Stars & Stripes

They picked their way down the hill, trailing their horses behind them. It would have been easier to let the horses find the way down, but Ty wanted to be certain he had the trail. They bottomed out into a wide arroyo, the first flat ground he’d seen that was longer than a football field since they’d left the preserve fence behind.



He stood and breathed out, trying to think. His horse jerked at his reins, then sidestepped and whinnied. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of vibrant color amidst the tan and green of the land.



He whipped his head around to see the tiger speeding toward them.



“Oh shit,” Annie gasped. She turned toward the panicking horses and fumbled in her saddlebag for the case of tranquilizer darts, and managed to jerk it out before the horses broke and fled back up the hill.



Ty’s hand was on his sidearm, but it was a last resort. They were here to save the cat, not kill him.



The tiger bounded over cacti and scrub brush, and every time he leaped into the air and came back down, the skin of his face would lift and reveal razor-sharp teeth. His deadly claws dug into the earth for traction.



Annie handed Ty the dart gun, her fingers trembling.



Ty was surprised he wasn’t flashing back to the last big cat who had charged him: the cougar in the mountains of West Virginia. But it had been dark then, and he hadn’t seen the cat coming. Now, he stood frozen, waiting for the tiger to come within range of the darts. He was oddly calm, his body not yet recognizing the danger.



It was unusual for the tiger to charge over open ground, in daylight no less, but Ty couldn’t guess at the behavior of an animal who’d been held captive all its life. He lifted the dart gun, his fingers less steady than they had been a moment before. Annie ducked behind him.



A gunning engine rent the silence, and the tiger made a sharp turn, retreating from the 4x4 tearing through the open end of the arroyo. The 4x4 careened to a stop, and a man hanging off the roll bar in the bed of the truck pointed a long-barreled rifle at the fleeing tiger.



The 4x4 displayed no markings. The men within it were armed, their faces covered. This was definitely not an official vehicle.



Ty dropped the tranquilizer gun and reached for his sidearm, drawing and firing with practiced speed. He hit the side of the truck, sending sparks flying. The shooter in the 4x4 shouted and turned his rifle on them.



“Shit,” Ty muttered as the other three men in the truck, all of them bristling with weapons, took notice of them. “Annie! Get down!”



Behind him, Annie screamed. Ty grabbed her and pulled, stepping in front of her to take the shot from the first man’s rifle.



It hit him in the chest, the shock of the impact knocking him backward into Annie. She caught him under his arms with another scream, but they both went tumbling backward.



Ty looked down at the dart in his chest. He grabbed it and yanked it out, surprised at how much it hurt. “Run. Go,” he panted, words harsh as he pushed himself to his knees and began firing. He felt Annie turn and run, hopefully after the fleeing horses where she could make a clean escape. His vision was already beginning to go dark, but he continued firing. He hit one man and saw him go sailing into the bed of the truck, rattling two large cages. Then he hit the windshield, and next a tire. He fired until his clip went empty and he sank back into the scrub grass. The world around him was turning a grayish purple.



He was distantly aware of the sound of retreating horse hooves and the truck’s engine idling. Several men stalked toward him. He fumbled for his other clip, but his fingers were numb.



“Used all my damn darts,” one man snarled as he pulled a gun. He sounded garbled, like he was speaking through a synthesizer.



“What do we do with him?”



“Take him. When he wakes up we’ll make him track down that damn tiger for us. Then we’ll use him as kitty chow.”



They drew near, one of them carrying what looked like a burlap sack. Someone knelt next to Ty, and though his face wavered and morphed, Ty didn’t have to see his expression to know he was in trouble. He pulled his knife from his boot—his last-ditch resort—and jammed it into the man’s thigh.



The man screamed.



A sound somewhere near them echoed it, a scream of anger and agony. Something primal in Ty knew what that was: the roar of an enraged predator. The men all stopped, looking up and around in a panic before turning and running back toward the safety of their vehicle, dragging the man Ty had wounded behind them.



And suddenly Ty’s vision was blue. It took him a moment to realize he’d fallen over and was on his back, staring at the cloudless sky. He couldn’t move. Not even his fingers would twitch. He was paralyzed, losing consciousness, in the middle of the desert. Alone.



He blinked, barely able to force his eyes open again.



From somewhere, a horse neighed, and hope rose in his chest. Perhaps Annie had seen the poachers retreat and had come back for him.



A blur of color entered his field of vision. For a moment he thought he was hallucinating, but then the figure made another chuffing sound, mimicking the neigh of a horse almost perfectly. Ty realized that he wasn’t hallucinating, and he wasn’t alone. He was merely staring into the black and orange face of a Bengal tiger with one floppy ear.



Zane was surprised when the trail they were following made an almost 180-degree turn. The truck had circled around, heading farther into the ranch and not off it, picking its way through the nearly flat gullies between the hills. The longer they tracked it, the more they began to realize that the truck hadn’t fled the scene, but rather had gone off searching for a passable route into the hills to follow the escaped tiger.



“Jesus, Ty and Annie are out there,” Mark said as they passed over one of the horse trails that crisscrossed the ranch. “Three to six men. How much ammo has he got?”



“As far as I know, just a knife, his service weapon, and an extra clip. It’s what he carries standard. Then they each have a rifle on their saddle and that dart gun.”



Mark wiped at his forehead, unable to sit still in his saddle as he grumbled and worried about his wife. Zane was worried too. But he had more faith in Ty than Mark did.



They kept following the tire tracks until Harrison paused, quieting the clopping of the horses’ hooves to listen. From the distance came an echo of gunfire and, not long after, the distinct roar of a tiger. The sound registered low, and the hairs on Zane’s arms rose with a prehistoric fear.



“Jesus.”



They waited, tense and on edge, but there was nothing more. Mark was growing restless and Zane desperately wanted to head off over the hills in search of the source of the gunfire, but the desert made it impossible to locate. They could do nothing but keep to the trail they were following.



Zane soon realized he could hear a buzzing sound over the clopping of the horses, and he hissed for everyone to halt again. It swelled until they all heard it: the distant growling of a car engine far to the east. Soon, it grew fainter.



“Shit.” Harrison stood in his stirrups and tried to peer off into the distance with his binoculars. “Sounds like they got what they came for.”



“Or they got run off,” Jamie added.



“We have to find Annie,” Mark said, growing more and more agitated.



They continued on, still following the tire tracks for lack of anything better to guide them. It wasn’t long before they heard the unmistakable sound of a galloping horse.



Annie topped a knoll and called out to them, her voice a panicked shout across the dancing heat waves. She urged her horse down the ridge toward them. Mark headed off after her, and he dismounted when he got close, pulling her off the horse to hug her.



Zane watched the ridge, his heart in his throat. A moment later, Ty’s horse topped the hill and picked its way down. It was riderless.



“Where’s Ty?” Zane demanded as soon as he came up on them.



Annie shook her head. Tears streaked her dirty face. “They shot him with a dart. He shielded me from it and told me to run.” She gasped out a sob. “I left him there.”



“Shot him?” Zane asked. His entire body had gone cold.



“It was a tranquilizer,” Jamie said. “Means he could still be alive.”



“No, you don’t understand.” Annie had told them that animal tranquilizers weren’t meant for humans, and some could kill in minutes. And then . . . this was Ty they were talking about. “He’s allergic to all kinds of medication, there’s no telling how he’ll react to animal tranquilizers. We have to find him.”



Annie gulped in air and shook her head. “The tranqs won’t matter, Zane. The tiger . . .”



“What?”



“We found the tiger right before they attacked us. They shot Ty, and I think he drove them away with his handgun. But . . . I left him out there with the tiger.”



They backtracked Annie’s trail, Harrison in the lead. Zane’s mind would not stop spitting out all sorts of scenarios, every one of which ended with Ty dying alone in the desert—the desert he dreamed about, the desert he screamed about in his sleep. Reacting to the tranquilizers and suffocating or having a heart attack or a seizure. Mauled by an angry tiger, shot by exotic animal smugglers as he tried to save Zane’s sister.



Several times, Zane almost had to stop to throw up, but he kept himself together. He could lose his mind after they’d found Ty, if he needed to.



Harrison halted on top of a high knoll and pulled his binoculars out again, scanning the land. He stopped and tensed, sitting up straighter. “Found him.”



Zane urged his horse forward. “Where? Is he okay? Let me see.”



Harrison lowered the binoculars and shook his head, giving Zane a look that made Zane’s heart leap into his throat. “I can’t let you see, son.”



“Why not?”



Harrison hesitated, glancing at the others before he choked out, “The tiger found him too.”



Zane’s stomach turned and his vision started to narrow. “No. Let me see.”



“No, son.”



Zane spurred his horse up the hill, reaching across the horn of his father’s saddle to snatch the binoculars from him. He aimed them in the direction Harrison had been looking. It took his trembling hand a moment to find the splash of color, but when he did, the bile rose in his throat.



The tiger lay recumbent in the middle of an arroyo, protected on all sides by low hills. He could see Ty lying nearly under the big cat. The red buff on his head was hard to miss, as was the lime green cast on his arm. The tiger was licking and gnawing on his hand like a kitten playing with a ball of yarn. Zane could see no blood, though. No carnage. He focused in closer, desperate to spot a sign of life from his lover.



The tiger rolled onto his back, powerful legs stretching out to the side. Ty’s cast was in his mouth between gleaming white teeth. He rested his head on Ty’s outstretched arm as he chewed.



Zane frowned. Then he caught it, the barest of movement from Ty. The fingers of his right hand curled in a come-hither motion.



“He’s moving.”



“Probably muscle spasms, Zane,” Mark said, voice gentle and careful. “I’m sorry, but . . . that’s a goddamn tiger down there.”



“He’s alive. He’s . . .” Zane held his breath, hardly daring to hope. “I think he’s rubbing the tiger’s nose.”



“What?” Annie asked through a quiet sob.



“He’s goddamn petting the tiger.”



“Petting the tiger?”



“I’m going down there.”



“Zane, wait!” Annie cried as Zane urged his horse down into the arroyo.



At the sound of her shout, the tiger sat up in a rush and focused on him. His horse balked, dancing sideways at it caught wind of the big cat’s scent. The tiger lunged to his feet, letting out a roar that froze the very marrow in Zane’s bones.



Zane was peripherally aware of the horses panicking. Ty’s bay broke away from Jamie and ran. It took all of Zane’s skill to get his own animal under control again.



Zane stopped his horse from going closer, but the damage was done. The tiger bent and took Ty’s arm in its mouth, pulling him by his wrist across the arroyo bottom. Ty didn’t move, didn’t struggle. Zane’s stomach knotted, and he had to fight the urge to retch as he watched Ty’s limp body being dragged across the ground, at the mercy of one of the largest, most dangerous predators on earth.



Annie joined him on foot, breathless and pale. “Tigers are territorial, Zane. Either Ty is his meal, or Ty is his friend. Either way, he sees us as a threat. We have to drive him off or tranquilize him before we get anywhere near Ty. And I lost the dart gun.”



Zane nodded, dizzy and ill. Annie reached for his saddle, pulling the rifle out of its scabbard and pointing it into the air. She fired.



The tiger jolted away, bounding a few yards before hesitating and looking back at Ty’s limp body. He seemed confused and intimidated by their aggressive behavior. Annie fired again and again, each time driving the tiger further away. Zane urged his agitated horse forward, and the animal just seemed glad to be getting away from the gunshots as it barreled down the hill. Annie fired the last round in the rifle as Zane’s horse charged, and the tiger turned and ran, disappearing into the hills.



Zane dismounted while his horse was still moving, hitting the ground running and then sliding to his knees in the scrub brush next to Ty. Ty’s eyes were open and unblinking, his body contorted in the position the tiger had left him.



“Baby?” Zane said through a broken sob as he reached for Ty’s face.



Ty closed his eyes, a painfully slow gesture, and when he opened them again he was staring at Zane.



“Oh Jesus, Ty. Are you okay?”



Ty closed his eyes again. He tried to speak, lips barely moving.