Dead Watch

pressure to get medical help. His car was three miles away, over tough country, and even if he was able to walk to it, he’d have to keep moving. If he stopped, he might bleed out; and he’d certainly stiffen up.
    Jake had problems, too: he couldn’t take a chance that the man might get away. He had to block him. If the other man realized that, he might simply hide, tend to the wound, and hope that Jake would stumble into him. If he killed Jake, he might not have to walk to his car: he might get Jake’s.
    Jake paused just long enough to press three more cartridges into the rifle, then began jogging across the hillside. He was making a lot of noise, but he had to get in position to block. Once he was there, he could slow down into a stalking mode.
    The walkie-talkie vibrated. He stopped, put the radio to his face, said, “Yes.”
    “He’s moving south. He’s going up the west side of the bluffs.”
    Jake started moving again, climbing higher on the valley wall. If the other guy was moving, he wouldn’t be able to hear Jake. In his mind’s eye, Jake could see a perfect ambush spot overlooking a deer-food plot with a shallow ravine running along its side.
    From there, he should be able to see anybody coming along the top of the bluffs. The spot was two hundred yards away. He windmilled toward it, refusing to let his bad leg slow him, his own breath harsh in his ears. Brush lashed his face, tore at his body and legs, scratching his face. He kept moving, gasping for air, up a last short slope and into the nest at the top.
    Billy had stacked tree branches in a two-foot-high triangle, an impromptu ground-blind looking down at the deer plot. Jake eased into it and settled down. Listening, listening . . .

    The sound of the slug was unmistakable as it hit George Brenner, a snap-whack so fast as to be inseparable, but distinct from the sound of the shot, which followed a few milliseconds later. Darrell Goodman didn’t think about it; he was too thoroughly trained to think, he simply moved, vaulting the porch railing, scrambling for the cover of the cabin. He felt an ankle go when he hit the ground, and he rolled toward the inviting darkness under the porch, felt the bite of a slug cutting into the same leg with the damaged ankle, never heard the second shot.
    The shooter was quick.
    He threw his weapon over his back on its sling and scrambled toward the right side of the cabin. The support beams were only eighteen inches over the ground, and in a few uneven places, even closer than that. Animals had been under the porch; he could smell them on his hands, in his face, and still he scrambled and dragged himself, ignoring his leg, out the other side, and then he was running toward the trees, staggering, his left leg weakening, the cabin between him and the assassin.
    In the course of the scramble, his brain had processed the cabin as a trap. It provided immediate cover, but that wouldn’t last. He had to get out. If he could make it to the trees . . .
    He didn’t think about being hit again. There was a bright flash to his right, and he dodged, thinking it might be a muzzle flash, but then he registered it as too bright , and a second later plunged into the tree line. As he did, there was another snap-whack four inches from his face, as a slug tore into a tree trunk.
    Jesus!
    He went down, on his belly, slithered into a depression, damp with dew on moldering leaves, and then he stopped.
    Listened, trying to suppress his heavy breathing, his heart pounding. He could hear the other man—had to be Winter. Jesus Christ, he’d set them up, he must’ve known about the bug, how long had he known, what had he fed them? He groped into the leg pocket on his injured leg, took out a cell phone, looked at the connection bar. No connection. He was too deep in the valley. He’d had a solid link at the top of the ridge, three hundred yards away. He had to get to a spot where he could link up, had to move quickly.
    Winter wasn’t alone. There was at least one more guy in the cabin, then there’d been the flash on the hillside when he was running, so there might be two more. The fag group? Was Winter working with Barber’s guys? No time to think: had to move. Couldn’t let them pin him down.
    He slid one hand down his injured leg, probing for the wound, came away with a wet red-stained hand. No first-aid kit. Still, he had to do something about the bleeding, soon.
    If he could get to the top of the ridge, he could make a