by David Dun
The man let out an earsplitting scream and dropped his gun to clutch at his hand. She dashed out of the cabin and with a backward glance saw him remove the knife.
"I'll fuckin' kill you!" He started shooting wildly.
"What the hell?" a second voice said.
There were at least four men, but now two were wounded. She crashed through the brush, hitting small saplings with bruising frequency. Charging down through brush so dense she couldn't see three feet, she had no idea where she would end up. She broke into a small clearing. There was a wiry short man with a grim, determined expression ten feet away pointing a gun at her middle.
"Party time," he said. "Wanna wrestle?"
Instead of shooting, he bolted after her, grabbing her around the middle. He stank like the first.
She turned, slapping the palms of her hands over his ears.
"Shit," he said, dropping his gun and trying to hold her arms.
Grabbing his ear with her teeth, she ripped the flesh and came away with a hunk the size of a quarter.
While he was feeling for his ear, she managed to kick his unprotected groin and connected. When he doubled, she kicked him in the face, hitting his eye with the toe of her boot. She picked up his gun. Deep, ragged breaths poured out as she tried to will herself to shoot him, then cursed at herself because she couldn't. He was hurt, but he could still hunt her. It was a weakness.
"What the hell?" a voice said as she ran. Two men hurt but not incapacitated. Maybe a third was out for good, blinded with two swollen eyes. With only one uninjured man, the odds were getting better. She wondered how many shots the pistol had left in it. In Alaska she had learned about guns. Although she never had to use one, she had carried them in case a grizzly turned her way.
She knew her life depended on flight. Given her inexperience, she would not win a shoot-out against three men. She had to flee down the creek. Turning at an angle to the stream, she went down and away from the men, running the whole way. Then something grabbed her foot, she was flung through the air, and a horn blast went off. Another trip wire. On the steep bank the gun went flying. Straight down the hill, she turned, running a hundred yards through heavy brush.
Sliding and jumping downhill, she traveled maybe twenty yards, then crashed through more brush and over the edge of a rock outcropping, continuing down an almost-vertical rock face. Aware that she was starting to free-fall, she reached out and clasped a tree root. A searing pain went through her shoulder, but she managed to hold on. With her other hand she pawed desperately at the rock, finally finding another handhold. She looked down. Hanging over a large expanse of watery brown muck bordered by an almost impenetrable wall of marsh grasses, she was trapped.
She heard the crunching sounds of a man in the woods.
"I saw her running down the mountain over here." A deep voice.
"All right, all right, but I don't know what a lone woman, without a pack, without even a coat, is doing out here. How Spike let her crunch his balls and gouge his eyes, I'll never know. She's the type who'd turn us in tomorrow."
''Maybe with a little encouragement she'd warm our beds tonight."
"We have three million dollars in plants to worry about. She's already half-killed Spike. Dutch is half blind. Let's just shoot the bitch and be done with it."
The voices were getting closer. Silence was crucial.
"I say we chain her in the shack first."
"We'll figure that out when you find her. Dutch, use the eye you got left to search down in the bottom. English, you circle around up the hill. I'm gonna hang around in this area."
"My hand hurts."
"I don't give a shit."
From where she hung, Maria watched the shadow of the man moving to the creek bottom until he appeared below her, downstream about fifty feet. Dutch. He was tall and skeletal, skin like tanned leather, an uneven pirate-looking beard. She held her breath. She was plastered as close as possible to the rock, but she would be visible if he looked up. She studied him as he debated stepping in the mud, tentatively placed his boot on the watery surface, and began sinking rapidly. Quickly he yanked his boot clear of the muck. Shaking his head, he eyed the putrid swamp.
"No one could have walked through this mud without leaving huge tracks," he shouted up to the leader. Turning, he began walking back uphill, climbing the rock slope using all fours, obviously in pain. Then having turned well above her, he could be heard crashing through the brush. She heaved a quiet sigh of relief. Obviously, they didn't realize how far down the hill she had gotten.
From above, Maria heard more crunching sounds of footfalls on the brushy slope. There were at least three men. Knowing that she could not hang on indefinitely, and that she would be discovered if she crawled up the outcropping, she began to consider a drop to the mud. By dropping under the lip of the rock, she could remain well-hidden.
She was in a small steep-sided mountain valley, where for a few hundred yards the creek ran nearly flat, and where the land acted as a natural settling pond before it spilled the water on down the mountain in riffles and cascades. On one side of the creek, the side from which she hung, there were some large gray rock formations near the water's edge; the other side had fewer sheer drops and was more soil-covered, the trees growing in places to the water's edge but not so densely that on a climb out, her invisibility would be guaranteed. The Douglas fir and the scattered oak were rich green in the sunlight of the day, but now in the lengthening shadows some were turning black, making the place seem deadly solemn.
The leader called out from a distance well above the rock. "I see another one coming. This one's got a gun."
Realizing her pursuers were distracted, she decided to drop. Letting the root slide through her hand, and using her fingers and toes to cling to the rock, she accomplished a controlled but painful slide. She moved down three feet, paused for a split second, and then pushed herself off-plummeting ten feet to the mud, her chin barely missing a stone projection as she fell.
Instantly she sank to her thighs in soft, velvety ooze. She had never heard of quicksand anywhere in California, but that hardly put her at ease. If it was quicksand, she knew thrashing would be stupid. But she had read about swimming in quicksand. The horror was that you got only one swimming lesson-and if you failed, you died.
She looked down again. Her belt was closer to the muck. Maybe she had just leaned over and wasn't really sinking. No-she had been still. Straining to pick up her right foot, she tried to move forward, but she received only shooting pains through her ankle for the effort and a loud sucking sound. The noise was frightening. And now the mud was touching her belt.
Above her she heard the growers on the hillside, waiting for whoever had been following her. With luck they would kill or run off her pursuers, but would that really help her? For the first time she felt cold, and wondered how long she could stand in the mud before her lowered body temperature would become life-threatening.
She looked down, barely saw her belt. How long until the mud reached her neck? Maybe she should just try crawling forward and gamble that they wouldn't hear her movements. What irony if she should die in this mud hole after escaping both the growers and her kidnappers. Tears came to her eyes. Don't be a wimp, she scolded herself.
She listened intently and soon realized that the leader was sitting just above her. Occasionally he would call out to the others who were searching the hillside. Any movement on her part created water and mud noise sufficient that she would be heard. Only a real struggle would free her.
Maria shivered uncontrollably as the sun began to slip below the ridge in the western distance. She was having a harder and harder time remaining conscious. She had ceased being in pain from the cold and the bruising; how she was numb, and she knew that was bad. Struggling and pulling herself out might soon be her only option. Dan's face kept flashing through her mind. He was coming, she kept telling herself, fighting the cold with the only weapon left to her: hope.
Then she heard the heli
copter in the distance. This time it seemed to be coming nearer. It grew progressively louder, finally flying directly toward her. The big buzzing bird came into view from behind the rock face, flying overhead.
But as it turned, glinting and reddened in the failing sun, heading back up the mountainside, her hope turned to bitter despair.
Janet Morgan pointed to where they had stowed the German behind them in the van. "Would he hurt us if we just let him go?"
"Damn straight he would," Jack said. "He said Corey should have killed that little boy."
"She's crazy," Janet said. "The way she just went all nuts and cut that guy, and gouged out his eyes. She was using her fingers."
"I don't think she'd kill a kid. And that guy was…" Jack paused. There was a thumping from the back.
''Hey, asshole," Janet shouted as she drove. ''Child killer. If you don't shut up, I'm gonna spray your ugly face again."
But still the pounding went on. After several more minutes, Janet slammed on the brakes. Grabbing the pepper spray, she walked around to the side door of the van.
"Wait," Jack said, getting out the shotgun. "You gotta be careful." With the gun trained on the entry, he let her open the door and shove the can under the hood. Muffled gagging sounds erupted when she released the spray-then the foot stopped. But the van immediately filled with a foul odor.
"Well, now you know why he was banging his foot," Jack said.
"The German's revenge," she said as she rolled down the windows.
A couple of minutes later, Jack heard Janet gasp.
''Take it easy,'' Jack said. It was a state patrol car turning onto the highway ahead of her. Janet slowed.
"Keep going normally."
A couple of hundred yards up the road, the patrol car turned into what Jack remembered as Corey's place. His face went white.
"That is the place," Jack said. "Just keep on driving."
"Damn!" Janet muttered, speeding past the driveway. He studied the mirror on his side. Just as they entered a bend, he saw the highway-patrol vehicle exit Corey' s driveway and head in the opposite direction.
Jack exhaled sharply. "He was just turning around."
The first patch had been small, with no obvious alarms or booby traps. It was unguarded; Corey passed on.
The second was much larger, and she almost missed the first trip wire. After stepping over it, she heard the voices.
"I'm tellin' you, I saw a second one, dressed for the hike and carrying a gun."
"Make the same pattern you did before, and keep your eyes open this time," an authoritative voice responded.
Corey put the nylon stocking over her face and moved toward the voice. As she approached, she could see the two subordinates moving off through the brush no more than twenty yards from her. One of them held a bloody hand under his arm, the other had a swollen bloody face. Walking when they walked, stopping when they did, she slowly crept upslope and around behind her target. Now she was downstream from the leader, assuming that his attention was directed at the mountainside. She waited, knowing that if she moved closer he might hear her. Carefully she stepped out from behind a redwood stump the size of a small car, stealing a quick look to ensure that he was still facing in the opposite direction.
Tossing a stone in the bushes was a tired trick, but it worked. He immediately started for the spot where the stone had landed. Moving behind some bru^h, Corey raised her rifle. Soon she heard the crackle of his footsteps; seconds later, he walked straight into her sights. He wore a bandanna tied around his head. Tangled red hair hung from under it. Built low, broad-shouldered and squat with long arms, he looked slightly apelike, with a bit of a belly and a flat-looking face like her wooden masks.
"Hold it," she said. "Drop the gun."
The man hesitated, considering his situation. Finally he dropped the gun, cursing.
"The woman you're hunting is a lady lawyer. You give her to me, and I'll walk her out of here and cancel her ticket."
"Go screw yourself."
Corey shook her head. "Turn around and spread-eagle against that tree."
The man just stared at her. She unholstered her army Colt. 45, strapped on the rifle, removed her stiletto, and approached him with her pistol aimed at his chest. A quiet click, and the blade on the stiletto appeared, glinting in the late-afternoon sunlight.
"Do it, asshole."
The man looked at her, gauging her, weighing his chances.
Totally at ease and as cold as an arctic night, she sighed. "I'm gonna kill you."
"All right." He turned and spread his legs against the tree.
"Farther," she said, kicking his legs apart. Frisking him thoroughly, she found a knife and a pistol on his calf. The razor-sharp stiletto cut into the skin of his torso as she began shallow but bloody carving. He groaned and tried to move away. She put the gun hard in the hollow at the base of his skull.
''You're a sixteenth of an inch from having your head blown off."
"Don't shoot," he croaked.
"Don't move," she said, continuing to cut him. "Call your boys and tell them you found me. Make it convincing or the knife goes right into your kidney."
"Get on over here, boys!"
"Now turn and face me; stay on the trail. Keep your mouth shut or you're a dead man,'' she said, stepping behind the stump to hide.
Soon the men came to the clearing. "Hey, Greg, whatcha doin'? You're bleeding. Did you see her?'' Both men walked toward their boss, curious as to his silence.
"You're not pissed, are you?" one man said in a worried voice.
When the two men were within twenty feet of their boss, Corey stepped out from behind the stump. ''Drop the guns or he takes a bullet right in his fat ass."
Startled, the two men dropped their guns.
"Get over by him."
They moved to their boss's side.
"What a sorry bunch of losers. You look like you walked into a meat grinder."
"Fuck you," the leader said. Slowly she approached him. Faster than a rattlesnake, she stabbed his thigh, then removed her knife.
"Oh shit," he groaned, holding pressure on the bleeding puncture wound.
"Did she get one of your guns?" Corey demanded.
"She got an AK-47 from me, but she dropped it. We found it in the brush."
"You got knives or guns hidden on you?"
"No," said the one with the bloody hand.
"Likewise," said the swollen face.
"You're going to strip," Corey said. "If you lied, I'm gonna slit your bellies. Now take 'em off."
"Uh, ma'am," said bad hand, eyeing the boss's bloody shirt and pants.
"What do you want?" she replied.
"I forgot about a knife on my leg and a gun in the small of my back."
"Me too," the other said.
''Get 'em out and throw them on the ground. I don't think you assholes take me seriously." Then without warning, she stabbed their boss in the same leg, eliciting a louder scream. "Don't fuck with me," she said, twisting the knife.
"Please, Holy Jesus." He was gasping in pain.
The two men hurriedly began taking off their clothes.
"Forget the strip show. I haven't got time." She frisked them both.
"How many more trip wires you got?" Corey asked.
"Four on the slope and five on the ridge," one of them answered, quickly pointing out various landmarks.
''OK. Two of you will pick points on the hill fifty yards away from one another. Boss man here will stand in the creek bottom down there at the narrowest spot. We can only cover the bottom portion of the hillside, but that's where she ran from you morons. The odds are she's hunkered down. If she went past this area, she probably would have hit one of the wires. If she stays put, she'll eventually die from exposure. Move in slow circles around your point. Don't get more than twenty-five yards from your spot. If I hear you moving in the brush, or catch you leaving your station, boss man here gets it in the other leg. So don't let me hear you. When she moves, w
e'll hear her. Now get moving."
Just then, the helicopter buzzed low overhead. Seconds later, it circled away.
"When she is dead, you can get back to your plants. Not a second sooner."
29
As the likelihood of rescue dimmed, it became easier to give in to the seduction of the cold. But Maria was stubborn. She had forests to save. She had Dan to contend with. Nate to apologize to. She looked down at herself. Clearly, she had stopped sinking. No quicksand, just deep mud. She decided to move.
Using her arms like stiff oars, she pulled herself ahead. She seemed stuck. She threw herself forward, then rocked back, loosening the mud. Throwing herself again as hard as she could, she began to come loose. At first, she could barely move but soon she discovered that she could crawl on her belly. Downstream twenty yards, the mud was knee-deep in thigh-deep water and she could walk. Within a hundred paces the ground became firmer. Then she rounded a bend and saw a man, standing. Although she could climb the canyon wall on either side, she would be exposed, and it would be very slow and noisy. Despair flooded her. She stopped, hiding in the rocks. Soon the gray light of evening would give way to bone-deep cold and the pitch dark of night in a wilderness canyon. Then she turned, and not fifty yards back and fifty feet up, she saw someone with a rifle.
Dan and Frank were getting frustrated. They could see little in the trees, and the pilot was running out of fuel. Only twenty minutes' worth remained. They were way beyond safe reserves. They would have to return to the airport, and then it would be dark.
"Let's run down the river drainage one more time before we land," Dan said.
"We gotta go," the pilot said.
"I still think she followed the creek," Dan replied. "Fly down it on the way back. Get down low and let me out."
"It's getting dark," Frank said.
"I know, but she's out there. I can feel it."
"Can't let you do it. After we try the creek again, we're outta here," Frank added.