Hunted

by William W. Johnstone

  Listening to the Coyote News on a radio, Darry smiled. He’d helped sow the seeds of revolution back in America’s infancy, and now he had the chance to do it all over again.

  It was a very satisfying feeling.

  He turned up the volume.

  “This (beep) smashes my wife in the head with a tire iron, fracturing her skull and blinding her in one eye. He grabs her purse and takes off. My son jumps in the car and goes after the (beep). The alley is dead-end, and my son pins the (beep) against a brick wall, breaking both his legs. The (beepbeep) punk sues us and wins! Can you believe that? You’re (beepbeep) right I think it was racial. I’m white, the (beep) is black, and the jury was eight-to-four black. What do you think? This nation is all (beeped)-up.”

  Darry heard the slight noise behind him and tensed. Then his acute olfactory senses told him the man was George Eagle Dancer. He relaxed. George was one of the very best men in the brush Darry had ever seen. The half-breed could move like a ghost.

  George squatted down beside him, a smile on his lips. “I almost got up on you, didn’t I?”

  “Almost, George. But close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. What’s going on?”

  “You’ve been formally charged with sedition against the government of the United States. Among other charges.”

  “Name some of the other charges . . . as if I didn’t know.”

  “Evading income tax for the purpose of defrauding the government, living under an assumed name, taking a false social security number, aiding and abetting federal fugitives... the list is pretty long.”

  “How are my dogs?”

  “Fat and happy. They’re safe. What about these charges, Darry?”

  “They’re just about what I was charged with in Europe several centuries ago. Wording is different.”

  “What did you do?”

  Darry smiled. “I killed a king. Now bring Stormy out here.”

  George chuckled. “How did you know? I left her a hundred yards back.”

  “I smelled her scent.”

  George discreetly vanished into the brush and gave Darry and Stormy some time alone. “You’ve got to let me broadcast your story, Darry,” she said, pressing against him, her arms around his neck. “I don’t want to, but it’s the only way to expose the government for what they are.”

  “No. That’s what the government wants.”

  She pulled back and looked at him. “What?”

  “The Ottoman Turks tried the same thing. In a manner of speaking. The government wants to deal, Stormy. I turn myself in to them for study, and they drop the charges against me. All a big mistake, they’ll say. No. I won’t do that. But it’s going to get rough. You don’t know big government the way I do. Everybody who was involved in this ‘incident’ in the wilderness is going to get dirtied. The government will very carefully manufacture charges to bring against everyone involved. Those charges might not stick in court . . . probably won’t. But the government has batteries of lawyers, and it’ll be expensive.”

  “A month ago I would have called you a liar, Darry.”

  “I know.”

  “Now what?”

  “I always say I am never going to get involved with big government again.” He smiled. “But I always end up doing exactly that. Keep hammering and chipping away at government excesses, Stormy. Do as much as you can in the time the government allows you.”

  “Darry, they can’t stop us. For all its faults, this is still the United States of America. And there is such a thing as the Constitution. We have rights—all of us.”

  Darry’s smile was sad. “I hope all the reporters now working for Coyote are clean. For if there is a blemish in the past of any of you, you can bet the hundreds of government agents now investigating each and every one of you will find it and use it against you. You can bet a year’s salary there is a full field investigation going on right now.”

  “We’re being investigated by the FBI?”

  “You better believe you are. And it’s being done by men and women who are very, very good at what they do.”

  “But we haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “That doesn’t make any difference, Stormy. The government has extensive files on Americans who have broken no laws. Now come on! Surely you knew that?”

  “I . . . suspected it.”

  Darry studied her face for a moment as they sat in the shade of a clump of trees, the Salmon River, the River Of No Return, miles to the south of them. “You really didn’t know about the secret files, did you?”

  She shook her head. “No. I didn’t. But that’s against the law, Darry.”

  He laughed bitterly. “Whose law, Stormy? What law? The same laws that apply to American citizens don’t apply to big government. You think you can gain access to them through the Freedom of Information Act? Forget it. Think again. All the investigating agency has to do is run behind the National Security Act, and they don’t have to tell you a damn thing. Ever. Or more than likely, if you confront the agency that is investigating you, they’ll just say: ‘Files? What files? We don’t have any files on you. Who are you?’ ”

  “You make our government sound . . . so evil.”

  “It is, Stormy. It’s also profane.”

  “Riders coming, Darry!” George Eagle Dancer called out softly.

  Stormy had one arm around Darry’s neck. A second later she had her arm around the neck of an enormous gray wolf with jaws so powerful they could crush the spine of a buffalo with one snap. She was so startled she could not utter a sound.

  The big wolf licked the side of her face and was gone into the brush with one bound.

  Stormy came very close to peeing her panties.

  29

  That Sam Parish and many of his followers in the Citizen’s Defense League could vanish so completely and stay hidden was a tribute to the burgeoning survivalist movement in America. While many, if not most, of the survivalist groups in the nation were not racist (although why that should be any business of big government was a mystery to many, unless the government was now attempting to monitor and control individual thoughts), and did not present any threat to the government of the United States, there were quite a few who did—at least in the minds of many government officials—and those groups networked with each other. With the government’s ability to listen to anybody’s phone calls (which many believed they did with an alarming frequency), government enforcement agencies able to intercept private mail and duplicate envelopes in a matter of seconds (which they did), citizens who wished to engage in private conversations had learned to be very inventive in communications.

  It drove the government crazy.

  Any coded message was a threat on the life of a senator or representative or some other elected or appointed bureaucratic and officious little dipshit. Scrambled or coded communications between private citizens were a plot to overthrow the government to the paranoid, sneaky, and devious little minds of many government officials, whose sole purpose for existence (or so it appeared to many) was to foul up the lives of as many law-abiding, tax-paying American citizens as possible . . . especially if they were ultraconservative (liberals referred to them as right wing and fascist) in politics and had the courage to speak out against America’s steady advance toward socialism.

  Sam and his group went underground and kept their heads down.

  Three weeks had passed since the fiasco in Idaho ended and the Coyote Network had gone on the air. The so-called “fluke” of news reporting and broadcasting had turned out to be anything but. The Coyote Network’s evening news and special reports consistently, night after night, garnered the highest ratings in TV news history as they stubbornly hammered away at government excesses and Big Brother’s insidious invasion into the lives of private citizens. Elected officials were warned, quite bluntly, by their constituents, that there had better be a flat tax rate brought to the floor for a vote, and it better be done damn quickly or a lot of elected officials were going to be out on t
heir asses looking for work.

  The Coyote Network reminded viewers that when the tax code was first written, it was about fourteen pages long. Now it was over ten thousand pages long.

  “As usual, the ultraright-wingers are misinformed,” one ultraliberal U.S. senator solemnly intoned, looking and sounding as if he were delivering the eulogy at a funeral. “It is only nine thousand seven hundred and fifty-three pages long.”

  Someone in the group of reporters gave him a loud, wet raspberry.

  “It is no laughing matter,” the senator mumbled on. “Every word in those tax codes is vital to this nation’s very existence and to the welfare of its citizens. The voluntary compliance to the gathering of taxes is the very rock this nation stands on.”

  “I thought that was Plymouth Rock,” a reporter called.

  The senator gave her a very dark look.

  “What do you mean, voluntary?” the reporter from the Coyote Network called. “There is nothing voluntary about it. The government collects taxes at the point of a gun.”

  “That’s a vicious lie!” The senator lost his cool.

  The Pres, watching the news conference from the Oval Office, said, “Oh, shit!”

  * * *

  Darry’s wait for the return of the mercenaries ended one rainy morning in early June. He had been alerted the day before that all federal agents who had been in the area looking for him had suddenly pulled out.

  “So Mr. Roche has some considerable stroke with the government,” Darry muttered. “That is very interesting. Sometimes, Mr. Roche, when you play both ends against the middle, you can get hurt.”

  But he knew getting to Roche would be next to impossible.

  “Are the dogs safe?” he had asked Chuck.

  “Yes. Don’t worry about them. Darry? My ... ah ... relatives could take these men out and there would be no trace ever found of them. These ol’ boys plan to hurt you, Darry. Cripple you.”

  Darry shook his head. “No. This is my fight. It’s personal now. Tell the Unseen to lay low until this is over. Chuck, thanks. You better get back now.”

  The outfitter nodded his head and turned to leave. He looked back. “Stormy said to tell you she’d see you when this mess is all over.”

  “She didn’t file a story about me, did she?”

  “No, and she never will, neither. She’s in love with you, Darry.”

  Darry offered no reply to that. He sat under the low overhang of branches until Chuck had disappeared from sight. “I warned you men,” Darry muttered. “I gave you ample opportunity to leave here with your lives. Now you’ve returned to harm me. So be it. You have no one to blame but yourselves.”

  Darry rose and began moving through the brush and timber, never exposing himself on any clearing. An hour later, he heard a shot, followed by a howl of pain. He recognized the cries as coming from a two-year-old member of a pack. A young male. There would be mourning in the pack over the loss. The cries died away as life left the young wolf. A mercenary had shot the animal thinking it was Darry; and had it been, it would not have died, and their capture would have been successful.

  “Bastards!” Darry muttered.

  A half mile away, Miles Burrell looked down at the dead wolf and shrugged. “I guess that ain’t him,” he said to Ike Dover.

  Ike gave the still-warm body a vicious kick. “We’ll shoot every goddamn wolf we see.”

  “What if the rangers show up?” one of the three new additions to the group asked.

  Mike Tuttle looked at Roy Craft. “We shoot them, too. But don’t kill that foxy little ranger. I want to pack that little pussy of hers full of meat.” He smiled. “Then we kill her.”

  Standing a few yards away, Dennis Tipton made up his mind. He was out of this. All the way out. He’d warned the men time and again they were making a mistake coming back into the wilderness for Darry, and making a terrible mistake by killing dogs and wolves in order to get to Ransom. War was one thing, this was something else entirely. But how to get out was the question. Mike and the others had crossed that invisible line. They had turned from soldiers into killers.

  “I thought I saw tracks back yonder a ways, Mike,” Dennis said, his mind made up. “I’ll see where they go and bump you.”

  “All right. Stay in touch.”

  Oh, you bet I will, Dennis thought. I’ll send you a telegram from my farm back in South Carolina. Providing Darry lets me get out of here alive.

  Dennis walked away into the mist that hung close to the land. A few minutes later, Darry watched the man throw his rifle and tranquilizer gun into some brush, then remove his holstered pistol and toss that into the brush.

  “Keep your knife,” Darry said, stepping out of the thicket and almost causing Dennis to shit his underwear. “You might need that.”

  “I’m out of this foolishness,” Dennis said. “I warned Mike and the others not to come back. Told them it was wrong. Now I’m through.”

  “Go on back to the ranger station. Tell Rick and Alberta what’s happening out here. And tell them I said to stay put this day. Don’t come out into this sector.” Darry took a stub of pencil and wrote a few words on the back of an envelope. “Give this to Rick. That will convince him you are being truthful. Don’t return here, mercenary.” Then Darry threw back his head and howled, the wavering notes sending shivers up and down Dennis’ spine. Darry howled and howled, each chilling call a bit different from the other.

  “What in the name of all that’s Holy was that about?” Dennis blurted.

  “I just assured you safe passage, mercenary. You, alone. Now go.”

  Dennis needed no further urging. He set out for the ranger station at a fast walk. He did not look back.

  It was nine o’clock on the morning that America’s second revolution was beginning.

  * * *

  “We’ve got a situation out in Texas, Mr. President,” a very nervous aide informed the Pres.

  “Oh, shit! Not another Waco?”

  “Worse.”

  “What the hell could be worse than Waco?”

  Before he could reply, another aide came up, his face shiny with nervous sweat. “We’ve got a situation in upstate New York, sir.”

  “My mother warned me not to go into politics,” the Pres said. “She wanted me to take over the ranch instead. But I ran for senator and to my surprise I got elected the first time out of the gate. Worse goddamn decision I ever made. I could have been very happy as a cowboy.” He sighed. “What’s going on in Texas and New York?”

  “You want the condensed version or the whole picture?”

  “Just turn on the damned television set,” the Pres said sourly. “I’m sure the Coyote Network is already on the scene and playing it for all it’s worth.”

  * * *

  At the urging of all concerned, Stormy and Ki had left the wilderness area to step back into the modern world. As soon as they heard what was happening in Texas, they had taken a private jet into Lubbock and rented a car for the short drive north. Another Coyote Network news team had jetted into the closest airport in upstate New York and rented a car for the drive west and slightly north. Both news teams were as close to the trouble spot as the police would allow them to get and were set up and broadcasting.

  “From what we have learned so far,” Stormy said, “it seems that a Mr. Roy Linwood had several hard choices to make. None of those choices easy ones. Faced with years of enormous medical bills that his insurance did not cover, Mr. Linwood decided to pay what he could on his medical bills and house notes rather than pay income tax. Over a period of three years, the man has struggled to keep his wife and son alive, and also to pay what he could on his mounting income tax bill. Early this morning, agents from the IRS moved in to seize Mr. Linwood’s property . . .”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” the Pres said, putting his face into his hands. “Not this, not now!”

  * * *

  In upstate New York, Mark Cole was broadcasting. Coyote cut away from Texas and switched to his l
ocation. “Barricaded inside this modest frame home is Mrs. Georgia Hill and her three children, ages nineteen, sixteen, and thirteen. The youngest is a girl, Sally. Since her husband’s suicide five years ago, Mrs. Hill has worked as a waitress at a local restaurant. Prior to her husband’s suicide, Mr. and Mrs. Hill operated a small but profitable business in this small community. Like nearly all middle-class Americans, they struggled to pay their taxes and, at the same time, tried to maintain a decent lifestyle . . .”

  It was a horror story, and the President was the most horrified, but much of it for strictly political reasons. He grabbed up the phone. “Get me the director of the IRS—now!” he shouted. A moment later: “Get those goddamn agents out of there!” he screamed. Then his face went chalk white. “What in God’s name do you mean ‘what agents?’ Don’t you know what the hell is going on in your own fucking agency?”

  Then the President heard shots coming from the TV speakers. “Oh, Christ!” he yelled. “Good God, no!”

  “The people inside the house fired on the agents first!” a very excited aide said.

  “I don’t give a damn who fired first!” the Pres yelled. “Tell your people to stand down and back off,” he shouted into the phone.

  “Shots have been fired in Texas, sir.”

  “Shit!” the Pres yelled. “Stop the shooting! Stop the shooting!”

  * * *

  Close, Darry thought, as the slug from the high-powered rifle slammed into a tree just inches from his right leg. Darry bellied down on the ground, cradling his .375 Winchester, and crawled into a thicket, then rolled down into a ravine and began circling. Darry knew every foot of this terrain; knew where all the hidden depressions were, all the places that afforded even the smallest bit of cover.

  “I think Dale winged him!” The shout came from only a few yards away from the ravine.

  Darry stood up, cocking back the hammer as he did. He let the Winchester boom. Ike Dover never realized what hit him as the big slug exploded his heart.