Necessary Evil (30 page)

Tillman rose, using his peripheral vision to navigate in the darkness along the ravine and to the edge of the forest. The pasture grass had spread beneath the trees. Its moisture and the sodden leaves made for quiet walking. With care he could approach within inches of the woman and she wouldn't even know he was there. A cluster of three tall fir trees stood near the spot where he had seen the flicker. He guessed the distance along the fence to the fir. By his estimate, it was one-third of the way across the back of the pasture, which he knew to be approximately seven hundred feet. Merely to arrive at the juncture of the back fence and the side fence would require twenty minutes. He took one step at a time, listening before taking the next. In the forest the dark was so heavy that it seemed to have texture. Only out of the very corner of his eye could he discern rough shapes.

With every step, he made an instinctive calculation of his vulnerability to detection. In the pasture there was enough light that someone hiding in the forest might see him as a silhouette unless he kept trees between himself and the open field. As he turned down the fence line that would take him to his goal, the brush became less dense, the forest more open. Even so, if she was hiding perfectly still and low to the ground, it could take hours to find her. And then, if he did, she might see him first.

It was an interesting problem. She had obviously begun as an utter neophyte in the woods, but since fleeing with Kier, a real tracker, she had no doubt learned much. The two men who had stalked her on the mountain were dead—and one of them had been shrewder than most. The thought that she was dangerous made her powerful, and power made her appealing.

Silence pervaded the night forest in winter more than at other times of the year. On this late fall night, there was little to disturb the quiet except the
tap, tap
of water on the forest floor.

A scampering on a tree might have been a squirrel or tree vole. Farther on came the barely audible splashing sound that Tillman took to be a coon washing its dinner. Cattle occasionally rose and moved about the pasture, but none blew in alarm as he glided by.

After getting within thirty paces of where he thought she would be, he slowed so that he moved no faster than a few feet a minute. Tillman allowed his mind to think of nothing but the woman. Somewhere nearby she waited—perhaps with the Indian, but probably not. Remaining absolutely silent was essential, if he was to detect her first. Since she carried a silenced pistol, she could kill without alerting any of the sentries posted around the house.

The tension was exquisite.

He moved into an area overrun with oaks and a few smaller, scattered Douglas fir. In the shade of the trees grew large sword fern with an occasional huckleberry and more manzanita. He felt a needled bough in front of him, and could barely discern the outline of the tree, which was maybe twenty feet high. The top, which drooped in an arch toward the ground, identified it as a hemlock. Beneath its bushy boughs would be a likely hiding place. Squatting slowly so as to remain silent, he listened and sniffed for several minutes. There was no sound, nor could he smell any odor, but he felt a presence, like a pause in a speech, where the forest was the orator, and he the audience. Or was it his imagination?

Light as soft as satin sheets, as subtle as the warmth of winter sun, began to spread across the eastern sky as the full moon came from behind a cloud. Soon the pale light would encroach on the mystery of the darkened forest and find its way beneath the hemlock. But before its faint glow lightened the part lowest to the ground, it would expose him. Gradually, he moved to his belly, knowing that now he would have to work even more slowly.

Unless she had moved, she must be close.

Value patience over the chase and you will have meat for winter.

—Tilok proverb

I
t was what they called a deer trail, but it looked too big and obvious for just deer. Here, at the base of a steep hillside well back from the pasture, people and livestock had taken to using it. For that reason the trail was easy to follow. Kier stepped well off the worn pathway to the slope above, going slowly, expecting to find a sentry lying in wait.

When he was no more than one hundred feet from the house, a single snap, probably the sound of a boot heel on brittle dead wood, alerted him. His hand caressed the grip of the silenced .45. Just in front of him there was a large huckleberry with interlocking stems. By turning sideways he managed to get through without making a sound. Nearby there was a small conifer, which he stepped behind, waiting. Whatever had made the noise stood close. The air shivered with the silence.

In moments of stress, the mind moved oddly along several parallel tracks, but always shouting the question: When? When? When? Drawn like all men to induce the tragedy, to anesthetize the agony of anticipation, Kier felt the temptation to move, to explore.

But he was calm and he let his meditation make him part of the whole of the place where he stood. He relaxed his muscles, relaxed his breathing to become deep, and perfectly controlled, allowing his senses to expand, to reach out. He became, in his mind, content with this place, as though he might remain here forever. All urgency departed him. Only the smooth metal of the trigger under his finger connected him to the struggle. He waited longer still. A tiny rustle of a night breeze, just enough to nod the foot-high grass, passed by. Then a muted, throat-clearing sound jarred the stillness.

It was an incredible blunder. Perhaps too incredible. He remembered Tillman on the mountain, shadowing his own men, and pondered whether this might be a similar ploy. He once again scanned 360 degrees. In the shadowy grays of forest in the moonlight, it would be hard to discern a man. He saw nothing.

The man making the sounds would be on the far side of a dense manzanita just ahead. Curving around the brush clump and through a tiny clearing, the trail would lead Kier into an ambush at very close quarters. Behind the manzanita was a large stump, perhaps four feet wide, which no doubt provided a shield. Kier waited.

The first awareness of the second man was not an instant in time. It was more like an itch that had no true beginning. While he believed he smelled the body odor of a man, there was no certainty. A rabbit's track in a vestigial snowdrift veered as if the little animal had detected something on the side of the trail opposite the manzanita, where a car-size boulder protruded from a hillock. An old dogwood stood stark and almost leafless against the granite. Suspicion that someone might easily hide behind the boulder became a conviction without conscious thought.

Another throat clearing from the stump failed to distract Kier's attention from the boulder. He searched the hillside for areas where he could observe the trap. Because of the dense foliage, there appeared to be no spot that would afford him a good view. Darkness had now given way to the full moon, finally broken free of clouds. It was the brightest of nights, and Kier knew he would need to move quickly. Slipping back through the brush along the trail about thirty feet, he placed a small flashlight in the pathway and turned it on. Next he retreated up the hill and into the forest about twenty feet, where he pointed his silenced pistol at the ground and fired.

"Mother of God," he groaned in his best Irish brogue, a decent imitation of Jack Donahue's father.

Silence. No movement. Careful to avoid the snapping of twigs or the sound of branches on fabric, he made his way through the forest back toward the manzanita. As he approached it, he saw a soldier moving along the edge of the trail toward the flashlight. Slipping quietly to the ground, he lay still, straining to hear the man's hurried whispers over the radio. He tensed as he considered that they might call in an army of shooters, but held his fire, gambling that they would not. First they would reconnoiter.

In seconds, the man had the flashlight. Then there were more whispers on the radio, which Kier again couldn't understand. Finally the man began to cast about in the brush near where he had found the flashlight. Kier turned his attention to the terrain around the rock across from the manzanita, observing a movement so subtle that to be certain of it was difficult. Perhaps there was a watcher.

The second time he saw movement, he could just discern the outline of a helmet. Next he was able to define shoulders and a torso, and then it became apparent that the movement was the slight nod of a head, full in the moonlight, as the watcher listened to his radio and shifted his gaze from side to side for danger. Kier began to get a sense of him. This fellow was much more careful than the first. He appeared calm, but it was a purposeful, deadly calm, revealed in ways that Kier could not yet pinpoint except for the slow deliberation in his movements and a certain detachment that they betrayed.

Kier suspected he was a leader, but not Tillman. Perhaps the second in command. With this came the realization that his task was becoming infinitely more complex. The watcher was a man who needed to be captured or killed—not merely wounded. To take his time and undertake a stalk would not work. Daylight would come too soon.

In his pocket he carried a garrote—a piece of wire snare with a stout wooden handle at each end. Now he removed it, moving back toward the man who searched the brush near the flashlight. In three minutes, he stood beside an old alder, its base immersed in a big manzanita that afforded him cover in the filtered light.

Forty feet away, behind some black oak and a smattering of head-high fir, was the man who hunted him. He was using the barrel of an M-16 to probe the brush diligently, perhaps expecting at any moment to find a wounded Irishman.

Watching him make ever-widening circles, Kier realized it would take too long for the man to pass close enough for the garrote. The silenced pistol would be too loud. Several feet away lay a faint trail through the brush, a natural corridor. Perhaps Kier could somehow use it. He crawled to the narrow opening and sat down in the middle of it. A large oak spread itself over the trail. One hefty branch passed through the tops of some incense cedar. Quietly, Kier climbed the oak, hooked his legs over the branch, and hung by his knees over the trail. Against the thick foliage, he would be invisible unless somebody shone a light skyward. Kier groaned loudly like a dying man, and immediately the footfalls of his quarry went silent.

He groaned again, twisting his voice into a wounded man's despair.

With luck the man would come with his eyes cast down, his light creeping just ahead of his feet, and his mind on a half-dead man who must surely be lying on the ground. Footfalls moved rapidly through the forest, and a light beam scurried among the trees. The movement stopped, started again. At first Kier got only glimpses; then his heart sank. The man had wandered off the trail.

Not aware enough to find the natural passage through the brush, the hunter, obviously tired of looking, forced his way through the manzanita, the tick weed, and the red bud. Kier tensed and drew the .45 from his belt when the fellow stopped short. Twenty feet separated Kier from his hunter. Kier barely breathed. He knew the man was listening for any sound, searching for any clue.

The light began moving around the brush. He came forward—ten feet away. Kier's concentration sharpened; his body was a taut-muscled spring. Damn! Veering off, the mere passed just out of reach.

Blood pounded in Kier's head and his feet began to tingle from the loss of circulation. He asked himself how long he could hang this way and still remain effective. The weight of the .45 put a slight ache in his extended arms. The discomfort would grow until finally Kier would be unable to maintain a firing position. By pulling the gun to his chest, he reduced the muscle fatigue.

At last, the man found the break in the foliage and began following it, apparently giving up his random search. Slipping the pistol into his belt, Kier once again readied himself. At about five feet from Kier, the man stopped, knelt down, and began moving the outer branches of the cedar. He was crawling, searching beneath the foliage.

Kier knew he had to act. If the man went beneath him he could drop from the branch using the wire as he fell. Seconds stretched to minutes and still the man stayed away. By now Kier's feet were numb and his head felt swollen. He clenched the wooden handles of the garrote, his fingertips unconsciously caressing the coarse wood pegs. He concentrated again on his target until the man moved almost directly beneath him. Kier looked for the watcher, the smarter one, but saw nothing. He positioned the wire, took one deep breath, and released his knees.

The damp leaves of the forest floor under Tillman's bare palms, the cool of autumn rushing down his throat, the feel of his instincts guiding him to yet another quarry—these things enlivened him. Only the threat posed by an unsuccessful outcome nagged at him. Once again it occurred to Tillman that his personal intervention was required at every turn. When they desperately needed a breakthrough in testing methodology, it was Tillman who first insisted on cloning infants in a Brazilian laboratory. It was he who determined to use Tilok women as surrogate mothers, and it was he who had the foresight to make the baby clones brain dead. Although some of the others recognized the necessity, it was Jack Tillman who had to come in one Saturday to apply the needle to the thirty infants. No one else had the courage to move the project forward.

He had assembled the babies in New Mexico at a high desert viral research laboratory. Marty was due to arrive in two weeks. Of course, Marty could never be told explicitly what had been done. For the record, the two men Tillman had told of the plan said it was unethical and they were absolutely opposed. Yet on the day in question, the five senior lab personnel managed to be absent for the afternoon without any further discussion or explanation.

In the room normally reserved for autopsies and tissue samples, six of the babies were lined up like little loaves of bread on three stainless-steel tables. They were still wrapped in their

blankets and strapped to miniature eggshell-foam mattresses. The other twenty-four babies lay in plastic cribs lined with the same material.

The lights had been dimmed, but that would not suit his needs. When he turned on the high-intensity fixtures, many of the babies began to wail. It perturbed Tillman that all the babies were positioned to stare into the manmade sun. Someone should have provided for a means to shade the babies' eyes. Nobody was paying attention to details.

Tillman had received hypothetical instructions. Plunge the hypodermic into the diamond-shaped fontanelle, the soft spot at the top of the baby's head. Someone mentioned anesthesia, but Tillman hadn't the time. He viewed his next act like a late-term abortion, except that the remaining tissue would mimic life and serve the cause of critical research.

He reminded himself of this several times as he filled the first hypodermic. The syringe's ten-gauge needle, a relatively large bore, was calculated to make the process go as quickly as possible. In a few minutes, the infants would become human tissue—no more and no less.

Since it was important that there be no infection, he used a small razor to shave the downy hairs from the scalp before applying alcohol with a swab, followed by Betadine. Grasping the head firmly in his left hand, he felt the fontanelle. Only skin, the epidura, and the meninges separated the brain from the external world at this stage of development. He would angle the needle toward the frontal lobe with his right hand. He wondered if he ought to feel something. But noting that he felt nothing, he told himself that he had achieved a clinical detachment.

Now, in the high mountains of northern California, on a lonely stalk, Jack Horatio Tillman struggled to find that same clinical detachment. His frustration with Kier and his own men

made it difficult, but finally he thought he had succeeded.

He had entirely circled the small hemlock before he realized that something bulky appeared wrapped around its base. If it was the woman and she had seen him, he was in trouble. This was the last thought he recalled before his chest exploded in a kaleidoscope of pain and he felt the bone-crunching thud of a subsonic .45 slug strike the steel plate in his body armor. It was the angle that saved him from serious internal injury.

His instinctive cunning left Tillman looking like a ground-sluiced dove. Slumping as though dead while in extreme pain was not something most men could do well.

His ribs were just bruised, he told himself. Nevertheless, it would be hard to have his first FBI agent while in this much pain. Ever since the thought had sprouted in his mind, it had been growing. Something about possessing the woman behind those eyes had stirred the pit of his being in a way he wasn't often moved. Now that she had shot him, his urge had become a passion. The picture of Jessie he had taken from the Donahue lady still lay in his pocket. Odd that he could become so intrigued based on nothing more than dead bodies and a photo.

Above the screaming pain, Tillman felt the quiet. She was waiting. Smart. Then he heard a rustling as she slithered over to him. He lay absolutely still, rolling his eyes back in his head. When she lifted his lids and shone the little light, he would appear gone.