Unacceptable Risk

To watch bees swarm, stand in the smoke.

—Tilok proverb

A pair of spotted owls roosted in an old, dead fir tree in a dense thicket of the forest. On this night, the owls hunted wood rats quietly. Sam, familiar with their ways, listened to their occasional calls and wingbeats above him until suddenly they began hooting with more vigor and coming down to the lower branches. Next they moved away, flitting from tree to tree and calling to each other. There was a certain recognizable pattern to these antics. The spotted owls had been fed live mice by so many biologists that they had developed an affinity for people. Their response to a creeping person was typically to come closer and make a dinnertime call, looking for a mouse on a stick. It sounded very much as if Sam had human visitors. If so, they were moving away from him, and that was not what Sam expected.

Sam clicked his radio and Paul clicked back. The wind moved through the trees, rustling stiff yellowed leaves. Clouds blew past, alternately veiling and unveiling a gibbous moon. On the forest floor it remained black. Grandfather had taught Sam to look from the corner of his eyes for improved night vision, as well as to "see" with his other senses. Despite Sam's efforts, only the owls had announced the visitors.

Grandfather had taught him as well as he could. On Sam's first night in the forest with Grandfather some twenty years ago, he had grown impatient after a minute or two. Now, after two decades of sporadic practice, Sam could remain still and alert for many hours.

To show Sam how to make himself a part of the forest, Grandfather had told him a story. A friend had kept a blind horse. It lacked even eyeballs, bide covering the eye sockets. When a man approached its paddock with an apple, the old horse could easily find the hand that held the fruit. In fact, the horse acted much like a horse with vision. The average person, looking from a distance, would never know the horse couldn't see. Grandfather told Sam never to allow anyone to suggest he couldn't see, even on the darkest night. To this day Sam resisted the temptation to fall back on the obvious and wear his night vision goggles without interruption. Instead, he used them at regular intervals, and the rest of the time he spent straining to discern.

Sam lay in a grove of Douglas fir near an ancient incense cedar, most of his body tucked inside a hollow pine log and covered in a down sleeping bag that kept the late-October cold and damp at bay. He breathed in the mold smell of the forest and the odor of old fire, and this night the musk of a distant skunk. It all blended and swirled, creating a place of comfort because it felt familiar. Thirty yards distant stood his log house, built seventy years prior by a timber baron in this most remote corner of the state of California. As precious as the house to Sam were its contents, among them an eight-foot-high fireplace with iron log stands forged in the 1890s in Boston; handmade feather-cushioned couches and chairs passed down by his father's Scottish ancestors; the grandfather clock that had come across the United States in a covered wagon. Most of the furnishings, even the throw rugs, had a story. But the best stories existed in no book, living instead in the land itself.

Here in the northern California coastal mountains, among the old-growth conifers shrouded in winter mist, even the greatest of men seemed small. The timber baron had chosen well, building his house on a bench on an otherwise steep mountain, surrounded by government land and adjacent to the Tilok Indian reservation and tribal grounds, home to the other half of Sam's family heritage.

From his position, Sam could see through the bay window to the fading glow of the coals from the fire that had earlier played over the Douglas fir floor and paneling. Next to him on the ground lay Harry, a mostly Scottish terrier, snuggled in his own heavy blanket. Sam had one last doggy treat for Harry, but he was waiting for the dog to ask for it. Out of sheer boredom Sam looked at Harry and licked his lips in a fashion commonly canine. Harry gave a quiet groan of belly-felt desire, knowing exactly what was on his master's mind. Sam reached beside his sleeping bag and into the doggy treats bag, removed one, and held it under his own nose for a languorous sniff, as a man might do with a good cigar.

Harry thumped his tail. Sam held the treat in front of Harry's nose and Harry sniffed it in dignified silence as Sam had taught him. Then Sam tossed it into the air and Harry snatched it with a quick snap before it bit the ground. Harry rolled over on his back for a good belly rub, which Sam obliged. Then Sam put his finger to his lips and made a slight
shhh
sound, at which Harry lay silently on his blanket. Harry was a master at both shush and stay. Although Harry was truly Sam's buddy, he also played a practical role. As difficult as it was to sneak up on Sam, it was nearly impossible to sneak up on Harry. The terrier's senses of smell and hearing were acute and he was fundamentally a paranoid dog. Given his brushes with death, he had a right to be.

Sam fingered the braided rawhide necklace and its gold medallion, which opened like a locket. Inside was a picture of Stalking Bear, his grandfather on his mother's side. Stalking Bear had been a full-blooded Tilok North American Indian and a Spirit Walker—a spiritual leader that came along, at most, once in a generation. Although Sam was already eighteen years old when he met his grandfather, he had learned what he could in the next twenty. And on nights like this he was grateful.

Sam was every bit as tough as he looked, a long-muscled, swarthy-skinned man, an exotic admixture of his two family lines. It had taken some doing to trace his father's lineage back to the Highlands. His clan had been big, fierce, ruddy-cheeked people, brave to the point of fighting every superior force. From them had come the curl in his dark hair, which fell down over his ears. His face was more angular than round, though; the fine features were smooth and unblemished except for two scars, a line over his right eye and a small nick at his chin. His eyes were amber. As a job-related precaution, Sam did his best to conceal his features with raffia hats, sunglasses, and nondescript clothing.

Tonight it had dropped briefly below freezing, leaving the intermittent precipitation somewhere between rain and sleet. The wind whipped up a nasty chill factor. At the mouth of their log, Sam had placed a small lip of camouflage material to direct the flow of water away from their shelter. Harry was careful to keep his nose back behind the rain line. Sam hoped this small concession to comfort would not call attention to their hideaway. He looked at his watch: 5:10 A.M.

It was peculiar, he thought, how, at this moment, out of the billions of people on earth, only one man really mattered. Sam knew that every time the man called Devan Gaudet closed his eyes to sleep he felt hunted. A small comfort, but comforting nonetheless. Perhaps Gaudet retained enough humanity to realize that Sam hunted him for good reason. Still, for all Sam's efforts to focus on his side of the battle, there remained the sobering realization that he hunted a man who in turn hunted him and all those dear to him. It was a game that would end only when one or both of them were dead. As part of the game hunt Sam had decided to give Gaudet a shot at killing him. When Sam found the radio locator beacon in his car, no doubt affixed by Gaudet henchmen, he had led Gaudet and his people north from Los Angeles and into these mountains.

Although the struggle between the two men had been professional in the beginning—Sam was a contracted anti-terrorist expert and Gaudet an assassin and international criminal for hire, the subject of one of Sam's investigations-it had turned personal when Gaudet began killing people Sam cared about.

After a time Sam clicked the radio again; this time he got nothing in return. Next he did a radio check. Nothing.

Silence was trouble. Men retreating into the forest were trouble because he didn't understand it and the worst sort of enemy was one you didn't understand.

Pulling himself out of the sleeping bag into the cool air brought him to full alert.

Sam straightened Harry's blanket, getting half of it under him and half on top. "Shush and stay."

Harry scrunched down.

Sam took three steps back, put on his field pack, his special forces MSA Gallet TC2000 helmet complete with night vision and headlamp, and then hefted his M4 combat rifle fitted with an underbarrel flashlight and an M 203 40mm single-shot grenade launcher. On his hip he wore a Heckler & Koch .45-caliber MK 23 SOCOM pistol, twelve-round clip, with laser aiming module and sound suppressor. "Stay," he whispered again, adding a hand signal. He knew the dog would not move.

Sam forced himself to walk slowly into the forest. If Gaudet were active, he would expect Sam to check on Paul first, so Sam made instead a giant circle in an unexpected direction, following the spotted owls.

He donned the night vision goggles, which created a world of strange and subtle shadows. Branches hung everywhere and in places logs crisscrossed into windfalls, but Sam managed to pick his way around them. He stayed low to the ground, looking for signs of other men on foot, until he saw a lowland area ahead. It was wet with slow-flowing water in the rainy season. Traversing it without sloshing and making sucking sounds would be difficult, so he moved up toward the steep-sided rock-strewn canyons until he reached a hardscrabble path that he could use in silence.

Once on the other side he moved back down the canyon, taking only a few steps at a time. He had been moving for nearly an hour when he stopped to study a small opening near the place he imagined that the owls had gone. At that moment he heard them calling, getting closer, until they perched right over his head. He ignored them and scanned the forest. Unbelievably, he saw the glow of a cigarette well off the ground—apparently in a tree. An old road that served as a main trail ended here. No doubt the man in the tree served as a rear guard in a position so far from the expected action that he thought he could safely smoke.

Sam began a major sneak, dropping to his belly and moving inches at a time. To remain quiet in a slither meant that speed was out of the question. His father had insisted that he learn to stalk deer on his belly well enough to kill with a bow and arrow, and Grandfather had insisted that he improve his technique to the point that he could come within a few feet of a deer's flank unawares. Men were not as perceptive as deer, especially a man foolish enough to smoke when it could cost him his life.

Near the glow of the cigarette Sam made out the vague silhouette of a hunched figure pointing a rifle at the sky. Stickery vines of wild blackberry were beginning to get hold of Sam's clothing and he had to extricate himself. Remaining silent was frustratingly difficult and he had only the wind as his ally. When he was within thirty feet, the man put out the cigarette and adjusted himself, flapping a branch in the process. A slight opening in the canopy allowed moonlight in, creating an enhanced silhouette of the armed man. After several more minutes of slow crawling, Sam lay within twenty feet. From this position the figure had disappeared altogether. This was dangerous. If they detected Sam, then a flurry of bullets from an automatic weapon could kill him before he could react.

He made out a large tree three feet distant; he crawled to it, stood, and plastered his body tight against the trunk. He needed the man to give him a final confirmation of his motive. Searching at his feet, he found a sizable chunk of wood. He further searched and felt a stone protruding from the soil under the forest duff and patiently worked to remove it from the ground.

Before tossing the stick, he removed his old Zippo lighter from his coat pocket. He threw the branch, which landed in the bushes with a soft brushy splash. He imagined the sentry tensing and straining at the night, then pointing his rifle. Sam lit the lighter and tossed it in a gentle arc. As Sam glanced around the opposite side of the tree, a burst from an automatic weapon lit the night. Sam now threw the heavy rock as hard as he could at the shooter and heard a slight smack followed by a low groan. There was a little luck in the throw, but Sam was good with a rock and the target had been close, albeit above him. Quickly he inserted a hand loaded rubber bullet into the chamber and another in the magazine. These were the only two rubber stun rounds that he carried and for that reason he had first tried the stone. They had a light charge allowing a safe hit to the head or jaw. After those two bullets he would be shooting hollow points and armor-piercing rounds called talons in an alternating sequence.

He waited for a moment; then the forest lit with the blast of the automatic weapon firing blindly into the night. The muzzle flash illuminated the man like a spotlight. Sam fired the two hand-loaded rubber rounds. He heard a crash followed by complete silence. Sam picked up a stick and tossed it. Nothing. He stuck his gun around the tree and fired a single lead round well over the man's head. Still nothing. In his pocket he carried a small but powerful NiCad light. He removed the night vision. Trying to stay hidden as much as possible, he shone the light around the tree and drew no fire. The bark of the tree was uneven enough for him to pull back a flap and wedge the flashlight in place so that he could leave it and scan from the other side of the tree. He saw bushes and ferns, but no person in the deep shadows. There were not many men in this attack group or the place would have been swarmed by reinforcements.