Relentless (13 page)

But there wasn't time to articulate all that. What Watchman said was, “Us Innuns have a name for people like him. The name is Custer.”

Vickers had gone back to the jeep and picked up one of the walkie-talkies. Watchman walked around the far side of the jeep, pulled the door back and began reaching inside and taking things out and distributing them on his person. He could hear Vickers talking into the hand radio:

“On the map I see a park headquarters and three ranches within fifteen or twenty miles of here in various directions. Get men into all those places and tell them to keep their radios open. And keep those planes in the air as long as you can—there's still some daylight east of here.… They did? That's fine. All right, we're going to wait here until we get word. It's a central spot and the fugitives can't be too far from here.”

You could hear it now—the storm was beginning to move, the air right here was very still and heavy and there was a faint growl coming from the west.

Buck Stevens came around the jeep. His boots crunched pebbles and seemed very loud. “What's up?”

“Time to move.” Watchman handed him the knapsack and a five-cell flashlight. He shouldered into the heavy night-fighter's battery pack and slung the 'scoped Weatherby rifle, with its red-lamped projector, in the crook of his elbow.

Vickers came in sight with his small mouth tight. His eyes whipped from Stevens to Watchman and he made an obvious effort to be civil:

“I gather you've got something in mind.”

“Sit here and wait if you want to. We're heading out.”

“No. I need you right here.” Vickers' jaw crept forward. “What do you think this is—every man for himself? If a call comes in we've got to move fast and move together. It's stupid to divide our forces when they've already got us outnumbered.”

“You've got reinforcements headed out this way. You won't be alone long. A couple of hours at the most, but that's a couple of hours' head start they add onto what they've already got if we wait that long.”

Vickers was very cool. “I've got two dozen planes up. Eleven roadblocks. Men heading into every ranch and building within walking distance of here. When the storm hits they're going to have to take shelter and they'll walk right into our people's arms. But when that happens we've got to be ready to move in—I can't have you way the hell out in the boondocks.”

Watchman smiled at him with the lower half of his face. “I guarantee you when that happens I'll be closer to them than you will.”

“Tracking on foot? Two against five, with this weather coming?” The FBI agent shook his head. “We've already got seventy-five people hunting. By morning it'll be two hundred. We'll find them. You'd be wasting energy and taking a chance of getting caught in the open when the snow starts. I say it's better to stay by the jeep and wait. Either they'll head for shelter and we'll catch them or they'll try to wait it out in the open, in which case they'll probably end up frozen to death—but even if they don't they won't have got far and we can find them after it blows over. No—you're just taking an unnecessary chance. I won't authorize it.”

Watchman looked at the sky. It wasn't moving fast; he might have half the night before it hit. The fugitives were hauling maybe two hundred and fifty pounds of loot, plus whatever they'd decided to salvage from the plane. They were traveling heavy and there was a chance to catch up before the weather socked down.

Buck Stevens said, “Maybe the man makes sense, Sam.”

“I don't say your idea won't work,” Watchman said. “I'm just saying there's a chance it won't work. I want to plug that hole. If they know how to handle themselves in this kind of weather they might just find ways to get clean out of the country while your whole army's bogged down and blinded by weather.”

“That's far-fetched.”

“I haven't got time to stand here arguing all night. Look: are you giving me advice or are you telling me flat out not to try this?”

That put it out in the open. Raw meat on the floor. Vickers had to make the choice now. If he made it a direct order and Watchman went ahead and disobeyed it, and if Watchman then caught up to the fugitives and nailed them, it would make Vickers look a prime fool. On the other hand if he left it at “disregarding my advice” and Watchman didn't produce any results, Vickers could always write up an “uncooperative officer” memo that could get Watchman in plenty of trouble. Technically Vickers didn't have authority to give orders to a state police officer but they both knew that was beside the point.

It really wasn't a choice at all. In the end Vickers had to leave himself the opening. “All right. I'm advising you not to do it but I'm not telling you what to do. It's your own funeral. If I need you later on and you're not here, it's going to sit heavy on you.”

“Understood.”

“What about you, rookie?”

Watchman snapped, “We don't play that game here. He's under my orders.”

“I'd like to hear what Officer Stevens thinks,” Vickers said. Stubborn about it because if Stevens went on the record as disapproving Watchman's action it would add ammunition to Vickers' arsenal later.

Buck Stevens' eyes went from Vickers to Watchman and back to Vickers. Suddenly he was at the point of an unpleasant triangle. Then his head lifted: “I don't mean anything personal. I know Sam Watchman and I don't know you, Mr. Vickers. If Sam says it's the right thing to do then I believe him.”

“Your faith and loyalty are very touching. I hope they're not misplaced.” Vickers' mouth was like a surgeon's wound. “I wish you both luck.” He said that expressionlessly and Watchman was reminded of old British war movies in which the Air Vice Marshal said something like that to his pilots just before he sent them up to be shot down by the Luftwaffe. The thought made him grin; he hunted for the snooperlight switch and turned to walk away.

The infrared projector wouldn't throw any light that the fugitives would be able to see but it would light up the ground like a floodlamp when you looked through the lens of the snooperscope: plenty of light to pick up indentations in the hardpan clay—light to follow tracks by.

Stevens was adjusting the walkie-talkie around his shoulders by its strap. When that was done he came away from the jeep. Ten feet from it Watchman turned to look back and said to Vickers, “We'll keep in touch. Listen, I'm not saying we'll get to them first, I'm just saying we've got to cover this bet.”

“I gather you know how to build a shelter if you have to. It's my opinion you'll end up sitting out the storm in one.” Then Vickers turned his back deliberately and reached for his walkie-talkie and Watchman smiled slightly, touched Buck Stevens' arm and walked out into the dark desert.

And Stevens said, “Git'im up, Scout.”

CHAPTER

4

1

Walker's legs felt rickety. He slipped the deadweight of the duffel bag off his shoulder and let it drop to the ground. It made a muffled sound and Baraclough snapped at him. “Take it easy with that. We break a hole in one of those bags and you know how long it'll take to chase down every last ten dollar bill in this wind.”

The Major said, “Five minutes, no more.”

Hanratty was sitting on his fat butt. “You think they're following us already?”

“Not following. Chasing.” The Major was on his feet, turning a slow circle on his heels, trying to burn away the darkness with the heat of his stare. He kept moving his head quickly, like an alert animal.
He's made out of poured concrete
, Walker thought, partly in awe and partly in resentment. Major Hargit had the endurance of a truck horse: he didn't look tired at all.

Hanratty said, “Christ, my feet's killing me.” Hanratty needed a thorough laundering: the creases of his neck looked begrimed, his clothes were rumpled like a beggar's, the lobes of his ears gleamed dully with a grease of old sweat.

By a trick of meteorological caprice the storm hadn't hit them yet. Either it had stopped in its tracks or it had changed direction radically. A few clouds had drifted over east but there were enough stars shining through from that half of the sky to throw a faint illumination across the pale ground. Walker could make out the heavier silhouettes of the mountain sawteeth, the silyer crest of a hill directly ahead of them, the faint glitter of the Major's eyes when they came around and touched him and went on, sweeping vigilantly.

It was cold; it was still. Gùsts came up now and then but the silence in the intervals was leaden. The chill seemed to irritate Walker's sore tooth and he kept sucking on it with his tongue to warm it.

“We should only have about two miles to go,” the Major said. “Let's get going.”

“Jesus Fucking H. Christ,” Hanratty complained.

“You're wasting wind,” the Major said mildly.

Eddie Burt got up and shouldered his sack and prodded Hanratty with his toe. “Get your ass moving before I put a boot up it.”

“Shit, I just sat down. Give me a chance to get my breath.”

Baraclough walked over to him and peeled his lips back from his teeth. “Hanratty, you drag ass just one more time and I'll feed you to the birds. Now get on your feet.” Baraclough said it in a sibilant whisper; turned on his heel and went back to pick up his duffel burden. When Baraclough straightened and looked at Hanratty the man was on his feet. Hanratty turned to the Major and grabbed the Major's sleeve and began to say something in his whining voice; the Major said, very soft, “You want that arm broken?” And Hanratty dropped his hand. The Major had spoken without heat but he had a driving, elemental thrust of hard personality and competent brutality and you knew he could have broken that arm without half trying.

Walker was sweating lightly in the cool air. He stayed out of it, to one side, not wanting anyone's attention: he didn't trust any of them. Least of all the Major. Because the Major no longer had any real need for him except as a beast of burden to help carry the money. There was no plane for him to fly and that was all he'd been recruited to do. Fortunately the rest of them were still too angry with Hanratty to think about Keith Walker but when they got around to it he wouldn't be surprised if they started thinking about his expendability.

It wasn't greed Walker sensed in the leader. Hargit wouldn't murder him for his share of the loot. Hargit wasn't that kind of doublecrosser. It was just that three could move faster than five, especially when the three were all ex-Green Berets accustomed to long fast treks through wilderness country in all kinds of lights and weathers. Walker didn't fit into the group.

The only thing he saw in his own favor was that he was a lot less expendable than Hanratty: Hanratty was past fifty, he was out of condition, he was a whiner, and he had made irrevocable trouble for all of them by shooting that God-damned guard.

Hanratty didn't care. He was an ex-con with nothing to lose—a three-time loser. The Baumes Act: one more conviction and Hanratty would get put away in hock for good, regardless of whether the charge was armed robbery or felony murder. They'd throw away the key: no chance for parole. So it hadn't made much difference to Hanratty, killing the guard. But it made a lot of difference to the rest of them and even though Hanratty sometimes acted as though he'd been taking stupid pills he wasn't dense enough to be ignorant of the way the rest of them felt. Baraclough had made it clear in a dozen ways. And the fact that Hanratty was Eddie Burt's ex-brother-in-law didn't cut any ice, not even with Burt.

Hanratty was on his feet now with the bag across his shoulder and his free hand locked around the grip of the big revolver in his waistband. He hadn't taken his hand more than six inches from the gun since they'd left the plane. Maybe it made him feel a little safer. Walker knew it didn't matter much to the rest of them: the Major could take the thing away from Hanratty without blinking an eye whenever he got ready to. But it made Walker nervous, Hanratty clutching the gun all the time. Hanratty had already proved he was a triggerhappy fool.

“Let's move out,” Baraclough murmured, and they started walking.

2

They lay in a line at what the Major called the military crest of the hill—just below the top so they wouldn't be skylined. They moved forward on their bellies. Like some kind of exercise in Basic Training. The Major had studied the maps and had said the place was just over this hill and he was right: they'd seen the glow of its lights in the air above. Now Walker reached a point from which he could see it.

The dirt road came up from the south and dead-ended in the yard. There were lights on in one building and half a dozen buildings dark. He could make out the lines of corral fences. There was a grove of trees behind the main house. Wires came in along the road on poles—electric power, telephone, or both. There was the faint sound of a motor pulsing: probably a water pump for the well. Windows in the main house splashed enough light around the yard to show the arrangement of buildings: a row of dark cabins, probably tourist accommodations, and a scatter of outbuildings—barn, tack shed, smithy lean-to, a three-car garage with half a dozen roofed carports extending out from one side of it. No cars in sight. One of the downstairs windows in the house showed a bluish reflected glow—possibly a television set. There was a tall spidery aerial on the roof.