George came down the trail. He was quiet; he moved slowly. I would never have seen him if I hadn’t been expecting him. He came abreast of me and stopped.
Animals have an instinct that tells them when an enemy is near. So does man. George sensed something, but he thought I was in front of him somewhere in the clearing.
He moved forward two steps more, and I pulled the rawhide lacing. The slipknot pulled free. The sapling whipped erect with a swoosh of branches in front of his face. George recoiled from what he thought was an attack.
Under the cover of the noise, I leaped to my feet. From behind I flipped the loop of the second rawhide lacing over his head and around his neck. The garrote was effectively deadly. It cut off the sound that tried to burst from his throat. Clawing desperately with his fingers at the leather thong that bit mercilessly into his flesh, he flung the M-14 away from him in a spastic jerk. The carbine landed somewhere deep in the brush. I maintained the pressure. George had no chance at all, but then he would have given me none, either. When I lowered him to the ground, the stench let loose from his uncontrolled sphincter muscle filled the air.
I tried to find the carbine, but it was no use. It would have taken me all night, and time was my enemy. Charlie and his deadly sniperscope were next, and all I had were two rawhide laces. I knew I couldn’t pull the same trick on Charlie. He had a sniperscope to look through. The closest I could get to him might be ten or twenty yards — if I were lucky.
Which meant that I wouldn’t be able to use the garrote again, or Hugo.
Or could I? The thought intrigued me.
I moved off the trail, going deep into the underbrush. My eyes had become almost totally accustomed to the darkness. The starlight gave me more than enough light. I found what I was looking for. It took me a few moments to cut down a six-foot length of supple branch about as thick around as my wrist. I trimmed it. Hugo’s sharp blade made the work go fast. I cut away the thin bark, except for the center section, where I had to be sure my grip wouldn’t slip. Tapering the branch, I cut a groove in each end. The branch was so thick I had to use all my strength to bend it into an arc. I took a rawhide lace and fastened it to each notched end, and when I was finished I had a rough but highly effective bow!
The arrow took me a little longer to make. I had to find a branch that was straight enough. When I’d found one suitable, I trimmed it clean, cutting off one end squarely and then carving a vee into it to take the rawhide bowstring. I had no vanes to make it fly without a wobble, but then vanes are needed only if you’re shooting over a considerable distance. I’d be only a few yards away — that is, if I got a chance to use it at all!
Hugo was my arrowhead. With part of the second lace, I bound the stiletto to the end of the crude arrow. When I was through, what I had, in effect, was a crossbow bolt that would be propelled by a version of the English longbow! The short pull required almost every ounce of my strength, but it would hurl the arrow with force enough to penetrate two inches of lumber!
I wanted to test the rig to see how it would shoot, but that was impossible. I had to go after George hoping the makeshift weapon would do its job. Arrow notched into the bow, I stalked down the narrow trail of that New England undergrowth. Overhead the sky was lighter than the darkness of the forest. The trees were black hulks in the night.
I finally found him. A sniperscope is an unwieldy weapon at best. I heard him thrashing around with the gun in his hand, striking low-hanging branches with the barrel as. he swept the scope from side to side, using it as an invisible searchlight to scan the forest for me.
I sank down beside the trail and waited. If he spotted me first with that damned beam, I was dead. No matter how you looked at it, all the advantages were his.
George came down the trail, the rifle held to his shoulder, his eye against the sight of the scope, using it as a flashlight. He would take a few steps, stop, sweep the path ahead of him and then take another few steps. I lay burrowed in the thick undergrowth beside the trail and didn’t move a muscle. An ant crawled across my face. It explored my lips. I still didn’t move. The ant moved over my upper lip and then into my nostril. The tickling sensation was overwhelming. I used all my self-control not to sneeze.
George came closer. He stopped only inches away from my head. I blanked out my mind, The ant bit. Fire raced through my nostril. And I took it. The techniques of yoga concentration enabled me to place myself away from my body. The itches and pain my body felt had nothing to do with me. I was somewhere else.
George took three more paces down the trail, and I came back to my body, rising silently to my feet. With every ounce of strength I had, I drew back on the bowstring. The heavy, crudely carved branch reluctantly bent into an arc until the haft of the stiletto was even with the handgrip.
The branch creaked slightly as it bent, and George spun around, aiming the rifle at me. I released the bowstring at almost the exact instant he pulled the trigger.
The short, heavy crossbow bolt whipped through the few yards that separated us. The explosion from George’s gun blasted my ears. There was a burning sensation along my left shoulder, and then, almost in slow motion, George let the heavy sniperscope rifle fall from his hands. His knees crumpled. He collapsed awkwardly on the trail, both hands fastened around the shaft of the arrow.
Hugo had been driven into his chest the complete length of the slender blade. If the haft of the knife hadn’t prevented it, the arrow would have gone completely through him!
I went over to George and took the rifle. Dismantling the scope from the weapon, I took it and the battery pack from his body and set off back through the woods.
Now the advantage was mine. Now I had no trouble in spotting where their men were and avoiding them easily. I made my way to the main road, skirting the last of their flankers.
It was almost dawn before I reached Lenox on foot. I knew that Julie must have been waiting impatiently for me to return and that the strain on her nerves must have been brutal. I wanted to take her in my arms and let her know that I was safe. I wanted a hot bath and a dressing put on the shallow flesh wound of my left arm.
In the darkness of pre-dawn, I came tiredly up the twisting, narrow village streets of Lenox. The Volks was parked about fifty yards from the inn, under a street lamp. Curiously I peered into it as I passed. And stopped.
Julie was sitting in the driver’s seat, her head thrown back against the headrest as if she had fallen asleep.
But she hadn’t. Someone had broken her neck, and she was dead.
Chapter Twelve
Pittsfield was too close. I drove the Volks south out of Lenox to Monterey, took Route 23 to Otis, Route 8 to New Boston and, finally, Route 57 through Granville and Southwick. They’re all country roads. At that hour of the night there was no traffic on them.
Julie was my silent companion for the first part of the trip. Silent and dead. Between Otis and New Boston, I found a deserted stretch of road, pulled over and took her from the car. I propped her against a tree where she would be found soon and continued my lonely journey. Now there was more driving me on than just my duty to AXE. There was more than just a feeling of responsibility not to let Bradford — or whatever his true Russian name was — get away with the Kremlin plot. From the time I found Julie dead in the Volks, I began to burn with an intense, personal hatred for the man. From that moment on, my mission was revenge and retribution!