Death Angel (15 page)

Pardee’s crew was already starting up the north face of the slope. The wooded ridge on the west side of the gap was burning. If Jack stayed there, he’d burn, too.

Fire was creeping east down the hillside toward the saddle. Pardee and company were moving to occupy the high ground of the slope before Jack got there. That would
put them in position to block him from escaping by descending the saddle’s southern slope or crossing to the east side of the ridge and losing them in its as yet-unburned woods.

The manhunters mounted up along the hillside in a crescent shape like the horns of a bull. Some of them had flashlights. Smoke strands writhed across the beams as they danced over the slope, sweeping, probing.

Jack angled southeast down from the western end of the gap, trying to outrace the hunters at the nearer tip of the horn before they could outflank him. With a rifle he could have raised merry hell, picking off his foes as they were exposed out in the open of the long slope. The handgun was good only up close, and he’d prefer to keep his distance from the hunters.

With any luck, he’d reach the saddle gap before his pursuers, but not without breaking cover. Timber, boulders, and brush on the slope played out, forcing him to cross a stretch of open ground. Firelight from the woods above betrayed him, outlining his form, casting his long shadow over the slope.

Excited shouts greeted his appearance, like the baying of hounds when they sight the fox. Flashlight beams lanced across the ground trying to pin him. Shots popped, rattled; spear points of flame stabbing out from rifle muzzles.

He was in the gap; the ground fell away from his feet. He hit the ground rolling, absorbing the impact on his shoulders, clutching his gun as if his hand was welded to it.

He slammed into a rock with a bone-jarring thud, coming to a halt.

He groaned, sitting up on the ground. He was in a hollow, a shallow basin. Cover was minimal: small crabbed stunted mesquite trees, bushes, scattered boulders and rock outcroppings.

He crawled to the north edge of the hollow, looked out
and down at the slope tilting away from it. The nearest of his pursuers were about fifty yards away. The hunters were pressing him hard.

He turned around and started south, across the gap. Seconds were too precious to waste in doing anything else but flight. Halt too long and they would have him. That was the hell of being a fugitive. The hunters gave you no time to pause; to think, regroup, or plan. Or even catch your breath.

Jack Bauer was running on sheer nerves and adrenaline. He was in top condition but he didn’t have much left in reserve to draw on. He hadn’t eaten a real meal since breakfast. Thirst was worse. He was parched for a drink of water. His mouth was dry, his throat felt like it was closing up. Desert heat plus fire heat had leached the moisture out of him.

He was dirty, grimy, exhausted. The smell of burning clung to him, permeating his clothing. His lungs heaved, his limbs were leaden.

Behind him—too close—the hunters shouted back and forth to one another.

Jack plodded on, a slow, steady jog. He picked a path through some waist-high bushes. A twisted root he hadn’t seen tripped him up and he fell forward, landing on his hands and knees.

He raised his head, glancing up—recoiling at the sight of a manlike figure looming over him. His gun was leveled on the apparition before Jack realized that he’d been about to blast a saguaro cactus. It was six and a half feet tall, and the limbs protruding from its trunk looked like arms bent at the elbows. Luckily he’d recognized it for what it was before pulling the trigger.

Yellow light flickered and pulsed ahead. The gap in the ridge opened onto a wooded plateau. The timber was about thirty yards away.

The ridge west of the gap was completely ablaze, its sides and summit blanketed with yellow flames. Black smoke
poured out of it. Fire lines had thrust down the slope, establishing a beachhead on the west woods of the plateau. Pine trees became torches with astonishing swiftness. Jack would have to move fast before the swift-spreading fire cut him off and barred his way.

Footfalls, hard breathing sounded behind him, very near, almost on top of him. The hunters were closer than he suspected. He turned to face them, standing on one knee. He rested the elbow of his gun arm on top of his thigh to steady it.

Rustling sounded in the bushes. Voices:

“See anything, Croft?”

“Thought I saw something moving right around here, Steve.”

Croft sounded closer of the two. He was on the other side of the brush. Steve was a half-dozen paces behind him. He was holding a flashlight. That’s all Jack could see of him, the flashlight beam. It bobbed and wiggled, pointing off to the side toward a place where Jack wasn’t.

“Bring that light up here, Steve,” Croft said. He parted the bushes and stepped through them, coming face-to-face with Jack Bauer.

They could see each other by firelight. Croft had short dark hair, a low forehead, and a lantern jaw. He wore a dirty white T-shirt and jeans and carried a shotgun cradled under one arm with the barrel pointing down at the ground.

He and Jack saw each other at the same time. Jack fired first, squeezing two shots into the other’s middle. They were fired in such rapid succession that they sounded in one crashing report. Muzzle flares from Jack’s gun flashed like two strokes of heat lightning, underlighting the mask of agony that was Croft’s face.

Croft jerked the trigger convulsively by dying reflex, discharging a shotgun blast into the ground. He dropped to his knees, pitched face-forward to the ground.

Jack wanted that shotgun, but before he could make a grab for it Steve popped into view. A straw planter’s hat was wedged on top of his coconut-shaped head. Jack threw himself flat on the ground.

The flashlight fell from Steve’s fingers as he took hold of his small machine gun with both hands and opened up. He panicked and cut loose on the saguaro cactus, chopping it in half.

Jack lay prone in the dirt firing upward. Steve fell backward out of sight behind the bushes. The flashlight lens cracked when it hit the ground but the beam kept shining, throwing a line of light at worm’s-eye level.

Gunfire broke out along the crest of the slope. Brush screened the hollow so the shooters couldn’t see what they were shooting at. Jack got out of there fast, putting a line of boulders between him and the fusillade.

“Spread out! We’ve got him now!” The command came in the harsh, metallic, unmistakable tones of Pardee.

But they didn’t have Jack, not yet. Crouched almost double, he made a mad dash for the timberline. The hunters hadn’t seen him, they were still focused on the hollow he’d just quit. Flashlight beams pinned it from several different directions. The site became a magnet for lead. Bullets tore up turf, pulped cactus, pinged off rocks with wicked whining ricochets.

The woods ahead were on fire in a dozen different hot spots. They hadn’t consolidated into one big blaze yet but not for lack of trying. Jack put on an extra burst of speed, hating the glare that picked him out as a better target.

Pardee was rallying his crew, bawling at the top of his lungs. “Get him, you dirty sons of—”

They’d stopped wasting bullets on the empty hollow and were throwing lead at the distant figure at the edge of the woods. Jack slipped between the trees, angling through
them for better cover. Bullets made woodpecker rappings against the timber.

Jack wove through the maze, seeking always the gaps in the flame, the arcades slanting southward toward the far end of the plateau. Hot embers and ash rained down on him.

The manhunters weren’t so eager to follow Jack into the inferno. Pardee raged, cursed, kicked some butts, and swore he’d shoot any laggards. That got his crew moving. Pardee hung back, going in last behind the others. Now they had him at their backs with a gun—a powerful incentive not to retreat.

The hunters fanned out, trying to outflank their quarry on either side. Not so easily accomplished with the blaze raging all around.

A sharp cracking report burst overhead. For an instant Jack mistook it for gunfire. Instead it was the sound of a tree limb breaking off near the trunk where fire had gnawed it down so that it was no longer able to bear the weight.

Jack jumped back, dodging the flaming branch as it came crashing down, sending hordes of orange sparks skyward. The ground was hot underfoot. A tree trunk exploded nearby, spewing sizzling resin, spraying bark. Not fire but gunfire was the cause.

Jack spun, dropping into a crouch, pointing his gun. A rifleman swung his weapon in line with Jack. Jack pumped some lead into him. The impact spun the shooter around before knocking him down.

Shapes, outlines of men appeared nearby, their images rippling in the heat waves. Jack turned, ran down the winding trail, darting through the trees. He angled toward the southeast, arrowing toward the fast-narrowing avenue of woodland as yet untouched by the fire. It would be a close-run thing. Much of the woods beyond the saddle were ablaze.

Jack flattened his back against a tree trunk, bracing himself for—what?

Overhead, lights and swift rushing motion; titanic, irresistible. An airplane. Not just any airplane but a tanker plane, making another run. It flew so low that it was almost at treetop level.

It dumped its massive cargo of tons of water on the saddle to balk the advancing arm of the firestorm’s southern front. Just as it or one like it had done earlier on the valley’s northern slope.

The tanker plane’s path overflew the fiery saddle between the ridges. Water cascaded earthward as though some giant knife had gutted a raincloud to unleash its contents all at once in a massive downpour of a tropical monsoon.

Jack was at the edge of the water drop but it struck with the impact of a high-pressure fire hose. It knocked him down, stunning him. He kept a death grip on his gun to avoid losing it.

Jack got his feet under him, forced himself to rise, leaning against a tree to keep from falling down. He looked around, unable to see much of anything except massive steam clouds that unfolded upward into the sky. He couldn’t make out any sign of the hunters.

The air shimmered with glowing clouds that were great abstract masses of yellow, orange, and red, all shimmering and swirling. It was caused by firelight shining through banks of steam.

The tanker plane’s water dump had literally been a drop in the bucket. It had blunted the firestorm’s advancing front, nothing more. The firestorm itself continued to rage, turning the west into a sea of flame.

The ridge west of the gap was a blazing beacon. Jack used it to get his bearings. He went south through the unburned section of pine forest, crossing the plateau toward South Mesa and escape.

8:43
P.M
. MDT
Felderman’s Station, Los Alamos County

A metal dragonfly that was a helicopter floated down from a red and black sky toward a crossroads. The crossroads lay south of the plateau where the tanker plane had made its water dump.

Whatever effect the water drop might have had in slowing the firestorm’s eastern advance had long since been nullified. The plateau was a solid sheet of flame and the fire had jumped the gap to begin eating its way across the next ridge in line.

The fire had been balked by the sandy wastes of the flat that lay at the base of the plateau’s southern slope. It was a broad expanse of reddish-brown soil too thin to promote anything but some patches of brush and weed too sparsely scattered for the fire to get a grip on.

A dirt trail that was an old logging road emerged from the south slope to stretch across the flat toward far-distant South Mesa. It intersected a gravel road running east-west. On the southwest quarter of the crossroads stood the moldering ruins of what had once been a stagecoach relay station and trading post: Felderman’s Station.

All that remained were the crumbling stone walls of the structure’s foundation. Jack Bauer lurked in the shadows of those walls, watching the copter descend. The stonework provided what little cover was to be found on the flat.

Jack was careful not to get too close to those jagged stone heaps. Such tumble-down rock piles were a rattlesnake’s delight. On the other hand, he had no desire to show himself in the open in case any of Pardee’s men was lurking in the area.

Earlier, the tanker plane’s water dump had provided him with the diversion he needed to lose the manhunters. He’d plunged ahead into the drowned woods, a bleak vista of blackened skeletal trees, steaming ground covered with black ashes and embers extinguished by the deluge, and hissing white clouds of water vapor wafting through glades and trails.

He worked his way to the plateau’s edge and then down its southern slope. The water drop hadn’t held the fire back for long. The hillside was once more ablaze by the time he reached the flat.

At noontime the atmosphere had been dead calm. Now it was restless, rushing, as if the firestorm was inexhaustibly sucking up great masses of air to fuel its ever-mounting onslaught. Winds whipped into the sky a blizzard of fire flakes, glowing coals and embers, sending them hurtling northeastward. Where they fell they sowed new blazes.

Jack made his way across the sandy flat to the jumbled ruins at the crossroads. The sky was bright with firelight,
the ground open. He hoped that Pardee had posted no snipers with night-scoped rifles on the heights of the ride east of the gap, where the fire was just starting to find a foothold.

He angled across the flat with his shoulders and upper back tensed in anticipation of being struck by a bullet. But it seemed that Pardee had given up the chase; there was no sign of enemy action.

Still, tension gripped him until he found himself sheltered by the cover of jumbled rock walls. He knew the blessed relief that comes from having evaded pursuit, to be able to draw a breath and recover his strength without being harried, hunted, and shot at.

He had the luxury of switching on his cell phone, something he’d been unable to do during the chase. For one thing the hunters had been pressing him too hard for him to take the time; for another, it would have been so much wasted effort because he’d have been long dead before any rescuers could arrive.

His cell had satellite phone capability, freeing him from worry about getting through if the fire had taken out some of the local cell phone towers. He contacted FBI SA Vince Sabito.

“Nice of you to check in from time to time, Bauer.”

Sabito’s deceptive mildness was a threadbare cloak for heavy sarcasm.

“I’ve been busy, Vince,” Jack said. He gave the other a quick summary of the events beginning with the shoot-out at Rhee’s apartment, followed by his pursuit of Nacio in the silver coupe, Pardee’s intervention with his gun crew, and the manhunt through the burning hills.

“Quite a story,” Sabito said when Jack had finished. “Tell me: You didn’t start the fire, too, did you?”

“Not guilty, Vince.”

“That’s something, anyhow. You can identify Pardee?”

“Only by voice. I heard him but I never got a good look at him. I won’t forget that voice in a hurry, though.”

“I’ll put a pickup order on him. Not that it’ll do any good; that bastard’s got a million holes to hide in all over the county. He’s a top Blanco gang hand. It’ll give me a reason to roust Torreon, though,” Sabito said, his voice expressing evident relish at the prospect.

“I could use some of that good interagency cooperation right about now,” Jack said.

Sabito snorted. “That’s rich, coming from you.” He sighed. “Okay, what do you want?”

“A ride out of here, for starters.”

“Where are you?”

“Out in the middle of nowhere.”

“That’s a big help, Bauer.”

Jack didn’t have to rely on any guesswork. His cell’s built-in GPS pinpointed the exact coordinates of his position. He read them off to Sabito.

“Sit tight, your ride’s on the way. You’ll be going airborne—a chopper’s coming to pick you up. Try to stay out of trouble in the meantime,” Sabito said. He broke the connection.

Jack checked his voice messages. The only urgent one was from Harvey Kling: it had come in about an hour earlier. Jack played it back:

“Bauer? Kling here. I’ve got something for you. Something big. Remember that hot lead I mentioned before? I wasn’t just talking through my hat. The proof of it is at number ninety-seven Meadow Lane in Shady Grove. Family name of Parkhurst lives there. They put me on to something that could break this case wide open. Ninety-seven Meadow Lane, Shady Grove. Meet me there as soon as you can. Come quietly so as not to tip your mitt. Come alone—I don’t know who else to trust with this thing.”

Jack called Kling’s number; Kling didn’t pick up. Jack left a message on his voice mail: “I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

Now the helicopter was in view, drifting down from the sky. The crossroads served as its mark. It dropped down right in the center of them. Rotor blade downdraft whipped up a ring of dust and sent it expanding outward like a ripple from a pebble dropped in a pool.

The helicopter touched down lightly, perching delicately on its rails. It was yellow with black trim, a sleek, hornet-looking aircraft. A hatch slid open on the forward starboard side of the cockpit. Framed in the hatchway was Hickman, cradling an M–4 carbine.

Jack jogged from the ruins to the copter. He moved in a crouch, keeping his head down. He approached the open hatchway where Hickman brandished the M–4. If Hickman was working for the other side, he’d never have a better chance to be rid of one Jack Bauer. Jack thought that Hickman was okay, but in this line of work there were no guarantees—

Hickman flashed his teeth in a knife-blade grin, moving aside so Jack could climb into the cockpit. He was still buttoned down in the same suit he’d worn earlier that day. He hadn’t even loosened the knot of his tie as a concession to the heat. He sat in a bucket seat up front in the passenger side of the compartment.

The pilot, about thirty, wore a set of earphones over a duckbilled khaki cap. He had wavy brown hair, dark brown eyes, jutting cheekbones, and an eyebrow mustache. He could have been a movie star playing a dashing World War I aviator—all that was missing was a silk scarf. He greeted Jack with a jaunty thumbs-up.

Hickman shouted to be heard over the noise of the engine
and rotors. “Looks like you got your tail feathers singed, Bauer!”

The helicopter lofted upward. The bottom of Jack’s stomach felt like it was dropping between his knees. The ground fell away from the copter like a descending elevator car, turning the landscape into a tabletop miniature.

Jack leaned forward, shouting, “Let’s take a look at the north side of the ridge—see if Pardee is still around!”

The pilot gave a quick glance at Hickman. Hickman nodded yes. The copter soared higher, wheeling above the plateau and the gap between the ridges. The sun had dropped below the western horizon, the sky was dark, smoke hid the moon and stars.

The helicopter zoomed over the north side of the ridges. The burning hills gave plenty of light by which to see the landscape. It was laid out below: the snaky gully, winding road, and blazing woods. A fallen tree blocked the road. West of it stood two burned-out hulks, the remains of the dark sedan and the silver coupe, engulfed and gutted by fire.

East, the road was empty; the pickup truck that had brought reinforcements was nowhere to be seen. “Gone!” Jack said. He’d expected as much. He leaned far forward and put his mouth near Hickman’s ear so he wouldn’t have to shout so loud. “Where’s Shady Grove?”

“On the Hill. Why?” Hickman asked.

“That’s where we’ve got to go.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s where we’ll find Harvey Kling.”

“So what?”

“Kling’s playing a deeper game than you think. He knows things and he’s ready to spill his guts.”

Hickman was openly derisive. “He’s an alcoholic. What’s your excuse?”

“I got to Rhee too late today. Let’s not make the same mistake twice,” Jack said.

Hickman looked unconvinced.

Jack played his trump card. “What have you got to lose? If it pans out, you get the credit. If it doesn’t, you can hang it on me while the Bureau comes out smelling like a rose. I’m sure Vince will like that.”

Hickman allowed himself a wintry smile. He told the pilot to head for Shady Grove.