Uncertain Justice

Two thousand miles away, Brady looked at a copy of one of the aerial surveillance photographs he did have in front of him showing the shallow cave and the house where Underwood was hiding. Reining in his impatience, he examined the view of the cliff and small stretch of river visible in the picture.

"Can't you get people up there and have them ... uh, drop down until they're just above the house?" he inquired. "He can't shoot at them then, can he?" The Marshal held the phone away from his ear and looked at it incredulously for a long moment. He couldn't see Brady pointing to a spot on the photo but the reference by the politician was clear.

"Sir, that cliff is so nearly absolutely vertical as makes no difference," he continued. "It's a good four or five hundred feet straight up to the rim. They don't make ropes long enough for our guys to rappel down that face and even if they could, anyone who did would still be stuck like a fly on a wall if he decided to come out shooting.

"There's nowhere for them to come down except right in plain view of the house and I don't think Underwood's about to let that happen without doing something."

Brady's pale features flushed at the faint derisive note in Owens's voice. "What about a helicopter? Couldn't they get in close and...?" He couldn't see the Marshal but in the lengthy silence, Brady could sense Owens shaking his head at the suggestion. He flushed in the dimness of his office though no one was there to hear the exchange.

"Mr. Brady, a chopper operating that close to a sheer wall of rock is going to be buffeted its own backwash in addition to every puff of wind that comes up the valley. The Air Force chopper tried to stay close to the cliff when they were coming in and he had one hell of a time. He nearly lost it more than once and had to move away ... across the river to get some clean air."

Owens stopped and considered what he knew about the former Texas district attorney. It had occurred to him Brady had seen too many movies. You could do almost anything in the movies ... and the good guys never took any bullets in the stomach.

"Okay. I want regular reports, Owens," Brady ordered. "Let me know the minute something happens. Push him, Owens. Push him hard. I want him cracked wide open and I want him in custody one way or the other, sooner instead of later. Do you hear me, Marshal?"

There was another silence at the other end of the line.

Frustrated, Brady swung his padded chair around to look into the DC night. His right hand drifted down to touch the M-16 leaning against the wall. He'd checked it out of the FBI's Quantico training armory and had it with him almost constantly these days. It was a great comfort to a man. Brady felt his jaw clinching and had to consciously relax the tight muscles before he could speak again.

"Are you still there, Marshal," he asked, more or less calmly.

"Yes sir, I am. Goodbye." Owens replied.

He punched the off button viciously and tossed the phone to an aide. He turned and walked away to see what he could do about generating a little pressure on the fugitive holed up across the way.

§

He couldn't stay where he was. Miles didn't need anyone to tell him that. He had enough smoked meat and jerky in the smokehouse out back to last for weeks and there was an inexhaustible supply of water from the cold spring that emptied into the tank inside the stone house. All that was good, but neither mattered much simply because a siege, whether long or short, would be fatal for him in the end.

No, his best chance ... his only chance ... was to find a way to get out the cavern as soon as possible and get into the woods where he would have the advantage. He shifted his position several times around the front window, bending low beneath the sill to come up on either side of the window frame to look in different directions outside.

Right in front of the stone house, there was a near vertical drop of fifteen feet or so down to the gentler rocky slope that led down to the river. The drop was only a couple of feet if you stepped off the cavern's rim near the center of the cavern and it was there that Miles usually came up. He couldn't go that way tonight. It would take too much time to get to the cavern's center, way too much time to go down the slope to the water's edge and he would be exposed the whole time.

The problem as he saw it was to first find a way to get out of the house quickly and down to some cover beside the stream. From there ... he could try to go south beside the stream, but there seemed to be a lot of foot traffic on the other side going and coming from that direction.

On the other hand--after some initial patrols he'd seen pushing off to the north--there had been no activity up that way. That suggested he had an opportunity to slip through the thick screen of trees and underbrush between the point of the cliff just north of the cavern and the river.

He would gain a little separation from the posse across the river and he should be able to move rapidly north along the west side of the river to get even more distance. Then he'd have a couple of good options. Without crossing the river, he could go up the steep walled gorge that led north and west out of the valley.

Huh-uh ... scratch that. The trail up the gorge was far too treacherous in many places. There was no way he could get through some of the more dangerous points in the dark. No, a much better path was to cross the river downstream, circle around the lawmen and get into the forested mountains off to the south.

He came back to the first problem ... the initial break--getting from the cavern down to the river. He needed a couple minutes of darkness and surprise. If they figured out what he was doing, they could stop him cold. Darkness and surprise were what he desperately needed. Gradually he pieced together a plan.

It had the crucial advantages of being simple and, even better, no part of it depended on any particular response from the force across the river. In fact, a complete lack of any reaction for a few precious seconds was advantageous to Miles ... and predictable.

It takes long, intense training and much experience to recover from shock quickly. The best thing Miles could do was to stun them badly with his first aggressive act--rock them back on their heels--then move and move fast.

For the necessary darkness--cover in which he expected to be able to have some freedom of movement for at least a short time--he was going to shoot out the lights they'd set up over there. The fugitive would open fire when they'd had long enough to think they had him cornered and he was helpless.

Miles would use the inevitable confusion with swift, purposeful action once the floodlights were out. A few seconds were all he needed and then it didn't really matter what they did when their surprise faded.

He'd be gone and moving further away every second.

The Deputy Marshal down there across the ford surely had his men watching the door of stone house ... and both windows ... very closely. Any hint of motion there and the alarm would be sounded. If he opened the door and then shot at the lights, they would be forewarned and could shoot back immediately ... and there were enough of them to lay down a heavy fire and make it impossible for Miles to move through the courtyard, jump the wall and run to the lip of the cavern.

There was another opening though--a potential way out of the house no one knew about but himself. Well, no one alive. Zeb surely knew but he hadn't never told nobody, he assured Miles.

Miles absently corrected Zeb, pointing out the double negative but Zeb snorted derisively. He wondered aloud about smart alecky, edicated folks who let themselves git trapped by strangers with long guns. Miles determinedly ignored the lengthy series of suggestions, none of them having anything to do with the current situation, which followed.

The route out to the floor of the cavern had to do with the way Zeb had built the house. Miles had thought the northern wall of the rock house was set tightly against the cavern wall when he'd first explored the structure a year ago. A close examination--involving some serious squeezing of his body through a tight opening--had been necessary to find it wasn't. The lawmen couldn't possibly know about the passageway yet.

The floodlight stands were thirty-five or forty feet below the lip of the cavern and could light up only the top three-fourths of the house. Additionally, shadows caused by the positioning of most of the lights to the south of the cavern concealed the narrow gap between house and cavern wall very effectively.

Once outside the house, he could crawl alongside the courtyard wall almost all the way to the lip of the cavern. The drop-off would just be a couple of yards away when he got to the end of the wall. He would shoot from there. Then, with the lights across the way shot out, he would quickly rope down the nearly vertical slope immediately in front of the house until he reached the gentler slope that eventually terminated at the river. From there, he would take off on a hard run north past the point and far enough downstream to be able to cross the river unobserved.

The only problem he could see was that the law enforcement types over there might have some infrared attachments for those black helmets they wore. Some might even have some light enhancement scopes they could use when the flood lamps went out.

But such devices couldn't be used in the glare of that arc of lights ... and it would take some measurable amount of time to find the equipment--in the dark--mount them and then do a scan of the stone house cavern. Time Miles would be using purposefully, instead of reacting to events happening without rhyme or reason ... from their point of view, anyway.

The decision made, he checked a final time to make sure the group of law enforcement officers were still across the river and not sneaking up on him. Keeping low, he slipped to the back of the house along the north wall.

§

Working the first few rocks loose wasn't easy. They'd been shaped to fit with their neighbors so tightly a knife wouldn't fit between them in most places. One of them though--down at the bottom of the wall--had been loosened by Zeb to drill a hole through one rock for the overflow from the water reservoir to drain outside. Zeb had used some adobe to fill tiny chinks where the stone had been knocked loose.

Dried adobe wasn't as hard as rock by several orders of magnitude and Miles was able to dig out the mud and straw mixture with his hunting knife in a few minutes. He used his axe to hammer on the stone part of the wall. It wasn't difficult to break loose the first stone from the wall and creating a small opening.

From there, it was a matter of expanding the gap rock by rock until he had a hole big enough to crawl through. He worked steadily, not bothering to be quiet. The people across the river couldn't have heard a jet airliner taking off over the noise of the generators.

§

Near 11:00 PM, a tired Marshal Owens took a last walk around the camp, making sure the night guards already on duty were alert and that they knew who would be relieving them. The officers who would relieve the first shift were identified and sent to their bedrolls. The gasoline generators powering the floodlights were creating an awful noise but he was already getting used to the racket.

After forty-eight hours or so of the bright lights at night, Owens would up the ante by playing a loud cacophony of 'music' all night. A few days of that and most people were eager to give themselves up. It had worked with Noriega down in Panama and in every barricaded suspect case Owens had ever been involved in. It would work with Underwood. It was only a matter of time.

He lifted his binoculars for a last look at the cavern. That house over there sure looked like one hell of a good place for someone who had nothing to lose to make a last stand.

For no good reason, he had a gut feeling Underwood considered himself in that category. The marshal had no idea how much food or water the man had up there, but if he had any, he could probably hold off the taskforce of U.S. marshals, FBI, and ATF agents for a long, long time. Only a matter of time, but time could stretch out forever ... and who knew what might happen down the road?

The open space in front of the dwelling up there had a low wall around it--from down here, only the top few inches of it were visible--but it looked to be about waist high. Two rocking chairs and a small table to the left of the door was an indication the little courtyard was a pleasant place on a summer afternoon.

For the first time, Owens thought of what kind of man Underwood must be ... wondered how he had come to be a fugitive and why. This place was one that Owens himself might have sought out if he were free to find a home in the wilderness. A very comfortable place....

Unexpected motion caught his eye and he jerked the glasses around in tiny increments until he found it again. A slender form, darker in color than the adobe wall on which it moved, was moving slowly from the deep shadows beside the courtyard wall.

In seconds it worked itself around the upright post at the right front of the patio, slithering slowly around the thick wooden beam and back into shadow. It stopped moving and tightened, seeming to coil around the post. For a moment, Owens had no idea what it was. Then it came to him.

A snake had come from the depths of the cave and wound itself around that timber for some reason known only to itself. Though it was three or four hundred yards away, Owens suppressed an instinctive shudder.

Hoping no one saw, he lifted the binoculars away from his eyes to inspect the ground around his feet. A Park Service ranger had warned them to be careful of the timber rattler, easily the deadliest of the species. They hunted at night, the ranger said.

Finding no rattlesnake near him, and deciding he was finished looking at the cavern, he turned on his flashlight and carefully walked the two hundred yards through the tall grass and brush to his tent. Before he went inside, he shined the light around inside his tent to make sure he didn't have any visitors. Stepping in, he zipped up the opening as quickly as he could. He did not like snakes. He suppressed a shudder as he felt around for his sleeping bag.

§

Just under an hour later, the camp boiled with frantic activity.

The door in the stone house had slowly opened inward and remained open. Through their binoculars, the guards on duty thought they saw Underwood's shadow just inside the door and immediately sounded the alarm with compressed air horns.

Off-duty officers struggled into combat boots and bulletproof vests in the dark and raced to positions in sandbagged emplacements facing the cavern. The tents had been set up a few hundred yards away from the noisy generators so the officers at least had some chance to get some sleep. The distance counted against them now.

Unaccustomed to the altitude, the long run to their posts exhausted more than a few. They lay at their positions gasping in the cold night air.

Lit by the bright lights, some of the building's interior was visible, but those same lights also cast stark shadows in there. It was impossible to pick out enough details to make a coherent picture. The Marshal, still gasping from his own run, could see little of use. Certainly there was no sign of the fugitive himself.

He wondered why Underwood had opened the door but couldn't think of a reason why Underwood would do such a thing. A few minutes later, the door closed as slowly as it had opened though Underwood was never seen. The taskforce waited expectantly, but nothing more happened. A half-hour later Owens ordered everyone except the guards on duty back to their beds. He took a last look around and made his way back to his own cot.

Around midnight, shortly after the new guard shift came on, the alarm horns sounded and the mad rush to the sand bag shelters began again. It took longer this time. Many had trouble getting their eyes to focus and their fatigued legs gave way beneath them.

The door in the dwelling closed eventually, without anything else happening. The taskforce members struggled back to their sleeping bags. The butts of their rifles dragged on the ground as they walked.

Barely had they wormed themselves into their sleeping bags before the horns blared again. Wearily, most of the sixty federal law enforcement officers staggered to their posts but it was a ragged formation this time. It was twenty minutes before the last arrival lowered himself behind the fallen tree trunk that was his post. Six, whose positions were on the periphery to the south and well away from where the Marshal would station himself, didn't bother to go at all.

When the heavy wooden door across the way closed quietly again, those who had responded began the trek back to their beds without waiting for orders. Most of them dropped wearily onto their air mattresses and got into their sleeping bags again, determined to get at least a little rest.

The guards left on duty came down from their adrenalin-based highs and settled down to watch the door. After a while, it seemed there would be no further activity and their interest waned. Then, half an hour after the last opening of the door, the moon disappeared over the western mountain peaks.

§

Miles was as ready as he could make himself. Carving a new door through the side wall had proved easier than he anticipated at first. Once the first few stones had been removed with much effort and extensive cussing, the others fell away relatively easily. He cut an opening just big enough for him to crawl out. He didn't want to weaken the wall too much and cause the house to cave in on itself.

In preparation for the actual escape, he'd made his way out and along the side of the house to the front of the wall around the courtyard. He slipped a gray climbing rope around the outside porch support on this side, leaving the so-called static line Linda had bought for him looped around the post and coiled out of sight behind the adobe wall.

The rope was ready for instant use and he could snatch up the loose ends on the run. He was careful, never exposing himself to the bright searchlights and there was no sign he or the rope was noticed in the whole operation.

Not able to sleep himself, he'd opened the heavy wooden door the first time just to see what the reaction would be in the camp full of law enforcement officers across the river. The ploy succeeded well beyond his expectations and he did it again after a while. If he couldn't sleep, they didn't need to either. Besides, keeping the enemy bewildered and off balance was always a good idea.

It was fun to watch all the confusion and purposeless racing about too. The length of time it took for a response was valuable intelligence. The last alarm was particularly illustrative. 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' syndrome was in play tonight ... and working to Miles' advantage.

When the moon went down, Miles pushed the Marine rucksack he'd appropriated from the sniper team out the newly made hole in the wall. The backpack contained jerky, salt, some other necessities ... enough provisions to last for several days while he eluded the crowd of federal officers over there. He anticipated being able to get out of the area to a small town and restocking supplies before very long. He hadn't made any plans beyond that.

Reaching through the opening, he propped the Barrett sniper rifle and the M-4A1 carbine against the outside wall. Both had full clips loaded and rounds jacked into the firing chambers. When he clicked off the safeties, they'd be ready to fire. Taking a last look around the comfortable home he'd made in the stone house, he ducked low and crawled through the opening and out onto the floor of the cavern.