State of Threat (State of Arizona Book 2)

by Doug Ball

  “One more quick try just to satisfy me, please.”

  Tan looked around the area while Abdul started doing a circle a hundred feet from the center of the launch site trying to find tracks leaving just like the hero of a Louis L’Amour book he read in prison. A guardsman standing on a large rock out a bit further yelled, “The tracks end here.”

  Abdul followed a set of tracks and sure enough they ended at the base of the rock the trooper was standing on.

  The soldier added, “This begins a massive pile of rocks that goes on down into that ravine, or small canyon, and continues for a good mile out the other side. We figure he got up on this rock and jumped from rock to rock to get out of here. The jumble of rocks goes for at least two miles and spreads out as it goes. We have a man down there walking the edge.”

  “Gotta be some sand in the bottom of this ravine. No tracks in that?”

  “Not that we found. You’re welcome to look. All of us hopped from rock to rock so there are none of our tracks down there. The Lieutenant that was wounded did walk down there and had to turn back. We found that set. He walked in and then, for some reason, turned and ran. I would guess he didn’t want to get on top of the rocks as he was coming up on the target.”

  “That don’t sound cool. Suggestions?”

  “None. Except keep looking. Man doesn’t just disappear.”

  Abdul asked himself, ‘Where would I go if I wanted outta here fast and unseen?’

  He didn’t get an answer.

  Engineers dangled on ropes working both sides of the dam, looked for anything that might tell them if, what, and how bad the damage was to the dam. The west facing, downstream side of the dam slowly dried in the warm afternoon sun. News helicopters hovered and circled overhead as the crowds at both ends of the dam grew. The scene was surreal when one reporter reported, “This dam could let go at any minute. Men and women are putting their lives on the line to check out the dam. I just saw a pair of Sheriff’s Department divers go in the water to check for damage buried by the lake. Each of them had two stout ropes, tended by two men each, tied around their bodies. None of the safety precautions I can see needed here are going to do one lick of good if that dam goes.”

  Adam Usafi listened to the sounds coming from above the trap door to his spider hole as he allowed himself to feel the effects of the wine and thought about how well he had planned this. There were enough groceries in the hole with him to last for five or six days if need be. The hole reached back under a boulder, which allowed him to lay down and stretch out. The soft fleece blanket he had purchased in Prescott felt like the soft hands of a woman as he slowly closed his eyes in sleep. He had enough excitement for one day.

  Tan walked around the perimeter of the launch site looking into all that was left behind. In the excitement he had forgotten this was a crime scene. One quick call and the CSI folks were on their way. A second call got the Governor and the DPS Director up to speed. A few moments on the radio and all other personnel were banned from the site and no more helicopters would be landing or offloading above the site, too many things were blown around already. Then he called his wife and reassured her that he was safe and working hard to make sure she and the kids remained safe.

  Abdul walked up just as Tan hung up. “They so many tracks around this place, ain’t no way you can track anybody. The sneaker tracks end at that boulder field. Combat boots been everywhere. I done backtracked the two wounded soldiers to their vehicle. Moved it outta da way so’s the road was clear. They gonna need at least a back hoe to clear the blockage on the two rut comin’ in here.”

  Tan just looked at him.

  “What?” Abdul could not read his expression.

  Tan said, “I will get, stop, kill this man, one of those, no matter how long it takes. That man put my family in danger and many others in danger. He will be stopped, and if I’m lucky and good at my job, I will be the one to stop him, once and for all. Low life scumbag of a man wages war like this. I will take it to him.”

  “How we gonna do dat, Boss?”

  “Let’s think. He pulled in the tribes against the state and when the showdown came along, he ducked out. One of the Indians we took into custody said that Usafi was there just as the battle for the SnowBowl started. Another combatant we got that day said Usafi was actually shooting at the Guard unit coming down the hill into the parking lot. How would he get out?”

  “You don’t ask no easy ones, Boss.” Abdul sat on a rock. “Only way I can think of is from a movie I watched once about a unit trapped on a hillside during the Korean War. Their boss was a man knew a buncha history and stuff like dat. He made his guys each dig a hole and get in it. Then they shoveled the dirt back in and placed their ponchos over the hole and cover it with dirt. The bad guys dey come up and find nobody there. After the bad guys leave, the boss he stick his head out of his hole under a bush and tell them all to come out.”

  Tan spun around and looked at Abdul, “That’s it,” he shouted, “Spider holes. Just like the Viet Cong did in Viet Nam. Now where did those sneaker tracks end?”

  “Right this way, Boss.”

  Tan called the others to him. After explaining it all to them, and the idea of a spider hole, he established a perimeter watch, using the senior Sergeant to assign the Guard troops and maintain alertness. He wanted men all around the boulder field so no one could leave the area without being seen. When those sentries were in place, Tan, Abdul, and two of the guard started stomping through every flat spot they could find where a spider hole could be dug, which meant in the bottoms between boulders.

  The Governor put everyone on standby and a hold on the evacuation.

  The CSI van and trailer pulled up to the roadblock an hour before sundown. Five men from the Gila County road crews were just finishing clearing the blockage. One of the road crew ran down to meet the van and make them wait in a wide spot so they could get the county equipment out without having to get into the crime scene. “Only gonna be about ten minutes. Wait here until we’re past and then go on it. Ain’t far from here.”

  “Gotcha,” the CSI driver said.

  Tan called for an infrared scan of the boulder field and the scanning crew reported from the chopper they were riding in that the boulders gave off too much heat to get any worthwhile readings.

  “How long after sundown?”

  “Three or four hours at least, and then only if the spot we’re looking for is pretty warm. It would need to be at least ten degrees hotter than the surrounding rocks for us to pull it out of the readings.”

  “Thanks,” Tan replied, “I’ll call if you’re still needed that late.”

  “Good luck.”

  Another group of Guardsmen arrived in a truck. Tan used them to tighten the noose around the area. “You got the idea? No one slack off. We keep this man confined in this area and eventually he dies or gives up. He’s gutsy enough to try to escape so don’t slack off. Please don’t slack off. I don’t want any more dead. Any questions?”

  No one spoke up or moved a hand to indicate a question might be there.

  “Move out. Eat where you are. Smoke. Whatever. Just stay alert. If he pops up, offer him a chance to surrender. If he does not surrender immediately, shoot to kill.”

  “Sounds like some of the commands my father talked of from his days in Nam,” said a Staff Sergeant.

  “I remember the movie, “Patton,” where he said make the other guy die for his country,” Tan replied.

  One by one the men hiked to their assigned spots and most of them ended up perched on top of a boulder where they had a better field of view.

  Night fell like a ton of soot on the scene around the launch area and still no terrorist. Thirty men watched from their perches around the boulder field while another twenty stomped in pairs through the boulders trying to make the sound of the ground tell them where Usafi was buried. Tan and Abdul stopped their search for an MRE supper during the short time it was twilight.

  Supper done, CSI finished wit
h all there was to see and gone, troops standing around doing nothing much, and the frustration level at high, Tan walked around the boulder field cautioning troops to stay alert and assigning others to make pairs of watchers for safety.

  Ten PM rolled around and nothing.

  Tan called in the chopper with the infrared scanning device.

  Nothing, the rocks were still too warm.

  18

  Unseen by any of the watchers, a circle of dirt moved upward a few inches. Usafi eased a listening device out the crack and listened. Leaving the device outside the cover of his hole and the cord leading in to his earphones, he sat back and listened.

  After ten minutes, no sounds of the searchers hit his ears. He wondered what was going on. Did they take the stuff and leave? Did they leave sentries behind? If so, where were they? Should he wait longer?

  He did not want to stay, but was it safe to move out of the hole? He started to lift the lid higher than before to do a visual. The field of view was in one direction, but what he could not see was blocked by two large boulders anyhow.

  He heard the chopper.

  The lid went down slowly.

  Tan was standing not a hundred yards from the spider hole, but even if he knew where it was it would take long minutes to get to it due to the jumble of boulders and drifts of sand between them.

  “Hey, Abdul. How long would it take to bulldoze this place trapping anyone in there underground?”

  “Couple of weeks with three or four dozers, Boss. That aint’ gonna work and you know that.”

  “Yeah, just thinking out loud.”

  The General came and went, leaving fifty men in Tan’s charge with a Master Sergeant to assist.

  “Good hunting,” he shouted as he was moving out.

  Tan replied, “I’m not sure I have the right license.”

  “He will not get past my people.”

  Tan said, “I hope not.”

  Tan looked at the MSgt, “We got enough men to surround this place and walk inward like beaters on a tiger hunt?”

  “There would be some holes, serious holes, but if we kept, say 10 men, lookouts on the high spots most of those would be covered if someone tried to leave the area after the line passed by their hidey hole.”

  Tan thought for awhile, “If we don’t have him by sun up, we’ll try that.”

  “I agree, Mr. Brown, I agree. By sun up, these men will be exhausted and I’m not sure we have relief personnel available.”

  “Great. So, as soon as it’s light enough to see we start the tiger hunt.”

  Adam Usafi lifted the lid high enough for him to see all there was to see except for directly over his head. A mirror on a long handle eased out of the hole and gave him a look back and up from the spider hole. All was clear. “Three AM is a great time for a walk,” he whispered to himself.

  The lid came off quietly, so quietly that a man less than 50 feet away did not hear the whisper of sand draining into the hole.

  As he moved slowly out into the open space between the rocks where the Lieutenant had stopped in his move toward the launch site, Usafi tied his sticky rubber soled approach shoes as tight as was comfortable, but secure on his feet, buttoned up his dull black soft canvas jacket, and checked his gun and knife in position. He placed the lid back on the hole and started to move with silence toward the eastern border of the boulder field. It was the closest walk to a road and the vehicle he had stashed, a light motorcycle capable of going almost anywhere, a fact he had proven to himself over two months ago when he purchased it and the stashed it behind a wall of rock at the base of a cliff not a mile away.

  Three boulders down the little gully following the footprints of the Lieutenant, Usafi stopped. Someone had coughed. Moving quickly to the center of a trio of large boulders and hunkering beneath the largest overhang he watched as a man in camo dropped into the gully ten feet down from Usafi and stopped. The man unbuttoned the trousers and relieved himself.

  Usafi moved until he was directly behind the man. As the Guardsman began shaking the last drops loose, Adam Usafi grabbed his head and with a quick, long practiced move, broke the man’s neck and eased his body to the sand. Now he had a uniform, an M4, a Beretta, and a hand held radio set to the searcher’s frequency.

  Adam Usafi grinned a malevolent grin as he stripped the dead man and changed into the attire of a Sergeant of the Arizona National Guard. Now all he had to do was walk out of here eastward to his motorcycle. His virgins would stay virgins in Paradise for a while longer.

  The terrorist backtracked the Lieutenant’s tracks until they were buried in the searchers’ tracks. At which point he moved into the open after carefully checking to see where the nearest sentry was standing. With one sentry a hundred feet to his left and another over a hundred yards to his right, he moved to the right atop the rocks, being careful not to draw any more attention to himself than was unavoidable.

  The man behind him said, “Feel better now?”

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  “We’ll be beginning the squeeze in about two hours, stay alert.”

  “Gotcha.” Usafi was mumbling his replies hoping it would disguise his voice enough.

  Tan walked around the perimeter of the boulder field talking with each of the posted men and women. Each one seemed as alert as could be expected under the circumstances and was eager to get the hunt over with. A few of the pairs had decided that one could watch while the other moved into the boulders and slept or searched a bit. Other pairs had spread out closing gaps near them. Most of the pairs were within fifty feet of each other chatting and joking to keep each other awake and alert. Tan talked with them all.

  Usafi saw the sentries turning to chat with someone on the ground or out of sight behind boulders and once in a while could see the bare headed man in civvies walking between the outposts. It took only minutes for him to determine that Tan was moving around the exterior of the hunt area and would be at his location shortly. Once he passed the large jumble of boulders to his right a couple hundred feet, Usafi would be in plain sight. The realization that this was the man they called Tan set his teeth on edge.

  This man had thwarted his attempt to kill both hunters at the motel in Flagstaff. Tan had walked right by him in the parking lot of the IHOP as he joined the DPS Sergeant for lunch the first time. He had been there when Usafi and the Chief checked out the motel and then was not there when the Indians kicked the door in and killed the DPS officer. Usafi had seen him at Two Guns from his hiding place across the canyon the time the stupid woman should have taken him out with the bomb she left behind in Leupp. He saved the DPS officers life when Usafi blew the Highway Patrolman’s house to bits. He led a component of the troops attacking the well-armed Indians at the Snow Bowl. Now he was here.

  Usafi looked around. No one was looking his way. He slid off the rock toward the open country and moved toward some trees in the distance unbuttoning his fly like he was going to water the trees, again.

  Behind him one of the other lookouts said, “I told you not to eat as much as you did. The trots will get you every time with those Country Captain Chicken MRE’s and you had to eat two of them. Hope you saved the TP packet.” Laughter followed from three or four mouths.

  He just waved as he ducked between two trees.

  Free, he was free. The ground fell before him. They would not see that he kept going. Laughter still rang out behind him as others took up the taunt started by the first expert on MRE’s and their effects on the human body.

  He ran.

  Tan came up to the laughter. “What’s up?”

  They told him. He started to chuckle with them, but stopped. “Are you sure that’s a guardsman?”

  “Should be. He took a leak not twenty minutes ago and has been there ever since.”

  “Where’d he take a leak?”

  “In the boulders over there.”

  Tan ran for the indicated spot and yelled, “Here?”

  “Yeah, he went in there.”


  A quick look with his flash light showed that the tracks in were different that the tracks out.

  Tan turned and ran, calling for a couple of the men to follow him and called others to fill in the gaps.

  Passing through the trees he could hear a man stumbling down the slope in the dark. Taking his flashlight in his left hand and holding it as far from his body as he could, he ran down the slope after the terrorist, he was sure it was Usafi. Not a doubt in his mind caused him to run faster than was prudent, but somehow he stayed on his feet.

  The man ahead of him stumbled and fell. Stopped, he looked back, lifted the M4, sighted on the light, and fired.

  Tan felt a bullet go whizzing past his hand and turned off the light. On the radio he said, “Target is moving east from the boulder field. It is our terrorist. Armed and dangerous. Send a car around to patrol the road.” He reached into his pocket to check that his phone was on. He yelled into the radio again, “Track me on the GPS feature of my phone. Have the car keep as close to me as possible.”

  “Yes, Sir,” was the response.

  He ran. Leaping brush and dodging cactus brought the pain back to his leg. He buried the pain deep inside and kept running. From the sound of the stumbling man ahead of him he was closing the gap, until all was quiet.

  He stopped, listened.

  Nothing.

  Tan slowly moved forward, straining to hear something, anything.

  A rock rolled ahead and to the left.

  Another.

  Silence.

  A grunt.

  A small engine roared to life.

  Tan ran toward the noise, stopping only when a small motorcycle emerged from the dark with all lights blazing a hundred feet in front of him. The .45 slowly came up as his tired body put everything behind lifting the weight of the gun. Tan fired once, twice, and the slide locked back. By the time he had reloaded, the bike was around the edge and nothing indicated its presence except noise that was rapidly fading.