As the Crow Dies

by Kenneth Butcher

  Just then, he saw three hikers emerge from the woods, young men bearing heavy packs. They stopped and took in the sight. After a moment of them looking at Segal and Segal looking at them, he motioned them forward. They dropped their packs and scrambled up to open Segal’s door. Segal started fumbling with his seatbelt, and two of them supported him as best they could as he got loose and climbed out and then down the bank to the trail, where he experimented with standing up straight and putting weight on his feet.

  Getting Jerome out was more difficult, as he didn’t have the use of his right arm. The hikers persisted with minimum damage. They laid Jerome by the trail with a sleeping bag under his head. One administered first aid while Segal tried his cell phone, to no avail. The other two hikers stood with arms crossed, trying to figure out their next move.

  “The parkway is up there somewhere,” one of them said. “One of us could climb up and flag down someone for help.”

  Segal looked up. It would be a hell of a bushwhacking scramble, almost straight up. “You can’t go up there,” he said. “There’s a man with a gun, a sniper.” The hikers frowned. Segal showed them his badge. “I know what I’m talking about. That’s how we ended up down here.”

  The third hiker stood after tending to Jerome with a first aid kit from his backpack. “I think he’ll be okay,” he said. “We’ve got to get him off this mountain.” Jerome’s shoulder was bandaged, and the small cuts were colored with iodine.

  Segal nodded. He reexamined the mountainside. The climb seemed impossible, even without considering the sniper. He remembered telling his boss he did not expect to be climbing any mountains on this case. Unfortunate choice of words, he thought. He knew he would somehow have to do it anyway. He took a deep breath.

  Accompanied by one of the hikers, he stumbled down the trail to the sign to see if it had any other information that might be of use. The sign read, “Mountains-to-Sea Trail. Motorized vehicles prohibited.”

  The hiker raised his eyebrows.

  Segal looked at the hiker, then the ruined SUV. “Guess we’re in a world of trouble now,” he said, and tried to wink but winced instead.

  CHAPTER 39

  A Brace of Kinsmen

  Dinah crept up the stairs to the second-story walkway. She dropped forward with her hands on the top step and lowered herself so she could peek around the corner with her head just above floor level. She clearly heard the creaking of the rocking chair and saw the man in it. The chair was angled so his back was to her. He continued to look between the view over the valley and the room with the two people he was guarding. The pace of his rocking had subsided, showing her he had less nervous energy than a short time ago.

  Then, near the other end of the walkway, there was movement. The guard’s hand tightened on the grip of the gun on his lap and he leaned forward. If there was going to be a problem with her plan, this was the time it would happen. Down the walkway, Lucile emerged from the other set of stairs. Dinah thought, Go, girl. Shorts, long legs, brown hair, checkered blouse with the top three buttons undone. She was better than nice looking. She looked like a movie star. If that doesn’t get his attention, I don’t know what will.

  Dinah saw the man’s hand relax on the gun. It was the sign she was watching for, and she knew in that moment her plan would work. She slid down a couple of steps and checked to make sure she had what she needed.

  Lucile neared on the walkway, her footsteps slow and even. Dinah moved up the two steps and watched again. Lucile stopped around ten feet from the guard and turned toward one of the doors. She set down Dinah’s gym bag. She had a key out and was fumbling with the door as if she were having trouble with the lock. Muttering under her breath.

  The man remained still, chair rocked forward, fixated on the show she was putting on. Lucile raised her hands at the door, faking exasperation. She looked at the key, looked at the door, looked at the key again. She glanced at the man and gave him a quick and sheepish grin, as if to say, Oops, wrong room. Then she bent over, picked up the bag, and sashayed down the walkway.

  By the time she turned the corner and disappeared down the stairs, Dinah had crept silently behind the rocking chair—not that complete silence was needed, considering the show Lucile put on. She had done her part, and now it was Dinah’s turn.

  A second after Lucile’s exit, the man relaxed, as Dinah knew he would. The chair rocked back, just as she knew it would. When it did, she was ready. She grabbed the top of the chair at the apex of the rock and pulled it toward her with force, slamming the back of the chair and the back of the man’s head to the floor. His reflex was to put out his hands to catch himself, including the right hand with the gun. Dinah knew this would happen, too, so her next move was to leap around and step on his wrist, releasing the weapon from his hand. She then swiped the communication rig off his head. He attempted a grab at her with his left hand, which she allowed him to do, as it gave her an opportunity to slap a handcuff on his wrist. Then, with her entire body weight, she lunged toward the outside of the walkway and clipped the other end of the handcuff to the wrought-iron railing. The whole thing took approximately four seconds.

  She stepped away and picked up the guy’s gun. The man lay in the chair with his legs up like a Mercury astronaut, left hand cuffed to the railing. He looked at her with anger, then let his head and his right arm go slack in complete submission.

  “I don’t envy you that climb,” one of the hikers said. They were helping Segal get ready for his ordeal. He handed Segal a water bottle with a clip that would attach it to his belt.

  “If I were you, I’d leave behind everything you don’t need,” another of the hikers said.

  It stopped Segal in his tracks. This was exactly the advice Dr. Gold had given him, word for word. Then he realized this guy was talking about the climb, about lightening his load. He began to shrug off his coat when he felt the weight of the book in the pocket. For one irrational moment, he considered finding some other way to bring the book with him, even carrying it in one hand. But that would be ridiculous. He took off the coat, book and all, and handed it to the hiker.

  Segal was soon breathing hard, sometimes leaning forward, stumbling at an extreme angle, more often crawling on hands and knees. He moved a few feet, stopped, pulled in a few ragged breaths, let his throbbing leg recover, then repeated. He thought of climbers ascending Mount Everest in halting fashion.

  He had left Jerome Guilford in the care of the hikers, one of whom happened to be a male nurse, in one of those serendipities hikers liked to call “trail magic.” They decided that one of them, the fastest, would go ahead for help while the other two stayed to care for Jerome.

  It fell to Segal alone to deal with the sniper, though exactly how he was going to do that he did not know. The first step, he figured, was to get himself up there and see what the situation held. He hoped he could reconnoiter and call for help if the cell phone signal came back, but deep inside he knew that would not likely happen and he would have to face the man with the gun on his own. That is, if the climb didn’t kill him.

  Which it might.

  It was difficult to make out the contour of the mountain, but he had been on that part of the parkway many times. As best he could remember, the tunnel they’d been heading for was cut into a hump in the northeastern flank of Mount Pisgah. He surmised that the sniper had established himself on that hump, which commanded an excellent view of the parkway as it approached the tunnel. Based on this, Segal reasoned that if he continued south on the trail, which paralleled the parkway, he could then climb the side of the mountain behind the sniper. Easier said than done—much easier. This was not the kind of climb anyone looked forward to.

  He wheezed and coughed.

  After a time, he could no longer see the trail and he felt profoundly alone. No good thinking about it. Just do it, one step at a time.

  And so he entered into some altered state of mind, one in which there was only the side of the mountain leading endlessly up with its coarse
grass and ragged scrub of weeds and briars. And of himself, there were only his limbs moving slowly, one at a time clawing upwards like the first primordial creature clawing its way out of the ocean up onto dry land.

  After some unknowable passage of time, his limbs refused to move and he collapsed. The grass seemed to smother him and he could not get his breath. With the last of his strength, he rolled over in defeat.

  His lungs heaved as he looked up at the perfection of the summer sky. Little by little oxygen and life reentered his body. After a few moments, a movement to his right caught his eye. It was a crow. He wondered if it was Richard. He couldn’t tell. He turned and struggled to his feet. The crow was now off to his left, followed by several smaller crows. It was getting lower in the sky, closer to the hump of the mountain, under which the tunnel ran. He registered that the ground was not quite as steep here. He had climbed higher than he dared to hope, and he felt a wave of relief. Maybe he had not failed after all. Not yet. As he followed the flight of the bird lower, toward the curve of the land, he saw a man standing and pointing a rifle at him.

  Unlike the time his cousin pointed a gun at him two years ago, this scene made perfect sense. Irrationally, the fact that he had actually made the climb was oddly freeing.

  The sniper lay in his nest. He was used to long times of waiting. It was part of the training, part of the practice of his calling. On the crest of the hillside, he felt he was lying on the flank of the world. It was an excellent position and a beautiful day. He watched the road carefully, although he assumed, he would have a heads-up call on his radio headset well before the primary target approached. He was also prepared for anything. One never knew what might be coming along—perhaps some other target secondary to the mission.

  He glanced to his right down the mountainside. His shots on the SUV had worked out even better than he hoped, and the recoil from the rifle hardly hurt at all. He’d taken out the drivers-side front tire, making the vehicle pull hard to that side, and had then taken out the windshield, just in case the driver had mad driving skills. The driver didn’t, and the SUV smashed through the guard rail like it was cardboard and plunged out of sight. The sniper heard the crash when it hit something solid enough to make it stop. It was about what he expected—not too loud and certainly no big ball of fire like in the movies. That rarely happened in real life. Too bad. He didn’t know how badly the two men in the vehicle were hurt, but given the terrain, he assumed they would be out of the action at least long enough for him to complete the mission. Nevertheless, he checked in that direction from time to time. If they came crawling up, then he would deal with that, too.

  He also checked behind. On a normal mission, this would have been the job of his spotter, but he didn’t have a spotter. It was the only thing not quite ideal about his present setup, and it made him uneasy. Every time he looked he, of course, saw nothing and then felt foolish for worrying.

  Then he saw the crow come flying over the crest behind him. Its flight seemed to be meandering, as if perhaps it was scouting, rather than traveling directly to some destination. It was followed by a few other crows. The sniper wondered if it was that trained bird he had first seen in Afghanistan, the one called Richard, or maybe one of the birds their own guy had brought here to Asheville to help them with their hunt. Then he felt foolish again. He had no reason to think it was anything but a wild bird here in the great wilderness of Pisgah.

  The sniper lowered his gaze to the ground, and there was a man, appearing out of nowhere. He looked ragged and unsteady. It was that Asheville cop. The sniper could not understand exactly how he got there, but he posed no special problem. The cop had nowhere to go, out here in the open. The sniper raised his weapon in a deliberate and businesslike manner. At the distance of fifty yards, he probably could have hit the guy shooting from the hip. Such was not his training. This was professional stuff. He looked through the scope, saw the expression on the cop’s face—surprisingly serene, even satisfied. He lined up the crosshairs on the middle of the cop’s chest, the way he supposed that cop woman, Dinah had lined up on him.

  Then he felt something touch the barrel of his rifle, a solid weight that should not be there, and a black shape obscured the view out of the scope.

  Segal would later wonder how long it took for his mind to accept what happened next. It was probably a second or less before he snapped back to the reality of the moment. The sniper seemed in no hurry to take a shot, but as the gun moved into place, Segal saw the crow dive, landing on the rifle just in front of the scope.

  The man jerked the muzzle up at the same time Segal dropped to his knees. The gun went off, the bullet whizzing by well over his head. Segal reached for his own gun, even though the man was out of his effective pistol range. There was nothing for it. He lowered his firearm. The scene was so bizarre he could only stand and watch.

  The crow was not thrown off when the sniper raised his rifle, nor when the rifle went off. In fact, it jumped forward toward the man’s face. The man turned his head away and put up a forearm in defense. Segal remembered what Dinah had told him about snipers—that their talent and performance began with their eyes. The crow seemed to understand this and attacked the man’s most vulnerable point. The sniper was now facing away from Segal, stumbling downhill on the other side of the hump in the mountainside. He was bent over, flailing with his arms to free himself from the relentless attack. He finally landed a blow to the bird and began to turn around. Other crows descended and were on him. There were only five or six, but it seemed like many more. It seemed like the man was covered with black, writhing feathers, and the sound was terrifying. The sniper dropped his rifle, and his downhill stumble turned into an off-balance downhill run.

  He disappeared over the crest. Segal broke out of his trance and followed, his own gun at the ready. He caught sight of the man for only a second. The sound of the crows stopped. He heard a human scream and then a sound more awful. Segal stopped to listen. There was nothing further except for the light breeze through the grass and shrubs. The crows rose, spiraled silently up, dipped, rose again, and trailed away, over the hillside single file.

  Segal realized he was about at the point where the sniper had been standing. He saw the long rifle with the big scope lying in the grass. Beside the rifle was the body of a large crow, limp and lifeless. He picked it up and saw the headset and also the wounds from a few days earlier. There was no doubt. Richard.

  Segal knew what had happened but had to see for himself. As he advanced, the downward slope became steeper and steeper. He was inching along by the time he came to the lip of the abutment where the vertical cut had been made in the mountainside for the road and the entrance to the tunnel.

  There on the pavement far below lay the body of the sniper, posed as though in midstride, a pool of blood forming beside his head on the pavement.

  Segal held the still-warm body of Richard tucked under his left arm. He felt a bolt of sadness work its way across his insides. Struck by an inspiration, he held Richard aloft. If anyone was watching, the crow cam would send them the most dramatic picture of the day. He felt he was helping a combat hero. The great winged crow, given one more chance to join the fight.

  CHAPTER 40

  Punch and Counterpunch

  For the first time since he had them under his control, the colonel seemed unhappy.

  “Three, come in,” he said into the mic for the fifth or sixth time. Three was the guy who was supposed to keep an eye on Emily Elah and the girl. Three had not responded for some minutes now. It was the easiest assignment and also probably the least crucial for the success of the operation. After all, what could those two possibly do to change the course of events? Still, it was an irritation.

  “One, report,” the colonel said. One was the sniper, the real operative, the main functionary. As long as this guy was in place, everything else could be dealt with. Three was primarily on the team as their electronics tech and was not as disciplined as the others. One was the best of th
e best. There was no response from him either.

  “What’s the matter, colonel, no one wants to talk to you?” Mattie said over her shoulder.

  “Just keep moving,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. We’re almost there, and we can talk to the man in person.” They were in an open field now, mainly low brush and coarse clumps of grass on the crest of the mountainside.

  Into his mic, the colonel called his remaining man. “Two,” he said.

  “Two here,” came the voice in his headset.

  “Are you at the inn yet?”

  “Close,” the man answered.

  “Report status there ASAP.” It was Two who had climbed Mount Pisgah and disabled the cell tower. When the colonel lost contact with the man at the inn, he had ordered Two down to check it out.

  Meanwhile, he and his captives were approaching the sniper’s nest, only there was no sniper. The colonel shouted, “Halt” and swore under his breath. He looked around, checking their position. They had to be close. They were on the crest of the hill that gave the best view. In front of him was the long, lazy curve of the road as it approached the tunnel, which, according to his understanding, must be right in front of them, just out of sight. There was no place for the sniper to be out of sight, not that he could tell, since the guy loved to hide and then appear out of nowhere—loved to pull that stuff to demonstrate his camouflage skills.

  “Stay here,” he said to Francis and Mattie. There was literally nowhere for them to go, nowhere they could run and take cover from the machine gun that hung from a sling over his shoulder. He advanced a few steps over the crest toward the place where the tunnel entrance was cut into the hillside. “What the hell?” he muttered under his breath.