Joe Gores - Glass Tiger

He melted into the undergrowth, as silently as she had ever seen anyone move, even the reservation Indians of her childhood.

Hatfield put his team in place in the woods between the highway and the cabin, took the driveway himself. If the woman was alone, his men would hold her while he waited for Thorne to show. If Thorne didn’t appear, he’d interrogate her alone. Why was Thorne looking for her? How did she fit into things?

If Thorne was with her, he’d let his team take her, then tell Thorne they had to talk. Kill him, make it look to his men like self-defense. He went into a comfortable crouch in a grove of western hemlock beside the track into her cabin, his .40 Glock semiauto resting on his right knee with his forefinger very lightly touching the trigger.

He tensed. Someone was walking cautiously up the gravel drive behind him. How in hell...

Thorne’s voice was a hoarse whisper.

‘Hatfield? Has she shown yet? Do you have her?’

Hatfield came slowly erect, the gun still out of sight beside his thigh, sure that he would be able to see Thorne on the open driveway by the light of the gibbous moon.

‘We’re waiting for her,’ he said in soft tones that wouldn’t carry to his men. ‘I sent you the tickets to Kenya, why in hell did you fake your own death?’

‘Because I’ve seen the inside of a Kenyan prison.’ Thorne gave a low laugh. ‘No thanks. But why did you plan to set me up? I told you I didn’t want credit for Corwin. Told you all I wanted was out. Why didn’t you just let me go my way?’

Hatfield peered through pale moonglow at the figure just visible on the far edge of the drive.

‘I was under orders to make sure you stayed out of the country for a few months.’ He was slowly raising his Glock, keeping it where no vagrant ray of moonlight could touch it. ‘Then you’ll be released and you can go back to Tsavo...’

He pumped round after round at the shadowy figure. It was blown sideways, spinning into the thicket of heavy juniper bushes beside the road with a long, loud, strangled cry. A moment of thrashing, then silence. He’d got the fucker! Now, just seconds to cover himself with his men.

With a gloved hand, he pulled out the old Colt he’d pushed the rounds through at the firing range in D.C. The perfect throw-down piece, untraceable, exactly the sort of illegal weapon Thorne would carry. He fired three times into the air and threw the gun into the bushes where Thorne had fallen.

‘Over here!’ he yelled. ‘I need lights! I need guns! I need men! Now!’

Like her father before her, Janet had wrapped her money stash in waterproof plastic that she had buried near the rear corner of the cabin only eighteen inches down in dry soil. She dug it up with her pocketknife, then moved silently up the side of the cabin toward the door. At the flurry of gunfire from the driveway, she jumped two feet in the air.

‘Over here!’ an unknown voice shouted. ‘I need lights! I need guns! I need men! Now!’

Hatfield’s men sounded like a cattle stampede as they abandoned their posts to rush to the aid of the shouting man. Hatfield? Had he shot Thorne? Killed him?

She ran to the door, slipped in, grabbed up her cellphone, jerked the bearskin off her bunk-bed, threw a couple of armloads of clothing into a backpack, was out again within ninety seconds. Her Reno wardrobe in the closet might hold them there, making them think she just hadn’t gotten home yet.

She drove slowly, cautiously away, without lights and without even thinking of waiting for Thorne. He would make it or he wouldn’t. She would wait for him at Whiskey River for... three days. Longer than that, he wouldn’t be coming.

Hatfield was waiting impatiently by the heavy thicket of juniper bushes where Thorne had gone down. He said to his men, ‘Thorne! He came up behind me and started firing. No warning, no words, nothing. He’s in that thicket. I don’t have a flashlight...’

They went in, Franklin in the lead. ‘Here’s his piece!’ He took a knee, and, without touching it in any way, sniffed the barrel of the throw-down .45 that Hatfield had planted there. ‘Yeah, this baby’s been working all right.’

They worked their way through the thicket and congregated on the far side. They had found the gun. They had found heavy blood splotches. But they hadn’t found Thorne.

Hatfield had a sinking feeling in his gut. But, hit like that, bleeding like that, Thorne couldn’t get far.

‘Listen up.’ They stood in an exhausted circle around him, adrenaline leaching from their bodies. ‘He’s hit, and he’s hit hard. Throw a perimeter around this wooded area until first light, then beat the bushes until we find the bastard’s body.’

‘Cops?’ asked Eisler.

‘We don’t invite the cops in, ever. You know that. If you spot him, shoot first and shoot to kill. Treat him like a Texas rattlesnake. By sunup, I want him in a bodybag.’

Thorne saw Hatfield coming up with the Glock and threw himself sideways into the cover as he had done with Corwin up on the mountain, yelling to make Hatfield think he was hit. But Christ, he was hit. The bullet smashed his side like a wrecking ball, accelerating the twist of his body so he went down hard on his side in the undergrowth, stunned.

He was bleeding heavily. Good: give them something to puzzle over. Bad: lose too much blood, the body would go into a defensive mode, pull blood in from the extremities, shut down everything not needed for sheer animal survival, and he’d go into shock. If the shock didn’t finish him off, Hatfield would find him and finish him off. Move. Now.

Things were going in and out. Essential to stop the bleeding now, so they would have no blood trail to follow. He ripped his sodden t-shirt apart and stuffed a long strip of it right through the wound, closing off both entry and exit.

That was when the pain started. Good. Pain meant he might not go into shock. But he had at least one broken rib, maybe two. Did he have bone splinters driven into his lungs? In his head, he heard Hernild’s voice:

The bullet entered and exited at an angle... fragmented the seventh rib... glanced off rather than penetrated... rib bone driven into the chest cavity but not into the lungs themselves... crawled a thousand feet to his cabin... saved his own life...

Hit as Corwin had been hit. Now he was going to have to save his own life, also as Corwin had done. Using all his woodcraft, he managed a silent crawl to the side of the thicket away from the searchers. Somehow found his feet, his balance, staggered away. Hatfield must have planned to kill him all along. So why the ticket to Kenya, why the elaborate charade? None of it made any sense...

He fell down. Had let his mind wander. Forget Hatfield for now. Just keep ahead of him. He struggled to his feet, went on. From lodgepole pine to lodgepole pine, from subalpine fir to subalpine fir, from white spruce to white spruce. Finally into a stand of poplars where the going was faster. Plenty of tree trunks to hang on to as he lurched along, and they grew thickly, almost like bamboo, so it would be harder for anyone to see him moving through the grove.

Just before moonset, he looked back the way he had come. No blood trail. He was going to make it! He was going to beat that bastard Hatfield at his own game. Whatever that game was.

His whole life had been fight or flight. Usually fight, but now, flight. Flight where? And just like that it came to him, the whole thing. The Loma Vista store. Call it two miles. Food. Clean water. AQUA River Tours. Medical supplies. Antibiotics. Hope someone on an overnight camping trip had left a vehicle parked there. Surely he could jump the ignition and get it going. He was a Ranger wasn’t he? Well, ex-Ranger...