Hunted

by William W. Johnstone

“Hank,” Carol said. “Max and his people are armed with automatic weapons. These pistols aren’t going to do us a lot of good.”

  “Rifle rack’s over there,” Chuck called. “Hep yourselves.”

  Carol chose a .308, Hank picked up a 7mm mag, and both loaded up, dropping a few extra rounds in their jacket pockets. By now, Max and his people were well within range. Before anyone could stop him, Hank stepped out onto the back porch.

  “Damn fool!” Chuck said.

  “By the book,” Carol said. “That’s the Bureau way. We’re both wearing vests.”

  “Not over your heads, you ain’t,” Chuck replied.

  “Hold it, Max!” Hank called. “FBI. It’s Hank Wallace. It’s over, Max. Give it up. You men, lay your weapons on the ground and advance toward me, hands where I can see them.”

  Max cut loose with a burst of .223 rounds, and Hank just managed to drop to the porch floor, safe behind a stack of firewood. The rogue agents scattered, two of them heading for the barn. Craig had left the house just after Hank and Carol had arrived and was in the loft. When the agents ran into the barn, Craig tipped over a tall stack of baled hay and flattened the two men, breaking the arm of one and knocking the wind out of the other. He jumped down and retrieved their weapons, then used their own handcuffs to secure the men.

  “I got all of that, Craig!” his cameraman called.

  “All right!”

  Carol drilled one of the rogue agents in the belly with her .308, and Chuck doubled one over with a round from his old .30-30. Max, Marty Stewart, Peter Elkins, Richard Adams, and Sonny Martin headed for the road and crossed it, making the timber. Young Pat Lewis and the rest threw down their weapons and stepped out, hands in the air.

  “We were just taking orders from the team leader, Mr. Wallace!” Pat hollered. “We were just following orders, that’s all! I swear it.”

  Carol looked over at Darry and was shocked. The man’s expression was one of sheer savagery. His pale eyes were glowing with an eerie light.

  “Just following orders,” Darry said, his face losing its barbaric look and the glow fading in his eyes. “Just following orders.”

  “There’s been more innocent people killed by assholes just following orders than fleas on a bear,” Chuck remarked.

  Carol said nothing. But silently, she agreed with the outfitter.

  The satellite truck was driven out of the barn and equipment made ready for broadcast.

  No one noticed that Darry had slipped away as silent as the breeze . . . until the sounds of a fast-galloping horse reached them. But there was nothing anyone could do to stop him, for first off there was the business of arresting people to attend to.

  “Don’t say a word,” Carol advised Pat Lewis. “It can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the young agent said.

  She advised him of the rest of his rights as Hank was reading the rights to the others.

  “Why?” an older agent now in handcuffs asked. “Just answer me that, Inspector. Why?”

  “Why what, Dickerson?” The two men had known each other for over ten years.

  “Why send us against people who haven’t done anything wrong, that’s what?”

  “That’s the very question a lot of American people are going to be asking,” Craig Hamilton said, walking up, a microphone in his hand and his cameraman filming.

  “There will be an official statement later on,” Hank said. “Until then, no one here has anything to say.”

  “I do!” Dickerson shouted. “By God, I do!”

  “Shut up, Dickerson!” Hank warned him.

  “Max Vernon knew all along those hippies were clean,” Dickerson plunged ahead. “And so did some of the other people in the various agencies involved in this screw-up.”

  “Goddammit, Dickerson!” Hank roared, trying to wrestle the man away from the damning microphone and the camera. “Will you be quiet?”

  But Dickerson wasn’t having any of it. “It’s political. That’s all it is. The orders come from higher up. We just take them and follow them. If we don’t, we lose our jobs. And that’s the God’s truth.”

  “He’s right, Mr. Hamilton!” young Pat Lewis shouted, jerking away from Carol. The mike and camera swung around. “It’s political. Waco didn’t have to happen. Neither did those killings up north of here. All that could have been handled without bloodshed. The government is out to get anyone who opposes it. And I mean anyone.” The young man stared at the logo on the microphone and then shifted his eyes to the big van. “Coyote Network. But I thought you were with . . .” He trailed off. “Well, it doesn’t make any difference. News is news.”

  “It is now,” Craig said. “Now it’s from the side of the people.”

  Hank and Carol could see their long careers with the Bureau slowly fading into the sunset with each damning word from the mouths of the captured agents. The men were in their custody; it was up to them to put a lid on comments from them.

  Hank looked at Carol, and she smiled. Both could retire whenever they wanted. They had their years in. Both were lawyers and both wanted to practice.

  “Well,” Carol said. “Fuck it!”

  “Yes,” Hank said. “That sums it up rather well. Just. . . fuck it!”

  They backed away and let the rogue agents talk. And talk they did.

  * * *

  In Washington, D.C., the President of the United States put his head down on his desk. He felt like weeping. He could practically hear the flapping wings of the circling buzzards, coming to pick the bones of his career clean.

  Over in Justice, the AG wondered if it was time to start desk cleaning.

  At the Hoover Building, the DIR/FBI leaned back in his chair, a strange smile of satisfaction on his face. No one else would ever know exactly what that smile meant. But then, the press had missed one important fact of his college days: the student had almost not gone on to law school. He had come very close to choosing another vocation, for his drama coach thought he would be a really terrific actor. And not only was the man ambidextrous, but the director had another talent besides the ability to play a part so well he almost believed it himself, and did, in fact, sometimes get so immersed in a part he actually played devil’s advocate in his own mind: he would have also made an excellent forger, for he could copy anyone’s signature well enough to fool most experts. He used to practice doing so with the signatures of his close friends.

  * * *

  “Is this what the government’s coming to?” The man whose home had been ransacked and whose wife and ten-year-old child were now in the hospital spoke into the camera. He was angry but keeping that anger under control... with a visible effort. “Neither my wife nor I, and certainly not our ten-year-old son, committed any crime. Neither my wife nor I have ever received so much as a traffic ticket. We belong to a group of citizens who think that government has grown too large and is out of control. And we speak up about it. We send out literature detailing government excesses. We are not racist; we have people of all creeds and colors in our group. What happened here”—he held out a hand to the destroyed living room of the home—“is nothing more than a move by the government to attempt to silence us. Well, it won’t work, Mr. President . . .”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it,” the Pres muttered, his eyes fixed on the TV screen in his office. “You think I know every damn thing that goes on in every agency? How the hell can you blame me?”

  Because you make the policy, stupid.

  “This tragedy just strengthened our resolve,” the man said. They had moved into the bedroom, which was a shambles. The camera panned to the bathroom, where the sink had been torn from the wall and the commode ripped from the floor. The man pointed a trembling finger at the camera. “Now you hear me well, Mr. President. You’re going to have to kill me to silence me. But when you kill me, there will be someone else to take my place. And yet another person ready to take their place . . .”

  “It’s not m
y fault!” the Pres yelled, startling his chief of staff and others in the room.

  Oh, but it is, Pres. You’re the Man with the power. You could stop it with one phone call.

  Mark Cole, the reporter for the Coyote Network, said, “The phones in the small offices of the Citizens Against Big Government have been ringing nonstop all day. People from all over America calling in to sign up, to pledge money, asking what they can do to prevent another tragedy like this from occurring. And the answer is always the same: get organized. The number to call is . . .”

  “Jesus Christ!” the Pres hollered. “News programs don’t do things like that.”

  “Relax,” the President’s legal counsel told his boss. “Those captured Bureau agents are just babbling. Nothing they have said or will say can be proven. You certainly didn’t order that tragedy at Waco, and you weren’t in office when the killings took place in Northern Idaho.”

  “I’m in office now,” the Pres mumbled.

  Most senators and representatives were in their Washington offices, watching the special reports from the Coyote Network on TV. Their phones had been ringing incessantly, fax machines dinging and donging; telegrams were pouring in.

  “I think,” the recently elected Speaker of the House whispered in awe at the events unfolding, “the revolution has begun.”

  * * *

  “No sign of Ransom,” Ike Dover reported in by walkie-talkie. “But I thought I heard shooting over at the outfitter’s ranch.”

  “Stay loose,” Mike ordered. “He’ll be along. Out.”

  That was the last report Ike would make on this day.

  “Phsstt!” the sound came from behind Ike.

  The mercenary turned around. “Oh, shit!” he managed to say, a micro-second before Darry hit him on the side of the jaw with the butt of the Winchester .375. Dover’s world turned dark as he kissed the ground.

  Darry trussed him up, threw his weapons into the brush, and moved on.

  The mercenaries had formed a loose semicircle around the cabins of the families Stormy was about ready to interview, laying back about a half mile from the shot-up homes.

  Miles Burrell felt a stinging in his butt and twisted around. He saw the feathered syringe sticking out of his left buttock and cussed as the powerful drug began to freeze his muscles, preventing him from moving. Within seconds he was fast asleep. Darry gathered up the man’s weapons, reloaded his tranquilizer gun, and moved on.

  John Webb thought a bee had stung him in the butt. Then the knock-out drug began working on him, and he realized what had happened. But he could not move. He sighed, drifted off, and Darry moved on.

  A few moments later, when none of his men would answer his radio calls, Mike Tuttle smiled grimly. “Damn, but you are good, Ransom. Just about the best I have ever seen.” A feathered syringe buried itself in Mike’s butt, and Mike grunted as he went to his knees. “Another day, Ransom. We shall meet again. Bet on that.”

  Mike Tuttle collapsed on the ground and didn’t fight the drug. He knew that to fight it was useless. He drifted off to sleep and would remain that way for several hours.

  * * *

  A federal judge, after sensing the political winds were very rapidly changing directions, had ordered the immediate release from jail of Kevin Carmouche, Vince Clayderman, and Todd Noble. In his decree, he wrote, “Law-abiding citizens of the United States have the constitutional right to protect themselves against armed aggression, even when that aggression comes in the form of duly constituted officers of the law who have clearly made a mistake.”

  The ruling was landmark, and the attorney general of the United States went ballistic.

  “Don’t say a goddamn word,” the chief legal counsel to the President warned the AG. “The attention span of the American people is too short to sustain it. The Coyote Network is a fluke. It will pass.”

  He was sure wrong about that.

  Darry Ransom slipped back into the deep timber of the wilderness, stretched out under the shade of a tree, and took a nap. He went to sleep with a very satisfied smile on his face. This was not the first time he’d helped fan the flames of revolution.

  * * *

  The American people had never seen news such as the reports airing on the Coyote Network. Those with any astuteness about them at all were mesmerized. Work in many factories and businesses around the nation slowed to a snail’s pace that day, as the special reports kept coming in. The workers, whenever possible, were glued to TV sets.

  When the hour-long evening news came on, the anchors from the Big Three felt like they’d been raped. They were airing reports about events in countries ten thousand miles away (most of which the average American had very little interest in, if any interest at all) while the Coyote Network was airing stories about America and Americans, events and happenings that touched a raw, exposed nerve in TV viewers.

  “By God, the press is finally doing something right,” was the general reaction from people who had stopped watching the evening news years back . . . since the content was always so boringly predictable.

  Neighbor called neighbor that evening; friend called friend, all over America.

  Ian MacVay took the last sixty seconds of air time that evening, proclaiming, “The Coyote Network will always put events about Americans and America first. If situations arise that might touch the lives of all Americans, we realize that residents of Binghamton, New York, want to know about those events, even if they are taking place in Valdosta, Georgia, or Santa Paula, California, or Kennett, Missouri. We are all a part of the whole. What takes place in one part of the nation directly affects those living in other areas of the United States. This is my adopted home, and just like all of you, I want to know what is happening in my country. And I want to know it immediately. And you will know about it when it happens, and that is the Coyote Network’s pledge to you.”

  “Crap!” said the Pres, clicking off the TV. “I would very much like to get drunk tonight.”

  “You can’t,” his chief of staff told him. “You’re having dinner with selected members of CLAPCAA.”

  “What the hell is CLAPCAA?”

  “Citizens for the Legislative Advancement of Political Correctness for All Americans.”

  “Shit!” said the Pres.

  “You got that right,” the chief of staff muttered, as he closed the door behind him.

  27

  Mike Tuttle awakened in the chill of early evening. He was stiff, sore, and the heavy drug had left him addle-headed. He reached for his pistol. It was gone. “Naturally,” he mumbled, his tongue thick. He sat up with a groan and fumbled for his canteen. He rinsed out his mouth and then washed his face with the water. “This is getting real personal, Ransom. I think I’m going to make you my own private little war.”

  One by one, his team of mercs began reporting in, all of them thick-tongued and mad as hornets at being taken so easily. Mike acknowledged their check-ins and told them to make it to the rendezvous point. They had cached supplies there.

  At the jump-off point, Mike said, “Ransom’s gone. Don’t ask me how I know, I just know.” He paused, deep in thought. “This was a warning, boys. I think Darry just told us that he could have easily killed us all, and that the next time we meet, he will do just that.”

  Ike Dover said, “This Ransom person spooks me, Mike. He’s the best I’ve ever seen. We need some more men.”

  “Yeah,” Mike slowly agreed. “Roche said he wanted this prick alive, but he didn’t say anything about crippled. We’ll get a long-distance shooter and knock a leg out from under the bastard.”

  “Dale Williams,” Nick Sharp suggested.

  “That’s who I was thinking of.” He smiled. “And Dale don’t like dogs.”

  Dennis Tipton gave him a hard glance. “Mike, I told you before, now I’m tellin’ you again: you hurt those dogs of his, Ransom will kill you slow and hard. Not only you, but everybody connected with this operation.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Dennis. They’
re dogs, goddammit. Just a couple of mutts.”

  “I don’t like it,” Dennis muttered. “I just don’t like it.”

  The others laughed him silent.

  None of them were aware of being watched from the edge of the clearing.

  * * *

  “Goddamn a person who would kill a man’s dogs to get at him!” Chuck raged, after his midnight visitor had left. “Takes one sorry son of a bitch to do that.”

  “I know Dale Williams,” George said. “He was thrown out of the army. Dishonorably discharged. He’s a killer. He’s a good shot, but he enjoys killing. It’s almost a ...” He grimaced. “A sexual thing with him.”

  Chuck spat in the cold fireplace, as if suddenly he had a very bad taste in his mouth. “How good is he?”

  “Up to three, maybe four hundred meters, none better. Beyond that, I’ve seen others out-shoot him.”

  “That’s a good shot, four hundred meters.”

  “Not bad,” George said with a smile. “You’re sure Mike and his people have left?”

  “Yes. They packed up and pulled out.”

  “Darry?”

  “He’s over at his cabin with that female reporter.” Chuck grinned mischievously. “I ‘spect they both all worn down to a frazzle now and just talkin’ low to one another.”

  “You’re a dirty old man, Chuck.”

  Chuck laughed and slapped his knee. “Ain’t it the truth?”

  * * *

  Network executives from the Big Three and two all-news networks had met in their conference rooms until late that night. Phone surveys had been done, and the Coyote Network evening news had blown them all out of the water. None of them had ever seen their ratings fall to such a dismal low.

  News ratings were never great ... but this was just awful. The talk in the various conference rooms went something like this:

  “But they didn’t even talk about the civil strife in Africa,” one harried-looking executive said.

  “Or the problems in the Mideast,” another pointed out.

  “Or the situation in the Balkans,” another said.

  “Or that terribly important conference in Pakistan concerning proper diet for Tibetan monks.”