by James Thayer
Taylor fought with himself. He might be able to help here on the ground, but all his training told him a helicopter was useless when idle. He decided he would get airborne, he would radio for help, and he then would try to extricate Coates.
Taylor engaged the rotors. The engines began to wind up. Twigs and grass and dirt whirled up.
The pilot yelped as the hot bore of a rifle was pressed into his neck.
A voice from behind. "Go up. Go west." The words were slow and bent by an accent.
The killer had climbed into the fuselage. He must have been shooting from behind the helicopter.
Again the careful words, "Go up. Go west. Listen to me."
The Black Hawk lifted off and gained elevation quickly, then banked away from the sun. Trees and fields slipped by below.
From behind came "Pick him up."
At first Taylor didn't know what the voice was referring to, but a hand came forward and pointed out the knee hatch.
A man was running wildly across a field, all legs and arms, churning away. The man stumbled and fell. He gazed fearfully over his shoulder, then scrambled up and started off again.
"Pick him up," the man behind ordered again. "I need bait."
The pilot narrowed his eyes. Perhaps it was a trick of the dawn light, but it appeared the runner below was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt. Taylor hadn't seen one in twenty years. He did not know what the man behind him meant by bait.
With the rifle barrel still against his neck, Taylor put the Black Hawk down in a field near the runner, who crazily veered away, running and limping and working his arms against the air, in a panic.
The gunman leaned out the hatch and beckoned once, then again, and when Andy Ellison dared to look over his shoulder again, he saw the Russian signaling him. Ellison slowed, then stopped. He gritted his teeth with indecision. Grinning, the Russian waved at him again. Ellison bolted for the helicopter, stumbling over straw and stones, looking left and right, blowing like a bellows.
Wetting his lips with his tongue, Taylor watched. The gunman helped the hippie into the copter's waist. His Mosin-Nagant on the pilot, the killer pointed skyward. The copter lifted off again.
Ellison slumped onto a jump seat. He was unable to catch his breath. He wiped his hands across his forehead. His jeans were soiled and torn. With trembling hands he removed his spectacles to straighten the wire frame.
He managed, "The DEA. They were after me. Christ, there were dozens of them, maybe hundreds."
The Russian grinned as he helped Ellison into a safety harness. "It is dangerous being around you marijuana farmers."
Ellison barked a laugh of relief. "Good God, yes. But it doesn't look like I'm going back to prison. Today, anyway. Thanks to you."
Trusov buckled himself in, the rifle still on the pilot. "No, neither of us is going to prison."
Owen Gray lowered the M-40A1 sniper rifle to the apple box. He picked up a bowl of Wheaties. Also on the apple crate were a carton of milk, a box of cereal, and cleaning and oiling equipment. The rifle was fully assembled. He put the bowl under his chin and shoveled flakes into his mouth with a spoon. He was sitting on the porch, the apple box to one side. He chewed mechanically, his eyes on the big larch tree. The ground was damp from the rain, but a gray weeping dawn had given way to blue sky. An Idaho State Patrol car was parked on the other side of the tree. Two troopers leaned against the front hood. One carried an automatic shotgun. They were eating a breakfast sandwich brought up from Ketchum.
Adrian emerged from the cabin squinting at the morning light. She was wearing a white terry-cloth robe that had a red rose stitched over her heart. She was barefoot and wore no makeup. She ran her hand several times through her hair, then stepped toward one of the cane chairs Gray had moved onto the porch. Gray thought she looked alluringly undone.
She stopped near him. "Cereal? I thought you mountain men ate moose and moss for breakfast."
He chewed a moment more, then said, "I told you I caught the trout we ate last night, but actually I bought the fish down in Ketchum."
She raised a hand against the sun. "Why the fib?"
"To see if you knew anything about the outdoors. You don't."
"How could I have known you didn't catch the fish?" Her frown reflected her disapproval.
Gray dug the spoon into the cereal. "The fins of a hatchery fish are worn down and nipped. Its pectoral fins may be missing altogether."
"Why?"
"Fins wear off on the concrete runways. And during feeding time the fish in their frenzy bite each other's fins. Wild fish are prettier, with full rays to their pectorals and dorsal fins. Those trout we ate were raised on a farm down in southern Idaho, probably near Hagerman. No outdoors person would mistake wild trout for farm-raised trout."
"Well, golly," she said in broad hick's accent, "I sure am dumb and you sure are smart."
Gray wiped the corner of his mouth with a finger. "I learned quickly in Vietnam to always test my partners. I need to know what you know and use what you know and make allowances for what you don't. I'm not going to let my life depend on a stranger."
"I don't know anything about the wilderness." She walked behind him toward the south end of the porch. She gripped her bathrobe around her. "If you had simply asked, I would have admitted it. Like, if I ask if you know anything about being a dolt, you can admit that you do."
Gray mumbled around a mouthful of cereal, "Don't get yourself bitten by a rattlesnake."
"Thank you, Marlin Perkins," she replied. "I won't."
"Yes you will, if you take three more steps toward the end of the porch."
Adrian's hands came up as if someone had thrown her a basketball. Her mouth widened. She danced backwards, away from the chair and the reptile that was near it.
The rattlesnake was lying half on and half off the south edge of the porch, absorbing the early morning sun, its flat head on the wood and its rattles over the side. With the black and white diamond patterns on its back, the rattler's scales resembled bathroom tiles.
"Goddamnit, Owen, you let me get too close to that snake."
"You were perfectly safe. They crawl, they don't fly."
"What's it going to do?" Adrian's voice carried a trace of fear unsuccessfully masked.
"It's going to sit there until the sun goes behind a tree or a until a mouse comes along, whichever happens first. They don't move much on hot days."
"Get rid of it. Shoo it away. Look, it's staring at me."
Gray lowered the bowl to the apple box. He crossed the porch, passing Adrian toward the snake. The snake's tail came up as its body contracted into a loose coil.
"Rattlers are less dangerous than people think," Gray said. "Watch this."
The snake's rattles—a series of horny buttons at the end of its tail—trilled loudly, sounding more like an electric spark than a baby's toy, a throat-grabbing, relentless, sinister burr. Gray slowly moved his right hand away from his body. The snake's villainous eyes followed the hand. Its forked tongue flashed in and out and its scales glimmered in the sun. While the snake's head was turning, Gray's other hand shot out and snatched the rattler just below its head. The reptile squirmed frantically as Gray lifted it. The snake wrapped itself around Gray's wrist and forearm. Adrian had stepped back as far as the door. Her right hand was at her mouth.
"My father and I tried venom harvesting for a while. We'd catch a rattler like this, then press open its mouth with our thumb."
When Gray pressured the back of the snake's head, its mouth opened, revealing its half-inch fangs below pink fang sheaths.
"We used to collect the venom in bottles," Gray said.
Glittering liquid appeared at the tip of the fang. Several drops fell to the porch.
"I saved my father's life once," Gray said, still holding the rattlesnake's head in Adrian's direction. "We were climbing a steep embankment and my dad was reaching up for a handhold when his hand found a rattler sleeping in the sun. The snake bit him on the back of the hand. S
o I got out a knife, cut little Xs where the fangs had punctured the skin, and sucked the venom out. My dad said later he was lucky the snake didn't bite him on the ass, because I would have sat there and watched him die."
Gray stepped down from the porch, peeled the diamondback from around his arm, and tossed the snake toward the remnants of the woodshed. The rattler crawled quickly under a pile of shingles.
Adrian exhaled loudly. "What an incredible showoff you are."
"But you have to admit you are impressed."
After a moment, she grinned. "A little."
Gray returned to the apple crate. He poured more Wheaties and milk, wiped the spoon on his trousers, then handed her the bowl and spoon.
He lifted the sniper rifle. "Scientists should study rifles more."
Around the Wheaties in her mouth, she said, "They should study you more."
"I've never fully understood everything a rifle does, but one thing I've noticed is that the weapon slows time. The passing day has a curious dilation whenever I hold a rifle. Tell me what you hear when I fire this rifle."
Gray yelled a warning to the troopers that he was about to use the weapon, then tucked the butt into his shoulder, aimed the rifle at a tree stump off to his left, and pulled the trigger. The rifle sounded loudly. Rotted pieces of bark jumped away from the stump, leaving a small black hole in the old wood.
She looked at him quizzically. "I heard a rifle shot, then some echoing from the mountains."
"But there was much more." Gray returned the rifle to the box. "The sound began with a fierce little slap, like metal on metal. Then came a brief pause full of rushing wind. Next came a bass thump, followed by a trumpeter with a mute making a wa-wa-wa tone. After that came the roar of passing train. When that trailed away, the echoing began. The sound was full of nuances."
"You sound like one of those snooty wine critics. They say it has a nice nose and a pleasant but presumptuous fullness when all they've really got is a simple glass of wine."
"It isn't just the rifle shot I'm talking about. When I'm holding a weapon, everything seems in slow motion, like everything is moving underwater. It's an odd effect and beyond my explanation."
She smiled. "Did these Wheaties stay crisp in the milk longer?"
He stared at her. "Maybe I should be talking to that rattlesnake."
Her spoon paused over the bowl. "The victim never hears anything, does he?"
"The bullet gets to him before the sound does."
"That's eerie," she said with a subdued voice.
Gray's gaze was again on the tree. He whispered, "He never hears a thing."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"The damned thing is reaching for me!" Pete Coates exclaimed, kicking his right foot. "Christ, that hurts."
"Watch where you're walking," Gray said mildly. "And it's only a wild blackberry vine. It won't kill you."
"Goddamnit, it's torn my new pants. I just bought these new slacks at Moe Ginsburg's last week."
The blackberry had sharp spines on almost every part of it—the leaves and leaf stalks, and on the grasping vines, where they were curved like talons. This plant had grown over a mountain maple, smothering it, and had reached along the path for more victims. It had found Coates, or rather Coates had found it.
"Is it any wonder I hate leaving New York?" With two fingers Coates pried the blackberry vine away from his pants leg. "It's got my thumb now." He flicked his hand. Blood oozed from the meat of his thumb.
"Looks like Central Park is about all the wilderness you can handle, Pete."
Gray and the detective were walking downstream along Black Bear Creek a hundred yards from the cabin. Gray carried the Weatherby Magnum on a sling over his shoulder. He was also wearing a backpack over a duck-hunting vest. A deer path shadowed the stream, curving with it, never straying far from the bubbling, swirling water. The trail was so narrow that Gray and Coates had to walk single file. Boulders edged some of the stream, and dark pools of still water gathered behind them. The current slipped from behind rocks, cascading in white and blue to the next pool. Sword and maidenhair ferns edged the water with their pure green, a color Idahoans believe with some justification occurs only in their state. A willow trailed its branches in the water, the current tugging at its leaves. The stream's sibilant whisper was mixed with the mirthful, flutey trill of a western tanager high in an aspen above the water.
They came to a larger pool ringed with small-leafed plants growing in patches as thick as a mat. The plants were anchored in the mud, with buoyant stems and leaves above the water. Gray brought out a plastic bag from his backpack, stooped over the pool, and tore bunches of the plant away from the water. He put several handfuls into the plastic bag before returning the bag to the pack.
"What is that?" the detective asked.
"Watercress."
"It grows in streams?"
"Where did you think it came from?"
Coates shrugged. "From grocery stores."
Gray shook his head. "Don't get near those stinging nettles." He waved a hand at a five-foot-tall bank of nettles in front of them. The stem, leaf stalks, and veins on the undersurface of the leaves had stinging hairs that injected poison into skin like hypodermic needles. Gray had to turn sideways to slip between the nettles and the water, sidestepping on a narrow ledge.
"You think I'm a city slicker who doesn't know nettles when he sees them," Coates groused.
He followed Gray, scooting along sideways, hanging his hands out over the creek away from the nettle leaves. The path turned away from the creek for a few yards. They walked over goose grass and creeping buttercup. The stream flowed through a ravine filled with hemlock and mountain laurel. Leaves were still damp from the storm the night before, but the strip of sky visible above Gray, seen from the shadows of the ravine, was rinsed and smiling and lapis blue. Gray smelled the pungent treacly odor of yarrow. The Shoshone had brewed a tea from its fernlike leaves. They passed several bunches of the plant.
Gray looked over his shoulder. "You ever been out here before?"
"Never."
"You'll like Idaho."
"In New York we pronounce it 'Iowa.' "
"Did you bring any outdoor clothing?"
"I wear a tie when I'm on business." Coates's gray sports coat was dappled with water spots from the leaves. He wore a red tie and white shirt. His pants cuffs were ragged from the vines. "And when you said your place was in the mountains, I sort of envisioned the Poconos, not this wild place. Aren't you supposed to put asphalt on these paths, and handrails?"
Gray had picked up Pete Coates at the Hailey airport two hours ago, a Horizon Air flight up from Twin Falls. During the drive, Coates had told Gray of the murder of the three FBI agents. Gray had never before seen the detective's hands tremble. Now, feeling each owed it to the other, both men were trying to generate a good humor neither felt.
"Watch the creek bank," Gray said. "It's soft here."
"Where?" As Coates asked, the bank crumbled under his feet and his left leg plunged into the water to his knee. The creek boiled around his leg and wicked up his pants to his crotch. He flailed the air wildly before his hands seized a laurel branch to lever himself out.
"There," Gray said.
He began climbing out of the ravine along a path he had known since he could walk, a trail so stitched into his memory that a growth of moss on a feldspar outcropping caught his eye as new and a stretch of stones near the rim of the creek canyon was brighter than he remembered; and when he glanced skyward he saw that the bathtub-sized raven's nest that had been in the nearby aspen for a generation was gone, perhaps blown down in a storm, allowing more sun to reach the ground.
Pete Coates scrabbled up the path behind Gray, leaving a wet shoe print every other step. His damp trousers clung to his leg. His eyeglasses flashed on and off in the dappled sunlight below the trees. Near the rim the detective's leather brogans could not find purchase on the pebbles and loose dirt, and he churned his legs, slipping with each ste
p. Gray grabbed his wrist and lifted him over the top.
Coates shook away Gray's hand and said with indignation that was mostly mock, "You think this gives you some sort of moral authority over me, don't you? Out here in the land time forgot, showing me the ropes, watching me cope."
"One of your shirttails is out."
Coates tucked himself in. "Just like I've been showing you the ins and outs of New York all these years."
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you asked for the tour of the property."
"Now you get the chance to lord it over this city slicker." Coates followed Gray toward the cabin. "You are positively glowing with it, parading your knowledge. You know what the biggest difference is between you and me, Owen?"
"I'm afraid to ask."
"It's this: I know crime and criminals. I know the underside of life, the rot of the big city, the vicious and the cruel, the myriad ways to squander lives, the complexity of urban life. And you know watercress."
Gray laughed.
"What happened to this garage?"
"It was a rickety old woodshed. Wind probably blew it down."
"Pretty violent storm, must've been, to hack out wood chips from the support poles just like an axe."
"You don't miss much, do you, Pete?"
They approached the home. A panel truck was parked near the porch. The vehicle was unmarked, but Gray knew it belonged to the FBI. On the porch Adrian Wade pointed directions to two technicians who carried a fax machine and computer into the house. The technicians returned to the truck to pull out a five-foot-diameter satellite dish.
Gray muttered, "She's going to make my place look like Houston Control."
A black-and-white police car was also parked on the gravel. The blue bubble was on the dashboard, not on the cab roof. On the door was a complicated insignia featuring a braying elk, a medieval gauntlet gripping a lightning bolt, a miner's shovel, and a fleur-de-lis. The insignia had resulted from a Hobart High School art class contest in the 1940s. Above the insignia were the words "Hobart Police Department." The police officer was sitting on the car's hood watching the truck being unloaded, and watching Adrian in particular.