The deputy arrived panting, his pistol in his hand.
"He's gone. And we're stuck here." He waved a hand at the flat tires.
Dickerson looked down the road, but the Caprice had already vanished. "I can't say as I'm disappointed to miss him."
"Me, neither." Schneider slipped into his car and reached for the radio handset. Before he pressed the button, he said, "He'll soon be out of Polk County, and that's the last we'll have to think about him."
"The hand of God made these mountains." Owen Gray's voice was soft with wonder at the panorama before them.
"It was glacial ice, not God." Adrian stopped beside Gray on the bluff overlooking the valley. "Those peaks are made of granite that crystallized below the earth's surface, then pushed through to create fault blocks. I read about them in a book about Idaho on the flight from New York. The granite crags are called batholiths. They were eroded by glaciers."
Gray said wearily, "And I'm telling you it was the hand of God."
Below them, filling Gray's vision and bringing forth a rush of childhood memories, were the narrow defiles of river canyons, topped with sharp ridges and peaks jutting forth at confused angles. Glacial gouges and cirques and horns gave the range an air of unyielding wildness. Douglas fir and lodgepole pine fought for purchase on the granite. The lower slopes were covered with blue bunch grass, wheatgrass, and Idaho fescue. Near the peaks, blue and yellow lichen colored the granite. When clouds passed overhead, the mountains changed hues, quickly purpling, then changing to gray, then lightening again to blue and gold as the billows passed. In the distance was Lewis Mountain.
Gray was wearing a Goretex backpack. The Weatherby rifle was over his shoulder. He pointed. "Look, there's a bird called a Clark's nutcracker. If you hold out a sandwich, it'll only take him a few minutes to get the courage to land on your hand."
The bird was perched on the low branch of a whitebark pine. Black wings rested against an ash-gray body. It peered at them intently, then hopped along its branch toward them.
Gray looked at her a moment. "I was startled when Pete Coates told me you were in Afghanistan."
"I was only gone two days. Even so, I'll bet you missed me."
"Well, I feel safer when you're around." He was deliberately cheery, not wanting to inflict his grief on Adrian. "I won't get mugged, anyway."
She smiled quickly and he generated a grin in return. Then he lowered himself to his haunches. "Look closely at the trail and tell me what you see."
Adrian squinted at the ground. "Dirt and some pebbles and a few twigs."
"See these slight depressions in the surface of the path?" Gray traced them with a finger. "They are paw prints. They tell us that an hour or two ago a yellow-bellied marmot passed by this way."
"What's a marmot?" Adrian asked.
"A big leaf-eating rodent."
"Like a rat?"
"Much cuter."
"How can you tell it's not a house cat lost up here in these mountains?"
Gray smiled. "A marmot has four toes on its front feet and five on its back. A cat has four all around. And cats walk like babies crawl, moving diagonal limbs at the same time. But a marmot moves both legs on one side of its body at the same time, like porcupines and skunks. See, you can tell by these prints that the marmot is shuffling both right legs, then both left legs at once."
"How do you know those tracks weren't made by a skunk?" she asked.
"A skunk has five toes in front. And we're too high for a skunk."
"Or a porcupine?"
"They like the woods, not the rocks."
Adrian was wearing a light blue jacket, jeans, and Eddie Bauer climbing boots. She persisted. "And how do you know the marmot came by here an hour or two ago, not yesterday?"
"The peaks of the marmot's prints have just begun to deteriorate, with grains of dirt falling into the base of the tracks. There's a five-to-ten-mile-an-hour wind today, so I know from experience that an hour or two of loose grains have fallen into the paw print." Gray could not resist showing off. "I also know that there were no hawks flying overhead when our marmot walked this way. And no coyotes around either."
Adrian pursed her lips. "I'm stuck out in the wilderness with Mr. Nature."
Gray hurried on. "And the reason I know is because the size of these tracks tells me this is an older marmot. He has survived several years of predators and is therefore smart about them. And had the marmot sensed the predators he would have been running and his stride would have been about fifteen inches instead of the seven or eight you see here."
A paintbrush plant, with its delicate orange blooms, was growing among balsamroot leaves near their feet.
She said, "I didn't come to Idaho to learn about rodents."
Gray shrugged. "So you found Nikolai Trusov's spotter?"
"Yakub Nadir was a member of the same faction, the Parcham, as Babrak Karmal, the Soviet puppet. Nadir worked as Trusov's spotter for almost two years. I found him in a tiny hill town outside Kabul, one of the villages still controlled by his tribe. He fell into the hands of Tajik mujahideen after the Soviets left, who, finding out his role, dug out both his eyeballs. Nadir is blind. He was wearing Soviet fatigue trousers, Afghan army boots, and a flat woolen cap called a pakol. I met him at a teahouse, then he took me to his home."
"He didn't mind talking to a westerner?" Gray asked.
"I think he enjoyed it. Nadir is an educated man. He attended the prestigious French-run Istiqlal School in Kabul and speaks French. He was studying to be an engineer when the Soviets invaded. He chose the wrong side, as he readily admits. He wears no eyepatches or dark glasses, and it's hard not to stare at the ragged holes in his head when talking with him. The mujahideen used a heated bayonet, and they weren't careful. So not only did he lose his eyes, but much of his face around his eyes is livid with scars."
"They have always played for keeps over there. Tell me about the interview."
"I was his mehman, his guest, and he made me feel welcome. His wife served us green tea and nan while we spoke. His home had one room with a high ceiling. To keep out the heat a ragged white curtain was drawn across the one window, but beams of sunlight came through the holes in the curtain. I sat on a couch with old cushions, and he sat on a patch of worn carpet. The plaster walls were flaking, and on one was a poster of Karmal. There was also a sentence painted on a wall in bold calligraphic letters, but I didn't find out what it meant."
"Doesn't Nadir fear for his life? Why isn't he on the run?"
"He thinks his eyes are all the mujahideen will take from him."
"So what did he say about Trusov?"
"Nadir said the Russian was a master of his craft."
"I already knew that."
"And Trusov enjoyed it. Sometimes he would fire many shots at the same target, hitting a knee, then a hand, then a foot, and so forth, taking a lot of care to place the shots where they wouldn't kill the target immediately. Nadir claims he saw Trusov fire twelve shots at a mujahideen, all hits, before the coup de grace. Trusov told Nadir that his twelve shots before the kill must be a world record."
"For Christ sake, that's not soldiering."
"Trusov knew about you."
Gray's head came up.
"That same day, after the killing shot, the thirteenth, Trusov said to Nadir, 'Not even the great American Owen Gray could place twelve non-lethal shots.' " Adrian Wade lowered herself to a boulder. She crossed her legs. "Trusov frequently talked about you."