Hunter's blinked. "Go home, old man. I will hunt this…Iceman. I will kill him for you… for your grandson."
"This I believe." The old man's eyes squinted against a sudden, slicing gust of wind. Hunter knew that what he said next was a warning. "It has killed many men."
"I know," Hunter answered. "And it will kill many more if it is not itself killed. So go home, old man. It is cold in the night. And when you He beside your fire, pray for me. Pray that I will kill this man from the ice… before it kills us all."
Hunter approached the camp from the heights in the last hour before dawn, moving in silence. He didn't worry about Ghost, knowing the great wolf always moved without sound.
He knew the creature had been severely wounded by the fall and the throat cut more than anything else, and knew that they would be relatively safe until dawn, but he still traveled at a relatively brisk pace. Battered and exhausted, he approached the campsite, Ghost trailing beside him, and all of them whirled, alert to the movement. Hunter was also too tired to care if they accidentally fired.
Takakura was the first to reach him. Hunter didn't see where Bobbi Jo was positioned. The Japanese searched his battered form with surprising concern before he hazarded, "And… so?"
"It's alive." Hunter knelt and picked up a can of MREs, eating a small bite. He made a face and gave it to Ghost, who devoured it in seconds. "I led it west, south, lost it for a while. It caught me. I put it off a bluff. I think we need to get moving. It'll heal up fast."
Takakura's voice had relief. "We will move immediately. But we must proceed slowly. Dr. Tipler is tired. And we would call for an emergency extraction but…"
Not shocked, Hunter approached him, staring the Japanese hard in the face. He didn't need more to know that the radio was no longer functional. After a second he shook his head, trying to rein in the anger. Yeah, his suspicions had been correct.
"You spoke of this," Takakura said in an unnatural tone. "How did you anticipate this?"
Without even responding, Hunter walked past him, moving to a hastily erected tent where he suspected they had laid Tipler. The old man was inside, and his face was white and sweating. Bobbi Jo was at his side, administering an injection. She tilted her head to indicate they should move outside and discuss the situation just as the professor sighted him.
"My boy!" Tipler cried, overjoyed. "I knew it! I knew you would do it!" He tried to give Hunter an awkward one-armed hug. "Ha! Ha! Ain't no man that ever lived who could ever track my boy!"
The outrageous exclamation was so uncharacteristic that Hunter almost laughed. He moved slowly to the cot, bent gently. His voice was calm. "How ya doing, old man?"
Upon seeing Hunter's battered body more closely, Tipler reached out and gripped him. "You are well?"
"Yeah, yeah, you know me. I'm always fine." Hunter smiled. "A few bruises. But you and me have seen worse." A laugh. "Especially you. I've seen you weather everything."
"Oh, this is hogwash, that's all," Tipler laughed gustily. "I had a slight palpitation. Had them for years. I am about as concerned about it as I am about the fact that my second-grade teacher died forty years ago. You get used to things."
Hunter laughed. "All right, you just take it easy. I'm gonna go outside for a minute and then I'll be back. I'll talk to you in a few minutes. 'Cause we gotta get you out of here." Tipler raised a hand but Hunter said, "No objections, old man." A wink. "You did all you could. Time to rest. I'll be right back."
Outside, a crimson dawn cast a golden halo around Bobbi Jo's silhouette, and Hunter stood motionless — a monument of dignity and strength. He waited only a second before she began. "His blood pressure is lower now than a few hours ago. But his pulse is still in the nineties. He can walk if we go slow, if we don't push him, but we have to get him serious medical attention. He could arrest at any time. I gave him something to thin his blood just a little and to boost his energy. But it's not a good idea to try and control this condition with what I have. We have to get to the research station as fast as we can move him."
"We'll put him on a stretcher," Hunter said instantly. "I'll have one made in fifteen minutes." Then he turned to Takakura. "What in the hell happened to the radio?"
"I do not know," the Japanese commander said plainly. "It is disabled somehow." There was a moment of pause before Hunter turned away and then back again, almost in Takakura's fearless face. "When we get back, I'm going after this thing alone, 'cause something is wrong with this mission. I've seen that from the first. So I'm gonna get you back to the research station, but not for you or this team. I'm getting you back for that old man in there."
He walked into the bushes, past the aristocratic Wilkenson, who said only, "I believe he will be all right until night, Mr. Hunter."
But Hunter wasn't in a mood for replying. He went into the woods, drawing his bloodstained Bowie to swipe two seven-foot length poles of poplar sapling. The trunks were about an inch in diameter, and strong because they were still green. With that and the leather twine in his pack he would quickly have a stretcher constructed.
They had broken camp when he finished gently loading the old man, who protested but finally conceded to Hunter's stern reproof. And then they were walking.
Takakura and Wilkenson guarded the rear. Buck and Riley had the first duty of carrying the professor through the difficult terrain, and Taylor was point. Hunter found himself walking beside Bobbi Jo, lost in his thoughts.
Until she spoke.
"Tell me something," she asked with the tone of someone who wanted to lighten the mood. "How did you get involved in something like this?" she looked at him, clearly curious. "They told us in the briefing that they'd found the best tracker in the world. Said you weren't military, but that you could track a squirrel across rock. But how would they know? Have you worked with them before?"
"No, not really with the military," he said finally. "When I was a kid, I found a place out in Montana. High. Cold. Isolated. Thought I might settle there. I didn't have much, but I could live off the land. So I trapped, hunted, survived pretty well. It looked a lot like this." He gestured toward the woods. "Anyway, I had a ham radio, just in case I was hurt or something. And I was listening to it one day when some kid got lost in this wilderness area below me. It was November, a cold front coming. They had tons of people in the woods, but they couldn't find this kid. I knew those mountains — how cold they got. I knew he wouldn't survive the night."
"And so you went down the mountain and started tracking him," Bobbi Jo said, without doubt or surprise. Hunter grimaced, half-shrugged before he continued.
"Yeah. And it was a tough track. Took me all day. The little kid was so tiny he hardly left a print. And he was wearing these flat-soled shoes that didn't have a pattern. I thought I lost him a dozen times." He smiled, shook his head. "Kids. They're something else the way they wander. You have to be careful. It's easy to lose them. And if you lose them, they'll die quick. They don't know how to find shelter. How to keep warm."
"So, did you find him?"
"Yeah. He was half-frozen, but I built a quick shelter and warmed him up and fed him. Then, the next day, I carried him out."
"He's okay now?"
He nodded. "Oh yeah, heard from him a while back. He's doing great. We write each other pretty often."
Silence.
"That was a lot of pressure," she said. "I mean, to find a little kid lost in a wilderness when the tracks were old, everyone had trampled on them." She thought about it a second. "So little left to go on, you have to get into their mind."