Blood trail

11

IN THE opaque blue light of the full moon, Joe saw what Lothar meant when he said it all comes out at night. Joe stayed back, giving Lothar room to work, nervously rubbing the stock of his shotgun with his thumb, watching the master tracker work while keeping his ears pricked to sound and peering into the shadows of the forest for errant movement.

Lothar started at the single good boot print they'd found earlier. As the moonlight fell on the short grass it created shadows and indentures that couldn't be seen in the day. Using a slim flashlight held inches above and parallel to the ground, they could detect more now-visible footprints going up the hill toward the knoll. Lothar placed the tip of the tracking stick on the depression where the ball of the shooter's foot had pressed into the grass, and telescoped out the instrument to the ball of the second. With a twist of his wrist, he locked the tracking stick into the exact length of the shooter's stride.

"Thirty inches," Lothar whispered to Joe. "He has a normal stride for a man in good shape. At that rate, even weighted down with a weapon and a light pack, we can expect him to travel at a normal pace of a hundred and six steps per minute, four to eight miles a day. A healthy and well-fed man can sustain this pace for four days."

Joe nodded.

"We'll use moonlight as long as we can," Lothar said, twisting the flashlight off. "We can see his footprints in the moonlight-"

"Which amazes me," Joe said.

Lothar grinned. "It's all about the ambient light. It strikes at a different angle and in a different way and it brings the shadows and depressions of a footprint out of the ground. It gives the ground a whole different texture. And now that we know the shooter's stride length, if we lose the track-like if he was walking on solid rock or something-we can estimate where he should have stepped and maybe find a dislodged stick or a mud transfer or something."

"Since we've got his track, why aren't we using the dogs?" Joe asked.

"Too loud," Lothar said, shaking his head. "Dogs might run him down, but of course he'd know we were behind them. This way, if we're able to find him purely on our own, we might catch him totally by surprise." THERE WAS nothing left behind in the knoll they could see with the red flashlight lenses, no spent rifle cartridges, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, or definitive markings to reveal the shooter's height or weight. But Lothar had no doubt this was where the shot was fired by the way the grass was still pressed down in places and the clear view it afforded of the granite outcropping where Frank Urman was hit. They picked up the track as they cleared the top of the ridge, and in the moonlight it was so obvious even Joe could see it with his naked eye. Only once did Lothar need to use the flashlight and his tracking stick to find it again.

They followed the boot prints for half an hour as the moon rose. Because they were not using artificial light, Joe's eyes adjusted and he found himself able to see well by moon and starlight.

"There's something I don't get," Lothar whispered to Joe. "I get the feeling he came here the first time taking every possible precaution because I simply don't see his tracks on the way in or out, but that when he came back the second time he was sloppy and careless, just trucking along. What made him drop his guard?"

Joe shrugged. He was wondering the same thing.

"I like it," Lothar said, patting his weapon. "If he's become sloppy, we have a better chance of taking him down."

"That's what you want to do?" Joe asked. "Take him down? How about we try to arrest him first?"

Lothar snorted. "Do you think he'll let us?"

"I say we try."

Lothar grinned wolfishly. "I say we light him up and smoke his ass." IT WAS difficult to walk without making any sound, Joe found. There was too much downed, dried timber and finger-thick branches that snapped when stepped on. Joe felt remarkably uncoordinated, and it seemed like he made twice as much noise as Lothar, who had a way of walking deliberately and silently by leading heel first and shifting his weight forward into each step. Joe tried to mimic the technique, stepped on an errant twig, whispered, "Sorry!"

Lothar stopped in the shadows, and Joe could tell by the angle of the tracker's head and the set of his shoulders he was about to receive another lesson in the art of man tracking.

"You've got to be quieter," Lothar said in an urgent whisper.

"I'm trying," Joe said.

"If he hears us he could set up an ambush."

"I know that."

"If we can maintain silence we might hear him first."

"You don't need to tell me that," Joe hissed back.

"Sound travels at a speed of seven hundred and twenty miles per hour, or about eleven hundred feet per second. The forest will slow that down a little, but if we hear something we can estimate distance. And if we see a flash of light like from a headlamp or flashlight, we can use sound and light to determine how to close in on him."

"So we can light him up and smoke his ass," Joe said with sarcasm.

"That would be correct. So step lightly." WHILE THEY moved through the dark timber, Joe recalled his call to Marybeth. When he told her about seeing Earl Alden's jet land at the airport and Alden being greeted by her mother, there was a long silence until Marybeth sighed and said, "Here we go again."

When Marybeth asked when he'd be back, Joe said, "Early tomorrow," with a kind of heavy sigh he hoped would mislead her into thinking his assignment was benign. As usual, it didn't work. Under sharp questioning, he told her what had gone on, from seeing Klamath Moore and his throng at the airport to Randy Pope going back to town, leaving Joe up there with Conway, Robey, and Lothar the Master Tracker.

"There are so many things wrong in what you just told me," she said, "I don't know where to start."

"I know," he said sourly.

"What is Randy Pope up to?"

"I don't know."

"I wish you could just come home."

"Me too," Joe said. "I operate best on the margins, not in the middle of a team."

"Having Nate around hasn't hurt either," she said.

"True."

"Joe, be careful. Something about this doesn't sound right."

Joe agreed, and asked her to contact Sheriff McLanahan's office or Phil Kiner and request backup, whether Robey said he needed it or not. NOW, AS HE shadowed Lothar through the shafts of moonlight in the trees, he wondered whether the shooter was just as aware of them as they were of him. Given the skill and experience the killer had shown (at least on his initial stalk and kill of Frank Urman), Joe didn't doubt the shooter was fully capable of making a stand and possibly even leading his pursuers into a trap. Maybe, Joe thought, the shooter's sloppiness was deliberate in order to make his tracks easy to follow. To lure them in. And despite Lothar's bold talk, Joe had no idea how the tracker would really react in a situation, whether he'd stand and fight or panic.

Joe wished he'd spent more time with Sheridan and Lucy that morning, wished he'd made love to Marybeth rather than inventorying his gear for the fourth time. Wished he wasn't on a dark mountainside with a man he didn't trust tracking a killer he couldn't fathom. "WANT A piece of jerky?" Robey asked Wally Conway in Joe's pickup.

"No thanks," Conway said. "I don't think I could eat anything right now."

"I'm just the opposite," Robey said. "I can't stop."

"I guess people react to fear in different ways," Conway said.

The moon had risen over the treetops and was bathing the top of the pines and the mountain meadows in a ghostly blue-white. Although it was getting colder, Robey hadn't yet turned on the engine. He kept his window a quarter open as well, so he could hear shouts or shots if there were any. The truck radio was set to a channel Joe fixed for the handheld he had taken with him two hours before. There hadn't been a report from Joe and Lothar since they walked down the saddle slope. Lothar had told Robey not to expect one until they decided to head back. Lothar also asked him to try not to call them and break radio silence unless it was an emergency.

The longer it went, the more excruciating the wait became for Robey. He wanted to be home in his leather recliner watching television with a fire in the fireplace. He did not want to be in a freezing pickup in the dark with a friend of Randy Pope's whom he didn't know.

Finally, Robey said, "Wally, since it looks like we'll be here awhile, can I ask you a question?"

He could see Conway smile in the dark, see the flash of teeth. "Sure."

"Why are you here?"

Conway chuckled. "I was wondering that myself. I kind of feel like I've been thrust upon you guys, and it's an uncomfortable place to be, let me tell you."

Robey appreciated Conway's candor. He wondered how far it would go. "How long have you known Randy Pope, then?"

"It seems like forever," Conway said. "Jeez… thirty years, I guess, although that's hard to believe. Growing up, I never thought I'd know anybody thirty years. I met Randy at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Heck, we were in the same fraternity and then we hunted together for years after that. I'd like to say we kept in touch but you know how guys are. I wouldn't hear from him for five years but I'd see him at a Cowboys game or something and we'd pick up the conversation we were having the last time we talked. That sort of thing drives my wife crazy, you know. She thinks men don't know how to be friends properly, and I think we do it exactly right. Why talk when you have nothing to say? I suspect it drives most women crazy, the way men do that."

Robey said, "So you haven't talked to him for a few years?"

Conway shook his head. "Nope, but like I say, that isn't all that unusual."

"What did he do-just give you a call this morning and say, 'I'm in the area, let's go on a manhunt'?"

Conway chuckled again. "That's not too far from what happened."

"I can't believe you came."

"I guess I didn't know all the circumstances," Conway said. "I thought it might be a chance to catch up with Randy, you know? But he's a busy man now that he's the director of the game and fish department. Today, he spent almost the whole time on his phone. But I'd like to do my part to catch the bad guy as much as anyone else. We can't have someone like that around."

"Nope."

"So you've known Joe Pickett for a while, eh?"

Robey nodded. "Yes. We fish together. There's no greater friendship."

"Did you know the game warden before Joe? Vern Dunnegan?" Conway asked. "He was quite a character."

"I knew him," Robey said without enthusiasm.

"He was a throwback. He kind of made his own law, if you know what I mean."

"That's one way to put it," Robey said. "That's why he's still in the Wyoming state pen."

Years before, Vern Dunnegan had retired as a game warden for the state and came back to Twelve Sleep County as the landman for a natural gas pipeline company. He used his relationship with local landowners and politicians to secure a right-of-way through the mountains but involved others-including some of Joe's friends-to eliminate a population of endangered species in the way. The crime spiraled out of control and resulted in murder and the attempted murder of Marybeth. Dunnegan was convicted and sent to prison. Joe shot him in the butt with a shotgun, and word was Dunnegan still had a pronounced limp.

"I know about that," Conway said. "But the man did right by me, and I'll always owe him for that."

Robey turned in his seat, confused.

Conway said, "We live here for the quality of life-to be able to go into the mountains to hunt and fish or just think restful thoughts. To think there's somebody up here assassinating innocent men-especially friends of mine-angers me to my core. Vern did us all a good turn once that allowed us to get on with our lives. I'm happy to do what I can to help."

Robey looked out over the darkened mountain landscape, noted the moon had risen a few more inches, then turned to Conway.

"What do you mean, friends of yours?"

Conway looked quizzically at Robey. "You mean Randy didn't tell you?" I AM UPSET that my target is not at the crime scene and feel that I may have not only wasted my time but exposed myself unnecessarily. Aren't they supposed to be up here? Aren't they supposed to be investigating the killing?

I've chosen not to use the knoll again. It would be too obvious and risky because they're probably watching it. So I settle in farther up the ridge, behind some weathered rocks that provide both shelter and a place to take aim. When my breathing calms down from the long trek I let my eyes get used to the dark and peer through the scope of my rifle. Like all good-quality scopes, it gathers more light than the naked eye and I can see down the slope to where I hung Frank Urman in the trees. The band of light-colored material is crime-scene tape, I realize, and for a moment I expect to see my target within the perimeter. But he isn't there. No one is there. I fight the building rage that has formed in my chest and pushed upward into my throat. I've taken a chance I shouldn't have taken. For nothing.

But I think I hear talking. It is low, more of a muffled murmur than actual words. Sound carries up here, and the distance of origin can be deceptive. I lean down hard on the scope, sweeping it slowly through the trees, trying to find the source. The wind shifts almost imperceptibly and I realize the voices are coming not from the trees or meadow but from above them.

I slowly climb the hillside with my scope until I can make out the outline of a pickup truck. I can't see it so much as make out its blocky outline against the star-splashed horizon. Only one vehicle, which seems odd since there were at least four men at the airport. Where has the other vehicle gone?

Despite training the crosshairs of my scope on the windshield for what seems like half an hour, I can make out nothing, and no one, inside. If they are in there, and I'm sure they are because I hear voices, they are talking in the dark. I consider a blind shot but decide against it. I don't do things blind. I strategize, I plan, then I act. I don't just fire away if I don't know who I'm shooting at. It's the first ethos of hunting: know what you're aiming at.

Sooner or later, someone from inside the pickup will open a door and trigger the dome light and I will see who is inside. Or turn on a light to look at a map.

But I can't wait all night. I'll be missed. This has to be done soon or I'll have to abort and go back. But after taking this risk and having this opportunity, I don't want to simply leave. I can't just leave.

Ayman al-Zawahiri of al-Qaeda, whom I've studied, perfected a strategy he used for maximum casualties. In Nairobi, Kenya, he set off two bombs timed a minute or so apart in front of the American Embassy. The first bomb created minimal damage but the surprise and impact of it outside on the street made scores of people inside the embassy building rush to the windows to see what had just happened. When the second bomb went off, hundreds were killed or severely wounded by the shattered windows they had just exposed themselves to. He justified the action by saying that although he was sacrificing civilians and fellow Muslims, it was still for the greater good because it effectively unleashed more terror on the infidels.

It was a lesson learned.

And one to be applied. THE FOREST had closed in and darkened around Joe and Lothar and they moved silently under the narrow canopy. They were on a game trail through the heavy brush. Lothar kept nodding, as if saying, yes, yes, yes, we're getting closer. Ahead of them, through the dark timber, Joe could both see and sense an opening lit by moonlight. Before breaking through the brush into the meadow, Lothar stopped and looked over his shoulder at Joe, his eyes wide and excited.

"What?" Joe mouthed.

Without speaking, Lothar pointed just ahead of him at a space between two branches that opened into the meadow. At first, Joe couldn't tell what Lothar was trying to show him.

Not until Joe crouched a bit and saw how the moon lit up the broken thread-thin strands of a spider's web did he understand what Lothar was telling him. The strands undulated in the near-perfect stillness like algae in a stream. Which meant that there had been a web across the game trail that had been broken through just moments before. Joe felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and an involuntary chill swept through him that threatened to make his teeth chatter.

In the timber on the other side of the small meadow a twig snapped.

They were on him.

Lothar nodded his head and gestured toward the black stand of pine trees on the other side of the meadow while unslinging his automatic rifle. Lothar used the barrel of his weapon to indicate to Joe that he should move to the left. Using Lothar's heel-first technique in the soft loam, Joe managed to distance himself about twenty feet without stepping on a branch or knocking his hat off in the heavy brush. As he moved he thumbed the safety off his shotgun and peered into the dark wall of trees, willing himself to see better.

The sharp voice came so suddenly he nearly dropped his shotgun.

"Drop your wapon! Drop it! Throw it out where I can see it!"

The man giving the command did so with authority that masked his exact position. Joe thought he heard a note of familiarity in the voice but couldn't place it.

"Throw it out. Now!"

"Okay," Lothar said. "Calm down, calm down."

"Is there anyone with you?" the voice asked.

Joe thought, He doesn't know I'm here. Would Lothar give him away?

"I'm coming out," Lothar said, stepping from the brush into the meadow, the moon bathing him in shadowed blue. He held his AR- 15 loosely at his side. Joe could see Lothar's face in the moonlight. He was grinning.

What was Lothar doing? Why didn't he identify himself as an officer of the law? Should I, Joe asked himself, and give away my position?

"I said drop it!" the voice bellowed, and Joe detected a note of panic. He also realized where he'd heard the voice before.

Joe shouted, "Lothar, no…"

But before Joe could finish, Lothar howled a piercing rebel yell and leaned back and swung his weapon up, pulling the trigger as he did so, the automatic fire ripping the fabric of the night wide open, the muzzle flashes strobing the trunks of the trees.

"No!" Joe screamed, his voice drowned out by Lothar's AR-15 and by the single, deep-throated bark of a hunting rifle from the trees. Lothar's head snapped forward from a single high-powered bullet that hit him in the throat above his body armor and he was thrown back, his weapon firing straight up into the night sky until it jumped out of his dead hand.

Joe kicked his legs back and let himself drop heavily to the ground, his shotgun out in front of him. The muzzle flashes of Lothar's weapon were seared blue-green into his vision in a pyrotechnic afterimage and he could see nothing, and the racketing automatic fire had made his ears ring. For good measure, he rolled to his left, hoping there would be no more shots.

"It's Joe Pickett!" he yelled out. "Hold your fire!"

From the shadows, Chris Urman, Frank's nephew, said, "Oh my God."

"I'm putting down my weapon," Joe called, peering down the barrel.

"Oh no," Urman said. "Oh no. Who did I just hit? What have I done? "

Urman's hunting rifle sailed out of the wall of pines, catching a glint of moonlight. Urman followed, holding his face in his hands. A full automatic weapon, at least a mile behind me, deep in the forest. What can that possibly be about? All I know is that some kind of mistake has been made, some kind of foul-up. And not by me. This is why they should never be allowed to leave the cities, where they belong, and come up here.

But in chaos, there is opportunity for the one who keeps his head.

Now I know why there are only two in the pickup truck on the horizon; it's because the others have been tracking me. I wonder if the men in the truck heard the gunshots as well? If so, I prepare myself and ease the safety off my rifle with my thumb… "DID YOU hear that?" Robey said, sitting up straight. He'd spent the last ten minutes trying to reconcile and process what Conway had told him about Randy Pope, about the other victims. Everything he had thought about the crimes had turned out to be potentially wrong, as if the foundation he'd relied upon was not only crumbling away but had been blown to bits. The information was explosive, so much so that Robey had briefly considered calling Joe with it, urging him to come back to the truck so he could tell him the world as they both knew it had suddenly changed. The only reason he didn't was concern for Joe's safety if Robey broke radio silence at the wrong time.

"I heard something," Conway said.

Robey said, "It sounded like automatic fire. Lothar has an AR-15, so it was probably him."

"Maybe they found our man," Conway said with gravity.

"God, I hope so," Robey said. "I hope they call in to tell us what's going on."

There was a pause as both men stared at the radio under the dash, at the softly glowing light of the channel.

"Talk to me, Joe," Robey whispered.

"Should we call him?" Conway asked.

"We'll give it a couple of minutes. I'd rather they call us so we know whatever happened is over."

"What if they don't?"

"I don't know," Robey said, feeling a line of sweat break across his upper lip like an unwanted mustache. "JESUS, WHO IS THIS GUY?" Urman said to Joe. "Why didn't he identify himself? He scared the shit out of me, and then he started blasting-"

"His name is Buck Lothar," Joe said, pulling himself to his feet as the realization of what had just happened hit him. He ran to where Lothar was splayed out in the grass. No pulse, just involuntary twitching of his arms and legs. Blood flowed through the dry grass under his body, smelling hot and sharp.

"He was hired by the governor to track the man who shot your uncle," Joe said.

"Ah, man," Urman cried, dropping to his knees before Lothar's body. "I'm so sorry. Is there anything we can do? CPR or something?"

"I don't know," Joe said.

Urman bent over and struck Lothar's chest with his fist. The body bounced. "Anything?" he asked.

Joe shook his head.

Urman hit Lothar again and again, so hard Joe thought he heard the dull snap of a rib.

"That's enough," Joe said. "He's gone."

Urman sat back, his face so pale it was the same blue-white shade of the moon and stars. "I killed a man," Urman said.

"It was self-defense," Joe said. "I'll back you up on that one all the way."

"Jesus," Urman said, his eyes glinting with tears. "All that time in Iraq and I never killed anyone…"

"And all this time," Joe said, his stomach turning sour, "we were following you." THE FRONT of the pickup Robey and Conway were in bucked slightly and a sharp crack snapped through the night. Robey reacted instinctively by grabbing the steering wheel with both hands.

"What was that?" Conway asked, his voice high. "A stray bullet?"

"I don't know," Robey said. "Listen…"

He could hear a hissing sound outside and felt the truck begin to list to the side. "I'm going to see what happened," he said, reaching for the door handle. I SEE the dome light come on inside the pickup, illuminating the two men inside. I'm confused momentarily. I don't recognize them at first. Then I do. The one on the driver's side was in the airport today with the game warden and Randy Pope waiting for a passenger on the plane. The other at first confounds me because I didn't expect him here, never saw it coming.

I can't believe my good fortune. It's as if he was delivered to me, presented as a gift. He was the least guilty of them, but guilty all the same.

I quickly work the bolt action and chamber another round. The acrid but sweet smell of gunpowder haloes my head from the first shot. I make a mental note to retrieve the spent brass before I leave.

The pickup door opens and the man I don't know gets out. He walks to the front of the truck, squats down to look at the tire I shot as it flattens. As I thought, the action drew him out.

I clearly hear the man squatting by the tire say, "Come look at this," and see my prey reach for his door handle and I thank my good fortune once again and know my plan has worked. I put the crosshairs in the center of the target's chest and squeeze the trigger. An instant before the shot bucks the rifle upward, I see the other man unexpectedly stand up in the line of fire, but it's too late to stop…

Chris Urman was explaining to Joe that he'd returned to the crime scene to track the killer on his own, that he'd been "less than impressed" with the sheriff and his ability to pursue his uncle's killer in a timely fashion, that he'd participated in enough night patrols in the Anbar Province to follow a track and keep his cool, when they heard the shot.

"What was that?" Urman asked.

"It came from back at the truck," Joe said, fighting a feeling of cold dread. He knew it wasn't Robey trying to signal him because he would have used the radio. It was someone else. It was Frank Urman's killer.

Joe snatched the radio from his belt as two more quick shots rolled through the mountains. I'M OUT of breath from running down the saddle slope and up the other side to the pickup. The night is cold and still. The only sound I hear is from my hard breathing.

As I jam the poker chip into my prey's gaping mouth I hear the radio inside the truck come to life.

"Robey? This is Joe. Is everything all right?"

No, Joe, it isn't.

I have a decision to make. I had much more planned for my target but this may have to do for now.

"Robey, can you hear me?"

I have the urge to pick up the mike and tell him Robey can't hear him, but I don't.

And I hear the sound of a motor, another vehicle grinding up the road from the direction of town. I see a splash of headlights in the trees less than a mile away, hear an engine downshift.

As I step over the other body, apparently a man named Robey who had the bad luck to step in front of my first shot, I hear the radio again, the voice on the other end more urgent.

"Robey, this is Joe. Talk to me, Robey. Please talk to me…"

I bend down and place my gloved hand on Robey's face and gently push his eyelids closed. I ask God to forgive me. This man did nothing to deserve this, and I truly am sorry.