Keller began jogging for the trees. “Your pal said he has her kid up there,” he called back. “She’s going after him.”
“Hold up,” Riggio said. “We need to get a couple of—”
“You catch up,” Keller snapped back. “I’ve waited long enough.” He turned and headed across the road toward the woods where the blackness loomed like a wall. He barely broke stride as he reached the trailhead. Once under the shadows of the trees, however, he had to stop. He couldn’t see two feet in front of him. After a few moments, he began to be able to make out vague shapes, more like slight differences in shades of black than actual objects. He shut his eyes and listened. A slight breeze was blowing up from the valley and the leaves of the hardwoods rustled nervously. The breeze died slightly and Keller could dimly make out Marie’s voice, somewhere up the slope. She was calling Ben’s name. He opened his eyes again. He could at least make out the trail well enough to walk. He started up the rough path. As he reached the first curve in the trail, he heard a slight sound behind him. He began to turn toward the sound. A hand was clapped across his mouth and he felt the point of a blade against the base of his spine.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Marie stopped in the center of the trail, panting with exertion. She bent over and put her hands on her thighs, trying to catch her breath. The bullet scar on her abdomen throbbed. I’m not going to make it, she thought. That bastard. That bastard’s going to kill my son. If he hasn’t done it already. The thought nearly drove her to her knees. Part of her wanted to curl up on the ground in a ball and lie there until the mountain wore away. No, another part of her spoke up, he may be alive. He may be hurt. If he is, he needs me. He’ll be so scared…She straightened up, took a deep, shuddering breath. The air was cool and dry, and the fog of fatigue and despair in her seemed to part slightly. She cupped her hands on either side of her mouth and called. “Ben!” The darkness seemed to swallow the words. She stopped and strained her ears, listening for any reply. None came back to her.
She gritted her teeth and headed up the trail. When it seemed that she was about to run out of breath again, she caught a faint whiff of something acrid in the air. There was a dim red glimmer in the trees ahead. Something was on fire. She broke into a run.
In a moment, she reached the edge of a streambed. The slope here leveled off, and the trail cut straight across the face of the mountain. The smell was stronger here, strong enough for her to identify. Cordite. Cordite and burned meat. There were half a dozen small blazes among the trees, burning like campfires. Their incongruous light cast a glow over the clearing. There were a few boards and a post where a bridge had once crossed the stream. As she stopped running, she stumbled over an object in the trail, something soft and squishy. She looked down and a sob stuck in her throat. It was a human arm, torn off at the shoulder. A gold wedding band on one finger reflected the firelight. She looked up. She could make out shapes on the ground. Slowly, she walked to the lip of the streambed and took in the other shapes lying below. The water flowed, implacable and uncaring, over a couple of them. All of the bodies were torn and Bloodied. All were larger than a child’s body. He’s not here, she thought. He’s not here. She cupped her hands around her mouth again. “BEN!” she called out.
***
DeGroot heard the faint call from below and looked down at the boy. He was seated on a flat rock, his hands bound behind him, his ankles strapped together with duct tape. Another strip of duct tape sealed his mouth. A web belt was wrapped around his chest. There were small pouches hanging from the belt. The pouches were filled with the same C4 that had been in the trunk of his vehicle. The boy’s eyes were wide and terrified in the darkness.
“Easy now, boykie,” DeGroot said in a low voice. “You don’t want to be moving about too much.” He looked out.
His vantage point was a flat clearing at the top of the mountain. A hardy tourist who made his way up to the end of this, the longest of the trails in the system below, could enjoy a view over hundreds of square miles of these mountains. DeGroot could see the glow of lights in the valley, small towns glittering like clusters of stars in the darkness, mirroring the riot of stars strewn across the sky above.
But it was the redder glow he could see closer below that concerned him most, the fires that showed where his preparations had done their work. He had no way of knowing how many variables he had eliminated. The four with him, to be sure. Probably quite a few more with the bomb in his vehicle. But there was no way to tell, and some of those men might still be hunting him, and he doubted that they would be in a mood to take him prisoner again.
The boy made a small terrified sound in his throat. DeGroot drew back his foot as if to kick him into silence.
Then he stopped as he heard the voice drifting up from below. The woman’s voice, calling her son’s name. So she at least had survived. DeGroot looked down at the boy appraisingly. He might still have some use. He bent down and ripped the duct tape away from his mouth. “You hear your mum down there, boykie?” he said. The boy nodded, too terrified to speak. “You want to see her again?” Another nod, more vigorous this time.
DeGroot drew his knife. “Then scream,” he said.
***
For Christ’s sake, Keller,” a voice—Powell’s—hissed in his ear. “Don’t go running straight up the goddamn trail. You want to die that bad, just stick that fucking shotgun in your mouth and pull the trigger.” The hand over his mouth was pulled away. So was the knifepoint in his back.
Keller turned. Riggio stood a few feet away, holding a short-barreled assault rifle on his hip. “Wish we’d have brought the night vision goggles,” he said.
“We weren’t expecting anything like this,” Powell said.
“I’ll take point. Mikey, you take the rear. Make sure that bastard doesn’t get behind us. And Keller, stay off the trail. He’s got it booby-trapped.”
From high above, a faint cry drifted down, a high-pitched wail of fear.
“Holy shit,” Keller heard Riggio’s voice in the darkness. “That sounds like a kid.”
“He’s alive,” Keller said. “And Marie’s going to go after him.”
“Then he’ll probably kill her,” Powell said. “Or worse, take her as a bargaining chip. The only reason he’d leave the boy alive is as bait. Come on.” He seemed to fade into the darkness beside the trail. Keller followed.
In the army, Keller had learned the basics of moving quietly. Later, he had learned other tricks of stealth and concealment that had helped him in the hunt for jumpers. He had always thought himself capable when it came to moving without being heard. But the two men with him seemed like wraiths, moving like smoke between the trees, slipping through undergrowth without making a sound, Presences that were sensed rather than seen. He felt awkward, like some huge clumsy animal blundering and crashing through the brush. Gradually, however, he seemed to pick up the rhythm and flow until he was moving up the mountainside, not quite as silently as they, but so nearly as to make no difference.
He began to feel the familiar thrill, the drumbeat in his veins that came when he was on the hunt. His senses seemed honed to maximum sharpness; he could feel the slightest feather touch of a night breeze on the back of his neck, smell the scent of the forest, the dark rich smell of rotting vegetation and the sharper tang of new growth, death and life melded in one dense and complex perfume. He could hear the rustle of leaves in the slight breeze, a skittering in the underbrush as some small creature fled his approach. And, once again, over all, the faint cry of a child. He drew up short.
There was another sound ahead, a faint crackling, and the faintest, throat-tickling hint of smoke on the wind. Then the fickle breeze shifted to another point of the compass, and another smell came to him, one he knew all too well, one that haunted his memories and stoked his nightmares. It was the stench of burned meat and of viscera torn open and laid obscenely exposed to the night air.
Burning, he thought, they’re burning.
He threw ca
ution aside and broke into a run. He heard one of his companions hiss a warning behind him. He ignored it. He burst into the clearing, screaming Marie’s name.
***
DeGroot was a shadow among shadows, crouched in the darkness in the lee of a massive fallen tree trunk.
He watched the woman sprinting up the trail. She stumbled slightly and he could hear her panting in great ragged exhalations. The child cried out again on the slope above him, and the woman stopped. She cupped her hands to her mouth and called out. “I’m coming, baby,” she called out. “Hang on.” She was only a few feet away, within easy striking distance. DeGroot tensed, ready to spring. Come on, he thought, just a little closer…
“MARIE!” a male voice bellowed from down the trail.
DeGroot faded back into the shadows, cursing to himself. He calculated the odds of taking the woman before the owner of that voice could arrive. The woman would fight. Precious seconds would be lost. And then the man, or men, would be on him. A shot from his stolen pistol would be quicker but it would give away his position. It was too uncertain, he decided. DeGroot valued certainty. It was rare enough to be valued highly. He’d wait.
Another figure came pounding up the trail. It was Keller. He and the woman embraced.
“I saw the bodies,” Keller said, his voice tight and breathless. “I thought—”
She cut him off. “Ben’s up there,” she said. “He may be hurt.” She turned as if to start back up the path. Keller restrained her. “Wait,” he said, “Just a second. The other two are right behind me.”
Other two? DeGroot thought. He liked these odds less and less. Then he saw a man come out of the trees on the other side of the path. Riggio. Another figure appeared beside the first. Powell. DeGroot furrowed his brow. Where was the FBI? Surely they wouldn’t have let these people come up here alone. He turned over all the possibilities in his mind. No FBI with them, he thought, so…no FBI left.
The little surprises he had prepared had exceeded his expectations. DeGroot bared his teeth in a quick grin, then stifled it just as quickly. He ran his thumb slowly over the edge of the knife, contemplating. There was still information to be gleaned from Powell and Riggio. He might still accomplish the mission he had set out on. But Keller and the Jones woman might pose a problem. He gave a mental shrug. He remembered a fragment of an American country song that he had heard the Delta men playing on their CD players in Afghanistan. Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em. Time to fold them, he decided.
DeGroot didn’t share the Americans’ near fanatical dedication to the Mission. Not if it was likely to get him killed, or worse. Besides, there might be intelligence to be gathered down below, at the foot of the slope. If he understood the tactical situation, there was nobody down there. And considering what he had prepared for them at the top of the trail, there might soon be no one up here.
Slowly, so slowly as to seem part of the forest, he moved away from the trail. He melted into the darkness and the shadows, heading back down the slope.
***
“Look,” Powell said. “You two need to understand something. DeGroot—the guy that’s somewhere on this mountain—is a stone fucking killer. You saw the kind of shit he rigged down in the parking lot. He’s probably set traps all up and down this goddamn trail, with your kid”—he looked at Marie—“as the bait. You keep running straight at him, he’s going to take you down. He’s going to take you down real hard and real nasty, and the boy with you. Your only chance of getting out of here, and getting the kid out alive, is to let us lead. Okay?”
“What do you care?” Marie said, her voice shaking. “I don’t know anything about you. For all I know, you’re working with him. How can I trust you?”
Powell looked at her for a long moment. “Lady,” he said finally, “I have done some stupid shit lately. I know that. I’ve fucked up in ways I’m going to be paying for for a long, long time. Maybe, just maybe, if I can pull something good out of this mess, I can start finding my way back.”
Another cry came to them on the wind. They were close enough now to make out the words. “MOM!” a voice full of tears cried down the slope. “MOM!”
Riggio stepped back onto the trail. They hadn’t seen him go. “Trail’s clear,” he whispered. “Until you get to the top.”
Powell looked at him. “You sure?” Riggio nodded.
“What’s up top?”
Riggio looked grim. “The kid’s up there,” he said. “And DeGroot’s got him wired up.”
They came out of the trees at the top of the trail. There was a rock formation where a jumble of boulders had fallen against each other, then been worn down by the slow, patient sculpting of wind and water until they formed a hollowed area surrounded by sharply upthrust rocks at its back and on either side. Tourist guidebooks called it “the Devil’s Throne.” Ben sat in the hollow. He had some sort of vest on. When he got his first glimpse of Marie, he started to rise from the seat.
“KID!” Powell’s voice cracked like a whip. “DON’T MOVE!” Ben sat down so quickly they could hear the sound of his rump hitting the rocks. “Mom?” he quavered.
“It’s okay, baby,” she said soothingly. “Just stay there. It’s going to be okay.” She turned to Powell. “What’s wrong?” she hissed.
Powell’s face was blank. “That belt he’s wearing,” he said. “It’s loaded with C4. It’s the same belt the Hajjis wear.”
Marie’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
“Mom,” Ben’s voice was more insistent this time.
“Can you disarm it?” Marie said.
Powell took a deep breath. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of tricks our friend may have wired up.”
“Demo’s not really DeGroot’s thing,” Riggio offered. “It’s probably pretty basic.”
Powell shot him a dark look. “Thanks, buddy,” he said.
“Come off it, bro,” Riggio said. “You’re going to try it. You know you are. You love that shit.”
Powell sighed. “Yeah.” He turned back to Ben. “Okay, kid,” he said. “I’m coming over there. You need to sit there and stay absolutely still, okay?”
Ben began to cry. “I have to go to the bathroom,” he whimpered.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Powell muttered.
Marie began walking toward Ben. “It’ll only be a few minutes, baby,” she said. “I’ll hold your hand.” She glanced over in surprise. Keller had fallen in beside her.
“Jack…” she said.
Keller didn’t answer her. “Ben,” he said steadily. “You know how you always call me ‘tough guy’?”
Ben quieted somewhat. “Yeah,” he said uncertainly.
“Well, now it’s your turn, kiddo,” Keller said. “You’ve got to tough it out. Just for a few minutes. This guy here,” he indicated Powell with a motion of his head, “is going to get that belt off of you. Then we’re going to get the heck out of here. Sound good?”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “I want to get out of here. I want to go home.”
“I heard that,” Keller said. He walked over and propped the shotgun against the rock. He knelt on one side of Ben and took his hand. Marie knelt on the other side and took his other hand. Powell came and knelt in front of him. They looked absurdly like some medieval tableau, supplicants kneeling before a prince. Powell studied Ben for a few moments, then gently reached out and opened the vest. To one side was a twist of multicolored wires, twined together like vines until a point where they separated and branched to the various pockets of the vest.
“What’s wrong?” Ben said. “What is this thing? Why did that mean guy make me wear this?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Powell said. From the suddenly professional tone in his voice, he might have been a pediatrician reassuring a patient that he only had a cold.
“Mikey’s right. It’s simple. Basic stuff.” He turned slightly. “Anyone bring a pair of wire cutters?”
There was a brief s
ilence. “Shit,” Riggio said.
Powell sighed. “Figures. How about a knife?” Keller reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small pocketknife. He handed it to Powell.
“Thanks,” Powell said. He opened the knife and reached forward to pluck one wire out of the rest. Ben started to pull away. Keller and Marie tightened their grip on his hands. “Shhh, baby,” Marie soothed. “Just stay still.”
“You sure about this?” Keller said. “What if your friend has learned to get tricky?”
“Then we’ll never know,” Powell murmured. “Well, Mikey might.” He raised his voice. “Mikey?” he said. “You might want to get clear.”
“Nah,” Riggio said, as calmly as if he was turning down a last round of beers. “I’m good, bro. You’ve got it. Easy pickings, like you said.”
“Okay,” Powell breathed. “Here we go.” He sliced through the wire.
Nothing happened for a moment. They all stood frozen, as if they couldn’t believe they were alive. Ben spoke up. “Can I take this thing off now?”
Riggio laughed. “Yeah, kid,” he said almost merrily. “You can take it off.” Powell was reaching for the vest when there was a sudden sharp noise. Marie uttered a quick, cutoff scream. Keller jumped as if he’d been hit with an electrical shock. The noise came again, an abrupt bang from far away, down the slope.
The sound of gunshots.
***
DeGroot straightened up. He took the pistol he had just used on the wounded FBI agent and tucked it in the back of his waistband. He moved through the smoke, among the bodies, looking for more who might be alive. He found no one.
He knew his time was running short. The FBI would be regrouping and coming back up after him, assuming there were any left in the vicinity. He glanced at his watch; only a few more hours of darkness.
He began surveying the remaining vehicles. His own rental was a total loss, of course. The poor unsuspecting sod whose credit information and identity he had appropriated to make the rental was about to get a nasty surprise on his next Visa bill.
Safe and Sound Page 12