by Wayne Mee
In the following silence, Josh took a deep breath. “And how do I know you will keep your word?”
Jocco’s smile became almost handsome. “You don’t.” The Tanto flashed through the air and the ropes holding Josh were severed. Legs, weak from three days of poor circulation, collapsed beneath him. Jessie called to his father, while Flame cursed Jocco with words even a good old boy like Bobby-Joe hesitated to use. Cobb just stared down at the pompous puke from on high. Seconds later the knife flashed again and he too fell to the floor.
“Major,” Jocco said. “Have your men lock these two in the basement. See they are dressed and fed. Anything they want to eat and then let them sleep, but have them up at dawn. The hunt will begin at nine hundred hours.”
After Scar’s men had dragged Josh and Cobb away, the one-eyed man strode over to Jocco. “What is this shit? I told you they were fucking dangerous. Let me kill them now.”
Jocco sighed, gently stroking Pam the Bitch’s pretty chin with his swagger stick. Her tongue flicked out and licked the end. “Patients, huntsman. To quote both Lord Walter and the good professor’s favorite author: ‘the game’s afoot’!”
Scar scratched his curly black locks, clearly at a loss.
“Shakespeare, major,” Jocco laughed, placing a hand on Scar’s broad shoulder. “Did you think your sovereign never read a fucking book?” Then, just as quickly as it came, the laughter was gone, replaced by icy indifference. “Shouldn’t you be going? You’ve three tough days to plan for.”
Scar was about to say something, but suddenly thought better of it. Instead he sketched a hasty salute and left the hall. Jocco watched him go, then turned back to a sweating Walter Pinkton.
As three helicopters circled over the wooded slopes several miles north of Lake Isabella, John Lonefeather and three of his hunting companions dove for cover. John looked at Charley Little Dog and signaled for the radio. Charley slid the portable short-wave off his back and handed it to the young Indian.
“You are calling Black Bear?”
John Lonefeather nodded and set the frequency. After several tries, Jim Carrol’s radio operator answered. Lonefeather told of the three helicopters and was told to await further orders. Ten minutes later they came, delivered in Big Jim’s own gruff voice. “Follow the bastards and report in when you see anything.”
John Lonefeather signed off, a wide grin on his young face. This was a hell of a lot better than rabbit hunting! Moments later all four men were jogging northward.
The rotors of the third chopper were still fluttering the Aspens when Jocco strode up to Josh and Cobb. Both men’s hands were bound. Jocco’s smile was as cold as the mountain air, puffing out in little clouds before him.
“Ready, gentlemen?”
Josh glanced at the soldiers lining up on one side of the clearing. A few were checking their gear. Two others were nosing about the old logger’s shack. His gaze swept over to the second helicopter, the one holding Jessie and Flame. Bobby-Joe Burlis and the skinny, nervous fellow called ‘Lord Walter’ were also on board.
“Where’s the map?”
“Right here,” Jocco said, patting his flack jacket. “But first, a little precaution I thought of last night. Captain Heller, will you do the honors?”
Roy Heller and Sergeant Peter Cozens came forward. Cozens was holding two round objects that looked like space-age dog collars --- which was exactly what they were. Radio collars used for tracking bears, cougars and other large, wild animals. As Heller snapped on the tough, electronic devices, Josh met Jocco’s eyes.
“You don’t need these. We won’t run away.”
“Oh, I’m sure you won’t,” Jocco replied. “But this way I’ll be able to monitor your progress, as will Major Scar.” He held out his hand and Pam the Bitch gave him something that looked like an electronic toy. “Ironic, isn’t it? Technology, man’s greatest achievement --- and his ultimate downfall. Ah well, all that’s in the past now. Ready?”
Josh held out his bound hands. Jocco pulled the Tanto out of his belt and placed the razor sharp blade between Josh’s wrists. For a moment they stood there, each one taking the other man’s measure. Then Jocco pressed down and the ropes parted. Heller quickly cut Cobb free and backed away.
“The map,” Josh repeated.
“Certainly.” Jocco handed over the map and the empty knife sheath. “You might have need of this as well.” The Tanto was reversed and placed in Josh’s hand.
Behind Josh, Cobb stiffened, instantly ready to make his move. He was sure he could take out Heller and maybe the big sergeant. Both were armed. If he could get one of their guns...
But Josh was already walking past him towards the hills. The moment had come and gone and now there was nothing left but to follow. At the top of the first rise Josh turned and leveled the Tanto in Jocco’s direction. His words were soft, yet pitched to be heard over the idling blades of the copters.
“If you harm either one of them, I’ll cut your heart out.”
Jocco made a mock bow. “You have three days, professor. Major Scar will begin tracking you at eleven hundred hours.”
Despite himself, Scar shuddered.
Cobb checked his watch. 10:57 AM. From their position high on the third ridge they could just make out the clearing with the three helicopters.
“So far he’s kept his word.”
Cobb grunted, fingering the radio collar around his neck. “Because it pleased him to. It’s all a game to him. A short one if we don’t get these things off.”
Both men had already tried removing the other’s collar. Even the Tanto’s tempered edge had done little more than scratch the space-age plastic.
Josh opened the map. As near as they could figure it was over fifteen miles as the crow flies to the circle marking Jocco’s cabin --- and they weren’t crows. Twenty to twenty five miles on foot, most of it over steep terrain, cut with streams and gullies. Josh took a rough sun sighting and mentally fixed his next reference point some two miles away.
“They’re moving, Josh. Looks like a dozen or more.”
Josh strained to see a knot of figures moving away from the helicopters. Then the copters themselves took off. Two of them flew back westward. The third, Jocco’s, headed straight for them. As the shark-shaped machine approached, Cobb had to hold himself back from diving for cover. Josh stood defiantly on the bare ridge.
Following the contour of the land, the large copter topped the ridge and hovered some fifty feet above them. Josh could see faces pressed up against the window. One had red hair, the other blond. He raised the Tanto in salute as the machine slipped away to the east.
Cobb fingered his collar. “As long as we wear these he can find us any time he wants.” Cobb looked back at the clearing far below. “And so can One-Eye.”
Josh snorted. “You mean ‘Major Scar’. The murdering son-of-a-bitch has come up in the world.”
Cobb grinned wolfishly. “What goes up must come down, and I mean to bring the bastard down hard.”
Josh turned back to the map, his finger tracing the contour lines. At the crest of the next ridge was a small square. “We’ll head for here. It’s supposed to be an old ranger cabin. Maybe we can find something there to help get these off.”
Cobb nodded and the two men started off at a slow trot. Half an hour later they came to the cabin. Sprawled on the rough plank floor, was a bundle of clothes. The once all too familiar gray ashes lay in little piles around the cuffs and open neck. Apart from mice droppings, the cabin was as it had been before the world changed.
“The poor bastard never even made it to the bed,” Josh remarked. Images of his own brother-in-law looking much the same flooded his mind. Was it really only a year ago? I felt like another life.
Both men began searching the cabin. “King Jocco screwed up royally this time!”, Cobb beamed, looking around at all the ranger’s gear piled on the split-log table. Extra clothes, a sleeping bag, a two-burner Colman stove, even a pair of snowshoes. The pile grew like Ja
ck’s beanstalk, most of it, however, was useless. The pack-sack, small but powerful binoculars and cans of food, though, would come in handy, as would a hatchet, climbing gear and a long length of rope.
Then Josh saw the radio. The car battery had been disconnected and should still hold a charge. While Cobb sorted the things they would take, Josh tried to contact the Eddy back at the LAV. After several tries, he heard Gretta’s heavy accent crackling over the static. Another woman, probably Suzy, yelled for the others. By the time that Eddy came on, Josh had already given the co-ordinates of Jocco’s lodge.
“Can we pick you up along the way?”, Eddy asked.
“Negative,” Josh replied. “There’s no roads between here and there. Just get as close as you can south of the lodge and wait. We should be there in two days, maybe three. Look from smoke. I’ll light a fire when we’re close.”
Cobb whistled, holding up a flare gun and a box of colored flares. Josh grinned, shooting Cobb a thumbs up sign. “Eddy, watch for a flare. Green for advance slowly, red for come in blazing. Got that?”
Eddy’s voice came back loud and clear. “Green for slow, red for kick ass. But are you sure you don’t want us to go in there now. We can get them out.”
“No!” Josh yelled, the stress of the last four days showing through. “For Christ’s sake, Eddy, unless he sees me, he’ll kill them both!”
“OK, Josh, we’ll just sit tight, but Nate says some of Jim Carrol’s boys are already in the area. They spotted three copters early this morning flying over the lake. Jim’s already told them to find out what they can.”
Josh swore. “Get them out of there! One-Eye and a dozen soldiers are right behind us. If they come across Carrol’s men, the shit will really hit the fan!”
“I’ll try, Josh, but you know Big Jim. He wants Jocco bad. Wants the LAV too. He’s starting to move out right now.”
“Have Nate talk to the asshole,” Josh said, his heart racing. “Shoot the bastard if you have to, but keep him the fuck away from my son!”
“Josh, I’ll ---”
The radio crackled, screeched and went dead. Josh’s hopes went with it. Slowly he became aware of Cobb’s hand on his shoulder.
“Come on. It’s time to get moving.” Cobb, the dead ranger’s pack on his back, led Josh to the door. “Watch your step. I’ve fixed up a little surprise for our friends.”
Cobb had lit the Coleman stove and placed it over the half open door. A pail half filled with kerosene sat between the two burners. When the door was opened all the way the stove and pail would fall, the kerosene dousing anyone below; the lit burners would take care of the rest.
Cobb grinned wickedly, holding up a long handled tree pruner. “The rangers must have used this for trimming the trails. Let’s see what it works on these collars.”
Josh smiled, suddenly back in the game, deadly though it was. Less than five minutes later the two of them were hurrying up the trail. Both collars were resting comfortably in the bottom of the outhouse.
“Shit!”, Roy Heller swore, backing out of the small wooden door, a tiny monitor beeping in his hand. “The fuckers got them off!”
Despite himself, Sergeant Cozens chuckled.
“Wipe that smile off your face, sergeant,” Heller growled.”
Behind them the Ranger’s cabin burned like a Roman candle. A half dozen men were nervously guarding the perimeter. Out back Private Gerald ‘The Nose’ Swan was searching around for sign. Off to one side several men were clustered round a badly burned comrade. Thirty some feet beyond lay the smoldering body of the first man through the door. Marco Garibaldi had gotten that far before collapsing in a screaming heap. Scar had shot him in the back of the head, more to shut him up than to put him out of his misery.
The Major now stood a few feet from Garibaldi’s remains, smoking a cigarette and trying to control his anger. Roy Heller walked over to him, tossing the electronic monitor away as he came.
“Smart-assed bastards got the collars off!”
Scar grunted. “I told you these fuckers were slick. Told that asshole Jocco too!”
Roy moved closer to Scar. “Jesus, man, keep it down! If Jocco hears you’ve been bad-mouthing him, he’ll have your balls!”
Scar flicked his butt away and faced Heller, his one eye lit by the hungry flames. “You don’t get it, do you, Dick-Head? These two were chasing are GOOD! By the time they’re through yanking our chain, we won’t have any balls left for Jocco to take!”
Heller scrubbed his face. “Christ, Scar, they just got lucky! We still got nearly a dozen men and enough firepower to blow them to rat-shit!”
Scar sighed. “You think so? Then you take the fucking point!”
Heller stiffened, unsure whether to be really angry or just slightly pissed off. He decided on the latter as being the more prudent course of action. “Fine. I WILL, and I’ll hand you these two farmer’s balls myself!”
As Heller stomped away, calling for Sergeant Cozens and Private Swan, Scar shook his head. ‘Shit-for-brains’ was one of the kinder names he silently called Roy ‘Dick-Head’ Heller.
Chapter 47: ‘THE LONG RUN’
Sequoia National Park
California, May 25th
Josh turned away from the rocky ledge and waved at Cobb. The ex-cop, ex-special forces officer and all round handy-man was up to his old tricks --- setting booby-traps. He was on his fourth one since leaving the ranger’s cabin, now just a smoldering smudge on the distant horizon. Josh marveled at the younger man’s skill. Half-way down the rocky slope, Cobb was setting a trip-wire. Anyone hooking the nylon fishing line would dislodge a stick that would, in turn, dislodge a larger stick, sending several large rocks cascading down on them.
“Think it’ll work?”, Josh commented.
Cobb shrugged, putting the fishing line and ice-ax into his pack. “If that bastard they’ve got tracking us doesn’t spot it, one of them is bound to set it off.”
Josh thought about the three other traps Cobb had already set. The classic dead-fall, where, at the slightest touch, a large, heavy log falls across the path; the leaf and twig covered depression, complete with pointed stakes, but the most deadly was the one Cobb had set at the base of this ridge.
“You don’t want to know how I learned about this one,” Cobb had said as he smeared fresh bear excrement on the thin, needle-like stakes he had lashed to a tied back evergreen. A simple forked stick triggered it, freeing the bent tree and sending it whipping into the face, stomach and groin of the man who tripped it.
“Nasty bit of work,” Josh had commented.
“Isn’t it just!”, Cobb had grinned.
Now, sitting on the ledge, Josh had an idea. Instead of moving on and hoping the traps worked, he proposed doubling back to the base of the cliff and waiting. When and if the rocks came tumbling down, they would be there to not only see the damage, but perhaps grab a weapon or two.
“Even if they don’t trigger the slide,” Josh pointed out, “at least we’ll be behind them. That’s a whole lot better than having them breathing down our necks.”
Cobb’s smile lit up his usually sober features. “I’ll make a Spook out of you yet!”
“’Spook’?”, Josh repeated.
“Special Operations Killer.”
Josh would gladly have settled for being the middle-aged father of a live teenager.
Private Swan usually enjoyed tracking. Pitting his skill against a cunning animal, man or beast, always gave him a kind of natural high. Hunting and tracking as he was fond of saying, was in his blood. He’d learned his skills from his father, who’d learned from his father and so on down the line. For the last eighty years the Swan family had run a small but profitable guide business in the Pacific Northwest. The states of Washington, Idaho and Montana had all used their services to help track down escaped prisoners. Each time The Nose had gone out he had always found his man.
This time, though, he wasn’t so sure. A bad feeling was building in his gut, a feeling that gre
w stronger with every trap he came across. The problem was that these bastards actually knew what they were doing. Always before the men he’d tracked were basically running scared. They blundered through the woods, noisy, careless, predictable. These two weren’t any of those. Also, the fire back at the cabin had shaken him more than he let on --- even to himself. Finding the deadfall had brightened his spirits, but when one of the men stumbled into the small pit-trap, twisting his ankle and driving a sharpened stake through his thigh, Swan’s doubts came rushing back. It didn’t help any when Heller bawled him out in front of the rest of the men.
And now this. Thank Christ he’d spotted the bent tree before continuing up the trail. Crafty fuckers had even smeared the stakes with bear shit! He’d called a halt and showed both Heller and Scar. Now, giving the bent evergreen a wide birth, Swan cautiously moved to the base of a steep ledge.
“Best let me check this out, Major,” he said.
Scar nodded and began to unbuckle his pack. Those behind him did the same. Roy Heller, however, still pissed off with Scar, pushed forward.
“Cozens! Pick two men and follow me. The rest of these pussies can sit around jerking off if they want. I’m going to have a look-see from up top!”
Scar, sitting on a rock, casually lit a smoke. Heller frowned, slung his rifle and began climbing the jumbled rocks. Sergeant Cozens and two men reluctantly followed. Half way up Heller called down to Scar.
“Hey! Fresh footprints! Get the led out, girls; were hot on their trail!” Heller than began to scramble faster, working his way up under an unstable looking overhang.
Haskin, one of the men with Cozens, wheezed in the sergeant’s ear. “Who the hell does he think he is, sarj? The Lone Fucking Stranger?”
Cozens frowned. An army man for nearly twenty years, he didn’t like it when grunts were disrespectful to officers. Though there was no love lost between Heller and himself, he did respect the man. Heller rarely sent out his men out to do something he hadn’t done himself. Private Haskin however, was another matter.
