Uncertain Justice

"And still you haven't found a trace of the man?" The voice was skeptical, vaguely derisive. Deputy Attorney General of the United States Carl Brady was one of the most senior officials in the government and he didn't hesitate to interrupt the marshal whenever he felt the urge. There were none here who could chastise him.

"Well, sir," returned Owens. "A team of over two hundred and fifty federal officers couldn't find Eric Rudolph back in the mid-nineties either. You'll recall he was the guy who blew up those abortion clinics and set off the bomb at the Olympic park in Atlanta back then. When he escaped into the Smokey Mountains, for all practical purposes, he disappeared. And the terrain out here is one hell of a lot worse than back there."

Owens was having difficulty hanging on to the ragged edges of his temper and it showed. The shouting match he and Brady had engaged in an hour ago was too recent and his nerves too raw to take very much more abuse. That his thirty-four year career was down the tubes was certain but he'd done nothing to justify the scorn and ridicule Brady had thrown at him.

"Rudolph would still be free as a bird if he hadn't come down into a little town in North Carolina and got caught by some rookie cop," he continued. The effort to control his voice was reflected in his flushed features.

"Underwood isn't about to get caught that way. You remember we thought at one time he had a relationship with a woman with a trucking business way north of here. But the best we can tell now, he's perfectly happy staying up here in the high mountains and it doesn't appear he's going to leave any time soon." He modified his tone a touch and waved an arm at the mountain vista visible through the open doorway of the headquarters tent.

"Sir, you can see for yourself what it's like out here. The forests are dense, even the grass grows shoulder high in some places, you need a bull dozer to get through some of the brush and a lot of the terrain is more vertical than it is level.

"Where there aren't mountains, there are hills and valleys, with canyons, gullies, and ravines everywhere in between. Some of them are dry as a bone at the bottom and some aren't. A lot of them are so filled with bushes and young trees you don't know they're there until you fall into them. There are frost heaves just made to stumble over and depressions to fall in you can't see for the ground cover.

"You can't take ten steps out here without having to climb over a fallen tree, detour around a thicket of heavy brush or make your way across some kind of gap or a creek. If you go above the timberline, you've got bare stretches of naked stone that are slippery as hell in the wet and rocks the size of small marbles all the way up to apartment building sized boulders falling down the slopes. Every time a bit of dust or a rockslide comes down, we have to go make sure it was natural and not Underwood.

"Between rocks and rivers ... fallen tree trunks and ... and those talus slopes, we've had four men break their ankles ... nine more have broken legs, ribs or worse and nobody's keeping track of lesser sprains, cuts, scrapes, and bruises."

Owens shook his head. It sounded much worse laid out for detailed examination. He was depressing himself. He blinked and shook himself to focus his attention back on the update he was giving the high-ranking official--his boss. He turned to face the man directly.

"Sir, the way it is ... Underwood could be behind a fold--no, that's not right--he could be behind any or maybe I should say every fold ... in the landscape or just on the other side of some bushes and he'd be so nearly invisible as makes no difference.

"Even the open meadows out here have deep grasses along with little rises and hollows in the ground where a man can conceal himself. We learned all these lessons hunting Rudolph years ago and we're learning them again trying to find Underwood."

He fell silent, still looking at the mountains framed by the tent poles. Implacable and unmoving, the immense slopes rising to the jagged peaks were strangely comforting. The rocky ridges had been there before there was a written history and would be there just as they were now until the sun quit shining.

"Yes ... well, no one's saying your people haven't been doing everything they can," Brady remarked. His voice was flat with no hint of approval. In truth, and very reluctantly, he had been impressed by the energy of the officers from the various federal, state, and local agencies.

But the decision had already been made in Washington to supersede the marshal in command. It wouldn't do to show the marshal any support, but it was equally impossible to bring the man to task as he would have liked to do. That would alienate the professional law enforcement officers gathered together to find the fugitive and Brady was far too smart a political creature to do that.

Then too, the gigantic mountains had strongly affected Brady as he flew in on the helicopter ride to get here. Once on the ground, he'd been awed even more by the massiveness of the mountains on every side. They were enough to humble the strongest man.

He was used to seeing buildings, streets and cars, and crowds of people. Nothing here was familiar. This was all strange and, if he'd let it, it would be humbling. He cleared his throat, bringing himself back to the problem at hand. He searched for something to say that would demonstrate his leadership.

"But, marshal," he said, speaking slowly. It was important to not embarrass himself in the company of all these people so much more experienced in the wilderness. "Isn't this bastard doing something very like what Rudolph did? I mean ... you said earlier he was getting into the supplies you've had flown out here, right?" Brady saw he had Owens's attention and knew he was on the right track. He continued more firmly. "Can't we trap him when he comes in the next time?"

"Well ... yes, sir, we can certainly try to," replied Owens. "In fact, we've had a team of officers on guard around the supply tents every night since we found out he was stealing from us." Mildly surprised Brady had identified a very real opportunity, Owens went on more carefully than before.

"The problem, sir, is that we don't know if Underwood will try it again ... and if he does ... when he'll do it. If he's smart, he won't come anywhere close to those tents again." The marshal frowned in sudden contemplation. "And everything we've got on this guy says he's damn smart ... except for one thing. He's not running any more. He's sticking around, trying to fight us. Told some of my officers he wasn't running from something he didn't do and warned us off."

Owens stopped speaking to look speculatively at Brady for a moment. Brady held a high position in the administration but the little man was clearly uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. Brady shook his head irritably, refusing to meet Owens' eyes.

"That's not our concern, Marshal," he retorted. "What we have to do is get this bastard ... and soon," he added. "I don't want to be screwing around out here any longer than I absolutely have to." He slapped the camp table and the terrain map almost slid off. A man cleared his throat in the back of the tent and took a step forward to make sure the two leaders noticed him.

"Yes?" Brady had noted the stocky man in forest BDUs when he'd come in but hadn't paid any more attention to him.

"Sir, I'm Lieutenant Ford, Colorado Army National Guard. Governor Parsons sent us up here to help out wherever we could. I've got part of a platoon with me ... twenty-odd soldiers, sir." He was silent for a moment as everyone attending the briefing absorbed the information. His eyes met those of Marshal Owens but the federal law enforcement officer didn't speak.

"Our battalion got back from Afghanistan six months ago, sir," remarked the lieutenant. "We saw some action up by the border with Pakistan, trying to keep infiltrators from getting in from the mountains there ... well, we got pretty good setting up ambushes." There was silence in the tent for a long moment. More than one of the police officers tensed, thinking the young Army lieutenant was about to criticize their handling of the daily patrols and checkpoints.

"What'd you have in mind," asked Owens mildly. He motioned the lieutenant closer. Brady's eyes narrowed but he said nothing. For the moment, he let Owens take the lead.

"Well, sir," Ford replied. "I thought that me and my boys might set up a trap for this guy ... somewhere around the supply tents. We don't know when he'll try to get more food but it's been, what ... four or five days since he took the last stuff?" Owens nodded.

"Seems to me he'll be needing more right about now," continued the Army officer, getting comfortable with his subject. "We can set up outside the perimeter of the camp ... back behind the tents ... and we'll be able to take him pretty easily, I think."

The young officer sounded confident. He certainly looked the part, Owens thought. The very picture of a professional soldier ... but then, so was Underwood. Owens cleared his throat and looked away from the lieutenant.

"That sounds like a plan to me," exclaimed the Deputy Attorney General. "You set that up, okay? Work with Marshal Owens...." His voice trailed off, his interest turning to his empty stomach. It had been a long time since lunch and he really wanted this meeting to be over with as soon as possible. He turned to Owens.

"Okay, Marshal?" he asked. Owens nodded without speaking. His jaws had snapped shut when Brady interrupted and they were clamped too tightly now to talk.

He'd been about to point out indifferently trained Taliban irregulars were a far cry from the trained infantryman and woodsman they were chasing, but it was a moot point now. The decision had been made. He turned and walked away before he said something he'd regret.

That started a general exodus from the tent, most of them moving with Brady toward the food tent. They had no desire to be seen associating with Marshal Owens. His star was declining quickly.

§

Hauling the big Barrett sniper rifle through the woods, valleys, and hills from his campsite below the southwestern corner of the mesa took most of the afternoon. He'd had to avoid a fair number of searchers briskly marching up and down most of the trails.

They were a lot more active today, for some reason, but they were still too loud. Their radios blared, equipment rattled, and voices echoed through the forest. They weren't that difficult to avoid, but it made for slow and careful movement. The patrols stayed with their normal pattern though. When the day progressed into the late afternoon, all the patrols turned around and headed back to camp.

Just before dusk, Miles found a hiding place near the encampment on the western face of a low hill where a windstorm had flattened four or five acres of mixed pines and aspens. The trees had been blown about randomly, branches and tree trunks intertwining in complex patterns. The tangled mass was hard to get through and impossible to do so quietly. No one could come up on him unexpectedly.

Deep inside a hollow made when the roots of a huge tree had been ripped out of the ground, and huddled under underneath several interlaced layers of tree branches, Miles cleaned the rifle as best he could while he waited for the night.

He had determined he was only going to use the ammunition in three of the clips--twenty-six rounds in all. It would leave him one full magazine of ten rounds consisting of mixed armor piercing and incendiary cartridges.

After nightfall, he made his way out of the massive blowdown and carried the heavy weapon to a rise south and a tad east of the camp. The distinguishing characteristic of the low hill was a group of tall cottonwoods with thick trunks and plenty of branches.

Miles selected a tree with limbs arranged closely enough to make it an easy climb. He didn't like climbing trees and seldom did--he wasn't very good at it either. Any climb he made of his own free will needed to be easy ... and this one was.

Pressing close to the three-foot trunk to merge his silhouette with the tree, he rested and enjoyed the night sky for another hour while he waited for the moon to rise. There was no sign of anyone moving around outside the camp though there was a slightly increased noise level to the north that indicated something might be happening up there. The sounds died slowly but he noted the direction, marking it as one in which he wasn't going to go tonight.

He rested the barrel of the powerful rifle on a sturdy branch and wrapped a length of climbing rope around the trunk and his waist. Cal had brought the line with him and passed it on to Miles as a replacement for the one Miles had lost.

Miles' was probably still in a crack in the rocks, somewhere east of the valley of the People where Miles had put it after having been shot by the strange gunman. Practically speaking, he mused, it might as well have been on the far side of the moon. There wasn't the slightest chance of finding it.

Shaking himself to bring himself back to the task at hand, Miles eased his body around the tree trunk until he found a good view of the tents in the encampment to the north. He checked ... there were enough gaps between the smaller branches and leaves through which he could fire.

He loosened the rope securing himself to the tree a little. He'd been too enthusiastic about tying himself to the trunk and it was uncomfortable now. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of something moving off to his left and he froze. Moving slowly, he swiveled his head around until he could make out the object plainly. He relaxed. It was a small group of people moving from the helicopter hardstand down a path and bound for the main camp.

There was a light still burning beside the last chopper to land. He looked through the twelve-power riflescope to see two men horsing a nozzle into the aircraft's refueling valve. The refueling hose was deployed from a central distribution point fed, in turn, by a six-inch pipe from the small "farm" of rubberized fuel bladders further uphill. Four floodlights set on poles about fifteen feet tall lit the pumping station. They weren't especially strong lights, Miles noted idly.

Abruptly, he began to rethink his plan for tonight. Untying himself, he climbed three branches higher to get a better view. He settled himself again, wrapping the rope loosely around himself and the tree trunk once more and tied it off with a slipknot. He peered around the trunk and nodded in satisfaction. From here he had an even better view of the camp. Setting his feet carefully on a limb he found by touch rather than sight, he moved around the circumference of the tree to find he had an acceptable line of sight all the way up the hill to the fuel bladders.

He judged the camp to be a little under six hundred yards off and the supply of aviation fuel seven hundred and fifty, give or take. Crabbing his way behind the bulk of the tree trunk where he couldn't be seen, he held the rifle where the moonlight would shine on it and dialed in a little more elevation and a bit more windage on the sights. The .50 caliber rounds were too heavy for the light breeze to deflect very much, but he had the time to spend on niceties. It was attention to details that made for good marksmanship.

Finished, he placed his feet and stretched his upper body forward along a length of a tree limb running out from the trunk vaguely toward the main camp. He studied the target carefully through the scope while he thought.

His initial plan had been only to destroy the water supply for the camp. However, with the fuel storage dump so clearly vulnerable, there was much more he could accomplish tonight with only a little added effort. If he found he had time to fire at the fuel dump, he would. It was settled.

He could see the water tank on its trailer bed clearly in the lights around the central area of the encampment. He settled himself into a comfortable firing position, tucking the butt of the long weapon into his shoulder and fitting his cheek to the stock. He aimed at the tank and did a series of dry fires, squeezing the trigger until the firing pin snapped uselessly in the chamber. He relaxed, wedged the rifle into a fork between two branches, and leaned back against the ropes for a short rest.

Water slows slugs fired into it--slows them down quickly. For that reason, the first six rounds in the magazine were armor piercing. Miles was counting on them to punch big holes in the bottom of the water tank. The incendiaries at the bottom of the clips were for the other targets.

He touched the grizzly bear claws on the thong around his neck and cupped the turquoise talisman between them in his palm for a moment. Warriors from the Wolf Clan called encouragement from the ground around the base of the tall tree. A few deep breaths and Miles got back into a shooting position.

Finding the target was easy with the twelve-power scope. Deciding where to place his shots was not. Miles settled on firing into the lower quarter of the tank to minimize the amount of water the bullet would have to travel through. The angle he'd set up by climbing high into the tree, along with the altitude of the knoll itself, should be enough to blow out the bottom of the tank on the back side. He hoped so.

He tested the rope to make sure it was holding. The recoil of the big sniper rifle was partially smothered by a dual chamber muzzle brake but it would still punch back at his shoulder with the force of a twelve-gauge shotgun loaded with double aught buck magnum shells. He checked twice, making sure the slipknot was secure. He licked dry lips, wishing he'd thought to bring his canteen up with him.

Closing his eyes tightly, he focused his thoughts on what he was going to do. He took three deep breaths, saturating his lungs with oxygen and shrugged his shoulders to relieve the tension.

Bending over the rifle and putting his cheek tight against the stock, Miles made sure the front-right corner of the water tank was steady in his sights. He pulled in another breath and let half of it out. Taking up the slack in the trigger, he squeezed gently until the rifle bellowed and the butt slammed into his shoulder. He wasn't knocked off balance, but he wasn't tempted to make himself more comfortable by untying the rope securing him to the tree either.

The heavy .50 caliber slug flying downrange was designed to penetrate the light armor of military reconnaissance vehicles and soft-skinned transports. It had no problem penetrating the thin aluminum side of the tank a third of a mile away and exiting out the other side a split second later.

The half-inch diameter entrance hole in the top corner was magnified ten-fold when the bullet exited through the bottom. Unnoticed in the night, several thousand gallons of fresh water began to drain into the thirsty mountain soil.

Spacing his shots down the length of the trailer-mounted tank, three more rounds created waterfalls spilling onto the thirsty mountain soil. Miles shifted to the pumping mechanism for the shower tent's water feed. Another armor-piercing missile was shortly screaming toward the camp from his perch high in the tree.

Oil gleamed in the moonlight as it gushed out of the shattered housing. Pieces of motor began to fly in all directions as the pump tore itself to pieces. Oil and water began to pool beneath the engine.

Miles fired the final AP round at the big radio antenna projecting from the roof of the little tent. The shaft of the antenna splintered, the tall stump was knocked six inches to the side before it began to fall vertically and stabbed through the canvas shell of the tent. The top of the antenna was now ten feet lower than it had been and leaned drunkenly off to the east.