Archer Mayor - The Dark Root

I aimed my binoculars to the left and then made a calculated gamble. “Drop everything and head back to your pickup, Richard. If he is mobile and I miss him, we’ll be shit out of luck without a vehicle. Steve, you find out what triggered that second hit, and call for reinforcements. I think this is it.”

“What if this is another diversion? Or a midnight joyrider?”

“Just do it. We don’t have much left to lose.”

I heard something in the distance and tore the headphone off my ear to listen. It was the high-pitched whine of a small engine. I disconnected the radio from all its covert paraphernalia, the need for silence over, and told Richard, “I hear it coming. Sounds like an ATV.”

Boucher was breathing hard, running for his pickup. “10-4. I’ll be headin’ your way in a sec.”

The fog bank by the trees told me nothing. As before, it lay there, trapped, opaque as green phosphorescence through the low-light binoculars, disguising the source of the approaching engine’s growing howl. I was frustrated by the binoculars. Richard and a few of the others had been issued sophisticated night-vision goggles from the Border Patrol’s limited supply, which not only could be conveniently strapped onto one’s head, but could also be left in place while shooting a gun. If it came to that, I knew I wouldn’t do much with a pair of binoculars in one hand and a pistol in the other.

At last, much closer than I expected, the fog gave up its malevolent gift. The dark, squatty form of a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle, towing a small trailer, burst from the bank like a shark clearing water, and came charging right at me, its lights extinguished.

I exchanged the binoculars for a powerful flashlight, stood clear of the rocks, steadied my gun hand on top of the hand holding the light, and switched it on. “Police-stop.”

But we were too close. It had happened too fast. There was no room left for either one of us to choose a peaceful option. The driver was also wearing night goggles, and the glare from my light totally blinded him for an instant, making him instinctively tear them off and throw them aside. He swerved at me, only barely in control of his machine. Just before diving out of the way, I saw the dazed face of Truong Van Loc.

I ended up against one of the rocks, momentarily stunned, the stench of the ATV’s exhaust in my nostrils. He hadn’t missed me by much. I dug my radio from the holster on my belt. “Richard-it’s him. He got by me. He’s heading for the road.”

I scrambled to my feet and began running, my flashlight now lost but my gun still in my hand. The road was a couple of hundred feet away, and Truong, now minus his goggles, had switched on his headlights. But I knew we were too late. Richard hadn’t been able to get to his pickup quickly enough. Even now, almost reaching the road and seeing Truong picking up speed in the opposite direction, I could barely see Richard’s lights coming over the rise far to my right.

Breathing hard, I staggered into the road and waved at the pickup to stop. He slowed down enough for me to pile into the passenger seat, and then poured the speed back on.

“He’s right ahead of us-four-wheel ATV with a trailer-using lights.”

Over the radio, we heard Steve reporting that he’d secured a large truck, minus the driver, and that he’d contained its human cargo by locking the back door.

Driving with one hand, the countryside ripping by in a frightening blur, Boucher unhooked his radio mike and relayed our situation to Dispatch in a calm, measured tone. “There is one thing going for us,” he said after he’d signed off. “Unless he really knows this part of the woods, he’s going to have to double back to keep on any kind of decent road. They all crap out about three to four miles east of here.”

I remembered that from studying the map earlier. Somewhere near where Orleans County ended and Essex began, the dozen or so marked roads all either dead-ended or looped back around to the west. But there were a lot of them, mostly interconnected, and unless we could seal them off quickly, Truong still stood a good chance of escaping, especially if he put his cross-country vehicle to its intended use.

“There he is,” Boucher murmured, almost to himself.

Ahead of us, around a curve in the road, a quick, jittery glow flickered briefly across the treetops. I hung on as Richard approached the bend without letting up on the accelerator.

Tires squealing, odds and ends shifting noisily around inside the cab, we took the corner almost on two wheels. Straightening out, we found the road ahead-straight, broad, and flat-totally empty.

Richard slammed his hand against the steering wheel, coming to a stop. “Damn. The son of a bitch. I should’ve known it.”

He threw the truck into reverse, turned us around, and sped back to a small gap in the woods I hadn’t noticed on the inside of the curve. Again, he grabbed the radio and gave a short update. Then he positioned us so our lights shined directly into the trees.

I looked dubiously at the narrow gap, which in the shadows looked about big enough for a bicycle. “You sure?”

“I know every deer path in this county. He’s down there, all right, playing hide and seek.”

“So we wait?” I asked.

A slow smile spread across his face as he shook his head. “Too many options in there. He could come out at a half-dozen places, cross another road, and keep on going. We’re going to have to force his hand.” He put the truck into four-wheel drive.

“In this?” I asked incredulously.

He laughed. “You never been Jeepin’ before?”

The truck leaped from the road into the brush with a tremendous crash. Branches flew by the windshield as if caught in a tornado, and I could hear the truck’s undercarriage squealing and groaning with the strain. I held onto the dash with both hands, wondering how I could have been so wrong in gauging Boucher’s character.

After the initial onslaught, the branches faded back a bit, allowing us some vision, and up ahead, exactly on cue, another pair of headlights suddenly came to life.

“I got you, you bastard,” Richard shouted gleefully, and put on more speed.

As he did so, two sharp muzzle flashes punctured the darkness. Our windshield cracked like a snapped bone, and we were sprinkled with tiny shards of glass. Boucher’s face, glowing green in the dash lights, merely hardened in silence.

The chase became a slow-motion cataclysm of violent sound, motion, and half-perceived disasters. Adrenaline-pumping images of grazed boulders, hip-checked trees, branches further smashing the windshield, and an occasional view of the vehicle just ahead, its driver hunched over the handlebars, crowded in on me in chaotic order. The maelstrom of jumbled impressions was so confusing, so immediate, and so life threatening, I actually found myself wondering if any of it was real.

And then abruptly it stopped. Boucher screamed, “Shit,” and slammed on the brakes. Ahead of us-almost under us-was Truong’s trailer, twisted, broken, completely blocking our way. Beyond it, receding rapidly, we could clearly see the fading lights of the ATV.

Once again, Richard grabbed the radio. This time, however, I reached out and took it from him.

“4-60 from Alpha One. Where’s the chopper now?”

“Near the intersections of Holland, Morgan, and Selby Roads.”

I glanced at Boucher.

“That’s just ahead. If we can move that trailer, I can get you there in five minutes. We almost had him,” he added as an angry afterthought.

“Can you land there?” I asked the helicopter.

“10-4. What about the ATV?”

“Have you inventoried the truck yet?” I asked instead, knowing the noise of our cross-country pursuit had drowned out anything that might have come in over the radio.