Relentless

She spoke without turning her head. “I understand.” She buckled the stirrup leather and let it drop. “I’d like to know where you’re taking me.”

“You’re entitled to know that.”

Instantly the Major had everyone’s attention. He lifted his arm toward the heavy darkness of the mountain peaks to the north. “We’re going up there.”

Silence: Swish of horsetails, thump of hoof. Hanratty squeaked. “Shit. You must be out of your gourd.”

Walker took a step forward. “Major, we’ll get buried under a ton of snow up there. You don’t know these mountains.”

“I’ve spent a good part of my life in montagnard country, Captain. I’ll keep you alive.”

“It’s insane. It’s a dead end.”

The woman wheeled. “Your friend is right. No one goes up in those mountains after the first snow. It’s suicide.”

The Major said, “I certainly hope the police are as convinced of that as you are, Mrs. Lansford.”

Baraclough came past Walker and climbed into a saddle. When he had his feet settled in the stirrups he said, “Major Hargit knows wild country survival better than any man alive. He’s right. Now let’s quit arguing and start moving.”

When Walker turned to put his foot in the stirrup he somehow caught the eye of the woman and for that brief instant their glances locked with tremendous impact: an exchange of sudden shared understanding, of bleak and hopeless regret.

Hanratty said, “Somebody help me get on top of this animal.”

CHAPTER

5

1

Through the infrared scope they showed up plainly: boot-heel indentations, scuffed ground, a patch where the pebbles had been disturbed when they’d set down their burdens to rest or reco

“Watch yourself now. Monument Rock just over the hill.”

“Okay, kemo sabe.” The knapsack made Stevens look hunchbacked.

Sam Watchman covered the last twenty yards on his belly and took his time looking it over. There were lights burning in the front room of the house. He didn’t see anything move.

After he had completed his naked-eye inspection he lifted the Weatherby to his shoulder, switched on the infrared beam and put his eye to the scope.

The snooperscope was designed to make heat visible. The image on the lens revealed contours of temperature rather than light. The warmth of the earth made it red; the relative coldness of the air made it green. The buildings, which stored less heat than the ground but more than the air, were an indeterminate mauve. The heat of lamplight against the front window made it show up very hot. The trees behind the house were a madras patchwork of shades.

If there had been human flesh in the beam’s line it would have shown up heavily red on the lens.

Watchman made a hand signal and the rookie handed him the walkie-talkie. He spoke into it with low-voiced clarity: “Watchman to Vickers. You still reading me?”

“I hear you.”

“How long since you’ve heard from the deputy at Monument Rock?”

“I haven’t heard from him at all. Hold on, I’ll check with Cu

Watchman put the scope on the tracks going down the hill. It took a few minutes to sort out the spoor. Four of them had walked down the hill. Two had walked up again. Three, carrying heavy loads—the indentations were deeper—had walked down again.

The FBI agent’s voice sputtered in his ear. “No word from Deputy Foultz since eleven o’clock.”

Watchman twisted his wrist to check the time. Almost two in the morning. “Then you’d better get over here and bring some people with you.”

2

“Let’s go down and scout around.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to wait for Vickers to show up?”

“If they’re still inside the house they’d hear the cars coming.” Watchman backed off the hilltop. “We’ll go around and come in through the trees.”

When they got near the house he played the scope around and made out patterns of footprints inside the grove; it was no good sorting out tracks on the open earth of the yard because the ground had been scuffed up by years of use. Watchman crept to the back of the house and used his ears. Heard nothing but the thrumming of the well pump; signaled Stevens forward and went around the side of the house, moving without sound, forward along the wall to the lighted front window.

When he looked inside he turned stiff in his tracks.

3

One of the FBI technicians offered a pack with a half-extended cigarette and Vickers, nodding thanks, took it and put it in his mouth and poked his face forward to take a light from the technician’s cupped match.

The technician waved his hand to extinguish the match. “Been dead two and a half, three hours. Not more.” He turned to Watchman: “The front door was open when you got here?”

“Yes. It looks like the kind of door that’s never shut.” Watchman’s eyes went beyond the technician to Vickers. “While you were on your way here I called Olsen’s horse ranch. Asked them to send a couple of four-wheel-drive trucks and horse trailers over here. All right?”

Vickers looked up at him; he had been bending down to look at the one-millionth-scale contour map on the table. “You think you can catch them in this country with trucks?”

“We can get fifteen miles back in there and use horses from there. We’ll gain at least an hour.”

“They’ve probably got three hours’ jump on us.”

“And they’ve got the woman,” the technician said. He was down on one knee, spreading a blanket over the dead deputy.

Watchman turned to Buck Stevens. “They left three horses in the barn. Let’s get saddles on them.”

4

The yard filled with cars and trucks—police, FBI, horse trailers, Dodge power wagons, Vickers’ jeep.

A big red-faced man drove a poorly stuck-together convertible into the yard. There was no wind. The dust settled just where it had been kicked up. The big man exploded out of the car. “What the hell is all this?”

Vickers stepped forward. “You’re Lansford?”

“You’re God damn right I am. What’s everybody standing around for?”

Vickers was flashing his identification. “We’re busier than we look, Mr. Lansford.”

The rancher whipped his hat off. It had indented a red weal across his forehead; he rubbed it with the side of his index finger. “They took my wife, is that right?”

“I’m afraid it is.”

“And you’re standing around.” Lansford’s eyes narrowed into a fighter’s squint. “Okay. Help yourselves. Stand around all night if you want.” He turned with a quick snap of beefy shoulders and began to tramp toward the three horses tied up by the barn.

Watchman blocked his path. “Take it easy, Mr. Lansford.”

“Take it easy!” The man had a good loud bellow. It rang around the yard.

Vickers said, “Try to calm down. Let us handle this, Mr. Lansford—we don’t need amateur help.”

“You’ve got it whether you want it or not.”

“Do you want me to place you under arrest?”

“On what God damn charge?”

“Protective custody if you like.”

“Piss on that. Those are my horses. You don’t go an inch on those horses without my permission.”

“All right,” Vickers said. “I hadn’t pla

Watchman turned; stared at him.

Vickers took two paces forward so that his face picked up the lamplight that splashed off the porch. “These five men have attempted a wave of terror. They’ve killed two men, one of them an officer of the law. They’ve abducted a woman. They’ve stolen almost a million dollars. Washington and Phoenix have agreed we can’t tolerate terrorism on this scale. We’ve traced the background of one of these men and it looks like we’re dealing with a well-organized group of former United States Army officers who were recently cashiered for acts of extreme brutality and savagery in Vietnam. The government regards this as a critical situation because we don’t know how much organized paramilitary support these men have and we don’t know how many more acts of violence they’re pla