by Joe Gores
His words had struck her in the chest like flung rocks. Oh God! Hal had tried to kill the president! But how had some FBI agent connected her with Hal? And how had this Brendan Thorne ended up with the 4-Runner?
‘Hatfield probably doesn’t know you’re going under the name Kestrel, but by now he’ll have connected up Janet Amore and Janet Roanhorse through that hospital administrator – Werfel – and Doctor Houghton’s office staff. He’ll have pressured Houghton’s people to find out where they sent the bearskin, and he’ll get your address from the post office in Groveland – that’s how I got it. If you want to talk to him instead of me, fine. But you don’t have any other choices.’
‘I can run. I’m good at running.’
‘Not from Hatfield and his men. Not alone.’
She had been hit with a series of stunning blows, but she recovered quickly. She just put out her hand. ‘Gimme the keys.’
‘They’re in the 4-Runner.’
She ran around to the driver’s side and he got in beside her. As she fired up the engine, all she said was, ‘I need some things from the cabin.’
Thorne was filled with admiration. If she had been riding shotgun for him, it was no wonder that Corwin had kept ahead of everybody for so long.
33
Hatfield huddled with his crew near the rent-a-cars at the Pine Mountain Lake Airport. Their breath went up in plumes on the cold, high-country air, so different from LA’s smog-laden offering. Their faces were pinched from pumping adrenaline: they wanted action. It was what they lived for.
‘Okay, guys, listen up. Roanhorse is in her twenties, black and blue, maybe part American Indian. She’s living in a shack off one-twenty. I don’t think she’s armed and dangerous, but I’m not sure. We either take her tonight or stake out her place until she shows. Only I will interrogate her, because only I have been given the guidelines.’
‘We got you, Chief,’ said Eisler.
‘I’ve got directions, I’ll drive the lead car with Franklin and Greene. Perry, you drive the second car. Any questions?’
Baror asked, ‘If she resists, how hard do we push?’
‘No shooting. It’s vital that I get a chance to talk to her. If she’s packing, it’s going to be a woman’s gun. A .380, something like that. Stopping power of a mosquito. You’ve got your flack jackets. And hell, you’re big tough guys.’
He couldn’t tell them Thorne was the real target here, that he wanted Thorne isolated so he could shoot him down. They were loyal to him, but they still were federal agents: they wouldn’t stand still for a flat-out execution. He doubted Thorne could have beaten them to Roanhorse, but he had to brief them on the possibility, however remote.
‘I doubt we’ll get so lucky, but she might be accompanied by the guy we brought back from Kenya, Brendan Thorne. Turns out we might be talking a major terrorist here.’ Franklin and Greene knew Thorne was no terrorist, but not even they knew he had killed Corwin, not Hatfield. ‘If it comes to grabbing Roanhorse or taking down Thorne, take down Thorne.’ He paused. ‘Anybody have anything?’ No one spoke. ‘Then let’s saddle up.’
Baror exclaimed, ‘Hi ho Silver, and away-y-y-y!’
It was their usual battle cry. Grinning, they headed for the cars. The prospect of action, as always, had them hyped.
As she drove, Janet kept casting covert glances over toward Thorne. He reminded her of Hal: much younger, but the same self-containment, the air of physical capability, the hawk eyes.
He asked, ‘Is there a back way to your cabin?’
‘Aren’t you being paranoid? He can’t be here already.’
‘You don’t know Hatfield. I do.’
‘How do you know him?’
‘Later.’
‘How did you get my truck?’
‘Later.’
A mile from the cabin, she swung the vehicle into what looked like a hiking path through the pines. They bounced over roots and rocks, branches banging against the sides of the car.
She was getting edgy. ‘We can circle around and leave the 4-Runner a quarter of a mile from the cabin.’
‘Good. This was your folks’ place, right?’
How did he know that? She said, ‘Yes. My place now,’ then felt compelled to add, ‘The old man got drunk a lot and beat on my mom and my sister and me. Then mom died and it was just Edie and him and me. Edie sneaked away to LA and married a Mexican. Soon as I was eighteen, I took off. Anywhere was gonna be better than here, with him. When he died, the cabin came to me. So I came back. Wood stove, no electricity, but it suits me fine during the warm summer months when I’m a river guide.’
‘How about during the cold winter months?’
She wrenched over the wheel to avoid crushing a fender against a rough-barked Ponderosa.
‘Then I spend most of my time in Reno, dealing blackjack.’
‘Is that where you met Corwin? Reno?’
‘Later,’ she said, aping him.
‘Fair enough.’
She thought, Why did I tell him all that? She had to get away from him as much as she did from Hatfield. It sounded to her like the FBI was after him, too, so after she found out from him where Hal was, she could use him to ditch the feds.
She drove the 4-Runner in a tight circle to face back the way they had come, then cut the engine and lights. They sat in silence until the high country silence that was no silence at all had again closed in around them. A nighthawk gave his cooing chuckle somewhere in the middle distance, throwing its voice, as always, so she couldn’t be sure just where it really was.
Thorne surprised her by quietly opening his door and getting out. He stood beside the 4-Runner and gestured toward the cabin, speaking softly through the open window.
‘It’s too silent over there. No wildlife sounds. Hatfield and his crew have the place staked out, waiting for you or me or maybe both of us. We’ll split up here, I’ll create a diversion. Where do we meet up if things go wrong?’
‘Meet up? Uh – Whiskey River.’ She said it before she thought it through, then knew it was the right thing. At Whiskey River she would be among friends. She wanted to lose Thorne, but she had to find out from him about Hal first. ‘It’s a biker bar in Oakdale, down the hill a ways.’
‘Since the Feebs are here, they’ll have your real name from the Groveland post office.’
‘You’re saying I should lose the 4-Runner?’
‘Yeah. It might lead them to you.’ He tapped a hand lightly on the window frame. ‘Give me five minutes.’
He melted into the undergrowth, as silently as she had ever seen anyone move, even the reservation Indians of her childhood.
Hatfield put his team in place in the woods between the highway and the cabin, took the driveway himself. If the woman was alone, his men would hold her while he waited for Thorne to show. If Thorne didn’t appear, he’d interrogate her alone. Why was Thorne looking for her? How did she fit into things?
If Thorne was with her, he’d let his team take her, then tell Thorne they had to talk. Kill him, make it look to his men like self-defense. He went into a comfortable crouch in a grove of western hemlock beside the track into her cabin, his .40 Glock semiauto resting on his right knee with his forefinger very lightly touching the trigger.
He tensed. Someone was walking cautiously up the gravel drive behind him. How in hell…
Thorne’s voice was a hoarse whisper.
‘Hatfield? Has she shown yet? Do you have her?’
Hatfield came slowly erect, the gun still out of sight beside his thigh, sure that he would be able to see Thorne on the open driveway by the light of the gibbous moon.
‘We’re waiting for her,’ he said in soft tones that wouldn’t carry to his men. ‘I sent you the tickets to Kenya, why in hell did you fake your own death?’
‘Because I’ve seen the inside of a Kenyan prison.’ Thorne gave a low laugh. ‘No thanks. But why did you plan to set me up? I told you I didn’t want credit for Corwin. Told you all I wanted was out. Why di
dn’t you just let me go my way?’
Hatfield peered through pale moonglow at the figure just visible on the far edge of the drive.
‘I was under orders to make sure you stayed out of the country for a few months.’ He was slowly raising his Glock, keeping it where no vagrant ray of moonlight could touch it. ‘Then you’ll be released and you can go back to Tsavo…’
He pumped round after round at the shadowy figure. It was blown sideways, spinning into the thicket of heavy juniper bushes beside the road with a long, loud, strangled cry. A moment of thrashing, then silence. He’d got the fucker! Now, just seconds to cover himself with his men.
With a gloved hand, he pulled out the old Colt he’d pushed the rounds through at the firing range in D.C. The perfect throw-down piece, untraceable, exactly the sort of illegal weapon Thorne would carry. He fired three times into the air and threw the gun into the bushes where Thorne had fallen.
‘Over here!’ he yelled. ‘I need lights! I need guns! I need men! Now!’
Like her father before her, Janet had wrapped her money stash in waterproof plastic that she had buried near the rear corner of the cabin only eighteen inches down in dry soil. She dug it up with her pocketknife, then moved silently up the side of the cabin toward the door. At the flurry of gunfire from the driveway, she jumped two feet in the air.
‘Over here!’ an unknown voice shouted. ‘I need lights! I need guns! I need men! Now!’
Hatfield’s men sounded like a cattle stampede as they abandoned their posts to rush to the aid of the shouting man. Hatfield? Had he shot Thorne? Killed him?
She ran to the door, slipped in, grabbed up her cellphone, jerked the bearskin off her bunk-bed, threw a couple of armloads of clothing into a backpack, was out again within ninety seconds. Her Reno wardrobe in the closet might hold them there, making them think she just hadn’t gotten home yet.
She drove slowly, cautiously away, without lights and without even thinking of waiting for Thorne. He would make it or he wouldn’t. She would wait for him at Whiskey River for… three days. Longer than that, he wouldn’t be coming.
Hatfield was waiting impatiently by the heavy thicket of juniper bushes where Thorne had gone down. He said to his men, ‘Thorne! He came up behind me and started firing. No warning, no words, nothing. He’s in that thicket. I don’t have a flashlight…’
They went in, Franklin in the lead. ‘Here’s his piece!’ He took a knee, and, without touching it in any way, sniffed the barrel of the throw-down .45 that Hatfield had planted there. ‘Yeah, this baby’s been working all right.’
They worked their way through the thicket and congregated on the far side. They had found the gun. They had found heavy blood splotches. But they hadn’t found Thorne.
Hatfield had a sinking feeling in his gut. But, hit like that, bleeding like that, Thorne couldn’t get far.
‘Listen up.’ They stood in an exhausted circle around him, adrenaline leaching from their bodies. ‘He’s hit, and he’s hit hard. Throw a perimeter around this wooded area until first light, then beat the bushes until we find the bastard’s body.’
‘Cops?’ asked Eisler.
‘We don’t invite the cops in, ever. You know that. If you spot him, shoot first and shoot to kill. Treat him like a Texas rattlesnake. By sunup, I want him in a bodybag.’
34
Thorne saw Hatfield coming up with the Glock and threw himself sideways into the cover as he had done with Corwin up on the mountain, yelling to make Hatfield think he was hit. But Christ, he was hit. The bullet smashed his side like a wrecking ball, accelerating the twist of his body so he went down hard on his side in the undergrowth, stunned.
He was bleeding heavily. Good: give them something to puzzle over. Bad: lose too much blood, the body would go into a defensive mode, pull blood in from the extremities, shut down everything not needed for sheer animal survival, and he’d go into shock. If the shock didn’t finish him off, Hatfield would find him and finish him off. Move. Now.
Things were going in and out. Essential to stop the bleeding now, so they would have no blood trail to follow. He ripped his sodden t-shirt apart and stuffed a long strip of it right through the wound, closing off both entry and exit.
That was when the pain started. Good. Pain meant he might not go into shock. But he had at least one broken rib, maybe two. Did he have bone splinters driven into his lungs? In his head, he heard Hernild’s voice:
The bullet entered and exited at an angle… fragmented the seventh rib… glanced off rather than penetrated… rib bone driven into the chest cavity but not into the lungs themselves… crawled a thousand feet to his cabin… saved his own life…
Hit as Corwin had been hit. Now he was going to have to save his own life, also as Corwin had done. Using all his woodcraft, he managed a silent crawl to the side of the thicket away from the searchers. Somehow found his feet, his balance, staggered away. Hatfield must have planned to kill him all along. So why the ticket to Kenya, why the elaborate charade? None of it made any sense…
He fell down. Had let his mind wander. Forget Hatfield for now. Just keep ahead of him. He struggled to his feet, went on. From lodgepole pine to lodgepole pine, from subalpine fir to subalpine fir, from white spruce to white spruce. Finally into a stand of poplars where the going was faster. Plenty of tree trunks to hang on to as he lurched along, and they grew thickly, almost like bamboo, so it would be harder for anyone to see him moving through the grove.
Just before moonset, he looked back the way he had come. No blood trail. He was going to make it! He was going to beat that bastard Hatfield at his own game. Whatever that game was.
His whole life had been fight or flight. Usually fight, but now, flight. Flight where? And just like that it came to him, the whole thing. The Loma Vista store. Call it two miles. Food. Clean water. AQUA River Tours. Medical supplies. Antibiotics. Hope someone on an overnight camping trip had left a vehicle parked there. Surely he could jump the ignition and get it going. He was a Ranger wasn’t he? Well, ex-Ranger…
He jerked his mind back. He had wandered out onto Highway 120. He got back onto the shoulder. Bent to pick up a fallen branch for a walking stick, and fell down again. Idiot! Keep the head higher than the heart or he’d end up as dead as Corwin.
Corwin! That was it! Hatfield wanted him dead because he, not Hatfield, had killed Corwin and thus had saved Wallberg’s life. If Thorne was alive, even in a Kenya jailhouse, he could keep telling people all about it. Eventually, someone might listen. And talk. Talk to important people who might believe, and talk also, and Wallberg might hear about it… Far better for Hatfield if Thorne were dead.
Ahead, in the just beginning pre-dawn, he saw the Casa Loma store. And the ’94 Chev Astro minivan that had been parked there yesterday morning. Detach the wires under the dash to bypass the ignition switch… And what? Drive as far and fast as he could? Hope he got to Oakdale and Whiskey River and Janet Kestrel before Hatfield caught up with him?
To his wandering mind, Janet seemed to have all the answers he needed. She’d give him two or three days before she moved on. He would have to get to Whiskey River before then. He’d have to tell her that Corwin was dead – and that Thorne was the one who had killed him. Then somehow, despite all that, get her to work with him on finding the answers he sought.
But first things first. He needed food, water, antibiotics to stave off incipient infection. Already he was getting feverish. If he went goofy, he was lost indeed.
He threw a rock through the store window.
As the sun began to shine through the notch of the Tioga Pass beyond Yosemite, Hatfield had to admit that Thorne was gone. Or that his men had missed the body. They should be expanding the perimeter of the search, but they didn’t have the manpower for it. He was operating outside the FBI action structure, and at this point, he couldn’t call in the cops or the sheriffs. Because if Thorne was found alive, he knew Thorne would talk.
The girl hadn’t shown, either. His search engin
es had been useless: he’d been looking for Amore or Roanhorse, not Kestrel.
He ransacked her cabin. What looked like all her clothes were there, and her personal papers. Missing were her i.d. and purse and money and car keys, but she would have needed those…
Car keys!
He checked his watch. Eight a.m. He didn’t remember Sammy as a workaholic, but he called the LA FO and asked for AIC Spaulding. Sammy was in!
‘Terrill! I couldn’t sleep all night. How much trouble am I in with the big boys back in Washington because of you?’
‘None. We missed our man. But I need you to run a Janet Kestrel, that’s K-E-S-T-R-E-L, for a California driver’s license, any vehicles registered to her, any wants and warrants.’
‘That sound you hear is my sigh of relief. Okay, Kestrel. I’m feeding her into the computer right now. Anything else?’
Hatfield paused, could see no downside to going ahead.
‘Yeah. Put out a Seeking Information Alert on her.’
‘An SIA? That’s terrorist shit, Terrill.’
‘I keep telling you this is coming from far up the food chain. I need to ask her about a possible associate.’
‘Got you. Ah hah! Janet Kestrel. Valid California driver’s license and a valid Nevada driver’s license. She holds legal title to a 1990 Toyota 4-Runner, dark green, Calif Five, C-W-D, Zero-Four-Six. Registration and insurance are current, no wants or warrants. I’ll keep digging, but—’
‘Put out a BOLO on the 4-Runner as well.’
He hung up, elated. They didn’t have Thorne – yet. But he’d soon have the girl. Had she and Thorne ever hooked up? Did she connect with Corwin in any way? Was that why Thorne was looking for her? He’d wring her dry, then decide whether he had to keep her on ice, probably in the FBI’s secret detention cells at the Federal Building in Westwood. The post-9/11 anti-terrorist laws gave him plenty of authority to do that.
With the BOLO out on her 4-Runner, and the SIA out on her, it was just a matter of hours until he had her in custody.
