The Gorge Read online

  Breathe.

  Bowie hated his lungs. They were two hot bricks. He could have hiked this trail without a second thought eight years ago. Now, second thoughts were all he had.

  And thoughts of the woman in the group, who should never have taken the assignment. For personal reasons. Very personal reasons.

  Breathe, step, breathe.

  “Only natural,” Bowie said under his breath, which was the only way he could say it at the moment.

  Farrengalli opened his loud mouth from the curve of the trail. “Hey, Okay, how’s the view?”

  “Looks like the fucking natural woods to me,” McKay said. That drew a laugh from the whole group, with the exception of Bowie. He sucked a snicker back up into his nose.

  “It’s only fuckin’ NAAAAAAAtural,” Farrengalli rumbled, startling a raven that had been watching the group from the high perch of a sycamore. It took wing, and Bowie saw the bird framed briefly against the sinking sun before it disappeared over the treetops.

  The low clouds were bruised and troubled. The forecast had called for clear skies, but the escarpment and the altitude led to unpredictable weather in the wilderness area. If conditions turned wet, they’d be doing a lot more hiking than rafting. The Unegama was treacherous in the best of times. At its worst, it could drink a man like a tornado swallowed a gnat.

  “Hey, Bowie, how’s the view from up there?” Farrengalli bellowed.

  Bowie wished the clouds would collide long enough to piss on the jerk’s parade.

  CHAPTER THREE

  As Clara cleared away branches and stones to make a flat space to camp, Ace ran a fine strand of trip wire around nearby trees. The booby trap circled the perimeter of the camp. He placed detonators in three sections, with the pull triggers set for a three-second delay. The detonators were each attached to two pounds of C-4 plastic explosive, the same kind he’d used on those abortion clinics. Ace kept one bomb, because the Free Militia taught him to keep something in reserve at all times.

  Ace returned to the campsite, pulled the sleeping bag from his backpack, and tucked the plastic explosive among the dirty clothes. The sleeping bag stank of old sweat, though he could barely smell it over the odor of his own body. They shared the sleeping bag, which cut down on the weight they carried, but sometimes Clara’s birdlike bones poked into his side or thigh and it got a little too cramped. She’d complained about his snoring once, but only once, by God. He rolled out the nylon-filled bag and sat on it.

  “Should we risk a fire?” Clara pulled some tin cans from her pack, along with a plastic water bottle. They’d been drinking from springs, but the water seemed safe enough. The way Ace figured, the government probably hadn’t gotten around to dumping its shitty chemicals in the mountains yet.

  “It ought to be safe this close to the river,” Ace said. “The way the breeze kicks up over the gorge, the smoke will spread out fast. We can keep the flames low and snuff it before full dark.”

  Ace gathered some twigs and dry needles from the surrounding balsams. He scooped out a hollow in the dark soil. After spreading the tinder around, he ignited it with his Bic. Clara used a little field can opener to open some pork and beans, which she slopped into a black-bottomed aluminum pan. Ace angled a few rocks around the fire, adding some larger sticks until they caught and crackled, then sat back while Clara cooked. Ace longed for a burger and fries, something gut-clogging that would slow the runs he’d endured for the last few days. He was sick of beef jerky, canned beans, and that sweetened horseshit Clara called “energy bars.”

  They’d been wandering the Unegama Gorge Wilderness Area for a couple of weeks, ever since the last close call back at that motel in Cullowhee. He’d looked out the window and seen a County Mountie idling in the parking lot and talking into a handset, no doubt running the plates on the stolen car. Ace put an Atlanta Braves baseball cap low over his forehead, sent Clara out, and told her to meet him at the Dumpster in five minutes. She wore a sweatshirt and a baggy-assed hippie skirt, so no cop in his right mind would take her for a killer at first glance. A doper, maybe, but she was too fresh-faced to be linked to a half-dozen homicides. Give or take a few. Ace had lost count, and he’d never learned to read well enough to follow the newspaper accounts, though he sometimes clipped the stories.

  From the Dumpster, they’d slipped into the woods, walked a half mile, and thumbed a ride in a pickup. Clara sat up front, Ace in the bed, and Ace figured she did the driver a slobbery favor, because he went ten miles out of his way to drop them near the Appalachian Trail. Ace had a map of the wilderness area, figuring sooner or later he’d have to take to the woods. He hadn’t counted on company, but here Clara was, and here he was, and beans sat steaming in the pan, a soft, soapy lump of fat floating in the sugary sauce.

  “Do you really believe it was the FBI?” Clara asked. The idea seemed to excite her, because her eyes brightened. Or maybe it was the firelight dancing off her pupils.

  “Probably not. Haircuts or no haircuts, they got no reason to look for us out here.”

  “If they traced that stolen car-”

  “They don’t know it was me that stole it. Could have been anybody. Cars get swiped every day in this country. They don’t call it ‘the land of opportunity’ for nothing. Course, they also call it ‘The Land of the Free,’ and that’s a goddamned laugh.”

  She stirred the beans with a pocketknife. “Do you want sardines or potted meat with this?”

  “The stink-ass fish.” Ace had a sudden ache for the good old days, right after the first bomb when he’d been something of a folk hero among his peers. He’d parlayed his notoriety into a modern-day Underground Railroad without the niggers, finding food and shelter among various militia groups and fellow freedom fighters. Those were days of hamburger and Pabst Blue Ribbon, high spirits and big plans. But one by one his allies turned their backs, because the feds had brought heat down on all of them as a result. After the second bombing, Ace had pretty much become an outcast among outcasts after two women and a child had died in the blast. As if it were Ace’s fault that that the baby-killing bitch brought her kid along when she visited the clinic. Those abortionist sluts were always looking for someone to blame besides themselves.

  He had been working his way north when Clara stumbled into his life, ten miles outside Atlanta. She was hitching in the rain, and he pulled over to lecture her on the murderers and rapists and spics and other trash that prowled America’s highways, preying on the innocent. She said she was heading north, but in no hurry. Three days later, they’d killed their first victim together.

  Well, Ace did the killing, but she was there. She loved him extra special that night.

  Clara was still a long way from Virginia, but at least she was safe now, Ace thought. Even if she couldn’t cook worth a damn. Nuts and berries would taste better than the shit she served up.

  “How long do you think we can hide out in the gorge?” she asked.

  “Be too cold by Thanksgiving. You ain’t got enough meat on your bones to get me through a winter night and I sure as hell wasn’t born no polar bear. I guess I’ll be heading back to Alabama then.”

  “I thought we were going north.”

  “You ain’t supposed to think. And who said anything about you, anyway?”

  Clara stirred the beans with the fork attachment of a Swiss Army knife, and then drained the sardine oil onto the fire, causing it to spit. Amid the sizzle, Ace heard the snapping of a stick, a sound less brittle than that of the flames. He was going to ask in a low voice if Clara had heard it, but she’d probably blurt out, “Hear what?” and every bear, cop, and mugger in a ten-mile radius would know their location.

  Instead, Ace reached into his jacket and put his hand on the Python. “I got to take a dump,” he said, rising from the log and heading toward the trees from where the sound had come. The sun had sunk further behind the mountains, bruising the sky and causing shadows to rise from the forest floor.

  “You forgot the toilet paper,” Cl
ara said.

  “Worry about your own ass,” he whispered to himself.

  Probably wasn’t those two haircut guys they’d seen, the two dudes who probably weren’t Feds. But Ace didn’t take stock in a whole lot of “probablies.” Besides, they’d seen enough hippies in the gorge, and Ace trusted them about as much as he trusted the Internal Revenue Service. He wouldn’t be surprised if one raided their camp just to see if they had any dope. Ace would only use the gun as a last resort, but last resorts were like probablies-they had a way of coming along a little too often.

  And he’d rather not have them trigger the C-4. He didn’t have much experience with open-air explosions and he wasn’t certain about the shrapnel and explosive force. Plus, since he’d been forced underground, the shit was hard to come by.

  On this side of the ridge, away from the river, the slopes were less rocky. Ace pressed himself against the trunk of a massive oak, gray moss tickling his cheek. From his vantage point, he could see most of the valley. A rhododendron thicket lay in a little depression below. In the dying light, the ripples of the distant ridges looked like giant ocean waves, a soft fog settling in the valleys. It was peaceful out here, with nothing but the birds and squirrels to bother him. A man could think in the mountains, if left alone. Sort things out, make sense of the world, get his shit together. Shut out the white noise of modern life.

  Fuck it. This was modern life, where women flushed their babies while the goddamned Republicans turned up their noses and Democrats rolled over and took it up the ass. A life where the cops wanted to slap him in irons when they should have been pinning medals on his chest. A life where the innocent had no rights and those who fought for the innocent were guilty. A life where Something moved in a stand of sugar maples to his right.

  Sun dappled the ground through the red leaves, but the wind had momentarily died, so it couldn’t have been swaying branches. Ace exhaled with his mouth open, letting his lungs empty so he could hear better. Leaves scuffled with sudden movement. A man stepped into a gap between trees, bent low as if sneaking. Ace recognized the gray flannel shirt, the brown vest, and the haircut.

  One of the Quantico boys.

  The agent (and Ace was certain now the pair had been FBI agents, he’d just been lying to himself as usual) crouched in the cover of a fallen tree, and then worked his way up the slope. He was forty yards away from Ace, out of pistol range, even a Python’s. Ace wouldn’t risk a shot anyway, not until he’d located both agents. The noise would give away his position, and the element of surprise would shift again. Right now, the Feds thought they were on the hunt, closing in, but it was Ace who held all the cards.

  The agents were probably going by the book, closing in on them from each flank. They had probably seen the fire. So it was Clara’s fault. He’d tried to talk her out of it, but could you tell a woman anything? No, their heads were harder than the fucking granite that lined the walls of the gorge.

  Ace wondered if the FBI agents were trained military. If so, they might know how to detect trip wires and avoid them.

  It would serve Clara right if he just waited for the agent to reach the ridge, then head down the slope himself and leave her to catch all the heat. Without the backpack and supplies, he might be in for a few rough days, but that beat trial in a federal court. United States prosecutors would probably go for the death penalty, and though Ace wasn’t afraid of dying, he couldn’t bear the humiliation of being called “guilty.”

  A trial would give him a chance to take the stand and explain just who was guilty (all those long-haired hippie women who let murderers vacuum babies out of their bellies) and who was innocent, but true justice was not only blind, it had a sock in its mouth and cotton in both ears. The only judgment that mattered would be handed down by Him Above. And Ace imagined a mighty big pat on the back was coming, and a soft chair, and a heavenly fridge that never ran out of beer.

  The agent was now in decent range, fifty-fifty chance that Ace could take the top of his skull off, but the second agent hadn’t put in an appearance. Darkness had a deeper grip on the woods now, and the agent’s flannel shirt blended into the undergrowth. But his skin was as white as a pearl, making his progress easy to track. He must be the desk jockey of the pair; Ace knew the FBI often teamed a shrink with a piss-and-vinegar guy. While the piss-and-vinegar guy would be the most dangerous, you better not misunderestimate anybody who’d made it through Quantico. They were usually good men who just happened to work on the wrong side of good and evil.

  Ace’s palm sweated around the Python’s grip. He hadn’t shifted so much as a finger since drawing his weapon. The bark of the oak was digging into his cheek, but the tree’s mass gave him comfort. The Fed had his pistol out, probably a high-caliber Glock, but no way could those bullets cut through a tree. If only Ace could locate Piss-and-Vinegar, he’d feel like the odds were even.

  Clara called Ace’s name.

  The agent lifted his head from concealment, looking in the direction of the camp. Ace could have pegged him like that critter in the Whac-A-Mole game, but the situation might play out even better now. Because, from the ruckus Clara was raising, Ace had a good idea where the second agent was.

  Haircut Number One broke into a run, leaving the thick evergreen undergrowth for the easier route between the large trees. Ace could have made his escape then. But if they took Clara, they’d learn a lot about Ace, plus the Feds would swarm the area like flies on fresh shit. The best strategy was to take them both down. Besides, he’d be doing the country a favor by knocking a couple of moochers off the taxpayers’ tit.

  Ace followed Haircut Number One, who slung his pack to the ground and jogged, bent low with a small, two-way radio to his ear. “Suspect in sight?” the agent said into the mouthpiece.

  A static cackle was the only reply, the words washed out by the noise of leaves crunching beneath the agent’s boots. They were getting near the clearing. And the trip wire.

  The campfire threw throbbing waves of light against the trees. Ace ran in a simian gait, relaxed and confident. He played the scene out in his mind, the two agents grilling Clara, asking about her companion, scaring her into a confession. He’d peg Piss-and-Vinegar with the first shot, then drop Haircut Number One before the sound of the first shot died away. Then he’d walk out of the trees, tuck his gun in his pants, and ask Clara if the beans were ready.

  Except the game didn’t follow the rules.

  The dusk roared, the trees shook, and the explosion’s concussion cast a warm wind across his face.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jim Castle (the man Ace had dubbed “Piss-and-Vinegar”) was full of only piss at the moment. Mostly he was pissed at himself. Eight years in the Navy SEALs; another six as a special agent in the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, or the “Super SWAT guys,” as they were called in-house; fourteen months assigned to the Goodall case, mostly as a sideline observer with a too-clean desk; then, three glorious weeks sleeping in the woods and eating what tasted like chipped horsemeat and Kennel Rations, riding shotgun on The Rook (whom Ace had dubbed “Haircut”) as they searched the gorge. All that time and effort building to the biggest moment of his career, and now he was stuck in the Appalachian equivalent of the Black Hole of Calcutta.

  “Jim…” Derek Samford’s voice came from the handheld radio somewhere below him. The radio had slipped from his belt when he’d fallen-or more precisely, when the earth had moved.

  If Castle could have reached the radio, he would have told The Rook to stay on point, to take Goodall down first and then worry about his partner. They needed a nail in the Bama Bomber. That’s the only way this ending would be happy. Because Castle had screwed the pooch big-time, the kind of boondoggle that would make them howl with laughter back in DC.

  But only after Goodall was locked away, of course. No one would laugh before then, especially the older veterans, who would see their own decline mirrored in Jim Castle’s bad judgment. Not the fresh faces, the new agents who thought scars and kills w
ere the measure of a man. And certainly not the higher-ups, who were getting reamed by Southern Congressmen and the press over their continued inability to nab a fugitive with a recorded IQ of ninety-five.

  Castle moved his legs. Nothing broken, though his hips were jammed tight between two molars of granite. He had some nasty scrapes along his thighs, and a tickling sensation down his shin signaled a line of oozing blood from his knee. He arched his neck and looked at the diminishing funnel of daylight ten feet above. The opening in the earth was raw and jagged, and pale roots poked from the soil like sick snakes. Specks of dirt sprinkled down and bounced off Jim’s face and shoulders. A piece of grit lodged in the corner of his left eye, and he blinked it to mud.

  The sides of the opening didn’t appear in immediate danger of collapse, so Castle figured suffocation wasn’t the biggest danger.

  No, friend, suffocation is not your biggest danger. Your biggest danger is Robert Wayne “Ace” Goodall walking up to the edge of the hole, whipping out his baby-maker, and showering you with a tender stream of golden humiliation. Just before capping your ass and bringing the Bama Bomber back into the national headlines.

  Good agents avoided headlines, even those like him who were scrambling down the final rungs on the FBI ladder. They didn’t wear dark glasses just for vanity. Speak to the media only when necessary, and only when higher ranks were dodging the microphone. He’d wanted one of those doors to open that led into the Puzzle Palace, the field agents’ fond nickname for DC headquarters. But he was far too old already, and this wasn’t a good time to get his name in the papers. No matter how you cut it, showing up as a casualty in the first paragraph wasn’t such a hot career move.

  He had a. 357-caliber Glock in his shoulder holster, but his upper torso was too contorted to reach the pistol. He was in no shape for a shoot-out.