David Dun: Necessary Evil

"This is the FBI. The plane is surrounded," she called out.

"Oh, thank God," a voice called back above the wind. "I thought you were Tillman's guys."

''Let me get on top of the plane and drop in through the broken windshield," Kier told Jessie quietly. "You go inside and cover him."

"You're a civilian," she snapped. "More important, you'll be a wide-open target."

"Have him put his hands through the hole in the cockpit door. Shoot if he moves. I have a better chance than you would."

She knew he was right. Reluctantly, she nodded and moved along the fuselage.

"First throw out your gun," she called from the rear hatch.

"How do I know you're a Fed?"

"Mister, you're gonna bleed to death if we don't hurry, and I'm not crawling up there to do the I.D. bit. Not as long as you have a gun."

"All right. All right." A second later, a pistol, complete with a long, ugly silencer, flew through the hole in the cockpit door and skittered across the cabin floor. Among the five guys in slick Italian suits, Jessie had only found three guns. The man up front might easily have the fifth.

''Now put your face and hands through the hole in the cockpit door where I can see them."

Silence. She sensed Kier behind her; she could feel his body heat. He had followed her. She whispered to him: "You don't dare climb up on top and start smashing the windshield unless his mug is in a spot where I can shoot it off."

Kier nodded. Then something else flew through the hole in the cockpit door. A hand grenade.

"Tillman sent you!" the man screamed.

Kier saw it coming, and he knew the conventional wisdom: If you saw a grenade coming at you, it was probably too late.

Time didn't slow down for Kier. Nothing did. There was no moment of insight or thought; his life didn't flash before his eyes. There was only time for the instinct to survive. And therein lay the telling act, because he grabbed Jessie before he jumped.

Intense heat engulfed them. Pulling her on top of him, he slid down a brushy, snow-covered hillock.

He became vaguely aware that the foliage had quit slapping their bodies. He felt Jessie slide off and watched her sink a hand into the velvety powder, trying to find purchase.

Kier helped her push up.

Half to herself, she asked, "Why'd he do it?"

"Didn't believe you? Knew he'd die anyway? No telling."

"Didn't believe what?"

"Didn't believe you were the FBI. How would the FBI get here this fast? He said Tillman.' Tillman's in those papers." He nodded back at the plane.

"What do the papers say?"

"Be right back," he said. Kier climbed to the top of the short rise. Returning in about two minutes, he noticed she looked uneasy. He wondered if she'd ever been alone in the deep forest. Around them the oaks shone stark black against the snow that glazed the upper sides of their gnarled branches, witches' fingers pointing everywhere. Behind them the taller evergreens rose like crystalline spires. For him it was a magnificent place temporarily desecrated by mankind.

"You don't like it here."

"It's a dank forest, in winter. Somebody just tried to kill us."

Kier nodded and decided against explaining his thought. Instead, he showed her the elaborate box that contained the five black binders.

"So people are killing each other over a planeful of lab reports?"

"They're into something they shouldn't be. Genetics and more, and involving my tribe. I think that plane was loaded with every infectious disease known to man. Somebody's got to-"

A mountain of air, followed by a thundering blast, knocked them both on their backs. Debris pelted the trees above them. Without the embankment they might have been killed.

Kier lay stunned, not yet believing what had just happened. Jessie was getting up, but looked woozy.

"You okay?" he asked.

She nodded. "It had to be a bomb. I doubt that fuel could have exploded that violently. We were damned lucky."

They both stood, burning debris on the snow around them, and Kier nodded toward what looked like an impenetrable wall of snow-covered branches. Ducking beneath larger boughs and dislodging a cascade of snow in the process, he knocked smaller dead branches out of the way until he had created a sheltered area just large enough for them to huddle in under the cover of an old evergreen tree. They squatted with their backs to the trunk.

She groaned.

"Sorry I haven't got a chair."

"I'll manage just fine," she said.

He pulled out Volume One and handed her the handwritten page. While she read, he took the volumes out of the heavy box and put them in his pack, abandoning his medical supplies.

"God, what was on that plane?" Jessie had finished reading. "You suppose there's anything left after that explosion?"

"Don't know. Flames everywhere," he said.

"I've got to call for help."

He began crawling out of the brush toward the embankment. "Let's get back to Claudie's and the truck."

Out of nowhere a man appeared, initially just a shadow in the dull light, moving steadily toward the plane. His clothes were the color of the snow. Jessie and Kier had walked halfway back from the plane by a circuitous route to avoid the heavy brush. They had turned down a very wet swale, as evidenced by the sword fern spread through the oaks. They saw him before he saw them.

Across his chest the shadow man held an automatic rifle. The oversize banana clip told Kier it was military, no hunting rifle. Kier motioned Jessie down behind a big, snow-covered log. As they dived in the snow, they caught glimpses of two more men, one to the right, one to the left, both apparently in a rough line moving through the trees.

The first man would soon cross the pair's original path from the Donahue ranch. Should Kier jump the man bearing down on them and ask questions later? he wondered. The jet had crashed a little more than an hour ago. How did men dressed for combat arrive here this soon? How could anyone know in advance where a plane would crash?

"What the hell?" Jessie whispered.

"I'll be damned," Kier agreed in astonishment.

The first man was still coming directly for them, walking slowly, and looking side to side, now just thirty feet off. They flattened behind the log, burrowing into the snow. Jessie fished out her gun.

"It looks like the army's arrived," she breathed in his ear.

"We'll know soon enough."

But Kier had a sense. When these men moved through the forest, they studied the ground and the landscape, their heads constantly turning. They often stopped to watch. This was no exercise. These weren't just soldiers: they were hunters.

Crunching snow told Kier the man was upon them.

Like a swooping bird, the rifle's barrel came, then passed from view. Kier sucked in his gut until it hurt. He put his finger to his lips and pointed up. The ghost man was standing just above them atop their log. In the dense snowfall and rough ground, the footprints that memorialized their passing were not so easily seen.

In an instant, Kier reached around the log, finding the white boots of the big man, and yanked with tremendous force, sprawling the soldier across the log. Obviously surprised and disoriented, the soldier flailed and started to call out. Kier rose above him, delivering a sharp blow with his right elbow to his solar plexus.

Faster than Kier could comprehend, Jessie thrust her gun in the man's face.

"Shut up," she half whispered.

Together, Kier and Jessie pulled the man into the deep snow behind the log, and under a hemlock with branches low to the ground. Jessie had ahold of the soldier's hair, with her gun still to his head, but he either didn't see it or didn't care. He began to scream.