by James Thayer
Adrian nodded. "I suppose Nikolai was willing to risk that to get into the U. S."
"And to come for me," Gray said darkly.
"Yes, to come for you."
"How did Trusov get his rifle into this country?"
She replied, "Probably in a diplomatic pouch."
"A rifle in a pouch?"
"Pouch is a term of art. It can be anything from a letter to a container on a ship, as long as it has the diplomatic seal. A Hero of the Soviet Union would easily have found a Russian diplomat to help him get his rifle in." Adrian leaned forward on the boulder. She stared at him a moment before continuing, "You know that you are asking me to believe the impossible, don't you?"
"I'm not following you," Gray said. He tossed another piece of the sandwich to the birds.
"It is impossible that no connection exists between you and Nikolai Trusov."
"I never said there wasn't," Gray protested. "I just don't know what it is."
"By not telling me everything, you are asking me to believe the preposterous. I'm convinced that something in your past connects you to Trusov. You might not know it, but it does. And I won't be able to make the connection between you and the Russian unless you tell me everything."
He nodded vaguely.
"You are hiding something from me. Level with me."
"You already know everything important about me."
"That's a lie." She smiled to take some of the sting from her words. "I've been a policewoman too long to buy that."
"You and I are on the same side," Gray said rather feebly. "I'm not going to lie to you."
Adrian leaned forward and brought her hands across her lap to fold her fingers. She gasped, then flicked her hand. Her mouth began a curl of horror but she controlled it. She leaped up from the boulder. Her voice wavered. "Have I hurt myself? There's blood all over me."
Gray rose and hurried to her, reaching for the hand. "Show me where."
Her voice was an unsteady whisper. "On my jacket."
Her coat had more zippers than a flight jacket. A dark stain had spread along the right sleeve near a Velcro fastener. Gray quickly undid the Velcro and gently pushed back the fabric along Adrian's arm. None of the blood had seeped through the Goretex onto her arm.
Gray said, "The blood is from the rock you were sitting on."
An edge of the granite slab was daubed with blood, and tinctures of the fluid darkened the silver moss on the stone.
"Where did it come from?"
"A wounded deer." The corners of Gray's mouth turned down. "A mule deer, probably."
Gray rubbed a finger along the rock, bringing a smear of blood to his eyes. "It's been hit in the liver. You can tell from the dark color of the blood."
"Wouldn't that have killed the deer?"
"A deer with a liver hit can take off at a dead run and go for a long way." Gray bent close to the rock. Mica flecks glittered in the sunlight. He found a tuft of hair. "This is his fur. It's black-tipped, which means it's from just above his belly." Gray knelt closer to look at the prints at the base of the boulder. He found a hoofprint. "The mulie staggered against the rock, then took off again, uphill into that ravine."
"Is he going to die?" Adrian asked.
"He can't survive this wound."
"Who shot him?"
"Some poacher who didn't have the skill or the energy to follow the deer."
"A poacher?"
"Deer are out of season."
"Can we help the deer?" she asked. "We should do something."
"There's nothing we can do."
"Yes, there is." She looked directly into his eyes. "We can't let him just die."
Adrian started along the path, then veered off in a bank of bunch grass toward the ravine. The nutcrackers scattered, crying raucously. She looked back at Gray. "I'm going to find him."
"Goddamnit," Gray muttered. He lifted his rifle and pack to follow her.
The north-facing slope of the ravine was dotted with lodgepole pine. Adrian's approach flushed a covey of grouse that had been feeding on buds and leaves. She led him along a deer trail through serviceberry bushes, whose flowers resembled white lilies. They reached a fork in the trail where the ravine branched.
She slowed, then stopped. "Which way did he go?"
"Look for blood. Women are better at finding blood on the ground than men are. I don't know why, but it's true."
"There." She stabbed a finger at the ground.
Blood often looks like rust spots on leaves. Gray wet his thumb with spit and rubbed the leaf. It streaked. Blood. "He went up the left ravine."
"Why up?" she asked. "Maybe he stopped and then went back down."
Gray shook his head. "Confused, wounded deer always go uphill."
"How do you know?"
"I just know they do. And lost children usually walk uphill and lost adults go downhill. That's just how things work."
They marched through the pine, which gave way to an aspen grove. The soil was loose, almost a scree. Their toes dug into it, propelling them up the path. Cheat-grass stickers found their way onto Gray's socks, making his ankles itch. On a boulder a piping hare jerked up and down as it whistled, an outsized sound resembling a goat cry. Gray nodded a greeting to it.
A deep gurgling croak came from a ridge above Gray, followed by a roll of squawks and clacks, a riotous, unnerving sound in the high stillness. Ravens rose from behind the ridge, their enormous ebony wings beating the thin air. Several landed on the boughs of a scrubby ponderosa pine. Others disappeared again behind the outcropping of boulders and grass.
"The mule deer is behind those rocks," Gray called. "Maybe you shouldn't get any closer. It's not going to be fun to look at."
Adrian asked, "How do you know it's there?"
"The ravens are waiting for their dinner."
"Will they start tearing away at the deer before it's dead?"
"Ravens aren't known for their table manners."
They rounded the rocks. The ravens flew away, but not too far before landing on the scree to stare sullenly at the humans. Adrian looked sadly at the wounded deer. The mulie was lying on a blanket of bunch grass, its large white-patched ears moving independently of each other like a mule's. It was a doe, and it was breathing raggedly, blowing pink blood from its nostrils. A red smear ran along its flanks. The entry wound was high in front of its hindquarters. Blood trails mapped the animal's flanks and thighs, seeping onto the stones. The deer stared blankly at the humans. Its nostrils flared as it fought for breath. The ravens shrieked at the intruders.
Adrian said softly, "He's going to die, isn't he? He looks bad."
"It's a she. Yeah, she's in bad shape."
"There must be something we can do." Adrian Wade blinked back tears. "The poor animal shouldn't have to die."
Gray looked at her. Adrian had known loss, had been pushed to the brink by grief. Gray didn't want his small tour of his mountains to freshen those emotions. He said, "Maybe I can dig the bullet out. You never know about deer. She could make it." He stepped across the lichens and stones to the deer. It followed him with its black eyes, and raised one hoof, but did not have the strength to lever itself off the ground. "Too many of us around here will scare her. You head down the ravine. I'll catch up when I'm done."
A tear trailed down Adrian's face. Her gaze went between the deer and Gray, then she turned back down the mountain, down the loose stones toward the deer trail. She looked back at Gray to see him draw the bowie knife from the scabbard. Gray waited until she was out of sight before he brought the blade to the mulie's throat.
Three minutes later he caught up with Adrian.
She glanced at the bowie knife, which was back in its place on Gray's belt. "That deer might live?"
"Maybe." Gray stared down the valley. "You bet."
Gray looked over his shoulder at the ridge. The ravens had left their perch and were hidden by the crest of the ridge. It seemed to him their renewed croaking held a victorious note.
&
nbsp; She said bitterly, "I thought you said you weren't going to lie to me."
After a moment he said, "I won't. Mostly."
Andy Ellison moved on his knees among the stalks, stopping at each one to sprinkle a small handful of fertilizer onto the ground, then using a hand to scratch the granules into the dirt. His stand was thick, and the pointed leaves brushed his face, a feathery sensation he associated with freedom. He dragged the paper sack of fertilizer along with him as he went from plant to plant.
His marijuana patch was hidden in a black cottonwood glen in Jefferson County, Montana, in the low foothills of the Rocky Mountains, two dirt-road miles north of the interstate highway. The glen bordered an open field, one of many pastures where the Rocking R Ranch's six thousand head of cattle grazed. Ellison's crop was protected by a barbed-wire fence. All marijuana plants favor sun, but this species, Chiang Mai red, craved it, and it was Ellison's despair that he could offer only light dappled by the cottonwood branches overhead. Otherwise DEA planes would quickly find the crop. Ellison had tried hiding his crops among Louisiana sugarcane (his arrest netted two years' probation), between rows of Washington State corn (two years at Walla Walla), and under grow lights in a California basement (four years at San Quentin). He had sworn he would never go back to prison, for those were hard years, particularly at the Walls, where Ellison was Booby Decker's girlfriend. Ellison still wore a tattoo on his buttocks that proved it. "If you reeding this, Booby kil you." Decker had pricked it onto Ellison's butt himself, smashing his fist into Ellison's ear each time Ellison howled. Booby was no artist, so the blue ink letters wiggled and bled, but the message was plain enough, and nobody at the Walls bothered Ellison except Booby. The tattoo had only humiliated Ellison. The misspellings had outraged him.
No, sir, Andy Ellison wanted no more to do with prison, and the next time the DEA or some local sheriff found him tending his crop Ellison would surely face six to eight years, being a three-time loser already. So he was careful. He limited each patch to twenty stalks, spending hours determining shadow patterns on the soil beneath the cottonwood boughs before he planted. Black cottonwood leaves—shiny dark green on top and white-green with rusty veins underneath—perfectly blended with the Chiang Mai red's leaves, especially when the wind roiled and blurred the foliage. No DEA plane was going to spot his crop, Ellison believed. He had fifteen such patches at the edge of the Rocking R land. The ranch's owner, a corporation based in Missoula, rented a homesteader's shack and barn to Ellison, one of the many busted-out spreads devoured by the corporation over the years. The corporation's concern were Herefords and tax codes, and it was not too attentive to the perimeters of its grazing land.
Ellison crawled along the ground, dropping the fertilizer and mixing it in. His plants were a bit leggy for lack of full sun, but the leaves were broad and green, a lot of product. A wren trilled in a cottonwood, its flicking tail seen at the edge of Ellison's vision. And a nearby towhee flicked aside leaves and twigs on the ground looking for insects, making a pleasant racket. Ellison whistled a Lovin' Spoonful song, keeping himself company. A nearby grasshopper rubbed its legs, squeaking along to Ellison's tune.
A small breeze brushed the stalks, but even so it was warm. Sweat dropped from Ellison's forehead onto his spectacle lenses. He took them off and wiped the lenses on his shirt. He had worn granny glasses since the Sixties, and the spectacles and his sandals and tie-dyed T-shirts he wore whenever he was tending his crop were his personal commemoration of the Sixties, that lost time that would never come again, that apex of Andy Ellison's life, those shimmering years of innocence and incense. And babes with no bras.
The intervening years had hardened Ellison, at least his appearance. He wore a ponytail tied with a rubber band, but the hair came from the sides and back of his head because he had lost most on top. Deep lines ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth. In a jealous rage, Booby Decker had punched out one of Ellison's front teeth, and the replacement cap had yellowed and now showed a line of blackened gum above the tooth. Ellison was indifferent to food and had always been thin, but lately his rib cage had begun to show and the tendons and veins on the back of his hands looked like road maps. He made enough money growing dope to feed himself most of the time, but as harvest approached he was usually down to pocket change and he missed many meals.
Ellison scratched his wrist, maybe an ant bite. Then Ellison's head came up. He looked left and right between the stalks. Something was amiss. The towhee and wren were abruptly silent. The buzz and clatter of insects had quieted. Even the wind had stopped, and the heat was suddenly thick and choking.
The prickly rash of fear crawled up Ellison's back. He had experienced this sensation once before, in the cornfield just before he was arrested, an indefinable sense that something was awry. He was no longer alone in the cottonwood glen. Somebody was closing in on him. Surely the DEA.
Ellison rose quickly, and more sweat dropped onto his glasses. He turned south toward the house, his view blocked by the tall marijuana stalks. But surely his pursuers had come from the house. He dropped his paper bag and turned north, ducking his head to hide below the top leaves of his plants. Still he heard and saw nobody. The sweat spread on his lenses, smearing his view. He turned left toward a brace of dwarf maples, brushing by the last of his plants. Then a man appeared before him, forming out of the maple leaves, obscured by the droplets on Ellison's lenses. A huge man with a blond plug head. Moving toward him.
The old hippie turned back, willing his legs to work, sprinting through the marijuana stalks. The once friendly leaves seemed to grab for him. He missed his footing on a cottonwood root and fell to one knee. He rose, limping, pushing himself forward. His breath rattled in his throat. Dear God, he didn't want to go back to prison.
The marijuana stalks ahead of him parted, and the big man was there. Ellison jerked his eyes over his shoulder. Were there two of them? How could he have moved so quickly? Panic rose in Ellison. Six years this time, maybe eight, every day of it spent as some con's girlfriend. A wail of fear escaped his lips. He dodged right, toward a thimbleberry thicket, his feet churning the loose soil. His chest heaved. He swatted aside vegetation and braved a look over his shoulder. He had lost the intruder. He turned back toward the thimbleberry, and there the big man was again, smiling slightly and raising a hand.
Panic almost closing his throat, Ellison turned again. His legs seemed made of rope but he dug at the ground and flailed at the vegetation as if swimming, pulling himself through the underbrush. He groaned with effort and his vision blurred even more.
Then he was on the ground, his face hard against the dirt, a rough hand at the back of his neck pinning him there. Ellison inhaled deeply, drawing in bits of dirt. Helpless, he closed his eyes. Six to eight years this time.
The hand rolled Ellison over. The intruder towered over him, the details of his face lost in the sun overhead. The hand gripped Ellison's arm and easily brought him to his feet.
"It's this scar, isn't it?"
Ellison was still blowing loudly, and he thought perhaps he hadn't heard the man. "A scar?"
"It frightens people." A blocky voice, unaccustomed to the language.
"Where's my Miranda rights?" Ellison was suddenly angry. He peeled off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt sleeve. When he returned them to his nose, he wished he hadn't. Seen closely and clearly, the intruder was even more frightening. Chopped face, gash of a mouth, and a red and scaled dent above his right eye that disappeared back under the blond hair. The scar made everything on his face seem askew.
"I demand my Miranda rights, goddamnit. Where's the protocol?"
"I need a bed for the night."
"A bed?" The slightest flutter of hope. "You just want a bed?"
The stranger nodded.
The six to eight years vanished. "Thank you, God." Ellison turned toward the shack. His confidence soared. "I don't mind saying you scared the hell out of me."
"I do that a lot." The accent was strong. "So
metimes on purpose, sometimes not."
The trailer was cramped and hot. Squeezed between banks of electronics, Pete Coates drummed his fingers on a tiny metal table. "Can't you hurry up?"
"I'll tell the pilot to rock back and forth in his seat to make his plane go faster," the technician replied with a Southern accent, not bothering to look at Coates.
The technician was an Air Force captain assigned to PHOTINT Tasking and was the master of the trailer, which was called a C3, for command, control, and communications. The trailer and the captain and the reconnaissance planes were on loan to Coates and the FBI. The technician had given Coates a ten-minute tour of the trailer, which consisted of both men slowly turning in their chairs as the technician pointed out one system after another, speaking mostly in unfathomable acronyms like SIGMA and MAC and TOT and DISCUS, all communications systems. The interior of the trailer glowed in soft green light from several monitors. Coates faced a wall of digital numbers, blinking red and green and yellow lights, dials and knobs and switches. The trailer was filled with a faint crackling. Three monitors were black but with the tiny power lights glowing red. On another monitor was ESPN.
After the tour of the communications equipment, Coates had asked, "You sure it's a car in there?" The captain had once again reviewed his evidence: an Army Beechcraft RC-12d—a plane notable for the dozen antennas protruding from its wings and fuselage—had with its UAS-4 infrared equipment detected heat coming from a dilapidated barn in Jefferson County, in foothill country. Within an hour Coates's team had checked the farmstead against the Jefferson County tax assessor's rolls and determined that the Allcrop Corporation, the parent company of the Rocking R Ranch, was paying property taxes on the land, and that the county assessor had dropped the structure component of the assessment on the parcel three times as the farm and barn fell into disrepair. So there should not have been a heat source in the dilapidated barn, yet there was.
"A yellow Buick Regal is what I'm looking for," Coates offered once again. "That's the last car Trusov stole, and we haven't found it abandoned anywhere, so he's still got it."