Apache Country (32 page)

Next they cut the deer meat into strips,
roasted it and ate their fill, letting the fire die down to a red
glow. Then they ate some of the cheese they had taken from the
cabin in the canyon. It was a feast. After a while Easton got up
and warily checked the rear of the cave. No snakes.

“Don’t worry,” Ironheel grinned. “If he’s
coming to visit, tl’iish bitseghál will give you a buzz.”

“Ho ho,” Easton said.

“Don’t like diamondbacks?”

“Does anybody?”

“Many Apache reverence them.”

“But they kill them just the same.”

“No. Never. It is better to appease the wrath
of the evil one rather than incur its enmity. When Apache sees
tl’iish bitseghál he says, ‘Go into your hole, ch’iin
biyi’golinihi, and take your evil with you.’.”

Although rattlesnakes were held in awe for
their power to kill, no Apache would ever use any implement or
weapon that had been touched in connection with a snake, he said.
Some accounted for their misfortunes by the number of snakes that
died during a summer and left the evil with them. He told about one
old woman who swore her arthritis had been caused by stepping in
the blood of a killed rattler.

“You think us pinda’lick oyes will ever
understand Apache?” Easton said.

“No way,” Ironheel grunted.

Not quite sure if he’d seen the hint of a
smile around the corners of Ironheel’s mouth as he said it, Easton
decided yet again that he had probably just imagined it. They
lapsed into a not uncomfortable silence.

“That chopper,” Ironheel said after a while.
“The one that came after us up at Whitetail. Who has machines like
that?”

Easton had been thinking along those lines
himself. “Only the big agencies with lots of money,” he said. “CIA.
Secret Service. Drug Enforcement Agency, Immigration, Border
Patrol.”

“Hard to imagine any of them trying to kill
us.”

“Seguro,” Easton said. “So who?”

“FBI?”

“I doubt it.”

“Wouldn’t they be called in as a matter of
course? Taking a hostage is kidnapping, isn’t it?”

“I hate to blah your high opinion of the
Feebs,” Easton said. “But out here in the boonies, FBI offices tend
to be staffed mostly by misfits and burnouts who’ve been banished
from the big time ‘a’, because they were too clever or ‘b’, they
were too dumb. And because they don’t want to be kicked any further
down the ladder, they tend to sidestep cases that look like winding
up without a result. And this one would certainly qualify.”

“Tell me more about this helicopter.”

Easton nodded. “If I’m right, it’s a Hughes
Defender. There would be at least two crew, with room for three or
four more passengers. If she’s state of the art – and on what we’ve
seen so far I’d say she is – they’ll probably have FLIR and a zoom
thermal imager onboard.”

“FLIR?”

“Forward Looking Infra-red Radar. Basically a
radar camera that turns darkness into a fuzzy greenish gray on a
monitor screen. Imagine a badly-tuned TV, but with a picture clear
enough to show roads, buildings, cars, and anything moving.”

“And what does a thermal imager do?”

“That’s the baby we’ve got to worry about,”
Easton told him. “FLIR has limited vision. It can’t detect anything
concealed from the naked eye—us under that log pile at Whitetail,
for instance. But a TI will give you a picture of anything whose
heat signature is as little as two degrees different from its
surroundings, in daylight or complete darkness. It can tell by the
heat emissions from the brakes, muffler and engine if a car has
been driven recently. It can see inside houses, through trees and
undergrowth. A good TI operator can even tell the difference
between an animal and a human being.”

“And they’ll have a good operator,” Ironheel
said darkly.

“Something else. If the chopper is hooked up
to ground patrols, the operator can guide them directly to whatever
or whoever he’s hunting. If it moves he can tell them where it
went. Or they can land a team close to wherever it is.”

“Hard to hide from,” Ironheel said.

“But it can be done. As you know.”

Ironheel looked thoughtful. “Kuruk,” he said,
softly. “He’s with them.”

“What?”

“Bigonsih dakózhaa. I know it without
knowing. If there’s to be a kill, Kuruk will want to be there.”

“Why?”

His answer was oblique. “Whoever hired him
will think he’s doing it for money.”

“But he’s not?”

This time Ironheel made no reply. His face
was like stone. His eyes glittered in the dying firelight.

“It won’t take them long to check out
Peachtree Canyon,” he said. “When they can’t find us, Kuruk will
remember these caves.”

“You think he’ll come after us?”

“I know he will. Will the men in the chopper
be able to tell we’re in here?”

Easton looked up at the roof of the cave.
“Thermal imagers can see through walls without too much trouble,”
he said. “Maybe even ten or twelve feet of rubble. But I doubt they
can deal with rock this thick.”

“What about this?” Ironheel said, gesturing
at the glowing remnants of the fire.

“I don’t know,” Easton admitted.

“How’s that plan of yours coming?”

“Still got a few loose ends,” Easton
said.

Ironheel nodded thoughtfully, then stood
up.

“Ilháásh,” he said. “I’ll take the first
watch.”

Against the darkness of the night, something
moved. It was not so much a sound as a subtle reverberation in the
silent air, as though some great bird was passing unseen, beating
the lambent sky with giant, noiseless wings. Easton knew at once
what it was.

He glanced at Ironheel, curled up asleep
beside the ashes of the fire, slightly surprised he had not
awakened. Maybe even Apache got tired, he thought, then crossed to
the cave entrance and stood next to the big rock they had rolled
across it. Outside, a faint breeze stirred the trees. Above them,
the sky was a vast, star-speckled void. Although he could see
nothing, he knew that somewhere in that blue-black infinity, the
sinister search helicopter was quartering across the sky like a
prowling cat. He pictured an operator crouched over his monitors,
alert for the smallest hint of movement or the bright static spot
of a heat signature. He went over and touched Ironheel’s shoulder.
The Apache sat up in one smooth movement, fully awake in an
instant.

“What is it?” he said, getting to his feet.
Easton put a finger to his lips then pointed upwards, moving his
forefinger in a circle. Ironheel padded across to the mouth of the
cave, standing near the entrance as still as stone, all his senses
tuned toward the sky outside.

“You’re right,” he confirmed in a whisper.
“How long have they been out there?”

“A while,” Easton said. “You think Mose Kuruk
is out there too?”

“Maybe not yet,” Ironheel said. “But he’ll
come.”

“Perhaps we’ll surprise him,” Easton
said.

“He isn’t easy to surprise.”

“There are five more caves besides this one,”
Easton said. “The nearest is about two hundred yards downhill.”

“You went outside?”

“Before they came,” Easton told him. “I’ve
lit a fire in one of the caves down there. Quite a big one. If I
did it right it’s still burning.”

It was a simple ruse: give the operator
something to see. The idea had germinated when they had talked
about the helicopter’s surveillance gear the preceding night. If it
worked it might just give them the edge they needed.

“You asked me if surveillance gear was
foolproof,” he said.

“And you said nothing was,” Ironheel
replied.

“That’s right. It’s machinery. It just tells
you what kind of signals it’s receiving. It’s the operator’s
evaluation that’s important.”

Ironheel nodded his understanding. “And you
gave him something to evaluate.”

“Bingo,” Easton said.

If the thermal imager picked up the heat
signature from the fire, there was a chance the operator would
conclude it was theirs – who else would be down there in a cave? –
and flash word to Kuruk. Then, theoretically, Mose Kuruk would
assume them to be where the TI said they had to be and act
accordingly.

Except they wouldn’t be there.

Everything depended upon two unanswerable
questions. First, would the heat from what was left of their own
fire show on the scanner, too? It was probably a few degrees warmer
inside their cave than any of the others, but Easton had no idea
whether a TI could pick that up or not. Second, and much more
important, would Kuruk fall for it?

“Put yourself in Kuruk’s place,” he said. “If
he thinks we’re down there in that cave what will he do?”

Ironheel shrugged. “Taanégo,” he said. “Act
slowly. He won’t take any chances.”

“Go on.”

“The only way that chopper could be out there
is because Kuruk told them where to look. So he’s working with
whoever sent it. Which in turn means he’s coming to kill us if he
can,” Ironheel said.

“Alone?”

He shook his head. “He’ll use the men in the
copter to find out where we are.”

“Just send them in, blind?”

Ironheel shrugged. “If it gave him an
advantage, he’d send his grandmother,” he confirmed. “Why?”

“If they’re going to give him backup they’ve
got to land the chopper somewhere. There are too many trees down
below. So where …?”

“Only one place near enough,” Ironheel said,
thinking fast. “Up above, on the saddle. The plateau near Chimney
Rock.”

“Okay, let’s say they land up there,” Easton
said grimly. “Where will they come at us from?”

“Not from above,” Ironheel said decisively.
“Even if they have abseil gear it’s too dangerous at night. They’ll
go down the gully trail, come up at us from the valley.”

“And?”

“Kuruk will send someone ahead, see if they
draw any fire. Then he’d have us pinpointed.”

“Except he won’t. Because by the time they
get to the cave we’ll be gone.”

“Without them seeing us? How do we manage
that?”

“Blindside them,” Easton said.

As soon as Kuruk or his men made their move,
he explained, he and Ironheel would retreat uphill and circle
around Chimney Rock, putting the huge turret of rock between them
and their stalkers. If they timed it right, it might even give them
time to get to the helicopter and put it out of action. After that
… Easton shrugged.

“And that’s the plan you were working on?”
Ironheel said.

“That’s it.”

“Iáá’yugo,” Ironheel said dubiously. “Too
many ‘ifs’.”

“Ain’t dat de troof,” Easton said.

If it worked, they might have a small
advantage. Not much of one, but an advantage. It would be good to
be on the offensive for a change.

“What next?” Ironheel said.

Easton nodded and pointed at the entrance to
the cave. “Like with the deer,” he said. “Watch. Wait.”

“And then?”

“T’lo kahdinadi aha’eh,” Easton said.
“Materialize without warning.”

Ironheel almost smiled. “Might make an Apache
out of you yet,” he said.

~*~

The trail down from the summit was steep and
rocky but Kuruk moved swiftly, no longer making any effort to
conceal his movements. After he found the deer carcass on the trail
he knew there was no longer any need to fear ambush. His quarry had
to be where he thought they were for the simple reason that there
was no place else they could hide. Dawn wasn’t far away. Off to his
right, felt rather than seen, the kiva-shaped column of Chimney
Rock reared into the sky. He stopped to use the walkie-talkie.

“Come in, Bluebird,” he said urgently. “What
have you got?”

“Looks like you were right, Mose,” the voice
of the helicopter pilot crackled back. “We’re getting a heat
signature from one of the caves.”

“What kind of signature? Human?”

“Negative. Our guess is it’s a fire. It’s
that kind of glow.”

“Any movement?”

“Negative.”

“What about the other caves?”

“We’re not getting anything there. Of course,
we can’t see inside them, they’re all screened by trees. But we can
make them out pretty clearly on the FLIR. So far we’ve located
six.”

“Six is right,” Kuruk confirmed.

He visualized the topography the way they
would be seeing it from the chopper. From left to right, a long
timber-clad slope coming down from El Marcial, then a shallow,
U-shaped saddle of naked rock maybe fifty yards wide at its widest
point, littered with boulders and scree lashed from the unprotected
face of Chimney Rock by storms and lightning. To the right of the
saddle rose the Rock itself, projecting four hundred feet upward
above the treeline like the blunted hammer of a pistol.

From the boulder-strewn saddle a wide ragged
gully ran downhill in an irregular zigzag to the forested canyon
floor below. The caves were positioned high up on the flank of the
Rock in a gradually ascending line, two on one side of the gully,
two on the other, and then two more higher up.

“Which cave are you getting the signal from?”
he asked the pilot.

“The next to highest as we look at them. To
the right of the saddle as we look at it. Where are you?”

“Coming down from the summit along the
ridge,” Kuruk told him. “Can you see me yet?”

“Negative,” came the reply. “What do you want
us to do?”

“Keep watching. If anything moves, I want to
know, fast. I’m going to climb up to the saddle. That will put me
behind and to your left of the target cave. Soon as I’m up there
I’ll contact you.”

Think like the enemy.

Always assume he is at least as resourceful
as you, and never forget that he will take bigger chances because
he has nothing to lose. Then make a choice: were Ironheel and the
pinda’lick’oye so stupid they would build a fire the chopper could
spot? The cop maybe. Ironheel, no way. It was a trap.