Death Echo

high and wide enough to hide a truck behind, a leftover from the nineteenth century when big trees were cut off where the trunk finally began to narrow, no matter how high up that was. The fifteen-or twenty-foot-high stump was left behind to rot. With cedar, it took a long time.
    He tucked behind the stump, turned the engine off, and yanked on the emergency brake. An instant later he was lowering the window.
    A slight breeze. The scent of moldy forest and evergreen and salt. No lights anywhere. No sound but the irregular ticking of the truck’s engine as it cooled.
    And the mosquitoes. It took them about ten seconds to realize there was fresh food available.
    Chow down , he thought. I hope I poison you.
    He heard a vehicle approaching from the direction of the highway. It was still several hundred yards away and closing fast.
    Mac got out and eased the door shut behind him. From the dense shadow of the forest, he watched the narrow opening onto Tribal Road that was the only sign the rutted, partially overgrown track existed.
    A car flashed by the cramped opening.
    Pale. Could be white.
    Could be a Jeep.
    And it could be a tired driver returning to the rez after a long day on the water or working at the casino.
    As the sound of the speeding car faded, Mac jogged toward Tribal Road, swearing at himself for being paranoid but not about to change. He hesitated in the shadow of the forest just long enough to be certain there wasn’t any traffic heading his way. When he was sure he was alone, he scuffed out the fresh tire marks he had left in the peaty mud when he had turned onto the nameless, overgrown dirt lane. Soon there was no clear sign of his recent passage.
    To make doubly certain, he broke off a cedar branch as long as his arm and messed up the tire tracks even more. Then he threw the bough back into the woods and scattered some old forest debris over the lane. He’d just finished when heard a distant engine. He pushed deeper into the forest and waited.
    He didn’t wait long.
    Score two for paranoia.
    A car was coming back down Tribal Road, heading for the state highway. The vehicle’s high beams were on and it was moving slowly. A flashlight speared through the open driver’s side window and probed the dark roadside.
    The skin on the back of his neck tingled.
    Mac was close enough to the road to recognize the body shape of the Jeep when it went by. But no matter how hard his paranoia worked, he couldn’t figure out even a stupid reason for someone to follow him.
    Yet there it was as big as life, a white Jeep whose driver was shining a flashlight over every opening along Tribal Road, looking for him.
    Mac wasn’t particularly worried about being found. He had been trained in escape and evasion by experts. He could vanish in bare desert at high noon. Nighttime in the forest was easy.
    Mosquitoes sung nastily in the darkness.
    He resigned himself to being fast food for bloodsuckers.
    Headlights and the flashlight flickered through the woods as the prowling car slowly approached. The Jeep stopped at the far end of the tunnel. The beam of the flashlight ran over the shoulder where Mac had brushed away his tracks. As the driver studied the ground, the light twitched back and forth like a hunting cat’s tail.
    The driver’s door opened.
    No overhead light, Mac thought sourly. I wish that surprised me.
    Without getting out, the driver bent over and held the light almost parallel to and only inches above the ground. The raking beam of light revealed more details than a light held at ninety degrees to the ground would have.
    Someone has been trained in the basics of tracking. Mac breathed slowly, shallowly, making no sound. This just keeps getting better and better.
    The light raked over the dirt lane. Mac hoped that he’d done a good enough job cleaning up.
    Should have been more careful. Been a civilian too long.
    At least he hadn’t left parallel lines in the muck with the branch. Not all of his training had been forgotten or ignored.
    After a long minute, the flashlight snapped off and the Jeep drove on down the road.
    Mac didn’t move until the sound of the Jeep’s tires had faded. Then he reached up and rubbed away the mosquito that had been drilling down into his neck. A second insect had already come and gone from his cheek. He could feel a welt rising there.
    Damn. I’ll itch for hours.
    But he kept standing in the night anyway, waiting, listening,