Necessary Evil (7 page)

"After you—as soon as I can. I'll find something to drive." Then, carrying the M-16 across his chest just as Miller had done, Kier trotted away with more misgivings than he let show.

He was a healer trying to do a warrior's job at a time when he had hoped the world had outgrown warriors.

To catch a rabbit watch his hole, not his track.

—Tilok proverb

"
S
tubborn damned Indian."

Jessie watched him run, marveling at the way he let the brush slip past him with long sure strides, even in the snow. Except for the obvious trail in the drifted mounds, he was as elusive as a wild creature in the forest gloom. He disappeared from her sight after running just forty or fifty feet.

She shuddered with cold, then fear. Putting together all that she had heard, and the little that she had seen, the man was the oddest mixture of scientist, mystic, and naturalist that she had ever met. Unfortunate that he lacked so in people skills.

Claudie said that when Kier was young he turned wild for a short time, running with a group of Indian radicals who undertook the survivalist way of life. They were socially aloof, a law unto themselves, fascinated with guns and knives and living off the land. They even plotted to take over the county seat, but it never got that far, despite the fact that Kier and his friends had obtained a frightening array of military hardware. Kier's rebellious phase had something to do with his father's death years earlier, but Claudie never understood the details. Fortunately, before Kier and his band did any irreversible damage, Kier's grandfather convinced him to break away from the group. If Claudie was to be believed, the only vestige of that experience that lasted was Kier's practice of the martial arts.

Beneath the forest canopy it was almost dark, the waning light turning everything a somber gray, which would linger in deathly, freezing, colorless, joyless tones. A purgatory if ever there was one, she thought, until the sun went down and it turned to hell.

Letting memory comfort her, she could almost feel her gray cashmere sweater, see the pearls that lay across it, smell the coffee, feel a yellow pad under her hand, and hear the soft hum of her computer, as soothing as a mother's heartbeat. She lived in seventy degrees, with carpets and Coke machines, bottled water, potpourri air freshener, ionizing filters, the gentle humor of intelligent colleagues, great challenges, but no danger. This freezing forest was not her world.

There were of course things that seemed worse than physical danger. Take Frank, her boss. A man you thought you could respect, a strong guy, a guy who by some miracle seemingly hadn't let the system, or criminals, steal his sensitivity. A man who was clever by anybody's definition, and wise about pain and cynicism and people, beauracratic or otherwise. Someone you could trust—someone she
had
trusted. Someone so smooth that he could explain how it was that he could have adulterous sex with another Bureau employee and still be the pillar of the office. Someone who could promise Gail marriage with his blue eyes brimming with sincerity—just before leaving on a trip for Hawaii with his wife.

The beauty of this hellish forest was that she didn't need to think about Frank and his threats to end her career—there was enough happening here without digging up that skeleton and worrying it some more. In fact, she'd stay alive longer if she dropped it, before she got to the really horrible part. Before she started in on all the whys. Why did her best friend behave so stupidly? How could Frank be so evil?
Why did I have to discover it?
And she slogged on.

Glancing back at Miller, she wondered what his name really was, where he came from, and what his mother was thinking at this moment. Did he believe he would die? For the second time in her life she thought she might.

One thing she knew for sure. She had to get to a phone and contact law enforcement right away, before anything worse happened to her sister, the boys, or even Kier, a man who might start a small war. In addition, there was the threat of an epidemic of some sort from that disease menagerie in the plane.

Only two hundred feet from where he left Jessie the ground became firmer. Sword fern gave way to bracken fern, like miniature tree stems with fronds atop, growing in every little opening, interrupted by dense clumps of Scotch broom and manzanita. Kier ran in a great arc, staying low, parting foliage by angling himself, letting his shoulders shrug off the clingy tendrils. Ahead a natural opening, dominated by grasses, left a blanket of snow that showed their old tracks like soil on white satin.

Kier knew that he needed to get close—very close—-before Jones saw him. With luck, the man would believe he was Miller. Jones stood only a few feet from the tracks left by Kier and Jessie. Running through a last cluster of madrone, Kier kept low, hoping Jones wouldn't look his way. Sixty feet to go. The man seemed occupied with the traces of Kier's earlier passage. He turned as if to follow the imprints in the snow.

Uh-oh. Jones was using his radio again. Already it might be too late.

Kier bounded the last three steps straight at Jones. The man turned, pointing his gun. Kier willed himself to keep the automatic across his chest, his eyes riveted to the black, round bore of Jones's M-16. Jones stared, cocking his head.

He's trying to decide. He's spooked.

Kier swung the butt of his rifle at Jones's jaw. Jones fired. The rifle butt connected with a firm thud as, missing Kier by inches, the shot echoed through the forest, shockingly loud. Kier cringed, knowing the sound would make things infinitely more complicated. Even so, he was sure Jones had not got a good look at his face, obscured as it was by the fur-lined hood under the helmet.

"Jones, say status. Jones, say your status."

The man's radio lay in the snow. Jones had alerted the others, and now Jones wasn't answering.

"Switch Delta, Switch and answer Delta," came the radio command.

They would be scrambling frequencies, Kier knew. And the way it worked, Delta code would not be available on either Jones's or Miller's radio card. Checking Miller's card, Kier saw a series of names down the left side, in alphabetical order. Numbers followed most of the names. Delta was blank. No doubt the printed list was also in electronic form on the phone. Both these radios would now be useless unless they wanted to talk to him.

Kier dropped to the snow, scanning the trees, using Jones's unconscious body as a half-shield. In seconds, another man approached, moving low and fast, obviously casting about for his comrade. Kier slumped forward, lying atop Jones. Like a pointer, this new attacker froze, staring through the snow-laden air. His gun came up. Surely he wouldn't shoot downed men in the snow—especially when they gave every appearance of being his own kind. Kier slipped his hand over the butt of his pistol. From the corner of his eye he watched the man cautiously approach.

"Help, I'm hit," he groaned as the man got very close.

Nudging Kier with his gun barrel, the man bent over, apparently trying to see his face. Kier kept it buried in the other man's parka and moaned. He waited until he felt the man lifting his shoulder. Kier rolled and at the same time delivered a hard kick squarely to the man's chin. He was on his stunned enemy in an instant, choking him to unconsciousness, keeping him silent until his body slumped.

Visibility was improving slightly, but steady polka-dot sheets of frozen moisture still blurred the landscape. Kier did not want to kill. If only these people had not brought their destruction to this place.

Once again his mind went over the facts like a watchmaker sorting the parts of an old-fashioned timepiece. Even if he didn't understand the nature of the power that the scientists had given Tillman or the extent of Tillman's plans, he knew that these men were capable of wanton killing. Common sense told him that escape would require a profound subterfuge. He needed to make them think they had solved the puzzle of their disappearing comrade.

He took Jones's automatic, fished out the rest of his ammo clips, grabbed his radio, his light, and took his money. Then he turned to the second man, leaving his weapons, but taking his money, his knife, his light, more ammunition, and his grenades. Pulling off Miller's field pack, he quickly loaded the booty.

Cringing even as he did it, he turned the second man over onto his belly and aimed the M-16 at the fleshy part of the man's buttock, taking care that the shot missed bone. The single shot blew out a chunk of fatty flesh a little smaller than a walnut. It bled profusely, allowing Kier to smear blood over the back of the man's outer coat. He fired off some more rounds.

"Miller has turned, Miller has turned," Kier said into the radio in the whispered growl of a dying man.

"Code nine, say status, Jenkins. Code nine, say status, Jenkins."

In response Kier fired his automatic and made an ugly gurgling sound into the mouthpiece.

"Code Zulu, switch and answer Zulu."

Again they were scrambling.

He was reaching to pick up Jones's body when a flurry of snow from overburdened branches cascaded to his right, and out from a wall of frosted evergreen boughs stepped another of his tormentors. The man was a good distance away and looking in the wrong direction. Striding directly back up Jenkins's trail for at least twenty paces, Kier heard no shots until he was almost out of sight. He dived for an elderberry thicket, shooting a volley as he flew. Though wild, the bullets made his quarry duck. Kier crawled desperately for cover. Already rounds slammed into the brush around him, missing him by what he knew must be inches. Finding a log, he climbed over it and hunkered down. A tremendous explosion directly behind him numbed his ears and tossed the bushes around him like salad. Somebody was using hand grenades or a mortar. There was no sound but the pounding of his heart; his ragged, too-fast breath came not from fatigue. Panic pooled in him like a reservoir trickling through the cracks of a dam. He needed to calm his mind. Now he would need another unconscious captive to carry out his plan.

"I've got him at sector seven. He's near the northeast corner, south and east of the corner maybe twenty or thirty feet. Repeat. Sector seven. Northeast corner, south and east of the corner approximately twenty to thirty feet."

The man was actually shouting. Kier felt a different kind of chill as he heard the enemy radioing his position. In minutes, there would be armed men everywhere. He dropped and crawled into a dense windfall of criss-crossed fallen trees shot through with Pacific bayberry and overgrown with salal. In this thicket he was all but invisible. But he had not been there ten seconds before he discovered that he shared the spot with one of the enemy.

It was the heavy sound of Kier checking his clip that gave him away. Only a few feet of heavy brush lay between him and the man who now, in panicked tones, reiterated Kier's position. Kier had no illusions. He was in a deadly spot.

Panic in the man's voice meant he was rattled and might do anything, even something that could kill them both, like tossing a grenade in tight.

Lying flat, Kier squirmed forward a foot, sticking his head in the brush, peering through the crystalline corridors formed by snow on branches. Nothing. He couldn't see more than three feet. Again he elbowed forward. An almost imperceptible rabbit trail appeared in front of him. Without thinking, he had been crawling down it. Off to his right the shooter lay waiting. If Kier continued on his current path, he would crawl into the enemy's sights.

He pushed slowly to the right and detected nothing. It was not until the second move that he spied a small patch of white fabric, distinct from the snow because of its flat texture. Squinting, he turned his head right and left, trying to see more, to at least identify the torso.

The man a few feet away would be wearing Kevlar body armor that could easily be pierced by the combat rounds in the M-16. But the silenced pistol he had shagged from Jones would be much quieter. If he could bring himself to shoot this man, he would take a chance on the pistol to gain a soundless assault. Aiming the long, lanky handgun, he rose even higher, carefully discerning the white fabric from fallen snow.

Slowly he moved off his elbows to a crouch. Now he could feel his own fear like a hand on his throat. At any moment he could be seen. His eyes roved. Nothing. With his head buried in the brush, he rose still higher. Oh yes! There was his shooter, just six feet away, his legs under a massive Douglas fir log, his body flat to the ground. Incredibly, the man had removed his helmet, probably to listen. Kier aimed at the man's hooded head.

It was a useless gesture. He would not kill a man who lay unaware and frightened in the bushes. Without another second's hesitation, Kier uncoiled his body from its crouch and dived at the man, aiming the butt of the pistol at the man's temple. If it hadn't been for the tough fibrous vines, the strike might have landed before the man could roll.

As it was, he struck the man's shoulder. Recovering, Kier drove the palm of his left hand into the man's chin, then swung the butt of the pistol into the man's temple with such force he hoped he hadn't killed him. Kier watched the body quiver, waiting for more fight. Then there was no movement. Flopping him onto his back, Kier felt for a pulse and found it. The man was young, maybe early thirties, handsome, with a moon-shaped baby face.

Bullets raked the brush in time with the staccato chug of an M-16. Kier flattened himself.

"Cease fire, goddammit. Crawford, you in there?"

It was quiet. Kier felt blood under his fingers. His eye followed it to the man's chest and a lethal wound. They had hit their own man through an arm hole. At least he had the body he needed, albeit a dead one.

Crawford's radio crackled again. "Crawford, say your status."