by Greg Iles
Leaving Oak Ridge on Highway 62, ours was the only vehicle on the road. We skirted the base of Big Brushy Mountain, on the far side of which lay the state penitentiary. Three county lines intersected in this isolated area, a mist-shrouded world populated by the descendants of coal miners and moonshiners. They clung tenaciously to existence in the shadowy hollows and along the abandoned strip mines that still scarred these mountains.
I turned north on 116, a narrow road that wound past the hamlet of Petros and then the prison, a starkly depressing enclosure lit by a harsh mercury glow and surrounded by razor-wire fences. North of the prison, the road began to twist back upon itself like a wounded snake. I turned left on a track that had no map number, but which I remembered well. Before long, I would come to the gate of the abandoned state park, which would probably be barricaded now.
A half mile from the gate, I slowed and began looking for an opening in the trees. When I saw one, I braked and turned off the road, and in ten seconds we had vanished. I drove until the woods became too thick and the grade too steep to go farther. Then I parked and shut off the engine.
Rachel hadn’t stirred. I reached back and pulled our sleeping bags from the gear behind the seat. As I unrolled them, she snapped awake and popped up out of my lap, staring wide-eyed in the dark.
“What are you doing?”
“Take it easy,” I said. “You’re fine. We’re there.”
“Where?” She tried to look out the window, but there was no light beneath the trees. We could have been in a cave.
“We’re outside Oak Ridge, at a place called Frozen Head. It’s an abandoned state park.”
“Frozen Head?”
“You’ve been asleep for hours.”
She shook her head. “I can’t sleep in cars.”
“Well, keep on not sleeping. I’ll wake you just before dawn.”
She blinked as though coming out of a trance. Then she put her hand to her mouth and grimaced. “Did you buy us toothbrushes?”
“Yes. You can do that in the morning.”
“I need to pee.”
“You’ve got the whole forest.”
“Is it safe out there?”
I thought of telling her to watch for timber rattlers, but she probably wouldn’t get out if I did. “This is the safest you’ve been in twenty-four hours.”
She climbed out of the truck and moved out of the light but didn’t close the door. This illuminated us like a lantern in the woods. She took a long time, and I started to feel anxious. Then raindrops began hitting the windshield, and I heard her squeal. She scrambled back into the truck with her jeans unbuttoned and yanked the door shut.
“It’s pouring!” she cried, fastening her pants.
“Rain’s good for us. It deadens sound when you walk in the woods.”
She pulled a sleeping bag over her chest and shuddered. “I don’t want to offend you, but this sucks. We couldn’t stay in some cheap motel?”
“No one in the world knows where we are now. So no one can find out. That’s the way we want it. Go to sleep.”
She nodded and settled against her door.
I sat listening to the symphony of rain and the ticking engine, recalling predawn vigils with my father and brother, waiting for our chance at ducks or deer. I was exhausted, but I knew I’d wake before the sun. Some primitive part of my brain that lay dormant in cities awakened in the wilderness and whispered the forest rhythms to me with unfailing accuracy. That whisper told me when dawn was close, when rain was coming, when game was moving. I pulled my sleeping bag up to my chin.
“Good night,” I said to Rachel.
Steady breathing was her only reply.
I woke as the first dim shade of blue showed through the trees. I blinked several times, then surveyed the scene without moving my head. Seeing nothing, I gently shook Rachel awake. Again she jerked erect, but not in quite the panic of last night.
“Time to go,” I said.
“Okay,” she mumbled, but she looked ready to go back to sleep.
I got out and relieved my bladder, then unloaded the gear from behind the seat. I put most of it into my own pack, giving Rachel only her sleeping bag, some canned food, and a couple of fuel bottles. When she got out, I handed her a Silent Shadow camouflage jumpsuit, heavy socks, and boots.
She made a wry face, but she took the clothes and went behind the truck. While she changed, I fixed the quiver and compound bow to my pack. Then I slipped into my jumpsuit and boots. As I shouldered my pack, the forest seemed to grow lighter all at once, and I knew the sun was topping Windrock Mountain to the east.
Rachel came around the truck looking like photos I’d seen of female Israeli soldiers. She shouldered her pack without much trouble, and she didn’t complain about the weight.
“If your friends could see you now,” I said, clipping a walkie-talkie to her belt.
“They’d be rolling on the ground laughing.”
I stuffed our street clothes into her pack. “Watch the ground. Step where I step, and watch for briers catching your clothes. If we get separated, use the walkie-talkie, but very quietly.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t speak unless it’s an emergency. If I hold up my hand, stop. Grab my belt if I go too fast. We’re not in a hurry. You’re going to see animals out here. Move calmly away from snakes, and ignore the rest.”
She nodded. “Where exactly are we going?”
“There are caves on the mountain. Hikers know about some, but there’s one that’s almost unknown. My dad and I found it when I was a kid. That’s the one we want.”
She smiled. “I’m as ready as I’m going to get.”
We followed the path left by the truck’s tires until we reached the road, then piled some brush over the open place. I crossed the road and began looking for a spring-fed tributary of the New River, a small creek that cut its way down the mountain through a rocky defile about fifty feet deep. That defile would be our route up the mountain. The park service had blazed a trail that paralleled the creek, but I didn’t want to risk running into any hikers. I also worried about locals growing marijuana in the closed park. During lean times, that temptation was great for the descendants of moonshiners, and they tended to frown upon trespassers. They booby-trapped their fields and shot before asking questions.
I soon found the creek, and by the time daylight illuminated the forest we were shin-deep in water, picking our way up the defile. Gnarled tree roots threaded through its walls like arthritic hands, and boulders big as cars lined the ravine. The creek was shallow and wide in some places but narrowed to gurgling channels in others. I saw deer tracks and scat, and once what looked like the track of a bear. That made me a little anxious about the cave. There was constant scuttling in the brush, rabbits and armadillos flushed from cover by our passing. Every few minutes I turned to check on Rachel, but she seemed to be holding up well. She slipped on wet rocks a few times, but moving uphill on slick stone was no task for beginners.
I was stepping over a waterlogged branch when I smelled smoke on the wind. I stopped in my tracks, hoping the smell was a hiker’s campfire. It wasn’t. It was good Virginia tobacco. I held up my hand, but there was no need. Rachel had halted the second she saw me stop.
Without moving my head, I scanned the rocks and trees ahead. Nothing moved but creek water and raindrops sliding off the leaves overhead. I raised my gaze and searched the low limbs of the forest canopy. A poacher in a deer stand was a possibility. But a real hunter would know that smoking a cigarette would kill his chances of bagging a deer, even out of season. I saw nothing in the trees.
Moving my head slightly, I searched the rim of the defile. First the right side, then the left. Nothing. I sniffed the air again. The odor was gone.
Rachel tugged at the back of my belt. “What the matter?” she whispered.
I turned and saw fear in her face. Be quiet, I mouthed. Stay still.
She nodded.
Another wave of tobacco scent wafted
past me, stronger than before. I turned very slowly and for some reason looked up. Forty yards away, a man dressed in black ballistic nylon leaned over the rim of the defile and flicked a cigarette butt down into the creek. My heart clenched, but I remained still. The butt tumbled in the air, a flash of white against green, then hit the water and floated toward us.
The man followed the butt with his eyes. I was certain we were about to be seen, but the man suddenly looked away and took something off his shoulder. A black assault rifle. An M16. He leaned it against a tree, unzipped his fly, and began to urinate off the small cliff. He played like a little boy, aiming his stream for the creek but not quite reaching it. A boy would have been able to reach it. This was a man in his late thirties, and he was wearing body armor.
I prayed that Rachel wouldn’t panic. She might not have seen the rifleman at first, but she couldn’t miss the long golden arc glinting in the early light. The man stopped urinating with a few desultory flourishes, then shook himself, zipped up, and picked up the M16. As he shouldered the rifle, he looked down the creek, right at us.
I held my breath and waited for our eyes to lock.
The rifleman’s gaze passed over us, then returned. He squinted, then looked farther down the creek again. It was the camouflage suits and headgear. He couldn’t distinguish us from the background of creek and brush. As I watched, he moved his head to the right in a strange way, as though he had a nervous tick, but then I realized he was speaking into a collar microphone. I heard the faint metallic squawk of a reply but couldn’t make out distinct words. Then the rifleman turned and walked back into the trees.
Numb with disbelief, I turned back to Rachel, who was staring at me in confusion.
“What’s the matter?” she whispered.
“You didn’t see that?”
“What?”
“The guy up there pissing off the cliff!”
Her eyes went wide.
“He had a rifle.”
“I didn’t see anything! I was watching you. I thought you’d seen a snake or something.”
“We’re going back to the truck. Now.”
Her face had lost its color. “What about the cave?”
“It’s blown. They’re waiting for us up there.”
“They can’t be.”
“They are. The guy was carrying an M16 and wearing body armor. Deer hunters around here look a little different.”
“But we’ve come all this way.”
Prickly heat covered my skin. “What do you care?”
“I don’t. I mean—that cave just sounded safe.”
“It’s not.”
A new awareness smoldered in the dark of my mind. They knew we were coming. Before my thoughts could go further, I found myself listening with absolute concentration. I wasn’t sure what I’d heard, but it was something. A movement that didn’t fit the usual sound track of the forest. I cursed silently. The rain that had dampened the sound of our steps was now giving cover to our enemies. Or were they only my enemies?
As understanding flashed into my mind, another faint squawk broke the silence, and I knew there was another rifleman within fifty feet of me. Stepping quietly behind Rachel, I clapped one hand over her mouth and whipped my other arm around her chest, pinning her against me with all my strength. She tried to scream, but no sound passed her lips.
I stood in the creek without moving, water pulling at my legs. Rachel struggled against me. The backpack made it hard to hold her. I was afraid she might bite my hand, but she didn’t. That alone kept alive doubt that it was she who had told the NSA where to find us.
“I’m going to uncover your mouth,” I whispered. “If you scream, I’ll cut your throat.”
Chapter
21
When I let go of Rachel, she whirled in the creek, her face a mask of terror and fury. Then she saw the knife in my hand, the Gerber I’d bought at Wal-Mart.
“Walk,” I told her. “Back down the creek. You know how to do it.”
She stared at me a moment longer, then turned and started over the rocks. I sheathed my knife and unslung my bow. I would stand little chance against a man with an M16, but if I saw my opponent first, I might get off a quick shot.
“Stick close to the right wall.”
She moved to the right, quickly picking her way from stone to stone. As I followed Rachel down the steep watercourse, my mind filled with questions I should have asked her before but hadn’t. That first day, when she’d awakened me from my dream about Fielding’s death…how had she unlocked the door? I’d locked it after the FedEx man left, yet I’d awakened to find the door banging against the chain latch as Rachel yelled my name. And finding my house without me telling her my address? I know someone in the UVA personnel office, she’d said. The university would have been warned about giving out information on a Trinity principal. And the surveillance plane over the highway? How had they known which of the thousands of cars between Chapel Hill and Nags Head to train their laser on? One phone call from Rachel while I was unconscious could have given them the Audi, the Nags Head cabin, everything.
As for Oak Ridge, she could easily have called them from the Wal-Mart in Asheville, when I’d posted her by the door. She hadn’t known about Frozen Head then, but she did have a cell phone. With a little nerve, she could have called the NSA when she got out of the truck last night to pee. On the other hand, I still remembered leaping into the hallway of my house and finding an assassin pointing a gun at Rachel’s back.
She paused as she came to a deep channel in the creek. I moved close behind her in case she fell or tried to run. As we negotiated the channel, I thought back to how I’d chosen her. Skow had resisted my going to a non-NSA psychiatrist, but had he resisted vigorously enough? Friends at UVA had told me Rachel was the best Jungian analyst in the country. Had Geli Bauer been walking in my footsteps, talking to everyone I talked to? Had she briefed Rachel before my first appointment? How could Geli have compromised her? An appeal to patriotism? Blackmail? There was no way to know.
I reached out and grabbed Rachel’s pack. The creek had leveled out. The road wasn’t far away.
“We’re close to the truck,” I said softly. “Veer left here, and don’t step on any branches.”
She looked back at me, her eyes still furious. “You don’t really think—”
I poked her in the back. “Walk.”
She picked her path through the dripping trees with surprising agility. After about forty yards, I grabbed her pack again, then scanned the trees ahead.
“David, you don’t think I betrayed you.”
I nodded. “No other explanation.”
“There has to be.”
I peered between the wet trunks, searching for anything out of place. “They might have figured out Oak Ridge, but not Frozen Head. I could have picked a dozen other spots in the mountains around here.”
She held up her hands helplessly. “I don’t know what to tell you. I haven’t spoken to anyone.”
“How did you get into my house that day? The first day?”
“Your house? I picked the lock.”
“Bullshit.”
“You think so? My father was a locksmith in Brooklyn. I grew up around the trade.”
Her explanation could be a facile lie, but it had the outrageous ring of truth. “What’s a Chubb?” I asked off the top of my head.
“A high-quality, British-made lock. I also know what a spiral tooth extractor is. Do you?”
I had no idea. “Turn around and keep walking. The truck’s a hundred yards ahead.”
Rachel turned and walked quickly through the trees. With my bow unslung, I had to be more careful. The bowstring seemed to attract briers, and the broadhead I was holding along the shaft of the bow kept catching on branches and shaking water onto me.
Suddenly, I heard a swish like a big buck leaping through wet foliage. Then I saw a flash of black between two trees.
“Freeze!” barked a male voice.
Rachel
stopped, her back just visible between two glistening trunks. Beyond her stood a man wearing black nylon and a bulletproof vest. He held an automatic pistol, and it was trained on Rachel’s face.
