Except they wouldn’t be there.
Everything depended upon two unanswerable questions. First, would the heat from what was left of their own fire show on the scanner, too? It was probably a few degrees warmer inside their cave than any of the others, but Easton had no idea whether a TI could pick that up or not. Second, and much more important, would Kuruk fall for it?
“Put yourself in Kuruk’s place,” he said. “If he thinks we’re down there in that cave what will he do?”
Ironheel shrugged. “Taanégo,” he said. “Act slowly. He won’t take any chances.”
“Go on.”
“The only way that chopper could be out there is because Kuruk told them where to look. So he’s working with whoever sent it. Which in turn means he’s coming to kill us if he can,” Ironheel said.
“Alone?”
He shook his head. “He’ll use the men in the copter to find out where we are.”
“Just send them in, blind?”
Ironheel shrugged. “If it gave him an advantage, he’d send his grandmother,” he confirmed. “Why?”
“If they’re going to give him backup they’ve got to land the chopper somewhere. There are too many trees down below. So where …?”
“Only one place near enough,” Ironheel said, thinking fast. “Up above, on the saddle. The plateau near Chimney Rock.”
“Okay, let’s say they land up there,” Easton said grimly. “Where will they come at us from?”
“Not from above,” Ironheel said decisively. “Even if they have abseil gear it’s too dangerous at night. They’ll go down the gully trail, come up at us from the valley.”
“And?”
“Kuruk will send someone ahead, see if they draw any fire. Then he’d have us pinpointed.”
“Except he won’t. Because by the time they get to the cave we’ll be gone.”
“Without them seeing us? How do we manage that?”
“Blindside them,” Easton said.
As soon as Kuruk or his men made their move, he explained, he and Ironheel would retreat uphill and circle around Chimney Rock, putting the huge turret of rock between them and their stalkers. If they timed it right, it might even give them time to get to the helicopter and put it out of action. After that … Easton shrugged.
“And that’s the plan you were working on?” Ironheel said.
“That’s it.”
“Iáá’yugo,” Ironheel said dubiously. “Too many ‘ifs’.”
“Ain’t dat de troof,” Easton said.
If it worked, they might have a small advantage. Not much of one, but an advantage. It would be good to be on the offensive for a change.
“What next?” Ironheel said.
Easton nodded and pointed at the entrance to the cave. “Like with the deer,” he said. “Watch. Wait.”
“And then?”
“T’lo kahdinadi aha’eh,” Easton said. “Materialize without warning.”
Ironheel almost smiled. “Might make an Apache out of you yet,” he said.
~*~
The trail down from the summit was steep and rocky but Kuruk moved swiftly, no longer making any effort to conceal his movements. After he found the deer carcass on the trail he knew there was no longer any need to fear ambush. His quarry had to be where he thought they were for the simple reason that there was no place else they could hide. Dawn wasn’t far away. Off to his right, felt rather than seen, the kiva-shaped column of Chimney Rock reared into the sky. He stopped to use the walkie-talkie.
“Come in, Bluebird,” he said urgently. “What have you got?”
“Looks like you were right, Mose,” the voice of the helicopter pilot crackled back. “We’re getting a heat signature from one of the caves.”
“What kind of signature? Human?”
“Negative. Our guess is it’s a fire. It’s that kind of glow.”
“Any movement?”
“Negative.”
“What about the other caves?”
“We’re not getting anything there. Of course, we can’t see inside them, they’re all screened by trees. But we can make them out pretty clearly on the FLIR. So far we’ve located six.”
“Six is right,” Kuruk confirmed.
He visualized the topography the way they would be seeing it from the chopper. From left to right, a long timber-clad slope coming down from El Marcial, then a shallow, U-shaped saddle of naked rock maybe fifty yards wide at its widest point, littered with boulders and scree lashed from the unprotected face of Chimney Rock by storms and lightning. To the right of the saddle rose the Rock itself, projecting four hundred feet upward above the treeline like the blunted hammer of a pistol.
From the boulder-strewn saddle a wide ragged gully ran downhill in an irregular zigzag to the forested canyon floor below. The caves were positioned high up on the flank of the Rock in a gradually ascending line, two on one side of the gully, two on the other, and then two more higher up.
“Which cave are you getting the signal from?” he asked the pilot.
“The next to highest as we look at them. To the right of the saddle as we look at it. Where are you?”
“Coming down from the summit along the ridge,” Kuruk told him. “Can you see me yet?”
“Negative,” came the reply. “What do you want us to do?”
“Keep watching. If anything moves, I want to know, fast. I’m going to climb up to the saddle. That will put me behind and to your left of the target cave. Soon as I’m up there I’ll contact you.”
Think like the enemy.
Always assume he is at least as resourceful as you, and never forget that he will take bigger chances because he has nothing to lose. Then make a choice: were Ironheel and the pinda’lick’oye so stupid they would build a fire the chopper could spot? The cop maybe. Ironheel, no way. It was a trap.
But what kind of trap, and how best to spring it?
“Okay, Bluebird,” he said into the walkie-talkie. “I’m coming up through the scree now. You got me yet?”
“Affirmative. You’re about fifty yards south and maybe twenty five, thirty feet above the cave.”
Kuruk looked over the edge into the blackness. “Any way I can get down to it from here?”
“Negative.”
“Can you land up here on the saddle?”
“No sweat,” the pilot said. “Why?”
“Just get down here!” Kuruk snapped. “And do it now.”
He crouched among the huge boulders on the saddle beneath the sheer south face of Chimney Rock. As the helicopter came across the night sky he got a glimpse of the two men inside, limned in the ghost glow of the instrument panels as it banked away from the mountain. A storm of dust whirled and eddied up around him as it landed, sifting sibilantly down as the rotors slowed and finally ceased turning. As the two men clambered out of the aircraft Kuruk went across to meet them.
“You guys packin’ iron?” he rasped.
Frank Dixon, the pilot, nodded and held up a chromed .357 Magnum Mark III Lawman Colt. Short and dark haired, with the wiry build of a jockey, he wore a bomber jacket and tan chinos. The other man, Alvares, was taller and slimmer, with receding hair and a worried expression. He wore a shooting vest with empty ammo loops, a blue denim shirt and light striped poly-cotton pants. He held up a Bodyguard Airweight .38 Smith & Wesson so Kuruk could see it. Both of them looked edgy, green about the gills. Coors men, Kuruk thought contemptuously. You ask for good men and they send this shit.
He watched silently as Dixon walked over to the edge of the saddle and stared down.
“Jesus,” the pilot said, turning to face Kuruk. “Is there a way to get down there?”
“Trail leads down the gully to the canyon floor,” Kuruk said. “Then we work our way up to the cave.”
“Holy shit,” Alvares protested, “Won’t that be dangerous?”
“Nothing like as dangerous as trying to chicken out,” Kuruk rasped.
Alvares eyes widened with alarm. “Hey, take i
t easy, man, no problem,” he stuttered.
“Better not be,” Kuruk said, turning away so they couldn’t see his contempt. “Come on, let’s get started.”
Levering a shell into the breech of his Winchester, he led the way down into the trees. The ground sloped sharply and although it was only about half a mile down to the canyon floor, their progress was slow. It was cool and silent as they moved around the curve of the hill in the pre-dawn darkness. To Kuruk’s ears the two men behind him sounded like stampeding elephants. Disturbed in its nocturnal prowling, a night owl suddenly burst from a bush with a rush of wings and sped past Kuruk through the trees.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Dixon breathed. “What was that?”
“An owl, for Chrissake,” Kuruk rasped. “Keep your mind on your job.”
They advanced maybe another hundred and fifty yards. Kuruk could feel the ground sloping upward beneath his feet. He hunkered down on his haunches and parted the brush in front of him.
“Okay,” he whispered hoarsely. “There’s the cave where you say you saw the fire. You guys ready?”
He could smell the fear coming off the bodies of the two men crouched behind him as they stared up the sharply-rising rock face at the entrance to the cave twenty feet above. Was it his imagination, Kuruk wondered, or could he see a faint flicker of light? In the same moment he scented the faint ashy aroma of woodsmoke.
“Ko’,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “Fire.”
“They in there?” Alvares whispered hoarsely.
Kuruk didn’t answer. His keen eyes studied the trailing vegetation partially covering the entrance to the cave and the compacted earth in front of it. He gave the two airmen a hand signal, follow, and using every shred of cover he could find, moved warily up the slope until he was maybe ten feet to the right of the cave entrance. A sort of ledge ran upward away from it at an angle. This close he could detect faint scuffs, tiny indentations in the ground. Someone had been here. Was he – were they – still inside?
Think like the enemy. Take nothing at its face value. Maybe they wanted him to think they were in this cave but in fact were in the one above waiting for him to make his move.
“What now?” Alvares whispered.
“Get over to the left,” Kuruk told him, pointing. “Dixon, you take the right.”
Dixon moved off toward the right, Alvares peeling off to the other side. Kuruk waited, watching, wincing at the racket they made moving through the undergrowth.
“Stay put while I check the other cave,” he hissed when they were in position. “If I open fire, start shooting into the cave. Got it?”
There was a faint hint of gray in the darkness now. The two men nodded tensely, their faces pale and drawn in the strengthening light. They’d have to do, Kuruk thought. Placing his feet with infinite care, he moved soundlessly up the long ledge of rock toward the cave higher up the slope, stopping as the rock face broke away to his left. Screened by a straggling branch of piñon, he was able to make out the entrance to the cave, maybe ten yards ahead. Once again his keen nostrils detected the faint sharp tang of woodsmoke: there had been a fire in this cave, too.
So which was it – the cave below or this one?
It didn’t make a damn bit of difference. The roof of the cave would be low and sloping. When he opened fire and the special rounds he had loaded hit it, the rock would disintegrate into a murderous mist of shrapnel that would cut anyone inside the cave to ribbons. His mouth set in a hard thin line. He drew in a deep breath then let it out, firing the Winchester as fast as he could operate the lever.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Its landing lights limning everything below a ghostly yellow, the helicopter moved up around the side of the mountain in a swirl of dust, then dropped out of sight as it descended. Watching from the cave, Easton felt a surge of triumph as the sound of the engine ebbed and died: the bird was on the ground.
Touching Ironheel’s arm as a signal, he led the way out of the cave, running flat out up a faint trail that led through close-set trees toward the north face of Chimney Rock. Daybreak was already lightening the sky and birds were rehearsing the first notes of the dawn chorus. They scrambled along a ledge that sloped upward to a rocky plateau littered with broken boulders and jumbled piles of stone, heading from there in an imperfect half-circle around the northern shoulder of the huge granite spire. They had covered maybe half a mile when they heard the sudden racket of gunfire, shockingly loud in the empty morning. Birds rose chattering in panic from the trees as the explosions echoed off the face of the rocks.
“Kuruk,” Ironheel said.
No comment was necessary. The Mescalero had taken the bait. It wouldn’t be long before he realized he had been duped. Once he knew they had not come downhill, he would come looking for them. How many men were there? How long would it be? Easton wondered. Half an hour? Twenty minutes?
He moved forward along the western face of the mountain, slipping and scrambling on loose rock and shale, Ironheel close behind. As they approached the open ground that formed the saddle, he held up a hand and came to a stop, his back flattened against the rough stone. Ironheel edged up alongside.
“There she is,” Easton whispered.
He had been right. The ‘copter was a Hughes Defender, twenty three feet long, eight feet high, with rotors over twenty-six feet in diameter, painted a matte dark blue. All identifying insignia and registration plates had been removed. It stood on a patch of open ground amid the rocky scree about twenty yards back from the edge of the ragged arroyo down which the trail led to the valley below. There was no sign of any crew.
“Wait here,” Ironheel said, handing him the Winchester.
“Where are you going?” Easton frowned.
“Take a look,” Ironheel said and wormed his way back among the big boulders behind them. It got very quiet again. Nothing moved. Time passed, an invisible river flowing to an unknown sea. As the sun moved a couple of notches up the sky and a welcome warmth began to radiate from the rocks, Ironheel slipped soundlessly back between the boulders with two pistols stuck in his belt.
“Kuruk had only two men with him.”
“Had?”
“Found them down in the gully,” Ironheel said. “Ndaldzid. Scared to death, making more noise than a herd of buffalo.” He touched the weapons in his belt.
“You disarmed them?”
“No point killing them,” Ironheel said, ejecting the shells from the Colt and the other handgun.
“And Kuruk?”
“He coppered his bet. Left them outside the lower cave, went up to the cave where we were and hosed it down. Told them to start blasting when he opened up. Whichever cave we were in, we’d be dead.”
“That was what all the shooting was?”
“Ha’ah.”
“And now he knows we weren’t in either of them.”
Easton took a quick look round. The rock strewn saddle area was still as deserted as it had been since they came upon it.
“You know where he is?”
“He’s coming,” Ironheel said. “But he’ll take no chances. He doesn’t want to die any more than we do.”
“I’m going to disable that chopper before he gets up here,” Easton said. “Cover me.”
He ran crouching across the open ground toward the helicopter. During the ten or fifteen minutes Ironheel had been away, he had abandoned his original intention of setting fire to the helicopter: a pillar of smoke would very quickly attract the attention of their other hunters. Now instead, he slid back the door and using the barrel of his gun, smashed in the monitor screens of the FLIR and the thermal imager, each imploding satisfyingly with a sound like shattering light bulbs. Next he smashed all the dials on the instrument panels and wrecked the engine starter controls. You won’t come after me again in that, you bastards, he thought with venomous satisfaction.
He ducked to back out of the cockpit and the movement saved his life. With an enormous bang, a huge chunk of the chopper’s c
anopy bubble disintegrated into whistling shards of flying plastic. Half-turning he was just in time to see Mose Kuruk fade back behind a slide of rock on the flank of the mountain, pumping another round into the barrel of his weapon.
Throwing himself down, rolling behind the chopper’s undercarriage, Easton desperately loosed off three hasty shots. He heard the slugs whine off rock somewhere. Then Kuruk fired again and the bullet blasted a fist-sized hole straight through the metal fuselage of the chopper, sending tiny pieces of metal whistling through the air above Easton’s head.
He recoiled as another shot whanged off one of the struts and another tiny rain of metal, like iron filings, burst in a cloud after the impact, stinging his eyes. What the hell was the man using for ammunition?
The ten yards between his position and the nearest scatter of boulders looked as vast and empty as a football field. There was no sign of Ironheel. Emptying everything except the sheer need to move as fast as he had ever moved in his life, he turned and ran like a deer toward the tumble of rocks.
It was like everything was happening in ultra slow-mo. Every sense was vivid. He could feel his feet pounding the hard earth, hear the breath rushing through his lungs, the adrenaline-fueled thunder of his heart. As he ran, weaving, crouching, he clearly heard Mose Kuruk lever another round into the magazine of his rifle and felt his skin crawl against the expected shock of a bullet, but none came.
Diving behind the sheltering rocks, frantically scrabbling around to get into some kind of shooting position, he saw Ironheel step calmly out into the open to Kuruk’s left, head up, the way a bullfighter steps proud into the ring, the short Apache bow drawn full back. How he had gotten to where he was from where he had been it was impossible to conceive.
Kuruk saw him and gave a jubilant shout, pivoting to aim his weapon, but even with a bullet in the breech, he was a heartbeat too slow. Easton’s eyes caught the flicker of sunlight on the arrow as it sped across the clearing. It drove into Kuruk’s throat just below his jaw and burst out of the back of his neck. Transfixed, eyes bugging, Kuruk staggered back, dropping his rifle. His clawed hands reached up to wrench the killing thing out of his throat, but then the strength seemed to run out of him like spilled water. He collapsed onto his knees, his forehead touching the ground. He made a ghastly strangling sound and then a huge gout of blood spurted from his mouth and he rolled over on to his side. His legs kicked once or twice and then he was still. Across the clearing, Ironheel stood like stone.
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