The Eye of Moloch ow-2 Page 4

  From the only narrow angle of view where Hollis had no cover at all—that was the unlikely direction from which the second man had come. Quiet as doom he’d stolen up close, his target not yet sighted.

  With a single glance upward the hunt would have ended differently. At less than twenty paces, though, a hiss from the two-way radio on his belt gave the hunter away.

  Prey and predator then met eyes at the same instant, each frozen in momentary disbelief at this unexpected turn of events.

  Hollis was pinned among the branches in his hiding place; there was no room to swing the long barrel of the shotgun around. The man on the ground backed away, calling out for the others and firing wildly at full auto as he retreated. Amid a storm of flying lead and splinters Hollis drew his pistol from the back and fired into the heart of the fray until the magazine was emptied.

  At length the echoes faded and the deep woods grew quiet once again. He climbed down, reloaded, and set out to see if their fight was really done.

  The other man had succumbed to his wounds by the time Hollis found him, but he hadn’t died too quickly. He’d crawled to a sly lair in the heavy brush to lie in wait for the approach of his enemy. He’d lost consciousness just that way, still waiting, and bled out from the effects of a damned lucky shot in the dark.

  And then, the third and last of them.

  This last one was smart; he’d done his job right. Hollis had picked up the two-way handset from the second man’s body and listened for a while, until it became clear that the enemy had wisely gone to radio silence. His two compatriots would be directly tracking the sniper, the last man had likely reasoned, so in the event that they failed he would choose instead to find his quarry’s destination—his rendezvous point with the other, unarmed escapees—and then take them down all at once, by surprise.

  The traces of a group bearing a wounded man were easy enough to follow, even at a prudent distance from their path. Still, the man hadn’t lapsed into carelessness. He was wary and took cunning precautions against pursuit, though he had little reason to suspect he was followed. It took hours, in fact, not only to find him, but to catch him briefly unprepared for a hostile confrontation.

  Near to his goal, less than a mile from the dim glow of a sheltered campfire up ahead, he’d stopped to rest and drink some water. That’s when Thom Hollis stepped from the shadows behind him.

  “I got you cold, son,” he said.

  The man had begun to turn toward the voice before stopping himself, his weapon still hanging at his side. A half-moon had risen as the night progressed, and by its pale filtered light it was the youth of this man that was most immediately apparent. His features were strong in profile but not quite fully mature, with that first sparse attempt at a beard that some adolescent rebels will try on at their first opportunity.

  For seconds more he didn’t move. Neither of them did; both knew well enough by then how this would end.

  “I can’t let you go,” Hollis said quietly. “And I ain’t taking prisoners.”

  Chapter 5

  Once Hollis had caught up to the others it took only a few minutes to take stock of their situation. Anyone inclined to count the blessings of this tattered band of fugitive patriots would find only this one: by all evidence their enemies had indeed elected to hold off until dawn before marching forth to wipe them off the face of the earth.

  Scattered communications on the salvaged radio seemed to confirm this, although since the other side would know their frequencies might be monitored, this chatter could be part of a ruse. Despite that possibility Hollis believed what they said, and for one good reason: these men weren’t quite as stupid as they looked. They had no need to risk rushing headlong into the dark. Their already decisive advantage would be even greater in the daylight. With such an overwhelming force behind them the next day’s search-and-destroy operation would be a turkey shoot, and they knew it.

  For the remainder of that night very little time was spared for rest and reflection. Wounds were tended to the crude extent possible in the absence of sterile supplies. Fresh water proved easy enough to find, though food was limited to what raw provisions of nature could be gathered in the depths of a bitter night in early spring. With those necessities tended to, Hollis took the watch and let the others try to sleep as best they could. As for himself, he couldn’t remember even the last brief nap he’d had, or the last meal that had been more than a squirrel’s portion. He’d never yet found the far limit of his endurance but he could feel complete exhaustion getting close.

  In the morning, they took stock and prepared to press on.

  The only shred of a map still in their possession was a worn pocket trifold that had been pocketed during that brief stay with the Pierce clan. It looked like a hunter’s crib sheet, hand-traced from a legitimate chart and only crudely annotated with landmarks, spot-elevations, deer paths, and a mark for due north. Hollis spent a few minutes with this map to get his proper bearings, and for a welcome change what he discovered wasn’t as bad as it could have been. They were days late and off course to be sure, but they also weren’t so awfully far from where they’d planned to be before this latest trouble began. Whatever their chances, the best prospects lay ahead; they needed to get themselves under way immediately.

  Before they left the campsite all visible evidence of the overnight stay was carefully erased, buried, or camouflaged. The path forward was simple enough: Molly and the others would start onward—seven walking and one dragged by two others on a makeshift stretcher—while Hollis took up the rear guard.

  He’d given the handmade map and the only compass to the forward group. If they got too far beyond him he would find his way by the transit of the sun and the seat of his pants. There was little craft or subtlety to the travel scheme. They would head northeast, as the crow flies, toward a now-belated rendezvous with some regional allies of the organization. For the sake of speed it was a straight-line excursion, though along the way they would try to employ any natural features of the terrain to make themselves more difficult to overtake.

  Despite the urgency to move, at the insistence of one of the more pious group members the ten of them elected to join hands and squander a few precious minutes in a prayer circle. Hollis declined to partake in this delay, choosing instead to devote his full attention to the threatening hush from the forest behind them.

  That’s why he was able to hear a sound that didn’t belong, and how he recognized the dry mechanical whisper of its approach, faint and very distant though it was.

  Helicopter.

  Perhaps the others had heard it, too, because their circle was soon broken with a hasty benediction, and they were off.

  As he followed, always watchful for signs of the inevitable pursuit, Hollis set about brushing out conspicuous tracks while periodically stepping off to fabricate decoy paths that might lead less experienced woodsmen astray. Naturally, if the enemy came with air reconnaissance, or even if they simply brought along dogs to aid in their hunt, most of these diversions would be for naught.

  The hard fact was, in all likelihood they were fleeing down a one-way road to nowhere. The near strangers Molly had been hoping to meet would have little reason to risk waiting this long in the open, especially if they’d gotten word of how badly things had fallen apart for her out here. Even if those supposed allies were still waiting, with such primitive tools of navigation the odds of actually finding them were slim to none, much less of evading capture along such an obvious route. But there was no backup plan, and the group had all agreed that this path seemed to be their best hope among bleak options.

  Of course, it could be worse, Hollis thought. It could be raining.

  • • •

  The downpour commenced about an hour after sunrise. What started as a gentle April shower rapidly angered and darkened into a legitimately violent thunderstorm. Before long the blowing sheets of frigid rain had reduced visibility to near zero, making hazardous business of even careful walking on the uneven, s
tony ground.

  He pressed forward into the teeth of the gale, the drawstring hood of his jacket cinched down to a crumpled keyhole, every gained yard a struggle just to plant solid footing and hold his line. All the while he was imagining the assault of these same perils on those up ahead. In the midst of such a storm they could easily become separated and lose their way, walk into the rush of a sudden mudslide, or simply take one errant step and be lost over the verge of a ravine.

  Concern for them was all that kept him going. The fatigue was getting worse; several times his legs simply failed him, his mind seemed determined to give up and wander off into a fog, and his arms felt barely capable of pushing him back to his feet when he’d fallen, time after time.

  After an endless, treacherous downhill crawl that stretched on to late morning, at last the weather commenced to ease somewhat as the worst of it blew on southwesterly. Though the trailing rain continued, the sky gradually smoothed and lightened as the sun began to reassert itself beyond the thinning clouds.

  Before too long Hollis caught sight of the rest of his party, taking refuge near a hillside beneath the overhang of a natural grotto. The storm had taken its toll on them but they all looked little worse for the wear. Despite his relief he didn’t approach them right away. Instead he watched them for a time from a distance, from under the imperfect shelter of a tall evergreen.

  They were huddled together against the cold, one obviously recounting some story from their deliverance with great animation, another catching a stream of rainwater with a length of curled birch bark and passing it to others for a sloppy drink, another tending the trail aches and injuries of those less able.

  After a few minutes he came forward and joined them, accepted and returned their greetings, and took a seat on the ground near Molly’s side. Hollis touched her shoulder and spoke a word to let her know he was near, but it seemed she knew already. She leaned to him and hugged him tight around the neck.

  “Thank you,” Molly said.

  “For what? For getting you out of the frying pan, or back into the fire?”

  “For everything.” She sat back, smiling, fished something from the pocket of her jeans, and held it out for him. “For this, especially.”

  He took the damp, crumpled wad of stationery from her hand and carefully unfolded it: a half page of typewritten text, crossed out from corner to corner with a heavy black X, with a bullet hole near the middle.

  He took a closer look at the condition of his target. While it had been a fair shot it was also far from the perfect bull’s-eye he’d pictured as he pulled the trigger. Depending on whether she’d held the paper upright or inverted, his aim had been off either high and left or low and to the right. But well off it had certainly been.

  “You’re damn lucky you didn’t lose a finger, or worse,” Hollis said.

  “There was never a doubt in my mind.”

  “I know.” He took a long breath and then another moment to weigh the wisdom of broaching a subject too long avoided. This was neither the time nor the place, but it never was, and that’s why some necessary things get left unspoken until it’s too late to make a difference. The two were almost out of earshot of the others, and this seemed as good an opportunity as any. “We need to have a talk about that, I think, on the odd chance that we ever get to see another sunup.”

  “A talk about what?” Molly asked, and she turned her face to him.

  Nearly all the scars from her injuries of that awful night were hidden inside; by outward appearances her gaze was as clear and bright as it had ever been. Though she could no longer see your eyes to look into them, she nevertheless had a way of looking toward you that somehow reached in deep to seize even more of a human connection.

  “Doubts,” Hollis said. “And how it might be healthy for us to entertain one or two of those right now.”

  She frowned a bit. It wasn’t a hint of anger or hurt, but only empathy that showed on her face. “Go on.”

  “I don’t want to have a fight about it, not here in the middle of all this.” Now that he’d taken the platform he found he didn’t know where to begin. “With all respect—”

  “It’s okay. Say what’s on your mind.”

  “All right, then. We lost your mom, and then we lost Danny, we lost Ben Church yesterday, and now we’ve got the full force of the U.S. government after us—”

  “Not the government. The people are the government.”

  “All right, then, not the government. Some freelance military-armed battalion of uniformed yahoos from the corrupted bowels of what the government’s become. Does it really matter? I stopped trying to keep track of all the jackboots when the Department of Education got their own SWAT team. The point is, we’re marked as shoot-to-kill enemies and they’re after us, with everything they can throw at us. And yesterday they chased us right into the only helping hands available, and those hands, I’m sure you noticed, were attached to some genuine homegrown, goose-stepping, brown-shirted, skinhead Wyoming Nazis. And now they’re coming after us, too.”

  “Yes.”

  She was clearly still waiting for him to come to his point; just stating the obvious wasn’t getting them anywhere.

  “Molly, I need to ask you, now. You and I, and these few people—what is it exactly that we think we’re trying to do?”

  “That hasn’t ever changed. We’re going to show the American people the truth and keep on fighting for the future of our country.”

  “How are we going to do that? With what?” The others were beginning to notice this side discussion but he was fully committed now, and come to think of it, nothing was being said that they all shouldn’t hear. “You know I’d walk straight into hell for you—”

  “It’s not just me. We have to make it about more than just me.”

  “But listen. You have to know that if we lose you, it’s all over.”

  “But you’re not going to lose me—”

  “We almost lost you yesterday, and it’s my job to protect you.”

  “You’re not alone in that, Hollis. I’m already protected.”

  “Oh, are we gonna talk about God now? Because I don’t think I can take it if you’re going to tell me that God got us out of that fix we were in back there.”

  “Okay—”

  “And the next time you speak to God? I hope you’ll ask Him for me, why in His infinite wisdom He reached down His all-knowing hand and got us into that fix in the first place.”

  “Okay, shh. Okay. I won’t talk about God.” She touched his arm, and her grip was firm and reassuring. “Just tell me what you’re afraid of.”

  And there she’d seen to the heart of it, as she always seemed to do.

  His voice was low when he finally spoke again. “I’m just about at the end of my rope, Molly. I’m not the man I used to be, and I’m afraid I’m not up to the task anymore.”

  “Oh,” she said, nodding. “So it sounds like it’s me that’s about to lose you.”

  “No, of course you’re not going to lose me.” Hearing her say such a thing aloud had made him realize there was at least one truth he still knew for certain. “I’m with you. Whatever comes, I’m with you.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  The dog got to his feet, stretched and shook off a magnificent spray of rainwater, and then sauntered over to sit himself down between them, as though far too much fond attention was being wasted upon others. Molly reached out to find him and stroked his unruly fur as he nuzzled closer to her.

  Something arrived then on the tail end of a gentle breeze, and it was the dog who caught it first. He sat up straight, head cocked and hackles rising, sharp eyes intent and trained to the north—right along the path they’d been traveling.

  Hollis motioned for the others to be still, and after a few quiet seconds he heard it, too. The rain had all but ceased, so there was nothing but distance to obscure the sound. It was the deep, steady note of a heavy engine up ahead, maybe more than one, approaching from just beyond a na
rrowing valley of young pine trees and tall Wyoming sage.

  Chapter 6

  They’d been found.

  There was nothing else this could mean. In the midst of this vast open land it was all but inconceivable that they could have crossed paths with someone by random chance alone.

  And they were neatly cut off, as well. At this juncture the terrain itself would allow only two ill-advised avenues of flight—either back the punishing way they’d come, or forward to confront these new arrivals. It was out of the question to just sit tight and hope to lie low. That would only delay the inevitable and forfeit their last remaining initiative, exceedingly weak though it might be.

  If this was to be a surrender—and short of a miracle that was the only realistic expectation—by any civilized code of conduct it would go better for the group if they gave themselves up without resistance, completely and visibly unarmed. But so far the ruthlessness of their enemies seemed unbound by any rules of engagement. They’d already made it clear that they would show no mercy.

  With that in mind he gave his handgun and its last full magazine to the man he judged most prepared to do what might have to be done.

  Hollis gathered them all close and made his instructions clear. He would walk out alone to face whoever had arrived in those vehicles they’d heard. In the far-fetched event that all was well, he would come back alone to tell them so. Any other development—for example, the distant sounds of a field execution by firing squad—was to be taken as a sure sign that something was badly wrong. He wouldn’t allow himself to be used as a front for their deception. If the group didn’t soon see him returning precisely that way—alone, unharmed, and unfettered—then he wouldn’t be returning at all.

  At that point they would need to quickly decide which of them, if any, wished to be taken alive. Even before their costly escape, George Pierce had made his designs quite clear: there was nothing but certain death waiting in his camp. As for their other adversaries, the government-sponsored men, indefinite detention without trial or charges appeared to be the prevailing standard of justice for those suspected of crimes against the homeland. But far worse fates had been reported at their hands, and in far better times than these.