men, who would get to see the action up close, it was a professional job.
The dot made its way to the highway, and Grey shifted nervously. He crossed and uncrossed his legs and wrung his sweaty palms. The dot finally began to climb the hill. He rose to his feet, pushed his chair backward, and leaned forward with his hands on the desk. The dot moved to the top of the terrain feature and began to slow; then it stopped. He willed the dot forward, first silently and now vocally.
“Go, go! Move forward! Keep going!” The dot began to move backward, first slowly and then more rapidly away from the well-laid ambush. “No, no!”
Grey snatched the phone from its cradle on his desk and dialed the number from the Post-it note on the side of his monitor. It took forever to connect and then rang several times before there was an exasperated answer in English, with a thick Russian accent.
“What?”
“What happened?” Grey shouted.
“I don’t know! Some cowboy stopped to help right in the kill zone. Then the target stopped and took off.”
“Did you fire?”
“Not until he drove away.”
“Shit!”
“What do you want us to do?”
“Call the other team and tell them to execute. Move to the ranch house. Kill the primary target. Wait, just kill everyone!” he yelled into the receiver.
“We don’t have a vehicle. The girl drove away and isn’t answering her phone.”
“Shit!” Grey slammed the phone, ending the call.
* * *
A few valleys away, Raife knelt at the track in the sand, its crisp outline indicating its extreme freshness. The droppings in front of it were still glistening with moisture. The deer’s gait had changed to a relaxed meander as he’d increased the distance between himself and whatever had startled him from his lair. With a flick of his wrist, Raife shook a cotton infant sock, sending a small white puff of the talcum powder inside into the air. The light breeze blew the powder back and slightly to his left, indicating he still had the wind in his favor.
He moved into a prone position and slid his body forward so that he could see into the open valley below him. It was one of the largest meadows on Kumba, a grassy bowl hundreds of yards across that was intersected by small creeks and a few scattered trunks from ancient toppled pines that were bleached nearly white by their exposure to the sun’s rays. Slowly he pulled the strap of his binoculars, bringing them within reach. He painstakingly searched the valley through the 10x lenses, systematically searching each quadrant of ground before moving his focus to the next. Ten minutes into the exercise, he saw it. The flick of an ear. The buck had bedded behind one of the fallen pines, its body concealed by the trunk and its massive antlers blending in perfectly with the single remaining branch that jutted skyward from the tree. But for that tiny movement, Raife never would have seen him.
Finding the deer was the first step; now he had to make a plan to work himself within range. He traced a muddy creek bed backward from near the buck’s position and figured that it would give him just enough terrain to crawl beneath the deer’s line of sight. If he could make his way to the creek without being spotted and could crawl the length of it without being heard, and if the wind didn’t shift to blow his stalk, he might have a shot. He rolled to one side and shrugged off his pack, taking only his bow and quiver and what little was strapped to his body. He unclipped the Motorola two-way radio from his belt and laid it on top of the pack before backing over the ledge and out of sight of the valley below. He walked bent at the waist and to the left to put him in position to move down the ridge behind the buck; it gave him the wind’s full advantage and made it less likely that the deer would spot his movement in its peripheral vision.
Melusi would be proud.
CHAPTER 39
REECE TOOK HIS FOOT off the accelerator as they approached the ranch entrance, and steered the Cruiser through the steel gate that was visible from the road. The truck rumbled over the welded pipes of the cattle gap, and he punched the gas. He picked up the radio mic and made his third attempt at contact.
“Reece for Raife, over.” It would make sense that Raife