Spider mountain

5

On Saturday morning, I found myself working harder than I’d expected, paddling a large aluminum canoe across Crown Lake. The shepherds were onboard, curled up one in front and one behind me among all the gear. I’d left a note back in the cabin in case Sheriff Hayes came looking for me. It said simply that I was going camping for the weekend and would be back Monday midday. I’d toyed with the idea of telling Mary Ellen Goode, but then decided against it. However reluctantly, I knew it was time to begin separating myself from her life, which was a pity, because I really did like her. But if she did not have the internal fortitude to cope with the kinds of things that seemed to erupt in my wake from time to time, Ranger Bob might yet prove his theory about persistence.

The lake was gorgeous, and I now understood its name. It was an impoundment for the TVA, as were some of the other big lakes in western North Carolina, which meant it wandered around the hills and mountains for many miles following the course of a long-drowned river. There were even some islands, the tops of submerged hills, still covered with trees. The Park Service map showed where the long-lost roads and villages had been submerged back in the thirties and forties when the dams were built to send electricity to the power-ravenous atomic bomb project at Oak Ridge.

I’d arranged for Moses Walsh to drive me, the boat, and my gear to one of the overlooks on the national park side of Crown Lake, and to retrieve me again Monday at noon. I’d told him to wait an additional two hours if I was late, but not to worry about declaring me missing if I didn’t show up. I did ask Tony back in Triboro to alert Sheriff Hayes’s office if I hadn’t called in by Monday at 8:00 P.M.

Mose had offered to guide until I’d told him I was going into Robbins County. “You’re retired,” he said. “You don’t do death-wish stuff once you’ve closed out of the Job.”

“I’m just going for a little look-see,” I told him. “The real cops are all wrapped around the axle with probable cause, warrants, etc. You were in homicide-you know how it is.”

He’d grinned at me as he realized I’d checked him out. “There’s a reason we have all that constitutional stuff in place,” he’d said.

“Right, of course there is.”

“No, I’m talking the selfish reason: By jumping through all the hoops, you make sure the excitement is going to be worth the risk. I don’t believe you appreciate the danger, my friend.”

I’d thanked him for his concern and admitted that he was probably right, but the truth was, I often didn’t appreciate the danger, if only because danger seemed to grow in the telling of it.

I had a rifle, a telescope, a handheld GPS unit, head-mounted night vision gear, and minimal camping equipment. If the local fire service maps were correct, there was a straight eight-mile shot across the face of Rockslide Mountain via fire lanes to the eastern front of Book Mountain, below which the GPS coordinates of Grinny’s cabin were centered. My plan was to set up a small camp on one of the offshore islands, rest this afternoon, go in by night, set up my hide, watch all day Sunday to see what went on around the cabin and the other buildings, and then go back out Sunday night.

I awoke at just after sundown and stretched on the air mattress. My left arm was still sore from the fight the other night. The shepherds were curled up in the pine needles but opened their eyes when I moved. It was getting cooler, and there was already a pale full moon rising over the lake. I got up, washed my face, and fed the dogs. The moon was painting a wide path of light on the still waters of the lake. I lit the Primus stove and heated up one of the MREs provided by Mose. I made sure that neither my camp nor the tiny flame was visible from the shore in the direction of Book Mountain. I doubted that Grinny kept permanent sentinels out on the hills and ridges, but I didn’t want to attract attention in case I was wrong about that. The hills above the lake were getting darker by the minute, and it was easy to believe I was all alone out there.

I cleaned up, buried my trash, and then made a cup of instant coffee. Despite the execrable coffee, it was a real pleasure to watch night fall on the lake. The wind that had been cascading off the nearby ridges died down. An occasional night bird called across the lake. A distant pack of coyotes made their obeisance to the rising moon as the forest noises subsided. I’d just decided to get going when the dogs sat up and stared out at the lake in the direction of the park. I had put in below the scenic overlook and then paddled more than four miles, rounding a point that now obscured my starting spot.

The dogs were staring hard into the gloom of the lake in that direction. I made sure the little stove was off and watched their ears twitching. I realized there had to be something or someone out there. I was reaching for my NVG headgear when I heard the thump of a paddle against aluminum, a splash, and then some unpleasant language. A moment later a canoe materialized out of the darkness and grounded at an odd angle on the gravel shoreline. Baby Greenberg climbed stiffly out of the canoe and massaged his knees.

“I saw that movie?” he said. “The Last of the Mo-what-the-fucks? They made this canoe shit look so easy. Damn! My knees hurt. My shoulders hurt. My hands hurt. And I cannot steer this thing worth a shit.” He staggered over some wet rocks. “Damn!”

“It gets easier if you have ten war canoes full of serious hostiles chasing your paleface ass down said river,” I said with a grin. “It’s all about motivation. How’d you find me?”

“Brother Mose told me where you started off from, and then I looked for light.” He held up the smallest night vision telescope I had ever seen.

I looked around my Spartan campsite. “What light was that?” I asked.

Greenberg pointed at the Primus stove, which was still warm from heating water for coffee. Those must be really sensitive glasses, I thought. The dogs came over to get reacquainted, while I made up another cup of coffee.

“What changed your mind?” I asked.

“Carrie Santangelo?” Greenberg said. “She called me. Said you really were going Creigh hunting. Wanted to make sure that someone besides her knew what you were doing. Asked me why I wasn’t going along. Told her I was chicken, but if she’d spend the night with me I might reconsider. She said she might go as far as phone sex, so I said okay. Then she asked me how I’d enjoyed it, and there I was. She is the best-looking slinky-toy in the whole SBI.”

I handed him the coffee. “She have any personal connection to this part of the world that you know of?” I asked.

Greenberg didn’t know. “She can surprise you, though,” he said. “Shows up at interagency meetings in one of those DKNY outfits? All the coffee-and-doughnut cops trying not to drool. But then she, like, sits at the back of the room, taking notes like somebody’s executive whatever, while some other suit sits at the table as the SBI principal. Only later you find out she’s the senior internal affairs inspector in the outfit, and the suit at the table works for her. They call her Santa Claws; that’s with a w, by the way, not a u. What’s our plan?”

“You sure you’re up for this?” I asked. “I mean, see that mountain? I’m going up to the topline of that one via the forestry fire lanes, then over to a second, higher one. Eight, nine miles by the map, and probably more with all the wrinkles. I have to go fast enough so that I can be in my hide by daylight. That’s daylight tomorrow.”

Greenberg smiled. He was starting to bounce around again. “I run ten miles every day,” he said quietly. “I won’t slow you down. You are gonna leave most of this shit here, right?”

I nodded. “I’ve got a small backpack, a camo shelter half, canteen, knife, the spotting scope, two MREs. Going up tonight, gonna watch all day tomorrow, come out tomorrow night, late.”

Greenberg pointed at the black rifle with his chin. “Whatcha got there, sport?”

“Remington 700P TWS model,. 308 Win rounds.”

“We going to war?”

“We might,” I said. “Although, from what I hear, the black hats see a couple of strangers, they usually fire a warning shot to shoo them away.”

“Usually? Is that like ‘assume’?”

“Well, life’s a risky business, Special Agent. I get a warning shot, I propose to scope the hillside and blow an arm off. You have official top cover to come along on this little hike?”

Greenberg sniffed and shook his head. “Officially, I was concerned that a crusading civilian might get himself hurt going up into Grinny Creigh’s cave and irritating the demons. I can follow you at fifty yards if you like.”

I laughed. “That might not be a bad idea, you know, in case that ‘usually’ shit doesn’t work out. But mostly I want to watch for an entire day. I’ve been there once, at night, and besides Grinny, what I remember most is Rue Creigh making headlights against the screen door.”

“Tell me your impression of Grinny Creigh-you’re probably the first LE guy to lay eyes on her for a long time.”

“Carrie said that her whole deal was about power and control: She radiates that. Big woman, fat, but probably strong as an ox. Cunning, pig eyes. Accustomed to command and obedience. Didn’t move out of her chair or raise her voice particularly, but when I pissed her off, the guys hanging back in the trees started sliding toward cover, like she might have been about to pull a gun and start blasting away. Her son, Nathan, looks like he ought to have bolts in his neck. Tall, skinny, one of those ball-bearing-eyes types. I think he gives the detailed orders to the black hats once Grinny sets the general objective.”

“Modern weapons?”

“None that I saw. Lots of shotguns, but all double-barreled, nontactical. A pack of dogs that’s pretty scary. Outbuildings, but I don’t know if there’s electricity. Really primitive look and feel to the place, but bigger than most of the cabins in these parts.”

“Primitive makes for pretty good electronic security,” Greenberg said. “Nothing for us to listen to when they’re whispering messages down the mountain trails in some eighteenth-century dialect, as we have found out. How many soldiers were there the night you went up there?”

“A dozen? It was dark. And that’s not counting the two who took me there.”

Greenberg nodded. “The population outside of Rocky Falls is estimated to be something between one and two thousand people,” he said. “That’s all in. But the state demographers really don’t know shit, and the federal census bureau has zero credible data. The Creigh clan isn’t that big, but they all tend to react negatively to strangers. The decent folk just try to keep out of their way.”

“So anyone who spots us is likely to at least raise the alarm.”

“And the usual warning shots. Don’t forget them.”

I looked at my watch and roused the dogs. “Why don’t we go find out?”

“How about these canoes-hate to have them stolen while we’re up that hill there.”

“We’ll sink them, pile some rocks in them. They’re aluminum. Easy.”

“How do we get the water out, we come back?” he asked.

“Now that’s hard.”

It took most of the night to get across the aptly named Rockslide Mountain to a position about a thousand feet above the cabin on the east flank of Book Mountain. The firebreaks, which had looked smooth and open from a distance, had turned out to be overgrown and very difficult to walk through without a machete. A bulldozer would have been a great help. We’d ended up traversing the slopes by staying just inside the tree line and using the firebreaks more as a navigation aid. We’d seen some cabins down in the hollows, but few lights. There’d also been some barking dogs, but no reaction from inside the houses.

I had put my dogs’ bark collars on and then deployed them fifty yards ahead of us, where they scouted, making regular returns to touch base with their struggling humans. Greenberg had been true to his word, though, keeping up with me all the way. Our biggest problems had been night insects and not enough water. Fortunately, our perch on the side of Book Mountain included a substantial weep of spring water flowing practically under our feet, so the dogs had water and we could fill our canteens, albeit with a hefty dose of Hal-zone purifier to kill off the ubiquitous giardia bugs.

We set up our hide between two massive boulders, which looked like they were ready to unlimber from the hillside any minute now and roll directly down on the cabin complex below. I had put the dogs on a long down above the boulders to give warning of anyone approaching from behind our position. Our own view into the cabin’s yard was partially obscured by a spotty line of pines, which also screened us, but the scope gave us a pretty good look. We counted twenty-five dogs of uncertain but uniformly large breeding in the dog lot, three even larger pigs in a pen next door, and a pair of goats wandering around eating invisible delicacies throughout the dirt yard.

Three men had come up the front meadow just after sunrise, leading a mule with bulging saddlebags. Nathan had come out of the building to the right of the main cabin. They’d talked for a few minutes, and then the men departed, leaving the loaded mule behind. Nathan took it into the barn, then came back outside. He slopped the pigs and threw chunks of something red to the dogs, causing an immediate dogfight, clearly audible from our hide. Greenberg wondered aloud if the red things were local babies while I sketched details of the cabin layout on a notepad.

The spotting telescope was a sixty-power Swarovski number shielded against making a lens flash. Greenberg pointed out that there were firing ports cut in the logs of the cabin, and that the ground behind the cabin was higher than the visible grade on either side.

“That’s been built up,” he said. “They’ve either got a basement that goes back into the hill, or maybe even a cave.”

I shivered mentally. The last cave I’d been into had been occupied by two starving mountain lions.

Greenberg said he saw a pipe running down from the springhouse to the cabin. “We ever do any kind of siege down there, we’d need to cut that pipe.”

“They have electricity that you can see?”

He said no, nor had I seen any power poles.

Grinny herself appeared midmorning on the back porch of the cabin, sweeping some dust and debris out into the yard. She was wearing a tent-sized housecoat, and from our hilltop vantage point her head looked too small for her body. I was watching her through the telescope and was startled when she stopped sweeping for a moment, cocked her head to one side, and then looked up the hillside and appeared to stare right back into the lens. I didn’t move, and neither did she, for almost ten seconds. Then she went back into the house.

“Shit!” Greenberg exclaimed. “She see you?” He’d been watching through his own small binocs.

“There’s no way,” I said. “But she might have sensed us. Some of these mountain women have what the locals call ‘the sight.’ Wouldn’t surprise me if she’s detected someone or something watching the cabin.”

“She looked right up here, and that’s, what, a thousand feet of elevation difference? We should move.”

“No,” I said. “Movement is a dead giveaway. She couldn’t have seen the lens; it’s recessed at least three inches into the tube.”

I watched the back windows for signs of curtains moving, but no further movement disturbed the morning calm. “I don’t think it’s anything,” I said, with more confidence than I felt.

Fifteen minutes later we saw a big dog burst out of the barn and go sprinting across the front yard. Nathan stepped into view for a moment, but the dog disappeared into the woods and kept on going.

“Looks like a dog got out,” Greenberg said, watching the show through the telescope. “The tall guy looks pissed off.”

I was using Greenberg’s binoculars now, which had a much bigger field of view than the telescope. It was getting close to noon, and it was hot in the little hollow between the two big rocks. I wondered if my dogs needed water. I was about to slide my way out to them when I saw a flash of metal through the trees below the cabin.

“Vehicle,” I announced.

Greenberg looked up to see where I was pointing the binocs and then swung the telescope in that direction. “Well, looky here,” he said. “The high sha-reef himself.”

“Mingo?”

“Yup. I can see him through the windshield. Apparently he’s allowed to drive on the grass, because he’s coming right up to the cabin.”

We watched as the sheriff’s patrol car drove up the meadow to the front of the cabin. Nathan came out of the barn to meet him. We couldn’t see whether Grinny was on the front porch because the cabin blocked our view. Nathan and M. C. Mingo talked for a minute, and then Nathan opened the left rear door of the cruiser and removed a young child, none too gently.

“Boy or girl?” I asked.

“Girl, I think, although with all that hair in her face… she’s done something wrong, the way Nathan’s manhandling her.” He kept his eye glued to the scope. “This thing have a camera port?” he asked.

“Yes, but no camera,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Lemme see if this fits,” he said, fishing in his vest pocket while keeping his eye on the scene below. He produced a small digital camera. “Screw this onto the top and shoot some pictures of Mingo talking to these bad-asses.”

I took the camera and tried it. The threads were wrong. “No go,” I said.

“Shit,” he replied. “Whoa-here comes the Big Mamu.”

I watched M. C. Mingo, Nathan, and the child, all standing next to the cop car in front of Grinny’s cabin. Then something large took over the image. It was Grinny Creigh’s ponderous backside, coming down off the front porch, one haunch at a time. Her head still looked too small for that enormous body as she shuffled painfully down the grass to the police car. She put her tiny little hands on her massive hips and bent down to address the child, who appeared to be terrified. At one point the child tried to run and Nathan restrained her by her hair. He pushed the kid back in front of the angry woman.

The tongue-lashing went on for almost a minute, and then Grinny did a strange thing. She stepped forward and, hooking her forearms under the child’s armpits, pulled her up into an ample embrace.

“I guess they made up,” Greenberg said.

But I wasn’t so sure. “Can that kid breathe?” I asked quietly.

Greenberg watched and then swore. It became obvious to both of us that Grinny’s embrace was anything but motherly love. We could barely see the girl now as Grinny hugged her to that huge, soft belly, but we could see her hands and feet struggling to escape those meaty arms. Grinny bent further forward and then really gripped the little girl’s body. Nathan and M. C. Mingo watched from a few feet away, Nathan with what appeared to be clinical interest, while M. C. seemed to be studying the ground until it was over. Grinny finally straightened up and threw out her arms in a dramatic gesture, and the girl’s limp body dropped in a heap of skinny arms and legs at her feet. Grinny nudged the body a couple of times with her foot, causing the girl’s head to loll like that of a broken doll. Then she turned to go back into the cabin. I thought I saw her glance up at the rocks, but the binocs were not strong enough to really see where she was looking.

Nathan helped the sheriff roll the child over, and then Mingo cuffed her hands behind her back. Together they loaded her into the patrol car’s backseat. They talked for a minute, and then the sheriff got in the car and drove back down the hill. Now he seemed to be in a hurry.

“Mother fuck!” Greenberg whispered. “She just kill that kid?”

“I thought so until Mingo cuffed her,” I said, swallowing hard. “Now I think she just smothered her until she passed out.”

“Damn. I wish I had a picture of that.”

“The kid would have been invisible,” I said. “But, man! What are these people doing?”

“Well, now we know all we need to know about M. C. Mingo,” Greenberg said.

“We have to report this.”

“Wanna go now?”

“We should wait till dark,” I said. I couldn’t get Grinny’s final glance upward out of my mind. Something wasn’t quite right here. Then it came to me.

“You know, maybe we should get out now,” I said.

Greenberg looked over at me and raised his eyebrows.

“She damn near smothered that kid,” I said. “Right out there in the open. Where anybody could see her do it, including any watchers up here on the ridge. Why would she do that in full view?”

“Because she never did see us?”

“Or because she’s already sent for reinforcements.”

“How?”

“Who knows?” I said. “Cell phone? Landline telephone that we don’t know about? Ham radio? Homing pigeon?”

Greenberg took another look through the telescope. “Homing dog, maybe?” he said softly. “You’re the dog man-is that possible?”

“Hell, yes,” I said, and we started breaking down our gear. Five minutes later we crawled on our bellies out from between the big rocks and up to where my dogs had been stationed. I was hoping that the pines in front of us would conceal our movements, aided by the fact that the eastern slopes of Book Mountain would be moving into sun shadow as the afternoon progressed. We made no sound as we moved through a deep bed of pine needles until I gave a low whistle to summon the shepherds from their hides above the big boulders. They came at a run, and I gave them some water. Then we headed back across the eastern face of Book Mountain, trying to keep trees and other vegetation between us and anyone watching from down at the cabin.

It took us a half hour to reach the first firebreak lane, where we stopped to catch our breath. I drank some water and gave the rest to the shepherds, who were panting pretty hard. We were going to have to cross the open firebreak to keep going down and across the mountain, and even though it was overgrown with chest-high weeds, we would be clearly visible from the heights above. The woods on the other side were denser than what we’d been toiling through, and those shadows were inviting.

“Any better way across this?” Greenberg asked, as I gauged the hundred-foot-wide clearing and felt the forested ridges towering above us.

I shook my head. “We can stay in the woods, but that’s the way we need to go to get back down to the lake. Cross this and then move parallel to it. We can wait for dark, but they might use dogs to find us. I’d rather be out on the lake after dark than still up here.”

Greenberg sighed. “So,” he said. “We just run for it?”

“I’ll send the dogs across first to make sure no one’s over there in the woods,” I said. I summoned the shepherds, deactivated their bark collars, and sent them across the open space of the firebreak. Once into the woods they looked back at me and I gave them the hand signal for a down. They dropped obediently into the tall grass.

“Love that shit,” Greenberg muttered.

“I’m going to move right fifty yards and then do a little broken-field running. If there are shooters up behind us, I’ll try to make it hard. Once I’m out in the middle, you break out here and go straight across.”

“Divide the targets,” Greenberg said. “Good move.”

“Unless there’s a dozen of them,” I said. I grabbed my bag, my rifle, and the now-collapsed telescope and headed down the hill. When I got to what I judged to be fifty yards down the slope from where the shepherds had crossed, I slung the rifle, slipped into the pack, took a deep breath, and bolted out into the fire lane, jinking right and then left but really pumping it, trying to accelerate as I ran to make it as hard as possible for a long rifle to set up on me. I blasted through some scrub pines and into the welcome gloom of the pine forest on the other side and stopped. I bent over to catch my breath and listened for any gunfire. Moments later, Greenberg came pushing through the undergrowth, followed by the shepherds. I gave them a stern look; technically they should have remained in place.

“My fault,” Greenberg said. “Once I got across, I told them to come on, and they were only too willing.”

The shepherds sat down in front of me and tried not to look too guilty. “What do you think?” Greenberg asked. “We clear?”

“There aren’t any more open firebreaks to cross,” I said, scanning the slopes above and the tree line on the other side. The sun was farther down in the sky, so the shadows along the eastern slopes of Book Mountain were lengthening. “We’ve got four, maybe five more miles to go, across that next big slope. Then down five, six hundred feet in elevation to the lake. Then we’re in the clear.”

“I remember the up phase of that,” Greenberg said. “Down sounds better.”

I gathered my gear. “Actually,” I said, “down is harder. Be on the lookout for some good walking sticks.”

We headed southwest through the pines, keeping close enough to see the firebreak from time to time to make sure we remained on course. The dogs ranged ahead, crisscrossing our line of advance, ears up and noses down. We went as fast as we could without making too much noise, and I began to feel slightly more confident about our chances of getting back to the lake without a confrontation with the black hats. After that, things would get interesting, I thought. Especially when we reported what we’d seen that woman do to the child.

Then the shepherds froze in their tracks and stared into the woods ahead.

I made a sound and dropped to the ground immediately. Greenberg, fifteen feet to my left, followed my lead. We were on a downslope section of the hillside, still within the dense pine stands, and we had been approaching a narrow brook that had carved a rocky V down the face of the hill. On the other side were more trees, but these were a mixture of pines and thin hardwoods, which provided even denser cover. I hissed through my teeth, and the dogs turned around and came back to me. I snapped them into a long down and then carefully, slowly, unslung the rifle. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Greenberg inching over toward a large pine to get some cover between himself and whatever was on the other side of that creek. I had dropped next to a flat, moss-covered rock, which gave me about a foot and a half of protection. For now, I thought, we were in decent defensive position, although when we crossed that brook, any shooters at the top of the V would be in even better position.

The slope facing us went back uphill at a fairly steep angle. I chambered a round, slipped the safety off, and then began to scan the forest on the other side through the Leupold VX-III scope, looking for anything out of place. Greenberg was doing the same thing with his binoculars, and he had his SIG. 45 out on a rock beside him. I realized that there could be someone approaching from behind us, but trusted the dogs to detect that problem. They’d hear footfalls and twigs breaking long before we humans would.

So what was over there? A deer? A bear? Or some of Grinny’s crew with an armful of shotguns? I lay on my side and began to methodically traverse the barrel of the rifle degree by degree, studying the scope picture for anything that didn’t look like a tree trunk or a boulder. The scope wasn’t as powerful as the telescope, but if I suddenly saw a man aiming a gun in our direction, I wanted to be able to shoot first.

The first puffs of the late afternoon breeze were stirring leaves across the way, and the pines were making that sweet whistling sound above us as their tops bent to welcome the cooler air coming down from the higher slopes. While my left eye studied the scope picture, my right eye saw that both shepherds were still interested in something across the way. Their ears were erect and not moving. I kept looking, tree by tree, across one line of elevation, and then back, slightly higher. There were no bird sounds other than what sounded like a large woodpecker working on something across the way. I kept searching the tree line, studying the shadows and the bushes, the reticles of the scope seeming to drill into the greenery. I was looking for a face, a hat, the glint of steel, eyes.

Eyes?

I steadied the scope and centered on a gleaming reddish eye looking back at me. My finger came off the trigger guard and settled on the trigger. I cleared my throat quietly, and Greenberg looked over at me. Seeing the rifle steadied, Greenberg swung his binoculars around, trying to locate the target. For an instant I lost it, and then the bushes moved slightly and I saw it again-a single red eye, surrounded by what looked like a black Brillo pad. The woods were silent except for the clatter of the woodpecker. I pulled the butt of the rifle in tight.

“Animal,” I whispered.

“What kind?” Greenberg asked. The shepherds were still down, but they sensed our excitement and were leaning forward.

“Can’t-” I began, and then I fired, almost involuntarily, as a four-hundred-pound black boar exploded out of the bushes in front of us and charged down the hillside in our general direction, grunting and growling and coming down like a four-legged avalanche, knocking down bushes and small trees and coming faster than I had ever seen any pig move. The shepherds launched forward, barking furiously.

“Tree!” I yelled to Greenberg, as I slung my rifle and leaped into the lower branches of the nearest pine tree. Greenberg did the same, and we both scrambled as high as we could get, dislodging a hail of dead branches, pine needles, and a few thousand startled insects as we pushed our heads up through the dense foliage. The furious pig blasted right past the shepherds and headlong into the tree Greenberg had climbed, shaking it from roots to tip and almost dislodging the scrambling DEA agent.

I swung around my own sticky trunk, unlimbered the rifle, and tried to get a shot, but by now the shepherds were circling the beast, barking and snapping, while the pig got down on its haunches and circled with them, tearing up great gouts of dirt and pine needles with its hooves while making a continuous roaring sound. I finally got a shot and fired down into the pig’s back, but the monster merely grunted once and kept circling. It lunged at Frick, who barely escaped being disemboweled by a whipping tusk, but the move allowed Frack to get a jaw-full of the pig’s right hind leg. The dog backed hard, pulling the squealing pig right off its feet. As it tried to bend around to get at the shepherd, Frick closed her jaws over the pig’s snout and began to pull back in the other direction. The pig thrashed hard enough to flail the two shepherds like furry rags, but the moment gave me a second shot. This time I aimed for the back of its head and the pig collapsed instantly. The two shepherds continued to pull and snarl until they finally heard me calling them off. The pig’s stubby legs twitched uncontrollably for about a minute and then it expired with a long, wet gasp that sprayed a flat cone of bright red blood onto the pine needles.

I swallowed hard and looked over at Greenberg, who was staring down at the black, hairy body below. His face was white as we watched the two shepherds sniffing around the body.

“What the fuck is that thing?” he asked.

“Wild pig,” I said. “I should have recognized the warning she was giving-remember the woodpecker sounds?”

Greenberg nodded, not taking his eyes off the pig, as if to make very sure that the thing was really dead.

“She was snapping her jaws at us, warning us to go away. There’s probably a litter up there.”

“Litter same as smaller?”

I laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. The yellow tusks sticking out of the pig’s mouth were at least twelve inches long. Okay, two. But the dogs had been lucky.

Dogs?

We both heard it at the same time-a long, melodious baying sound from the ridge behind and above us. Then another dog joined in. The pack was coming to the sound of our gunfire.

“Rock and roll,” I said, and slid down the pine tree in a shower of sticky bark and outraged pine beetles.

Forsaking any semblance of caution, we grabbed our gear and took off down the slope to the brook. Greenberg slapped his side and turned around to go back and retrieve the gun he’d left in the grass. I waited anxiously on the other side, trying to wipe pine pitch off my hands. I reloaded the rifle, and then we were off again, trotting right along the edge of the firebreak to make better time. From the sounds of it, there were even more dogs behind us now and they were onto a solid scent. The shepherds were ranging out ahead again, occasionally looking behind to see where that dog pack was.

“That dead pig will slow them up for a few minutes,” I said, trying not to puff. We were climbing again, and the branch-littered ground made for rough going.

“Can we make it to the lake before they catch up?” Greenberg asked. He seemed to be doing just fine physically, without any signs of being out of breath. Of course, he wasn’t carrying as much gear as I was. That had to be it.

“If the men keep the dogs with them, on tracking leads, then we can beat them. If they turn them loose, I don’t know. We get over this spine, it’s all downhill from there.”

“That’s good,” Greenberg said.

Actually it wasn’t. The slope was much steeper going down, and my thighs were burning within a few minutes of starting down that hillside. The footing on Rockslide Mountain was loose shale, rocks, and tufted grass, and I felt as if I were falling forward more than running down the hill. Greenberg started to slow down, as I had thought he might. It was always much harder to go down than up. The dogs weren’t doing too much better. Frack lost his balance and tumbled for ten yards before getting back up, and then he did it again. Behind us the noise of the dog pack seemed louder, but I kept telling myself it was just the acoustics caused by the rock walls above us. The bad news was that it didn’t sound like the dead pig had slowed anyone down.

We finally reached the bottom, which was a jumble of large boulders in front of a tangled pile of winter-killed pine trees. The line of debris stretched hundreds of feet in both directions along the base of the mountain. Greenberg collapsed in front of a big rock.

“Fuck it,” he gasped. “You were right-my legs are done. We’ve got a pretty good field of fire here. Those dogs show up, let’s waste ’em.”

I glanced down at Greenberg’s. 45; lovely weapon though it was, the pursuing dogs would have to be at our throats for pistols to do any good, especially shooting uphill. I dropped my gear and picked a suitable rock for rifle work. The shepherds flopped down in the woods beyond the debris field, panting heavily. The sounds of baying hounds echoed clearly now from within the trees up above our position. I shook my canteen, but it was empty. Somehow the top had come off in the big scramble down the slope. I yelled a command at the shepherds to put them into a long down.

The afternoon shadows were deepening fast down here, but there was plenty of light for the Leupold scope. I attached the rifle’s arm sling, contracted my body into a sitting position behind the rock, and pointed the rifle up in the direction of all the noise. I began to scan the edge of the trees from which we had escaped. I had enough ammo to thin out the pack leaders and hopefully convince the followers to stop and talk things over.

“There they are,” Greenberg said. “Swing right.”

I traversed the rifle and saw the first three dogs clearing the edge of the forest and coming down the hill in our direction. I lined up on the biggest one and squeezed off a single shot at about two hundred yards. At first I thought I’d missed, but then the dog tumbled down the hillside in a hail of dust and gravel and lay still. The rest kept coming, and there were more appearing at the edge of the woods. I set up on one running in another pod of three and dropped that one, too. The dog nearest to that one looked over its shoulder but never broke stride. Greenberg was crouching over his rock, watching.

“Get under cover,” I said to Greenberg while stuffing more rounds into the magazine. “The handlers will have rifles.”

Greenberg dropped and then crawled on his stomach to the rock behind which I was hiding. He began sweeping the ridge with his binoculars, looking for the men behind the dogs. I fired again and swore when I saw dirt fly. I dropped a third one, a through-and-through lengthwise, and this one died hard, screaming as it rolled down the hill. That stopped the ones behind it, and I took the opportunity to shoot one more before the pack finally scattered. But the lead wave, now down to three truly ugly dogs, was inside of a hundred yards away and coming strong.

Greenberg was sitting alongside me now. He had his. 45 out, waiting calmly. I dropped one of the final three, which somersaulted into a twitching heap. The other two were at forty yards, still coming fast, teeth clearly visible, ropes of drool flying.

“I’ve got one round left,” I said.

“I’ve got the world’s supply,” Greenberg said, brandishing a spare magazine. “You keep the ones up the hill honest.”

I steadied the rifle back up to where the rest of the dog pack was milling around, not willing to run by the one gut-shot dog that was still screaming on the hillside. I sighted in on one especially big dog and dropped it with a hindquarters shot. It went down with enough drama to convince the rest of the pack to withdraw into the woods. I lifted my eye from the scope in time to see Greenberg sighting carefully from a two-handed grip right between the two oncoming dogs, whose growls were now audible. At the last minute, he fired, right and then left, shooting both dogs through-and-through. They tumbled into a single bleeding heap about ten feet in front of them, too badly hurt to scream.

I swung the scope back up the hill, looking for signs of humans in the tree line. There was a big boom next to my right ear as Greenberg dispatched one of the wounded dogs, which had begun to crawl toward us. When I looked back up the hill I thought I saw a face in the trees.

“Down!” I yelled, and we both ducked behind our rock just as a bullet blasted a spray of granite bits all over us. Three more rounds came down the hill, each one placed right where our two faces had been seconds before.

“Those the usual warning shots?” Greenberg asked with a grin, and I shook my head.

We executed a high-speed slither into the tangle of downed trees. When we came out the other side, I whistled up the dogs and we took off running again, keeping well into the woods, which by now were deep in shadow. We could no longer see the firebreak lane, but I knew in which direction the lake was and, by this juncture, all slopes headed down would end up in the water. There was no more shooting from up on the ridge. I was hoping that the dog pack had decided that we were definitely bad juju. We jogged for fifteen minutes and then took a breather. My thighs were hurting again, and I was glad for the momentary respite.

Until a huge dog came out of the woods from our right and lunged at my face. I ducked the snapping jaws by throwing myself backward hard enough to crack my head on the ground. The dog went over my head, landing in a heap, but then whirled around, jaws agape, only to be nailed by Frack, who seized it by the throat with a huge roar. The two dogs went down in a blurred tangle of feet, teeth, and flying hair. The attacking dog was bigger than Frack, but the shepherd had a death grip on its throat and it was already suffocating. Frick came by in a blur, went over a log, and attacked a second dog head-on, biting the attacker’s right front leg off at the elbow and sending the amputee screaming back up the hill with Frick in hot pursuit, the dog’s leg still in her mouth. Greenberg shot a third dog that had slid to a stop when Frick attacked, and then a fourth in midair as it launched itself over our position. I felt helpless without a close-in gun, but somehow I’d managed to get my knife out and was back-to-back with Greenberg.

The woods went silent except for the final sounds of the deadly struggle as Frack completed strangling the bigger dog. It was now down on it side, its eyes bulging and its rear legs kicking helplessly. Frick came bounding back to us, still carrying her bloody trophy. The air was filled with a sudden acrid smell of gunpowder and then dog manure as the big dog died.

Greenberg apparently saw something move out on the edge of his vision. He fired two snap-shot rounds in the general direction of the sound. There was a yelp in the woods, but I couldn’t tell if it was human or canine. We got down behind some logs and waited. I reminded myself not to make any more assumptions. After five minutes, Greenberg took a deep breath.

“Chapter two,” he said quietly, and we started running again, the shepherds bounding alongside, their hackles still up. Greenberg loaded his spare magazine and racked the SIG as we ran through the trees. I wanted to look back over my shoulder but had to pay attention to my feet, as the slope had steepened noticeably. Greenberg stumbled and went down in a heap of pine needles and furious language. Then we burst out into the open, picked our way across a wide strip of rocks and gravel, pushed through a ten-foot-wide stand of stubby, stunted pines, and slid down a rocky bank to the edge of the lake. Once down on the water, I tried to decide which way to go. A rifle bullet kicked up a waterspout ten feet out in the lake, and we both dived back to the base of the bank as the boom from the rifle arrived. I whistled the dogs over from the water’s edge.

“Which way?” Greenberg said.

“If he’s up high, he can’t see us as long as we stay under this bank. Let’s go that way as far as that point, see if we can spot the island.”

We hunched over and went west along the lakeshore, making sure we couldn’t be seen by the long-range shooter up on the ridge. We’d gone fifty yards when a goddamned dog started barking at us from up on top of the bank. Greenberg stepped out and fired once. He missed, but the dog jumped back when the ground next to him blew up. Another bullet smacked a waterspout into the air offshore, indicating that the shooter, taking his cue from the dog, now knew where we were and, more important, in which direction we were running.

“Fucking dogs,” Greenberg said, prompting disapproving looks from the shepherds. We were still a hundred yards from the point, and, to make matters more dangerous, our friendly bank dissolved into a narrow, rocky beach at the point itself, creating a no-cover zone.

“We’re going to have to wait until it’s dark,” I said. “We can’t cross that open area with riflemen up there.”

The dog returned, barking furiously at us from the edge of the bank. Then a second one joined in. They weren’t making any effort to come down to the shore, but they were making it absolutely clear to anyone watching from the ridge where their quarry was holed up. I judged we had another hour at least before it would be dark enough to try to cross that open ground, and then we’d still have to deal with an unknown number of dogs. A third hound joined in the noisy chorus up above, and yet another heavy round punched a hole in the lake, followed this time by the distinctive boom of a black-powder rifle. A second round hit the top of the bank, blowing a spray of rocks and dirt out into the water and scaring the dogs, but only for a moment.

As long as we stayed down below the rim of the bank, we were safe from gunfire. But we couldn’t get away, and, as more dogs joined the ones up on the bank, it was only a matter of time before the pack mentality took over and our pursuers would spill over the bank and come to dinner.

“How many rounds you got left?” I asked.

“Not enough for all that,” Greenberg said, pointing with his head at the rim of the bank.

Another heavy bullet hit the top of the bank. The shooter was either trying to keep us pinned down until others could get down to the lake, or he was just showing off, I thought. A puff of wind blew in from the lake toward the shore, which gave me an idea.

“Got your lighter?”

Greenberg patted his pocket, nodded, and fished it out.

I took it and began looking around for a small, dried-out bush. I found one and ripped it up out of the sandy ground. The barking and snarling from up above was getting more enthusiastic. Greenberg took careful aim and dropped one of the dogs. Its body came tumbling down the slope, which seemed to just make the survivors hungrier. The two shepherds lay with flattened ears next to the water, for the first time looking worried.

“You gonna start a fucking forest fire?” Greenberg asked.

“A little one,” I said. “Remember that gravel strip? That should act as a firebreak. Hopefully the fire will drive the dogs and the humans off the bank.”

“But what if it gets loose?”

“We’ll blame it on God,” I said, setting the lighter to the dried branches. “There’s precedent: It’s a burning bush.”

Greenberg rolled his eyes as I climbed up the bank and then whipped the smoldering bush around my head until it burst into bright flames. The dogs suddenly shut up. I threw the flaring bush up into the line of dry pines at the top. At first, the pack went nuts, but when the wind from the lake gusted and began to blow a flame-front down the lakeside strip of vegetation, the dogs decided enough was enough. I peered over the top just long enough to be sure and saw a satisfying brush fire with lots of useful smoke roaring down the beach line.

I signaled Greenberg. Time to go. When we got to the edge of the clearing, the fire behind us was audible, pushed along the lake margins by a suddenly interested onshore breeze. So far, the gravel strip was doing its job, but I didn’t know how far that strip extended. Greenberg was right: I might have just started a major forest fire. But that beat being eaten by a pack of dogs.

“We gonna run for it?” Greenberg asked as we crouched under the last of the cover.

“Any better ideas?”

Greenberg took a deep breath and then nodded. We took off across the open stretch of beach, the shepherds running with us. Amazingly, Frick still had her trophy leg. There was no gunfire as we splashed through the shallows at the point of the rocky spine and then around it, where we were again sheltered by a high bank. The point with the island at the end was right ahead, and there appeared to be cover all the way as we were now on the back side of the ridge. The sun was finally setting, glowing yellow through the big cloud of smoke behind us and making it doubly difficult for anyone up on that ridge to get a good shot. The glow of the fire silhouetted the lower spine of the ridge as we moved out onto the island itself. I kept telling myself that the fire was diminishing, but that may have been wishful thinking. Now all we had to do was figure out how to raise those two canoes and get the flock out of there.

We made it back to my cabin at just after four in the morning. Greenberg had brought his stuff down to the lake in his personal pickup truck, which now had both boats strapped in the bed out in the lodge’s lower parking lot. I made some coffee, and we dropped into chairs out on the creekside porch.

“Well, that was fun,” I said. I wanted some scotch in my coffee, but my legs were too rubbery to get up. “So now what?”

“We witnessed a near murder, executed right in front of the Robbins County sheriff,” Greenberg said, lighting up a cigarette. “Can’t just let that sit.”

“We witnessed an apparent near murder,” I said. “While basically trespassing on private property and spying on private citizens, without a warrant or jurisdiction and, in my case, against the explicit orders of the local sheriff not to leave town. Then, let’s see, we shot somebody’s dogs, killed some wildlife, and started a forest fire in a national park. Can’t wait to go in and tell local law all that good news.”

“Or,” Greenberg said, “we set off to take a perfectly innocent hike in said national park. How were we to know we’d strayed out of the park and into Rob-bins County? We rested under some rocks while we tried to decide where we were. Saw some shit. Left. Got chased by guys with guns and a pack of mad dogs. Defended ourselves, from them and the damned wild pig. One of the bullets fired at us hit a rock and started a brush fire, not a forest fire, and we had to escape by boat. Don’t know who was doing all the shooting, or who that woman was who smothered that kid in front of the sheriff, but somebody should really look into that.”

I looked at him. “Who would believe that bullshit?”

Greenberg squinted at me through a blue cloud. “What are you saying? We’re just going to forget this all happened?”

“Hell, no. We just have to pick the right person to tell, that’s all.”

We both said the name at the same time: Carrie Santangelo of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.

I looked at my watch. “It’s Sunday. No, it’s Monday morning. Let’s get some sleep, call her later this morning. See what she makes of all this.”

He nodded, rubbing his thighs.

“Told you down was harder,” I said, trying manfully not to rub my own quivering thigh muscles. “You really okay going to state law with this?”

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” he said.

Over in a corner Frick still had her leg. I’d tried to take it away, but she’d given me one of those “I caught this leg fair and square and I am not going to turn aloose of it, friend” shepherd looks. I decided to go get some scotch after all.

“I know it’s four in the morning,” I said. “I need a drink. How ‘bout you?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” he said. “Down was a bastard.”