Unacceptable Risk

Chapter 1

A pair of spotted owls roosted in an old, dead fir tree in a dense thicket of the forest. On this night, the owls hunted wood rats quietly. Sam, familiar with their ways, listened to their occasional calls and wingbeats above him until sud denly they began hooting with more vigor and coming down to the lower branches. Next they moved away, flitting from tree to tree and calling to each other. There was a certain rec ognizable pattern to these antics. The spotted owls had been fed live mice by so many biologists that they had developed an affinity for people. Their response to a creeping person was typically to come closer and make a dinnertime call, looking for a mouse on a stick. It sounded very much as if Sam had human visitors. If so, they were moving away from him, and that was not what Sam expected.

Sam clicked his radio and Paul clicked back. The wind moved through the trees, rustling stiff yellowed leaves. Clouds blew past, alternately veiling and unveiling a gibbous moon. On the forest floor it remained black. Grandfather had taught Sam to look from the corner of his eyes for improved night vision, as well as to "see" with his other senses. Despite Sam's efforts, only the owls had announced the visitors.

Grandfather had taught him as well as he could. On Sam's first night in the forest with Grandfather some twenty years ago, he had grown impatient after a minute or two. Now, after two decades of sporadic practice, Sam could remain still and alert for many hours.

To show Sam how to make himself a part of the forest, Grandfather had told him a story. A friend had kept a blind horse. It lacked even eyeballs, bide covering the eye sockets. When a man approached its paddock with an apple, the old horse could easily find the hand that held the fruit. In fact, the horse acted much like a horse with vision. The average person, looking from a distance, would never know the horse couldn't see. Grandfather told Sam never to allow any one to suggest he couldn't see, even on the darkest night. To this day Sam resisted the temptation to fall back on the obvi ous and wear his night vision goggles without interruption. Instead, he used them at regular intervals, and the rest of the time he spent straining to discern.

Sam lay in a grove of Douglas fir near an ancient incense cedar, most of his body tucked inside a hollow pine log and covered in a down sleeping bag that kept the late-October cold and damp at bay. He breathed in the mold smell of the forest and the odor of old fire, and this night the musk of a distant skunk. It all blended and swirled, creating a place of comfort because it felt familiar. Thirty yards distant stood his log house, built seventy years prior by a timber baron in this most remote corner of the state of California. As pre cious as the house to Sam were its contents, among them an eight-foot-high fireplace with iron log stands forged in the 1890s in Boston; handmade feather-cushioned couches and chairs passed down by his father's Scottish ancestors; the grandfather clock that had come across the United States in a covered wagon. Most of the furnishings, even the throw rugs, had a story. But the best stories existed in no book, liv ing instead in the land itself.

Here in the northern California coastal mountains, among the old-growth conifers shrouded in winter mist, even the great est of men seemed small. The timber baron had chosen well, building his house on a bench on an otherwise steep mountain, surrounded by government land and adjacent to the Tilok Indian reservation and tribal grounds, home to the other half of Sam's family heritage.

From his position, Sam could see through the bay window to the fading glow of the coals from the fire that had earlier played over the Douglas fir floor and paneling. Next to him on the ground lay Harry, a mostly Scottish terrier, snuggled in his own heavy blanket. Sam had one last doggy treat for Harry, but he was waiting for the dog to ask for it. Out of sheer boredom Sam looked at Harry and licked his lips in a fashion commonly canine. Harry gave a quiet groan of belly-felt desire, knowing exactly what was on his mas ter's mind. Sam reached beside his sleeping bag and into the doggy treats bag, removed one, and held it under his own nose for a languorous sniff, as a man might do with a good cigar.

Harry thumped his tail. Sam held the treat in front of Harry's nose and Harry sniffed it in dignified silence as Sam had taught him. Then Sam tossed it into the air and Harry snatched it with a quick snap before it bit the ground. Harry rolled over on his back for a good belly rub, which Sam obliged. Then Sam put his finger to his lips and made a slight shhh sound, at which Harry lay silently on his blanket. Harry was a master at both shush and stay. Although Harry was truly Sam's buddy, he also played a practical role. As difficult as it was to sneak up on Sam, it was nearly impossi ble to sneak up on Harry. The terrier's senses of smell and hearing were acute and he was fundamentally a paranoid dog. Given his brushes with death, he had a right to be.

Sam fingered the braided rawhide necklace and its gold medallion, which opened like a locket. Inside was a picture of Stalking Bear, his grandfather on his mother's side. Stalking Bear had been a full-blooded Tilok North American Indian and a Spirit Walker-a spiritual leader that came along, at most, once in a generation. Although Sam was already eigh teen years old when he met his grandfather, he had learned what he could in the next twenty. And on nights like this he was grateful.

Sam was every bit as tough as he looked, a long-muscled, swarthy-skinned man, an exotic admixture of his two family lines. It had taken some doing to trace his father's lineage back to the Highlands. His clan had been big, fierce, ruddy- cheeked people, brave to the point of fighting every superior force. From them had come the curl in his dark hair, which fell down over his ears. His face was more angular than round, though; the fine features were smooth and unblemished except for two scars, a line over his right eye and a small nick at his chin. His eyes were amber. As a job-related precau tion, Sam did his best to conceal his features with raffia hats, sunglasses, and nondescript clothing.

Tonight it had dropped briefly below freezing, leaving the intermittent precipitation somewhere between rain and sleet. The wind whipped up a nasty chill factor. At the mouth of their log, Sam had placed a small lip of camouflage material to direct the flow of water away from their shelter. Harry was careful to keep his nose back behind the rain line. Sam hoped this small

concession to comfort would not call atten tion to their hideaway. He looked at his watch: 5:10 A.M.

It was peculiar, he thought, how, at this moment, out of the billions of people on earth, only one man really mattered. Sam knew that every time the man called Devan Gaudet closed his eyes to sleep he felt hunted. A small comfort, but com forting nonetheless. Perhaps Gaudet retained enough human ity to realize that Sam hunted him for good reason. Still, for all Sam's efforts to focus on his side of the battle, there re mained the sobering realization that he hunted a man who in turn hunted him and all those dear to him. It was a game that would end only when one or both of them were dead. As part of the game hunt Sam had decided to give Gaudet a shot at killing him. When Sam found the radio locator beacon in his car, no doubt affixed by Gaudet henchmen, he had led Gaudet and his people north from Los Angeles and into these moun tains.

Although the struggle between the two men had been professional in the beginning-Sam was a contracted anti-terrorist expert and Gaudet an assassin and international criminal for hire, the subject of one of Sam's investigations- it had turned personal when Gaudet began killing people Sam cared about.

After a time Sam clicked the radio again; this time he got nothing in return. Next he did a radio check. Nothing.

Silence was trouble. Men retreating into the forest were trouble because he didn't understand it and the worst sort of enemy was one you didn't understand.

Pulling himself out of the sleeping bag into the cool air brought him to full alert.

Sam straightened Harry's blanket, getting half of it under him and half on top. "Shush and stay."

Harry scrunched down.

Sam took three steps back, put on his field pack, his special forces MSA Gallet TC2000 helmet complete with night vision and headlamp, and then hefted his M4 combat rifle fitted with an underbarrel flashlight and an M 203 40mm single-shot grenade launcher. On his hip he wore a Heckler amp; Koch. 45-caliber MK 23 SOCOM pistol, twelve-round clip, with laser aiming module and sound suppressor. "Stay," he whispered again, adding a hand signal. He knew the dog would not move.

Sam forced himself to walk slowly into the forest. If Gaudet were active, he would expect Sam to check on Paul first, so Sam made instead a giant circle in an unexpected di rection, following the spotted owls.

He donned the night vision goggles, which created a world of strange and subtle shadows. Branches hung every where and in places logs crisscrossed into windfalls, but Sam managed to pick his way around them. He stayed low to the ground, looking for signs of other men on foot, until he saw a lowland area ahead. It was wet with slow-flowing water in the rainy season. Traversing it without sloshing and making sucking sounds would be difficult, so he moved up toward the steep-sided rock-strewn canyons until he reached a hardscrabble path that he could use in silence.

Once on the other side he moved back down the canyon, taking only a few steps at a time. He had been moving for nearly an hour when he stopped to study a small opening near the place he imagined that the owls had gone. At that moment he heard them calling, getting closer, until they perched right over his head. He ignored them and scanned the forest. Unbelievably, he saw the glow of a cigarette well off the ground-apparently in a tree. An old road that served as a main trail ended here. No doubt the man in the tree served as a rear guard in a position so far from the expected action that he thought he could safely smoke.

Sam began a major sneak, dropping to his belly and mov ing inches at a time. To remain quiet in a slither meant that speed was out of the question. His father had insisted that he learn to stalk deer on his belly well enough to kill with a bow and arrow, and Grandfather had insisted that he improve his technique to the point that he could come within a few feet of a deer's flank unawares. Men were not as perceptive as deer, especially a man foolish enough to smoke when it could cost him his life.

Near the glow of the cigarette Sam made out the vague silhouette of a hunched figure pointing a rifle at the sky. Stickery vines of wild blackberry were beginning to get hold of Sam's clothing and he had to extricate himself. Remain ing silent was frustratingly difficult and he had only the wind as his ally. When he was within thirty feet, the man put out the cigarette and adjusted himself, flapping a branch in the process. A slight opening in the canopy allowed moonlight in, creating an enhanced silhouette of the armed man. After several more minutes of slow crawling, Sam lay within twenty feet. From this position the figure had disappeared al together. This was dangerous. If they detected Sam, then a flurry of bullets from an automatic weapon could kill him before he could react.

He made out a large tree three feet distant; he crawled to it, stood, and plastered his body tight against the trunk. He needed the man to give him a final confirmation of his mo tive. Searching at his feet, he found a sizable chunk of wood. He further searched and felt a stone protruding from the soil under the forest duff and patiently worked to remove it from the ground.

Before tossing the stick, he removed his old Zippo lighter from his coat pocket. He threw the branch, which landed in the bushes with a soft brushy splash. He imagined the sentry tensing and straining at the night, then pointing his rifle. Sam lit the lighter and tossed it in a gentle arc. As Sam glanced around the opposite side of the tree, a burst from an automatic weapon lit the night. Sam now threw the heavy rock as hard as he could at the shooter and heard a slight smack followed by a low groan. There was a little luck in the throw, but Sam was good with a rock and the target had been close, albeit above him. Quickly he inserted a hand loaded rubber bullet into the chamber and another in the magazine. These were the only two rubber stun rounds that he carried and for that reason he had first tried the stone. They had a light charge allowing a safe hit to the head or jaw. After those two bullets he would be shooting hollow points and armor-piercing rounds called talons in an alternating se quence.

He waited for a moment; then the forest lit with the blast of the automatic weapon firing blindly into the night. The muzzle flash illuminated the man like a spotlight. Sam fired the two hand-loaded rubber rounds. He heard a crash fol lowed by complete silence. Sam picked up a stick and tossed it. Nothing. He stuck his gun around the tree and fired a single lead round well over the man's head. Still nothing. In his pocket he carried a small but powerful NiCad light. He removed the night vision. Trying to stay hidden as much as possible, he shone the light around the tree and drew no fire. The bark of the tree was uneven enough for him to pull back a flap and wedge the flashlight in place so that he could leave it and scan from the other side of the tree. He saw bushes and ferns, but no person in the deep shadows. There were not many men in this attack group or the place would have been swarmed by reinforcements.

He quickly belly-crawled to within several feet of the man. A glance at the man surprised Sam. He seemed to be sitting on a stick or small tree stump and slumping against the larger tree from which he'd fallen. Sam got hold of a rock about the size of an egg and threw it hard at the figure. The thump of its impact sounded promising, but nothing moved.

Sam knew it could be a trap, although few men could sit still and take that kind of punishment. The body's position still seemed strange, almost like an animal shot in the gut. He took down the flashlight and drew closer. On the side of the man's jaw there was a nasty bruise. It was a mixture of luck and skill that the rubber bullet had struck him in the head, rendering him unconscious. Sam shone the light downward: indeed, the man appeared to be sitting on a narrow tree stump.

The man's head lolled to the side and then straightened and he let out a moan. Suddenly the man screamed and at the same time sounded as if he were being strangled. His scream ing became more robust, then took on the tenor of someone crying. Confused, Sam shone the light down again, illuminating the man's buttocks. Blood ran freely from the seat of his pants. As Sam moved closer, he could see that the small sapling's trunk, perhaps the diameter of a quarter, disappeared up and into the immediate vicinity of the man's anus.

He was impaled.

Sam broke out in a sweat as he realized what had happened. On the ground lay a machete. Obviously, the man had whacked off the sapling to build a platform or blind in the larger tree. That had left a sharp, angled surface. When knocked from the tree above, the unfortunate soul had landed ass first, with the entire weight of his body driving the tree deep into his rectum.

With two quick strokes of the machete Sam cut off the of fending trunk and laid the man on his side. From his pack he took a syringe with morphine and gave the man a quarter of a dose.

"I'm going to try to save you."

"Help me. Help me!" The man sounded nearly incoherent with pain.

Sam guessed that there was more than a foot of tree trunk inside him, perhaps two feet, if it followed his spine behind his vitals.

"I am going to build a stretcher as fast as I can."

Sam moved quickly to his pack, pulled out a satellite phone and his GPS. He called the sheriff, gave the latitude and longitude coordinates off the GPS, and let the sheriff call the chopper from Mercy Medical Center in Redding. The police put him on hold, then returned to tell him that they could not arrive anytime soon and that the helicopter was already en route to an accident. Sam called the reservation, his mother's sister. A rescue party would arrive within hours. He told them to bring guns and to be extremely careful and to move slowly, expecting an ambush. It bothered Sam to ask for their help because he knew Gaudet and his capabilities. Sam dismantled his pack and used the heavy synthetic mate rial and a swatch of fabric, designed for this purpose, to build a travois.

"Who do you work for?" Sam asked.

"Oh God, I'm dying. It hurts. Do something."

Sam worked on the stretcher while he waited for the initial dose of morphine to kick in. "Who do you work for?"

"Girard."

"Does he have another name?"

"I don't know. I only know Girard."

"I found the tracking device on my car. Did you follow in cars or what?"

"Cars and a helicopter. Ahhhh, it hurts. I knew it was too easy."

"More morphine?" Sam said, then inquired, "Where did you find my car?"

"Followed it from your office."

"My guy Paul thought he saw sun flash from a telescope. Did you stake the office?"

"Mmm-hmm." He moaned again.

"Where is this Girard from?"

"More painkiller." Sam pushed in a little more. "France? Quatram?" The man seemed uncertain.

"Why are you here?"

"Waiting for the neighbors to shoot a guy called Sam. If they don't, we will." The man's words were guttural and barely comprehensible.

"The neighbors?"

"I don't understand it."

"What's your next assignment after that? Anybody else to kill?"

"Amazon. Find Bowden."

"Bowden who? Who's Bowden?"

Sam thought he recognized the name. It was right under his nose, but he couldn't place it. Something about Bowden and the jungle went together. It would come to him. He snapped back to the present.

"I don't know! Help me."

He gave the man a bigger dose of morphine.

"Why Bowden? Why the Amazon?"

"Medicine. I think. They don't tell us much. Pharmacy company."

"Where in the Amazon?"

"Peru? Maybe Brazil. The border."

"How do you communicate with Girard?"

"Computer."

"Access address."

"Pocket."

Sam found a small black book. He flipped through it.

"Where?"

"Look under u."

Sam looked under u and found uaeromtioneb. net// exchange. He recognized the name spelled backward. Cute. He stuck the book in his pocket.

"What's the password to get into the site?"

"More morphine."

"The password."

"It changes at least every ten days. It's too long. Can't re member."

"Listen, my friend. I'm going to try hard, but you are prob ably going to die. Why not do the right thing while you're dying. Tell me how to stop this man who calls himself Girard." Sam gave him more morphine.

"It's in my computer."

Sam knew it was probably true and that the password would be very long and he took a guess about how it might be stored. He also figured that Gaudet only posted things for a very short window of time and then only when he had tipped off this man to look for something. Still it was worth a try. Maybe Grogg could break through the fire wall.

"In an encoded document?"

"Yeah."

"What's the password to the document?"

"Birthdate 12/24/61, then Independence Day 07/04, my Social Security number backward, plus the words: 'laughing out loud' run together."

"In what file is the document?"

"I don't know."

"When you open your computer, where do you go to get to this password for Girard's site?"

"My Documents."

"You on a server?"

"Yeah."

"Homepage?"

"Irishmanandleprechauns. com."

"Do you have an ISDN line, DSL, or a cable connection to the Internet?"

"ISDN."

"You leave your computer on?"

"Yes."

Sam got on the sat phone. At last he may have found a weak link in Gaudet's fortifications. Gaudet was smart but had a dummy working for him. He got Jill, his number three in command, on the phone. Putting her in a management role had been a logical choice. She was smart, had the most experience next to Paul, was the most critical, and had the best instincts of anyone he knew. On the other hand, she had been his lover, never quite letting him forget it, and perhaps still loved him. He had a severe mental thing about risking her in any kind of a fight, which meant he did his best to keep her locked away in the office, and that was a source of contention. In her mind she was a soldier.

"Jill, go to Irishmanandleprechauns. com." Then to the man, "What's your name and the password to your exchange server? We're going in right now."

"Rollin and Rollinstrolley for the password." He spelled it slowly.

Sam gave it to Jill. "Go to the C drive. My Documents. Find an encrypted document, password as follows." He read it to Jill, up to the Social Security number. "What's your Social Security number, Rollin?"

He got it and told Jill to type it in backward, then type the words, "laughing out loud."

"Tell Grogg to use everything he's got to get into a site called by the name Benoit Moreau dot net, but Benoit Moreau is spelled backward. Use the password in Rollin's Word document at Irishmanandleprechauns. com to get in." Sam rolled Rollin onto the travois and the pain of the move ment caused the man to scream himself hoarse.

As Rollin quieted, Sam heard something and jumped into a bunch of huckleberry. Quickly he circled with his. 45 drawn. Whoever was coming was unskilled. Inside a minute he saw a man walking heavily through the brush. He appeared panicked by the way he moved. Sam hit him with the light.

"Freeze."

Holding an automatic weapon, the man whirled and shot, one of the bullets just grazing Sam's cheek. Before he could think about it, Sam fired back. A solid hit in the chest knocked the man off his feet, and as the man rolled, Sam realized his foe wore body armor. When he came up again, Sam blew off the side of his face with the second round.

Sam paused for a moment, feeling his bleeding cheek and allowing himself to process the fact that he'd nearly lost his life. Then he tried the radio again.

"Paul?"

"Yo."

"Where you been?"

"Might ask the same of you. Don't you usually come when a man doesn't answer?"

"I was getting around to it. You seen anybody?"

"Killed two."

"Just a minute."

Sam went back to his patient, who had begun groaning again.

"What's Girard look like?"

"Different all the time."

"Is he here tonight?"

"Yes."

"How many with you?"

"I think five. I don't know. Please help me."

Sam gave him more morphine, amazed at the fact that a giant stick up the bowel worked better than truth serum. Of course the finger on the morphine plunger was not to be underrated.

Sam picked up the radio again. "At least two left."

At that moment a massive explosion came from the direc tion of Sam's log house.

"You know what I think that was?" Paul said.

"Uh-huh. It means he's given up for the moment. Maybe Gaudet's losing his touch."

A pause, then a click from Paul's radio.

"I don't know, Sam. Someone seems to have a gun at my head."

Sam felt tired. It was an uncommon reaction to a col league's imminent demise.

"I'm a dead man," Paul said before he was cut off.

"Gaudet," Sam said.

The response was garbled.

The radio on Rollin's belt came to life, a barely audible voice saying something Sam couldn't quite hear.

"Girard. Whoever. I can trade you Rollin for Paul. And I know you don't care about Rollin, but you might care about what he could say to the authorities."

"No!" Rollin cried. "He'll kill me."

"Just a minute." Sam turned off the radio. "Then you bet ter help me figure how to trick the bastard."

"There are seven of them," Rollin said. "Not five."

"What else did you lie about?"

"Nothing. They'll be coming here now. They knew my GPS coordinates. God, I need more morphine."

Using all his strength, Sam dragged the stretcher up the side of the canyon a hundred feet and parked Rollin in a thicket. At the hilltops it was growing light. He placed two syringes full of morphine in the man's trembling hands and kept the last two. He rather doubted he would see the man alive again. As he turned away, he remembered one more thing he should ask.

"Did you ever hear of a Frenchman named Georges Raval?"

"Never."

Sam ran along the canyon wall, and as it started to flatten near the house, he slowed down. They would be corning without lights so as not to make themselves sitting ducks. Paul had been halfway around the house; Gaudet would send the others and stay with Paul, his ticket out.

Sam went straight toward Paul's hiding spot, slowing when the GPS showed him within fifty yards.

Then he realized the flaw in this approach. Gaudet always left when his plans went awry. That meant he would send his men to kill Rollin and then order them to leave because they had lost the element of surprise and their odds had worsened considerably.

Damn. There was nothing he could do. He had to try to save Paul even if the chances were nil. With a sense of utter futility he continued on until he found Paul's dead body tied to a tree. The Kevlar vest was on the ground indicating he had probably been held at gunpoint. He had also been evis cerated, a method Gaudet had used once before on one of Sam's men. Gaudet's process was a shadow of one taken from medieval times where they went beyond merely piling intestines on the ground and actually cooked them in a fire while the victim lived. Sam forced himself to study his friend's body. The incision was unlike the one other similar job per formed by Gaudet. This time the incision was high and long and began at a partially disguised hole in the sternum. Judging from the edges it was a bullet hole. A wave of relief went through Sam as he realized that the bullet had no doubt hit the heart or the aorta and would have caused near instant death or at least unconsciousness. So the evisceration was a brutal afterthought like a calling card or a cruel attempt to convince Sam that his friend's suffering had been without parallel. Paul was dead or unconscious when they did this.

Gaudet had left him a one-word note: ventouse. As best as he could recall from his times in France, the word meant "sucker."

Sam moved away, his movements stiff as he processed the horror. He could not hide from the agony of losing Paul by pushing it from his mind. Such things needed to run their course or they would return in unexpected ways. He allowed the feelings of deepest disappointment and despair, followed by incredible, careless rage. Like all such feelings they would pass in time and give way to determination. Pure and simple he had to kill Gaudet.

In what he knew would be a vain effort, he ran back to the hillside where he had left Rollin. Even at a distance the man looked like a corpse. Sam felt unsettled and knew not to ignore his instincts. It would be a mistake to assume Gaudet was gone, even though that fit his pattern.

He made his way up the hill with great caution. The duff was sodden and dense and a little like mulch, making for quiet footsteps. Then he heard someone coming fast, charg ing through the brush rather than coming around it. It wouldn't be the Tilok rescue team, not yet, and not that noisy. Sam squatted and raised the M4, flicking the switch into the auto matic fire position.

A hat became visible and, amazingly, he recognized it. It was quite distinctive, festooned with fishing flies that in the predawn light looked like blurred dots. The hat belonged to Matt, his neighbor and friend down the road, a naturalist sort of a fellow, big into the outdoors. He killed a deer now and then for meat, gathered a lot of edibles from the forest, and smoked his fish the old Indian way. He was a good man, helpful with his neighbors on the mountain, and personally rugged. In this situation Matt could be a real asset, although Sam knew he wasn't a soldier. But Sam also remembered Rollin's strange remark about neighbors. Sam kept low in the event Rollin was right or in case Gaudet's men remained in the vicinity. As he waited, he scanned Matt with the starlight scope on his rifle.

Matt's expression was unusual, his mouth in a flat line, tense and determined. Perhaps he'd already had an unpleasant run-in with Gaudet's men. Or maybe he was a murderer in the making. Indeed, he carried a rifle of his own. When Matt was perhaps fifty feet distant, Sam heard a second per son also moving fast.

Apparently, Matt heard the same footfalls and stopped moving up the hill, dropped to one knee, and assumed a fir ing position. He made no attempt to find cover. He raised his Ml4, looking prepared to shoot whatever emerged.

A bald head appeared, moving in and out of the trees and cover. It was another neighbor, James, also a good man, although Sam didn't know him as well. He lived a few miles away. James also carried an automatic weapon, which was s tranger still, since James was strictly a fisherman and not a gun enthusiast. James carrying a combat rifle seemed more than suspicious.

Matt aimed at James as he emerged from the brush, fin ger on the trigger.

What the hell?

"Matt!" Sam shouted. Matt whirled and fired from the hip, peppering the tree that served as Sam's shield. A couple of the bullets made it through the edges of the trunk, causing Sam to pull in his elbows and squat. More shots came from below.

"It's me! Sam!" The bullets came faster and closer. Both men were shooting, but the bullets had stopped slapping the tree. Sam risked a peek around the tree only to find Matt and James shooting at each other. James was down and wounded, but still firing, and trying to crawl up the hill. Matt had found cover behind a black oak.

"Stop it," Sam shouted. "Let's talk."

Immediately they redirected their fire at Sam.

Bad idea. As they advanced on his position, Sam ran straight through a patch of huckleberry and behind another tree-lucky he hadn't caught a bullet. He ran back up the hill, figuring he would outrun them.

Passing Rollin, he saw that someone had shoved the stick all the way into his innards and shot him in the head.

Sam moved on and climbed to a small bench where large rock formations offered better cover. There he waited to see if his neighbors would follow. In minutes they were a hundred feet below him. Once again he turned and ran, moving farther up the hill, knowing he could get away but wonder ing what the men would do if left alone together. They were acting like men possessed. Sam couldn't imagine restraining or capturing them in this unnatural mind-set.

Sam would climb the mountain, then circle back, find the Tiloks, and determine what to do next. With a group of clever trackers they might trap and disarm the men before they hurt somebody. For just a moment he listened to make sure they were following, but now there was silence. He waited for minutes, but nothing moved.

Perhaps it was a trap. He made a gradual arc, descending the hill until he came opposite from the spot he had last heard his neighbors. Slowly he crept forward on his belly over slimy leaves, moving inches every minute. He knew to be patient. It took him half an hour before he caught a glimpse of the spotty camo of Matt's hunting clothes. Matt was on the ground, on his back. Sam crawled closer. Open-mouthed, the man shook in convulsions. Quickly Sam approached and found blood seeping from the corner of Matt's mouth and his body still convulsing. Sam checked his pulse: racing. Then it slowed and the convulsions ceased. Matt con tinued to breathe on his own, so Sam secured his hands to gether, left him, and found James several hundred feet down the hill. He'd been shot multiple times and crawled until he'd died-a great waste of a good man.