The Afghan

“Absolutely not. I keep two hunting rifles and a shotgun, but I bring them out with me in the fall.”

“Okay. Now, clothing. Do you have a closet with heavy winter clothing?”

“Sure. It’s a walk-in, right beside the bedroom door.” Captain Li

“There should be my pair of arctic snow boots, quilted pants and a parka with zippered hood.”

All gone.

“Any skis or snowshoes, Doctor?”

“Sure, both. In the same cupboard.”

Also gone.

“Any weapons at all? Compass?”

The big bowie knife in its sheaf should have been hanging inside the closet door, and the compass and flashlight should have been in the drawers of the desk. They were all taken. That apart, the fugitive had ransacked the kitchen, but there had been no fresh food left there to rot. A newly opened-and emptied-can of baked beans and a can opener lay on the countertop with two empty cans of soda. There was an empty pickle jar that had been full of quarters, but no one knew that.

“Thanks, Doc. I’d get up here when the weather clears with a team for a new window, and file a claim for the loss.”

The Alpha leader cut the co

“Tell McChord I want a Spectre and I want it now. Engage all the authority you need-the Pentagon, if you have to. I want it over the Cascades and talking to me directly.”

While waiting for their new ally to show up, the twelve men of Alpha 243 pressed on hard, pushing the pace. The sergeant tracker was at point, his flashlight picking up the marks of the snowshoes of the fugitive in the frozen snow. They were pushing the pace, but they were carrying much more equipment than the man ahead of them. Li

The original Hercules transport plane was gutted and her i

In its first “locate” role, it does not depend on daylight or dark, wind or rain, snow or hail. Mr. Raytheon had been kind enough to provide a synthetic aperture radar and infrared thermal imager that can pick out any figure in a landscape emitting body heat. Nor is the image a vague blur; it is clear enough to differentiate between a four-legged beast and a two-legged one. But it still could not work out the weirdness of Mr. Lemuel Wilson. He, too, had a cabin, just outside the Pasayten Wilderness, on the lower slopes of Mount Robinson. Unlike the Seattle surgeon, Wilson prided himself on his capacity to overwinter up there, for he had no alternative metropolitan home. So he survived without electricity, using a roaring log fire for heat and kerosene lamps for lighting. Each summer, he hunted game, and air-dried the meat strips for winter. He cut his own logs, and foraged for his tough mountain pony. But he had another hobby.

He had enough CB equipment, powered by a tiny generator, to spend his winter hours sca

A thermal imager is fine for detecting body heat, but Lemuel Wilson’s corpse, dropped into a crevasse ten yards from where he died, lost its heat fast. By the time the Hercules AC-130 Spectre began its circling mission high above the Cascades thirty minutes later, Lemuel Wilson did not show up at all. “This is Spectre-Echo-Foxtrot calling Team Alpha. Do you read me, Alpha?” “Strength-Five,” reported Captain Li

“Smile nicely and I’ll take your picture,” said the infrared operator four miles above them.

“Comedy comes later,” said Li

“Negative. No such image,” said the voice in the sky.

“There must be,” argued Li

Li

“Check again,” asked Captain Li

Izmat Khan, urging the feisty but tired pony off the scree and into the forest, had actually lengthened his lead. The compass told him he was still going north, the angle of the pony beneath him that he was climbing. “I am sca