Thomas Perry - The Informant

When he reached the level ledge where he'd left his gear, he retrieved the rifle, the rolled poncho, and the night-vision scope, and climbed some more. It was after a few steps higher that he became aware of a faint, almost imperceptible hum. For a second he wondered if it was some kind of vehicle straining its transmission as it drove up a parallel road to intercept him. But as it grew louder, it didn't sound like that. It was some kind of aircraft. It occurred to him that he had not heard any aircraft before. And it must be too late at night for airliners to be landing at Phoenix Sky Harbor.

He moved faster. He took off the jacket he had stolen from the sentry and ran on. He concentrated on making his way up to the crest of the mountain, where the pine forest flourished and the cover was thick. When he reached the big grove he moved off the trail to the thick carpet of pine needles to quiet his footsteps and tried to catch his breath while he walked.

The hum of engines grew into a loud, rhythmic throbbing, and the sound of rotors became a thwack-thwack-thwack in the general roar. Helicopters came in overhead, and he could see their running lights as they cleared the top of the mountain and followed the terrain down into the compound below.

He kept moving, listening to the sounds of more and more helicopters coming in and landing at the foot of the mountain. He knew there would already be federal or police vehicles blocking the private road that led away from the resort, and undoubtedly the highway beyond it. The first thing they did in a raid was take control of the roads so nobody could drive out.

There was no question in his mind that these invaders were the result of his conversation with Elizabeth Waring. He had tipped her off to the existence of a meeting and asked her to use the Justice Department's net of wiretaps and surveillance operations to find out whether a lot of capos were on their way to one place. She had refused to tell him, but of course she had found out and sent an army of federal cops to round up everybody at the meeting. Now the feds would have a wonderful couple of days photographing, fingerprinting, and identifying all the men at the meeting and trying to find out what they were up to.

But things had not worked out well for him. If he had been able to get to her more quickly, or had more specific information for her, maybe the federal cops would have arrived in time to keep Frank Tosca from making his pitch. Tosca had called powerful men here from all over the country, and if they'd all been arrested right away, they would have been angry. Maybe they wouldn't have killed Tosca, but they might have. They certainly wouldn't have agreed to make him head of the Balacontano family. For Schaeffer the timing was wrong. They had already agreed before the first helicopter had swooped in. Now Schaeffer was about as likely to get scooped up in the police sweep as the rest of them. And if the police didn't get startled in the woods and open fire on him, then he would be locked up in a big holding cell with about fifty men who would consider it a pleasure and a privilege to beat him to death.

When he reached the rock shelf where he'd left his pack, he slipped the poncho over his head. He hid the rifle under a pile of rocks, pushed pine needles over it so no part was visible, and stood. Getting out was going to depend on stealth and speed, and not on trying to win a shoot-out with the FBI.

The trail through the pines was deserted, but as he loped along, the sound of helicopters was always in his ears. Suddenly the sound grew deafening, and he threw himself down and skittered under a big rock outcropping. When the helicopter was overhead, he was blinded by the outcropping above him, but then he could see the white belly slide over and then down into the valley. It looked so near that it seemed to him he could almost reach up and touch it.

They must be still ferrying policemen into the center of the resort so they could keep swarming into the compound, detaining everybody they saw. In a few minutes that would be accomplished, and they would be free to start fanning out, searching for stray gangsters from the air.

Before he dared to slow down, he needed to get outside the perimeter the cops were establishing. He kept moving through the pine woods, fighting the stitch in his side and the difficulty he felt gasping in enough air. He reached the spot where he had left the dead sentry, and knowing he had gotten that far gave him a second wind. If all the sentries were in a long line at this altitude, that line would be the spot where the police would start. He ran harder, promising himself he would get as far as the downslope and then stop to catch his breath. Do it now, he thought. Whatever you do now is worth a hundred times as much as anything you can do later.

He found that he remembered the ground he was crossing. He knew the spots where he could risk breaking into a full run, and where he would have to trot, watching for half-buried rocks and raised roots that could injure him in the dark. Tonight a broken ankle would be fatal.

The sound of the helicopters changed again. This time the sound was coming from the north, along the spine of the mountain. He dashed to a sparse stand of pines nearby and then searched for a better place to hide. He found a deep depression on the edge of the grove. It looked as though sometime in the past a big tree had fallen, and the roots had left a hole. He sat in the depression, spread his poncho around him, pulled armloads of pine needles and twigs over on top of it, and lay down on his back.

A helicopter passed over him, bright spotlights shone down from its belly, and then it began to descend. It hovered and set down on the open meadow that lay between him and the downslope. The engine remained loud and the rotors still turned, the false wind kicking up dust and bits of bark.

The door on the side opened and two men in olive jumpsuits ran a few feet, dropped to their bellies, and lay there sighting M-16 rifles on theoretical foes lurking in the forest. Then the rest of the team jumped out, spread, and ran for cover. A second helicopter landed farther up in the meadow, and its crew performed the same landing drill.

The two helicopters churned up even more dust and debris as they rose unsteadily to a height of about a hundred feet and then swung away along the spine of the mountain. The men on their bellies got up and ran to join their comrades, who were already setting off along the path that led to the ranch complex.

He lay still and waited. He was fairly certain that the outer edge of the sweep had been established, and this was it. The men coming along the path passed within fifty feet of him, the butts of their assault rifles resting atop their shoulders instead of against them, turning their heads one way and the other to spot a target. None of them discerned anything human about him in the hole under the poncho and the pine needles and scraps.

Moving slowly, he fed the tube from his backpack canteen up through the neck of the poncho and drank. He rested and regained his strength while he waited for the contingent of federal officers to move far enough off. After a few more minutes he didn't hear them anymore so he got up and began to walk.

Before long he reached the beginning of the downslope. It was a gradual, steady descent, but now there were no paths. Probably few, if any, of the resort's guests had ever hiked down the mountain. In the daytime, the level land at the foot was a hot, harsh, demanding place.

As he descended out of the zone of pine trees and into the levels with patches of cactus and yucca, he could feel the rocky ground radiating stored heat into the cooler night air, like a memory of scorching sunlight. He came downward at a walk. When he reached the level ground and could see ahead far enough to spot the variations that were rocks and desert plants, he worked his way up to a trot. He could just catch the faint sound of helicopters on the moving air now and then from the far side of the mountain.