Sam had asked the government to come in with an infrared- sensing helicopter and look for people on the nearby moun tains. It was how they would catch Gaudet and then use drugs to pump him for information about Cordyceps. What the government would not dare try, Sam would do without hesitation. The helicopter was coming, he was told, but to date it hadn't arrived and now it was too late. The growing snow flurries would prevent them. Sam had tried to impress on Ernie the logic of waiting in the mountains, but the FBI was convinced that Gaudet was orchestrating Cordyceps from a Manhattan warehouse. They agreed to come to the California outback only if anybody showed up.
Mother Nature had other ideas about that.
Grady and Michael appeared at the cabin door with Georges Raval. They had donned stocking caps, obviously preparing for a walk around the compound.
"It's not a good idea to go far," Sam said.
Michael nodded.
"There's nothing but wilderness up that mountain and it goes for miles. The artillery is down here."
The wind was whipping and a chime near the porch dropped to the ground with a final metallic tinkle that was choked off on impact. Black clouds hung everywhere; it appeared as if the forecasted blizzard were about to cut loose. Chandler jogged up, looking like a man with something on his mind.
Just then, Sam cocked his head as he heard a cracking sound reverberate through the mountains, followed by a rumble and a vibration that he could feel in his feet. It grew in intensity until the sound was deep and rolling, perhaps a volcano or a massive landslide with the vibration filling the air and literally shaking their bodies. Suddenly it stopped.
"What was that?" Michael asked.
"Shit," Chandler said as he reached the group.
"What in the world was that?" Grady murmured. "An atomic bomb?"
"Look." As Yodo pointed toward the river, Chandler's head exploded in a burst of blood. Sam shoved Grady and Michael to the ground, urging them to crawl to a small rock wall. Yodo ran for a rock fortification and the machine gun it housed, apparently more concerned with fighting back than with getting shot.
Bullets smacked into rock and occasionally ricocheted with a whine. Sam's men were returning fire and the opposite hillside was pocked with puffs of snow, dust, and rock. Someone on Sam's team fired a rocket and a small patch of trees on the opposite mountain was upended and a body came tumbling over the lip of a cliff. It slapped its way from one rock protrusion to the next, the body bending and break ing in a gruesome display.
After depositing Grady and Michael in the rocks, Sam belly-crawled through the brush to the bluff edge, where he could see whatever might have excited Yodo. He looked down at the river and saw its flow had ceased and that it was shriveling to a series of tiny pools, the green rocks exposed, the car-size boulders surrounding what had once been a vi brant river now standing like monuments over ancient graves. Cascades of heavy rapids became trickles even as he watched. And there was something else. Men in white camouflage were coming across the river bottom, spread out, one at a time. Yodo was firing virtually nonstop, pinning down one member and then another of the enemy team. It was an assault- too many to fight off. Looking at the force, Sam wondered whether Gaudet had actually managed to enlist the French. Raval was still a French citizen and they would do everything possible to take him back to France. It was crazy, but maybe they saw it as their only hope of getting what they thought they had purchased.
"Count on the government to be someplace else when you need them," Sam muttered. The snipers were not going for Michael or Raval. That explained why Chandler had his head blown off, with Michael and Raval standing close by, but it didn't explain why Sam still breathed. Probably the first bullet was a premature shot by an overanxious sniper; probably Gaudet would be boiling that shooter's balls before daybreak next.
Sam kept low and ran back to Grady and Michael. "Get to the base of the mountain," Sam said. "We're gonna climb."
"Supplies?" Michael said. "I have to get the '98 journal anyway." Sam looked at the spacious log house thirty yards distant across mostly open space. If they tried to make it into the house and back out, at least one of them would probably die.
"Over there, through the trees, there's a rock house. Inside, there are two guns and a little ammo. Run like hell. I'll be right behind."
"First the journals." Michael sprinted off through a hail of bullets without awaiting an answer.
Sam took out his radio. "Everybody up the mountain now. High ground."
Sam looked again at the main house. By some miracle Michael had made it inside. Sam waited to see if he would emerge. Between the front door and his current hiding place were several oaks, trimmed up and offering little cover. There were some benches cut from logs, a chain saw sculpture that formed the likeness of a walking bear, and an old hammock strung between two of the oaks. Unfortunately, his M-4 was on the porch. He set out in a run, his boots sinking in the soft earth and throwing up black soil as he zigzagged to make himself a tough target. Shots cracked in the cold air and bullets spat mud around him. Just as he reached the porch, he heard a rushing sound-something like the sound following a jet fighter's low pass at an air show. Michael passed him at a dead run. Grabbing his rifle, Sam fled as the rocket vaporized the back of the cabin and the concussion sent him flying. Hitting the dirt, he was moving instantly with hands and feet flying, and his gun slung over his back in an unconscious motion guided by reflex.
Food would have been good, but they would have to make do without.
Sam found Grady, Michael, and Raval huddled, Grady with red eyes.
"God, I thought you were both dead." Her voice cracked, but she held back any tears.
"Let's go," Sam said, grateful at least for his gun.
They ran through the densest clumps of trees toward a corner of the property, where there was a pump house and a cache of M-4 ammunition. Sam's body sung with adrena line, his mind working out how he could get his charges up the mountain.
They ran at a full sprint, except where rough ground or tree branches slowed them. They bulled their way through a heavy stand of fir saplings and into a small opening. For a second Sam had difficulty locating the small doghouse-size structure that he had seen only once. Then he located an old madrona tree that had been partially burned at the base, and he knew right where to look. Upon finding the rickety, grayed pump house, he yanked the door off its hinges and grabbed ten clips, stuffing them in his pockets. In a war it wasn't much. Michael, Grady, and Raval grabbed handfuls, he didn't know how many each.
Grady, Michael, and Raval were running behind Sam, while Yodo was running through the trees about thirty feet to their right, as were Martin, Gunther, Kenneth, and the rest. Yodo had a rocket launcher; Martin was lugging the BAR. They were taking one heavy piece of armament each and he hoped it wouldn't slow them down. They were all headed across a forested stretch of the plateau that was dotted with sixtysomething-foot conifers. As they neared the corner of the plateau and the mountain, they tightened into a single- file formation.
The snow began falling in windblown sheets. Almost im mediately it became difficult to discern angles and slopes; "down" became the white ground and "up" the white sky. Beyond that, there was little visible of anything. It even made it hard to balance. They began running through what seemed a white tunnel with snow-laden branches whipping them and the whoosh of snow underfoot. The cold air poured into their lungs in odd juxtaposition to their sweating bodies. Soon they were laboring in the heavy branches.