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  Darry smiled. “Eventually, yes.”

  “If I was twenty years younger, I’d bed her down. Hell, ten years younger.” He looked hard at Darry. “You be careful out there, boy. I don’t know exactly what you are, only that you’re as different from most as I am.”

  Darry had worked on his pack and listened to Chuck talk.

  “There’s gonna be a lot of trouble within this nation, boy. I never thought I’d say that, but now I am. Country’s reached a sad-assed state. I read me a book a few months back, ‘bout all the rights that has been taken from citizens in America. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize it was that bad. I made me some phone calls and found out everything that author wrote was true ... and gettin’ worse.”

  “The ruling party of any government almost always turns on those who don’t support it,” Darry said. “But this government is doing so with a savagery that I never expected to see in this nation.”

  “You seen lots of big governments, hey, Darry?” the old man asked with a smile.

  “More than my share.”

  “Someday we’ll speak of that,” Chuck said.

  “Perhaps,” Darry replied.

  Pete and Repeat came to Darry, and he knelt down between them, rubbing them and pressing his face against theirs. He gently bit them on the muzzles, and they very gently bit at his chin. Wolf signs of affection. Darry gazed into their eyes, and instructions flowed silently between them. When he was sure they understood, Darry rose to his boots and shouldered into the heavy pack. He seemed not to notice the weight.

  “It will either end here in the wilderness, or it will have its start here. I can’t say which one it will be.”

  “Only that you will be a part of it,” George remarked.

  “Yes.” Darry looked at the two men. “But it won’t be the first time for me.” Darry walked out the door and quickly was gone into the timbered wilderness.

  “Something mighty strange about that young feller,” Chuck observed. “But I can’t quite put my finger on it. Mystical, comes to mind.”

  “That’s as good a word as any,” George Eagle Dancer said.

  23

  The director of the FBI was a party man, and a good friend of the President, but he was also a fair man, believing in the Constitution (as it was originally interpreted; something he kept silent about). But being a political appointee, he knew he had to play the Washington game if he wanted to keep his job . . . however repugnant that game might be. And to his mind, this game was getting dirty. But he, too, knew how to play dirty.

  He knew he was being lied to by a few of those around him, and it amused him. But it was such a carefully constructed and practiced lie, he could not break it. Nor did he want to.

  He smiled another secret smile, knowing that the President had nothing to do with the out-and-out murders of some obscure families living in the western wilderness. He was equally certain that the attorney general would never go along with cold-blooded murder in the name of. . . what?

  Silencing dissidents? He couldn’t believe that. Dissent was a basic right for Americans. But just thinking that made the man slightly uneasy. For he was well aware that of late there had been a lot of quiet little dirty work in an effort to silence, or at least mollify, those who were opposed to this administration.

  But murder? He couldn’t believe it.

  Three times he put his hand on the phone to call his old friend in the White House. Three times he pulled his hand back. When the private line to the White House rang in his office, it startled him.

  “What the hell is going on out in Idaho?” The President came right to the point.

  “I don’t know, Mr. President,” the director replied. “I’ve only been back in the States a few hours. This is what I know about it: I got a call from the AG to send some people in there to check out a story about a man who could not die—”

  “Wait just a minute,” the Pres said. “I didn’t authorize that. I asked the CIA to send someone in. I figured that was the way to go since they’re always screwing up anyway and if it became public, no one would pay much attention to it.”

  “Well, the AG told me that she had received a directive from the White House requesting the Bureau look into the matter.”

  “Was the directive signed?”

  “Yes, sir. By you.”

  “Jumpin’ Jesus Christ, man! Do you think I’d sign an order wasting taxpayer money checking out some story that appeared in the National Loudmouth?”

  Makes about as much sense as midnight basketball for punks, the director thought, but did not vocalize. The director felt the new crime bill was the biggest waste of money since the government’s war on poverty began thirty years back and to date had cost the taxpayers about a trillion dollars . . . but being a loyal party man he played the game and kept his opinions to himself. “I did wonder about that, sir.”

  “How many rogue agents are involved in this?”

  “Only a handful.”

  “Well, I’ve got damage control trying to figure out some way to blame all this on the Republicans ...”

  The director managed to contain a sigh that was filled with revulsion. It always comes down to that, he thought. No matter what party is in power, each always tries to blame the other for a fuck-up. Sad. So sad.

  “... this Max Vernon has to be taken care of,” the voice on the other end said.

  “What the hell are you saying, sir?” That slipped out before the director could stop it.

  The Pres sidestepped that. “Did you know that military intelligence—all branches—also had people in that area looking for this man who could not die?”

  “I just learned of it, sir.”

  “Doesn’t that give you an idea?”

  Of course he knew what the President of the United States was subtly suggesting, but damned if he’d play along with it. “No, sir. It does not.”

  “You think about it,” the Pres said. “And do something about Max Vernon.”

  The line went dead.

  The director leaned back in his chair and thought about the screw-up in Idaho. Somebody had sent the AG a bogus directive from the White House. He was not at all certain it had to have originated from the White House; from someone close to the Man. But whoever it was, for sure, gave Max Vernon carte blanche in dealing with the survivalists and the others in the wilderness area.

  But why? Was it someone trying to embarrass the President? Hell, someone was always trying to embarrass a president—no matter what party was in the Oval Office at the time.

  Or was the deputy director lying?

  If he had to take a bet, that would be where he’d lay his chips down.

  He picked up the phone. “Doris? Tell Hank Wallace I want to see him ASAP.”

  * * *

  For three days, Darry slept during the day and prowled at night, covering huge distances as his Other. He was beginning to think that he had misjudged the mercenaries; that they had not returned to this area. Then on the night of the third day, he caught the faint twinkle of a small fire, and his keen nose smelled woodsmoke. Darry flitted through the brush on silent paws until he was just outside the small dancing circle of firelight. There, he bellied down and listened to the two men talk.

  “So George is here,” one of the men said. “What does that prove? Nothing. That is one crazy Indian, for sure.”

  “I think he hooked up with this Darry Ransom just after he left us, Joel. And we know for pretty sure this Ransom is the guy we’re after.”

  “Billy, there ain’t no man living out here who is seven hundred years old and who can shape-shift into a goddamned wolf. Now I don’t mind taking Mr. Roche’s money, but that tale of his is pure crap and you know it.”

  Darry wondered what the reaction of the men would be if he rose up and leaped right between them, and let them see what a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound timber wolf looked like. But he didn’t seriously consider doing that. Still, it would have been good fun.

  “I don’t know
about that, but I do know it was stupid for us to come back in this area. How many of those fuckin’ feds did we kill, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Twenty or thirty, I suppose. Hell, nobody can tie us in to that. We didn’t leave any alive to testify against us, and we weren’t spotted. So quit worrying about it.”

  Darry wondered how many of those agents the mercenaries killed were actually involved in the killings and the cover-up, and how many were good, decent men, just doing their jobs.

  And as Darry, now in the shape of his Other, lay on the ground listening to the men talk, he again wondered what was the real reason he had returned to this area? George had been right as far as he went: If Darry could contain all the brutality here, there would be no civilian deaths or injuries. If he had run, going to a city, when those after him finally caught up, there could be many innocent people hurt or even killed.

  But there was another reason, deeper and darker, that had brought him back to the wilderness: Darry hated big government. All big governments. He had made America his adopted home a few years before the Revolutionary War—although he had left the country many times over the years to roam the world—because he’d felt, at the time, that America was going to be a great and fair nation. And it had been, for many years. Darry was proud to call himself an American.

  Now he wasn’t so proud.

  Darry wanted to expose what had happened out here; wanted all fair-thinking Americans to see what they had allowed their government to become.

  But he would need help to do that, and had made up his mind that Stormy was just the person to provide that help.

  Then Darry’s mind was swiftly returned to the immediate as his eyes caught just the slightest bit of movement on the other side of the camp. Darry’s nose caught the scent of something not quite human and not quite animal and knew instantly what it was.

  The Unseen.3

  Those creatures caught halfway in the evolutionary cycle. Darry knew where half a dozen of their caves were, and they knew he knew. They left him alone, and he left them alone.

  Matt Jordan, the retired CIA man who had successfully fought to have the government set aside a chunk of land for them, had moved with most of the half-human creatures to the wilds of Canada after the government reneged on their promise (what else is new?) to allow the Unseen to evolve naturally; to live in peace without fear of man while scientists studied them.

  Darry sensed anger in the breeze, emanating from the big creatures. But why were they angry?

  That was answered when Billy Antrim said, “What the hell kind of animal was that you winged this morning, Joel?”

  “I don’t know. Looked sort of like a bear, didn’t it? Funny-lookin’ goddamn thing.” He laughed. “Maybe it was Big Foot, you reckon?”

  Darry slowly turned his head and looked up into the savage eyes of a creature that stood well over six feet tall, with an animal-like head and jaws, but with a nearly perfect human body . . . except for its hands, which were more apelike, with claws for nails. The creature slowly shook its huge head, and Darry understood.

  The “animal” the mercenaries had shot that day was one of the tribe called the Unseen who had elected to remain in this area when Matt had taken the others up into Canada.

  By shooting one of the Lost Tribe, the mercenaries had screwed up ... bad.

  The creature standing behind and to the right of Darry, who was in the shape of his Other, made no hostile move as Darry rose to his paws, turned away from the firelit circle, and padded back into the brush.

  The screaming from Billy Antrim and Joel Bass began a few seconds later. It did not last long.

  * * *

  Rick Battle swung down from the saddle and looked at the dead ashes of the camp fire. He poked at the ashes, but they were cold, holding no spark that might set off a raging forest fire. Rick was on a five-day inspection tour of his area, leaving Alberta at the station to take care of things there.

  Rick’s eyes found a dark spot several feet away from the circle of stones that had held the fire. He walked over to look at it. He knew immediately what it was: blood.

  His eyes began to pick out faint footprints, and they were footprints, not boot tracks. Members of the Lost Tribe, the Unseen, the Watchers (they were called many things) had, for some reason, struck this tiny camp, silently and savagely. And they had killed those who had camped here.

  Rick knew he would never find the bodies. In his years out here, he had known only three other incidents where the Unseen had taken human life, and it was always in revenge for the killing or wounding of one of their own. The bodies were never found, and neither was any of the camping and hunting equipment.

  Sheriff Paige knew what had happened in all three cases, and other than sending out the obligatory search parties (which were always unsuccessful) nothing was ever done about it. For Sheriff Paige was also a descendant of the Lost Tribe.

  “Hello, Rick,” Darry said from the edge of the clearing.

  Rick turned and smiled. “I thought I’d see you again, Darry. Do you know what happened here?”

  “Yes, and so do you.”

  “Who were the men?”

  “People who will not be missed, and no inquiries will ever be made of them—in all probability. They were among a team of mercenaries, hunting me.”

  “How many men were here?”

  “Two. One named Billy, the other Joel. One of them shot a member of the Unseen.”

  “Shit!”

  “Hello, the camp!” The shout came from a few hundred feet away, in the timber, and Rick turned in that direction.

  “Come on in,” Rick called. “I wonder who that is?” he muttered. When he received no reply, he looked around him.

  Darry was gone, vanishing without a sound.

  * * *

  “So who sent the directive with the President’s name on it?” the DIR/FBI asked Hank Wallace.

  “We don’t know, and probably never will know.”

  The director hid a smile. “What does the Secret Service say?”

  “Nothing. As usual. If they ever do find out who sent it, we probably won’t know about it.”

  The director grunted. “What about this Darry Ransom person?”

  “Now there is a mystery man. His birth certificate is bogus. The name was taken from a tombstone of a person who died shortly after birth back in ’64. Everything about the man is bogus.”

  Carol Murphy smiled. “Except for his fingerprints. There the story gets complicated.”

  “So uncomplicate it for me.”

  “They are the identical match with two men, both of whom served in the army, one in the Second World War, the other in Vietnam. Both men served with distinction and honor. Both men won a lot of medals. But their names are as bogus as Darry Ransom. William Shipman died in California in 1922. Dan Gibson was killed in a car wreck in Michigan in 1950.”

  The DIR/FBI leaned forward, placing both hands palm down on his desk top. “What are you saying, Carol?”

  “Oh, there is a lot more, sir. A lot more. Back in the 1830s there was a mountain man who fits Darry’s description to a T. In the 1850s there was a scout who also fits the same description; then in the late 1870s and early 1880s, there was a famous gunfighter who also fits the description, right down to the color of his eyes.” She looked at Hank.

  “We also discovered that a man fitting the same description, right down to the color of his eyes, served in the army during World War One. He went by the name of Billy Wilson.” Hank opened his briefcase and laid a worn photo of a company of soldiers on the director’s desk. One of the men was circled. “That, sir, is Billy Wilson. He is also William Shipman and Dan Gibson.”

  The director was stunned; having some difficulty grasping all he was being told and shown. He picked up and quickly scanned several military DD 214s Carol laid on the desk. “Now, wait a minute. Just hold on. Are you telling me that a man who had to be at least seventy-five years old served as an Army Ranger in the Vietnam war?”r />
  Hank tapped the circled man in the faded photo. “That, sir, is Darry Ransom. And he’s a lot older than seventy-five.”

  “Are you certain?” the director finally found his voice.

  “That it’s the same man? Yes. Both of us are. We were with the man for several days in the wilderness.”

  “We’ve also discovered something else, sir,” Carol said.

  The director sighed. “I’m developing a really bad headache. But go on.”

  “The billionaire industrialist, Robert Roche, is very interested in finding Darry Ransom. We now have information that it was Roche who hired the mercenaries who killed most of our people in the wilderness. They were hired to find and bring Darry Ransom back alive.”

  “Why?”

  “It might be that Roche believes Darry holds the key to the fountain of youth. He probably wants him for study,” Hank said.

  “Why did the mercenaries turn on our people? Weren’t they aligned with this Sam Parish person?”

  “Not at first, according to one of the survivalists we have in custody. We’ve been told that federal agents confronted the mercenaries as they were pulling out, probably doing so rather rudely. There is a certain type of person who objects, often quite violently, to that type of behavior.”

  “Then . . . this business about the man who could not die. It’s . . . ?”

  “True. All of it. Darry Ransom is immortal.”

  “Oh, my God!” the FBI director said in hushed tones. He certainly hadn’t planned on anything like this.

  24

  Rick didn’t like the looks of the two men who were walking toward him. They weren’t making any threatening gestures; but something kicked off his mental alarms. They both carried tubes, about three and a half feet long. For their fly rods, Rick guessed.

  “What happened to your friend, Ranger?” one asked.

  “What friend?”

  “The man who was standin’ right here about thirty seconds ago,” the other said.

  Rick smiled. “There is no one here except me and my horses. Your eyes must be playing tricks on you.” Rick didn’t know why he was lying about Darry. He just felt it the right thing to do.