Hunted

by William W. Johnstone

  “Did you get him, Ike?” Miles shouted.

  Darry had already spotted Miles and fired. The mercenary raised up and dropped his rifle. He toppled to the ground and died looking up at the sullen sky, the fat rain drops splattering wetly on sightless eyes.

  Darry ran on through the ravine, exited the twisting corridor at a stand of timber and zigzagged through the trees and brush up a long slope. No shots were fired, so he guessed he had not been seen. Darry thumbed two more rounds into the Winchester and stretched out in a prone position. The mercenaries could not approach him from the rear, for that was a sheer climb of about a hundred feet. To his left lay an open field, and to his right was a burn area caused by lightning hitting a tree a few months back. They had to come at him from the front.

  Darry took a sip of water from his canteen and waited.

  * * *

  Horrified Americans watched as Georgia Hill staggered out of the house, her chest bloody. She lifted a rifle, and the federal assault team fired as one, a dozen rounds slamming into her body. Screaming their rage at the death of their mother, the three kids opened up with a shotgun and two .22 rifles from the windows of the house. The federal agents returned the fire. All America watched the tragedy on television, and many, male and female alike, wept as thirteen-year-old Sally Hill tumbled out of a window, half her head blown off. Her brothers, nineteen and sixteen years old, solemnly shook hands and charged out the back door, firing as they ran. They were chopped down by automatic weapons fire and died in a sprawl. Mark Cole noticed that both soles of the shoes the sixteen-year-old was wearing had holes in them.

  Mark was so angry, so shaken by what he had just witnessed, he lifted his microphone and said, in a voice choked with emotion, “The America our forefathers envisioned has turned into a bloody nightmare.”

  In Texas, Stormy watched as federal agents, wearing gas masks, assaulted the home of Roy Linwood, running through clouds of choking gas. From inside the house, three carefully spaced shots boomed. Roy Linwood had killed first his paralyzed son, then his wife, and then himself.

  “Everybody’s 10-7 in here,” a federal agent called from the porch of the house. Law enforcement ten-code numbers for “out of service.”

  “Get out of here,” a local radio newscaster said to Stormy and Ki, his voice shaky. “Right now. All hell is about to break loose.”

  The women turned. The street in front of the Linwood home and the lawns on both sides and to the rear was filling with grim-faced Texans, men and women, all of them carrying rifles or shotguns. It got very quiet. The sounds of bolts and levers and slides working, jacking rounds into chambers, was loud in the sudden stillness. Stormy and Ki had backed up, Ki filming as she went.

  “We are witnessing the beginning of a revolution,” Stormy reported.

  “You people are going to be in serious trouble if you don’t put those weapons away!” the team leader said through a bullhorn. “You are interfering with federal officers.”

  “Don’t film any of the citizens’ faces,” Stormy said to Ki.

  A deputy sheriff standing close by smiled at that. “Finally, the press is on the side of the people,” he said.

  The team leader of the federal agents turned to the county sheriff, standing off to one side, and lifted his bullhorn. “These are your people, Sheriff. You’d better do something.”

  The sheriff folded his arms across his chest and smiled.

  30

  The standoff in the small town in Northern Texas ended without further bloodshed, but it left some very badly shaken federal agents, who all knew they had come within a heartbeat of dying at the hands of very pissed-off citizens. And they all knew, too, that their power would never again be the same—anywhere in the United States—unless Big Brother came back to this town and came down hard on the citizens who had taken part in the... well, call it another “incident.”

  “Take the film from all the reporters,” Stormy whispered to the deputy who had smiled at her.

  “Right good idea, little lady,” he said. “But you can keep yours. You people from Coyote are all right.”

  The FBI was in town less than an hour later, meeting with the sheriff.

  “What happened to all that film of the incident, Sheriff?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “What film?”

  “Don’t play games with us, Sheriff. The citizens of this town are in a lot of trouble.”

  Wrong words to say to a tough ol’ Texas sheriff who grew up on a working ranch and won a chestful of medals in Korea with a regimental combat team. The sheriff pointed a finger at the special agent. “Let me tell you something, you goddamn blow-dried federal fart. Agents from the IRS came into this town prepared to put a sick man, his dying wife, and their paraplegic son out into the goddamned street with just the clothes on their backs, because they couldn’t pay their fucking federal income tax—”

  “Now you listen to me, Sheriff!” The Bureau man got his dander up. He wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to in such a manner. “Nobody, nobody, points guns at federal agents and gets away with it. I want that film.”

  “Good luck in getting it,” the sheriff said with a smile, leaning back in his chair. “I heard, through the grapevine, of course, all that film was burned up. However, I disremember exactly where I heard it.”

  “Sheriff, we both wear badges. We both enforce the law. We’re on the same side.”

  “Are we?” the sheriff questioned softly. “Maybe it started out that way. But no more. I think most of the time now we’re on opposite sides of the fence.”

  “You can’t mean that, Sheriff.”

  “The hell I don’t! What about all that mess that happened last month up in Idaho? What about that uncalled for, god-awful, government fuck-up over in Waco? What about that mess up in Idaho two/three years back where that young woman and her son was killed? I work for the people, sonny. I don’t spy on them. We don’t keep secret files on hard-workin’, decent people. Roy Linwood was a good, decent man who fell on hard times. He had a series of terrible choices to make, and he made the right ones, I think. He chose family ahead of all else. And if you wouldn’t have done the same, then you’re a damn sorry excuse for a man. Now get the hell out of my office. I want to listen to the Coyote News special report comin’ up shortly. They tell it like it is.”

  * * *

  Darry held high, and the slug took the mercenary just under the throat and blew out part of his spinal cord. John Webb was dead before he hit the ground.

  “Jesus Christ, Dale!” Mike shouted into his radio. “Will you get some lead in that son of a bitch!”

  “He’s behind good cover, Mike,” Dale radioed. “I can’t get a clear shot at him. And that is no off-the-rack rifle he’s using, either, and that ammo is hand-loaded.” Right on both counts.

  “And he’s got the high ground,” added Roy Craft, one of the three new mercs hired, just as the third new mercenary jumped from his position and tried to make it up the burn area.

  Darry dusted him, the round going in one side and blowing out the other. The man rolled slowly down the hill, coming to a stop only after getting wedged between two burned-out hulks of fallen trees.

  “Quinn didn’t last long,” Nick observed.

  “What’s behind the bastard?” Mike tossed the question out.

  “Forget it,” Nick radioed. “Straight in is the only way.”

  “Well, straight in is suicide.”

  “Where the hell is Dennis?”

  “I think Dennis split,” Roy Craft said. “I told you I thought he would.”

  “So you did, Roy,” Mike radioed. “So you did. Everybody just hold your position.”

  The words had just left Mike’s mouth when Darry’s rifle boomed and Roy Craft took a slug in the center of his forehead. It was a chance shot, and Darry had not expected to hit anything. But Roy raised his head just as Darry squeezed the trigger.

  Mike keyed his handy-talkie. “This isn’t worth a shit, boys. I’m going to give thi
s bastard a full magazine while you two make for those woods behind you. When you get there, both of you give me cover fire.”

  When the lead started howling all around him, Darry had no choice but to keep his head down, suspecting what prompted the gunfire. But when Mike’s magazine was empty, Darry chanced a look and saw that the two retreating manhunters had not quite reached the timber. Darry leaped to his feet and made it across the burn area before Mike could slam home a fresh magazine.

  “Son of a bitch!” he heard Mike’s angry shout.

  Darry went to his knees in a blow-down of tangled logs and brush, caught his breath, and sighted in on a man’s head, several hundred yards away. He couldn’t make out the man’s features, only that it was one of the two mercs who had left the hill under cover fire. He knew the drop of the bullet at four hundred yards and held high, his finger taking up slack, and the rifle fired itself. The big bullet took Dale Williams in the left eye and splattered Nick Sharp with bits of bone, blood, and gray brains. Yelling his rage, Nick gave Darry’s position a full thirty-round mag.

  Mike left his cover and zigzagged across the open meadow, expecting any moment to take a round in his back. He leaped for the brush and caught his breath. “Nick?” he panted into the handy-talkie.

  “Yeah. I’m all right. But Dale is dead. I’m wipin’ his head off me right now.”

  Mike did some old-fashioned cussing for a moment. Then he lifted the transceiver. “Abort this, buddy. Meet you back at the Broncos.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Darry watched them go, waited for several minutes, and then began jogging, making a wide circle. He knew where the men had parked their vehicles, and that was a full day’s hard march away.

  The sky opened up, and a hard, cold rain began falling. At this rate, Darry knew from experience, it would not take long for the creeks to fill to overflowing, making many of them difficult to cross.

  Mike and Nick had linked up and found a trail, leading west. “This will take us to the ranger station,” Mike said. “We’ll kill the man, fuck the woman before we do her, and take their vehicle.”

  “Sounds good to me,” the Brit said, wiping the rain from his face. He grinned. “You recall that time we double-teamed that pretty little bird in Central America, fore and aft?”

  Mike laughed, his eyes hard and shiny. “Yeah. She did scream some, didn’t she?”

  “Let’s go.”

  An hour later, Darry cut their trail and knew where they were heading. “Shoot first and apologize later, Rick,” he muttered. “You and Alberta are going up against some bad ones.”

  * * *

  The big three networks gave the shootings in Texas and New York ninety seconds each of air time, then moved on to something much more important: the sending in of American troops to stabilize a country sixteen thousand miles away; the very important conference being held in Bora Bora on why aborigines sweat; and the annual conference in Geneva on the standardization of the screw head. The Coyote Network gave each shooting ten minutes and then offered a scathing editorial on the federal government’s continuing policy of sometimes lethal overreaction against its citizens.

  “I hate those goddamn people,” the Pres said, during a commercial break on the Coyote Network’s evening news.

  “Mr. President,” the AG said. “We’ve got to move against those people in Texas. We simply can’t allow private citizens to hold federal agents at gunpoint.”

  The Pres gave his AG a very dark look. “Well, what the hell do you suggest we do: saturation bombing of the town? Every time an agent makes a positive identification of one, ten citizens step up ready to swear the person was fifty miles away at the time. Those goddamn Texans confiscated and destroyed the film ... including the film taken by IRS people. Our agents were damn lucky to get out of that town without first being tarred and feathered, or hanged or shot. Now that damn loudmouth senator from Texas is calling for straight across the board tax rates. At least, I think he is; I can’t understand half of what he says. He butchers the English language worse than that loose cannon from North Carolina. And now he’s calling for a flat tax rate. Jesus!”

  “We’ve got to be forceful, Mr. President,” the AG persisted. “I’ve prepared dozens of John Doe warrants, and I strongly urge we blanket the area with federal agents. We can use federal troops to go in and disarm the people prior to our agents moving in.”

  One of the President’s young aides took a hand-grenade-sized wad of bubble gum out of his mouth and said, “Boy, that would be really neat. I’d like to see that. Then we could show those ignorant redneck cowboys down there who is really running this country.”

  The Pres favored him with a look that was guaranteed to melt titanium. “I was a cowboy,” he reminded the aide. “You ditz!”

  The aide sat down and concentrated on chewing his cud.

  * * *

  Across town, a large group of senior senators and representatives from both parties were meeting. They had already reached one unanimous and bipartisan decision: this president and his cabinet were history.

  “We’re going to have an armed revolt on our hands,” Idaho said. “And it just might begin in my state.”

  “Hale’s far,” Texas drawled. “It’s done slap begun in my state.”

  “If we manage to ram through straight across the board tax rates, a lot of programs are going to be slashed to the bare bones,” Massachusetts said, looking as though he might start weeping at any moment.

  “That’s what the middle class wants,” Mississippi said. “And they’re bearing the brunt of the taxes; have been for years.”

  Minnesota responded, “And the programs designed to help blacks will be hit the hardest.”

  “Some of those need to be cut,” Tennessee said.

  “And when we do, those of us from the South will be out of work,” Georgia replied.

  “We just have to prioritize where the money goes,” Oregon said.

  “We cannot continue to attempt to be all things to all people all the time,” Maine said.

  “Last year’s crime bill was the biggest wad of horse-shit in recent memory,” Kansas said.

  “Do we have enough votes to impeach?” Arkansas asked.

  “No,” Michigan said.

  “So where does that leave us?” Virginia asked.

  “Waiting for the second revolution,” Louisiana said softly.

  * * *

  Canada was watching the goings-on to the south with very nervous eyes. As were England and many other countries around the globe. Japan knew if the conservatives got their way in America, Japanese imports would be cut drastically. Made in America was gaining momentum with each year. Mexico knew the plug might be pulled on NAFTA and GATT and those agreements would go right down the toilet.

  But Darry was not thinking about world opinion or anything except getting to the ranger station ahead of Mike Tuttle and Nick Sharp. He was running full tilt with a sinking feeling that he was going to be too late. He could not shape-shift, for if he did that, he would lose his rifle. He was immortal, but not a magician.

  The mercenaries reached the ranger station twenty minutes ahead of Darry and ten minutes before Sam Parish and his group arrived. Mike shot Rick Battle and Dennis Tipton and left them for dead in a bloody sprawl in the barn where they’d been forking hay down to the horses.

  “Sorry about that, Denny old boy,” Nick said, looking down at the body of the man he’d called friend for years.

  The men had torn the clothing from Alberta and tied her hands to the bed posts. She was bent over at the waist, face down on the spread.

  Mike was naked from the waist down and had masturbated himself into full erection. “Now, little sweet meat,” he said, positioning himself behind her. “Let’s hear you scream.” He bulled his way into her brutally, and Alberta began shrieking.

  Rick Battle, hard hit but a long way from being dead, returned to consciousness and heard the painful screaming. He looked at Dennis Tipton; the man had two holes
in the center of his chest. Rick began crawling toward the station, his blood staining the mud as he laboriously made his way through the falling rain, inch by painful inch.

  * * *

  Johnny McBroon was finally released from jail where he had spent the past ten days after punching out an FBI agent who had been part of the teams who assaulted the people in the wilderness area. He would have been out a lot sooner, but he refused to apologize to the agent. To make matters worse, Johnny kept referring to the agent in the most uncomplimentary of invectives. A local Idaho judge, who learned of the ex-spook’s incarceration, and who agreed with Johnny’s verbal assessment of the Bureau, ordered him released. He was only about a mile from the ranger station when his left front tire blew. The vehicle started slewing around on the wet gravel road, and Johnny ended up in the ditch, stuck in the mud.

  Johnny got out, looked at the situation briefly, cussed, pulled his hat lower and turned up his collar against the cold rain, and started walking. He had a Beretta 9mm model 92S shoved behind his belt.

  Rick had managed to crawl into the station and get his pistol and a rifle from the rack when the vehicles carrying Sam Parish and his bunch arrived. Rick staggered to the bedroom, shoved open the door and without hesitation shot Mike Tuttle in the head. Nick Sharp jumped out a window, minus his shirt and boots and guns, and was rounding the corner of the house when he came face-to-face with Sam Parish. He jerked Sam’s M-16 from the hands of the startled man and turned as Darry ran into the area. Nick leveled the rifle, and Darry shot him, the force of the slug lifting the man off his bare feet and slinging him backward against Sam, taking the CDL leader with him to the wet ground. The other members of the CDL, those who had them ready, leveled their weapons.

  “Freeze!” Johnny spoke from behind the knot of men and women just as Rick and Alberta (wearing a robe) stepped out onto the porch, guns in their hands.

  “Anybody makes any stupid moves,” Darry warned, “I kill Sam Parish.”

  “Don’t do nothin’ stupid, people!” Sam hollered.