23
DANIEL BOONE NATIONAL FOREST
TUESDAY MORNING
The devil was jabbing his pitchfork into his heel. Manta Ray didn’t remember hurting this bad when he was shot in the side. Jacobson’s antibiotic salve hadn’t helped a bit, and the bandages made it hurt worse. Manta Ray sat on a rock between a gnarly maple tree and a mess of spiny shrubs. Jacobson and Elena stood over him.
“Your heel hurt?”
Not like Jacobson cared, the stupid ass. “Yeah, real bad.”
“Let me take a look.” Elena squatted beside him, waited until he got his sock off, thinking he was whining like a little girl until she lifted his foot onto her thigh. It looked much worse than it had that morning. It was nasty now, raw and open, probably infected. Not good. Elena called to Jacobson to give her the first-aid kit.
She dabbed on more antibiotic cream and flattened down the last three gauze bandages. He moaned a couple of times, stiffened up. She took a new white T-shirt out of his backpack, used her Ka-Bar to cut it into strips. Then she doubled two strips and stretched them like an Ace bandage around his foot and heel, tight as she could, tying it at his ankle. She gave him four aspirin, handed him his canteen. She watched him pop the aspirin, lean back against the warm rock, and close his eyes. She’d done the best she could, but she had to face it—Liam wouldn’t be hiking anywhere. And that meant she and Jacobson wouldn’t, either. She didn’t have a problem with lying around for a while, after all, they were in no hurry.
Elena rose and looked around her. Bethel Ridge was a magnificent spot. It was a clear day and she could see miles and miles in all directions, mostly tree-covered hills and creeks winding like ribbons through the land. Farther in the distance she saw a few small white houses and horses grazing in pastures. They’d stopped under a small stand of trees for shade against the bright afternoon sun. Too bad they couldn’t stay here, but Elena knew they couldn’t. They’d have to make their way down to Clover Bottom Creek and camp in the trees until Liam’s heel dried up. They’d be protected there, no one would see them. Boredom would be the problem, and trying to keep Jacobson under control. She’d have him make a crutch for Liam, keep him busy for a little while. She’d have to call Sergei, tell him about Manta Ray’s heel being too raw for him to move much, let him know they’d have to stay put for a while rather than continuing on northward toward Interstate 64, where he’d arranged for their pickup.
Manta Ray said, “You know what I want? I want to get back to civilization. A nice hotel, a bathtub filled with hot water instead of these pissy cold creeks, and a john with a pile of magazines, with the swimsuit issue on top. Do you think there’s a hotel in that town over there? What’s the name of that Podunk?”
“Sandy Gap, and there’s no way we’re going anywhere near that town. We’re going to stay out of sight. That young hiker, well, that was a mistake. We don’t want a repeat of that, or worse.”
“If you guys had bought the right size boot, this never would have happened.”
Elena took a deep breath for patience because what she really wanted to do was slit his throat with her Ka-Bar. “They are the right size. I told you the problems you get when you don’t try on boots. You’ve never hiked, you have city-boy feet. We’re going to go back down to the creek, where there’s plenty of cover and stop there, wait for your heel to get better.” She wasn’t about to admit it had never occurred to her he could get a blister. She never would. Maybe someday she’d tell Sergei and they’d have a good laugh. “We’ll have to stretch our supplies a bit, but we have enough.”
She thought Jacobson would speak and shook her head at him. Surprisingly, he kept his mouth shut. But not for long, she knew, no, never for very long.
She rose, dusted off her pants. “Jacobson and I will help you, but you’re going to have to suck it up until we get back down off this ridge. We’ll give the aspirin another few minutes to kick in.”
Manta Ray thought that was about right. He looked over at Jacobson leaning against a boulder, chewing on a twig, looking back at him like he was a loser. Manta Ray reminded himself to kill the stupid bully once they were out of this hellhole.
He grinned up at both of them, his saviors, his guards. He might be their prisoner, but they were his ticket to freedom and money, more than he’d originally planned on. Their boss obviously badly wanted or needed that box he’d slid into his leather case along with everything else from those safe-deposit boxes. He wished now he’d opened it so he’d know exactly what kind of money to demand, but once he’d escaped to the warehouse in Alexandria, all he had time or energy for was to see the box was safe and to stay alive.
“Elena, you said no one could be looking for us, so why move at all? Why not camp here? We got a great view. Jacobson can hike down to the creek and get us fresh water when we need it.”
Patience, patience. Her mantra now. “You know the answer, Liam. Even though there’s a bit of tree cover up here, someone could spot us—” The sat phone rang. Elena jumped. Their ironclad rule was no communication unless it was critical. That meant something had changed, something was wrong. The two men watched her dig the phone from her backpack and walk out of sight behind a pile of boulders.
Manta Ray said to Jacobson, “Is that your boss?” The one I’ve got by the short hairs? “I wonder what’s got Elena so concerned?”
Jacobson shrugged, pulled out a power bar, and ate it in two bites.
Manta Ray watched him, the pain in his heel down to a dull throb now after the rest and the aspirin. He said, “Hey, if we stay up here you need to give me one of your knives. I could take care of the next stray hiker. You got that first guy clean, though, I’ll give you that.”
Jacobson puffed up a bit. “Yeah, my old man taught me how to do it right. The kid was still wondering what was happening when he was dead.”
“No muss, no fuss, that’s the way to do it. I just didn’t like having to stand back and watch somebody else have all the fun. By the time anyone stumbles over him, there’ll be nothing left but bones and a wallet.”
Jacobson shrugged. “The boss didn’t want anyone dead, but hey, there he was, staring at us, and you could see he was going to talk to the first ranger he saw. What could I do?”
“That was good of you to leave his wallet so they’d be able to identify him.”
“Yeah, I’ve got the milk of human kindness running in my veins.”
Elena came back, put the sat phone into her backpack. She’d heard him. “The kid wouldn’t have said anything, all you had to do was use your brain and let me do the talking.” Idiot. She’d told Sergei about the murder, though she hadn’t wanted to. Deep down, she knew he’d kill Jacobson without hesitation. She knew he wouldn’t do anything to her, not ever.
Jacobson said, “Was that the boss? Is there a problem?”
She ignored Jacobson, looked down at the mess of boot prints. She started to tell him to break off a branch and sweep the area, but stopped. It didn’t matter. What mattered was moving out of there right away, fast.
She pulled out her map, found the easiest way to Clover Bottom Creek Road. When she knew exactly how to get there, she said, “Get yourself together, Liam. Wrap another couple of socks, your T-shirt, or your shirt, anything you can find around your foot to protect it. We’ve got to move. Jacobson, there’s no time to make him a crutch. You’re going to have to help him across the ridge and down to the road. It’s not going to be easy, but we don’t have a choice.”
Jacobson took a step toward her. “Come on, talk. What’s wrong?”
“FBI are here; they’re already in the forest. They’ll have a tracker with them, maybe one of the rangers. The boss says they found out where we entered the park; how, he didn’t know. That means they’ve probably already found our tracks, since we didn’t take the time to hide them. We have to move. We’ve got to be down to the road in”—she looked down at her watch—“three hours and it’s not going to be easy to get down there if Liam can’t put any weight on his heel.
“Jacobson, toss all the gear and the backpacks in that mess of shrubs over there. We won’t be needing them any longer. We’ll keep one weapons bag, the binoculars, and the sat phone. Get it together, we’re out of here in two minutes.”
Manta Ray cocked his head to one side, said in full-blown Irish, “And just how, girl, did your boss find out the FBI are after us?”
Elena stuck her favored Walther PPK into her waistband. “The boss hired people to keep an eye on the Feds and local law enforcement outside the forest. One of them probably got a ranger to tell him what was happening. But what he doesn’t understand, and I don’t, either, is how they knew exactly where we came in.”
She looked over at Liam. He was wrapping his T-shirt, then his shirt around his heel. When he finished tying off the shirtsleeves, he stood, put a bit of weight on the foot, and nodded. “Not bad. All those bandages, my foot looks like a painting of an old guy with gout I saw in Dublin once.”
Jacobson was looking at him like he’d like to kick him. He knew it was too soon to leave the forest; the manhunt outside the forest was still way too heavy.
“Jacobson, help him. We’re out of here.”