White Star

CHAPTER NINE

Owen Gray was going to ground. To the high country, to his old home. The land would gather him in and embrace him. Stone and sage and the summer wind would let him breathe again, and he would find his footing among the granite and grass. Or he would die in these mountains.

He had finally figured out Nikolai Trusov's message. The Russian had wanted to chase Gray from the city to the wilderness, to a proper dueling ground. Trusov would have kept on killing whomever was standing near Gray until Gray complied. And now Trusov would follow Gray to these mountains. Gray was going to prepare for him as best he could. The Russian would quickly determine where Gray was, and would be coming. Gray did not know when Trusov would arrive in the mountains, but it would be soon. Time was short.

A thicket of kinnikinnick crowded the dirt road, the shrub in full white bloom. Its oval leaves scraped the rental Jeep on both sides. Gray engaged the vehicle's four-wheel drive for the last hundred yards up the incline toward the cabin. Rocks spit from under the Jeep as the wheels found purchase. The canyon of white fir and lodgepole pine opened, allowing serviceberry and syringa to grow in patches of white sunlight. When he was twelve years old, Gray had made tobacco pipes out of syringa stems, using beetle grubs to eat through the pith to hollow the stems just as Chief Joseph had. Dogwood leaves flavored with licorice fern served as tobacco. Gray had spent his youth studying the Nez Perce and Shoshone and Kootenai.

He downshifted, then guided the Jeep around a stone outcropping to gain his first glimpse of the larch tree in the front yard. The larch was not common in the Sawtooth Range, and its grand trunk rose almost 250 feet barren of foliage until reaching a bushy top. This glorious spire had stood sentinel in front of the cabin for all of Gray's memory, and all of his father's and grandfather's.

Gray drove the vehicle around the larch to the gravel patch that served to keep mud from the front door during the spring melt. He set the parking brake. When he opened the Jeep's door he was met with the brace of mountain Idaho, the stirring redolence of red cedar and bracken and columbine blooms and damp earth, scents sharpened in the thin air, scents that always filled Gray with a longing for times past and people gone.

He stepped around the Jeep toward the porch. Birthplace of three generations of Grays, the cabin was made of lodgepole pine, used because their trunks taper so little. The building had outgrown its origins as a one-room hut with one door and one grease-paper window hastily thrown up to keep the winter of 1903 at bay. Over the decades several more rooms had been tacked on. Hardwood floors and plumbing and electricity had been added, and a porch and pantry, closets and a massive stone fireplace. Gray climbed the porch and opened the door with the key, then stepped inside.

The air was thick with dust and mold and the scent of dry pine. Gray left the door open and pulled aside window shutters to brighten the room. Memories rushed in with the light. The scene — every corner, every cranny, every worn stick of furniture — was from his youth. The three-legged stool next to the iron fireplace tools, the pole and peg coat hanger, the couch covered with a red and purple Shoshone blanket, a Sears Roebuck coffee table, the cracked leather chair with the brass brads, the rag rug in front of the fireplace, the room was as it ever had been. Gray had inherited the home and five hundred acres from his father. He had returned to Idaho for the funeral, but not since.

Gray's friend Jeff Moon, who lived in Ketchum, looked after the place with a weekly visit. In return Moon rented it to hunters during the season and kept the proceeds.

The heirloom was still in its corner. The term was Gray's father's, and it referred to a chair Gray's grandfather had made out of deer antlers in the 1930s. The seat and back were horsehair covered with tanned buckskin, but everything else on the chair — legs, arms, frame, armrests — was artfully placed whitetail and mule-deer antlers, more than two dozen of them, flowing here and there, with knotty curves and dangerous points. The result was a grotesquery so forbidding and unwelcome that Gray's mother had never been able to give it away despite earnest efforts over several decades. The heirloom was hazardous to sit in, took thirty minutes to dust, and was impossible not to stare at. As a child Gray had avoided the chair lest it snatch him up. And in all his life he had sat in it only a handful of times, simply to prove to himself he could escape. The chair still sat ominously in its corner, daring anyone to approach.

Built when wood was free and oil heating was a suspicious notion found no closer than Boise, the fireplace almost made up the entire west wall. The mantel and hearth and fireback were washed river stone. The firebox was as large as a Volkswagen. The andirons and grate were made of mule sled runners, bent into their new shape by a Ketchum blacksmith.

Antlers. It seemed his family history had been defined by antlers. The dining area was in the main room, to the rear near a passthrough to the kitchen. Above the unvarnished pine table was a moose-antler chandelier, another twisted horror lovingly fashioned by Gray's father. Three 1,400-pound moose had given their all to illuminate the Gray table, and each rack measured over fifty inches across. Six twenty-five-watt bulbs were attached to the antlers. The electric cord was skillfully hidden as it crawled up an antler to the ceiling. The slightest draft would catch the antlers' sweeping shovels, slowly swinging the chandelier. Gnarled and grasping shadows would creep across the table.

On a stand near the leather chair was a General Electric radio, a black Bakelite box with two knobs and a green frequency indicator that glowed in the dark. Gray knew from experience that the old radio could pull in stations as far away as Salt Lake City and Sacramento and Cheyenne, and Gray remembered roaming the length of the band night after night, finding dozens of faint and scratchy stations, a wondrous connection to the outside.

His parents' bedroom was off the main room, and Gray's room was behind the kitchen. He passed the kitchen's wood stove, made of cast iron and resembling the front end of a locomotive. Gray pulled the tong to open the door to his room. He had never understood why the room had bunk beds, as he had no siblings. He had always slept on the top bunk. His gray and brown Shoshone blanket still covered the thin mattress. The blanket was trimmed with purple glass beads that glinted with light. Gray's desk and chair were against a wall. The desk light was made of a miner's tin lunch growler. A 1905 reprint of The Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, all eight volumes, also lined the top of the bookshelf. These books were the most influential reading of his youth, and Gray had never fully escaped them. The rifle case next to the desk was empty.

Gray moved to the back of his room, to the double-panel doors locked with a four-inch-square Master Lock padlock. Gray had reinforced this closet with two-inch planks on all interior surfaces and with quarter-inch steel hinges. Here were those items Gray didn't want the hunters who rented the cabin to take home accidentally or otherwise. He found the small key on his key ring and opened the lock and then the door. He yanked the string of the overhead light.

The history of the Gray family in the Sawtooths could be traced by the contents of this closet. Gray's great-grandfather Mason had resigned his army commission at Fort Abraham Lincoln and had rushed into Idaho in 1878 when gold was discovered on Yankee Fork. Mason's placer pan, almost three feet across and worn to a high sheen by years of hope and backbreaking work, was on a ledge in the closet. Mason had died broke, which was the prospector's usual reward. His son George — Gray's grandfather — turned to the forests and streams for his provender. In the early years of the century George Gray would often harvest a hundred salmon or redfish a day using spears. The fish were salted, smoked, or canned, and sent to Boise. George's spear heads — wickedly barbed and with edges that would slice grass — were stacked in a corner of the closet. George had then tried sheep and then cattle. In another closet corner was his branding iron. G. George and his son Dalton — Gray's father — had supplemented their income by trapping wolves and coyotes for the government bounty. A dozen foot traps hung by their anchor chains from the closet's side wall. The traps' jaws were closed and the villainous teeth were interlaced like short fingers.

All these endeavors had busted out, and it was a hardscrabble existence until Gray's father made a discovery that to his dying day he could scarcely credit: rich Californians would travel three days on a train to the Sawtooths to shoot game. In the mid-1940s, Dalton Gray began his career as a hunting guide.

Owen Gray lifted a Remington over-under shotgun from the weapons rack on the closet's south wall. He broke it open. The chambers were empty. His father would help the outlanders kill anything they might like: chukar, Chinese pheasants, blue grouse, whitetails and mulies, moose, elk, bighorn sheep, rainbow trout and salmon, and in the early days cougars and black bears and grizzlies.

A simple trick virtually guaranteed his clients would become repeat customers. During the hunts Dalton would always come across several rattlesnakes, and while the Californians watched he would grab the snake's tail, whirl the rattler around and around, then crack it like a whip, snapping the snake's head off. He'd offer the head — inch-long fangs dripping poison — as a souvenir to the gasping Californians. Every Gray for four generations had mastered this moronic stunt — Owen was no exception — but it never failed to leave the customer slack-jawed and convinced their guide was Kit Carson reincarnated.

Owen Gray returned the shotgun to the rack, placing it next to a Winchester twelve-gauge double barrel. Hanging on the back wall were a pair of whitetail rattlers — antlers with tips blunted for safety which hunters ground and clicked together to call bucks through dense undergrowth. Along the wall were a Remington 700 under a mounted scope and a bolt-action .330 Weatherby Magnum with a muzzle brake Dalton Gray had made himself. When Owen was sixteen years old, his father had promised to purchase the Weatherby for him if Owen could spend one week in the mountains. "That all I have to do?" Owen had asked. "You ain't heard all of it." His father grinned. "One week, and you can take your bowie knife. Nothing else." Gripping his knife, Owen had left the cabin that August Sunday as naked as when he came into the world. He returned seven days later, only a few pounds lighter and wearing a mulie's hide. The Weatherby and a handshake were waiting for him.

On a small shelf on the back wall were bottles of doe-in-heat scent, the labels yellowed with age. Boxes of shotgun shells and rifle cartridges crowded the shelf. An axe and wedge, a two-man crosscut saw, and a sledgehammer leaned against a wall. Other tools were in a wood box on the floor. The room also contained more than twenty-five knives wrapped in an oilcloth bundle on the shelf.

Gray lifted the axe. As a child he would leave this axe outside for the night and wait by his bedroom window to watch porcupines lick the handle for the salt. He left the closet and passed through his room. He re-entered the kitchen and was startled not to find his mother standing at the counter, his eternal picture of her, wide and solid in her print dress, usually pounding dinner to tenderness, the fleshy thump-thump filling the house as her meat hammer rose and fell, rose and fell. His mother had died of stomach cancer six years ago. His father passed away a year later. Ruth Gray was an antidote to the wilderness, and after she went, Dalton didn't last long. His death certificate listed heart failure as the cause, but Owen Gray knew it had been loneliness and grief.

After years in New York City it was difficult for Gray to imagine that at nineteen, when he joined the Marine Corps, he had never been outside the Sawtooth Range except for several trips to Boise, eighty miles southwest. His father had told him that if he wanted a journey he could go deeper into the mountains. Until he left for boot camp, Gray's horizon had always been the next jagged mountain range, and he knew all there was to know between himself and that horizon. He had learned since that it was only a short distance to those peaks.

Carrying the axe, Gray left the cabin through the kitchen door. The screen slammed behind him. Behind the house were two smaller one-room cabins for hunters, and behind them a small barn and corral. Attached to the barn was a tack shed. These outbuildings were made of clapboard weathered to a dull gray and curled. He crossed the packed ground to the woodshed, a firebreak distance of fifty feet from the house. Hidden by a wall of chokecherry and mountain maple and down a small ravine, Black Bear Creek gurgled and ran. Pink and purple mountains rose above him in all directions.

The woodshed was a peaked and shingled roof on four posts. Two-by-fours crisscrossed on three sides for lateral support. He walked around several horseweeds and a musk thistle, then stepped into the shed. Almost three cords of wood were under the roof. His father had cut the wood, which lasted years in the high elevations before beginning to rot. The splitting block was a two-foot-high wedge of Douglas fir.

Gray picked up a length of wood and put it on the block. The axe swung in a practiced arc, and the blade sank into the wood. Gray lifted the axe, the wood clinging to the blade, and brought it down again. The halves toppled to the ground. These pieces should have been a good size for the fireplace, but he picked up one, returned it to the block, and halved it again. Then he lifted the smallest piece and split it with a well-aimed swing. Now he had kindling.

But he swung again, this time at the sticks on the ground. The blade bit through them and dug into the earth, the shattered halves flipping into the air. Gray grunted as he brought the axe around again. This time the whistling blade missed wood entirely, and shot into the soft ground, sending chips skittering away. Then again and again and again. The blade chewed up the ground.

The axe changed course, slamming into one of the shed's support posts. Splinters shot away. The axe slashed at it again, and the ancient wood fractured and grasped the steel blade. Gray ferociously ripped the blade out of the wood and sent it soaring again into the post. A hollow cry escaped him. He chopped maniacally at the post, and the top portion of the post began to sag under the roof's weight.

He swung again at the toppling beam, a blind blow. The blade bounced off the wood and cut deeply into Gray's calf. The front quarter of the shed drooped slowly to the ground, braces and posts and crosspieces cracking loudly. Still he swung, into the post, into the shingles, into the ground, into the post again. A tear almost made it down to his chin, but his frantic motion flicked it off to the ground. He brought the blade around again and again, and chips burst from the wreckage. Blood flowed down his leg and filled his shoe. His brow was damp from sweat and his cheeks shiny from tears. He swung savagely, the mad hiss-and-chop cadence filling the canyon. The old shed slumped further as the axe slashed into it again and again.

Five minutes or an hour might have passed. When he finally dropped the axe his hands were bleeding from open blisters and his right pant leg was damp and sticking to his calf. His breath ragged, he stumbled away from the wreckage. He left red footprints.

Gray collapsed on the front porch. He gazed without seeing at the distant pinnacles. The lowering sun coppered his face. He wet his salty lips. And again, for the thousandth time in two days, his mind produced the image of Mrs. Orlando.

And with it came the black cloud, the unshakable agony of grief and guilt. This cabin, his family home, had always been his refuge and his cure. This time it had not been enough.

Gray leaned against the trunk of a black cottonwood, his legs out in front and his feet dangling above the water of Black Bear Creek. He was sitting on a mat of blooming buttercups. The stream gurgled by, pooling and bubbling, idle at some spots and swift at others. A fine mist hung over the creek, softening the boulders that lined it and wetting the serviceberry and nettles that grew along the stream. The water's white hiss calmed him. Blisters on his hands were raw, blood showing at the surface. He was a quarter mile north of the house. The Weatherby rifle and a backpack also leaned against the tree. Bog orchids and ladies' tresses grew near the cottonwood's trunk.

He brought out a length of beef jerky, bit some off — not without a struggle — and began chewing. This wasn't minimart jerky made of leather a cobbler would reject, but beef jerked by Rose Schwartz down in Ketchum, beef with flavor that filled the head and then rushed down into the chest to seize the innards, a sensation so strong that anything else eaten the remainder of the day had no taste whatsoever. Gray chewed and chewed. He kept his fingers apart and his hands upturned on his lap. His palms and fingers stung.

A sniper was taught that when pinned down he had to move or die. Resting against the tree, Owen Gray was trying to move, to push his thoughts along quickly rather than let them rest, for when his mind halted it was on the horrific image of Mrs. Orlando, bound and gagged on the roof, dead by Gray's hand. He hoped he might be able to work the awful moment through, to leap from one rationalization to the next until he found one that alleviated his pain, and so he needed to keep his thoughts rushing forward. Move or die. A sniper also learned never to exit a hide by the same route he entered it. Maybe this lesson could also help, keeping Gray's thoughts from returning by the same route to the same grief. If he could just go through new doors, roll along to new territory.

His chin came up. He listened intently and searched the stream banks without moving his head. His father had taught Gray that it was possible to sense if someone were watching you, saying that you could feel a slight warp in the air, an eerie dissonance in the day. Gray felt it then. Still chewing, he slowly turned his head right. His hand inched toward the rifle. His gaze swept the banks and the underbrush and trees beyond.

Pale blue eyes were locked on Gray. They peered out from the shadows of a small dogwood, partially hidden behind the dark green leaves of an alpine laurel. Gray saw pink below the eyes. A tongue.

"A coyote," Gray said to nobody. "That's all I need."

The animal slipped out from under the tree and walked in a tight slink several feet closer to Gray. The coyote was on the other side of the creek, emboldened by the intervening water. It stepped into a dish of light that had made it through the overhead bough canopy. The animal was forty feet away, and its eyes never left Gray. Its coat was a dusty gray except for the buff belly. The fur on its legs was urine yellow. Its tail was bushy and handsome. The tongue hung out rudely.

"Beat it. I don't like carnivores staring at me for any length of time."

Gray lifted a small stone and chucked it at the coyote, a halfhearted toss that barely cleared the stream. The animal didn't move. Gray's hand stung from the effort.

"If you had any idea how many coyotes the Gray family has killed over the years, you wouldn't sit there so complacently."

The coyote panted.

"You'd realize I'm a very dangerous fellow." Gray chewed the jerky. A half pound of the cured beef remained in his hand.

The coyote's snout was sharp and its ears restless. Teeth gleamed like pearls.

"The reason I don't like coyotes," Gray explained to the coyote, "is that if I had a heart attack right now — hypothetically, you understand — and were to roll over dead on the ground, you'd be over here in two seconds, ripping hunks of flesh from my corpse, our new friendship be damned."

The coyote ducked its head at some sound only it heard, and in doing so appeared to be agreeing with Gray.

"My friend Pete Coates tells a joke you'd appreciate. He said that one time he dated a woman so ugly he had to do the coyote trick. I asked Pete, 'What's the coyote trick?' Pete said that when he woke up the next morning with this woman in his arms he chewed off his arm rather than wake her up."

The coyote waited. Gray's bandaged calf ached where he had stitched the palm-sized flap of skin and muscle back to his leg with a needle and thread from his mother's sewing kit.

"I didn't think it was funny either." Gray paused, then said, "When I was on a mission in Vietnam I would be so in tune with the terrain that I would merge with it. I'd become a part of the soil and trees and bush. The enemy couldn't see me because I wasn't there to be seen. I was absorbed by the terrain. Are you listening?"

The coyote watched.

Gray glanced at the remaining beef jerky. When he held it out to one side as far as he could the animal's eyes followed it. "Just as I thought. You aren't listening. But I do admire undisguised greed. You want this meat so bad you are willing to reveal yourself to me, and that means you're mighty hungry. And this is truly superior beef jerky. Too bad for you."

Gray took another bite, gnawing it off with his teeth, smacking his lips for the coyote's benefit. "I'd go into enemy territory, entirely assimilated by the ground I was walking on. The field seemed to do my thinking for me, guiding me and warning me. I was so plugged into the bush that I lost my separate identity. I shared an awareness with the ground and all that was on it. If I were a hippie, I'd call it sharing my consciousness with the earth, but snipers generally aren't hippies. No surprise there, I suppose." Gray hesitated. "Is this too Zen for a coyote?"

The coyote ran its tongue along its black lips.

"That's what I'm out here doing now," Gray explained, his voice suddenly uneven. "I'm trying to get these goddamn trees and bushes to take over, to absorb some of what I'm feeling, to take some of it off me, goddamnit."

The animal sank to its belly, its eyes glowing like ice.

"But it's not working." Tears glistened in Gray's eyes.

Gray worked ferociously on the jerky, trying to hide his emotions from the coyote. The animal waited.

After a moment Gray could continue. "Here's another tactic I'm trying while you watch me. A sniper learns that much of what he sees is illusion." He held up his palm as if the animal was about to argue. "It's true. For example, distances are usually overestimated when the target is lying down, like you are. The same is true when the enemy can't be seen clearly against the background. And it's also true when the target is seen over broken ground. In all these instances the enemy is closer than you think, and so you generally become dead. Do you know why? Because your bullet soars over the enemy's head, alerting him to your presence, and he fires before you can get another round in the chamber."

Gray bit off a small piece of jerky. "The mind has performed a deadly slight. I'm trying to do something like that now, something more benign, and so, you'd think, more simple. An easy trick. All I want is to hide a memory, a little sleight of hand with a recollection." He chewed. "But it's not working either."

The coyote bounced up to sitting. It yipped once and bowed its head. The eyes were still fixed on Gray.

"Anguish and desperation aren't going to be fooled, are they?"

Gray rose to one knee. The animal was instantly alert, rising fully, ready to bolt, its tail down.

"This is the absolute nadir of my existence," Gray said. "Talking to a coyote."

Gray tossed the remaining beef jerky across the stream. It landed five feet from the coyote. The animal leaped high and dove at the jerky, as it does when it hears a mouse beneath the snow. The jerky was the size of a hand. The coyote seized the meat with its teeth, shook it once to make sure it was dead, then tilted its head back and swallowed it whole, rapidly shaking its entire body as it urged the meat down its throat. The coyote licked its mouth again, then without another glance at the human it loped away, disappearing in the underbrush.

Gray's hands burned as he gingerly lifted the rifle and backpack. He began walking downstream toward the cabin. "Whining to a coyote. The absolute nadir."

CHAPTER TEN

The stolen station wagon began to fail after three hundred miles. With all its miles and years, it could not tolerate hour after hour of freeway driving. First to go was the air conditioner. Then a left rear retread blew away and was replaced by a threadbare spare. Then the rods began to knock ominously. But only when an idiot light came on did Nikolai Trusov pull off the highway to raise the hood. The fan belt had disappeared. The car needed a replacement. He would face less risk in finding a new belt than in stealing a new car.

He drove off the freeway and passed through a worn and grimy section of Cleveland, full of warehouses and light industry and potholes. It was nearing one in the morning. Tractor trailers and delivery trucks were on their night runs, but otherwise the streets were empty. Most businesses — the metal fabricators, sand and gravel lots, and oil distributors — were closed. The few open gas stations Trusov could find had minimarts rather than service bays. Street lamps cast silver cones of light on the roads.

He turned onto Center Street. A flatbed truck carrying I-beams was parked at the side of the road. The truck's mud guard had the inscription "Show Me Your Tits." On the corner was a freight company with coils of razor wire atop its security fences. He passed Lincoln Towing, a Mayflower Moving and Storage, and the Thor Gasket Company.

At the end of the block was a service station. The sign identified it as Hal's Independent Service, and the fluorescent lights shining down on the service island announced the station was open. The two service bay doors were closed, but the office door was open and lights were on in the office. Leafing through a magazine, an attendant was sitting in a chair, his feet propped up on a desk. The station wagon drove onto Hal's lot and up to a gas pump. The bell rang in the office.

Hal's Independent had seen more prosperous days. The fuel pumps were old models, with money and gallon totalizers that rolled on a reel rather than with digital readouts. The metal skirt below the dial face was splotched with grease and dirt. The panels above the dials carried no advertising and instead were marred by bits of old adhesive that had once held brand-name placards in place. The rubber fender guards around the nozzle were tattered. The station had once been painted white, but stains and smog and sun fading had stippled the building in brown and yellow. Plywood covered the window openings of the service bay doors. A sign at the corner of the building read "Rest Rooms Closed." Two black fifty-five-gallon drums were near the bay doors.

The attendant brought his head up when the station wagon arrived but continued with the magazine, a lurid publication called Gent, Home of the D Cup. He had a hand in his pants pocket and a cigarette in his mouth. He wore a Penzoil hat backwards on his head and a blue zippered sweatshirt open at the front. A book of matches and his Camels were in the pocket. Underneath the sweatshirt was a T-shirt that had imprinted on it "Nixon Was Cool." His face resembled a greyhound's, narrow and knobby with a weak chin. His ears had pendulous, sagging lobes. An empty Domino's Pizza box was on the desk near a manila envelope from the state patrol. Hal's Independent was still receiving mail even though Hal hadn't been to the station since his business went belly up. The attendant had opened the envelope and glanced at its contents, but it didn't have anything to interest him. The state patrol was always sending bulletins.

The gas jockey's name was Boyd Slidell, pronounced like the town in Louisiana, as he told his probation officer the first time they met. Early in life Boyd Slidell had mastered the art of stealing and stripping automobiles. His first auto theft occurred shortly after his thirteenth birthday, a T-Bird he still remembered fondly because he stole the car and learned to drive on the same night. He had separated dozens of cars and pickups from their lawful owners over the years. He liked to think there wasn't a vehicle made that he couldn't get into with a hacksaw blade or a length of clothes hanger wire in sixty seconds. At twenty-two, Slidell had mastered his craft.

He worked for the Sundstrom brothers, Cleveland's leading auto choppers. The Sundstroms were in the business of dismantling stolen cars and selling the pieces to parts shops. A carefully torn down automobile was worth four times more than the intact car.

Boyd Slidell rose from his chair to peer out the door at the Ford and its driver. With any luck the customer would pump his own gas. His hand was still in his pocket. He returned to the chair.

Hal's Independent Service had lasted thirty years, but the business had gone the way of so many service stations, and four weeks ago the Sundstrom brothers had rented the building from a management company representing the bankruptcy court. The Sundstroms figured they had two months in any one location before the police found them, so they changed addresses more often than Boyd Slidell changed his shorts, as Bobby Sundstrom liked to say. Sundstrom also liked to brag that a hundred thousand dollars' worth of tools were in the service bays: power drills and saws, air hammers and wrenches, compressors, blowtorches and acetylene welders, electric metal saws, portable lighting units, hydraulic hoists and electric winches, and dozens of ripping and prying tools. The plywood over the bay door's windows was not due to broken glass but so nosy passersby could not peer in. An automobile ceased to exist within thirty minutes of arriving at one of Hal's service bays. Parked behind the garage were two three-quarter-ton Dodge trucks the Sundstroms used to deliver the parts. The brothers kept the gas bay operating as a cover for the chop shop. This night Boyd Slidell was expecting the delivery of a silver 1991 Pontiac Firebird just as soon as Danny Anderson found one. Slidell was going to call the brothers when the Firebird arrived, and the four of them would dismantle the car in a frenzy of hacking, tearing, yanking, cutting, and sawing. Boyd Slidell loved his work.

The asshole in the station wagon at the service island wasn't pumping his own gas, just staring out his car window waiting for help. A big fellow wearing a cap and a frown. Something was familiar about the customer. The station wagon had New Jersey plates. Shaking his head with resignation, Slidell flipped the magazine onto the desk and walked out toward the station wagon.

"Put gas in the car. And I need a fan belt." The words were said with obvious effort and a gnarled accent.

Any more Polacks in Cleveland, the place will be like Chicago. And why did the Sundstroms insist on keeping up the façade of the all-night service station? Pumping gas was beneath Slidell's dignity, a talented man like him. He stared at the foreigner a moment, considering telling him to take his piece of dirt station wagon somewhere else. Didn't see many of these old fake woody wagons anymore. Goddamnit. Bobby Sundstrom had told him to pump gas if anybody came in, and do it politely.

"With your big gas guzzler, you'd better turn the engine off while I pump gas," Slidell said. "Otherwise you'll never leave the station."

No laugh from the foreigner. Christ, how do they get into this country? The Polack looked like he'd taken a few cuffs to the head. A rough dude, looked like. Had the foreigner been into the station before? He was sort of recognizable.

"I'll go see if I have a belt that fits," Slidell said. "We don't take no credit cards."

Not that this Polack was likely to have any. Slidell shuffled back to the station's office, lighting another cigarette. He put the matches back into his pocket and exhaled. He looked down the street, hoping Danny would hurry back with the Firebird so they could get to work.

He hesitated at the desk. Something about the Polack nagged at him. His eyes fell on the state patrol manila envelope. And it came to him. A mean grin spread across the car thief's face. He pulled out the contents of the envelope. He was right. He laughed shrilly with building excitement. Fifty thousand dollars for information leading to Nikolai Trusov's arrest and conviction for murder. Christ, Slidell could do anything he wanted to with a murderer. And Slidell could be a hero. Maybe he wouldn't have to visit his goddamn probation officer twice a week anymore. Boyd Slidell, hero. He cackled again.

He returned to the service island carrying the envelope and another piece of paper in his hand, his walk a cocky pump and roll. He lifted the gas nozzle from the boot and flipped the reset lever. The Polack was just sitting there behind the steering wheel. Slidell brought out his matches.

"Hey, Polack, recognize yourself?" Slidell held up a five-by-seven black-and-white photograph of Nikolai Trusov, delivered to every airport, bus station, car rental agency, and service station in every midwestern state. Pete Coates had organized the distribution with the help of the FBI offices, police departments, and state patrols.

"You came to the wrong station, pal." Slidell laughed.

He quickly held up the gas nozzle, not to the gas tank cover but to the station wagon's window, six inches from the foreigner's nose. He let the photo drop, and with the swift motion of one who had been smoking since he was nine, he struck a match. He squeezed the nozzle trigger and brought up the flaming match. He laughed crazily.

Gasoline poured into the Ford's cab, splashing onto the foreigner. Slidell ignited the stream. The gas roared as it caught fire, spewing into the station wagon's interior and filling it with orange light and ferocious heat. A wall of flame blocked Slidell's view of the foreigner. He took two steps back, away from the heat, but he held the nozzle out, still filling the cab with a surging, broiling flood of fire.

Slidell giggled in a piercing falsetto. The conflagration churned inside the cab. Roiling flames surged out the open window, almost reaching the roof of the service island. The leaping fire hid everything inside the cab.

Fifty thousand dollars. Slidell dropped the nozzle and fairly danced across the cement to the office. That's more than he'd make in two years working for the Sundstroms.

The station wagon moaned and crackled. The passenger side door was open and flame spilled onto the cement, spreading quickly to the front tires. Black smoke seethed from the burning rubber. The fuel tank exploded with a dull retort, adding its fuel to the firestorm. The old station wagon sank on its blazing tires. Fire consumed the wagon, inside and out, forming a cone of red and orange fire above the blackening vehicle.

"Fifty cool ones," Slidell exulted. He stepped inside the office to grab the phone. "Goddamnit, who do I call?"

The arm was around his neck before the telephone reached his mouth. A hard and massive form stepped up from behind, lifting Slidell off the ground by his neck and choking off a scream of fear and pain and rage. Another arm wound around his chest, holding him in a hug so powerful that Slidell heard two of his ribs break. He lashed back with his feet, finding his tormentor's legs, but the man behind him ignored the kicks as he carried Slidell through the side door into the shop. Slidell tried to yell, but his windpipe was collapsing. With his hands he tore at the arm around his throat, but it only gripped him tighter. The office smelled of burned flesh.

The Sundstroms' tools and equipment filled the shop, leaving only enough room for the stolen Firebird in the far bay that Slidell had expected at any moment. Overhead was a bank of fluorescent lights. Slidell was carried around a portable tool stand toward a drill press, a Sears Craftsman, with the motor housing and belt safety guard six feet above the floor on a column. A half-inch auger bit was in the chuck.

Nikolai Trusov had moved with the swiftness and skill of a man who had spent twenty years as a soldier. He had been almost out of the car before the first gasoline landed on the seat, and the flaming fuel had caught only a small patch of his trailing arm. He had dragged the nylon sports bag containing his rifle after him.

Trusov dropped Slidell, knocked off his cap and grabbed a fistful of his hair. Slidell shrieked as the Russian moved Slidell's head onto the press table below the auger bit. He held Slidell's head, right ear down against the table, and flicked on the engine switch. The drill press whirled. With his free hand, Trusov gripped the pilot-wheel feed and spun it. The drill's mounting collar and chuck brought the auger down.

Boyd Slidell saw it out of the corner of his eye. The giant's hand pinned Slidell's cheek and chin and temple painfully onto the table. The auger descended, whirling evilly, growing in Slidell's sight, coming down for him.

The auger's cutting edge bit into the hair of Slidell's right temple, twisting off the hair and spinning it around the shaft like spaghetti on a fork. The thief wailed, his eyes showing white all around. The bit dipped into skin. Blood rose on the auger's corkscrew blade, then fell away to soak Slidell's hair. Skin twirled up. Then came bits of gray matter, twisted up from the auger's point. Slidell screeched again. Brain worked its way out on the bit's blade. Slidell abruptly slumped, his limbs loose and his head pinned by the auger to the rigid table. His dead eyes were open. His tongue flopped out.

The Russian continued to turn the pilot-wheel feed, bringing the bit down all the way to the receiving hole in the table. Then he locked the tension knob which kept the auger in the down position. A gob of brain and bone had built up around the bit. Blood from the puncture dribbled down Slidell's face and across the table to drip to the floor.

Owen Gray would surely learn of this, of the terrible consequences of a meeting with the Russian. Trusov smiled and looked at the station's west wall, as if he could see through the wall and across the continent. He may have cared more about the drill press's effect on Gray than he did on the hapless victim pegged to the table.

Trusov glanced at his arm, at the slight burn above his wrist. He would have to get a new shirt. He turned away from the body and the drill press, slapping his hands together as if to rid them of dust.

He walked through the office and out to the service island, stepped around the blazing car, picked up his sports bag near a gas pump, and continued west into the night. He looked back at the garage, shook his head, and said to himself, "Crazy Americans."

Hobart is up the valley from Ketchum about as far as an ore team can travel without collapsing in the harnesses, which is why the first white man settled there in 1891, hoping to make his fortune watering and feeding mules. The town is on the Big Wood River at the confluence of Black Bear Creek. The town has 205 people or 212 people, depending on whether one drives in from the north or south. The Green River Ordinance is enforced either direction.

Only a handful of businesses remain, and one of them is the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Saloon, shortened to the Right Saloon by its patrons. At the turn of the century the building had been a bank, and the structure was ornamented along the roof line with embrasures resembling archers' loopholes. An Olympia Beer neon sign glowed in the window to the right of the door.

Owen Gray entered the saloon, and by instinct he stepped to one side until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The stitches in his leg felt as if they were clawing at him. The saloon's east wall was dominated by a backbar of beveled mirrors and fluted walnut columns and topped by elaborate moldings. The backbar had been carved in New Orleans and brought up the Columbia and Snake rivers on a barge. On one of the backbar's shelves was a stuffed badger, its teeth bared and a claw raised. On another shelf were a cobra and a mongoose, the snake's coils wrapped tightly around the mongoose, and the mongoose's teeth sunk into the snake's neck, one of those taxidermal horrors sailors brought back from the Philippines at the end of World War Two. Trophies hung from the walls — the heads of buffalo, moose, bighorn sheep, and a mule deer. The trophies made the saloon seem crowded, even though the room was empty. The place smelled of cold cigarettes.

He steered around several tables, heading for the pay phone in the hallway to the rest rooms. The bartender emerged from the hallway wiping his hands on his apron. His plump face first registered curiosity at a stranger having found the tavern, then surprise and pleasure.

The bartender stuck out his hand. "I'll be damned, Owen. It's you. Welcome home."

Gray tried not to wince as the bartender vigorously squeezed and pumped his hand. Blisters on his palm and fingers from the axe handle were red and leaking. Gray exchanged a few words with the bartender, a friend of his father's named Ray Miller. The bartender's weak chin was lost under his damp and wagging lower lip. His porcine eyes sparkled as he spoke. He had known Gray all Gray's life.

Miller said, "I hope you're in the Tooths for a happier reason than last time, Owen."

"A little R and R is all," Gray replied. "I stopped phone service out at the place when Dad died, Ray. I need to use yours."

Miller thumbed the pay phone behind him. "Let me post you to a beer when you're done."

Figuring the Right Saloon was not making any profit when its patrons chatted on the phone, Ray Miller had placed the phone only four feet off the floor and had shortened the cable to the handset so that a conversation of more than four minutes resulted in neck and back pain, usually requiring a beer to assuage. Gray punched in his calling card number, and a few moments later Pete Coates was on the line.

When Gray was a boy, telephone connections from the Saw-tooths to the outside world were scratchy. He was still tempted to yell into the phone during any long-distance call. But satellites and fiber optics had come to the mountains. Coates sounded like he was next door.

The detective asked, "How you doing?"

"Better."

"Anna Renthal asked about you. Wants to know when you'll be back."

"Frank Luca gave me as much time off as I need," Gray said. "I don't know when I'll be back."

"Can I be blunt?"

"Anything else and I'd be startled," Gray replied.

"You didn't go back to Idaho to kill yourself, did you? Commit suicide like you tried in Vietnam?"

"No."

"Is that a promise?"

"I'm stronger now."

"Where are your kids?" Coates asked.

"I'd trust you with my life, Pete, but the fewer people who know where the twins and John are, the better I'll feel."

"But they aren't near you, are they? Now that we know what Trusov is capable of, it'd be too dangerous for your kids."

"They're safe." The children were with Jeff Moon and his wife in Ketchum, dropped off on the drive from the Boise airport. His eyes closed, Gray pinched the bridge of his nose. "I thought we had him, Pete."

"It was a slam dunk, looked like to me."

"Maybe your first reaction was right, that the police and FBI should have just swarmed the building."

"No," Coates said adamantly. "We would have spooked him for sure. And even if we could have trapped him, you were right when you said he'd kill a lot of my men before we got him. Your plan — give him a target, wait until he exposes himself, then take him out from a long distance — was the only one that would have avoided a bloodbath."

Gray's voice trembled. "Have you figured out how he got Mrs. Orlando?"

"She was last seen a block from your apartment at a laundromat called Sixth Avenue Coin Op. We have no idea how he abducted her."

"So he was onto us all along." Gray's voice was dark with sorrow.

"Looks like it. But we did discover how Trusov set up the shot on the paper passer, Donald Bledsoe. We had wondered how he would know you'd be in the courthouse alley and how he'd have time to set up his hide."

"Yes?"

"We think the Russian was following you, probably waiting for a shot. When you got to the alley to wait for Bledsoe, Trusov climbed a fire escape to the roof of the cafe at the end of the alley, across the street. He wasn't in a building twelve hundred and fifty yards away like he was with the Chinaman, but rather only a hundred yards away. We found his red shell on top of the cafe."

"So he didn't prepare anything, just took an opportunistic shot?"

"We're learning Trusov is a cunning boy."

Anger colored Gray's words. "Have you learned anything else, like why Nikolai Trusov is on my case?"

"That's Adrian Wade's department, and she's taking it seriously. She's in Kabul as we speak."

"Afghanistan?"

"You know any other Kabul? General Kulikov found the name of Trusov's Afghan spotter. And with the name, the U.S. consul in Kabul found the faction he fought for, and still fights for. His clan was aligned with Babrak Karmal and the Soviets during the war, and are now in the mountains. The spotter is from a village named Marjab about ten miles from Kabul. Adrian was on a plane ninety minutes after she got the news. Didn't even go back to her hotel. JFK to Charles De Gaulle to Riyadh and into Kabul."

"Couldn't she telephone him?"

"This fellow is in the hills. She's going to have to drive out to him, probably end up hiking in. But the consul thinks he's been given accurate information about where the spotter is."

"What's she after?"

"Anything that'll explain why Nikolai Trusov is hot for you."

Gray's voice rose. "I've got nothing to do with Afghanistan or the Soviets or with Trusov. Goddamnit, Pete, what's going on?"

"Maybe she'll find out, Owen."

"Yeah, maybe." Gray exhaled slowly. "Your people surrounding the Russian embassy haven't had any luck, I take it."

"Trusov never returned to the embassy to visit his father, and I found out why when I interviewed the old man again. Turns out the son called the father, and the old guy was delighted to tell his boy about all the policemen visiting."

"So Nikolai Trusov never showed up there."

"That's right," Coates replied. "And there's more news, Owen. We found where Trusov has been staying, a place called the Four Leaf Clover Motel in Jersey City. We broke into the place. He's got a box of Owen Gray memorabilia."

"Some of my stuff?"

"In a cardboard box in his motel room closet we found a Hobart High School annual, class of 1967. There's a photo of young Owen Gray wearing a Beatles haircut and a narrow black tie. There's also some recent photos of you — one leaving your Brooklyn apartment leading your son, John, down the steps, another showing you and me carrying gym bags into Sam Owl's place. There's one of you and your girls sitting in the window of a McDonald's. And another of Mrs. Orlando."

"Christ," Gray blurted, "he was following us around."

"And here's something spooky. We also found your bag gloves, the brown Everlasts you thought you had lost."

"So he's been inside Sam Owl's, inside my locker there?"

"Looks like it."

Gray rubbed his forehead. "Damn, Pete, what's going on?"

"This guy isn't going to get out of New York," the detective said. "Trusov's got the mayor and the police commissioner and the FBI director's full attention now. They've flooded this town with people. There isn't a bus station, train depot, airport, or hotel where he can show up and not be spotted. Even the uniforms are carrying his five-by-seven photo on the top of their clipboards. We've released some of the story to the media, and the Russian's photo has been playing big on television and in the newspapers. The whole eastern seaboard and the south and midwest are on the lookout for Trusov. It's just a matter of time."

Gray was hunched over the phone and his neck and shoulders had begun to complain. "The telephone at my place will be restored by tomorrow."

"I'll call with the latest." Coates hesitated, then added, "You weren't kidding me about your promise, were you, Owen? About plunking yourself? You wouldn't go and ruin my whole day, would you?" Coates's lighthearted words were betrayed by his apprehensive tone.

Gray hung up. He returned to the saloon's main floor and waved at Ray Miller on his way out.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Polk County undersheriff Mel Schneider turned his white-and-black off the road and into the Cat's Meow Cafe parking lot in the town of Mentor. He passed a few automobiles and pickups as he slowly headed for a vacant spot in front of the cafe's large glass windows. He glanced at his wristwatch. He was meeting Deputy Mike Dickerson for lunch at the Cat's Meow, and Schneider was hungry. There were two open slots next to a silver Chevrolet Caprice. He pulled in next to the Chevy, set his parking brake, and again brought up his watch. He hoped Dickerson would be on time.

RayAnne Folger owned the Cat's Meow — Schneider could see her startling red hair through the cafe's window, serving three customers sitting at the counter — and she served a fine meatloaf sandwich. Schneider turned the squawk box to low, then rolled down his window to let the breeze in. He'd wait a few moments for Dickerson before going into the cafe.

When Schneider's belly growled with hunger, it did so loudly because it was a big belly, pushing against the steering wheel. Schneider had been on the force almost twenty-five years, and the goddamn squad cars had become less and less comfortable over those years. Now the big man was wedged in between the wheel, the radio and mounted computer to his right, a shotgun on a vertical rack next to the computer, and the safety glass that separated front and back seats. Schneider lifted his hat from the passenger seat, forked his fingers through his hair, and placed the hat on his head. His hair had gone gray in streaks. His eyes were close together and faded blue. His thin, bloodless lips made his rare smile vulpine. Reading glasses were in his shirt pocket. He glanced at his watch. His stomach rumbled again. Damn it, Dickerson, get your lard-ass in gear and get over here.

A silver Caprice. Schneider's head jerked left. Christ in his cups, a silver Caprice. The undersheriff opened the car door, stepped five steps to the rear to read the Chevy's license plate. He quickly returned to his car to punch the license number into the computer. The screen told him to wait. He lifted his handset and without the usual radio rigmarole asked, "Where are you, Mike?"

The radio cackled with "Twenty seconds away. I see your bubble in the parking lot. Your gut must be doing the talking again."

The amber computer screen blinked with the information.

"Aw, goddamnit," the undersheriff whispered as he read the screen.

The Caprice had been stolen in Brainerd, Minnesota, three hours ago. The auto's owner had seen a large man wearing a baseball cap low on his head drive by in the car while the owner was getting a haircut. The Caprice's owner had later identified Nikolai Trusov from a photo shown him by a Brainerd police detective. The goddamn New York police had thought this man would never get out of their jurisdiction, and he was already halfway across the country. The FBI now believed Trusov was stealing a new car every hundred miles or so. Earlier that morning a Mercury Cougar had been found in Brainerd that had been stolen in Anoka, a town just north of Minneapolis. The Russian's fingerprints were all over the vehicle.

Undersheriff Schneider peered through his windshield into the cafe. A sticker on the door announced that the Cat's Meow was a member of the Mentor, Minnesota, Chamber of Commerce. A doughnut case was at one end of the counter near the cash register. He knew that six booths were ranged along the north wall. Two customers sat at the booth he could see. He counted four diners at the counter, sitting on stools, their backs to the window. Ketchup bottles and napkin dispensers were visible between their elbows. A large and gleaming stainless steel coffee urn was against the wall. The door to the kitchen was near the coffeemaker. RayAnne was putting a plate in front of the largest man at the counter. He was wearing a tan jacket and a green baseball cap. He lifted a fork and bent to the plate. It had to be Nikolai Trusov.

Schneider reached for his clipboard. On it was the bulletin given every Minnesota law officer that morning. He read again about the Russian. "Sweet Jesus, I don't want to do this."

Deputy Mike Dickerson pulled his patrol car into the slot next to Schneider, who waved him toward the passenger seat of Schneider's car. Dickerson stepped toward the cafe, but then saw that his boss was not getting out of the car. He squinted in puzzlement through the window, then opened the door and slid into the passenger seat.

"I got some bad news for our lunch plans," Schneider began. "You see that man at the counter, last one on the right?"

"Yeah," Dickerson said. "The big guy?"

"That's the Russian we were told about at lineup this morning. Same guy that's on the FBI bulletin."

Dickerson stared into the cafe. The deputy had a long face and a chin that protruded beyond his lips. He wore a burr cut with almost no hair showing under his cap. He was a veteran of twelve months in the sheriff's department. "What're we going to do?"

"We're going to do what the taxpayers pay us for. Arrest him."

The deputy asked, "Shouldn't we call in reinforcements?"

Schneider rubbed a temple. "There's two of us. He's sitting peaceably at that counter. He doesn't even know we're here yet. I'm going to walk right up to him and stick the Remington barrel into his face and tell him he's under arrest. I don't need reinforcements for that."

"He's tough." Dickerson wet his lips. "You read what he did to that gas jockey in Cleveland."

The undersheriff's eyes seemed to have moved even closer together. "He's not tougher than my shotgun. We're going in."

"The Russian is a commando. According to what I read, he's been at war for most of his life. He's probably pretty good at it."

"Probably," Schneider granted.

"I ever tell you I've got a three-year-old son?"

"For Christ sake, Mike, I've eaten dinner at your house a half dozen times, your kid sitting there oinking down his food each time. I know you've got a kid." He paused. "Hell, what's the Russian doing now?"

Nikolai Trusov was rising from the stool. He placed his napkin on the counter next to his plate. He spoke several words to RayAnne, who pointed over her shoulder toward the rear of the cafe. He walked behind the other counter customers, then disappeared down the aisle between the booths.

"He's going back to take a leak."

"There's no rear door back there, is there?" Dickerson asked.

"Just the bathrooms. Mike, the men's room has a window in it. As I recall, it might be big enough for a man to climb through. You go around the north side of the cafe and wait next to the window. I'm going in the front door."

Dickerson nodded and unsnapped his holster.

The undersheriff laid a hand on Dickerson's arm. "Mike, we only need to make an attempt to arrest this guy. If the son of a bitch looks sideways at you, shoot him. Don't give him a break. He won't give you one."

Dickerson yanked the door handle. He pulled his pistol from the holster as he exited the car. The deputy rounded the patrol car and the Caprice, then disappeared around the north corner of the cafe. The undersheriff clicked the pump shotgun from its mount. After he got out of the vehicle, he thumbed the safety off. He entered the cafe.

A few customers turned toward him. Acquaintances nodded, then stared at the shotgun. His eyes on the rest-room hallway, Schneider sidled up to the doughnut case. Her hand at her mouth and wide eyes on the shotgun, RayAnne Folger moved to the end of the counter.

Schneider said, "That big fellow who just went back into the hallway. What'd he just say to you?"

She had the look of a deer caught in headlights. Her voice was scratchy. "He asked for the men's toilet."

"He speak with an accent?"

She pounced at the question. "Yeah, he did. Pretty bad one, even those few words I heard."

The undersheriff slowly walked down the aisle toward the rest-room hall. The customers followed him with their eyes, their burgers and fries forgotten. He passed a high chair, two stacked booster chairs, and the pay phone. He held the 12-gauge in front of him like an infantryman, expecting the Russian to emerge from the rest room at any moment. The door remained closed.

Schneider paused in front of the door. He could feel his blood pump, and his tongue seemed stitched to the top of his mouth. He whispered hoarsely, "Christ save me, I don't want to do this."

But he did. The undersheriff lurched forward, his shoulder slamming into the rest-room door, which jumped back and banged against the wall. He charged into the room.

One hand on his belt and the other on his privates as he stood in front of the urinal, Don Hansen dried up. His mouth fished open, and he backstepped, still exposed and dribbling.

Schneider ignored him. He turned to the stall and kicked in the door. He jabbed the shotgun into the space. It was empty.

"What the hell, Mel?" Don Hansen demanded. He adjusted his pants. "All I'm doing is relieving myself here. That ain't against no law I know of."

The window was closed and the sill was dusty. Nobody had used it. Schneider turned a full circle. Don Hansen, and that was it. A knot formed between the undersheriff's eyebrows. He turned back to the stall, staring at the toilet-paper dispenser, as if a man could hide somewhere in there. How had the Russian disappeared? He shook his head slowly and gestured vaguely toward Hansen.

Schneider pulled open the rest-room door to return to the hall. And across from him was the door to the women's rest room. And then he understood.

Knowing he was too late and just going through the motions, he lowered the shotgun, and bulled his way into the women's head. No one was in the room. A breeze poured through the open window, freshening the air. The window exited south, the opposite side of the building from the deputy. Nobody in the two stalls.

Schneider hurried from the room and sprinted down the aisle. Customers' eyes followed him once again. The under-sheriff said aloud, "How did the bastard spot us?"

He stopped in front of the stool where the Russian had been sitting. He stared across the counter to the backbar. Reflected in the stainless steel coffee urn was the parking lot behind him, and his patrol car, clear as day, just like in a mirror. He moved by the stools and yanked the cafe's front door open. He went on his tiptoes and looked south. The Caprice was a block away and accelerating. The green baseball cap was visible through the rear window.

He yelled, "Mike, hurry up."

Undersheriff Schneider was going to give chase, but when he reached for his door handle, he had to bend slightly lower than usual. He glanced back. The rear tire had been slashed and the car had sunk to the wheel rim. Schneider stepped around to Dickerson's patrol car. It, too, was low on its rear axle. RayAnne and her customers were at the window staring at Schneider.

The deputy arrived panting, his pistol in his hand.

"He's gone. And we're stuck here." He waved a hand at the flat tires.

Dickerson looked down the road, but the Caprice had already vanished. "I can't say as I'm disappointed to miss him."

"Me, neither." Schneider slipped into his car and reached for the radio handset. Before he pressed the button, he said, "He'll soon be out of Polk County, and that's the last we'll have to think about him."

"The hand of God made these mountains." Owen Gray's voice was soft with wonder at the panorama before them.

"It was glacial ice, not God." Adrian stopped beside Gray on the bluff overlooking the valley. "Those peaks are made of granite that crystallized below the earth's surface, then pushed through to create fault blocks. I read about them in a book about Idaho on the flight from New York. The granite crags are called batholiths. They were eroded by glaciers."

Gray said wearily, "And I'm telling you it was the hand of God."

Below them, filling Gray's vision and bringing forth a rush of childhood memories, were the narrow defiles of river canyons, topped with sharp ridges and peaks jutting forth at confused angles. Glacial gouges and cirques and horns gave the range an air of unyielding wildness. Douglas fir and lodgepole pine fought for purchase on the granite. The lower slopes were covered with blue bunch grass, wheatgrass, and Idaho fescue. Near the peaks, blue and yellow lichen colored the granite. When clouds passed overhead, the mountains changed hues, quickly purpling, then changing to gray, then lightening again to blue and gold as the billows passed. In the distance was Lewis Mountain.

Gray was wearing a Goretex backpack. The Weatherby rifle was over his shoulder. He pointed. "Look, there's a bird called a Clark's nutcracker. If you hold out a sandwich, it'll only take him a few minutes to get the courage to land on your hand."

The bird was perched on the low branch of a whitebark pine. Black wings rested against an ash-gray body. It peered at them intently, then hopped along its branch toward them.

Gray looked at her a moment. "I was startled when Pete Coates told me you were in Afghanistan."

"I was only gone two days. Even so, I'll bet you missed me."

"Well, I feel safer when you're around." He was deliberately cheery, not wanting to inflict his grief on Adrian. "I won't get mugged, anyway."

She smiled quickly and he generated a grin in return. Then he lowered himself to his haunches. "Look closely at the trail and tell me what you see."

Adrian squinted at the ground. "Dirt and some pebbles and a few twigs."

"See these slight depressions in the surface of the path?" Gray traced them with a finger. "They are paw prints. They tell us that an hour or two ago a yellow-bellied marmot passed by this way."

"What's a marmot?" Adrian asked.

"A big leaf-eating rodent."

"Like a rat?"

"Much cuter."

"How can you tell it's not a house cat lost up here in these mountains?"

Gray smiled. "A marmot has four toes on its front feet and five on its back. A cat has four all around. And cats walk like babies crawl, moving diagonal limbs at the same time. But a marmot moves both legs on one side of its body at the same time, like porcupines and skunks. See, you can tell by these prints that the marmot is shuffling both right legs, then both left legs at once."

"How do you know those tracks weren't made by a skunk?" she asked.

"A skunk has five toes in front. And we're too high for a skunk."

"Or a porcupine?"

"They like the woods, not the rocks."

Adrian was wearing a light blue jacket, jeans, and Eddie Bauer climbing boots. She persisted. "And how do you know the marmot came by here an hour or two ago, not yesterday?"

"The peaks of the marmot's prints have just begun to deteriorate, with grains of dirt falling into the base of the tracks. There's a five-to-ten-mile-an-hour wind today, so I know from experience that an hour or two of loose grains have fallen into the paw print." Gray could not resist showing off. "I also know that there were no hawks flying overhead when our marmot walked this way. And no coyotes around either."

Adrian pursed her lips. "I'm stuck out in the wilderness with Mr. Nature."

Gray hurried on. "And the reason I know is because the size of these tracks tells me this is an older marmot. He has survived several years of predators and is therefore smart about them. And had the marmot sensed the predators he would have been running and his stride would have been about fifteen inches instead of the seven or eight you see here."

A paintbrush plant, with its delicate orange blooms, was growing among balsamroot leaves near their feet.

She said, "I didn't come to Idaho to learn about rodents."

Gray shrugged. "So you found Nikolai Trusov's spotter?"

"Yakub Nadir was a member of the same faction, the Parcham, as Babrak Karmal, the Soviet puppet. Nadir worked as Trusov's spotter for almost two years. I found him in a tiny hill town outside Kabul, one of the villages still controlled by his tribe. He fell into the hands of Tajik mujahideen after the Soviets left, who, finding out his role, dug out both his eyeballs. Nadir is blind. He was wearing Soviet fatigue trousers, Afghan army boots, and a flat woolen cap called a pakol. I met him at a teahouse, then he took me to his home."

"He didn't mind talking to a westerner?" Gray asked.

"I think he enjoyed it. Nadir is an educated man. He attended the prestigious French-run Istiqlal School in Kabul and speaks French. He was studying to be an engineer when the Soviets invaded. He chose the wrong side, as he readily admits. He wears no eyepatches or dark glasses, and it's hard not to stare at the ragged holes in his head when talking with him. The mujahideen used a heated bayonet, and they weren't careful. So not only did he lose his eyes, but much of his face around his eyes is livid with scars."

"They have always played for keeps over there. Tell me about the interview."

"I was his mehman, his guest, and he made me feel welcome. His wife served us green tea and nan while we spoke. His home had one room with a high ceiling. To keep out the heat a ragged white curtain was drawn across the one window, but beams of sunlight came through the holes in the curtain. I sat on a couch with old cushions, and he sat on a patch of worn carpet. The plaster walls were flaking, and on one was a poster of Karmal. There was also a sentence painted on a wall in bold calligraphic letters, but I didn't find out what it meant."

"Doesn't Nadir fear for his life? Why isn't he on the run?"

"He thinks his eyes are all the mujahideen will take from him."

"So what did he say about Trusov?"

"Nadir said the Russian was a master of his craft."

"I already knew that."

"And Trusov enjoyed it. Sometimes he would fire many shots at the same target, hitting a knee, then a hand, then a foot, and so forth, taking a lot of care to place the shots where they wouldn't kill the target immediately. Nadir claims he saw Trusov fire twelve shots at a mujahideen, all hits, before the coup de grace. Trusov told Nadir that his twelve shots before the kill must be a world record."

"For Christ sake, that's not soldiering."

"Trusov knew about you."

Gray's head came up.

"That same day, after the killing shot, the thirteenth, Trusov said to Nadir, 'Not even the great American Owen Gray could place twelve non-lethal shots.' " Adrian Wade lowered herself to a boulder. She crossed her legs. "Trusov frequently talked about you."

"Why? Did he tell his spotter he had ever met me?"

She shook her head. "I gather he knew of your Vietnam reputation. I questioned Nadir closely about this. Trusov never claimed any acquaintance with you, or said he ever met you. He knew of your reputation. He was envious of it."

"How did he get the big scar on his head?"

"Nadir didn't know. He had that groove in his skull when they first teamed up in 1985."

A bluebird on the bough of a subalpine fir chirruped noisily.

Adrian put her hand under her coat to adjust her holster, then continued, "Nadir said Nikolai Trusov was crazy."

"I already knew that, too."

"He meant that while Trusov was a superb soldier during his first years in Afghanistan, the Russian became increasingly unstable. Doing erratic things. But he was so valuable to the Soviet war effort that he was tolerated for a long while. Then he snapped."

"What happened?" Gray asked.

"There was bad blood between Trusov and his captain. Nadir didn't know how it started, but the two were always at each other. The captain didn't have the leeway to deal with Trusov like he would any other subordinate because Trusov was an Olympic hero and a brilliant sniper. Trusov detested the captain, an up-and-coming Moscow University graduate trying to make a mark. Nadir doesn't know what set Trusov off that day, but when the captain drove by in an open GAZ field car, Trusov put a bullet through both the captain's wrists as his hands gripped the steering wheel."

"Did the Afghan spotter actually see this happen?"

"Nadir was there, and he said it was a phenomenal shot. Four hundred yards at a moving vehicle, and Trusov called it before he fired, just like you'd call a pool shot, telling the Afghan he'd take out both the captain's wrists."

A nutcracker landed at the other end of the boulder and dipped its beak at Adrian, hoping for a handout.

"Trusov may have been a hero, but no soldier gets away with that." Gray opened his backpack and brought out a peanut butter sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

"He didn't," Adrian said.

Gray tore off half the sandwich and tossed it to the bird. The nutcracker squawked and leaped onto the handout. Two other nutcrackers instantly appeared to tear at the bread. They flapped and hopped and quarreled, flipping bits of bread down their gullets.

"Trusov was arrested and court-martialed," Adrian said. "He spent the next eight years at hard labor in the Red Army's First Military District prison. He was released six months ago."

"I thought the INS was supposed to keep criminals out of this country." Gray tried to keep the touch of desperation from his voice. "Didn't they check him out before they gave him a visa?"

"A visa to accompany someone coming to the U.S. for surgery isn't examined closely."

Gray wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. The day was warming, and the sun was high in the pale rinsed sky.

Adrian continued. "But the people at the INS are helping our investigation. They checked with their counterparts in Europe, and the Swiss came up with something. Victor Trusov could have had his operation three months earlier in Geneva. The Swiss had given both him and his son permission to enter their country, and the Red Army had made arrangements for the operation at St. Paul's Hospital in Geneva. But the Trusovs refused, apparently waiting for the U.S. visa."

"So Nikolai intended to come here all along, and was willing to make his father wait for the surgery until things worked out. Old Victor could have died in the meantime."

Adrian nodded. "I suppose Nikolai was willing to risk that to get into the U. S."

"And to come for me," Gray said darkly.

"Yes, to come for you."

"How did Trusov get his rifle into this country?"

She replied, "Probably in a diplomatic pouch."

"A rifle in a pouch?"

"Pouch is a term of art. It can be anything from a letter to a container on a ship, as long as it has the diplomatic seal. A Hero of the Soviet Union would easily have found a Russian diplomat to help him get his rifle in." Adrian leaned forward on the boulder. She stared at him a moment before continuing, "You know that you are asking me to believe the impossible, don't you?"

"I'm not following you," Gray said. He tossed another piece of the sandwich to the birds.

"It is impossible that no connection exists between you and Nikolai Trusov."

"I never said there wasn't," Gray protested. "I just don't know what it is."

"By not telling me everything, you are asking me to believe the preposterous. I'm convinced that something in your past connects you to Trusov. You might not know it, but it does. And I won't be able to make the connection between you and the Russian unless you tell me everything."

He nodded vaguely.

"You are hiding something from me. Level with me."

"You already know everything important about me."

"That's a lie." She smiled to take some of the sting from her words. "I've been a policewoman too long to buy that."

"You and I are on the same side," Gray said rather feebly. "I'm not going to lie to you."

Adrian leaned forward and brought her hands across her lap to fold her fingers. She gasped, then flicked her hand. Her mouth began a curl of horror but she controlled it. She leaped up from the boulder. Her voice wavered. "Have I hurt myself? There's blood all over me."

Gray rose and hurried to her, reaching for the hand. "Show me where."

Her voice was an unsteady whisper. "On my jacket."

Her coat had more zippers than a flight jacket. A dark stain had spread along the right sleeve near a Velcro fastener. Gray quickly undid the Velcro and gently pushed back the fabric along Adrian's arm. None of the blood had seeped through the Goretex onto her arm.

Gray said, "The blood is from the rock you were sitting on."

An edge of the granite slab was daubed with blood, and tinctures of the fluid darkened the silver moss on the stone.

"Where did it come from?"

"A wounded deer." The corners of Gray's mouth turned down. "A mule deer, probably."

Gray rubbed a finger along the rock, bringing a smear of blood to his eyes. "It's been hit in the liver. You can tell from the dark color of the blood."

"Wouldn't that have killed the deer?"

"A deer with a liver hit can take off at a dead run and go for a long way." Gray bent close to the rock. Mica flecks glittered in the sunlight. He found a tuft of hair. "This is his fur. It's black-tipped, which means it's from just above his belly." Gray knelt closer to look at the prints at the base of the boulder. He found a hoofprint. "The mulie staggered against the rock, then took off again, uphill into that ravine."

"Is he going to die?" Adrian asked.

"He can't survive this wound."

"Who shot him?"

"Some poacher who didn't have the skill or the energy to follow the deer."

"A poacher?"

"Deer are out of season."

"Can we help the deer?" she asked. "We should do something."

"There's nothing we can do."

"Yes, there is." She looked directly into his eyes. "We can't let him just die."

Adrian started along the path, then veered off in a bank of bunch grass toward the ravine. The nutcrackers scattered, crying raucously. She looked back at Gray. "I'm going to find him."

"Goddamnit," Gray muttered. He lifted his rifle and pack to follow her.

The north-facing slope of the ravine was dotted with lodgepole pine. Adrian's approach flushed a covey of grouse that had been feeding on buds and leaves. She led him along a deer trail through serviceberry bushes, whose flowers resembled white lilies. They reached a fork in the trail where the ravine branched.

She slowed, then stopped. "Which way did he go?"

"Look for blood. Women are better at finding blood on the ground than men are. I don't know why, but it's true."

"There." She stabbed a finger at the ground.

Blood often looks like rust spots on leaves. Gray wet his thumb with spit and rubbed the leaf. It streaked. Blood. "He went up the left ravine."

"Why up?" she asked. "Maybe he stopped and then went back down."

Gray shook his head. "Confused, wounded deer always go uphill."

"How do you know?"

"I just know they do. And lost children usually walk uphill and lost adults go downhill. That's just how things work."

They marched through the pine, which gave way to an aspen grove. The soil was loose, almost a scree. Their toes dug into it, propelling them up the path. Cheat-grass stickers found their way onto Gray's socks, making his ankles itch. On a boulder a piping hare jerked up and down as it whistled, an outsized sound resembling a goat cry. Gray nodded a greeting to it.

A deep gurgling croak came from a ridge above Gray, followed by a roll of squawks and clacks, a riotous, unnerving sound in the high stillness. Ravens rose from behind the ridge, their enormous ebony wings beating the thin air. Several landed on the boughs of a scrubby ponderosa pine. Others disappeared again behind the outcropping of boulders and grass.

"The mule deer is behind those rocks," Gray called. "Maybe you shouldn't get any closer. It's not going to be fun to look at."

Adrian asked, "How do you know it's there?"

"The ravens are waiting for their dinner."

"Will they start tearing away at the deer before it's dead?"

"Ravens aren't known for their table manners."

They rounded the rocks. The ravens flew away, but not too far before landing on the scree to stare sullenly at the humans. Adrian looked sadly at the wounded deer. The mulie was lying on a blanket of bunch grass, its large white-patched ears moving independently of each other like a mule's. It was a doe, and it was breathing raggedly, blowing pink blood from its nostrils. A red smear ran along its flanks. The entry wound was high in front of its hindquarters. Blood trails mapped the animal's flanks and thighs, seeping onto the stones. The deer stared blankly at the humans. Its nostrils flared as it fought for breath. The ravens shrieked at the intruders.

Adrian said softly, "He's going to die, isn't he? He looks bad."

"It's a she. Yeah, she's in bad shape."

"There must be something we can do." Adrian Wade blinked back tears. "The poor animal shouldn't have to die."

Gray looked at her. Adrian had known loss, had been pushed to the brink by grief. Gray didn't want his small tour of his mountains to freshen those emotions. He said, "Maybe I can dig the bullet out. You never know about deer. She could make it." He stepped across the lichens and stones to the deer. It followed him with its black eyes, and raised one hoof, but did not have the strength to lever itself off the ground. "Too many of us around here will scare her. You head down the ravine. I'll catch up when I'm done."

A tear trailed down Adrian's face. Her gaze went between the deer and Gray, then she turned back down the mountain, down the loose stones toward the deer trail. She looked back at Gray to see him draw the bowie knife from the scabbard. Gray waited until she was out of sight before he brought the blade to the mulie's throat.

Three minutes later he caught up with Adrian.

She glanced at the bowie knife, which was back in its place on Gray's belt. "That deer might live?"

"Maybe." Gray stared down the valley. "You bet."

Gray looked over his shoulder at the ridge. The ravens had left their perch and were hidden by the crest of the ridge. It seemed to him their renewed croaking held a victorious note.

She said bitterly, "I thought you said you weren't going to lie to me."

After a moment he said, "I won't. Mostly."

Andy Ellison moved on his knees among the stalks, stopping at each one to sprinkle a small handful of fertilizer onto the ground, then using a hand to scratch the granules into the dirt. His stand was thick, and the pointed leaves brushed his face, a feathery sensation he associated with freedom. He dragged the paper sack of fertilizer along with him as he went from plant to plant.

His marijuana patch was hidden in a black cottonwood glen in Jefferson County, Montana, in the low foothills of the Rocky Mountains, two dirt-road miles north of the interstate highway. The glen bordered an open field, one of many pastures where the Rocking R Ranch's six thousand head of cattle grazed. Ellison's crop was protected by a barbed-wire fence. All marijuana plants favor sun, but this species, Chiang Mai red, craved it, and it was Ellison's despair that he could offer only light dappled by the cottonwood branches overhead. Otherwise DEA planes would quickly find the crop. Ellison had tried hiding his crops among Louisiana sugarcane (his arrest netted two years' probation), between rows of Washington State corn (two years at Walla Walla), and under grow lights in a California basement (four years at San Quentin). He had sworn he would never go back to prison, for those were hard years, particularly at the Walls, where Ellison was Booby Decker's girlfriend. Ellison still wore a tattoo on his buttocks that proved it. "If you reeding this, Booby kil you." Decker had pricked it onto Ellison's butt himself, smashing his fist into Ellison's ear each time Ellison howled. Booby was no artist, so the blue ink letters wiggled and bled, but the message was plain enough, and nobody at the Walls bothered Ellison except Booby. The tattoo had only humiliated Ellison. The misspellings had outraged him.

No, sir, Andy Ellison wanted no more to do with prison, and the next time the DEA or some local sheriff found him tending his crop Ellison would surely face six to eight years, being a three-time loser already. So he was careful. He limited each patch to twenty stalks, spending hours determining shadow patterns on the soil beneath the cottonwood boughs before he planted. Black cottonwood leaves — shiny dark green on top and white-green with rusty veins underneath — perfectly blended with the Chiang Mai red's leaves, especially when the wind roiled and blurred the foliage. No DEA plane was going to spot his crop, Ellison believed. He had fifteen such patches at the edge of the Rocking R land. The ranch's owner, a corporation based in Missoula, rented a homesteader's shack and barn to Ellison, one of the many busted-out spreads devoured by the corporation over the years. The corporation's concern were Herefords and tax codes, and it was not too attentive to the perimeters of its grazing land.

Ellison crawled along the ground, dropping the fertilizer and mixing it in. His plants were a bit leggy for lack of full sun, but the leaves were broad and green, a lot of product. A wren trilled in a cottonwood, its flicking tail seen at the edge of Ellison's vision. And a nearby towhee flicked aside leaves and twigs on the ground looking for insects, making a pleasant racket. Ellison whistled a Lovin' Spoonful song, keeping himself company. A nearby grasshopper rubbed its legs, squeaking along to Ellison's tune.

A small breeze brushed the stalks, but even so it was warm. Sweat dropped from Ellison's forehead onto his spectacle lenses. He took them off and wiped the lenses on his shirt. He had worn granny glasses since the Sixties, and the spectacles and his sandals and tie-dyed T-shirts he wore whenever he was tending his crop were his personal commemoration of the Sixties, that lost time that would never come again, that apex of Andy Ellison's life, those shimmering years of innocence and incense. And babes with no bras.

The intervening years had hardened Ellison, at least his appearance. He wore a ponytail tied with a rubber band, but the hair came from the sides and back of his head because he had lost most on top. Deep lines ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth. In a jealous rage, Booby Decker had punched out one of Ellison's front teeth, and the replacement cap had yellowed and now showed a line of blackened gum above the tooth. Ellison was indifferent to food and had always been thin, but lately his rib cage had begun to show and the tendons and veins on the back of his hands looked like road maps. He made enough money growing dope to feed himself most of the time, but as harvest approached he was usually down to pocket change and he missed many meals.

Ellison scratched his wrist, maybe an ant bite. Then Ellison's head came up. He looked left and right between the stalks. Something was amiss. The towhee and wren were abruptly silent. The buzz and clatter of insects had quieted. Even the wind had stopped, and the heat was suddenly thick and choking.

The prickly rash of fear crawled up Ellison's back. He had experienced this sensation once before, in the cornfield just before he was arrested, an indefinable sense that something was awry. He was no longer alone in the cottonwood glen. Somebody was closing in on him. Surely the DEA.

Ellison rose quickly, and more sweat dropped onto his glasses. He turned south toward the house, his view blocked by the tall marijuana stalks. But surely his pursuers had come from the house. He dropped his paper bag and turned north, ducking his head to hide below the top leaves of his plants. Still he heard and saw nobody. The sweat spread on his lenses, smearing his view. He turned left toward a brace of dwarf maples, brushing by the last of his plants. Then a man appeared before him, forming out of the maple leaves, obscured by the droplets on Ellison's lenses. A huge man with a blond plug head. Moving toward him.

The old hippie turned back, willing his legs to work, sprinting through the marijuana stalks. The once friendly leaves seemed to grab for him. He missed his footing on a cottonwood root and fell to one knee. He rose, limping, pushing himself forward. His breath rattled in his throat. Dear God, he didn't want to go back to prison.

The marijuana stalks ahead of him parted, and the big man was there. Ellison jerked his eyes over his shoulder. Were there two of them? How could he have moved so quickly? Panic rose in Ellison. Six years this time, maybe eight, every day of it spent as some con's girlfriend. A wail of fear escaped his lips. He dodged right, toward a thimbleberry thicket, his feet churning the loose soil. His chest heaved. He swatted aside vegetation and braved a look over his shoulder. He had lost the intruder. He turned back toward the thimbleberry, and there the big man was again, smiling slightly and raising a hand.

Panic almost closing his throat, Ellison turned again. His legs seemed made of rope but he dug at the ground and flailed at the vegetation as if swimming, pulling himself through the underbrush. He groaned with effort and his vision blurred even more.

Then he was on the ground, his face hard against the dirt, a rough hand at the back of his neck pinning him there. Ellison inhaled deeply, drawing in bits of dirt. Helpless, he closed his eyes. Six to eight years this time.

The hand rolled Ellison over. The intruder towered over him, the details of his face lost in the sun overhead. The hand gripped Ellison's arm and easily brought him to his feet.

"It's this scar, isn't it?"

Ellison was still blowing loudly, and he thought perhaps he hadn't heard the man. "A scar?"

"It frightens people." A blocky voice, unaccustomed to the language.

"Where's my Miranda rights?" Ellison was suddenly angry. He peeled off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt sleeve. When he returned them to his nose, he wished he hadn't. Seen closely and clearly, the intruder was even more frightening. Chopped face, gash of a mouth, and a red and scaled dent above his right eye that disappeared back under the blond hair. The scar made everything on his face seem askew.

"I demand my Miranda rights, goddamnit. Where's the protocol?"

"I need a bed for the night."

"A bed?" The slightest flutter of hope. "You just want a bed?"

The stranger nodded.

The six to eight years vanished. "Thank you, God." Ellison turned toward the shack. His confidence soared. "I don't mind saying you scared the hell out of me."

"I do that a lot." The accent was strong. "Sometimes on purpose, sometimes not."

The trailer was cramped and hot. Squeezed between banks of electronics, Pete Coates drummed his fingers on a tiny metal table. "Can't you hurry up?"

"I'll tell the pilot to rock back and forth in his seat to make his plane go faster," the technician replied with a Southern accent, not bothering to look at Coates.

The technician was an Air Force captain assigned to PHOTINT Tasking and was the master of the trailer, which was called a C3, for command, control, and communications. The trailer and the captain and the reconnaissance planes were on loan to Coates and the FBI. The technician had given Coates a ten-minute tour of the trailer, which consisted of both men slowly turning in their chairs as the technician pointed out one system after another, speaking mostly in unfathomable acronyms like SIGMA and MAC and TOT and DISCUS, all communications systems. The interior of the trailer glowed in soft green light from several monitors. Coates faced a wall of digital numbers, blinking red and green and yellow lights, dials and knobs and switches. The trailer was filled with a faint crackling. Three monitors were black but with the tiny power lights glowing red. On another monitor was ESPN.

After the tour of the communications equipment, Coates had asked, "You sure it's a car in there?" The captain had once again reviewed his evidence: an Army Beechcraft RC-12d — a plane notable for the dozen antennas protruding from its wings and fuselage — had with its UAS-4 infrared equipment detected heat coming from a dilapidated barn in Jefferson County, in foothill country. Within an hour Coates's team had checked the farmstead against the Jefferson County tax assessor's rolls and determined that the Allcrop Corporation, the parent company of the Rocking R Ranch, was paying property taxes on the land, and that the county assessor had dropped the structure component of the assessment on the parcel three times as the farm and barn fell into disrepair. So there should not have been a heat source in the dilapidated barn, yet there was.

"A yellow Buick Regal is what I'm looking for," Coates offered once again. "That's the last car Trusov stole, and we haven't found it abandoned anywhere, so he's still got it."

The technician nodded. "The second plane should be there by now. We'll see what shows up."

The Beechcraft had not been equipped with cameras, and in any event the plane had covered the ground too quickly to take still photographs, so another plane, a Grumman Mohawk from Fort Ord, had been sent for a second fly-by. The Mohawk was a multisensor tactical observation and reconnaissance platform equipped with an ESSWACS (electronic solid-state wide-angle camera system), a five lens assembly that focused light onto five charge-coupling devices. The five currents were sent through an on-board video processor, then through a multiplex system to turn them into a single burst of digital pulses. The plane carried a stabilized transmitter in a helmet-sized blister under its starboard wing, which would send it to an LOS (line of sight) relay station atop Moller Mountain. The signal would be instantly forwarded to the trailer, and the picture reconstructed on the monitor in front of Coates and the technician.

"Still enough light, you think?" Coates asked.

The tech glanced at his wristwatch. "It's only eight-thirty. The sun sets late this time of year. There'll be enough light."

Coates was counting on the tumbledown barn to be missing shingles. He rubbed his forehead with frustration. "I thought I had Nikolai Trusov bottled up in New York."

"Sounds like he got out."

"He went through my so-called impenetrable ring like crap through a goose, goddamn him anyway."

"You know, Detective, I've read the FBI's case report on your Russian. He's a hard man."

"He is that."

"I've never met Owen Gray, but I feel sorry for him, real sorry for him, what with this Nikolai Trusov after him."

Coates snorted. "A gunnery sergeant told me some stories about Owen Gray."

"Yeah?" His instruments instantly forgotten, the captain turned to Coates.

"Gray has a series of scars on his arms and legs. He got them in Vietnam."

"Yeah? How?"

"He fell into a tiger pit, a man trap set by the Viet Cong. The enemy disarmed him, dragged him a mile to the nearest village, and nailed him to a wall."

"Nailed?" The tech made a face. "Like Christ?"

"The VC had more nails than the Romans. They nailed Gray's hands, his biceps, couple more nails in his feet and through his shin bones, nails through his shoulders. Twelve nails in all."

"How'd Gray free himself?"

"He was pinned to that wall for all of a day and some of a night." Coates said his next words slowly, one at a time for emphasis. "Then he ripped himself free."

The captain's face lengthened. "What do you mean?"

"He couldn't pull the nails from the wood, so he yanked himself off the nails. The VC were sitting around an iron pot, boiling their fish and rice, and didn't see or hear him. Gray left chunks of himself on each nail, bloody gobs of skin and muscle. But he freed himself, then walked for three days back to American lines."

"Good God."

"So while you feel sorry for Owen Gray" — Coates smiled narrowly—"feel sorry for the Russian."

A moment passed, the captain digesting the story. Then he asked, "You hungry? I've got a top secret LAPSAT radio downlink that'll order us a pizza."

Coates shook his head. "I want to get the hell out of here as soon as—"

In front of the technician, the NEC monitor's screen turned to white, then ran through a color protocol, flickering quickly through a palette of primary colors. Then an image appeared on the screen showing approximately a square mile of Jefferson County. Visible were a small stream, rock outcroppings, patches of forest, several fence lines, and two buildings. Above the image appeared a series of menu buttons.

"Here we go," the tech said, pulling a mouse from behind the monitor. The tech clicked twice on a screen button. The image was instantly sectioned into twenty-five parts. The arrow then moved to the section containing the house and barn. Another double click, and that portion was magnified. The image was taken directly over the house and barn, and they showed clearly. A chimney throwing a long shadow, a collapsed chicken house near the barn, a wood stand that had once supported a windmill, another pile of wood that might have once been a toolshed, and a green van parked near the house, all were plainly visible on the screen. More clicks, and this image was sectioned, and the arrow found the part containing the barn. Yet more clicks, and that part was enlarged.

"Looks like you're right," the tech said. "Missing shingles. But look here, too. In front of the barn, in the grass, the double lines of an automobile track. Abandoned barns usually don't have fresh tracks on the ground in front of them."

Coates rose from the chair to lean toward the monitor. "And beneath the barn's roof in the gaps left by missing shingles…"

The captain pointed at a feature on the screen. "Looks like there's some yellow in that barn."

"Bright yellow, looks like," Coates added. "And shiny."

"Yeah, that's not hay bales or an old tarp or anything like that."

Coates lifted his jacket from the back of his chair. His voice was tight with excitement. "It's a goddamn Buick Regal is what it is. We've found that Russian son of a bitch." He slapped the captain on the shoulder and turned for the trailer's door.

CHAPTER TWELVE

"You caught these fish?" Adrian asked, nodding at the two rainbow trout on the pan. The fish were cleaned but still had their heads and tails.

Gray moved a skillet over the heat. "In the creek."

"Did you kill the pig, too?"

Gray ignored her. He placed three strips of bacon into the frying pan. The bacon hissed and spat. He jiggled the pan to move the bacon back and forth. Gray lifted a pinch of cornmeal from a porcelain canister and dropped it onto the plate. He rolled the trout in the cornmeal. When bacon grease covered the skillet, he slid the fish from the plate to the frying pan. The trout and bacon sizzled together. On the other grill, steam rose from a stainless steel pot containing brown rice in boiling water. Gray placed a steamer over the water and rice. He lifted spring peas from a paper sack on the counter and dropped them into the steamer. He was wearing jeans and a high-neck University of Idaho Vandals sweatshirt.

Adrian leaned against the post that separated the kitchen from the main room. Her arms were crossed in front of her, and a glass of chardonnay was in one hand. Her mouth was pursed and her eyes moved back and forth. Gray thought she had the look of someone whose guard was up. He lifted a piece of wood from the iron box next to the stove, then opened the stove's front grate. Flame cast the kitchen in flickering red light. He shoved the wood through the opening and closed the grate.

She turned her head at a distant plaintive tremolo that ended in a series of sharp barks. She raised an eyebrow at Gray.

"A coyote." He used a spatula to turn the fish in the skillet.

"I thought they only bayed at the moon." She was wearing a white wool fisherman's net sweater and jeans.

"They howl at anything. Maybe he's mad at the weather."

Living in New York, Gray had gotten away from monitoring the weather. Rain or snow or sun, by the time it reached Manhattan's walled streets it didn't make much difference to Gray. In the Sawtooths, Gray checked the Emory and Douglas barometer on the kitchen wall several times a day, just as his father had for so many decades. That afternoon the mercury had dropped abruptly, and the storm had swarmed into the mountains as night had come. Rain lashed against the roof in wind-driven waves. Windows rattled with the gusts, and beads of rainwater were pushed horizontally along the glass. The wind bawled through the trees, filling the cabin with a deep rumble. Tossed by the wind, the trunks of young aspen trees in the grove behind the cabin clicked together in an uneven staccato. The old cabin creaked and groaned.

Gray lifted the skillet and used the spatula to slide the fish onto two plates. He opened the fish and poked gently them with a fork. "They're done."

With a spoon he retrieved the spring peas from the steamer. "The difference between perfect peas and overdone peas is about ten seconds. It's all in the timing."

He placed the peas on the plates and sprinkled them with pepper. He drained the rice in the sink and used a serving spoon to divide it onto the plates. Then he carried both plates around the dining table and into the main room to place them on the coffee table next to a wine bottle and two place settings.

"My grandfather was smart in a lot of ways." Gray pushed aside the screen on the fireplace. "One of them was this fireplace. You don't need to carefully balance your firewood on the grate, hoping it won't roll out onto the floor. This fireplace is so large you can just toss a couple of logs in and they'll be all right."

He brought two pieces of wood from the box and lobbed them onto the fire. Red sparks swirled and disappeared up the chimney. Gray closed the screen. The fire surged, engulfing the new offering. The blaze was the size of a bonfire, and it roared and popped, filling the room with warmth and dancing light. He lowered himself to the couch, facing the fire.

Adrian Wade joined him on the couch. "You didn't take the head off this fish."

"A trout looks better whole."

"You'll eat it, but you won't disfigure it."

"Something like that."

She placed her glass on the table. "You're not having wine?"

"Even one glass takes my edge off. I can't afford that right now."

Gray glanced at her. The fire's hues played on her face and sweater. Golds and reds and blues painted her in reeling patterns, making her seem an illusion. She brought up a few flakes of the fish and touched them with her tongue before eating them. Gray watched her chew. She seemed to do it absently, with the delicacy of disinterest. She gently twirled the wine. Colors of the fire sparkled in the wine and her eyes.

"You're staring at me again," she said quietly.

"Damn it." He shifted his gaze to his plate.

"I still mind, but not so much."

They ate in silence awhile. Gray had hoped for a comment about the fish, but none came. Trout was a meal he knew he cooked superbly, and this fish was tender and buttery, suggesting the wilderness without being gamey.

She sipped her wine. Her lips left a slight red print on the glass. Gray stared at the glass a moment. He wondered why such a common sight — lipstick on a wineglass — could be so suggestive.

She said, "Your friend Pete Coates likes to look at the files of people he works with."

"He knows more about me than I do."

"Did he tell you a lot about me?"

"Nothing I'd call tantalizing," he answered.

"You know about my husband?"

"A pilot who died in a plane crash. Sad business."

"I read once in a psychology text that for any given person in the United States there are sixty thousand other people that person could fall in love with. But I knew that statistic was sheer nonsense. There was one person for me and I had the good fortune to find him. Then I lost him."

Gray brought up a forkful of rice. He wondered where the conversation was going.

"I first met Rick when I was in grade school. Then we went to the same high school, and we both went to UCLA. I don't remember when I didn't know him, and I always knew that I would one day marry him. It was just a given in my life."

She was looking fully at him, so he thought there would be little risk in turning to her to listen. She might not snap at him for staring at her. Her eyes shimmered with reflected firelight.

Adrian went on, her voice a whisper above sounds of the fire and storm. "When I heard Rick died, I died, too, everything except my pulse. I became an empty shell with nothing inside."

"It must have been hard." About as inane a comment as possible, but he could think of no other.

"I have a few seconds of happiness each day just after I wake up in the morning. Then I realize again that Rick is gone. Every morning I endure again the crushing return of his loss."

Gray nodded his understanding.

"Do you know that I haven't dated anyone since he died? I doubt that little fact was in Pete's file."

"In four years?"

She smiled and shook her head. "Four years. And you can infer all you want from that about my sex life, and you'll be right."

"It's not my province to infer anything about you. And besides, I'm too gentlemanly." He chewed several peas. "Not in four years?" He wanted to add that it was a terrible waste, but thought better of it.

She renewed her smile. "It's a terrible waste, right? I've heard that before from guys trying to put the make on me."

"But not from me."

"When I get hormonal urges, I go to my martial arts gym and use a striking bag. An hour's worth usually does it." She ate some of the rice, then said, "From what I understand, you are like me."

Gray shrugged. "I get out once in a while."

She laughed. "Yes, to the zoo or a children's museum or McDonald's for Happy Meals."

He rubbed the side of his nose. "I know what you are doing, Adrian."

"Yes?"

"You are opening up to me, confiding your deepest wound and the great secret of your sex life. But you and Pete Coates are alike, always on the job."

She again sipped her wine.

"You believe that I have something hidden in my past that will help your investigation," Gray said. "You think that if you bare your soul to me I'll reciprocate, that I'll reveal my past so you can clinically examine it like some coroner picking apart a body."

She grinned at him. "It's working, isn't it?"

"Not at all."

"Sure it is. The fire, this remote cabin, the storm outside, the delicious food, me. You are yearning to tell me your secret. The urge is overwhelming."

"I don't feel any such urge." Gray turned back to the fire.

"I can outlast you."

"Outlast me?" He tried to add a touch of scorn to his voice but failed. "You don't know anything about endurance. You don't know—"

He abruptly rose and walked into the kitchen. He returned with a wineglass. He held up the glass to fill it precisely halfway. "Half a glass and I'll still have all my reflexes." He took a drink of the chardonnay, then returned to the couch.

"Tell me your secret," she demanded softly. She crossed her legs and leaned back against the armrest as if expecting a long confession.

Gray swallowed more wine.

"A line of perspiration has appeared on your forehead, Owen."

"This sofa is too close to the fire."

She laughed lightly. "You are sweating because you are about to break. You are desperate to tell me, someone who will understand."

He waved his hand in dismissal.

"You don't have a choice," she said. "Tell me."

Gray swallowed. His throat was dry. He held the glass with both hands. The fire swayed and flashed and hooked its tongues of flame, curling around the logs and twining together and pulling apart. It was enticing him, beguiling him. Tendrils of her scent reached for him, a light gardenia. The wind coursing through the trees had gained a low musical, pulsing quality. The air had become dense. Gray was having trouble breathing.

"You've put something in my wine," he protested feebly.

"It only feels like it. You were about to tell me."

" I… can't."

Her voice brushed him. "Tell me."

An age passed.

"That number." The words at last escaped his mouth. "Ninety-six."

"The number of your kills in Vietnam." She was utterly still, perhaps not wanting to derail Gray by a movement.

"That's the number that brought me fame in the Marine Corps, that got a rifle range named after me at Quantico, that got the stories in the Marine Times about the so-called legend. And my ex-wife and the army psychiatrists thought that number was the source of all my problems. The doctors talked about the patriotism of that number, of a soldier doing his duty. My wife kept asking what it was like to look through crosshairs at ninety-six people."

She lowered her chin slightly, a delicate encouragement.

"The number wasn't ninety-six." He emptied his glass. "It was ninety-seven." He had said it. She had broken him. Gray looked at her, but her face carried no trace of a victor's smirk.

"Ninety-seven," she said, not a question.

He turned back to the fire. Blue flames curled around the bottom of the logs. "My last shot in Vietnam. In Elephant Valley, or at least that's what the Marines called it. My spotter Allen Berkowitz and I had been out for three days. We hadn't had any luck. I don't like to look back and think I was impatient and careless, but of course I was. Berkowitz didn't see them, but I did, the telltale three white dots of a human in the brush, the face and two hands. And a flash of reflected light from a scope or binoculars. We knew we were in enemy territory. No friendlies anywhere near. So I aimed and fired as fast as I could, thinking the flash might be a scope and the enemy had me in it." Gray's eyes dropped from the fire to the stone hearth.

"Go on," Adrian whispered.

A moment passed, then he said, "My kill fell out of the bush where he had been hiding." Gray placed his glass on the table. His hands were trembling, and the base of the glass rattled on the tabletop. "He was an American. A Marine sniper."

With two fingers, Adrian gently touched her chin, as if exploring a bruise. "Are you sure?"

"He was wearing a Marine Corps field uniform and he was a Caucasian. And the only whites operating in the area were Marine Corps snipers. We usually stay away from each other's territories, but somehow our signals got crossed."

"Did you recognize him? Was he someone from your unit?"

"I didn't get close to him. I couldn't. A look through Berkowitz's binoculars was enough, though. It was a good shot, a head shot, right through his nose. Blood and gore and brains were all over his face as he lay there. He was as dead as I've seen anybody, and I saw a lot of dead people. Mostly people I made dead."

"Was it someone from your unit?"

"We all were accounted for that evening. But there were other Marine sniper companies in Elephant Valley. They suffered losses all the time. It's the nature of the profession that sometimes snipers don't come back from patrol."

"And you didn't report this to your commander?"

Gray moved his head left and right, an almost imperceptible motion. "I didn't have the courage. I never learned who my victim was."

"Did Allen Berkowitz have the same trouble you had coping with this?"

"Berkowitz was killed by mortar fire two days after I left Vietnam." Gray continued with his dinner, chewing mechanically and tasting nothing.

"What happened after the accident?" she asked.

"The old-fashioned term for it is a mental breakdown. I had one. My captain found me sobbing, sitting on an upside-down bucket near the latrine. He hid me for several days, thinking I'd come out of it, but I didn't. So he drove me to the Fourth Marine Division Hospital at Phu Bai. They locked me up in a padded ward in a MUST. The kook cell."

"A must?"

"Medical Unit Self-Contained Transportable, a portable hospital that looks like an immense inflated tube."

"You attempted suicide?"

"I don't remember it very well because of the medication the doctors were giving me at the division hospital. I took a couple of stabs at my wrist with a scalpel I stole from a surgery cart."

Adrian reached for his left wrist. She pushed back his sleeve. Pink scars were only slightly visible on the underside of his wrist. She said, "These don't look too bad."

"After I got to New York, I had a plastic surgeon work on the wrist. So now I can pass it off as a childhood accident with a pop bottle."

She looked at his other arm. "You only took the scalpel to one wrist?"

"It hurt too much." He smiled weakly. "I quit after the first wrist."

"What about the scar on your neck Pete Coates talks about. Let me see it."

He pulled down the neck of his sweatshirt.

She said, "It looks like an egg fried over easy."

"The plastic surgeon worked on this, too. You should see the 'before' pictures."

"Any more scars?"

"Couple puncture scars on my arms and legs that don't amount to anything. And I clipped the side of my foot with a .22 bullet when I was seven years old." He tried to generate a waggish tone, but his voice wasn't cooperating. "I still wear a crease of red skin there. Want to see it?"

"I think I'll pass." She finished her wine.

He said, "You are the second person I've ever mentioned the ninety-seventh kill to. You and Mrs. Orlando. You've hypnotized me somehow."

"You didn't tell your ex-wife?"

"Cathryn couldn't handle ninety-six. No sense telling her about the last one."

"Why did she marry you if she couldn't reconcile you with your past?"

Gray spread his hands. "I lied to her about it. At first I told her I was an infantryman in Vietnam and only saw a little action, nothing much."

"When did you tell her you were a sniper?"

"Two years into our marriage I figured Cathryn knew me well enough — knew my good qualities, knew that I wasn't crazy, knew that it was behind me — that she could handle the news."

"But she couldn't."

Gray exhaled slowly. "She couldn't come to grips with me peering through a scope at ninety-six human beings and pulling the trigger. I argued. Christ, I argued. A war was on. They were the enemy. I was doing my duty. Made no difference to her." Gray wet his lower lip with his tongue. "I'm not sure I blame her. It's a hard number, ninety-six. Tough to push it around and come up with anything redeeming. It hit her hard, I guess." Gray paused, then decided to risk the confidence. "We never made love again, not once, after she learned I was a sniper."

"Have you come to grips with it?"

"The first ninety-six, yes. But the last one — the American I left dead in the Vietnam bush, and forever left his family wondering — is something…" Gray hesitated and again looked at Adrian Wade. He measured his words. "It's an inescapable pit of agony for me. That terrible moment is always present, every hour of the day and many hours of the night. You'd think a tough ex-Marine and federal prosecutor like me would be able to deal with it, but I never have. I make do, with my kids, with my job." His voice was barely audible. "But I know now that number ninety-seven is never going to go away."

They stared into the fire for a few moments. The fury of it had abated and now the flames leisurely worked on the blackened logs. Embers glowed at the base of the fire. Smoke twisted and rose up the chimney.

She gently patted his arm. "I'm going to turn in. You'll talk about this more tomorrow, won't you? You won't clam up?"

"Feel free to interrogate me further. It's your job, after all."

She smiled good night at him. She put her plate in the kitchen on her way to his parents' room, where he had made the bed earlier in the day. She closed the door behind her.

Owen Gray sat on the couch another two hours, utterly still, gazing at the fire. When he rose to go to his bedroom only blood-red embers remained.

"Are you on the run?" Andy Ellison asked, bringing his cup of chamomile tea to his lips. The hands shook uncontrollably, and the tea splashed over the cup's sides. His voice was as steady as he could make it but still sounded like he was entering puberty. The rush of confidence he had felt on learning this man was not a DEA agent had quickly evaporated.

"On the run?"

"A fugitive?" Ellison had quickly determined that the stranger knew no colloquialisms or slang, even the most common phrases. The foreigner had learned English from a book, probably an old book.

"Yes."

Ellison sipped the tea, wishing he could control his hands. He was terrified of this big man with the dent in his head and the bony face. The man's eyes were curiously flat, and they seemed to look through things rather than at them. His large nylon bag was on the floor near his feet.

"Who is looking for you?"

"U.S. Immigration Service."

"They want to send you back? To where?"

"To Russia." The big man plunged a cleaning rod into the barrel of the Mosin-Nagant rifle. A scope was mounted on the rifle.

"You handle that weapon like you know what you are doing." Ellison was determined to get this man to like him and therefore spare him.

The Russian said nothing, working the rod in and out. Half of the items in the farmhouse would have been recognized by the homesteader who built the place a hundred years before— the pine table and primitive chairs, the rocking chair, the washstand, a hurricane lamp, the glass doorknobs, and the lacy curtains. The homesteader would have been clueless about Ellison's additions — the poster of John Lennon, a wood tie-dye frame, a glass and brass hookah, a boom box near a rack of Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin CDs, a well-thumbed 1969 Volkswagen van repair manual, an incense bowl, and a bead curtain that hung in the door to the kitchen.

The Russian abruptly asked, "Have you ever been in prison?"

Ellison hesitated, wondering if he was being asked to incriminate himself. Then he said, "Yes."

Trusov wrapped a new patch around the tip of the cleaning rod and reinserted the rod into the barrel. "In the United States?"

"Yes, in California and Washington State."

"The prisons here are… " Trusov paused, apparently searching for the word. "Are fun."

Ellison was affronted. "Fun?"

"Not like in Russia."

"It was hardly fun," Ellison said petulantly. "And for what? I was just trying to make a living. I'm never going back to prison." He decided the huge stranger probably didn't want to hear any more whining, so he asked, "What were you in for?"

No answer, so Ellison tried, "Why were you sent to prison?"

"I wounded a Red Army officer."

"Accidentally?"

Trusov's mouth cranked up into what might have been a grin. "No." Then he returned his gaze to the window or perhaps he was staring at the blank wall above the window. After a moment he said, "I was in the army's First Military District Prison. It was called" — he glanced at Ellison as if for help with the language, then he tried —"Boulderhouse?"

"Probably stonehouse. That's more poetic."

"Stonehouse, because its walls are made of a stone and concrete mix. It's near Podolsk, forty kilometers south of Moscow. The comforts of American prisons are not at the Stonehouse."

"Sounds like you did hard time."

"Twenty percent of Stonehouse inmates die each year. Some freeze. Some starve. Some kill themselves. Some just show up missing on the prison's papers."

"The prison's records," Ellison helped.

Trusov nodded. "Every day we would march out chained together for road work. Sometimes the snow on the sides of the road was over our heads. Sometimes ice would form on our faces and beards as we worked. If a prisoner fell, he was left on the road until night, when a truck would pick him up, pick the body up."

Ellison nodded, taking more tea. The Russian's hands were busy with his weapon, but he continued to stare at the wall.

"The cell… the alone cell."

"Solitary confinement."

"It was ten meters below ground, a three-meter-by-three-meter hole. No light. No toilet. No clothes."

"They took your clothes away in solitary?"

"First they beat you, then they take your clothes away." Trusov turned away from the wall to pull back his right cheek with a finger. His upper molars were missing. "A rifle butt."

"Is that also how you got that crease on your head?"

Trusov turned back to the window. "I was in the Stonehouse eight years, and I spent over five hundred days in that cell, two hundred of those days for my walk to Riga."

"You escaped?"

Trusov nodded. "I ran from the work line, ran across a field, the guards shooting, but they were poor shots, like most soldiers everywhere. I walked eight hundred kilometers west, with no papers or money, and only my prison clothes."

"But you were recaptured?

"The Riga KGB. I don't know how they found me, but they took me back. When my time was over, I was given a new suit of clothes and two hundred rubles, and I walked out the Stone-house's gate. I weighed seventy kilograms."

Ellison's eyes widened. Like all folks in his business he was good at metric conversions. "You weighed a hundred and fifty-five pounds?" The Russian appeared to now weigh close to two-twenty, all muscle and bone. He had indeed served hard time.

"You hungry?" Ellison asked.

"I was always hungry."

"I mean now. I've got dinner on the stove. There's enough for two." He pushed aside strings of beads and disappeared into the kitchen. He returned with two soup bowls, spoons, and a loaf of bread.

Trusov carefully placed the rifle across the table to accept the bowl. He dug into it with a spoon, turning the steaming contents over. Finally he asked, "Where's the meat?"

With proud defiance Ellison replied, "I don't eat meat."

"What is this?"

"Rice and beans and corn in a tomato base. Some oregano and garlic."

Trusov ate several spoonfuls, then pronounced, "You are a hippie."

Ellison beamed. "Yes, yes I am. How do you know about hippies?"

"I read about them in Red Army school at Rostok, a political class, a class about America. But I thought all hippies were gone many years ago."

"Not many of us are still around," Ellison conceded. "Only the strong of heart and the pure of purpose."

The Russian tore off a hunk of the bread and used it to ladle the soup into his mouth.

Ellison asked tentatively, "Why are the U.S. Immigration authorities looking for you?"

"After my release from the Stonehouse, I was not supposed to leave the First Military District. A condition of my release. But I did. I came here. Now the Red Army has asked the U.S. police to look for me."

That made sense to Ellison, except for one thing. "Why did you come to the U.S.?"

The Russian chewed. "I need to stay here tonight. I will go in the morning."

"Sure," Ellison said quickly. He wasn't going to press this man for answers. But he was emboldened by the man's statement that he was journeying on after a night's sleep. His hands were calming. After several more spoonfuls of soup Ellison ventured, "Can I ask, where are you going?"

"To your state of Idaho. I'm meeting someone in Idaho."

"Three minutes," the pilot called over his shoulder. Bruce Taylor had flown for the U. S. Army for eight years until joining the FBI. He wore a holster strapped to the leg of his blue flight suit. He scanned his gauges, then ordered loudly, "Check your safety harnesses."

"You ever done this before?" shouted the FBI agent next to Coates.

"All the time."

"You don't look too comfortable in that flak jacket."

Coates yelled above the scream of the General Electric free-turbine engines, "Don't worry about me, sonny. I'll do fine. That son of a bitch'll regret the day he came here."

The agent grinned. "The Russian's got your goat, sounds like."

"Something like that." Coates pulled his service pistol from under the jacket. He checked the load.

"Why don't you trade in that nosepicker for some pop." The agent's name was Ray Rafferty. He held up his assault rifle. "With this you just point and spray."

Coates shook his head. It was hard to think in the belly of the Sikorsky Black Hawk. The engines roared and the blades pounded and the wind whipped by. The helicopter rose and fell with sickening abruptness as the pilot followed the terrain. Coates and three FBI agents sat in the waist. The agents wore bush coats over their Kevlar vests, and "FBI" was inked on the back of the coats, hardly noticeable amid the green and brown camouflage colors. Their faces were blackened. Coates had been so awkward applying the grease paint Rafferty had finished the job for him. Between the agents' knees rested their M16s. At the rear of the compartment were two litters. They were approaching the farmhouse at 150 miles an hour.

Across from Coates was an agent named Buddy Riggs who had earlier told the detective he had earned a business degree and had become a certified public accountant, but after two years found the profession was "not meeting my needs for personal growth," so he had joined the Navy and had become a SEAL, then had gone on to the FBI. Riggs was missing an eyebrow, and it looked as if it had been burned off. Coates hadn't asked him about it. Next to Riggs was John Ward, a blunt-nosed special agent Rafferty had said could do six hundred push-ups.

Rafferty and Riggs and Ward were members of an FBI organization called Inter-Agency SWAT. These men were often called to assist sheriffs' departments and police forces who abruptly found themselves over their heads.

This helicopter was one prong of a three-way deployment. The Black Hawk was going to land a mile north of the farmhouse in a clearing that was close enough to the farm to walk in but far enough away so the Russian would not hear the approach. Another copter was landing two miles south of the farmhouse in a field. Yet more agents and police were hiking in from the highway and the dirt road. They would have the Russian surrounded.

"Here we go," yelled the pilot.

The helicopter sank and Coates's belly rose in his throat. The pink sky of dawn was visible through the portholes in the fuselage. Then the view turned dark green as the Black Hawk dipped into the trees. Dust and leaves blew up and the blades gained an even deeper throb. The pilot was skilled, and Coates did not know the helicopter was on the ground until Reardon slid open the hatch.

The detective popped open his harness and crouched low to approach the pilot. He tapped the pilot on the shoulder. "Keep your engines idling." He touched the radio in his pocket. "We may have to call you in."

The pilot nodded.

Coates dropped through the hatch to the ground. He squinted against the swirling dust. The turbines still shrieked. The FBI team waited for Coates to lead off. This was his show. The detective crouched low under the spinning blades even though they cleared his head by eight feet.

"You ready, boys?"

Rafferty gave the stock of his assault rifle an affectionate squeeze. "We're always ready."

The detective brought up his wristwatch. "The farmhouse is a mile south. We've got eighteen minutes to get there. It's broken ground but fairly open. Let's go."

Coates led them away, the FBI agents running like infantrymen, their weapons across their chests, while Coates stumbled ahead, unused to traversing ground that wasn't paved. The sun had just begun its climb in the east.

The pilot watched them go. The detective and the agents crossed the meadow single-file, heading for the trees. Special Agent Ward brought up the rear, occasionally glancing back at the helicopter, checking the avenue of retreat in the best infantry-school fashion.

Dust blown up from the blades had coated the inside of the copter's windscreen. Taylor kept a soft cloth at his feet. He swatted the rag against the glass, brushing away the dust.

Just as the pilot's eyes refocused through the windshield, a red halo abruptly formed around Ward's head. Mist and light swirled and flickered. Ward crumpled to the ground and was still.

The pilot squinted. The distance and the sun reflecting off his windshield made Taylor unsure what he had just seen. All he could hear was the Black Hawk's turbines.

The three men ahead — ducks in a row — were unaware Ward had fallen. They had apparently heard nothing. They continued to cross the field to the pines. With Ward down, the last man in the single file was now Buddy Riggs. The pilot saw Riggs's head blur red. Riggs fell.

Coates and Rafferty marched ahead, the detective in the lead. They were almost to the trees.

The pilot leaned out the hatch to scream a warning, but the sound was lost in the noise of the turbines.

Then Ray Rafferty's head flew apart and he collapsed onto the cheat-grass. The three shots had taken less than ten seconds.

Panting and oblivious, Coates reached the trees. He glanced at his watch, then lifted a compass from a pocket. "Due south. We've got a lot of time." He turned around to confer with the team.

And only then did he see the horror, all three down and bloodied, a ghastly trail of bodies.

Coates dropped to the ground before he fully understood what had happened. His instinct saved his life, as the fourth bullet, the one intended for him, smacked into a lodgepole pine near where his head had been an instant before. Coates crawled behind a tree.

Taylor fought with himself. He might be able to help here on the ground, but all his training told him a helicopter was useless when idle. He decided he would get airborne, he would radio for help, and he then would try to extricate Coates.

Taylor engaged the rotors. The engines began to wind up. Twigs and grass and dirt whirled up.

The pilot yelped as the hot bore of a rifle was pressed into his neck.

A voice from behind. "Go up. Go west." The words were slow and bent by an accent.

The killer had climbed into the fuselage. He must have been shooting from behind the helicopter.

Again the careful words, "Go up. Go west. Listen to me."

The Black Hawk lifted off and gained elevation quickly, then banked away from the sun. Trees and fields slipped by below.

From behind came "Pick him up."

At first Taylor didn't know what the voice was referring to, but a hand came forward and pointed out the knee hatch.

A man was running wildly across a field, all legs and arms, churning away. The man stumbled and fell. He gazed fearfully over his shoulder, then scrambled up and started off again.

"Pick him up," the man behind ordered again. "I need bait."

The pilot narrowed his eyes. Perhaps it was a trick of the dawn light, but it appeared the runner below was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt. Taylor hadn't seen one in twenty years. He did not know what the man behind him meant by bait.

With the rifle barrel still against his neck, Taylor put the Black Hawk down in a field near the runner, who crazily veered away, running and limping and working his arms against the air, in a panic.

The gunman leaned out the hatch and beckoned once, then again, and when Andy Ellison dared to look over his shoulder again, he saw the Russian signaling him. Ellison slowed, then stopped. He gritted his teeth with indecision. Grinning, the Russian waved at him again. Ellison bolted for the helicopter, stumbling over straw and stones, looking left and right, blowing like a bellows.

Wetting his lips with his tongue, Taylor watched. The gunman helped the hippie into the copter's waist. His Mosin-Nagant on the pilot, the killer pointed skyward. The copter lifted off again.

Ellison slumped onto a jump seat. He was unable to catch his breath. He wiped his hands across his forehead. His jeans were soiled and torn. With trembling hands he removed his spectacles to straighten the wire frame.

He managed, "The DEA. They were after me. Christ, there were dozens of them, maybe hundreds."

The Russian grinned as he helped Ellison into a safety harness. "It is dangerous being around you marijuana farmers."

Ellison barked a laugh of relief. "Good God, yes. But it doesn't look like I'm going back to prison. Today, anyway. Thanks to you."

Trusov buckled himself in, the rifle still on the pilot. "No, neither of us is going to prison."

Owen Gray lowered the M-40A1 sniper rifle to the apple box. He picked up a bowl of Wheaties. Also on the apple crate were a carton of milk, a box of cereal, and cleaning and oiling equipment. The rifle was fully assembled. He put the bowl under his chin and shoveled flakes into his mouth with a spoon. He was sitting on the porch, the apple box to one side. He chewed mechanically, his eyes on the big larch tree. The ground was damp from the rain, but a gray weeping dawn had given way to blue sky. An Idaho State Patrol car was parked on the other side of the tree. Two troopers leaned against the front hood. One carried an automatic shotgun. They were eating a breakfast sandwich brought up from Ketchum.

Adrian emerged from the cabin squinting at the morning light. She was wearing a white terry-cloth robe that had a red rose stitched over her heart. She was barefoot and wore no makeup. She ran her hand several times through her hair, then stepped toward one of the cane chairs Gray had moved onto the porch. Gray thought she looked alluringly undone.

She stopped near him. "Cereal? I thought you mountain men ate moose and moss for breakfast."

He chewed a moment more, then said, "I told you I caught the trout we ate last night, but actually I bought the fish down in Ketchum."

She raised a hand against the sun. "Why the fib?"

"To see if you knew anything about the outdoors. You don't."

"How could I have known you didn't catch the fish?" Her frown reflected her disapproval.

Gray dug the spoon into the cereal. "The fins of a hatchery fish are worn down and nipped. Its pectoral fins may be missing altogether."

"Why?"

"Fins wear off on the concrete runways. And during feeding time the fish in their frenzy bite each other's fins. Wild fish are prettier, with full rays to their pectorals and dorsal fins. Those trout we ate were raised on a farm down in southern Idaho, probably near Hagerman. No outdoors person would mistake wild trout for farm-raised trout."

"Well, golly," she said in broad hick's accent, "I sure am dumb and you sure are smart."

Gray wiped the corner of his mouth with a finger. "I learned quickly in Vietnam to always test my partners. I need to know what you know and use what you know and make allowances for what you don't. I'm not going to let my life depend on a stranger."

"I don't know anything about the wilderness." She walked behind him toward the south end of the porch. She gripped her bathrobe around her. "If you had simply asked, I would have admitted it. Like, if I ask if you know anything about being a dolt, you can admit that you do."

Gray mumbled around a mouthful of cereal, "Don't get yourself bitten by a rattlesnake."

"Thank you, Marlin Perkins," she replied. "I won't."

"Yes you will, if you take three more steps toward the end of the porch."

Adrian's hands came up as if someone had thrown her a basketball. Her mouth widened. She danced backwards, away from the chair and the reptile that was near it.

The rattlesnake was lying half on and half off the south edge of the porch, absorbing the early morning sun, its flat head on the wood and its rattles over the side. With the black and white diamond patterns on its back, the rattler's scales resembled bathroom tiles.

"Goddamnit, Owen, you let me get too close to that snake."

"You were perfectly safe. They crawl, they don't fly."

"What's it going to do?" Adrian's voice carried a trace of fear unsuccessfully masked.

"It's going to sit there until the sun goes behind a tree or a until a mouse comes along, whichever happens first. They don't move much on hot days."

"Get rid of it. Shoo it away. Look, it's staring at me."

Gray lowered the bowl to the apple box. He crossed the porch, passing Adrian toward the snake. The snake's tail came up as its body contracted into a loose coil.

"Rattlers are less dangerous than people think," Gray said. "Watch this."

The snake's rattles — a series of horny buttons at the end of its tail — trilled loudly, sounding more like an electric spark than a baby's toy, a throat-grabbing, relentless, sinister burr. Gray slowly moved his right hand away from his body. The snake's villainous eyes followed the hand. Its forked tongue flashed in and out and its scales glimmered in the sun. While the snake's head was turning, Gray's other hand shot out and snatched the rattler just below its head. The reptile squirmed frantically as Gray lifted it. The snake wrapped itself around Gray's wrist and forearm. Adrian had stepped back as far as the door. Her right hand was at her mouth.

"My father and I tried venom harvesting for a while. We'd catch a rattler like this, then press open its mouth with our thumb."

When Gray pressured the back of the snake's head, its mouth opened, revealing its half-inch fangs below pink fang sheaths.

"We used to collect the venom in bottles," Gray said.

Glittering liquid appeared at the tip of the fang. Several drops fell to the porch.

"I saved my father's life once," Gray said, still holding the rattlesnake's head in Adrian's direction. "We were climbing a steep embankment and my dad was reaching up for a handhold when his hand found a rattler sleeping in the sun. The snake bit him on the back of the hand. So I got out a knife, cut little Xs where the fangs had punctured the skin, and sucked the venom out. My dad said later he was lucky the snake didn't bite him on the ass, because I would have sat there and watched him die."

Gray stepped down from the porch, peeled the diamondback from around his arm, and tossed the snake toward the remnants of the woodshed. The rattler crawled quickly under a pile of shingles.

Adrian exhaled loudly. "What an incredible showoff you are."

"But you have to admit you are impressed."

After a moment, she grinned. "A little."

Gray returned to the apple crate. He poured more Wheaties and milk, wiped the spoon on his trousers, then handed her the bowl and spoon.

He lifted the sniper rifle. "Scientists should study rifles more."

Around the Wheaties in her mouth, she said, "They should study you more."

"I've never fully understood everything a rifle does, but one thing I've noticed is that the weapon slows time. The passing day has a curious dilation whenever I hold a rifle. Tell me what you hear when I fire this rifle."

Gray yelled a warning to the troopers that he was about to use the weapon, then tucked the butt into his shoulder, aimed the rifle at a tree stump off to his left, and pulled the trigger. The rifle sounded loudly. Rotted pieces of bark jumped away from the stump, leaving a small black hole in the old wood.

She looked at him quizzically. "I heard a rifle shot, then some echoing from the mountains."

"But there was much more." Gray returned the rifle to the box. "The sound began with a fierce little slap, like metal on metal. Then came a brief pause full of rushing wind. Next came a bass thump, followed by a trumpeter with a mute making a wa-wa-wa tone. After that came the roar of passing train. When that trailed away, the echoing began. The sound was full of nuances."

"You sound like one of those snooty wine critics. They say it has a nice nose and a pleasant but presumptuous fullness when all they've really got is a simple glass of wine."

"It isn't just the rifle shot I'm talking about. When I'm holding a weapon, everything seems in slow motion, like everything is moving underwater. It's an odd effect and beyond my explanation."

She smiled. "Did these Wheaties stay crisp in the milk longer?"

He stared at her. "Maybe I should be talking to that rattlesnake."

Her spoon paused over the bowl. "The victim never hears anything, does he?"

"The bullet gets to him before the sound does."

"That's eerie," she said with a subdued voice.

Gray's gaze was again on the tree. He whispered, "He never hears a thing."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"The damned thing is reaching for me!" Pete Coates exclaimed, kicking his right foot. "Christ, that hurts."

"Watch where you're walking," Gray said mildly. "And it's only a wild blackberry vine. It won't kill you."

"Goddamnit, it's torn my new pants. I just bought these new slacks at Moe Ginsburg's last week."

The blackberry had sharp spines on almost every part of it — the leaves and leaf stalks, and on the grasping vines, where they were curved like talons. This plant had grown over a mountain maple, smothering it, and had reached along the path for more victims. It had found Coates, or rather Coates had found it.

"Is it any wonder I hate leaving New York?" With two fingers Coates pried the blackberry vine away from his pants leg. "It's got my thumb now." He flicked his hand. Blood oozed from the meat of his thumb.

"Looks like Central Park is about all the wilderness you can handle, Pete."

Gray and the detective were walking downstream along Black Bear Creek a hundred yards from the cabin. Gray carried the Weatherby Magnum on a sling over his shoulder. He was also wearing a backpack over a duck-hunting vest. A deer path shadowed the stream, curving with it, never straying far from the bubbling, swirling water. The trail was so narrow that Gray and Coates had to walk single file. Boulders edged some of the stream, and dark pools of still water gathered behind them. The current slipped from behind rocks, cascading in white and blue to the next pool. Sword and maidenhair ferns edged the water with their pure green, a color Idahoans believe with some justification occurs only in their state. A willow trailed its branches in the water, the current tugging at its leaves. The stream's sibilant whisper was mixed with the mirthful, flutey trill of a western tanager high in an aspen above the water.

They came to a larger pool ringed with small-leafed plants growing in patches as thick as a mat. The plants were anchored in the mud, with buoyant stems and leaves above the water. Gray brought out a plastic bag from his backpack, stooped over the pool, and tore bunches of the plant away from the water. He put several handfuls into the plastic bag before returning the bag to the pack.

"What is that?" the detective asked.

"Watercress."

"It grows in streams?"

"Where did you think it came from?"

Coates shrugged. "From grocery stores."

Gray shook his head. "Don't get near those stinging nettles." He waved a hand at a five-foot-tall bank of nettles in front of them. The stem, leaf stalks, and veins on the undersurface of the leaves had stinging hairs that injected poison into skin like hypodermic needles. Gray had to turn sideways to slip between the nettles and the water, sidestepping on a narrow ledge.

"You think I'm a city slicker who doesn't know nettles when he sees them," Coates groused.

He followed Gray, scooting along sideways, hanging his hands out over the creek away from the nettle leaves. The path turned away from the creek for a few yards. They walked over goose grass and creeping buttercup. The stream flowed through a ravine filled with hemlock and mountain laurel. Leaves were still damp from the storm the night before, but the strip of sky visible above Gray, seen from the shadows of the ravine, was rinsed and smiling and lapis blue. Gray smelled the pungent treacly odor of yarrow. The Shoshone had brewed a tea from its fernlike leaves. They passed several bunches of the plant.

Gray looked over his shoulder. "You ever been out here before?"

"Never."

"You'll like Idaho."

"In New York we pronounce it 'Iowa.' "

"Did you bring any outdoor clothing?"

"I wear a tie when I'm on business." Coates's gray sports coat was dappled with water spots from the leaves. He wore a red tie and white shirt. His pants cuffs were ragged from the vines. "And when you said your place was in the mountains, I sort of envisioned the Poconos, not this wild place. Aren't you supposed to put asphalt on these paths, and handrails?"

Gray had picked up Pete Coates at the Hailey airport two hours ago, a Horizon Air flight up from Twin Falls. During the drive, Coates had told Gray of the murder of the three FBI agents. Gray had never before seen the detective's hands tremble. Now, feeling each owed it to the other, both men were trying to generate a good humor neither felt.

"Watch the creek bank," Gray said. "It's soft here."

"Where?" As Coates asked, the bank crumbled under his feet and his left leg plunged into the water to his knee. The creek boiled around his leg and wicked up his pants to his crotch. He flailed the air wildly before his hands seized a laurel branch to lever himself out.

"There," Gray said.

He began climbing out of the ravine along a path he had known since he could walk, a trail so stitched into his memory that a growth of moss on a feldspar outcropping caught his eye as new and a stretch of stones near the rim of the creek canyon was brighter than he remembered; and when he glanced skyward he saw that the bathtub-sized raven's nest that had been in the nearby aspen for a generation was gone, perhaps blown down in a storm, allowing more sun to reach the ground.

Pete Coates scrabbled up the path behind Gray, leaving a wet shoe print every other step. His damp trousers clung to his leg. His eyeglasses flashed on and off in the dappled sunlight below the trees. Near the rim the detective's leather brogans could not find purchase on the pebbles and loose dirt, and he churned his legs, slipping with each step. Gray grabbed his wrist and lifted him over the top.

Coates shook away Gray's hand and said with indignation that was mostly mock, "You think this gives you some sort of moral authority over me, don't you? Out here in the land time forgot, showing me the ropes, watching me cope."

"One of your shirttails is out."

Coates tucked himself in. "Just like I've been showing you the ins and outs of New York all these years."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you asked for the tour of the property."

"Now you get the chance to lord it over this city slicker." Coates followed Gray toward the cabin. "You are positively glowing with it, parading your knowledge. You know what the biggest difference is between you and me, Owen?"

"I'm afraid to ask."

"It's this: I know crime and criminals. I know the underside of life, the rot of the big city, the vicious and the cruel, the myriad ways to squander lives, the complexity of urban life. And you know watercress."

Gray laughed.

"What happened to this garage?"

"It was a rickety old woodshed. Wind probably blew it down."

"Pretty violent storm, must've been, to hack out wood chips from the support poles just like an axe."

"You don't miss much, do you, Pete?"

They approached the home. A panel truck was parked near the porch. The vehicle was unmarked, but Gray knew it belonged to the FBI. On the porch Adrian Wade pointed directions to two technicians who carried a fax machine and computer into the house. The technicians returned to the truck to pull out a five-foot-diameter satellite dish.

Gray muttered, "She's going to make my place look like Houston Control."

A black-and-white police car was also parked on the gravel. The blue bubble was on the dashboard, not on the cab roof. On the door was a complicated insignia featuring a braying elk, a medieval gauntlet gripping a lightning bolt, a miner's shovel, and a fleur-de-lis. The insignia had resulted from a Hobart High School art class contest in the 1940s. Above the insignia were the words "Hobart Police Department." The police officer was sitting on the car's hood watching the truck being unloaded, and watching Adrian in particular.

When he saw Owen Gray, the man's face wrinkled into a grin, and he slid to the ground and crossed the gravel, hand out in front of him. He pumped Gray's hand, and then he continued to hold it, patting it like he might a child's, smiling all the while.

"Tell me you are moving back into the Sawtooths, and that handsome woman is your bride."

Gray smiled. "Walt, I'm only here for a while."

"And that's not your wife?"

"Lord, no. She's a combination ninja assassin and Grand Inquisitor, and I'm not related to her in any way." He introduced Coates to Hobart Police Chief Walt Durant.

Walt Durant had a doughy face. His mouth was wide and his lower lip hung an inch out of his mouth and was always damp. His nose was the size of a light bulb and was lined with burst capillaries. Acne had left pits high on his neck below his ears. With small gaps between every one of his teeth, his smile resembled a picket fence. He was bald except for a horseshoe of gray hair from temple to temple. Durant was walleyed, and Gray never knew whether the chief was looking at him or staring over Gray's shoulder at something more interesting. Durant was wearing a tan uniform shirt and slacks. Above his badge were four citation plates awarded by the city council, each representing five years of distinguished service. Gray had heard the chief complain that it was cheaper for the city to give him a medal than a raise. Durant wore a holstered revolver on a Sam Browne. Also on the belt were a handcuff case and two bullet dumps. He had left his hat on the car seat.

"You carry two shields, Chief?" Coates asked, pointing to Durant's shirt pocket.

Durant lifted the second badge from his pocket. It glittered gold in the sunlight. "I'm also the Hobart fire chief. The badge I wear depends on the nature of the emergency. I'm also in charge of the Hobart sanitary landfill." The police chief brightened. "Another job I had once was a bounty counter."

"A bounty hunter?" Coates asked.

"A counter. The federal government back in the early sixties offered a bounty for coyotes. You remember that, Owen? You and your old man brought in two hundred fifty coyotes in one month. Most ever, I'd bet. I'd pay you ten dollars for every set of coyote ears you and Dalton brung me. That's still talked about in this town, Pete, two hundred fifty coyotes in thirty-one days." Durant whistled appreciatively.

Durant had been Dalton Gray's closest friend, the first visitor to the house when Owen had been born. Decades later, as Dalton was being lowered into the ground in the Hobart cemetery, Durant had told Gray in a breaking voice, "In the future, if you need anything from a father, you ask me, Owen."

The police chief said, "You haven't mentioned what brings you out here, Pete."

While Coates told Chief Durant about Nikolai Trusov, Gray crossed the lot to enter the cabin. He returned a few minutes later carrying sandwiches piled high on a plate. He stopped at the porch to hand some out to Adrian Wade and the two techs, then returned to Coates and Durant. They helped themselves.

"What's in it?" Coates asked, lifting the top slice of bread like a flap.

"Watercress, a lot of butter, and salt."

"Where's the pastrami? It's like you've given me two bookends with nothing in between." The detective bit into it, then admitted, "Not bad."

"And what makes you think the Russian is coming to Hobart?" Durant asked.

"We put two facts together. One, Trusov is heading west. And two, Owen is here."

"How does this Trusov know where Owen is?"

"I haven't figured that out," Coates replied, glancing at Gray. "Trusov knows Owen was raised in the Sawtooths, because he had a copy of his high school annual and he's seen Owen's service record. Maybe he's just guessing Owen has returned home."

"So what are you proposing we do?" Durant asked.

"I tried to erect a series of concentric circles around Manhattan, circles of people looking for Trusov. But he got outside them all. Now I'm going to put the same circles around Hobart, hoping I can spot Trusov coming in."

"And you want my help," Durant said skeptically. "To protect Owen here? Owen can probably take care of himself."

The detective said, "My task force isn't assigned to protect Owen. Its job is to catch this murderer."

"A task force," the sheriff repeated. He looked at Owen, his eyes mirroring his mirth. "An entire task force?"

"I'm going to make it impossible for Nikolai Trusov to come to this area without being noticed, I'll guarantee you that."

From a coat pocket Coates removed a contour interval map of the area. The map had a 1/250,000 scale, with contours every hundred feet. The detective asked questions about the lay of the land, about State Highway 75, which was the only paved road in and out of Hobart, and about the smaller gravel and dirt roads that wandered in a number of directions up into the mountains, short roads because the peaks east and west of the town were close. He asked about the emergency grass airfield north of Hobart, about trails that crossed the mountains on which a hiker might approach the town, about locations for highway checkpoints.

Coates finally summed up. "It looks like I'm going to need two shifts of about eighty people each. A hundred and sixty. I suppose you know most of the sheriffs and police chiefs around here."

Durant nodded. He crammed the last quarter of his sandwich into his mouth. A stray watercress leaf escaped his jaws and floated to the ground.

"Will they loan you their people?"

"As many as they can spare." The police chief produced a can of Copenhagen from his pants pocket. He tapped the lid before opening it, then held the tin out. Gray and Coates declined. The chief inserted a wad of tobacco behind his lower lip.

They were standing thirty yards southwest of the house. A tangle of weeds was at their feet. Owen Gray lowered himself to his haunches and absently began pulling weeds from the ground, one at a time, throwing them off to his right. The police chief followed him down and also yanked the plants from the ground.

"And I need some of your resources. What's the size of your department?"

"You're looking at it."

"You? That's it?"

Durant put a backcountry drawl into his voice. "Hobart ain't Manhattan, Pete."

"How about communications equipment?"

"I don't have much, because when I'm out of the office there's no one to call at the office, and when I'm in the office there's no one out on the road."

Pete Coates also lowered himself. He imitated the others by yanking a weed from the ground and throwing it aside. "Does the Hobart Police Department have anything useful?"

"Twenty orange traffic cones."

"That's it, for Christ sake?"

"Four portable barricades, one police car, four assorted firearms, and a one-person jail that an imbecile could break out of."

The detective removed his eyeglasses to scratch the side of his nose where the tabs had left red marks. "Does your office have electricity?"

"Yep. And we get the mail whenever the river freezes over and the dogsleds can get in."

Gray and Durant continued with the weeds. The small pile of discarded plants was growing. Behind them toward the ravine was a thicket of taller weeds, these with sharply pointed elongated leaves of bright green with slight purple veins.

The detective asked, "Is there anything else you can do to help me, Chief?"

"I'll call everyone in Hobart and tell them to keep their eyes out. A stranger won't be able to belch in this town without me hearing of it."

"Can you tell me by tonight how many people you can borrow?"

"You bet."

Coates lifted a spiral notebook from his coat pocket and flipped through a few pages. He spoke for a moment about response times, about how his circle of men and women would collapse around the first location where Trusov was spotted. He used SWAT team jargon. Walt Durant pursed his lips and nodded.

"That's all I got right now." Coates returned the book to his pocket before saying, "I'm loath to display my city ignorance once again, but why are we pulling these weeds?"

"These are wild oats," Gray replied, tossing another aside.

"Aren't you supposed to sow wild oats, not pick them?" Coates asked.

"See these?" Gray held up one of the wild cereal stalks. "This bristlelike appendage that sticks out of the grain is called an awn. It can get stuck in an animal's throat and cause an infection. I lost a mule once that way. By the time I noticed the infection, the mule was a goner."

Coates picked another oat stalk. "But you don't have any mules or horses around here now."

"I do it on principle." Gray flicked another weed onto the pile.

"We're both principled guys," Durant said.

The detective rose to his feet. "Yeah, well, you're both having fun at this big city guy's expense. But I'll tell you, the only thing I can see favorable about the mountains is that you can walk thirty feet in any direction and take a leak."

Coates turned to walk across the gravel into the taller weeds behind him. He brushed a few aside, and stepped further into the thicket. His back to Gray and Durant, he unzipped his pants. He was hidden from Adrian by a stand of mountain laurel. He said over his shoulder, "No need for pay toilets out in Idaho."

There were the sounds of a satisfied grunt, then of liquid falling onto the ground.

Chief Durant clucked his tongue and asked Gray, "You want to tell him or can I?"

"What's a friend for if he can't break bad news?" Gray called to the detective. "Hey, Pete. How you feeling about now?"

"Never better. Nothing like relieving pressure on the inner systems."

"Well, as they say in the song, 'You're going to need an ocean of calamine lotion.' "

It took Coates a moment, then he yelled, "Aw, goddamnit." He held his hands away from his body and shook them as if that might rid them of the poison oil. "Goddamnit."

Without turning, he looked over his shoulder at them. "What do I do now, for Christ sake?"

The police chief said, "I'd put your peter back in your pants, for a start."

"It'll be best if you can do it without touching it," Owen said, pulling out another wild oat stalk. "Otherwise the oil will spread and you'll end up looking like you got the Bangkok pox."

"And don't ask me to help you with the task," Durant said with a straight face. "I wouldn't get the kick out of it you might suppose."

"Goddamnit," Coates yelled again. He jiggled himself, then jumped up and down, and finally used the thumb and little finger of one hand to put himself back into his pants. Still holding one hand away from his body and high above the surrounding plants, he zipped up his pants.

"Son of a bitch." He turned on his heels. "What do I do now?"

"You wearing socks?" Durant asked. "Otherwise your ankles will get it."

"Of course I'm wearing socks. Goddamnit, get me out of here."

"Why don't you walk out like you walked in?" Gray advised. "Keep your hands up."

The detective tiptoed out of the bank of weeds. When he got back to them, he demanded, "Why didn't you tell me I was walking into poison ivy, for Christ sake?" He grabbed the back of one hand with the other. "Christ, my hands hurt already."

"Pete, you're a smart guy," Gray said, dropping the last of the wild oats onto the pile and rising to his feet. "Never in my wildest imagination did it ever occur to me that a smart guy like you would walk into a patch of poison ivy with his privates hanging out."

Durant laughed.

"I was speechless," Gray explained. "I couldn't warn you."

Coates frantically scratched the back of his hands. "Funny guy, Owen, goddamnit."

Chief Durant returned to his car. He said he'd be in touch, and then he backed around the larch tree and drove down the road, disappearing down the hill, dust rising from the car's passing.

Coates and Gray started back to the cottage. Adrian Wade and the FBI technicians were inside. Coates scratched and scratched.

The detective said, "Owen, you're having a lot of fun at my expense, looks like. But you'd better do some serious preparing for Nikolai Trusov. He's coming and I'm going to try my best to stop him, but I tried in New York and failed. I don't plan on it, but I might fail again, and then he'll show up here."

"I'm getting ready."

"Doesn't look like it to me," Coates said. "Goddamnit, I got some poison ivy on my third leg. I can feel it." He scratched his crotch.

"Follow me." Gray led the detective to the side of the cabin. As a firebreak, the wild grass and bushes were kept well away from the structure. They walked on clover and grass and pebbles around to the back of the house, to the main bedroom window at the back. Moss grew on the lower logs of the house.

"Are you jacking me around, Owen?" Coates scoffed. "Cowbells and tin cans?"

Partially hidden in a stand of quaking aspen was a length of wire on which were three rusted cowbells and several empty cans. A trip wire was attached to the second log of the house and ran across the firebreak to the string of cans and bells.

"This looks like a kid designed it!" Coates exclaimed, working on his hands. "You don't think for one minute that Nikolai Trusov will fall for this, do you?"

"Nope." Gray stooped to lift a hand-sized rock. "But it'll take his attention off of more serious matters."

He lobbed the rock onto the ground two feet the other side of the bell-and-can alarm. The rock bounced on the leaves and grass.

The sound of an explosion filled the space between the brush and the building, a concussive wash of wind rushed past them. The air instantly filled with leaves and twigs, twisting and falling.

Coates jumped back, grimacing as if wounded. Smoke was gray and acrid, filling the air and making it shimmer. He reached under his armpit and pulled out his service revolver. "What in hell?"

A speckled pattern had appeared on the logs of the house. Some of the bird shot was visible in its craters, others had sunk further into the wood. A few pellets had dropped to the base of the building. Splinters had been torn away from several logs. Dust rose from the damaged mortar. The shot pattern was the size of a basketball.

"Jesus Christ, Owen. A spring gun?"

Gray nodded. "A 12-gauge hidden in the bush. I built a pressure plate out of some sticks."

Coates peered into the bush. "I don't see the shotgun."

"I hid it a little better than I hid the alarm. I've got five other weapons placed here and there, cocked and ready. I'll come back in a while and reset this one."

Coates returned his weapon to its holster and resumed scratching his hands and his groin. "All right. Maybe you are taking Trusov seriously."

They moved toward the front of the house.

Coates asked, "Where'd you learn about spring guns?"

"In Vietnam. We'd usually set traps at rear approaches to our hides so nobody could sneak up on us. All snipers are taught about booby traps."

"I'm going to be bunking out here in Frontier Land with you." Coates said, biting the back of his hand for relief. "You sure you remember where you put all the guns?"

"I'll draw you a map, if you like." Gray led him to the porch. "I only hope you're not a sleepwalker."

Montana State Trooper Ross Bowen lifted the plastic photo frame from his dashboard and grinned again at his new daughter. Eight pounds, seven ounces, twenty-one inches long, born six days ago, and if there was a God in heaven the girl would look like her mother. He gently tapped the photo, sending his love to his daughter. Bowen had been unprepared for the emotions that had overtaken him in the birthing room and that were still with him. His wife had laughed when he told her that food was tasting better since their daughter was born. So he hadn't told her that the Montana air seemed purer, that he could do more chin-ups than ever before, and that their Labrador retriever was more obedient. Everything was better. Bowen was suffused with parental joy.

Then the silver Honda Accord appeared in his mirror, growing quickly. Bowen didn't need to refer to his daily briefing memo and he didn't need to radio for confirmation. He knew the Accord had been stolen forty minutes before from the parking lot of a minimart. The State Patrol had assumed the Russian was behind the wheel.

Bowen's patrol car was parked behind a stone outcrop that hid much of his vehicle from westbound travelers yet allowed him to aim his mounted radar gun back east along the rising road. His radar was off, and the cone was against the windshield pillar. Trooper Bowen had viewed this duty as an opportunity to sit in the sun under his windshield and consider the good fortune of a new daughter.

The Accord tore by Bowen's patrol car. The trooper cranked over his ignition and slammed his foot down on the gas pedal. The patrol car fishtailed from the shoulder onto the asphalt. The photo of his baby fell to the floor.

The silver Accord wasn't speeding, only sixty miles an hour or so, Bowen determined as he closed the distance. He could see the back of the driver's head, but details were lost in the flashing reflection from the Accord's rear window. And there was a passenger in the car. Bowen flicked on his cherries and siren, then lifted his handset to notify the dispatcher that he would need assistance. He pulled within ten car lengths of the Accord.

To Bowen's surprise the Russian's car began slowing, and the rear blinker indicated the car was about to pull over. The trooper turned off the siren. He bit his lower lip. He had been hoping this Nikolai Trusov would outrun him, give him a reason to claim that further pursuit would have endangered civilians, which is when the Montana State Patrol regulations demanded the chase end. The Accord kicked up dust as it rolled onto the shoulder.

Trooper Bowen grimaced. Pulling over drunks and dopeheads and car thieves was dangerous enough, but this son of a bitch was straight out of a foxhole. Nothing in Bowen's training had addressed stopping a skilled combatant, a Soviet-manufactured fighting machine. From what Bowen had read about him and from the briefing given that morning by his lieutenant, the trooper knew Trusov was a superb killer — merciless and efficient — who apparently loved his craft. This man was perhaps the best the Russians could produce at shedding blood, and in a moment the Russian was going to turn his attention to one Ross Bowen of the Montana State Patrol. Bowen didn't like the situation at all.

The Accord came to a stop on the gravel shoulder. The trooper pulled up the patrol car forty feet behind the Russian's vehicle, then yanked back on the emergency brake. Bowen was breathing quickly. He silently ran down the procedure for arresting an armed and dangerous suspect. He unsnapped the holster strap over the hammer of his .357 magnum, a Colt Trooper. He opened the door and pulled out the revolver. He crouched behind his open door, the weapon in both hands and braced against the windshield pillar. Christ, he had forgotten his hat on the passenger seat.

His voice was more strident than he would have wished. "Put both hands out your window. Now." Bowen concentrated on the Russian. He would worry about the passenger later.

The window rolled down and both hands came out, fingers spread wide. Bowen could make out the green baseball cap above blond hair. The bile of fear rose in the trooper's throat. The procedure was to immediately control the situation and put fear into the arrestee. He barked, "With one hand, open the door using the outside handle. Do it now."

The Russian's left hand lowered to the Accord's exterior handle. The door cracked open.

Bowen's hand was shaking, and he could see his Colt's barrel wiggle back and forth. He breathed deeply to steady himself, then called, "Now keep both hands in my sight and step out of the car. Do it slowly."

The Accord's door pushed open. The Russian rose from the car, moving with a fluid confidence that was evident to Bowen in even those few seconds. And Trusov rose and rose. He seemed enormous, with a massive chest and a head cut from stone. He filled the road. His face was bony and hard and expressionless, as cold as a carving. He stood motionless next to the Accord's door. The passenger was staring out the Accord's back window, but Bowen could not risk glancing at him.

Trooper Bowen suddenly realized that in climbing out of the car Trusov had put his left hand back into the door. The Russian stood there with one hand not showing.

"Pull your other hand out of the car," Bowen yelled in his best voice. "Do it now."

The Russian remained still. He seemed to be calmly and unhurriedly studying the lawman. Bowen flushed with fear, and the fear played games with him. He heard a clock ticking away, centered in his head behind his eyes, counting down his last seconds on this earth. His life would end on a desolate road.

Nikolai Trusov spoke slowly. "Get back into your car and you will live."

The truth of the words seemed blinding, and struck Trooper Bowen with the force of Biblical revelation. Entirely at odds with the apparent situation — Bowen was holding a fearsome weapon on an unarmed man standing forty feet away — the Russian's warning offered the miraculous hope that Bowen's newborn daughter would not lose her father this day. The clock behind his eyes stopped its ominous ticking.

Moving slowly to make his intentions clear, Trooper Bowen lifted his Colt from the door frame and smoothly re-entered his car. He lowered the weapon to the passenger seat near his hat, turned the ignition, and performed a U-turn on the road. The patrol car picked up speed as it headed east. In Bowen's rearview mirror, the Russian slipped back into the Accord. Bowen lost sight of the stolen car as the road ducked behind a hill.

The trooper reached for the photo of his daughter. He pressed it back onto the dashboard. Then he brought up his radio, about to report that the Russian had somehow shaken him. He smiled. Life offers few clear choices but it had just then. Bowen had made the correct one. His wife and daughter would see him again at the end of his shift.

"I usually don't eat things I can't lift." Adrian Gray poked her dinner.

Baked potatoes filled their plates, hanging over the edges. They had been opened and filled with spiced meat, cheese, olives, sour cream, and topped with a sprinkling of chopped chives. Steam still rose from them. Potatoes were the specialty of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Saloon. The owner, Ray Miller, hovered behind the bar wearing an expectant smile, waiting for Gray and his guests to begin their meal so he could enjoy the gratification on their faces. He served the best potatoes in the Sawtooths and he knew it.

Coates didn't disappoint Miller. The detective took his first bite, then began an insistent shoveling from plate to mouth. Ray Miller's smile widened. His potatoes never failed.

The detective mumbled, "Don't get between me and this potato. It'd be too dangerous."

Adrian lifted a measure of potato. As always with the first bite of anything, she touched it quickly with her tongue before putting it into her mouth. Gray stirred in his seat. She chewed a moment, then beamed at Ray Miller, who seemed to grow three or four inches with the smile. When Gray had entered the saloon with Adrian Wade, Miller had gleefully whispered to him, "And to think I worried about you." Miller had been only slightly dampened when Pete Coates followed them. Adrian's coat hung on the back of her chair. Pete Coates was wearing a pea coat over a plaid shirt, and jeans above hiking boots. Gray had loaned him the outfit, which had belong to Gray's father. The clothes were stretched to their limit over Coates's bulk.

The detective said, "Chief Durant was as good as his word. Hobart is crawling with sheriffs' deputies and State Patrol, even some police personnel from Boise and Twin Falls. I've got their duty rosters ready. And the FBI will start arriving soon. Flights into Hailey will be full of them."

Gray cut into his potato. He had eaten dozens and dozens of Miller's famous potatoes over the years.

"Adrian, you're all set up?" Coates asked around a mouthful of potato.

"All in one corner of Owen's living room. I've got the communication capacity of the Manhattan FBI office. I'm already talking with General Kulikov and Colonel Rokossosky. And it's easier to get hold of them in Moscow from Idaho than if I were in Moscow. The telephone system there is that unreliable."

Ray Miller held up the telephone behind the counter. He called, "Detective Coates, it's for you."

Coates dropped his napkin on his seat and walked to the bar.

Gray said quietly, "I suppose you've mentioned to Pete about my ninety-seventh shot."

"He's your best friend, isn't he? He should know."

"My best friend?" Gray laughed. "I haven't thought in those terms since I was in grade school."

"Well, then you can be the last to realize it. Of course I told him, because he's your friend and because he's trying to figure out what's going on. Do you mind?"

Gray shook his head noncommittally.

Coates returned and said bleakly, "Nikolai Trusov was spotted in Butte by a policeman there an hour ago. Trusov was driving a pickup truck, a red Dodge Ram, heading the opposite direction as the cop. He had a passenger with him."

"The policeman is positive it was Trusov?"

"No question. He yanked his patrol car around and tried to give pursuit but the pickup disappeared. He alerted his department and the Montana Highway Patrol. They found the truck in the western outskirts of Butte, abandoned. They can't find Trusov anywhere, and speculate he has found another vehicle and is continuing west." Coates lifted his beer glass. "I'd like to know how Trusov determined you are in Hobart, which it sure looks like he has figured out, coming in a beeline here."

"Do you want to tell him?" Adrian asked, bringing her gaze around to Gray.

"Tell him what?"

"How Nikolai Trusov knows where you are."

"You tell me," Gray challenged.

Adrian said, "You left him a message, Owen."

The detective stared at Gray.

She went on. "I called your home telephone number in Brooklyn. On your recorder is the message 'No one is home right now. If you are looking for Owen Gray, he is at his father's place on Black Bear Creek near Hobart, Idaho.'"

"Son of a bitch." Pete Coates's voice rose and he pointed his fork at Gray. "You guessed Trusov would call your number, and you've deliberately told him where you are."

Gray was silent.

Coates fairly shouted, "Owen, you are intentionally setting up a duel between you and Trusov, is that it?"

Again Gray said nothing.

Coates put down his fork. "Trusov wants you to meet him in the field, and you've decided to oblige him. Am I right?"

"I came to Idaho," Gray said lamely. "If he is following me, so be it."

"Owen, this isn't the goddamn OK Corral. Nikolai Trusov is a killer, and he is superb at it. And now you've decided to play a game with him, to go mano a mano with him? I thought you and I were working for the same thing, but I guess we no longer are."

"I guess not," Gray said quietly.

"I ought to throw you in jail for your own protection.' Coates's voice was lower. He was settling down. He lifted his beer. "Goddamnit."

"Pete, you might be the most skilled detective at the NYPD," Gray said, "but I don't believe you'll be able to stop Nikolai Trusov before he finds me."