Necessary Evil

Chapter 18

Once Jessie had composed herself, she left the shrapnel-shredded soldier to locate the body of the man she had shot. He had fallen just off the path, with his head buried in snow-covered brush. Pulling the head from the snow, she studied the man she had killed. His blue-gray eyes were open and looked large and dull, like those of cod on ice.

Clean-shaven, he appeared relatively fresh for a guy who had obviously been living in the bush. There was a single gold earring in his right earlobe bearing a cross emblazoned on a small round button. Oddly, he reminded her a little of her younger brother-about the same age and build. No identification except dog tags. He carried no wallet, but had a money clip just like Miller's.

Forty-five-caliber slugs were big and the bullets traveled slowly, working well with silencers. When the hefty slug had finally arrived at its target, it had done serious damage, hitting with fiercely destructive power. In this case, the talon bullet had missed the steel breastplate and struck the edge of the Kevlar at the arm hole. At least portions of the specially made slug had entered the body. The result sickened her. While not piercing the Kevlar, the other portion of the bullet had cratered the vest, pushing the material through the man's ribs and into his body. Undoubtedly the energy transferred to the chest cavity, stopping the heartbeat.

The bleeding had been heavy, but most was under the flak jacket beneath the down-filled arctic suit.

By the time she had donned the man's coat and body garment, most of the blood had coagulated and frozen. Since the clothes were much too large anyway, she pulled them on over her own coat and clothing, substantially increasing the amount of her insulation. Her revulsion at his bloody coat felt trivial compared to her relief from the encroaching cold.

In his pack she found power bars and hungrily she opened one. As she bit into the bar, she noticed a small piece of translucent tape running along the edge of the wrapper. Instantly she realized the possibilities. Her jaws froze in horror. If only she hadn't taken a bite before she noticed the tampering. Immediately she spat it all out, then rinsed her mouth with handfuls of powdery snow. She had swallowed nothing, she was sure. If there had been more time, these men probably would have used some method for invading the wrapper that was completely undetectable, like a fine needle or a syringe.

In training they had taught her about poisoned food, and she now realized it had been incredibly stupid to eat what was in the man's pack. Obviously they would have anticipated that food would be taken from corpses or the wounded.

Thinking calmly, she decided that some of the power bars must be free of poison. Three had tape on them; twelve others did not. Further, the three with tape had been stored within easy reach, in a pocket on the outside of the pack. That was about as far as she got with the logic before the first cramp hit. The convulsion in her gut made her throw up. What was left in her stomach came up. She felt clammy; her heart pounded, and her head throbbed. Her insides churning, she vomited again. Instinctively, she curled into a ball, wondering how quickly she would die. Maybe it's a virus, she thought, as she began to fade.

Probably the fittest seventy-two-year-old in California, maybe in the country, Stalking Bear hiked at a pace that was an honor even to the young man who followed him down the mountain. The men in the white suits had seen Jessie's track. Stalking Bear knew his grandson, Kier, was fighting. They were perhaps a quarter mile from the Bear's Cave trail in the thickest brush to be found. He made a great circle around Jessie's old trail. He studied her steps, read in the ground the story of her ruse.

He sensed where she'd be. A feeling came over him. Something was wrong.

After passing through an oak thicket and a stand of tall fir, he found the small cave.

"I must sleep," he told James Cole. "You go ahead down the mountain. Go to the reservation. I will come after."

James hesitated.

"You can help them best by continuing on," he reassured the young man.

James thought a moment longer, then turned and trotted down the mountain. Unrolling his bedroll, Grandfather sat straight-backed, closing his eyes.

In his dream, Grandfather walks on. After heading across the mountain, through the windfalls, past the cabin, and into the red fir, he sees her track again. It is just where he expects. He follows for many paces. She circles and comes back. Tirelessly, he follows. When the time is right, he looks down into the dying face of Jessie Mayfield. Urgently, he bends over her. She must drink. Nearby is a rivulet. Using all his energy, he watches her drag her body. He waits until she drinks deeply.

Grandfather gently touches her face. As his flesh presses hers, his spirit leaps within him.

He wondered at it as he awoke in his cave. He rose and followed the boy. He knew that he must return and try to save the Tilok people.

After swinging wide into the canyon to get below the men, Kier drew close to the rock wall, still moving downhill through the brush while working toward the hut. He expected that the men would be cautiously approaching his previous hiding spot on the ledge. By now the shooter on the far hillside would have alerted them. It wouldn't take long for them to find his trail in the snow.

Near the hut a large crease ran vertically across the rock wall. Kier pressed into it. Then, peering around the sharp edge in the granite face, he saw the shelter he and Jessie had built. It looked like a giant ice cream cone stashed in the rock, the door plug a small lump of white next to it. He saw no fresh tracks anywhere.

The men had obviously turned around before getting this far, no doubt to search the ledge where he was last seen. Kier laid a track to the mouth of the hut, dusted the snow off the plug, inserted it, then very carefully walked backward in his own footsteps until he reached the smooth, gray granite of the cliff. An experienced tracker would be able to detect what he had done, but a novice would not.

Quickly, he found a sheltered area under a tree with a reasonable view of the hut. And then, down a slight incline from his hiding spot, two men appeared, just barely visible. They had come much faster than he had expected, but these were the novices, not the stalker from the hillside. They looked to be thirty or forty feet from the hut entry, one of them talking on the radio. Where was the man who knew how to hunt? What was he thinking at this moment?

As if to egg Kier on, one of the men fired a long burst with his M-16 into the hut. Kier's trigger finger tightened, the shooter in his sights. But he didn't want to kill if it could be avoided.

"Drop your guns," he shouted at the men, who looked up, bewildered. A four-shot burst by Kier brought the men to their knees, guns thrown down.

He left them naked, huddled under the leaves in the hut, and burned their boots and clothes before their eyes. Next he destroyed their radios and rendered the rest of their equipment useless. It was better than a prison. Kier doubted the stalker would even bother to look for them, and if he did, they would do him no good without shoes and clothes.

Angling carefully up the side slope of the canyon away from the men, Kier found something that stopped him cold. Grandfather's track, headed down the mountain. So that was how James Cole got away.

Kier crossed their tracks and continued on. He picked up Jessie's trail about a mile farther along the ridge from Bear's Cave, and he began following it, relieved that the stalker had not yet arrived. Jessie had made a giant circle. He smiled. With a glance, he saw her first false side trail, but knew it was a dead end by the way she had backed out. It would fool the inexperienced. He found a more recent side trail that could be easily missed. She had jumped from the main trail to the base of a tree as he taught her. A cursory glance would reveal only the dislodged snow that had fallen from its branches.

Seconds later, Kier found a track through the trees. After twenty feet, she had stood still. A shell's dull brass finish caught his eye. She had fired the gun.

Tracing the general direction of her shot by the angle of her toe, he studied the terrain. She had run to a fallen tree. He could see where she had crawled.

Looking up, he saw that bullets had ripped through the woods. His heart pounded. A grenade or mortar had exploded. She had hid behind the log, then crawled again… his eye followed. Quickly, he moved down the track.

A great sigh of relief escaped his lips when he came upon a man who had apparently been blown to pieces by a grenade. She got him. But where'd she go? He found the berm, then followed her track to the first shooting spot, then into the woods. Oh, God, there was another body-a man, sprawled, partially stripped. Kier's eyes took in the food wrapper, the vomit, the partially eaten bar, and the spot where she had spat in the snow. Drag marks. She had crawled.

He found Jessie lying in a fetal position with her face next to a barely flowing stream. Her tousled hair fanned from under the helmet. When Kier saw the blood over her stolen white coat, his soul seemed to shrink. A moan escaped his lips. He rolled her into his arms and cradled her head. He pressed her neck.

A pulse. Her chest rose in shallow breaths. Frantically, he tore at her clothes, exposing her body. The delicate white skin bore no marks that he could see.

She was still alive because she had ingested only a minute quantity of the poison. Judging from her distended belly, she had thought enough to drink lots of water. He redid her clothes to keep her warm.

Certain he had too little time, he cast about for a more secluded spot, placed Jessie over his shoulder, and crashed into the brash, making no effort to be quiet. Scrambling over two large logs, he forced his way through a thicket of branches, crashed them to the ground, and cleared a small area surrounded by windfallen trees and brash. Returning to the dead man, he obliterated the evidence of the poison, then moved the man's body a hundred yards down the trail. The man who hunted him would easily find them, but the heavy brash would make it difficult to approach in complete silence, and the soldier's body would provide a momentary distraction.

When Kier returned, she was leaning against the log where he had left her.

"Bathroom." She tried to rise.

"Okay."

Kier moved her through the heavy brash to a spot twenty feet away. He found a foot-high log to sit her on with a smaller six-inch log suspended in the brash pile over which he could drape her elbows. It was what nature had to offer in the way of a convalescent toilet. Using mittened hands, he cleaned the snow off both logs.

She groaned. He lifted her eyelids. She looked barely conscious. Gently, he shook her. Nothing. He shook her again- vigorously this time. With a flutter she half opened her eyes, seemingly more aware of her surroundings. Putting his ear to her belly, he heard bowel sounds and knew that what was coming would not be pleasant.

"Bathroom," she muttered again, made more alert by her discomfort. "Get out of here."

Her fingers began straggling with her coat. Without saying anything, Kier unzipped it. He took the large overcoat off long enough to strip down the arctic overalls underneath, then put the coat back on her for warmth. When he began to unbutton her jeans, her hand grabbed his.

"Get out of here," she said again, her voice hard.

Kier stepped back. "You can do this?" he asked even as her body seemed to wobble on the log.

"Get out of here," she repeated evenly. "I'll do this myself, or die trying."

Then, as if the effort of asserting herself was too much, she began to slump forward. Kier jumped and grabbed her. Maneuvering behind her, he reached around and stripped down her pants. When she tried again to grab for his hands, he put them back on the small log.

"I don't like this any better than you do. Stop struggling and let's do the best we can," Kier said, hot with embarrassment. "Just go." His large hands supported her thighs with her knees draped over the log. ''Come on, come on, push, push, push. It's poison. Let's get it out."

Somehow, he thought, if he made it seem like some kind of weird athletic event it might be less horrible for her. Her humiliation made a lump in his throat.

"I'm going to hate you forever for this," she said through clenched teeth.

Then she evacuated her bowels and peed for more than a minute.

"I thought I had already earned that distinction," Kier replied, grabbing toilet tissue from the dead man's pack.

"If you wipe my ass, I'll kill you."