Nowhere To Run - A Joe Pickett Novel Part 33

"I'll call," he said, and punched off. It felt like a lie.

HE COULDN'T FEEL HIS FEET or his legs, and his heartbeat whumped in his ears as he walked out into the clearing with his shotgun. Camish and Caleb emerged from the trees. Joe guessed they were seventy-five yards away. Out of range for his shotgun or .40 Glock. He wondered when Caleb would simply raise the rifle and start firing.

Joe thought: They look silly, the Grim Brothers, dressed in the same clothes, identical except for the bandage on Caleb's jaw. They're such losers. From another place and another era, and their ideas of the way things ought to be are old and out of date. They know, he thought, if they come down from this mountain they'll be eaten alive. The poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

He thought: This is their mountain. It's where they feel safe. It's the only place they feel free.

He thought: He might give up his life for an argument he didn't think he agreed with.

Camish said something, but Joe didn't catch it due to the roaring in his head.

"What's that?" Joe called out.

"I said it's still not too late to leave," Camish said. "I admire your courage, but I question your judgment."

Joe thought, Me too Me too.

The brothers were within fifty yards.

JOE THOUGHT, Camish first Camish first. Shoot Camish first. He was the leader, the spokesman. Taking out Camish might stun Caleb for a split second-in time for Joe to jack in another sh.e.l.l and fire.

Shoot, then run to the side, he thought. Make himself a moving target. Duck and roll. Come up firing. Run right at Caleb, confuse him. Caleb wouldn't expect Joe to come right at him.

Forty yards.

WHEN JOE WAS GROWING UP, he'd read everything he could find about Old West outlaws and gunfights. He'd found himself disappointed. In real life, showdowns like the ones portrayed in movies and myths were almost nonexistent. Men rarely faced off against each other on a dusty cow town street at high noon, with the fastest gun winning. Much more likely was an ambush, with one man firing a rifle or a shotgun at his enemy before the victim could draw his weapon, or a gunman sneaking up on someone and putting a bullet in the back of his head from a foot away. Men didn't face off if they could help it.

He remembered what Nate had told him: It's about who can look up without any mist in their eyes or doubts in their heart, aim, and pull the trigger without thinking twice. It's about killing. It's always worked that way. It's about who can look up without any mist in their eyes or doubts in their heart, aim, and pull the trigger without thinking twice. It's about killing. It's always worked that way.

Thirty yards.

Not optimum for his shotgun, but close enough.

Without warning, he dropped to one knee, raised his weapon, and shot at Camish.

Camish was. .h.i.t with a spray of double-ought pellets, but he didn't fall. Joe caught a glimpse of Camish's puzzled face, dotted with fresh new holes. He was hurt but the wounds weren't lethal. He seemed as surprised at what Joe had done as Joe did.

From the trees to Joe's left, there was a deep-throated boom and Caleb's throat exploded. A second shot blew his hat off and it dropped heavily to the gra.s.s because it was weighted by the top of Caleb's skull. Caleb spun on his heel and fell, dead before he hit the ground. The AR-15 caught the sun as it flew through the air.

Camish opened his mouth to call something out but a third .454 round punctured the body armor over his heart like a missile through tissue paper and dropped him like a bag of rocks.

JOE ROSE UNSTEADILY, his ears ringing from the gunshots. He was stunned by what had just happened and amazed by the fact that he wasn't hurt, that the brothers hadn't fired back.

From the trees, Nate walked out into the clearing and the morning sun lit him up. He ejected three smoking spent cartridges from the cylinder and replaced them with fresh rounds. He said, "That may have been the worst thing we've ever done, Joe."

Joe dropped his shotgun, turned away, bent over with his hands on his knees, and threw up in the dew-sparkled gra.s.s.

THE SHARP SMELL OF GUNPOWDER held in place a few feet above the meadow, the result of a morning low pressure. Gradually, it dissipated. The odor of spilled blood, however, got stronger as it flowed from the bodies of Caleb and Camish until the soil around them was muddy with it.

Nate found a downed log at the edge of the timber and sat down on it, his .454 held loosely in his fist, his head down as if studying the gra.s.s between his boots. Joe walked aimlessly toward the timber from where the brothers had emerged. He doubted the woman had been hiding there, but he wanted to check. His shotgun was still in the gra.s.s.

He stopped near to where Caleb had come out, noting a dull, unnatural glint on the edge of a shadow pool in the trees. Stepping closer, he took a deep breath. The glint came from a substantial pile of loose rifle cartridges in the pine needles, and something dark and square. He was puzzled.

Joe dropped and counted thirty .223 cartridges on the ground. A lot, he thought. More than Caleb would have dropped casually. In fact, Joe thought with a growing sense of dark unease, it was the entire quant.i.ty of a combat AR-15 magazine.

Short of breath, Joe lurched from tree to tree clutching a rifle bullet and the journal he recognized from the first time he'd encountered Caleb in the lake. It didn't take long to find the place a few yards away where Camish had unloaded his shotgun sh.e.l.ls. Four of them, bright with their red plastic sleeves and high bra.s.s, lay in a single pile as if dropped from beneath the weapon like metal scat.

He opened the journal and thumbed through it as his eyes swam. The first three-quarters of the book were devoted to daily journal entries. The last quarter appeared to be an antigovernment screed. Joe thought, Their manifesto Their manifesto. Hundreds of words that could be summed up as Don't Tread on Me Don't Tread on Me.

The last of Caleb's entries was a spidery scrawl that read, "Please take good care of Diane. It ain't her fault. She done nothing wrong. She just wanted to be free of you people." "Please take good care of Diane. It ain't her fault. She done nothing wrong. She just wanted to be free of you people."

Nate had entered the trees with his gun drawn. Joe watched Nate as his eyes moved from the .223 bullets to the shotgun sh.e.l.ls. His friend's upper lip curled into a frightening grimace.

Joe said, "No wonder they didn't shoot. They unloaded before they walked out there."

"Oh, man," Nate whispered. "It was bad before. It just got worse."

JOE CALLED MARYBETH. She picked it up on the first ring. He said, "I'm not hurt. Nate's not hurt. We're done here."

She said, "Joe, what's wrong?"

He took in a long breath of cool mountain air that tasted like pine, and he looked out on the meadow as the sun lit up the gra.s.s so green it hurt his eyes. "I don't even know where to start."

32

AT MIDMORNING, JOE COULD SMELL FOOD COOKING FROM above in the rimrocks. The aroma wafted down through the spa.r.s.e lodgepole copse. He clucked at his gelding and led the animal up toward the source of the aroma and thought about how long it had been since he'd eaten. Not that it mattered, since there was nothing left in his stomach at all.

THEY'D LIFTED THE BODIES of Caleb and Camish facedown over the saddles of their riding horses and lashed them to the saddles as if they were packing out game animals. Joe and Nate wordlessly tied lifeless hands and feet together under the bellies of their mounts to keep the bodies from sliding off. Before they guided the horses and the bodies out of the meadow up toward the rimrocks, Joe had called dispatch on his satellite phone. The dispatcher offered to route him through to Sheriff Baird or Special Agent Chuck c.o.o.n of the FBI, who were both in place and in charge at the command center that had been established at the trailhead.

Joe said, "No need. I don't want to talk to either of them right now. Just pa.s.s on the word that the Grim Brothers-or the Clines, or whatever the h.e.l.l their real names are-are dead. There is no more threat. Tell them they can stand down. We'll be bringing the bodies out by nightfall."

The dispatcher said, "My G.o.d. They're going to want to talk directly with you."

Said Joe, "I'm not in the mood," and powered down the phone so they couldn't call him back.

WHEN THEY CLEARED THE TREES, Joe spotted Diane Shober. She was a hundred yards above them, peering down out of a vertical crack in the rimrock wall. When she saw them-and what they had strapped to their horses-her hand went to her mouth and he heard her cry out. Then she was gone back into the cave.

Joe thought that unless he'd been told specifically by Farkus and Camish where the cave was located, he never would have found it. He thought it unlikely that the search-and-rescue team would have found it, either. And certainly not the strike team building at the trailhead who, for the most part, weren't familiar with the terrain to begin with. There was a shelf of rock on the side of the mountain, and it was striated with sharp-edged columns over ten feet high, stretching for several miles in each direction. It was as if the mountain had been shoved down by a giant hand with tremendous pressure until the top fifth of it broke and slipped to the side, exposing the wound. The striation was deceptive in its uniform geology, and its columns made stripes of dark shadows on the granite. The opening Diane looked out of could have been one of the vertical-striped shadows.

"See her?" Joe said over his shoulder to Nate.

"Yes."

She slowly shook her head from side to side. The sun gleamed off the tears streaming down her face.

Joe called, "We're here to take you home."

The woman drew back a few feet into the shadow of the opening.

After a few moments, she said, "I am am home." home."

He said, "Diane, the reason we're here is because your mom asked me to come. She misses you."

Joe wanted to persuade, to cajole, and not to threaten in any way. He couldn't bear the thought of forcing another result like what had happened with the brothers.

"We didn't want to hurt them," he said. "We did everything we could to talk them into coming down with us. Caleb and Camish forced the issue. In a way, they committed suicide."

Shober nodded. It wasn't news to her. Obviously, Joe thought, the brothers had indicated to her how things were likely to end if the first wave-Joe and Nate-wasn't turned back by the traps.

Behind Joe, the packhorse nickered. Up on top of the wall but out of sight, a horse called back, then another. The brothers had kept the horses ridden by the Michigan men and had picketed them up in the trees.

"If it's okay with you," Joe said, "we'll come on up there and get those horses and saddle them up for you. You can ride down with us."

Diane Shober stepped out of the cave opening. Her dark hair was tied into a ponytail. Her clothing was more formfitting than it had been before, and she looked younger than she had as Terri Wade, he thought.

She said, "What if I don't come with you?"

Said Joe, "Let's not find out. The truth is, this mountain will be crawling with law enforcement within the hour, I'd guess. We know where you are, and they'll find you. They might not be as sympathetic as us."

"Sympathetic?" Diane said, laughing bitterly. "Like you were sympathetic with Camish and Caleb there?"

Joe's voice held when he said, "They gave us no choice. You'll have to believe me when I tell you that. They must have decided they'd rather die up here than take their chances in court."

Diane nodded. "Yes," she said, "that's what they told me they might have to do."

"Then come with us," Nate said. "We'll do our best to protect you."

Again, Diane laughed. It was a high, plaintive laugh. "You think you can protect me, do you? From the government? From the press? From my father and the kind of people he works with?"

Joe said nothing.

Diane said, "Have things changed, then? Can we be free people again? Is that what you're saying?"

Nate said, "I know people who could help you. You aren't the only one who's gone underground."

Diane studied Nate for a long time, as if trying to make up her mind about something. Finally, she withdrew back into the cave. Joe waited without moving for five minutes, then turned to look at Nate. Nate looked back at him as if he were thinking the same thing.

"d.a.m.n," Joe said, and quickly tied his horse to a stump. Nate did the same. They ran up the slope, breathing hard.

Joe threw himself through the opening. The sudden darkness made him blink. It took a moment for his eyes to begin to adjust. He and Nate stood in the entrance of a surprisingly large cavern. There were beds, a stove, handmade tables and chairs, fabric and hides on the interior walls. It smelled damp, but the food odors made it surprisingly comfortable. It reminded Joe of where Nate hid out, and he wondered how many others there were in the country in hiding. How many people had gone underground, as Nate said?

On the table was a knife.

Diane Shober looked up from where she was packing items into a large duffel bag. "What, did you think-I wasn't coming out?"

Joe said, "I'm sorry. I couldn't live with the prospect of more blood on my hands."

AS THEY RODE DOWN the mountain, Joe said to Diane, "I'm glad you're coming down. I'll be eternally grateful you saved my life, but this isn't any way to live."

Her mouth was tight, and she stared straight ahead. When she talked, her lips hardly moved. "It's crude and lonely, I agree. Growing up, this is the last thing I would have wanted. But when I was running, I went a lot to Europe. I got to experience socialism firsthand. At first, it's seductive. Free health care, free college, all that. But nothing is free. And anything that's free has no value. Zero means zero. I saw it close-up. So yes, you're right. This is crude and dirty. But it's my choice. There's no one here to tell me what to do or how to think. The trade-off is worth it."

Joe had no response.

"Will my mom be down there?" Diane asked.

"I'm not sure."

She hesitated, asked, "My dad?"

"It's possible," Joe said. "But we're in a pretty remote location. It would be hard for them to get here so fast."

"If he tries to talk to me, I might have to kill him," she said, tears welling in her eyes.