Текст книги "Dry Bones"

Автор книги: Craig Johnson

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

14

I was seeing double. I shook my head, another mistake in that now my brain felt like it was bouncing around like a sneaker in a washing machine.

“Good thing you’ve got a hard head.” Bob Delude made a face as the Bobs stood at the foot of my hospital bed like bookends.

Sitting the rest of the way up, I could see Henry and Doc Bloomfield at the side of my bed. “You know, I’m really getting tired of waking up in this place.” I could feel the bandages wrapped around my skull as I rested back on a collection of pillows. “Has anyone found Jennifer and Taylor?” Henry shrugged, and I looked at the two patrolmen, who followed suit. “What about Enic?”

“Also missing.” The Cheyenne Nation sat in the nearest chair. “We were hoping you could tell us where everyone was, but we did find the horse.”

“Do me a favor?”

“Yes?”

“Shoot him.”

“Too late. We already returned him safe and sound to the corral at the Lone Elk Ranch.” He studied me. “Did the horse have something to do with all this?”

“Well, kind of. The biggest problem was Enic.” I yawned and could hear cracking noises—probably not a good sign. “My head hurts.”

Robert Hall spoke up. “We’ve got an APB out on the two—should we add Enic?”

“Yep.” I glanced around. “Where are my clothes?”

“Locked up.” The doc’s voice was firm as he pulled at his nose with a thumb and forefinger. “DCI sent back the official report on Danny Lone Elk.”

“Now why do I not like the sound of that?”

“All indications are that Danny died of mercury poisoning.”

I glanced at the other men in the room, but they seemed as concerned as I was. “Mercury poisoning?”

The doc nodded. “Yes. If you’ll remember, I remarked on the flesh shedding at the fingertips?”

“Other symptoms?”

Isaac recited: “Tremors, emotional changes, insomnia, impairment of peripheral vision, headaches, lack of cognitive function—all the things that Danny had been suffering from that lately might’ve been misconstrued as alcoholism.”

“The rattle.” They all looked at me. “The turtle rattle that Danny kept getting out and placing on his chest when he took his naps—it had a strong smell to it, and I remember Dave Baumann saying that the things were dangerous because of the residual chemicals that remained from the museums cleaning them. He mentioned mercury, specifically.” I happened to catch Henry’s eyes as they played out through the dark past the windows. “What?”

He turned to look at me. “Fish.” He stood, placing his fingertips on the surface of the glass. “High levels of methylmercury can be retained in fish and shellfish.”

I stared at him. “Are you saying that Danny ate enough fish that he—”

“Well, in Danny’s case not exactly fish.” He turned to look at me. “Turtles.”

“Oh, hell.” I thought about it. “Didn’t Randy say that Eva fixed their dad turtle soup all the time?”

“She did, but still, where is the mercury coming from?”

I watched as Isaac thumbed up his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose, a habit when in deep thought. “Forty percent of mercury poisoning in the U.S. comes from power plants, but once again, there’s nothing like that in the area.”

I thought about the conversation I’d had with the Hardin hippy. “Turtle food.” They all looked at me. “The herbalist/pharmacologist up in Hardin told me that he sold turtle food to Danny by the truck-load.” I turned to the Cheyenne Nation. “What do turtles eat?”

He smiled the thin-lipped smile, the one that cut paper . . . or red tape. “Fish.”

“Most of that crap that Free Bird is selling is illegal Chinese stuff, and I’m sure it’s probably laced with mercury because it’s too bad to sell to humans.”

Bob shrugged. “So you think his death actually was an accident?”

“I am not sure, but if somebody knew about the mercury in the feed and subsequently the turtles in combination with the sacred rattle . . . Eva?”

I looked at the Bear. “You think?” I turned to Isaac. “Doc, I need my clothes—now.”

As he hurried out, I spoke to the assembled posse. “So, as near as I can tell, Taylor and Jennifer have a thing and Uncle Enic is helping them along.” I looked at the Bobs. “Can you guys get down to the Lone Elk place and arrest everybody who is down there?”

They spoke in unison. “Charge?”

“What, since when do you guys need a reason to arrest somebody?” I threw out the first thing that came to mind. “Probable cause.”

Bob turned to Robert. “I love probable cause.”

Robert nodded and looked back at me as they went out the door. “Me, too. So, not that it’s any of our business, but where are you two going?”

“Looking for the starstruck lovers and their guardian. I think I owe Enic a pop in the jaw . . .” As the HPs exited, I turned back to the Cheyenne Nation. “Where are Trost and the FBI?”

Henry folded his hands in his lap. “They were boxing up more of Jen, but it is late and they gave up when they could not get Jay to run the forklift in the rain.”

“It’s a manhunt—isn’t that what the FBI does best?” I pressed my fingers against my right eye, which seemed to want to pop out. “Wait, did you just say it was late?”

Henry looked at his wristwatch. “Close to eleven; Mr. Hall and Mr. Delude found you just before dawn and you have been unconscious all day.”

“Oh, no.”

Henry frowned. “Yes, you cannot move in your holding cell. From what I understand, Trost has been in negotiation with the DOJ to have Jen stored in the official depository in Bozeman.”

“What the hell is he thinking?”

The Bear shrugged. “I guess he has his sights set higher than the Big Empty.”

“I’m calling Joe Meyer.” I glanced around for a phone but could see only the internal one for the ICU. “As soon as I get my damn pants.”

 • • •

There were some emergency clothes in my office, which was good because the director of the Cheyenne Conservancy and the chief of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, along with their bodyguard, were waiting for me.

I re-dressed and limped back into the dispatcher/receptionist area. Henry was sitting on the bench with Brandon White Buffalo and Lonnie Little Bird, Lolo Long sitting on Ruby’s desk, her long legs dangling. “Sheriff.”

“Chief. What’s up?”

She gestured toward the old man, who smiled. “I’m thinking there’s something you should know. Um hmm, yes it is so.”

“What’s that, Lonnie?”

“There was a meeting a few months ago with the tribal council, and those meetings, they get long, so I sometimes fall asleep. Mm, hmm.” He shook his head. “Which is how I got elected chief I suppose; I was asleep and couldn’t defend myself . . .”

“What about the meeting, Lonnie?”

“What?” He looked at me, his mouth moving in an attempt to continue the conversation, but not quite sure what it was.

“The meeting?”

“Oh, yes . . . There was a meeting. Mm, hmm, it is so.”

I stood there looking at him for a spell but then finally turned and glanced at Chief Long, who obliged me by reminding him, “The girl, Lonnie.”

His head rose back with his mouth open, the thought re-forming. “The girl, yes, there was a girl. She came to the first meeting and stood by the door, but then they got her a chair to sit on in the next one, and then by the time we got to the last meeting she was sitting with us at the table during the negotiations.”

“Who is ‘us’?”

“Danny, the negotiations with Danny about the Cheyenne Conservancy and the dinosaur.”

“Yep, but who was the girl?”

“The girl with the camera. Mm, hmm. Yes, it is so.”

Lolo added in explanation, “The paleontologist, Jennifer Watt.”

“She filmed all three of the meetings?”

Brandon sat forward, his giant hands linked under his chin. “It’s true. I remember that there was a blonde woman at the meetings, filming. Evidently she and Danny were very good friends, and he had her film everything.”

“Yes.” Lolo shrugged. “I didn’t think anything about it, but then she went missing along with Taylor and I thought it might be pertinent.”

I looked at Henry. “We need to find those two and get those files. Any word from McGroder on the computer?”

“Not that I know.”

I glanced back at Chief Long, figuring she probably knew the answer to such things. “How much can you save on one of those cameras?”

“Small, digital?”

“Yep.”

“They record onto a memory card, so it’s according to how big that is. If one file gets filled it will just flip over to the next.”

“Remembering that she films everything, enough so that the files from that meeting could still be in her camera?”

“I would think so.”

I turned to Henry. “All right, we’ve got the two starstruck lovers and their trusty companion; as my go-to guy on all things tracking, where would they be?”

“On the ranch—it is the only place where they would be safe.”

“Well, that’s only fifteen thousand acres—how would you suggest doing that?”

“Omar and his luxurious Neiman Marcus helicopter.”

My stomach flipped. “Tonight?”

“I thought you had gotten enough sleep.”

“Flying.” I listened to the rain pelting the roof of the old Carnegie library. “In this weather?”

The Bear smiled. “He has flown in worse.”

 • • •

On September 3, 1996, Ron Bower and John Williams broke the round-the-world helicopter record in seventeen days, six hours, and fourteen minutes. They were able to accomplish this feat due to the Bell 430, which had a four-blade, bearingless, hingeless composite main rotor and close to eight hundred horsepower produced by two Rolls-Royce/Allison turboshaft engines. I was listening to the same sort of engines whine as we ducked under the swinging props and climbed into Omar’s helicopter, the rain now blowing sideways.

I envied the poncho the Bear had appropriated from the duty closet as I clamored toward a seat. “This fits the parameters of my worst-case scenario.”

We thumped into the soft, butter-colored leather of the obscene conveyance as the Cheyenne Nation closed the door behind us.

“Wait. It will most likely get worse.”

Omar called over his shoulder, “We in?”

I yelled back. “For better or worse!”

In revenge, he throttled up, and I felt my guts settle into the cradle of my pelvic bones, suddenly rushing up and skyward. “Oh, hell.”

The Bear turned and looked between the seats at our pilot. “You know where you are going?”

He nodded, most of his face covered from my view by the massive headset. “Start at the dig site?”

Henry shouted. “We will do a circle out, and if we find nothing then we can begin a grid pattern.”

Omar nodded, and we raced over Durant’s main street, headed south-southeast. The last time the three of us had been in this self-same helicopter had been in an attempt to save a young man who was being stalked by an unknown sniper in the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area. The weather had been moderate when we’d started, but then a front had come in with snow, sleet, and sixty-mile-an-hour winds that had sent Omar and the Neiman Marcus helicopter down the mountain and Henry and me on a life-threatening hike on snow-covered trails. “Don’t get shot this time.”

“I intend to do my best.”

“And don’t sing.”

“I did not sing before.”

I glanced out the window at the rolling hills we traversed, only a hundred feet or so above the wet, waving grass. “Can’t we fly higher, so we don’t have to go up and down so much?”

“I think he is attempting to avoid the wind, which is worse higher up.”

“Oh.”

He glanced out the window on the other side of the helicopter. “It also means the helicopter will fall a shorter distance should something happen.”

“Shut up.” I fastened my seat belt. “How fast are we going?”

He leaned forward again, reading the instruments over Omar’s shoulder. “One hundred and forty knots.”

I thought about the rough knowledge I’d received behind the control seats of a B-25 Mitchell by the name of Steamboat years ago. “One hundred and sixty-one miles an hour?”

He shrugged and went back to looking out the window. “I think he likes to go fast, and since it is his helicopter . . .”

I looked out and was barely able to make out the contours of the land now. “How are we going to see? It’s as dark as the insides of a cow out there.”

“Omar has assured me that he has enough auxiliary lighting that we should be able to spot them if they are out here. We can search for them until dawn and then refuel and start out again.”

He studied me. “How is your stomach?”

“Flipping like a trout.”

“Does it help to talk?”

“Some.”

“MMO?”

It was a game we had played for as long as I’d been in law enforcement, maybe even a leftover from Vietnam: Motive-Means-Opportunity. “Is it my imagination, or was it on this same helicopter that we last did this?”

He shrugged. “Breaks up the monotony.”

“And keeps my mind off my stomach.” I settled myself. “Suspects?”

“Jen, Taylor, Enic, Eva, Randy, and your friend, Dino-Dave.”

“No one else on the ranch as far as we know.”

The Cheyenne Nation nodded toward Omar. “Him.”

“He was there, but he doesn’t have a motive; anyway, we’ll throw him in when we get to opportunity.”

A voice suddenly sounded in both our headsets. “You two know I can hear you, right?”

Henry smiled. “Might be an opportunity to ask.”

So I did. “Hey, Omar, did you kill Danny?”

“No.”

I gestured with my one hand. “He’s innocent.”

Omar’s voice rang again. “I understand your having to ask.”

“Thanks.” I glanced at Henry as we both removed our headphones and hung them back on the interior hooks. “Jen.”

“Low on motive—what would she have to gain?”

“Taylor?”

“We’re moving on?”

I shook my head. “No, she had Taylor to gain.”

“You think Danny would have prevented the two of them from getting together?”

“Possibly.” I tilted my head. “But she was obviously trusted enough by Danny to be invited to all the Cheyenne Conservancy meetings. Two?”

He nodded. “Opportunity?”

“Zero, she didn’t live there and wouldn’t want to be caught near the pond, as nobody knew about the relationship with Taylor, or so they say.” I shook my head. “Randy seemed genuinely surprised.”

“All right, we will give Jen a total of two.”

“Eva?” I thought about the psychopharmic cloud surrounding the woman. “Who the heck knows?”

“She would keep her son from Jen, and Enic would side with her on traditionalism.”

“And the two would override Randy?”

“Yes.”

“Give her a three.” I looked out the window but still could see nothing but the rain pelting the glass. “Means?”

“She cooked for him.”

“Yes.” I sighed. “Three.”

“Opportunity?”

“Three.”

He nodded. “We have a new leader at nine.”

I moved on. “Taylor.”

“He would get the ranch eventually, but there are two surviving generations ahead of him.”

“He’d get the girl.”

He shook his head. “Do you think the objections to their May/September relationship were strong enough to kill his grandfather for?”

“Seems like a stretch.”

“Give him a one? I am not giving him a zero.”

“Means?”

“He had access to the alcohol and the turtle feed.”

“He doesn’t drive.”

“True.”

“Two.” He glanced back out the window. “Opportunity?”

“He was around the house all the time, when he wasn’t running away, and he didn’t seem to have too much of a problem shooting at us after we found Danny.”

“Two, which gives us five.”

“Dino-Dave.”

“Killing Danny would only complicate things for him.”

I agreed. “One.”

“Means?”

“He doesn’t live on the ranch; I’d give him another one.”

“Opportunity?”

“Same, so we’ve got an all-time low of three.” Suddenly I could feel the aircraft pull up, and we hovered there in the air, probably a hundred feet or so above the ground. Omar motioned toward his earphones and then gestured toward ours.

Henry and I plucked them from the hooks and put them on, adjusting the microphones in front of our mouths as Omar’s voice sounded in our ears. “You’ve got a call from the FBI.”

“Yep, I left a message for McGroder on his cell phone. Mike?”

His voice was groggy. Static. “I just got the message to call you.”

“Any luck on that computer?”

Static. “No, it’s annihilated; any information on the hard drive is corrupted. Sorry . . .”

“Well, that’s a disappointment, but I’ve still got one ace in the hole. Hey, Mike, do you guys have any kind of whizbang satellite gizmo that can pinpoint the location of some suspects out here on the—”

Static. “Where the hell are you?”

“I’m in a helicopter; we’re looking for the runaways and Enic, and I was hoping to call in a favor and see if the bureau had any way of helping us track them down.”

Static. “Tonight?”

“Well, yep.”

Static. “No.”

“What do you mean no?”

Static. “I mean no as in you’re only going to get satellite reference on a twenty-four-hour basis, and then somebody’s going to have to go through the data. Besides, is it still raining?”

“Yep.”

Static. “Then you’re not going to get anything anyway.” He readjusted the phone. “I can locate a guy in Manhattan using his mobile in a third of a second, but out here in God’s country? You’ve got to be kidding.” He laughed. “If they were using a cell phone we could get an approximate location from the sending towers, and by approximate, I mean a couple hundred square miles, but since there is no cell service almost anywhere here in Wyoming, they won’t be using one—which means we get zippo, nada, zilch.”

“Thanks for your help.”

Static. “Any time.” There was a silence, but then he spoke again. “Look, I’ll contact NSA, but I’m promising less than nothing, okay?”

“Better than nothing, I guess.”

Static. “Over and out.”

I listened to the radio go dead and glanced up at the millionaire pilot. “Omar, how far to the site?”

The nose of the chopper dipped, and we jetted forward. “About two minutes.”

As we skimmed along into the rain and the windswept sky, I rapidly moved down the list. “Randy I’m giving a two on motive simply because he would have to kill his uncle as well to get anything out of it.” I thought about it. “But there was something Enic said about Danny being hard on Randy.”

Henry raised a finger in response. “Also, Enic is a Traditional and possibly more open to the idea of closing out something newfangled like the Cheyenne Conservancy.”

“I just don’t see those two agreeing on much of anything.”

“Around eight million dollars can soothe over a number of differences.”

I shook my head. “I’m still giving him a two.”

“Means?”

“Gotta give him a three on that.”

Opportunity?”

“Three.”

“Second place at eight.”

“Enic.”

“He knew about the relationship, and he’s been trying to help them.” I reached over and fingered the delicate glass of the bud vases, a strange thing to have onboard a twin-engine, light-medium helicopter, but it had come from Neiman Marcus. “He said something about Eva not being happy about the situation.” I sighed. “He gets the ranch, he gets the eight-million-dollar Jen . . . He gets everything.”

The Cheyenne Nation nodded. “Three.”

“He just doesn’t seem like the type; I get the feeling he wouldn’t kill his brother.”

“He struck you in the back of the head with the stock of a shotgun.”

“He could’ve shot me.” I acquiesced. “Three.”

“Means?”

“Three.”

“Opportunity?”

“Three.”

An eyebrow on the Bear crept up like a black caterpillar. “Need I remind you that the game is not Motive-Means-Opportunity, and Feelings.”

Boy howdy.

15

“Is it me, or have we stopped?”

The Bear nodded. “I think we are in the process of stopping.”

The Bell 430 eased to a hover over the dig site as the northwest wind buffeted the fuselage and Omar eased us downward, suddenly pivoting to the left, his voice a little too excited for my taste. “Sorry, that ridge was a little closer than I thought. We’re checking the immediate area from the air and then, if we don’t find anything, we begin the circle?”

“I’m open to ideas if you’ve got a better one.”

“Nope—just checking before I turn on the lights.”

Henry glanced at me as we swept the immediate vicinity, our eyes getting used to the sudden glaring light. “Enic is armed?”

I nodded. “With a single-barrel shotgun that looked as if it might’ve come off a Wells Fargo wagon.”

“Do you have an extra firearm, just in case?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“That’s okay, I do.” Omar’s voice assaulted us, along with the butt-end of a tactical shotgun, complete with a black nylon sling. “Benelli M4 with all the bells and whistles—nothing lives in two equal parts, unless you get attacked by earthworms.”

The Cheyenne Nation took the thing from the front passenger seat and held it gently in his hands, more than a little impressed with the sleek, matte-black 12-gauge. His fingers wrapped around the fore stock near the flashlight below the barrel, and he flipped on the high-intensity light.

“Shades of Vietnam?”

His eyes came up to mine, and he smiled as his free hand pulled the hood of the poncho up over the cloak of dark hair. “Just a little.”

“Hey, Omar, nothing moving around here—let’s proceed south by southwest and see if we can find a lineman in a hay shack, or something like that.”

I figured it was pretty much an impossibility that we might stumble onto the shack even with the lights, but I kept my eyes out the windows, as much as I didn’t want to, adjusted the mic, and spoke to Omar. “Follow the drainages; when we found the opening to the mine it was on a hillside with the shack on the ridge above it.” I’d just finished speaking when there was a loud thump, the aircraft shuddered, and the searchlights were entwined in a mass of wet, waving grass. “Did we just hit the ground?”

Omar’s voice sounded completely calm. “Just grazed a hilltop.”

My voice, on the other hand, was not so completely calm. “Let’s not do that again, okay?”

Henry glanced over at me, shook his head, and continued looking out the window.

“I know this area pretty well. I’ve hunted down here and we—”

There was another thump. “Damn it, Omar! Put another twenty feet between us and the ground, would you?” This thump had been different, though. The helicopter shuddered like before, but now there seemed to be an imbalance in the vibrations of the thing. “What the hell was that?”

“Shit.” I watched as Omar struggled with the controls, finally easing the craft back in an attempt to hover, but the chopper was having none of it and pitched to the side.

I slammed my shoulder against the door, clamped a hand onto the seat, and, glancing at Henry, noticed he had lost a little of his nonchalance. “What’s happening?”

“We hit something, or something has hit us.”

I pressed myself even further into the seat, if possible. “Are we going down?” He didn’t answer, but there was another shuddering thump and it seemed as if the helicopter was tipping forward even though we were still moving. “Are we on the ground?”

Omar answered. “We are, but we are sliding—better grab on to something.”

I reached for the seat in front of me, but we hit the side of the hill before I could hold on. I flew forward, taking Henry with me, and we tumbled into the cockpit with Omar, crushing him into the instrument panel as we flipped over the dash and lodged against the glass.

The good news was that we’d stopped moving.

I yanked my arm free as the Bear carefully placed the shotgun on the seat, then pulled himself into the copilot position and looked at Omar, who was piecing together a strip of flesh at the bridge of his nose that was leaking copious amounts of blood.

Henry disengaged himself from the copilot controls. “Are you all right?”

Omar nodded and started shutting the helicopter down. He gestured toward me. “Yeah, I guess. I was fine until Bigfoot planted a boot in my face as you two went over.” He reached down and hit a few more buttons and then spoke into the mic. “Absaroka County Control, we are down. Requesting assistance.” He keyed the mic again. “Absaroka County Control?” He listened for a moment and then pulled his trademark black hat from his head and ceremoniously dropped the headset to the floorboards. “Either we’re out of range, there is no reception, or the radio is FUBAR.”

Lying on the leather-covered dash, I dropped my head back and looked at the rain striking the Plexiglas. “What did we hit—or what hit us?”

Omar gave the flap of flesh one more quick pinch and wiped the blood away with a GORE-TEX sleeve. He put his hat back on, then grabbed a high-intensity flashlight from a console and pulled the lever on the door. “Let’s go find out.”

The Cheyenne Nation piled out his side with the Benelli, and as comfortable as I was just lying there, my sense of duty called and I dragged myself off the comfy shelf, fell into Omar’s seat, and slid out after them. They were looking at the chopper, but, like them, I couldn’t see anything beyond the bending of the runners and a little cosmetic damage to the front of the fuselage.

“It looks fine.” I glanced at the multimillionaire but noticed he was pointing up.

“Not really.”

Henry and I followed his eyes and the beam of the flashlight and could see large chunks broken from the rotors. “I’m no aviation engineer, but that looks bad.”

“It is.”

“I don’t think the county can cover this.”

“I’ve got insurance.” Omar walked behind me around the stabilizers as the Bear and I, saying nothing, looked at each other in the rain. After a few seconds, our pilot came back and held out a shredded piece of what looked like rubber-coated cable.

“Power line?”

He nodded. “An old one, copper.” He glanced around. “Probably a rural electrification feed from back in the thirties.

“Who the hell would be running electric lines all the way out here back then?”

“Let’s go ask them.”

“I was thinking you should stay here with the helicopter.”

“Like hell.”

I turned to look at Henry as he pulled up the hood of his poncho again. I watched as he studied the rotors and then looked over our heads toward the hillside behind us where there was a square outline of a lit, framed window that could be seen on the ridge above us, in what I could only assume was the lineman shack.

“Good job.” I punched Omar’s shoulder with my fist. “You found it.”

He reached back into a storage section of the Bell and pulled out another shotgun exactly like the one he’d given the Cheyenne Nation. “Indeed.”

We walked toward the light. “So, how many of those things do you have onboard?”

Omar tucked the second Benelli under his arm and wiped the rain and more blood from his face. “In my experience, you can never have enough AsomBroso tequila or shotguns.”

The Bear held back as the pilot stopped for a moment, holding his nose. “The Reserva Del Porto?”

Omar shrugged. “Of course.”

Henry called back to him, “The bottle looks like a penis.”

He looked up and sniffed. “At eleven hundred dollars a bottle it’s fucked me up enough times.”

As I pulled up beside him, Henry placed a hand on my chest. “Just as a precaution, I think you should know that I believe someone may have been shooting at the helicopter.”

“You see something in the rotors?”

“Maybe.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I am still not sure; it is possible that it was ball bearings, but since the engines are bearingless, I am thinking it could have been a shotgun.”

“Sure about what?” Omar had caught up with us.

“Henry thinks we might’ve been shot at.”

He shook his head. “Bullshit—it was the power line.”

The Bear didn’t say anything.

“Could it have been both?”

Omar shook his head. “I’ve been shot at before, and the results are similar but different.”

I knew Rhoades’s background and was pretty sure he hadn’t been in the military. “Where?”

“Kyrgyzstan, hunting Argali sheep. We were in the Batken Oblast near the Kyrgyz-Tajik border where the land mines are like paving stones. The only way you can get the sheep is with a helicopter, but with all the political and ethnic violence, you’re constantly flying into one tribe’s or another’s airspace—so they shoot at you, and sometimes they get lucky and score a hit.” Omar started climbing, and we followed. “Really sucks getting shot down in a minefield.”

“I bet.”

“Saved my life one time with a bag of bite-size Snickers bars.” He paused, tipping his head down and letting the rain run off the brim as I had done numerous times in the last seventy-two hours. “We were able to land this piece of shit Hind and avoid the land mines and what happens? This patrol of Issyk-Kul partisans came marching up to us like the minefield doesn’t exist.” He shook his head. “I swear, there wasn’t a one of them with hair between their legs. They were gonna shoot us, but I happened to have that bag of candy and I swear that’s what saved our lives.” He laughed and moved ahead. “There was a guy at the Transit Center in Manas near the airport close to Bishkek who gave me the tip. Spooky fucker, but he said you could offer these teenage soldiers your Rolex and they’d look at you like you were an idiot, but pull out candy or soda and you had friends for life.”

I stepped back on the shelf a little, remembering the light in the shack’s window. “If we cut the power line, how come they still have electricity?”

Henry nodded and started after Omar. “From the quality of the illumination, I would say propane.”

I trudged in the mud after them. “From that distance in these conditions you could tell that?”

“Yes.”

Omar laughed and called over his shoulder. “Bullshit.”

Suddenly, there was an unmistakable blast of a 20-gauge, and shot ricocheted off of everything. I covered my face with an arm as Omar fell onto the ground next to me. “Well, bullshit.”

I asked the question you ask in like situations, which always sounds like bad dialogue in a B war movie: “Are you hit?”

He grimaced and clutched at his leg. “No, I was just tired and thought I’d lie down and take a nap.”

I sat him on the deer trail and examined the wounds, two small holes that appeared to have struck to the left of center on the femur and lodged in the thigh. “You’re lucky—eight inches higher and you’d be singing soprano.”

He gritted his teeth and spit out the words, “Well, it hurts like a bitch.”

I pulled a bandana from the inside pocket of my jacket underneath my slicker and carefully wrapped it around his leg, tight enough to stem some of the bleeding. I helped him up. “Can you walk?”

“I think so . . .” I released him, and he immediately fell. “I guess not.”

Sitting him upright, I looked at the hill, but from this vantage point I couldn’t see where the shack was or where the shooter might be. Henry had moved to the right and was studying the rim of the ridge above us. “See anything?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you want to go ahead and clear the way, and I’ll bring Omar up with me?”

Without answering, he slipped up the side of the hillside like a black ribbon.