Hunted (18 page)

“Okay, if that's the way you want it. We're gone, Johnny,” Pete Cooper said. “Good luck.”

Johnny smiled and wished his new-found friends well. He shook hands with each man. When the others had gone, Johnny lay for a time reviewing his situation. If the feds wanted him dead, they were going to have to work at it. For Johnny was an old pro at the art of staying alive.

“Come on, you bastards,” Johnny muttered. “Now you're going to start
really
earning your money.”

* * *

After checking on the pilot, and finding him just a bit addled and not hurt, Darry sent George back to the cave to get the others. “This crash will bring the feds in here fast. They'll find that cave eventually. We've got to get out of here and do it quickly.”

“Come on, you prick,” Darry said to the pilot. “Get on your feet.”

“You going to kill me?” the pilot asked.

“Don't be stupid! It's you people who are trying to kill us.

The pilot blinked at that.

“So far,” Darry told him, “you trigger-happy federal gunslingers have killed a dentist from Boise, wounded a schoolteacher from Kansas, attacked the cabins of law-abiding and decent people who have lived out here for years, staged an assault against an at-the-time unarmed camp of survivalists, killing and wounding no telling how many of them, roughed up a doctor from Los Angeles, whose wife is a very well known attorney from that city... and that's just the people that I know about. God only knows what else you silly bastards have managed to screw up, all in the name of law and order.”

The pilot's shoulders sagged. “I felt it in my guts. It just didn't seem right. You know what I mean?”

“Oh, yes,” Darry replied, his mind racing back over seven centuries of big governments all around the world running amuck and riding roughshod over citizens. “Yes. I sure do know what you mean.”

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them.

—George Washington

It would be difficult to put a political label on Craig Hamilton. On some issues he was very liberal; on others he was archconservative. He could have been a top-flight broadcast journalist, right up there with Stormy and Dan and Connie and Tom and Peter. But he had no burning desire for great wealth and worked on stories that he wanted to do and to hell with the others. But among the things that could light his often very short fuse were abuse to animals and violation of the constitution.

Craig's fuse became lighted when he hit his first roadblock. Craig's cameraman (and it was a man, so all you political correctness freaks can settle down) had gone back to Los Angeles after wrapping up the story in Montana. But Craig had his own mini-cam and was skilled in the use of it. He backed off from the roadblock and shot some film, then once more approached the line of federal marshals.

The marshal in charge of this roadblock got just a tad nervous, for he had recognized Craig Hamilton immediately. He didn't want to sound like a fool when asked what was going on, but the truth was he
didn't
know what was going on in the wilderness. He'd heard snatches of stolen conversation from other agents and, of course, the inevitable rumors. But by manning this roadblock, he was just following orders, that's all.

Just . . . following . . . orders.

Blind obedience toward the masters.

The marshal held up a hand, palm out. “I really don't know what is going on in there, Mr. Hamilton. And that is the God's honest truth. But we have orders to keep everybody out, and that includes you. Sorry.”

“I think I'll go talk to the sheriff,” Craig replied.

“I sure can't stop you from doing that, now, can I? It's a free country.”

Craig's look was very bleak. “Right. And everybody who still clings to that bit of overused bullshit can stand up and whistle the wedding march from a
Midsummer Night's Dream. ”

* * *

“You have a choice,” Darry told the shaken-up helicopter pilot. “You can go with us, you can stay here by your chopper and hope somebody comes to find you, or you can strike out across country and hoof it back to your base.”

“The hell you say!” the pilot blurted. “Those people out there are shooting on sight! Both sides. We know from running fingerprints that one of the dead men is, was, a known mercenary. One of the highest paid mercs in the world. Interpol has notified us that about a dozen of those guys have suddenly dropped out of sight. We think they're here and have linked up with Sam Parish's CDL. We're looking at a full-blown war in this area. Anybody who goes blundering around out there”—he waved a hand—“is looking for a bullet with his name on it.” He looked at the group gathered around him. “I'll stick around here, probably hide over there in that brush. I'll... do what I can to help you folks. But I'm just a pilot. I don't have a lot of stroke.”

“You're still an FBI agent,” Stormy said. “Why don't you demand our surrender?”

The pilot hesitated for a few heartbeats. “Two reasons. I don't think you people have done anything wrong, and with Max Vernon running this op, I ... ah ... would not recommend any of you turn yourselves in. But you didn't hear that from me.”

“He knows I've got film of him and his bully-boys attacking that survivalist camp and opening fire on unarmed men and women, right?” Ki asked.

“That's . . . ah ... what I hear, yeah.”

“He's got to kill us, right?” Darry asked.

The pilot shrugged his shoulders.

Darry handed the man the 9mm autoloader he'd taken from a shoulder holster rig. “You might need this.”

The pilot took the pistol, very gingerly, and slipped it back into leather. Then he sighed and shook his head. “Jesus, what a fuck-up!”

* * *

Craig drove away from the roadblock for about a mile, then cut off the road and into the brush, following the faint signs of an old logging road. He had rented a four-wheel drive Bronco and made the few hundred yards into the timber easily.

Craig had put together his pack before leaving the motel, and he shouldered into it and started walking into the timber. He had a map that clearly showed the location of the ranger station. He headed in that direction.

Craig was no dewy-eyed, city-born idealist. He was about half liberal (if that term even applied of late), but he'd been raised on a working ranch in East Texas, in what years back was known as the Big Thicket country. He was home in the woods or on the plains, had pulled two tours in Vietnam with Marine Force Recon, and had been on some dangerous assignments during his years as a reporter. Right now, every nerve in him was screaming out
danger.

Craig stopped by the side of a tree and carefully and slowly looked all around him. He stood quite still for several moments before he finally spotted what he had suspected was out there; and only then because the man moved. The man was in full-body blind leaf camouflage.

It's big, Craig thought. And dangerous. But he had heard nothing on the radio or TV about any manhunt. There had been nothing in the newspaper. None of the people he'd spoken with in the town where he'd spent the night had mentioned anything about roadblocks or escaped killers or massive manhunts. So what the hell was going on? And where were Stormy and Ki?

Craig eased his way back toward the Bronco. On his way in, a few miles back, just off the road, he'd passed an outfitter's place. He'd stop there and see what he could find out. But Craig had a bad feeling about this. A real bad feeling.

* * *

“I'm not going to jail for shooting that man, Mother.” Paul Collier finally spoke of the killing. Up to now, he had said very little about the incident on the bluffs. “That man threatened to kill you, we all heard him, and I defended you. That's all there is to it.”

“No, Paul,” his father said, his voice firm. “You most definitely are not going to jail.”

“Ray,” Karen cautioned. “Don't make promises you can't keep. He will have to turn himself in. That's the way our system works. You know that.”

“No, goddammit! I'll send him out of the country. I've got friends in Argentina that will take him in. I'll—”

She put a hand on her husband's arm. “Ray, don't talk foolish. Even if he does go to trial, no jury will convict him. He'll have the finest legal representation in the world. Once all the evidence is heard, there is a good chance no charges will be brought. But we've got to do this by the book.”

Kevin, Vince, Todd, and families exchanged glances at that. Despite all of Karen's legal experience, the aging hippies probably knew more about government excesses than she did, due in part to the underground newspapers that made their way to them . . . and most of them did not come by the U.S. mail. Several times a week all would gather at Kevin's cabin. Kevin would crank up the generator outside his cabin, aim the satellite dish, and pull in television programs that the majority of Americans never watched because they preferred to sit with their noses stuck up the asshole of some athlete or sit like zombies, viewing a program of extremely dubious quality rather than know what was taking place within their own government.

And an alarming number of Americans don't read. They can read, of course, they just
don't
read past the sports page . . . and they never read a book. A large number of Americans (and probably, taken per capita, an equal number of citizens of other countries) get their news from TV reporters, most of whom seem loath to take a firm stance against the growing excesses of government and the disturbing number of personal liberties that are being stripped away from citizens by the very government those same citizens are
forced,
through income taxes, to support.

And many Americans are so afraid of their own government, they simply will not do or say anything against it for fear of reprisal directed against them. They are astute enough to know (or at the very least,
suspect)
that the power of the Internal Revenue Service can be used against them very, very vindictively. More than a few Americans are keenly aware that the federal tax system is now nothing more than oppressive tyranny under the guise of revenue gathering. Citizens of America are aware of midnight raids on homes by heavily armed, ninja-suited and masked police (city, county, state, and federal) sometimes with bogus warrants whose charges come from jailed informants wishing to make a deal in order to lessen their own time in the bucket or to have pending charges dropped or reduced. Sometimes the warrants come after a tip from a disgruntled neighbor; sometimes, many suspect, the warrants are a means to harass and silence a too vocal critic of government policy. (Occasionally the national press will report on such midnight raids, but they seldom follow up on those stories even though they should be aware that their own First Amendment rights are slowly being taken from them.)

“You allow that kid to turn himself in to this bunch of trigger-happy bastards,” Kevin said, “and he won't live long enough to reach the main highway.”

“You don't know that for sure!” the mother snapped at him.

“Open your eyes, Karen.” Betsy Noble spoke the words softly. “If you get out of this mess alive, start reading between the lines . . . so to speak.”

“What do you mean?” Karen asked.

“Organize a group of people to openly protest income tax. Get a large group of people together—if you can find enough people with the courage to do it—and go public. But be sure you get someone who is a skilled polygraph or PSE operator. See how long it takes before you're infiltrated by government agents. You won't be in business six months before some of you will be audited by the IRS or visited by IRS field agents with thinly veiled threats. If you're self-employed, you really better look out, for this government has declared war on the self-employed . . . that's being done to force more people to be subservient to the government.”

“I simply cannot believe that,” Doctor Collier said.

“I'll bet you will before this mess is all over,” Vince told him.

* * *

“What do you mean, Craig?” the news chief back in NYC asked.

“I mean the whole goddamn area is blocked off by federal marshals and FBI and BATF and God only knows what other federal agency. And Stormy and Ki are right in the middle of it. They're being hunted on some bogus charge of selling dope.”

“What?”
the news chief screamed the one-word question. Craig held the receiver away from his ear as the man two thousand miles away roared, “That is fucking absurd!”

“Of course, it is. It's bullshit. I got this info from an old guy named Chuck something-or-another. I'm calling from his place right now. He's an outfitter. He rented Stormy and Ki horses to go into the wilderness. He says he's been hearing gunshots day and night for the last three days or so. He says some fed came to see him and told him to keep his mouth shut about anything he might see or hear. The old guy told the fed to go fuck himself. Look, I'm on my way to see a man called Buckskin Jennings. I've got a note from Chuck to show him. Chuck says Buckskin will guide me in and keep me out of trouble. I've got to find Stormy and Ki.”

“No. You stay right where you are. I'll have crews out there by late this afternoon,” the news chief promised. “Craig? You blow the goddamn lid off this operation, you hear me? This network will back you one hundred and ten percent, and I'm having that put into writing as soon as you hang up. And if the boys and girls in the legal department don't like it, they can stick it where the sun don't shine.”

Craig laughed. He and the head of network news were old and good friends, and if the man said he'd back you, he'd back you all the way. “I'm going to find Stormy, Boss. She might really be in trouble.” He hung up on a sputtering news chief back in NYC and headed for his Bronco. He had to get to Buckskin and find Stormy.

* * *

“There they are,” the agent said to his team leader.

George Eagle Dancer was leading the small group across a clearing.

The TL lowered his binoculars. “So it is,” he said.

The agent looked at him. “We have to stop them, Will.”

“Do we? Thomas, do you really believe that Stormy and Ki are dope dealers and involved with a dangerous survivalist group?”

“Ah . . . well, not really.”

“Anybody?” the TL looked around at his group.

The men all averted their eyes.

“That's what I thought.”

“Will?” another agent said, lowering his glasses. “That's Jack Speed and Kathy Owens in there! I graduated academy with them.”

The TL looked. “They've still got side arms, and Kathy is carrying an M-16. What the hell?”

“This makes it a whole new ball game, Will.”

“Yeah, it sure does.” He stood up and shouted to the group about a hundred yards away in the clearing.

“Jesus, Will!” Thomas said, astonished. “You're violating procedure.”

Will ignored him. “Jack, Kathy! Hold up. We're friendly. The rest of you just take it easy. Don't do anything foolish. Just stay there, I'm coming to you.” He looked back at his men. “Stay off the radio until we get this matter straightened out. If I hear one crackle on my radio, I guarantee you the man who sent it will spend the rest of his days operating a one-man station in Death Valley.” Will stepped away from the brush, leaving his M-16 behind, and walked over to the group.

“Mr. Augello,” Kathy said, remembering the agent from when he lectured at the academy.

“Kathy, Jack,” Will said, stepping warily around Pete and Repeat. Biggest damn dogs he'd ever seen—looked like wolves. Hell! They
were
wolves.