Hunted (27 page)

When the hour-long evening news came on, the anchors from the Big Three felt like they'd been raped. They were airing reports about events in countries ten thousand miles away (most of which the average American had very little interest in, if any interest at all) while the Coyote Network was airing stories about America and Americans, events and happenings that touched a raw, exposed nerve in TV viewers.

“By God, the press is finally doing something right,” was the general reaction from people who had stopped watching the evening news years back . . . since the content was always so boringly predictable.

Neighbor called neighbor that evening; friend called friend, all over America.

Ian MacVay took the last sixty seconds of air time that evening, proclaiming, “The Coyote Network will always put events about Americans and America first. If situations arise that might touch the lives of all Americans, we realize that residents of Binghamton, New York, want to know about those events, even if they are taking place in Valdosta, Georgia, or Santa Paula, California, or Kennett, Missouri. We are all a part of the whole. What takes place in one part of the nation directly affects those living in other areas of the United States. This is my adopted home, and just like all of you, I want to know what is happening in my country. And I want to know it immediately. And you will know about it when it happens, and that is the Coyote Network's pledge to you.”

“Crap!” said the Pres, clicking off the TV. “I would very much like to get drunk tonight.”

“You can't,” his chief of staff told him. “You're having dinner with selected members of CLAPCAA.”

“What the hell is CLAPCAA?”

“Citizens for the Legislative Advancement of Political Correctness for All Americans.”

“Shit!” said the Pres.

“You got that right,” the chief of staff muttered, as he closed the door behind him.

Mike Tuttle awakened in the chill of early evening. He was stiff, sore, and the heavy drug had left him addle-headed. He reached for his pistol. It was gone. “Naturally,” he mumbled, his tongue thick. He sat up with a groan and fumbled for his canteen. He rinsed out his mouth and then washed his face with the water. “This is getting real personal, Ransom. I think I'm going to make you my own private little war.”

One by one, his team of mercs began reporting in, all of them thick-tongued and mad as hornets at being taken so easily. Mike acknowledged their check-ins and told them to make it to the rendezvous point. They had cached supplies there.

At the jump-off point, Mike said, “Ransom's gone. Don't ask me how I know, I just know.” He paused, deep in thought. “This was a warning, boys. I think Darry just told us that he could have easily killed us all, and that the next time we meet, he will do just that.”

Ike Dover said, “This Ransom person spooks me, Mike. He's the best I've ever seen. We need some more men.”

“Yeah,” Mike slowly agreed. “Roche said he wanted this prick alive, but he didn't say anything about crippled. We'll get a long-distance shooter and knock a leg out from under the bastard.”

“Dale Williams,” Nick Sharp suggested.

“That's who I was thinking of.” He smiled. “And Dale don't like dogs.”

Dennis Tipton gave him a hard glance. “Mike, I told you before, now I'm tellin' you again: you hurt those dogs of his, Ransom will kill you slow and hard. Not only you, but everybody connected with this operation.”

“For Christ's sake, Dennis. They're dogs, goddammit. Just a couple of mutts.”

“I don't like it,” Dennis muttered. “I just don't like it.”

The others laughed him silent.

None of them were aware of being watched from the edge of the clearing.

* * *

“Goddamn a person who would kill a man's dogs to get at him!” Chuck raged, after his midnight visitor had left. “Takes one sorry son of a bitch to do that.”

“I know Dale Williams,” George said. “He was thrown out of the army. Dishonorably discharged. He's a killer. He's a good shot, but he enjoys killing. It's almost a ...” He grimaced. “A sexual thing with him.”

Chuck spat in the cold fireplace, as if suddenly he had a very bad taste in his mouth. “How good is he?”

“Up to three, maybe four hundred meters, none better. Beyond that, I've seen others out-shoot him.”

“That's a good shot, four hundred meters.”

“Not bad,” George said with a smile. “You're sure Mike and his people have left?”

“Yes. They packed up and pulled out.”

“Darry?”

“He's over at his cabin with that female reporter.” Chuck grinned mischievously. “I ‘spect they both all worn down to a frazzle now and just talkin' low to one another.”

“You're a dirty old man, Chuck.”

Chuck laughed and slapped his knee. “Ain't it the truth?”

* * *

Network executives from the Big Three and two all-news networks had met in their conference rooms until late that night. Phone surveys had been done, and the Coyote Network evening news had blown them all out of the water. None of them had ever seen their ratings fall to such a dismal low.

News ratings were never great ... but this was just awful. The talk in the various conference rooms went something like this:

“But they didn't even talk about the civil strife in Africa,” one harried-looking executive said.

“Or the problems in the Mideast,” another pointed out.

“Or the situation in the Balkans,” another said.

“Or that terribly important conference in Pakistan concerning proper diet for Tibetan monks.”

“Nobody
watched the segment by Dr. Farnot on the heartbreak of facial hair on teenage girls. I thought that piece was exceptionally well done.”

“I was enthralled by our piece placing the blame of the upswing in gang violence on either the lack of vitamin C or the Republican party. I thought it was very timely.”

“I just don't understand it,” another executive said, waving a handkerchief. “They didn't even run my favorite piece about the success of midnight basketball for disadvantaged youth.”

“They didn't run it because while the game was going on there were two stabbings on the court and a thirteen-year-old girl got gang-raped in the locker room,” it was pointed out.

“That doesn't mean the program isn't working,” the hanky-waver rebutted.

A woman stood up and closed her briefcase. “You just don't get it,” she said. “None of you. And I doubt you ever will. We, and the other networks, are perceived by a large percentage of the population as antigun, liberal to the core, soft on crime, and pandering to punks. We're losing viewers because we don't run stories that a vast number of Americans want to see. Americans are overtaxed, overlegislated, drowning in federally mandated paperwork, distrust and in many cases openly hate their own government. They think the majority of senators and representatives are a bunch of crooks, live in fear behind barred windows and locked doors in their own homes... while we run stories about ingrown toenails, facial hair on teenage girls, carp every goddamn night about the Mideast—when only about five percent, or less, of the American public actually gives a big rat's ass what happens over there—we've all stopped editorializing because our editorials were so damned liberal it made the average American want to puke . . . and you people can't understand why the Coyote Network News just kicked our asses right off the ratings scale. Me? I'm going home. Providing, of course, I can get there without being mugged, or raped, caught up in a drive-by shooting, don't get run over by a drunk driver who already has been ticketed for DWI fourteen times and is still driving . . . or any number of equally depressing scenarios, while you people are sitting around here discussing tomorrow's news, contemplating about whether to run a piece on Mongolian yak drivers or the lack of political correctness in America. Personally, I'd opt for the yak drivers. Americans are much more likely to watch that. It has some human interest value. Animals, you know? Good night.”

* * *

The morning was cool, and Stormy lingered for a time under the covers. She had told herself a hundred times that she was not going to make love to Darry Ransom. But she had, and now her story about him, if she did one, no matter how hard she tried to be objective, was going to be tainted.

Darry was up, had been for some time. She could smell the coffee. She smiled. Before coming out to Darry's cabin late yesterday afternoon, she'd called in to Coyote headquarters and heard some beautiful words: Coyote Evening News had kicked some butt. They'd earned the highest shares in television news history. The White House and everybody associated with it was furious; the IRS was vehemently denying it ever went after anybody for punitive reasons, certainly not at the suggestion of the White House, or any federal enforcement agency. Senators and representatives were being inundated with faxes, phone calls, and telegrams from hundreds of thousands of pissed-off Americans, demanding that big government be cut back and rigidly controlled. The FBI, DEA, BATF, Federal Marshals Service, and others were maintaining a tight-lipped, no-comment policy about anything and everything, and sponsors were literally hammering at the doors of Coyote headquarters wanting to buy time.

Life was good.

She closed her eyes, stretched under the warmth of blankets, and sobered. But now, what the hell was she going to do about Darry?

“You can start by having a cup of coffee,” Darry spoke from the doorway.

Stormy jerked under the blankets. “Will you please stop doing that?” she said. “How the hell can you get inside a person's head like that?”

“My mother was a gypsy.” Darry sat down on the edge of the bed and held out a mug of coffee.

“Sure she was,” Stormy said drily, sitting up and taking the mug. Despite the coolness of the morning, Darry was shirtless, and her eyes took in the scars on his chest. “You can be hurt,” she said softly.

“Oh, yes. But I heal very quickly.” How quickly would have boggled her mind and mystified medical science. “You'd better make plans to get out of here, Stormy. This area is about to get very dangerous.”

Her eyes widened, and the blanket and sheet fell from her shoulders to her waist. She paid no attention to that, but Darry sure did, enjoying every second of it.
“About
to get dangerous? What the hell has it been for the past couple of weeks?” She realized she was naked from the waist up and grabbed at the sheet while Darry laughed at her antics and took the coffee cup from her hand before she spilled it all over herself, and him.

“My parents really were gypsies,” Darry said.

“Fine. Now tell me why this area is going to get more dangerous now than it has been?”

“Because the war between the mercenaries and me is about to get personal, that's why. They plan to kill my dogs in an attempt to anger me and cause me to slip up, get careless. But that will not happen.”

“Kill Pete and Repeat? That's horrible!” She bit at her lower lip. “But how do you know this?”

“A friend told me last night.”

A friend about six and half feet tall, weighing about three hundred pounds, with a head like a prehistoric bear and paws and claws for hands.

“Where was I?”

“Asleep.” The press had never really believed the stories about the Unseen and, for the most part, paid no attention to the rumors. “Get dressed. I'll walk you back down to the ranger station.”

“Maybe I don't want to go.”

“You have to. You and the others have to keep hammering away at the government. You have to make the people so angry they'll approach an open revolt stage. Only that will make the government take notice and start heeding the wishes of the majority. You can't ever let up; never stop the momentum. Start asking hard and rude questions about third generation welfare recipients. Start questioning the reasons why the taxpayers should foot the bills allowing young, able-bodied people to live in public housing. Hammer at government waste in all areas. Get on the backs of elected officials and demand to know why an across the board flat tax rate—which the majority of Americans want—is never even brought to committee. Demand to know why we allow our elderly to die from the heat in the summer and the cold in the winter while the government spends billions of dollars in wasteful social programs that don't work. Question why our seat of government, Washington, D.C., is the crime capital of America.”

“Some of those things will make a lot of blacks and minorities very angry, Darry.”

“Good. They need to get angry. That's the only way they're going to solve the problems facing them. But they need to get angry at a small percentage of their own people who are causing the problems, and stop putting the blame on somebody else—stop blaming all their woes on society and whitey.”

“Oh, boy!” Stormy said with a sigh.

“Start asking hard questions of the thousands of immigrants flooding into this country. Ask them how in the hell they expect to survive. Do they think it's fair and right for them to expect the American taxpayers to support them while some of our own long-suffering citizens are homeless and jobless and hungry? The press has got to stop ducking the issues and get down and dirty and take a stand.”

She smiled at him. “You want a revolution in this nation, don't you, Darry?”

“I've started or helped start more than one in my time, Stormy. I hate big government. I've seen too many times what it inevitably turns into. The pen is mightier than the sword, Stormy. I've been a writer; I know.”

Stormy was silent for a moment, sipping her coffee. “You know something, Darry,” she said, almost wistfully. “I felt good yesterday interviewing Kevin Carmouche and his friends. I felt like for the first time in my career I was really accomplishing something.”

“You were. Sticking it to big government.”

She laughed. “You really do hate big government, don't you?”

“Passionately.” He stood up. “Get dressed. You've got to get out of here.”

“I told you, I don't want to go. And neither does Ki. She thinks this is where the big story is going to be, and so do I. And, I think, so do you, or you wouldn't be trying so hard to get rid of me.”

Darry slowly nodded his head. “Yeah. Well, if I can't convince you to leave, you could stay with Chuck and George, I suppose. Both of you would be safe there. That's a fierce old man, and George is tough as a boot and as fast and dangerous as a rattlesnake.”

“I like both of those men.”

“Then you and Ki will stay with them; follow their instructions?”

She cut her eyes to him. “You worried about me, Darry?”

“Well, yes.”

As their eyes met, something warm and pleasant stirred deep in Darry's soul, and something soft and gentle moved around Stormy's heart.

Don't be a fool! Darry thought. It never works, you know that.

You'll never do that story on Darry now, Stormy thought with absolutely no pangs of regret.

End it right now, Darry thought. Take her to the ranger station, leave her, and walk away and don't look back. You know that's the smart thing to do.

My God, Stormy thought. What kind of life are you expecting with this man? Your future together is hopeless. Don't let this happen.

It's unfair to her, Darry thought. You know it is. Don't let this happen.