Текст книги "The Naked Edge"
Автор книги: David Morrell
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"Faster!" Cavanaugh yelled, ignoring something hot that fell on his left arm.
Any moment, he expected a bullet to knock him flat. But more chunks of metal and burning wood kept falling, and he kept charging, and at once, yet another explosion shook the canyon, its shockwave so powerful that it threw Cavanaugh and William onto their chests.
" Jamie? " Cavanaugh's ears rang. " Mrs. Patterson? "
"We're okay! What was that ?"
"I think it was the helicopter!"
Cavanaugh tugged William to his feet and pushed him, urging him to run. Cavanaugh's body armor made him feel suffocated. Another hot object struck him, this time on his neck, but all he cared about was the forest looming before him as he and William burst through undergrowth into the trees. He yanked William down with him and waited tensely for Jamie and Mrs. Patterson to crash through bushes and dive behind trees, landing next to him.
Only then did bullets from the opposite side of the canyon wallop into the woods. Too late , Cavanaugh thought in triumph.
The shots faltered, ending.
"They know the explosions can probably be heard all the way to Jackson," Cavanaugh said. "The smoke's above the canyon now. Police and emergency crews will be coming. The shooters need to get out of here."
He let thirty seconds elapse and decided it was safe to peer between trees. What he saw made him inhale sharply. The exploding propane tank had indeed caused the helicopter to explode. The combined force had flattened the lodge. Burning timbers were everywhere, igniting the grass.
Chapter 25.
"You prick!" the spotter yelled. "You swore you could do this!"
"How was I to know the target would–"
With a look of contempt, the spotter drew a handgun and shot his companion four times in the face. Then he took out his knife and cut off the sniper's fingertips.
"That's what I know," he said.
The act wasn't impulsive. It wasn't motivated by anger. The truth was, he'd been ready to kill the man, whether the attack was successful or not. The sniper had exemplary professional habits before an assignment, first-rate preparation, but afterward, he drank and talked too much. His usefulness had come to an end. In fact, the execution was the only thing about this assignment that felt good.
" Abort ," he shouted into his walkie-talkie. " Abort. Abort. Abort. "
*
PART TWO:
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO FAIRBAIRN
Chapter 1.
"Those last four shots are too low-pitched to be from a rifle," Jamie said, puzzled.
Cavanaugh nodded. "Sounds like they came from the ridge where the sniper was. But we're too far away for anybody to expect to hit us with a pistol from there. It doesn't make sense."
Jamie studied their surroundings. "We need better cover."
"Right. For all we know, there's still at least one shooter on this side of the canyon. Keep down," he told William and Mrs. Patterson. "Move back."
Deeper into the woods, they found a depression circled by trees and squirmed into it.
"Mrs. Patterson, face this way," Jamie said, watching the elderly woman take her small Ladysmith revolver from her apron. "Aim toward the trees."
"William, you face this way." Cavanaugh unholstered his pistol and gave it to the attorney. "Keep it pointed away from us. Don't pull the trigger unless I tell you."
Cavanaugh and Jamie sank low, every quadrant occupied.
"When I get out of this–" Emotion made William's voice thick. "–I'm going to take shooting lessons. Karate lessons. Every damned lesson I can find. I won't feel helpless like this again."
"I'll be glad to teach you," Cavanaugh said, trying to distract William from his fear. "Especially about Fairbairn."
"Fairbairn? Who's he ?"
"But here's your first lesson. Stop talking. We need to be quiet so we can listen if someone's sneaking up on us."
"Oh." William's face turned red with embarrassment. "Yes."
They waited and watched the forest. Cavanaugh's need to protect helped distract him from his rage. He wanted to get his hands on whoever had ordered the attack, to slam that person's head against a rock until bone cracked and–
No. Fantasies about revenge were a liability. Anger got in the way of clear thinking.
Concentrate on keeping everybody alive.
A minute passed. Cavanaugh's ears continued to ring because of the explosions and the shots he'd fired. He worked to filter out that sound, to listen beyond it, trying to detect any noise in the forest.
Ten minutes. Fifteen.
Sweat oozed from under his body armor. His back hurt from the force of the bullet that the armor had stopped. As he aimed toward the trees, his heart thumped against the ground.
There! A branch snapped deep in the trees. Cavanaugh steadied his rifle in that direction. Another branch snapped, and now Cavanaugh's finger slid onto the trigger.
He relaxed as an elk poked its head from the underbrush, its antlers blending with the dead branches of a tree behind it.
Maybe this is going to be all right , he thought. The elk wouldn't be wandering in this direction if somebody with a rifle is out there, creeping toward us.
Then another elk appeared, and Cavanaugh became more hopeful.
At once, the animals bolted, their hind legs kicking as they crashed through the forest. Somebody is out there. Cavanaugh again touched the trigger. But then he realized what had spooked the elk. Not somebody creeping among the trees.
A noise. Far away but getting louder. A high-pitched cluster of sirens. The police and the emergency crews were finally coming.
Cavanaugh studied the forest one more time and murmured to the group, "I think we're going to make it."
"Whatever pressure you put on me, I can take," William said.
"What?"
"I went to Harvard law school. Nothing's more brutal than that. I'm holding you to your promise to teach me. And while you're at it, who the hell is Fairbairn?"
"When this is over, I'll tell you." Taking refuge in his protector's role, Cavanaugh distracted William from present fears by projecting him into the future.
Chapter 2.
They stayed within the forest, moving southward along the edge of the smoldering meadow.
"You think the sniper might still be on that ridge?" William kept glancing in that direction.
"He might have risked staying, in case we get careless when help arrives. It's better if we don't step into the open."
When the sirens stopped, Cavanaugh turned toward the silence. Through a gap in the trees, he saw scattered, burning timbers: all that remained of the lodge. To subdue another burst of fury, he focused on movement within the smoke, relieved to see that five of his horses had survived. They gathered nervously near the one that had been killed. Sickened, he shifted his gaze toward the countless bullet holes in his car, its windows starred, some of them shattered. Thinking of Angelo's body inside it, he felt his fury intensify.
Immediately, the horses bolted as a highway patrol car, dark chassis, white roof, flashers on, emerged from the lane. Even at a distance, Cavanaugh detected the shock on the face of the uniformed driver when he saw the damage.
Then a forest-service fire truck emerged, and its occupants looked stunned, also.
They managed to move the van that was blocking the lane , Cavanaugh thought. A further idea struck him: Or maybe some of the gunmen drove it away.
With Jamie watching the trees behind them, he led William and Mrs. Patterson around the southern curve of the forest and only then stepped into the lane, the trees still shielding them from a sniper.
At almost the same time, a highway patrol car came around a curve, the driver slamming on his breaks at the sight of them.
"Set down your weapons," Jamie warned William and Mrs. Patterson as she and Cavanaugh put down their own.
"Let him see your hands are empty," Cavanaugh emphasized.
The state trooper, a captain, had his fingers on his holstered pistol as he got out of the car, but then he gave Cavanaugh a closer look. "Aaron?"
Cavanaugh had used his legal name when he'd bought his property. If an enemy who knew him only as Cavanaugh had hoped to track him down by searching through land records, the effort would have been useless.
"Nice to see you, Garth."
The trooper looked surprised. "My God, with all that soot and dirt on you, I didn't recognize you."
"We had a little trouble."
"So I hear. On the radio, the first officer to get here told me your place looks like a war zone."
Garth had a solid build from weight lifting. He was tall, with strong cheekbones and a dark mustache. He spent so much time outdoors that his face had the grain of weathered wood, his tan emphasized by the green of his uniform and trooper's hat. Like any expert police officer, his eyes were constantly alert, even off duty when he, Cavanaugh, and Jamie sometimes ate dinner together in Jackson.
Those eyes were very alert now. "Jamie, is that blood on your shoulder?"
"Yes, but it isn't mine."
Cavanaugh thought angrily of the blood spatters inside the Taurus after Angelo was shot.
"Lillian . . ." Garth frowned at Mrs. Patterson. "You're wavering. Come over to the car and sit down."
With an unsteady hand, she pushed gray hair from her face. Dirt streaked her apron. "Thanks, Garth. It's been a long afternoon."
"You'll find four dead men in the western edge of the meadow," Cavanaugh said.
"Dead? How?"
"Shot."
"Who pulled the trigger?"
At this point, Cavanaugh would normally have requested a lawyer to make sure that he didn't say something that became misinterpreted. But he had one of the best attorneys in the country standing next to him.
" I did," Cavanaugh said. "You'll find a fifth body in my car, or what's left of my car. One of the other guys pulled that trigger."
Chapter 3.
Mrs. Patterson's late husband, Ben, had been a Wyoming state trooper who died in a shootout with a gang trying to hijack a truck filled with pharmaceuticals. Known as Lillian to every officer assigned to Teton County, she was interviewed first, then escorted back to the waiting room at the highway-patrol barracks ten miles south of Jackson.
"I phoned your son-in-law to let him know you can leave now," Garth said. "He'll soon be here to drive you to your daughter's place. Your family's eager to see you."
"I'll wait with you in the front hallway," Jamie told her.
William was the next person taken to the interview room. Twenty minutes later, he came back, the satisfied look on his face indicating that, while he might not know anything about guns, he knew how to conduct himself with law officers. Now that he was in lawyer mode again, his torn, filthy suit somehow looked dignified.
Jamie went next. Cavanaugh had taught her to answer police questions directly but never to provide more than what was asked and never to attempt to deceive.
Then it was Cavanaugh's turn. The room had harsh lights, plain walls, two chairs, and a small desk. Focusing on minutiae helped keep his emotions in check.
"Want some coffee?" Garth pointed toward a carafe and some Styrofoam cups on the desk. A tape recorder was there, also.
"I could use the caffeine," Cavanaugh said, pouring a cup. His watch showed that it was half past ten. But now that his adrenaline had dissipated, he felt as if it were four in the morning.
"Ready?" Garth asked.
"When you are." The stench of smoke radiated from Cavanaugh's jeans and shirt. His neck and arm hurt. His back felt bruised where the bullet had struck his armor. But at least his legs and chest felt lighter, relieved of the heavy vest.
Garth pressed buttons on the recorder. "This is Captain Garth Braddock. The interview is with Aaron Stoddard." He gave the place, time, and date. "Tell me what happened."
While waiting, Cavanaugh had taken the opportunity to get his narrative in order. Only after concluding his description, did he allow his emotions to show. "I haven't the faintest fucking idea what's going on."
"We found your sniper."
Cavanaugh leaned forward. "Is he answering questions?"
"It's a hard to get answers from a corpse. Somebody shot him four times in the face."
Cavanaugh took a moment to adjust to that, finally saying, "That explains the four pistol shots we heard."
"Fragmentation-type ammunition. Mutilated his features enough that even people who knew him would have trouble identifying him. His teeth were so damaged that comparing them to dental records will be useless. The question is, who did that to him?"
Cavanaugh thought about it. "The only available candidate is someone on the assault team. But that doesn't make sense. Did he have ID?"
"No."
"Did you send his fingerprints to the FBI?"
"Couldn't. The tips of his fingers were cut off."
Cavanaugh took a longer time to adjust to that.
"The four men you killed," Garth said.
"Was forced to kill."
" Their fingerprints got a really quick response. Those men were fresh out of prison. Within the past six weeks."
"Six weeks?"
"I can't imagine how they came to be together. They served time in four different penitentiaries. Pennsylvania. Alabama. Colorado. Oregon." Garth slid a sheet of paper across the table. "Recognize any of these names?"
Cavanaugh studied them, hoping, but finally had to say, "No." He grasped at a thought. "Four different prisons? They must have known each other before they went to those prisons."
"Not according to their criminal records. There's no indication they ever crossed paths before. But they did have one thing in common. Armed robbery. Gang shootings. Rape. These were really violent guys."
"Before everything started, I think I saw them and the rest of their friends at the Moose Junction gas station." Cavanaugh said. "They didn't handle themselves like street criminals. They weren't wired and jittery and unfocused. These guys had stillness and control. They looked like operators."
"But their records indicate they were street criminals. So how, all of a sudden, did they get to be . . . 'Operators' you called them? Unusual word. I don't often hear it. That car of yours. When I got a close look at what was left of it, I found bullet-resistant windows, armor plating, tires within tires . . . Tell me again what you used to do for a living."
"I was in the security business."
"The bodyguards I see around here–"
Cavanaugh hated the word.
"–are usually hired by entertainers and sports stars on vacation. Mostly for show in a quiet community like this. To remind us how important they are. But you never fit the profile of the thugs some of those celebrities use for bodyguards."
"I'm an unassuming guy."
"Obviously, you don't like being called a 'bodyguard'."
No answer.
"Are you holding back anything I need to know?"
Cavanaugh hesitated. "Yes. I was what's called a protector. I worked for an international security firm called Global Protective Services. I used the professional alias of 'Cavanaugh'."
"Professional alias?"
"I saved the lives of people who show up on CNN and the front pages of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal . These are the kind of people who need the reassurance of knowing they can absolutely trust me with sensitive information, that nobody'll come around later and persuade me to answer questions about them."
"You mean like the police asking questions?"
"My former clients will stonewall you."
"It's been tried."
"And they'll never trust me again."
"Again? I got the impression you'd retired."
"My retirement just ended."
"Is that another way of saying you intend to run your own investigation?"
"If a former client decided that he or she can't let me live with certain information, I have ways to find out."
"You're not a law enforcement officer. Keep that in mind."
"I will."
"I'm serious. I wouldn't want to see you in front of two grand juries. 'Cavanaugh.'" Garth tested the sound of the name.
"The idea was to keep my private life and my professional life separate."
"Looks like it didn't work."
Chapter 4.
A state trooper came over when Garth escorted Cavanaugh from the interview room.
"Did you find any of them?" Garth asked.
The trooper looked at Garth, as if to suggest that they speak in private.
"It's okay. You can talk in front of him."
In the background, Jamie and William listened to the trooper's reply.
"No sign of the shooters."
"They were dressed as campers," Cavanaugh said.
"Which makes them fairly invisible around here," Garth pointed out. "Even so, how do you suppose they got out of the area near your property so fast?"
"When you drove me from the ranch, I noticed that the van that had blocked the lane was gone. Did any of your team move it?"
The trooper shook his head no .
"Some of the shooters probably drove it away. The tires were low from weight in the back, but even so, they could have driven it. As for the rest, I'm guessing a couple of cars picked them up as they emerged from the trees. Using two-way radios, they could have easily coordinated it so they didn't show themselves if there were police cars or emergency vehicles in sight. Plus, you didn't know what you were dealing with and didn't start searching until thirty minutes after the explosion. Plenty of time to get away. They could have been in Jackson by then."
Another trooper entered the room. "A lot of reporters and a TV crew in the parking lot."
"Swell," Garth said.
"We can't assume they're all legitimate," Cavanaugh warned. "That hit team isn't going to fade away. They'll watch the building. They'll try to follow us when we leave."
"Spend the night here."
"There's nothing I'd rather do. But in the morning, we'll still have the same problem. Not to mention, they'll be organized by then. No, the best time to leave is when they least expect it. As soon as possible."
"How? And where will you go? What will you use for transportation?"
"I already made the arrangements," Jamie said.
Chapter 5.
In the harshly illuminated parking lot, dozens of reporters straightened as the barracks door opened. The lights from within silhouetted Garth, who stepped from the building and walked toward them. The weather had shifted, cold enough to bring frost from his mouth. Garth had no idea how the media had gotten word of the attack so quickly. If one of his officers was responsible, he swore to find out who it was and give him the worst duties imaginable. Since Jackson didn't have a TV station or a large newspaper, most of the men and women converging on him must have come from Idaho Falls (a drive-able 180 miles away) or from Casper, Laramie, and Cheyenne (much farther away–to get here this soon, the reporters would have needed to charter planes). Then it occurred to Garth that the person who alerted the media might have been somebody on the hit team. Get as many reporters and TV cameras here as possible. In the ensuing chaos, the gunmen could blend. Any of the supposed news people shouting questions at him could be a killer.
"Is it true that six men were shot–"
"Ranch thirty miles north of–"
"Explosion destroyed–"
"Sniper–"
"Helicopter–"
"Okay, all right." Garth gestured for quiet. "If all of you talk at once, I can't hear your questions." The television lights glared at him, hurting his eyes. "I have a brief statement. At four-thirty this afternoon–"
Suddenly, the front door to the barracks banged open. As Garth turned, he saw a trooper hurrying toward him, a concerned look on his face.
"What's the matter?" Garth asked.
Cameras flashed as the trooper motioned Garth away from the reporters and spoke in urgent hushed tones.
Garth spun toward the reporters. "This'll have to wait. There's been a–"
"Captain!" a trooper yelled from the front door.
A siren wailed in the fenced-off parking area behind the barracks. Roof lights flashing, a highway patrol car rounded the building and skirted the reporters. An officer was silhouetted in the front seat as the car reached the main road and sped north toward Jackson, disappearing around a curve in this sparsely populated section of the valley. Moments later, a second patrol car followed, lights flashing, siren wailing.
Some of the reporters raced for their cars.
Or possibly they aren't reporters , Garth thought.
Others stayed, demanding to know what was going on.
"Tell us what happened this afternoon!"
"Are these incidents connected?"
Headlights blazing, a state police van hurried past, reached the road, and followed the three civilian cars that chased the cruisers.
Chapter 6.
Opening and closing his knife, the man who'd shot the sniper watched from a road on a bluff across from the police barracks. He was forty years old, tall and lean, with an etched face. His powerful forearms resulted from years of pounding a hammer onto an anvil, forging blades. He used various names. Currently, his devotion to knives had prompted him to choose the alias of Bowie. Sitting in his car, he used a night-vision magnifier that wasn't affected by the stark contrasts of light and darkness in the parking lot a quarter mile from him. While he listened to the sirens, he studied the sequence of vehicles speeding away: the first cruiser, the second cruiser, the three civilian cars, then the police van.
Damned smart , Bowie thought.
He spoke into a two-way radio. "It's a shell game. The target's in one of the police vehicles. The question is which."
A voice from one of the pursuing civilian cars said, "I vote for the van."
"Or maybe the target's still in the barracks," Bowie replied. "Maybe those police vehicles are decoys. We don't have enough personnel to follow everybody."
"Wait!" the voice blurted. "Ahead of us. One of the police cars is pulling to the side of the road."
"For God's sake, don't stop," Bowie ordered.
"But we need to act like real reporters. Real reporters would stop."
"That's what they want you to do. You'd be caught between the cruiser that stopped and the van behind you. Meanwhile, the first cruiser would get away. That must be where the target's hiding."
"Okay," the voice said five seconds later, "I didn't stop. In my rearview mirror, I see the other cars–the reporters who left with us– they're stopping. Shit. The cruiser ahead of us. It's stopping!"
"Drive past it!"
"It's turning sideways! It's blocking the road!"
Chapter 7.
Cavanaugh crouched out of sight in the police car's back seat. Feeling the state trooper expertly skid the cruiser sideways to block the road, Cavanaugh braced himself and reminded the driver, "Leave room for them to drive around!"
There was always the chance that actual reporters were in the pursuing car. On a hunch, the reporters might have decided to ignore the patrol car that stopped and to follow the one in the lead. If so, with the road blocked, the driver of the pursuing car would now stop and demand to know what was going on. But members of the assault team would want to get away.
Hurrying from the cruiser, Cavanaugh and the policeman took cover behind the engine, the only place in an unarmored vehicle that would stop a bullet. The pursuing car took advantage of the space the patrolman had left and veered toward the shoulder, passing the cruiser's back fender, throwing up dust. As it sped farther down the road, Cavanaugh aimed a powerful flashlight, centering the beam on the license plate.
"Got it!" He shouted the numbers and letters to the trooper who repeated them into a radio microphone attached to his collar.
The second cruiser arrived, and Jamie hurried from her hiding place in the back seat. Meanwhile, Cavanaugh's driver chased the escaping car, his siren wailing.
A moment later, the van arrived. William got out.
"It worked," Jamie told Cavanaugh.
"Not just yet." As the other cruiser joined the chase, Cavanaugh walked along the road, in the direction from which he'd come. The trooper who'd driven the van followed him, accompanied by Jamie and William. Cavanaugh turned left toward a dark lane that led into a gravel pit. He aimed the flashlight and saw a shadowy pickup truck parked between mounds of earth. In case there'd been a gunfight, the occupants would have been out of the line of fire. Even so, they'd obeyed instructions and taken cover behind the truck's engine.
"Mrs. Patterson? Kyle?" As Cavanaugh shone the light, keeping it away from eye level, he saw two people rise from behind the truck.
"More excitement," Mrs. Patterson said. "I don't know how my husband ever put up with it." But something in her voice suggested that some aspects of the excitement were enjoyable, that she now understood why her husband had liked being a police officer.
The man next to her–stout, bearded, with wooly hair–was Mrs. Patterson's son-in-law, one of the best horse trainers in the valley. "Good directions, Jamie."
"Thanks." When Kyle had picked up Mrs. Patterson at the barracks, Jamie had explained what needed to be done. "You won't be safe with your family," she'd told Mrs. Patterson. "The people who attacked us know you matter to us. They might try to grab you and use you against us. Plus, your family won't be safe if somebody on the assault team follows you to them."
"Jamie told you I need a favor?" Cavanaugh asked Kyle.
"The loan of my truck. Sure. Anything to keep Lillian safe."
"Count on it," Cavanaugh said. "This officer will make sure no one's following his police van when he drives you home."
Kyle gave Cavanaugh the keys to the truck. "Where are you taking Lillian?"
"Can't tell you in case a couple of guys with guns come around and ask you."
"Anybody who tries'll be dodging slugs from a deer rifle. No matter what, I wouldn't tell," Kyle emphasized.
Cavanaugh thought, But what if they put a gun to your daughter's face?
In the distance, the pursuing sirens echoed.
Chapter 8.
"The cops must have radioed ahead!" the voice blurted from the two-way radio. Sirens shrieked in the background. "We're in Jackson! They've got two police cars parked sideways, blocking the street! The other police cars are still chasing us!"
Saddened, the man who called himself Bowie shook his head. He had spent the past month with the team he spoke to. He had shared meals with them, slept in the same room, and gotten to know all the pathetic, painful outrages that had been done to them throughout their lives. Social conservatives would argue that those outrages were nothing more than excuses these men used to justify their outrageous acts. There was truth to that viewpoint, Bowie thought. No matter how damaged people were, they needed to accept responsibility for their actions. They needed to exert control over themselves. Without discipline, chaos reigned. He had learned that lesson with great difficulty.
"I'm going to do a one-eighty!" the voice yelled.
Leaning closer to the radio receiver, Bowie heard tires squealing.
"They're blocking us that way, too!" the voice yelled.
Yes, chaos needs to be eliminated , Bowie thought.
Melancholy, he reached for a transmitter next to him. He pressed its "on" button and saw a red light appear. When he pressed another button, a green light appeared.
In the distance, a sound like thunder rumbled through the night.
Chapter 9.
Speeding toward the car, the state trooper stared beyond it toward the flashing lights of the Jackson police cars that blocked a main street through the small town. Almost got them , he thought. One thing they're not is reporters .
Suddenly, the quarry ahead executed a 180-degree turn. With equal abruptness, the trooper pressed his brake pedal enough to give him traction but not lock the brakes. He swerved so that his patrol car blocked the left side of the almost deserted street. The cruiser following him performed an equivalent maneuver, blocking the right side of the street.
He scrambled outside, drew his Glock .40, and took a position behind the engine area, aiming toward the vehicle that sped toward him. His fellow officer did the same. If the car tried to ram them, they would flee toward the protection of the storefronts on each side. If the car stopped and its occupants decided to try shooting their way to freedom, the troopers would teach them the error of their ways.
The car sped closer, veering to the right, hoping to slip between the cruiser and the sidewalk.
It exploded, the shockwave hurling the trooper backward, slamming him onto the street. The flash seared his vision. The ringing in his head was agony. As his mind spun, he felt pressure in his chest, air being sucked from his lungs.
Wet. Why does my face feel wet? He pawed his cheeks. Blood. My God, I'm bleeding.
Chunks of metal crashed around him. Something soft and wet fell on him. Beyond the ringing in his ears, he heard the other trooper screaming. Then he realized, he was the one who was screaming.
Chapter 10.
As the pickup truck worked its way up a slope, Cavanaugh heard the blast from the direction of town. Using only parking lights so that the truck would be difficult to follow, Jamie drove, Mrs. Patterson and William sitting next to her. With no more space in the cabin, Cavanaugh sat in the truck's uncovered back.
He felt the explosion as much as he heard it. In the murky distance, a fireball illuminated the night, showing him that the explosion came from the direction of town.
The truck's back window slid open. "My God, what caused that ?" Jamie asked through the opening.
Cavanaugh was reminded of what Garth had said when he'd arrived at the ruin of Cavanaugh's home– looks like a war zone . "This is beginning to feel like Bosnia did."
He sensed Jamie thinking as the truck jounced along a deep rut. "You never told me you were there."
"It's not something anybody who was there wants to remember. One thing you could count on–just when things got quiet, somebody'd start shooting again or blow something up."
