Hunted

by William W. Johnstone

  “Considering all the drivel that’s been coming from the networks for the past several decades,” the DIR/FBI remarked off-handedly, “I’m looking forward to it.”

  The Pres sighed. He knew very well his friend was far more conservative than liberal, and he also knew that the director of the Bureau was a very moral man. Many had considered that to be a liability when the Pres suggested him for the job.

  The intercom buzzed, and the call was for the Bureau director. “Wonderful,” the DIR/FBI said after listening for a moment. His voice was filled with sarcasm. “That is just wonderful.” He hung up. He looked at the President. “The Collier family has filed papers to sue the federal government for half a billion dollars. The charges are attempted murder by a federal officer, three counts of assault and battery by a federal agent, ordering the Internal Revenue Service to engage in punitive measures against a citizen—or words to that effect—harassment, invasion of privacy, threats of bodily harm by agents of the Justice Department . . . and about fifteen other charges, pertaining to that family alone. In addition, the law firm of Bennett, Duran, Collier, and Williams is now representing the families of Carmouche, Clayderman, and Noble. They are suing the government for half a billion dollars. Do you want to hear the charges, Mr. President?”

  “No,” the Pres said with a sigh. “ShitShitShitShit!” he shouted.

  * * *

  Ian MacVay spent several million dollars in advertising during the three days prior to the Coyote Network kicking off their evening news. MacVay never even thought about making a profit; he didn’t even consider breaking even. But when people began to understand that his news would be a total departure from what the public had been force-fed over the years, the sponsors began flooding his studios with calls wanting to buy time.

  MacVay’s people had not even worked up a rate card for the news; but someone had copies of the rates charged by the Big Three, so that’s what MacVay’s people went by.

  Within six hours, the Coyote Network’s evening news program was sold out for the rest of the month.

  * * *

  The six mercenaries who remained active in the wilderness were ordered to lay low . . . among other orders received from Robert Roche. Robert Roche had gotten word from Ian MacVay that the first segment of the Coyote Network’s news was to come from that area: Stormy standing in front of the shot-up cabins of Kevin, Vince, and Todd. Darry was sure to make an appearance either before or after the taping.

  Mike Tuttle had also made contact with Max Vernon. The now disgraced Bureau man and a few of the agents who had willingly gone along with the failed cover-up were living a rather miserable existence in a cave, poaching game and fishing to eat.

  “Here’s the deal,” Mike told the man.

  “Who are you working for?” Max interrupted.

  “You don’t have a need to know,” the mercenary told him. “Are you in or out?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No.”

  Max nodded his head. He was in bad need of a hot bath and a shave. “All right. We’re in.”

  “We want Darry Ransom, and we want him alive. Dead is no good. If he’s dead, the deal is off. You understand?”

  “Right.”

  “Pull this off, and you and your boys go to work in South America. New names, new passports, new everything. You’ll be paid well and you won’t go to prison.”

  “What about our wives and kids?” another rogue agent asked.

  “Forget them. Take it or leave it.”

  “We’ll take it,” Max said, after conferring with the men.

  Mike laid out the plan, ending with, “After you kill his dogs, Ransom will be so pissed off he’ll throw caution to the wind and come after you. Me and my boys will be waiting. It’s a simple plan and you know why . . .”

  The more complex a plan the more likely it is to screw up.

  “Transportation will be standing by to take us out of here. In seventy-two hours, you’ll be in South America. Now, what about this location? What about the men who left you and got out?”

  “We shifted locations as soon as the others decided to leave and try it outside on their own. They’ll eventually be caught. But no one except you knows of this cave.”

  Max was sure wrong about that. Chuck knew where the rogue agents were hiding out. Buckshot Jennings knew where the rogue agents were hiding. Darry knew where they were hiding. And the Unseen knew where they were hiding.

  Max was not a totally stupid man. For a long time he had been a loyal agent of the Bureau. He had carefully kissed enough ass and made enough friends with power to enable him to reach a supervisory position, and he’d been very careful to always have men under him who would blindly follow orders and not make waves. Men who were assigned to him who had a lot of initiative didn’t last long with Max. Max had always found a way to either have them transferred or run completely out of the Bureau. This operation was to have been his crowning glory; the pinnacle of success.

  Max blamed his failure on Darry Ransom.

  “Stormy is due in the area later today. They’ll be setting up satellite equipment and all that other shit that reporters do. She’ll be visiting Kevin Carmouche and the others tomorrow. Darry will be close by, bet on it. That’s when she’s going to get the news that a raid was done on that old outfitter’s place and Darry’s dogs are dead. Darry will surface then, and we’ll get him and we’re out of here. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “Start getting your boys in place. But be careful. George Eagle Dancer is staying at Chuck’s place. And that Indian will eat your boys alive if they’re spotted. Don’t underestimate George.”

  Max didn’t immediately comment on that remark, but he didn’t take it seriously, either. No damned mercenary was better than a trained Bureau man. That just wasn’t possible.

  “Do you understand about George?” Mike pressed.

  “I understand.”

  “You better,” Mike said very grimly. “George is almost the best there is.”

  “Who is better?” Max questioned. “You?”

  Mike smiled and shook his head. “No. Darry Ransom.”

  * * *

  Bobcat Blake and Tom Doolin were being held under heavy guard at the county jail. Hank Wallace didn’t really trust Sheriff Paige, so he’d arranged to have federal marshals throw a ring around the jail just in case. It wasn’t that Sheriff Paige was not a good man, for Hank knew he was. A damn good man. But a damn good man whose opinion of the federal government borderlined on open, undisguised hate.

  One among hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, and steadily growing, Hank thought, as he and Carol drove back to the ranger station. And why not? Why should any observant, thinking citizen have much faith in their government? We spy on the people, we snoop into every aspect of their private lives, we investigate any who openly and loudly criticize the administration—no matter what party is in office—we position the IRS over Americans’ heads like a spiked club. We can and do seize property, throw citizens out of their homes, freeze their assets, put them in jail, and in some cases, kill Americans if they resist.

  “A penny for your thoughts, Hank,” Carol said.

  “To paraphrase my son: ‘Government sucks!’ ”

  “With a capital ‘S,’ Hank.”

  * * *

  Steve Kelly, who used to cover Southern California for another network, was standing by at the Collier home in L.A. Debbie Howard, another top-flight reporter recently defected from one of the big three networks, was standing by at the home of the Kansas schoolteacher, Beverly Stevens. Mark Cole, one of the brightest and fastest rising stars in broadcast journalism (and an avowed conservative and anti-big government, which had not set well with his liberal bosses at the network he’d worked for until a few days ago) was standing by at what was left of the home of a man who had suffered through an early morning raid by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms—BATF. The man belonged to a group of hard-working,
law-abiding, tax-paying American citizens who believed that government was out of control and were not afraid to say so, often and loudly. Naturally, the government couldn’t allow people to group together and get organized and say bad things about their government. So acting under an “anonymous tip,” federal agents, legally armed with a search warrant, raided the home at one o’-clock in the morning, looking for illegal weapons (assault rifles, naturally). Of course, none were found, but the man’s wife was now in a local hospital, having suffered several broken ribs and a broken arm while resisting the ninja-suited and ski-masked goons who broke into her home. Trying to protect his mother, a ten-year-old boy was butt-stroked unconscious by an agent carrying an assault rifle (what else?). The child was now in the same hospital as his mother, with a broken jaw. Inside, the home was a wreck. Mattresses had been cut open, the floor ripped up, sofas torn apart, wall paneling pulled down, commodes and sinks ripped out. The agents had used metal detectors, scouring the backyard, looking for underground caches of weapons. Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of damage had been done to the home, and the only weapons found were a .22 caliber rifle, a .38 pistol that the man had bought at a gun show and was not registered, and one twelve gauge shotgun the man used for duck hunting. The man was placed under arrest and tossed in jail for having an unregistered pistol.

  Your government at work, friends.

  The local sheriff promptly released the man on his own recognizance and was standing by, with the homeowner, to give his opinion of the raid—which was not going to be very complimentary toward the government.

  In New York State, another reporter from the Coyote Network was standing by with a man who had stopped a mugging in his town. He had broken the mugger’s arm in doing so, and now the mugger was suing the citizen for zillions of dollars, claiming his civil rights had been violated because the citizen had called him an uncomplimentary racial name while he was preventing the mugger from using a knife on the woman he had attacked.

  Six other reporters from the Coyote Network were standing by in other parts of the country, with similar stories to air. Naturally, the government knew where all the reporters were (having sent federal agents out to spy on them), and naturally, the agents reported back as to the content and substance of the stories, and naturally, the government was highly distressed about it. The AG’s office concluded that these stories were going to agitate an already irritated American public and further exacerbate the situation. In other words, the average citizen was going to get pissed off.

  The President looked at the field reports from around the nation and said, “Oh, shit!”

  * * *

  “You’ve got more balls than Dick Tracy,” Craig Hamilton said to Darry. “There must be two hundred and fifty federal agents looking for you, and here you sit, calm as can be, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts.”

  Darry had slipped into the home of Chuck, the outfitter, just before dawn on the day Max Vernon and team were due to arrive at the remote ranch to kill his dogs. One of Chuck’s distant “cousins” had told the man what was going to happen. The cave in which Max and his cohorts were hiding ran for miles underground and was a natural amphitheater, a whispered word carrying for hundreds of feet.

  Darry smiled at the reporter. “Do you have the capability to go live from here?”

  “Anytime I choose. Why?”

  “Max Vernon and his boys will be here in about an hour. They’re about two miles away right now. They’ve got some silly plan to try and flush me out.”

  “How do you know they’re two miles away at this moment?” Craig asked.

  “Signals,” Chuck told him, sitting by a window. “They’re moving again, Darry.”

  “Time to get into position. We—”

  “Car pulling into the driveway,” George called from the front porch. “It’s those two feds; Hank Wallace and Carol whatever-her-name-is.”

  “Just keeps getting more and more interesting,” Darry said.

  The satellite truck had been hidden in the barn, the technicians standing by, ready to relay. Stormy and Ki were at the remote cabins of the three families who were attacked by federal agents, ready to roll tape.

  Hank and Carol stopped short at the sight of George Eagle Dancer, sitting on the porch, Pete and Repeat on either side of him, but recovered quickly. “You’re just in time for the show,” George told the pair from IAD. “Go right on in. If you don’t mind, I’ll pull your car around to the barn. We don’t want our unexpected guests to be tipped off.”

  Hank looked at the mercenary with the hard eyes, taking in the face with the map of the world written on it. He shrugged and tossed him the keys. “All right. I’m not too old to enjoy a surprise.”

  “Go in the house,” George told the hybrids. Pete and Repeat rose as one and padded into the house, through the door held open by Carol.

  “Jesus!” Carol said, stepping into the den and spotting Darry.

  “There are a lot of people looking for you, Mr. Ransom,” Hank told him.

  “So I’ve been told. I believe you know Chuck and Craig. Get yourselves a cup of coffee and relax for a few minutes. The show will start in about fifty minutes.”

  “What show?” Carol asked.

  “One I’m sure you’ll enjoy,” Darry said.

  Hank poured two cups of coffee and turned to Darry. “We got a tip that something big was going to take place here. The call came to us, through the sheriffs office, about two hours ago. The sheriff didn’t seem all that interested in it.”

  Chuck smiled. “Greg don’t have much use for you federal people.”

  “We gathered that much,” Carol said drily.

  “Would either of you care to make a statement for the press?” Craig asked innocently.

  “I think not,” Hank said. He looked at Darry. “It is my duty to inform you, Mr. Ransom, that you—”

  Darry waved him silent. “Save it for later.”

  Hank sighed and sat down. He looked at his partner. “Why not?” he said.

  * * *

  Max Vernon really wasn’t very intelligent. But he was prodding and thorough, and given enough time, he could figure things out. Now, squatting on a ridge about half a mile from the outfitter’s house, he finally put it all together.

  “It’s a set-up,” he told his men. “That goddamn mercenary set us up.”

  “How do you figure?” a young agent named Pat Lewis asked.

  “Call it a gut feeling,” Max answered sourly. Like the others, he was physically tired, mentally exhausted from being on the run, and his clothes were stiff with dirt and sweat. “Among other things.”

  “What other things?”

  Richard Adams said, “I’m with you, Max. That ranch down there is just too goddamn peaceful-looking to suit me.”

  “Max?” called Marty Stewart, who had been bringing up the drag. “We got . . . things behind us and to the left and right of us.”

  “Things?” Max said, twisting around. “What the hell do you mean, things?”

  “Just what I said, Max. Things. They walk upright, but they’re not human. They’re things.”

  Max smiled and then chuckled. “You’ve got a vivid imagination, Marty.”

  A series of low growls came from the brush all around the knot of maverick agents. The men moved closer together and tightened the grip on their weapons.

  “Remember those footprints we saw back in the cave, Max?” Pete Elkins reminded him, nervously looking all around him. “I think those things out there made them.”

  “I hate this goddamn place,” Sonny Martin said. “It’s spooky out here.”

  Max glanced at his watch. It had stopped. He sighed. “What time is it?” he asked.

  “We’re supposed to hit the ranch in fifteen minutes,” Pete said.

  “Then let’s do it,” Max said, standing up.

  From out of the brush and the timber and the rocks there came a strange sort of laughter. It was not human, but yet, oddly, it was. The sound rattled
the nerves of the rogue agents.

  “I hate this goddamn place,” Sonny repeated.

  “If we go down there, we’re gonna die, Max,” Richard said. “I feel it.”

  “Would you rather go to prison for the rest of your life?” Max countered.

  That was met by stony looks.

  “That’s what I figured. Move out. We got a couple of goddamn dogs to kill.”

  26

  In the loft of the barn, Craig’s cameraman was filming the advance of the rogue agents. In the house, Hank lowered his borrowed binoculars.

  “What in the world is the fool thinking?” Hank said softly.

  “Oh, he’s coming here to kill my dogs,” Darry said. “He’s now working with the mercenaries—he thinks. But they set him up. They called you and told you about the ‘something big’ going to take place here.”

  Hank and Carol both pulled their S&W stainless steel 10mm autoloaders from the high-rise regulation holsters.

  Chuck snorted and tossed Darry the .375 Winchester. Darry levered a round into the chamber.

  “You stay out of this, Ransom!” Hank said sharply.

  “They came here to kill my dogs,” Darry said. “That makes me a part of it.”

  “I am ordering you to ... oh, to hell with it!” Hank said.

  Carol turned her head for a moment so Hank could not see her smile.

  “Call in!” Hank told Carol. “Tell base to ...” He fell silent. “Sure we will. How are we going to do that when the damn car’s in the barn?” Hank looked over at Chuck. The man was standing by a window, a rifle in his hands. The IAD man looked over to his right. George Eagle Dancer stood by a window, a heavy caliber rifle held in his hands.