Relentless (16 page)

Silence: Swish of horsetails, thump of hoof. Hanratty squeaked. “Shit. You must be out of your gourd.”

Walker took a step forward. “Major, we'll get buried under a ton of snow up there. You don't know these mountains.”

“I've spent a good part of my life in montagnard country, Captain. I'll keep you alive.”

“It's insane. It's a dead end.”

The woman wheeled. “Your friend is right. No one goes up in those mountains after the first snow. It's suicide.”

The Major said, “I certainly hope the police are as convinced of that as you are, Mrs. Lansford.”

Baraclough came past Walker and climbed into a saddle. When he had his feet settled in the stirrups he said, “Major Hargit knows wild country survival better than any man alive. He's right. Now let's quit arguing and start moving.”

When Walker turned to put his foot in the stirrup he somehow caught the eye of the woman and for that brief instant their glances locked with tremendous impact: an exchange of sudden shared understanding, of bleak and hopeless regret.

Hanratty said, “Somebody help me get on top of this animal.”

CHAPTER

5

1

Through the infrared scope they showed up plainly: boot-heel indentations, scuffed ground, a patch where the pebbles had been disturbed when they'd set down their burdens to rest or reconnoitre.

“Watch yourself now. Monument Rock just over the hill.”

“Okay,
kemo sabe.”
The knapsack made Stevens look hunchbacked.

Sam Watchman covered the last twenty yards on his belly and took his time looking it over. There were lights burning in the front room of the house. He didn't see anything move.

After he had completed his naked-eye inspection he lifted the Weatherby to his shoulder, switched on the infrared beam and put his eye to the scope.

The snooperscope was designed to make heat visible. The image on the lens revealed contours of temperature rather than light. The warmth of the earth made it red; the relative coldness of the air made it green. The buildings, which stored less heat than the ground but more than the air, were an indeterminate mauve. The heat of lamplight against the front window made it show up very hot. The trees behind the house were a madras patchwork of shades.

If there had been human flesh in the beam's line it would have shown up heavily red on the lens.

Watchman made a hand signal and the rookie handed him the walkie-talkie. He spoke into it with low-voiced clarity: “Watchman to Vickers. You still reading me?”

“I hear you.”

“How long since you've heard from the deputy at Monument Rock?”

“I haven't heard from him at all. Hold on, I'll check with Cunningham.”

Watchman put the scope on the tracks going down the hill. It took a few minutes to sort out the spoor. Four of them had walked down the hill. Two had walked up again. Three, carrying heavy loads—the indentations were deeper—had walked down again.

The FBI agent's voice sputtered in his ear. “No word from Deputy Foultz since eleven o'clock.”

Watchman twisted his wrist to check the time. Almost two in the morning. “Then you'd better get over here and bring some people with you.”

2

“Let's go down and scout around.”

“Wouldn't it be better to wait for Vickers to show up?”

“If they're still inside the house they'd hear the cars coming.” Watchman backed off the hilltop. “We'll go around and come in through the trees.”

When they got near the house he played the scope around and made out patterns of footprints inside the grove; it was no good sorting out tracks on the open earth of the yard because the ground had been scuffed up by years of use. Watchman crept to the back of the house and used his ears. Heard nothing but the thrumming of the well pump; signaled Stevens forward and went around the side of the house, moving without sound, forward along the wall to the lighted front window.

When he looked inside he turned stiff in his tracks.

3

One of the FBI technicians offered a pack with a half-extended cigarette and Vickers, nodding thanks, took it and put it in his mouth and poked his face forward to take a light from the technician's cupped match.

The technician waved his hand to extinguish the match. “Been dead two and a half, three hours. Not more.” He turned to Watchman: “The front door was open when you got here?”

“Yes. It looks like the kind of door that's never shut.” Watchman's eyes went beyond the technician to Vickers. “While you were on your way here I called Olsen's horse ranch. Asked them to send a couple of four-wheel-drive trucks and horse trailers over here. All right?”

Vickers looked up at him; he had been bending down to look at the one-millionth-scale contour map on the table. “You think you can catch them in this country with trucks?”

“We can get fifteen miles back in there and use horses from there. We'll gain at least an hour.”

“They've probably got three hours' jump on us.”

“And they've got the woman,” the technician said. He was down on one knee, spreading a blanket over the dead deputy.

Watchman turned to Buck Stevens. “They left three horses in the barn. Let's get saddles on them.”

4

The yard filled with cars and trucks—police, FBI, horse trailers, Dodge power wagons, Vickers' jeep.

A big red-faced man drove a poorly stuck-together convertible into the yard. There was no wind. The dust settled just where it had been kicked up. The big man exploded out of the car. “What the hell is all this?”

Vickers stepped forward. “You're Lansford?”

“You're God damn right I am. What's everybody standing around for?”

Vickers was flashing his identification. “We're busier than we look, Mr. Lansford.”

The rancher whipped his hat off. It had indented a red weal across his forehead; he rubbed it with the side of his index finger. “They took my wife, is that right?”

“I'm afraid it is.”

“And you're standing around.” Lansford's eyes narrowed into a fighter's squint. “Okay. Help yourselves. Stand around all night if you want.” He turned with a quick snap of beefy shoulders and began to tramp toward the three horses tied up by the barn.

Watchman blocked his path. “Take it easy, Mr. Lansford.”

“Take it easy!” The man had a good loud bellow. It rang around the yard.

Vickers said, “Try to calm down. Let us handle this, Mr. Lansford—we don't need amateur help.”

“You've got it whether you want it or not.”

“Do you want me to place you under arrest?”

“On what God damn charge?”

“Protective custody if you like.”

“Piss on that. Those are my horses. You don't go an inch on those horses without my permission.”

“All right,” Vickers said. “I hadn't planned to use them anyway.”

Watchman turned; stared at him.

Vickers took two paces forward so that his face picked up the lamplight that splashed off the porch. “These five men have attempted a wave of terror. They've killed two men, one of them an officer of the law. They've abducted a woman. They've stolen almost a million dollars. Washington and Phoenix have agreed we can't tolerate terrorism on this scale. We've traced the background of one of these men and it looks like we're dealing with a well-organized group of former United States Army officers who were recently cashiered for acts of extreme brutality and savagery in Vietnam. The government regards this as a critical situation because we don't know how much organized paramilitary support these men have and we don't know how many more acts of violence they're planning to execute. For that reason the federal government and the Governor of Arizona have agreed to mobilize the National Guard.”

5

“By morning,” Vickers continued, “a cordon of police officers and National Guard troops will have this mountain range completely surrounded. We're establishing roadblocks on every road and trail that comes out of the range. If the storm holds off until daylight, the troops will begin to move into the mountains from all sides, and we'll have helicopters up there to locate the fugitives. We've got them bottled up in there—they've got no way out. It's only a question of time now.”

Ben Lansford's outdoor eyes squinted at Vickers. He made a half turn and rubbed the back of his neck nervously, bobbing and ducking his head. A lot of excited talk ran around the yard. Lansford met Sam Watchman's glance, ran a hand through his hair showing his desperation, and said in a lower voice than he'd used before, “You mean you've got these horses saddled right here and you're not going in after them.”

Vickers stepped in. “Mr. Lansford, they're only three horses. There are at least five heavily armed men out there. I don't see taking the kind of risks we'd run with a three-man scavenger hunt.” Vickers made an elaborate sweeping arc with his arm and looked at his watch. “Once the fugitives have satisfied themselves there's no way out of those mountains past the cordon of troops they'll have to see the logic of releasing your wife and giving themselves up.”

“Will they?” Lansford said. “Would
you
?”

“Naturally.”

Lansford's mouth clamped shut: rage swelled behind his eyes. You could see the obsession that had him in its grip. Five toughs had his wife. One look at Ben Lansford—bluff, loud, impatient, arrogant—and you knew the kind of conclusions he must have jumped to.

And it was little comfort knowing they might be the right conclusions.

Vickers said, “Try to relax, Mr. Lansford. We'll keep you advised of every development. But right now there's nothing for any of us to do but wait.”

Watchman's hair rose. He had tried to convince himself it wasn't going to come to this but that had been stupid. Obviously it was going to happen the same way every time Vickers found a theory that pleased him. Vickers and his kind had this marvelous ability to find ways to make all the facts fit the theory.

Vickers was continuing in his clumsy reassuring voice: “If the storm passes by we'll move in right away at dawn. If it doesn't, the fugitives won't be going anywhere either. In either case, Mr. Lansford, thousands of men will ridgewalk every inch of those mountains if it becomes necessary. We're good at what we're paid to do. Trust us.”

Watchman turned. “I'd like a word with you.”

“Go ahead.”

“In private.” He turned past Vickers, went by the horse trailers and chose a spot behind the jeep.

6

Vickers came around the jeep, paused to step on the stub of his cigarette, looked up quickly as if to catch an unguarded expression on Watchman's cheeks. “All right. What is it?”

“I've said this to you before. You're not going to get this job done with armies and helicopters. Use your head—you got a make on them, you know they can take care of themselves in the woods. They're not going to blunder into any traps. They've got a blizzard coming and they'll use it.”

“If it pins us down it pins them down.”

“No. It gives them time to get ten thousand miles from here.”

Vickers just watched him with the patient attitude of a man giving him enough rope to hang himself.

Watchman showed his anger. “Do you have any idea of the size of the circumference of this range?”

“I've seen the map.”

“And you think you can seal it off with a cordon of troops?”

“Don't be an idiot. We know the general area. We're stringing lines of troops across the mountains ten miles east and ten miles west. We've got them boxed into a square, ten miles on a side.”

Watchman was unimpressed. “Forty-mile perimeter—how many troops, two thousand? Fifty men to the mile? A hundred feet between each man? And you don't think five Green Berets can crawl through a hundred-foot gap in a blizzard without getting spotted?”

Vickers kept his face rigid with suppressed feelings. “Trooper, you're in trouble with me.”

“Oh wow.”

“One. They've called out more like four thousand troops—so that narrows your gap a little, doesn't it? Two. Our cordon won't be standing still, it'll be moving—and that means converging, the gap between men growing narrower all the time. Three. Even assuming somehow the fugitives did slip through the lines, they couldn't get far on foot and if they tried stealing a car they'd be stopped by a police roadblock. Every road within forty miles of here is blocked at ten-mile intervals. No: let me finish. This is the last time you're going to try and make a fool out of me. I don't know what I've done to rub you the wrong way but you've thrown your last banana peel at me. Understand this: if I thought I was the wrong man for this job I'd step out. If the time does come, I'll know before anybody else does. In the meantime I want no further interference from you. As far as I'm concerned you can go home right now and amuse yourself practicing your fast draw.”