Necessary Evil

Chapter 8

Jack Tillman regarded the old man and his wife silently. carothers read the little sign by the driveway. There was shiftiness to their eyes that Tillman couldn't trust. Tire tracks led into the forest, past the Carothers' snug little tin-roofed cabin. Tillman was almost certain that these tracks matched those that had come from the Donahue farm. Nobody was going to make it over the Elkhorn Pass now. At any moment Tillman half expected his men to tell him they had found the vehicle in the woods out back.

"Doc came by earlier," Mr. Carothers was saying when Doyle joined them.

When Doyle had come to Tillman from England, Tillman had made him second in command of the field people. More and more, though, Tillman felt tempted to promote him over Brennan. This red-haired Englishman embodied the no-holds-barred, kick-ass attitude that Tillman liked.

Like Tillman, Doyle was a big man. Together they towered over their reluctant hosts. With the addition of three of Tillman's other men, the two-room cabin was almost filled to capacity. Everybody stood away from the door, near the stove that dominated one wall.

Carothers apparently noticed Tillman's naturally dark complexion and asked if he was part Indian. Tillman took it as a compliment, feeling as he did that he was in touch with his primal self and therefore much fitter than many of his softer counterparts.

''Well, the National Guard is here on government business.'' Tillman eyed the frail man as an owl might study a mouse. "And we can't do our job unless we know the whereabouts of everybody in the valley. As I said, we found the Donahue place empty, but freshly so, like they'd left in a hurry. Two vehicles went in this direction, but only the truck, which was first to leave, kept going. The car may have turned around. I don't know for sure." He paused. "Coincidentally, there are tire tracks coming right into your place here-"

The door opened and Brennan stomped in. "We got 'em," Brennan said. "Just up the road, in the woods."

"Thank you for your cooperation," Tillman said on his way out the door to the old man.

The Donahue woman had driven the truck up an old logging skid trail well into the woods and had been working in the dark to obliterate her tire tracks when his men found her. She had a long way to go if she had intended to complete the job all the way back to the county road. Now Doyle had her in the cab with the kids.

Claudie Donahue struck Tillman as a handsome woman, even though ripely pregnant in a heavy overcoat and peering out from under her dowdy stocking cap. He spoke through the open driver's side window. At first he proceeded slowly, showing his fake I.D. and explaining his military status. He was careful to let her study his driver's license, and even showed her his dog tags. Oddly enough, he joked, he was General Grant of the National Guard, no relation to the Civil War hero. That her expression remained too impassive to read irritated him. Her cool skepticism cut him like a knife.

"Take the kids," he told Doyle finally. "I'll ride with Mrs. Donahue." He opened the door of the king cab truck.

"The kids stay with me." She said it calmly, but forcefully. "And where are we going?"

Tillman held up his hand, signaling Doyle to wait.

"Back to your house, ma'am. It's necessary."

"The kids can ride in back," she said.

"We need to talk, ma'am. Things that aren't for kids."

She hesitated, studying him. He supposed she was trying to decide whether he was really a general of the National Guard.

''I can get you out of here on a snowmobile if you cooperate."

Hope flickered in her eye. "Can we talk here?"

"Fine. Take the kids to the house," he told Doyle.

"Let's go, chaps," Doyle said with a big, friendly smile.

Getting in the cab beside her, Tillman spoke in conspiratorial tones. "We're searching for a downed plane, and we thought maybe you could help."

"Don't know anything about it." Her response was too careful.

"You heard nothing this afternoon?"

She hesitated.

"Of course, you did. Why are you afraid to talk?"

"I don't know what I heard. A boom. Later, I heard what sounded like guns, more explosions."

"Two vehicles left your driveway. You were driving one. Who was driving the other?"

"Frankly, I don't know."

"Who was staying with you? Come on, ma'am, we need your cooperation. We've got an emergency here."

"Why are you here?"

"That's classified, ma'am, for your own protection. Now, I'm the one asking the questions, and I need your help."

"My sister was staying with me."

"Who else?"

"No one else. But our friend, Dr. Kier Wintripp, was visiting."

"How do you know him?"

"He's been a friend of ours for years."

"This is an important government operation, ma'am; we know a lot. We just need you to confirm it. Tell me about your sister. Where's she from?"

"Back East."

"What's she do for a living?"

Again Claudie hesitated.

"Mrs. Donahue, I really need your help here. I don't have a file on your sister because she doesn't have a place near Mill Valley. Now, she could be in real danger… so please help me."

"She's with the FBI."

"A special agent with the FBI?"

"Yes." The woman sighed.

"Was she there when you heard these noises?"

"No. Later."

"Did she go investigate?"

"I don't know. She suggested I go to town before the snow got deeper."

"This is the vet's rig."

"We thought I could make it easier in the truck."

"Why didn't your sister come too?"

"She was going to stay and watch the place."

"Ma'am, forgive me, but I don't think you're being candid here, and I need your full cooperation."

"I've told you everything I know."

He was certain she was lying. An FBI agent would have gone to investigate. That would account for the second set of footprints. That left the third set of tracks at the wreckage. Any of the three could have the lab summaries.

"Ma'am, I'm going to insist that you be candid and tell me what you know. Right now! People's lives could be at stake."

She looked at him squarely, without fear. "I've said everything I have to say for the time being, and I want my kids back."

Glancing around to be sure everyone was still inside, he reached under the woman's cap and grabbed her long brown hair, yanking back her head. With his right hand, he clamped down on her neck. The instant after he did it, he knew that, right or wrong, he was committed to a course of action that must end in her death. Her hands went to his, trying to break the chokehold. She was strong, but not strong enough.

"Stop fighting me," he hissed, increasing the pressure.

He had to get his wits about him. From under his coat he pulled a black-handled knife and popped the blade. He put it to her neck.

"I'm not going to waste any more time on you. And before I start cutting you up, I'm going to kill the kids."

He heard himself speaking, but it was as if he were listening to a stranger.

She groaned an animal groan: "No."

"If you don't talk…"

"Noooo."

"… and talk fast, I'm going for the oldest. I'll bring him out here and slice his throat while you watch."

"What do you want?" came her hoarse whisper.

''I want to know exactly what happened, and if I think you're lying, I kill the kid."

"Kier went looking for Jessie in the storm. While they were gone there was an explosion. It was at one-thirty or so, maybe a little earlier. They didn't come back. There was another large explosion, then shooting, then more explosions. Far away. Finally she came back. She was frightened. She told me to leave. She wouldn't explain or come near, insisting that she remain outside. Just an epidemic or a disease or something she said Kier had found. She begged me, so I went. She said to head for Johnson City and avoid strangers. That's all."

Tillman could feel her submission. It felt good-like victory. He realized that he was breathing hard. The colors in the cab had become more vivid. Confidence filled him. He put a hand on her belly. She stiffened.

''If you don't cause me any trouble you may yet have another child."

He felt an unaccustomed urge to continue touching her body. The new clarity of thought that now possessed him enabled him to see that his power over her was for the good of the whole project. His hand moved to her breast, and he studied her face as he felt it. It was not the hefty breast that impressed him, but his power to incite her loathing.

"I will take you to Johnson City. If you tell a soul of our little talk, I will kill you."

Watching her face, he knew this woman was too strong to believe that he might let her live. She would not anesthetize herself with false hope, like some. He could have saved his breath.

He radioed Brennan. For what he was about to do, Brennan was the right man.

"Get the snowmobile and follow me."

Tillman laid the back of his hand against her cheek, experimenting. It satisfied him that she did not pull away, even though he knew her body shook with the desire to escape. Her fear mingled with hate was a form of respect that he had come to cherish.

When Brennan's snowmobile pulled behind him and the kids were in the small jump seats in the back of the oversize cab, he told Doyle to take the other men and go on ahead to the Donahue ranch.

Other than the occasional quiver of her lip, Claudie looked almost normal as she drove. Mothers always tried to keep up appearances for the kids. It was a shame these boys weren't younger. If he could have saved them without them having any troublesome memories, he would. He didn't kill kids when it wasn't necessary.

"Mom, Bren keeps poking me and won't quit," Micah said from the back.

"You boys hush."

He could tell by the way her eyes darted that she was thinking. A strong woman like this would be grasping at any straw.

"Stop the truck."

An uneasy silence fell all around. Reaching under his coat, Tillman pulled out a grenade, holding it low so the boys wouldn't see it. "You know what this is?"

She looked down at his hand and nodded. He pulled the pin and held it on the seat.

''If I let go of this lever, you know what happens?'' Again she nodded, saying nothing.

"Don't even think about driving off the road. If I relax my hand, this cab becomes an inferno."

She nodded again.

The boys were quiet now. Tillman figured that like all mammals they were alert to the presence of danger, even if they didn't understand it. Idly, he wondered at all the things he could make their mother do. Her arms seemed locked in place, her hands frozen to the wheel. He studied the way she bit her lip. He was winning. He could smell the kill. Oddly, he found himself wishing he had time for sex. He shook it off.

"Please let them go. They won't understand…" It was starting, he knew. "They won't remember, they don't understand any of this."

''We're letting you all go. You have nothing to worry about."

Her mouth quivered and she began to sob.

"Please, please," she whispered, "not the boys… they're just little boys."

"Mommy, Mommy."

Just around the next bend, Tillman recalled that a sheer drop of over five hundred feet plunged to the river. Nothing could survive that spill. Taking his radio, he spoke to Brennan and told him to hold back. The lights from the snowmobile disappeared behind them in response.

They came to the bend.

"Stop," he said.

In her eyes he could see the knowledge of her own death and the terror at her children's. But shockingly she didn't stop. In an instant, he knew her thought. She wasn't going to let him win. He would die with them.

"Bastard," Claudie said as she drove for the edge.

Holding the grenade tight, Tillman opened the passenger door and pushed with everything he had. As the front wheels slipped over the edge, he reached for the ground, aware of the abyss ahead. His fingers, clawlike, grabbed a large rock at the drop off. He watched as the truck teetered. Then the engine roared. It was in reverse, and the rear tires were biting through the snow to the rocks. Far below the grenade exploded. A horror filled him as he realized she might drive away.

Tillman clambered to his feet, drawing his pistol even while considering whether to use another grenade. He had never searched the truck cab for guns. He had been stupid-careless. Aiming at the cab, ready to fire if the track were freed, he waited. He began walking in a wide arc toward the driver's side. As he moved, the outline of the truck was almost lost in the snow and darkness.

Tillman remembered nothing until Brennan bent over him.

"Where's the woman?" he said. Pain shot through his head. He felt his own hair matted with blood.

''I don't know. You've only been out for a few minutes, but I just got here. I haven't been to the truck."

With his head pulsing, Tillman rolled and looked toward the motionless vehicle. He could see nothing but the glow of the taillights. He struggled up, determination overcoming his pain, dizziness, and caution.

"Let's go." Then he paused. He had killed clever men and cunning animals. It was a mistake to let his anger drive him.

"You circle that way," he told Brennan.

"Why not just turn on the M-16s and be done with it?" Brennan asked.

"How do I explain a bullet-ridden vet's truck at the bottom of the canyon? If I'd wanted that, I'd have stuffed a grenade in the cab." He asked, "Did you hear the grenade explode down over the cliff?"

"Yeah, seven or eight minutes ago. I hung back like you said."

Tillman shook his head, trying to remember.

"There's no cover to approach the damn thing," Brennan said, nodding at the track. "I say we just unload an M-16 and be done with it."

"Nobody asked you."

In a matter of two minutes, Tillman had circled around and begun his approach. He went slowly, completely in control. As he got closer, he expected a trap.

But they found the track abandoned, its doors left ajar, and the snow gliding inside. All the footprints led to the cliff. Tillman followed the trail along the cliff until it abruptly ended. His captives and their rescuer had climbed over the edge to escape. In the beam of Brennan's flashlight, he looked for individual tracks, but the trail from the track along the cliff was stirred up as if they had gone back and forth. To sort it out and count prints would take time he didn't have. He looked down the face of the cliff, but could see no more than twenty or thirty feet in the dark. At the edge of the abyss where the tracks ended, he found no sign of a rope. Casting about, he found a heavy branch with a barely discernible rope burn. They had used a line and somehow pulled it down after themselves.

''It would take serious climbing gear to get down that cliff,'' Brennan said.

"Maybe somebody left pitons in that wall."

"I doubt it. And without gear it wouldn't be that easy to use them."

Obviously the truck's vet cabinets had made a hiding place. The person who hid in the compartments had circled behind Tillman, clubbed him, and led the family over the cliff.

Perhaps it had been the veterinarian. But then who had been in the other vehicle? He had no time to go down the cliff after them, and without equipment in a snowstorm, it would be extremely dangerous-probably impossible. Kier and the FBI woman were far more important to find. What were the odds that a woman and two kids could survive in this weather anyhow, much less on a cliff?

"They're dead or on their way to being dead," he said. "We'll send men back to make sure."

Returning to the truck, he yanked open the storage compartment doors and examined every space. Most of the storage areas were chockful of medical supplies and equipment. He found only one cavity possibly large enough for a man to hide in, but far too small for Kier Wintripp.

At the tailgate, Tillman shouted, "Push." He threw his chest against the truck. Brennan heaved as well, but the truck didn't budge. They began rocking it on the edge, until they felt it slip just an inch, then again. At last it groaned, slid forward, then plunged down over the cliff. The crashing sounds it made on the way down were smothered in the pillows of snow.

Normally a comfortable ally, the darkness now thwarted Tillman. He could not penetrate its murky depths, and the mysteries it enfolded were likely to multiply. He needed to improve his odds. At Elk Horn Pass on the road to Johnson City a cellular phone would enable a man to call anywhere in the world. He would dispatch someone on a snowmobile immediately. If only the weather cleared, even slightly, an infrared-equipped attack helicopter would perform wonders. With the thought of that power unleashed against one Indian and an FBI woman, Tillman's mental edge returned. With it came the realization that until now he had never met a hunter that was truly his equal. Even lacking the technology, given enough time, he would hunt and kill Kier Wintripp.

Stalking Bear stood on a ledge under a rock overhang that created a shallow cave. Claudie's two boys sat huddled beside him next to a coil of rope. From above came the sound of the truck grating on the edge of the rock. After a moment the scraping of metal ceased, and for a couple of seconds there was silence. Then a crashing noise ended in a muffled thud far below.

He listened for Claudie's screams, but heard none. He had gambled her life on the assumption that the men would be in a hurry and would be distracted. They would be searching the ground for tracks and staring over the edge of the cliff.

Using a rope he had pulled her up the tree next to the truck to the first branches. From there she could climb to over forty feet above the ground, hidden in the pitch black of the heavy boughs. By laying a clear path that dead-ended along the abyss, Stalking Bear hoped to distract the men from Claudie's hiding place. To lower themselves they had passed a rope around a tree leaving two strands dangling. Once safely on the ledge, they had pulled in one end, snaking the rope back around the tree and down over the cliff.

Even if the men didn't find Claudie, he questioned whether she could climb out of the tree. He waited perhaps an hour before he began searching the face of the rock with his hands. Climbing the cliff unassisted would be difficult, but not impossible. The two boys huddled together and he suspected they were cold. He considered how he might ascend, then felt one last time and discovered what he was looking for-there was a line dangling from above.

Two tugs on the line were answered by two tugs from atop the cliff. Claudie had made her way out of the tree and was signaling her success by dropping the rope to him. Fastening his rope to the one hanging above, he and the boys continued down the cliff to a treacherous but passable trail. Claudie traveled by a different route to a cave near the bottom of the canyon far below them where they were all reunited.

Knowing their pursuers would send more men, Stalking Bear led them to a cave three miles distant and there built them a camp.