Дэвид Балдаччи - Long Road to Mercy

But she shook off these thoughts and regrouped.

Side canyon. It had to be a side canyon where Roth would have gone. That actually would line up with the navigation points on the flash drive.

She checked her watch. Another hour before the light would start coming. She set out.

The Canyon flattened out near the Colorado; the river had seen to that, of course. Yet when one veered away from the water, the land quickly steepened and there were a great many side canyons down here.

Thirty minutes later she reached the first one. After exploring it as best she could by foot, she pulled out a pair of night optics from her pack and surveyed the rest of the area.

The next moment Pine went into a crouch and slipped her Glock from its holster while she trained her optics onto the entrance to the side canyon.

She had heard the clink of boots on rock.

To her experienced ears, they were not the casual footballs of hikers. The footsteps were too stealthy, not that any sensible hikers would be exploring a side canyon in the middle of the night.

She slid to the right and took up position behind a boulder.

Ten seconds later three men appeared from out of the dark.

She saw them clearly through her optics.

She was pretty sure they weren’t rangers.

Pine had seen many rangers.

But she had never seen any of them wearing full body armor and combat helmets, and holding M4 assault rifles.

Pine drew farther back against the rock as the men drew closer.

She silently cursed, because as she crouched there, the dawn was beginning to break over the Canyon. Light coming here could be breathtaking. She had hiked over the Canyon at various places and various times simply to see the sunrise. It was a surreal, one-of-a-kind experience.

Now she hated it, for the first time ever.

She could tell the men were real pros simply by the way they moved over the ground. They worked as a team, spread out, one point, two flanks, and communicating efficiently by hand signals, their gazes scanning all points on the compass, methodical, missing nothing.

And, at some point soon, they would not miss her.

They also had night optics, but their models looked far superior to hers. They were dressed in cammies but were not wearing military uniforms. No insignias, no name tags, no indicia of rank.

But they certainly looked military.

As the light began to deepen and then diffuse, they lifted their optics and trained their eyeballs on the terrain ahead.

Her Glock versus three assault rifles. It would be a short fight. She wondered where they would bury her, if they even bothered with that.

They must have come to the same conclusion that she had: namely that Roth was down here, in one of the side canyons.

And that told Pine something else.

They’d gotten the knowledge of Roth’s plan... from Ben Priest. After enhanced interrogation? And what about poor Ed Priest, whose only sin was being Ben Priest’s concerned sibling?

As Pine focused on the M4s coming her way, she slipped out her phone. One of the major carriers had put a tower in the park, and its customers sometimes could get reception. Well, Pine was a customer.

“No Service” was displayed across the top of her phone screen.

Note to self: If you get out of this alive, cancel your fucking provider contract.

She stiffened as the man on the point reached up and pulled a small communication unit that was Velcroed to his armor. He spoke into it and then listened to the response.

Okay, he’s probably got secure satellite communication down here. He would probably have it in Siberia, or Antarctica, too.

If these guys weren’t American military or CIA paramilitary, she wasn’t sure who they were. The fact that they probably served the same country as she did brought her no comfort. Those had been feds back at Simon Russell’s house, too. And they were planning to fly him to a place where torture was considered perfectly legal.

Based on that, Pine believed if she stepped out and flashed her FBI creds they would probably just shoot her in the head. And then shoot her a second time just to be sure.

The point guy put his comm unit away and motioned to the other two men. They turned around and made their way out of the side canyon.

Pine breathed a sigh of relief and then looked to the sky.

The breaking dawn, she knew, had probably just saved her butt. They were as afraid of the coming light as she was. They had probably been searching down here all night.

She wondered where they were camping out. Or was a chopper shipping them in and out? Ordinarily, that was not permitted under the prevailing laws and regulations enforced by the Park Service.

She assumed those laws and regulations had been overruled by a far higher power.

That sent a chill right down her spine.

She waited another thirty minutes before coming out of her hiding place, just to be sure. Then she set up camp behind the cover of a large rock outcrop that also provided some shade.

It was going to get blisteringly hot down here shortly. She had earlier located her water source, then refilled her hydration pack and a second CamelBak bladder after filtering the water. She sat in the shade, and ate and drank until she was satisfied, but no more than that. The heat crept up on you. You simply felt warm one minute, and then sick, dizzy, and disoriented the next. It could take hours or even days to recover, a luxury Pine did not have.

The presence of the three M4 guys here told Pine that they didn’t have Roth. And they weren’t down here looking for her, because they could have no idea she was even here. Were they looking for the nuke, too? But how did that make sense? Roth was a respected WMD inspector. Why wouldn’t he be working with the government to get the sucker out of here? This whole thing was as muddied as the Colorado River.

She endured the stifling heat, taking catnaps and keeping her hydration levels up.

Part of her wanted to get up and continue her search for Roth during the daylight. But her good sense made her stay where she was. If the brutal heat didn’t get her, the three guys with assault weapons might. Better to do her searching at night.

The day passed and darkness fell swiftly, as it tended to do on the floor of the Canyon.

Pine awoke for the last time around nine. She checked the sky and her brow furrowed.

This time of year, the monsoons would draw on the energy built during the heat of the day, combined with the layers of moisture from the southeast, to create some truly remarkable thunderstorms. Well, it looked to Pine like tonight she would be the recipient of such a meteorological vortex.

She put on a water-resistant poncho and made sure her backpack was zipped tightly. She carried it with her, because to leave it on the ground would invite attacks from squirrels, mice, and other rodent types. And they could chew through steel, given time. At the campsites, the Park Service had metal bars hung up high to hang your gear on for that very reason.

She barely had time to take cover before the first streak of lightning seared across the heated sky. The following thunderclap seemed to shake the very insides of the Canyon.

With the second thunderclap came the rains. Or water bullets, to be more accurate, because the velocity was enough to actually be painful when they struck you.

The boulder above Pine’s head provided some cover until the wind picked up and drove the rain horizontally. She turned her face away from the driving water. The temperatures had dropped a bit, but it wasn’t like on the rims, where a pop-up storm could drop the mercury by twenty degrees in minutes. She was sweating even though she was drenched.