himself still for several minutes, worried that he had miscalculated his quarry. Was he in Cole’s sights even now? He hadn’t heard a bullet come anywhere near him. Maybe it had been a random shot intended to slow him down — which it had.
“Nice try,” he admitted. “Very smart. But it is not enough to stop me.”
Satisfied that Cole did not have him in his crosshairs, after all, Hauer continued up the slope. His breathing came heavily — drinking vodka and chasing whores were not exactly the best activities for staying in shape at his age. He took his time, reading the landscape as he went.
He had spent many of the intervening years hunting with other members of the Stasi and had sharpened his tracking skills as a result.
Here and there, the bed of leaves and pine needles was disturbed, indicating that his quarry had passed this way. He spotted broken twigs left in the wake of their passage.
Finally, he saw spots of blood, rich and dark. So, his bullet had found its mark.
He squatted down and touched a spot of blood, wetting his fingertip and then rubbing the blood between his fingers.
“I am coming to put you out of your misery, Hillbilly!” he shouted.
The hills echoed back his words, but there was no answer.
Hauer shrugged and kept moving. Slowly, laboriously, he followed the blood trail and the footsteps on the soft carpet of the forest. Where the ground grew rocky, he saw places where the rocks had been disturbed. A couple of hours passed. Hauer sat down and ate a candy bar, wished for a hot cup of coffee, rested for a few minutes, and then kept going.
Finally, he reached the summit.
The view was stunning. Even someone like The Butcher could admit to the natural beauty of the place. He saw deep forests, tall pines mixed with the fiery colors of autumn leaves. No buildings. No roads. No signs of civilization at all, in fact, except a single column of woodsmoke that appeared to be several miles distant. The days were so short this time of year that the sun was already slipping low in the sky. The mountain winter was just around the corner.
He studied the trail leading down the other side of the summit. What was down there? More rocks, more forest. Had Cole gone that way? Hauer was doubtful. The only real chance Cole had was to get down to the valley again and look for the trail out. That Hillbilly was clever — it would be just like him to have left a false trail, and then doubled back.
“Where have you gone, little pigs?” Hauer wondered aloud.
After another moment of thought, he turned and headed back down the slope, returning toward the valley, confident that Cole was trying to give him the slip.
But not for long.
Back at the lodge, Hans was worried. When his new friend, Cole, and Cole’s grandson had not returned with the other hunters at nightfall, he had expressed concern.
“They have gone back to Munich,” the hunt master explained, holding up a walkie talkie by way of proof. “Hauer radioed me to say that they’d had enough and that he was driving the American and his grandson back to the city.”
“They did not tell me,” Hans said. “I’m the one who drove them here.”
The hunt master shrugged. He looked toward his companions, gathered around a fire and drinking schnapps. He seemed eager to join them, rather than to debate with Hans. “What can I tell you? That is all I know.”
“We should call the authorities.”
The hunt master groaned. “Oh, we don’t need them here! They will just have us answering questions all night, when we should be sitting by the fire drinking schnapps. If your friends were driving back to Munich, they won’t get there until much later tonight. Why don’t you wait until tomorrow morning and give them a call? I am sure that they will explain everything then.”
The hunt master gave Hans a reassuring pat on the shoulder, then moved toward the ring of celebratory hunters. Someone passed him a glass of schnapps.
Angela had been nearby, listening in. “Do you think they really went back to Munich.”
“No, I do not.”
“Neither do I,” she said. “We should go have a look at their room.”
The limited accommodations at the lodge had required that the grandfather and grandson share a room in the converted stable. However, calling it a stable was something of a misnomer because the building had been completely renovated to match the lodge in comforts. The door to the Americans’ guest room was not even locked. Not that there was anything of value in it, other than clothes. Pajama bottoms, two scattered socks, and some underwear lay on the floor near Danny’s unmade bed, evidence that he had dressed in a hurry to go hunting, and a suitcase full of disheveled clothing lay open on top of the covers. Cole’s side of the room had a military precision about it, with the bed neatly made.
“Your boyfriend is a slob,” Hans said, smiling. The situation might be serious, but he could not resist teasing his grand-niece.
“Uncle Hans, he is not my boyfriend!”
“Hmm,” he said. “Are you so sure about that?”
Angela made an exasperated sound in response.
“All their things are here,” Hans said. “It does not make sense that they left. I don’t trust that Hauer one bit. He is up to something.”
“We need to go look for them,” Angela said. “Maybe they need help. Maybe they are hurt. We need to go right now.”
Hans shook his head. “It is dark out. What would you and I do, an old man and a city girl?”
Angela pouted. “We must do something! I am worried about Danny!”
“I already expressed my concerns to the hunt master. Whatever else we do will have to wait for morning.”
“We can’t wait that long!”
Hans thought about it, knowing his grand-niece was right. The question was, what could they do?
Then he remembered the business card in his billfold. He took it out. On it was the telephone number for the retired American officer who had helped to organize the WWII museum.
“Angela, we must find a phone. We will call Colonel Mulholland. He will know what to do.”
Miles away, Cole and Danny were preparing for another night in the forest. It was clear and cold. Through a gap in the treetops, Cole could see the stars overhead, sparkling bright. He had spent a lifetime looking at those stars. They felt like old friends.
Danny surprised him by saying, “Look, there’s Orion.” He pointed up at the three stars that made up The Hunter’s belt.
“Huh, I reckon somebody was paying attention when I taught him the stars, after all.”
“Sure, Pa Cole. I know all the stars.” He pointed. “There’s Pegasus. There’s Taurus. The Bull.”
While their situation remained desperate, they were both in better spirits. They had built a small fire and roasted some of the pork, and both of them had eaten their fill.
While the fire had been a way of thumbing his nose at Hauer, Cole wasn’t foolish enough to sleep right beside it. Instead, they had made their makeshift camp about one hundred feet away. They had left a couple of bundles of branches on the ground near the fire so that from a distance the bundles would resemble sleeping bodies.
Cole was close enough that he would see Hauer if The Butcher entered the circle of firelight. If that was the case, then Cole planned to shoot him. In part, Cole had broken every rule for stealth and built the fire because he now suspected that it wouldn’t be Hauer’s style to ambush them in the night, or even to pick them off from the darkness. That was outside the rules of the strange game that they were playing. No, he suspected that Hauer would want Cole to see what was coming. He would want to savor his final victory. Hauer would want to gloat. With no sign that help was on its way, Hauer wasn’t in any rush to finish them off.