Hunted

by William W. Johnstone

  The man laughed. “No, ’fraid not. I’m a wildlife photographer. The name is Johnny Mack.”

  * * *

  Darry left his hybrids at the cabin and went for his weekly romp with the wolf pack that had settled into the area. But they were tense and nervous, and they signaled danger to him. Darry walked among them—being careful not to get between the alpha male and female—and they all began to settle down. Normally, a pack would not tolerate an outsider. But with Darry, they knew he posed no threat to them; indeed, he was an asset to the pack, for when he was as them, he warned the pack what areas to stay out of and which were safe for a night hunt. The alpha female signaled “follow me,” and the pack took off in single file, with Darry bringing up the rear.

  They ran for several miles, staying in the brush and on safe trails the pack had checked out and scented as their own. The female led the pack up a grade and behind some rocks on a ridge overlooking a long valley. She bellied down, and the others followed suit, Darry beside her. Darry had named this female Rodica, after a girl he had known back in the village where he was born. Both Rodicas were lovely.

  Neither the wolves nor Darry were winded. Darry had not even broken a sweat during the several mile run.

  Darry looked out over the valley and immediately saw why the wolves had told him there was danger. He could see two teams of men working slowly through the wide valley. He uncased his binoculars, adjusted for view, and studied the men. He had never seen them before. They moved like hunters. Not game hunters: man hunters. Professional warriors.

  He lowered the glasses and put his hand palm down on the ground. Rodica laid her muzzle over his hand in a sign of trust, then raised her head and gently bit at his chin. Wolf affection. Darry pressed his face against hers and signaled her to take the pack away, to safety. Two seconds later, there was no trace of the wolves on the ridge.

  Darry lay alone on the ridge and studied the teams of men. Now they had been joined by a third team of two men, and Darry had a strong suspicion there were more of them working on the other side of the timber-covered far ridge. There was no doubt in his mind what they were looking for. They were looking for him.

  Darry sighed and cased his binoculars. He lay for a time with his forehead on the cool ground. He was so tired of running. Centuries of running. An endless roll of years, unable to establish any sort of permanent home or relationship. And it just got worse as technology advanced. It hadn’t been so bad before the telegraph and telephone and the industrial revolution; life was slower and easier, and it had been much simpler to lose one’s self. It was getting more difficult each year.

  Darry raised his head and gazed down into the valley. Two more men had joined the others, and Darry felt sure there would be still more. The men had gathered in a small circle and were squatting down. One was pointing toward the west. That was all right, for Darry’s cabin lay to the south of the valley. But they’d get around to it, sooner or later.

  He wondered just how good these men were. That question was answered a heartbeat later when a voice said, “Mike? You copy this?”

  Darry tensed, not moving a muscle. He didn’t even blink. How in the hell could a man get this close to him without his knowing it?

  “Yeah, Mike. You can see for several miles up here. There are no cabins in this valley. No signs of human life at all. None.”

  How close was the man? Not more than three or four yards at the most, Darry guessed, for the voice was clear.

  “Yeah, okay,” the man radioed. “I see Doolin and Blake. They’re comin’ out of the timber to the north of you. Okay. Right. I’ll start workin’ my way down to the valley floor. Jenkins has already started down. Sure. Let’s give Mr. Roche his money’s worth. Right. Webb out.”

  Mr. Roche? Who the hell was Mr. Roche?

  Darry listened as the man turned to leave. He moved well, his boots making only the tiniest of whispers. If the rest of the manhunters were as good as this one, Darry was in for a time of it.

  Six teams of two each. At least twelve men were hunting him. Damn! And the reporter and her camera-person. He’d have to run. He’d have to pack up what he could, put the hybrids in the bed of the truck and leave. He had no choice in the matter. None at all that he could see.

  Or did he?

  Darry lay on the ridge and thought it out. His cover was as good as it had ever been. His driver’s license was valid. It would take some organization like the FBI to discover that his past was nonexistent—at least on paper—and it would take them several days to do it.

  These men hunting him were not government hunters. He was sure of that. Someone named Roche was paying them. But why? He could not remember anyone named Roche in his past.

  Roche Industries? The words popped into his consciousness. Robert Roche, he had read somewhere, was the richest man in the world. Worth billions and billions of dollars. He owned all sorts of factories and construction companies and real estate and . . . hell, Darry couldn’t remember all of the article. But Robert Roche’s holdings were vast. Worldwide.

  Could that be the Mr. Roche the manhunter was referring to?

  Probably.

  But why?

  Darry had no answer to that question. But then, people had chased him before without any real reason. But mostly those had been in the bad old days, back when he was a gunfighter.

  Darry made up his mind. He was not going to run. Not just yet. He was weary of running. He’d stick around as long as possible. Maybe he could bluff his way through. He’d done it before.

  But the manhunters didn’t worry him nearly as much as the TV reporter. He could not allow his face to be shown nationwide. Somebody in his past would recognize him. Then there would be hell to pay.

  Darry stood up and checked the valley below. The manhunters had moved on, tiny dots in the distance slowly working their way west.

  He looked up at the sun. High noon. What was it that Afrikaner had told him during the Boer War? Yes. It was always high noon in Africa. The same could be said for Darry’s situation.

  Then Darry remembered something about the manhunters. They all had a short, tubelike object carried on a strap. What the hell was that? What was inside that tube? Some sort of weapon? He’d better find out. He decided to pace his predators. They had to camp somewhere. And when they did, he’d be there.

  7

  Both damaged tires on Johnny’s truck held air. No nails or tacks or bits of stiff wire had punctured and flattened them. Odd, Rick thought. Very odd. If Chuck had noticed, he said nothing about it, and Rick kept his suspicions to himself. But warning bells were ringing silently in the ranger’s head.

  Rick, Chuck, and Johnny McBroon sat on the front porch of the one-man ranger station and drank coffee and chatted for a time after the “flats” had been inflated.

  “So you’re here to photograph wildlife, hey?” Chuck asked.

  “Yes. I heard that the wolf is making a comeback in this area and wanted to see if I could get some on film.”

  “Odds are, you won’t,” Rick told him. “They’ll see you, but your seeing them is iffy. Wolves tend to shy away from human contact.”

  “And you sure can’t blame the critters, neither,” Chuck said. “They’ve been hunted and poisoned damn near to extinction. And they sure as hell don’t deserve the bad reputation they got hung on them.”

  Rick was one of only a handful of people who knew that Chuck was not exactly what he appeared to be. Chuck was a descendant of the Lost Tribe. Several years back, a group of not-quite-human beings had been found in the wilderness of Idaho, many of them caught midway in the evolutionary chain. The government had promised to protect them, but as so often happened whenever the government got involved in anything, everything got all fucked up. A handful of scientists from the U.S. and Canada quietly moved the Lost Tribe out and into a new area. Few people knew where they had been relocated. But many descendants of the Lost Tribe still lived in the area.1

  “You seem to know a great deal about wolves,
Chuck,” Johnny remarked.

  “I been close to them a time or two,” the older man said drily.

  Rick smiled at that.

  “Am I apt to run into many people out there?” Johnny asked, waving a hand toward the wilderness area.

  “A few live there year-round,” Rick said. “But it’s a little early in the season for many tourists. The nights still get chilly.”

  “I see,” Johnny said. He looked at Chuck. “You say you’re all out of riding horses and pack animals?”

  “Oh, I reckon I could outfit you, Mr. Mack. You seem like a right nice fellow.” He told him how to get to his place and said he’d be right behind him. After Johnny had left, Chuck said, “He’s another goddamn fed, Rick. But at least he ain’t as arrogant as some of those others.”

  * * *

  Darry had worked in close to the manhunters’ noon camp and was listening as they rested and talked. Their location was a good one, with plenty of shade and water. But it also showed the men had no idea they were being trailed. Darry had slipped up on them with relative ease.

  “What’s the matter, George?” one asked. “You’re sure quiet.”

  The Indian looked up, his expression giving away nothing. “I felt eyes on me this morning. I don’t like this place. Terrible things have happened here.”

  “Now how the hell do you know that?”

  “I feel it. Sense it.”

  “I think,” a big merc named John Webb said, “that you are full of shit, Indian.”

  “And I think,” George Eagle Dancer said, a cruel smile playing on his lips, “that you are a fool.”

  Webb started to rise to his boots. “Sit down, John,” Tuttle said. “You tangle with George and he’ll kill you.”

  ebb hesitated. “Sit down!” Tuttle barked.

  Webb sat. He stared at George. “Me and you, Indian, will settle up when this op is over.”

  “I think not,” George said evenly. “I think you will die in this wilderness. But not by my hand.”

  Darry studied the men. None of them were kids. Darry guessed their varied ages to be between thirty-five and forty-five. And to a man they looked very capable of handling any situation that might confront them.

  An ex-army ranger named Joel Bass said, “I’ve worked with you many times, George. But I’ve never seen you like this. What the hell’s got you so spooked?”

  “What we’re doing is a mistake,” George replied. “There is no clear-cut right or wrong here. We are chasing a man who has broken no laws. If this is the man I think it is, he was a friend to my people. I told you all, Indian nations from Canada to the Mexican border still sing songs about this man who will not die. If we push him, he will be forced to fight. He does not want to fight. But he will, and he is the greatest warrior to ever walk the face of Mother Earth. I agreed to this operation, yes. But I wish I had not. This is not democracy against tyranny, not peaceful people against bandits. What this is ... is wrong.”

  “We’re not here to hurt this man, George,” Tuttle pointed out.

  “No. Just kidnap him. Chase him down, drug him with these guns”—he tapped the tubelike object by his side—“and take him away against his will.”

  Tranquilizer guns, Darry thought.

  “Let’s don’t get all moralistic about this op, George,” Miles Burrell said. “Let’s just do the job, collect our money, and move on.”

  “Speaking of moving,” Tuttle said, glancing at his watch. “Police this area and let’s get cracking. We’ve got a lot of daylight left.”

  The mercs buried their ration containers and left the area as they had found it, splitting up and fanning out, moving toward the west.

  Darry watched them for a time, then worked his way out of the area and started jogging back to his cabin. He wanted to take a bath, then fix a whiskey and water and sit for a time. He had a lot of thinking to do.

  * * *

  “I’m gonna burn that son of a bitch’s cabin down and kill his goddamn dogs,” Willis Reader said.

  “No, you’re not,” Sam Parish told him. “Just leave him alone for the time being. You’ll get your chance at him. I promise you that. But now would be a real bad time.”

  “You mean that, Sam?”

  “I mean it, Willis.”

  “Then I’ll wait. Just don’t make me wait too long.”

  * * *

  To an observer, it would appear that the man was simply looking at his dogs. But there was much more to it than that. Thoughts were passing between the human form and the hybrids. When Darry was certain the two wolf-husky mix understood, he averted his eyes and rested for a time. It was very tiring communicating with them for any length of time while in his human form, but he could make them understand and obey better this way. Like so many other aspects of his double personage and never-ending life, Darry didn’t know why that was so; it just was. But Pete and Repeat now knew they must be very careful and alert for trouble constantly.

  Upon returning to the cabin, Darry had done several hours work around the place, then bathed and shaved and silently spoke to his hybrids. It was now approaching twilight. Darry had a stew simmering on the outside stove, under the dog walk, and had just fixed a whiskey and water and sat down on the porch, waiting for the person or persons who had been stomping around in the brush and timber for several minutes to announce their presence.

  “Hello, the cabin! Anybody home?”

  “The last time I checked, I was,” Darry called. “What’s the matter, are you lost?”

  “Frankly, yes,” the voice admitted.

  “Well, come on in and rest.”

  A young man and young woman stepped out of the timber. They looked to be in their mid-twenties. Both of them dressed in the height of outdoor fashion. They both carried side arms on their belts. 9mm or the new .40 caliber; Darry wasn’t sure. He waved to chairs on the porch.

  “Get out of those packs and have a seat. You both look beat.”

  “We are,” the woman said. “I’m agent Kathy Owens; this is agent Jack Speed. We’re FBI.” They both showed him their credentials.

  “Very impressive. I’m Darry Ransom. You’re only about a thousand yards from the river trail. That way.” He pointed. “If you listen, you can hear it. The ranger station is about six and a half miles away—in that direction.” He pointed. “But it’s easy to get off the trail.”

  The young man sat down wearily. “Our horses ran off—saddle horses and packhorse. Luckily we had made up these backpacks before that happened.”

  “Did you rent them from Chuck?”

  “Ah . . . yes. That was his name,” Kathy said.

  “They’ll go back home. You two can bunk here tonight, and tomorrow I’ll take you back to the ranger station.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Ransom,” Jack said.

  “Darry. Call me Darry.”

  It was then the two huge hybrids chose to stand up and approach the FBI agents, almost scaring the crap out of both of them.

  “Good God!” Jack said, his hand dropping to the butt of his pistol.

  Darry moved; moved so fast he was a blur to Kathy. Darry’s hand closed around Jack’s arm and paralyzed the move to draw his gun. There was no pain associated with the grip; Jack just could not move his arm

  “Don’t even think about hurting my dogs,” Darry said softly. “Miss Owens, if you make a move toward your side arm, one of those hybrids will have your throat torn out before you can draw. Now just settle down. If you don’t make hostile moves toward them, they won’t hurt you.” He released his grip on the agent’s arm. “Let them smell you and they’ll go on back and lie down.”

  Pete and Repeat smelled the agents, then looked up at Darry. “It’s all right,” Darry assured them.

  The hybrids backed up and lay down on the porch.

  “They’re wolves!” Kathy said.

  “They’re half wolf, half husky, miss.”

  Jack looked down at his arm. He could now flex his fingers and move the arm. �
��How did you do that?” he asked, no hostility in his voice.

  “Pressure points,” Darry told him. “It’s a painless, harmless, and very effective way to disarm an opponent.”

  “My whole arm went numb,” Jack said. “No pain, just no feeling.”

  “Let me give you both a bit of advice. You probably won’t take it, but it’s free, so what the hell? There are men, and women, living back here in the wilderness, who would have shot you stone dead if they’d been in my boots a moment ago. So go easy on grabbing for guns.”

  “Those wolves startled me,” Jack said, a bit defensively.

  “They’re hybrids. And they won’t hurt you unless you make some sort of threatening move toward them.”

  “So there are a lot of armed survivalist types living back here?” Kathy asked.

  Darry smiled. “I don’t know what you mean by survivalist, miss. There are people living back here who grew weary of the rat race of city life; people who wanted to simplify their lives and get away from a pressure-cooker sort of existence. There is a small commune of what used to be called hippies living not too many miles from here. They’re good people who never cause any trouble.”

  The two federal agents exchanged glances in the dim light coming from a lantern in the cabin. Darry read the look accurately: we’ll look for marijuana patches. That amused him.

  “What other types of people live back here, Mr. Ransom?” Jack asked.

  “Darry. My name is Darry. We’re not very formal around here. What other types? There are a few families who decided they didn’t like the way their kids were taught in school, so they moved out here to get away from that; teach their own kids. There are some who believe the United States is going to hell in a hand basket. You’ll find a few of them scattered around.”

  “Before we came in,” Kathy said, “we were briefed about a large survivalist group who train in this area. Sam Parish and his Citizen’s Defense League.”

  Darry jerked a thumb. “They’re over that way a few miles. Not too far away. They’re not the most likeable people I have ever encountered. But as far as I know, they haven’t broken any laws.”