Hunted Read online

  “You go straight to hell!” Sam Parish yelled. “We’re under attack, people. Arm yourselves!”

  Darry jumped at the two women and rode them down to the ground just as the camp erupted in gunfire.

  * * *

  Jody Hinds’ wife, Linda, was the first to die. A federal agent shot her in the face as she was standing in the doorway and splattered the back of her head all over the cabin wall. Roaring out his rage, Jody jerked a mini-14 from the wall rack and triggered off a full thirty-round clip in the general area from which the killing shot had come.

  A federal marshal took two .223 rounds through the forehead and was dead before he hit the ground.

  In two miles-apart locations, the pristine wilderness erupted in gunfire, and the government-instigated carnage began.

  * * *

  Ki was filming even as Darry rode her to the ground. The camera witnessed a mob of men dressed in camouflaged clothing and wearing ski masks come charging out of the woods, automatic weapons clattering. The camera recorded graphically the sight of an unarmed woman taking a three-round M-16 burst to the chest and being flung to the ground, her blue-and-white-checkered shirt suddenly blossoming in crimson.

  “Jesus Christ!” Stormy said. “What’s happening here?”

  “Your government at work,” Darry said. “Crawl into the timber. Stay low. Move, dammit, move!”

  Just inside the trees, Ki turned and shot a full three minutes of very damning film before Darry grabbed her by the belt and literally dragged her deeper into the safety of the thick brush.

  “Those are our government agents?” Stormy questioned.

  “They sure as hell aren’t from Libya,” Darry said. “Move. Quickly now. We’ve got to get back to the cabin and get the hell gone from here. They’ll be after us.”

  That stopped the woman. “After us? But why?”

  “Because we just witnessed a federal government fuck-up,” Ki answered her. “And I got about three and a half minutes of it on tape. They’ll want that tape, and I suspect they’ll do anything to get it.”

  “You got that right,” Darry said. “And I think I heard shooting coming from the other side of my cabin.”

  “What the hell is our government doing?” Stormy demanded, anger rapidly overcoming her fright.

  “Declaring war on dissidents, I suspect” Darry said grimly. “I saw it coming months ago.”

  * * *

  With unlimited and unchecked power, big government could be a frightening monster out of control, especially when many of its enforcement agents were young zealots—politically left or right—with the fires of fanaticism burning brightly in their eyes.

  Jack Speed and Kathy Owens were young, but neither was a zealot or a fanatic. The two FBI agents exchanged glances and silently agreed to get the hell gone from the area around Jody Hinds’ cabin.

  This is madness! they both thought.

  Jack crawled to his hands and knees and a round from a rifle slammed into his shoulder, knocking him sprawling to the ground. Kathy quickly scurried to his side, and another bullet grazed her head and sent her spinning into darkness. One-handed, fighting the pain in his shoulder, Jack grabbed Kathy’s shirt at the back of the neck and began pulling her away from the wild shoot-out. He dragged her a good quarter of a mile from the cabin before they both tumbled over the edge of a ravine and dropped to the rocky ground. Jack lost consciousness and drifted into oblivion. Neither agent would be witness to the carnage that took place a few minutes later.

  * * *

  Kevin Carmouche, a Vietnam veteran who, after serving two tours in ’Nam, came back home to Louisiana, married his high school sweetheart, Niki, had then immediately joined the hippie movement and moved to a commune in Idaho. They had been living in the wilderness area for over twenty years. They had raised four children, and only one remained at home, their youngest daughter, Beth, now sixteen years old.

  Of the original sixty or so members of the commune, only a handful now remained. Vincent Clayderman and his wife, Anna, and their fifteen-year-old son, Jerry, and Todd Noble, his wife, Betsy, and their sixteen-year-old daughter, Ginny. Like Kevin, Vince and Todd were combat-tested veterans of the Vietnam war. They were peaceful men, seeking only to live and let live and be left alone.

  Many people had terrible misconceptions concerning hippies. Many believed they were cowards and drop-outs from reality. Nothing was farther from the truth. Push a hippie hard enough, and the person doing the pushing was going to have a hell of a fight on his hands, for many of the “back to the earth” crowd were hard-assed military veterans, with some hairy ops behind them.

  Vince Clayderman was an ex-SEAL and Todd Noble ex-Marine Force Recon. Kevin had been a Ranger LRRP.

  The three families stepped out of their cabins and stood together, listening to the sounds of hundreds of rounds of ammunition being expelled.

  “What the hell is going on?” Vince said.

  “Sounds like Tet to me,” Todd replied.

  “Whatever it is, it probably isn’t going to be good for us,” Kevin summed up much more accurately than he could possibly know at the moment. “You remember I told you I saw Old Buckskin Jennings a couple of days ago, and he told me the place was filling up with federal agents.”

  Vince spat on the ground; his opinion of federal agents.

  Another hard burst of gunfire reached the families. “That’s coming from Jody and Linda’s cabin,” Anna said. “I don’t like this at all.”

  “I’ll take a walk over there and see if everything’s all right,” Kevin said. He turned, hesitated, then went into his cabin and returned with a Winchester model 94,. 30-30 lever action rifle. He looked at his friends. “Get ready for a shit-storm,” he told them. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I think all hell’s about to break loose.”

  * * *

  Seven men and five women of Sam Parish’s Citizen’s Defense League lay dead or dying on the ground. Four more were badly wounded. The rest were being held under guard in a barracks building.

  “What the hell have we done?” a woman had screamed at a BATF agent.

  “Shut up,” he told her, his voice shaky.

  “Fuck you!” she responded, and that got her a not too gentle kick in the ribs.

  The agent instantly regretted doing that, but he was scared. Really scared. This op had gotten all out of hand. Government agents from several different enforcement agencies had fired into an unarmed bunch of men and women who were doing nothing more than having a cookout. No matter if they were on the list for dangerous groups. They were, at the time, unarmed and offering no resistance. You can’t shoot somebody for cussing at you, he thought. This wasn’t supposed to have happened. Goddammit, it wasn’t supposed to happen. He walked outside and carefully locked the door. He joined the other agents.

  He looked around him. The others all had the same silent question in their eyes: What in the hell are we going to do?

  The federal agents gathered in a group in the center of the survivalists’ camp. They stood silent for a moment, each waiting for the other to say something.

  (The question that begs to be answered is: How would you react if a group of heavily armed men wearing camouflage and ski masks suddenly invaded your home or property?)

  One hundred government agents had struck the survivalist camp, and fifty government agents had attacked the cabin of Jody Hinds. Federal marshals, BATF personnel, and members of a special Justice Department unit were involved.

  It was a total, colossal, unforgivable, out-of-control government fuck-up. Now it had to be covered up.

  * * *

  A badly shaken federal marshal who had been physically sickened by what he’d seen and taken part in at the cabin of Jody Hinds met Kevin Carmouche on the trail. “Drop that weapon!” he shouted.

  “Who the hell are you?” Kevin asked the cammie-clad and ski-masked man.

  “I said drop that rifle, goddammit!” the agent shouted. “I’m a federal agent.”

 
Kevin didn’t know if the man was a fleeing bank robber or kidnapper or murderer or child molester or just exactly what the hell the man confronting him was. But he damn sure wasn’t going to hand over his rifle to this stupid-looking person. “Go to hell!” Kevin responded.

  The agent cursed, lifted his M-16, and Kevin shot him. The agent was wearing a protective vest, but he’d been standing sideways when Kevin fired. The bullet entered just under his left armpit and exploded his heart, dropping him dead on the trail.

  “Oh, shit!” Kevin said. He stood for a moment over the dead body of the man. Then he picked up the man’s M-16 and clip pouch, and took his 9mm side arm and extra clips. He did not search the body for any ID. Kevin walked on. He had to find out what had happened at Jody’s cabin. But he thought he knew. Just the supposition made him sick.

  * * *

  Jody Hinds had made it out alive. He knew his wife was dead, and was certain her sister and boyfriend were also dead, all of them shot by federal agents.

  Now Jody was killing mad.

  * * *

  The Collier family had lost one rubber raft on the last stretch of wild white water before reaching their prearranged camping destination. They were low on supplies and fresh water. They had lost half their tents and clothing. They were just slightly discouraged.

  It was about to get a hell of a lot worse.

  * * *

  Johnny McBroon did not have any idea what was taking place. He had not gone in the wilderness with all the fancy electronic equipment that the others had. When he had something solid to report to his field reports officer, he’d planned on hiking down to the ranger station and using the pay phone.

  When the sounds of shooting reached Johnny, he was sitting with his back to a tree, his boots off, smoking a cigarette and rubbing his aching feet. “Jesus Christ!” Johnny said, as the sounds of the lopsided battles drifted to him.

  He was lacing up his boots when he spotted the two running men heading his way. He whistled at them, and they stopped, paused, then trotted over to him.

  Lt. Commander Jay Gilmore, from ONI, had linked up with Major Lew Waters of Army Intelligence. Lew had told Jay what he believed to be going down, and the men had ID’ed themselves.

  “You’re no happy camper out here bird watching,” Lew said to Johnny, after identifying himself and Jay. “We’ve got ourselves in the middle of a shit-storm. Now who the hell are you?”

  Johnny paused. “Let’s just say I’m under government contract.”

  “The goddamn CIA is out here, too?” Jay blurted.

  “I didn’t say that,” Johnny said.

  “You didn’t have to,” Lew told him. The men squatted down, and Lew told Johnny what he knew to be fact and what he suspected was happening.

  “Holy Jumpin’ Christ!” Johnny said. “We gotta get the hell out of here.”

  “That may be easier said than done,” Jay said. “We just might get shot on sight. Those cowboys I left over at the Hinds’ cabin are pumped up and trigger-happy. By now, if it’s gone down like I think it has, they’ve figured out they screwed up bad. Let’s do a little careful reconnoitering and try to work up some assessment of this situation.”

  “I suggest we stay together,” Lew said.

  “Yeah,” Johnny agreed. “This is real bad, people.”

  “And it could get a lot worse,” Jay said, a grim note behind his words.

  * * *

  When the faint sounds of the twin battles reached the twelve mercenaries, they immediately hit the ground and stayed low.

  “What the hell is all that?” Bobcat Blake threw the question out.

  “It’s gunfire,” Ike Dover said with a smile. “How soon we forget.”

  “Knock it off,” Mike ordered. “Two major firefights, about two miles from us in either direction.”

  “Do we assemble our heavy weapons and make a stand?” Al asked with a grin, pointing to his cased tranquilizer gun.

  “That’s not funny,” Billy Antrim replied. “We could be in real deep shit here.”

  Mike Tuttle’s face held an odd expression. Nick Sharp picked up on it. “What are you thinking, Mike?”

  “I am thinking that we abort this mission and get the hell out of here,” the team leader said. “We cache these side arms and dart guns and split up into pairs. We’ll attract less attention that way. We make our way back to the vehicles and head for motels. We don’t return until this... whatever it is ... is over.”

  “I agree,” John Webb said.

  “I will stay,” George Eagle Dancer said. “The rest of you go.”

  “That’s not smart, George,” Mike told him.

  “Go,” George said. And with that, he stood up and walked off, leaving his cased tranquilizer gun on the ground, hidden from view by weeds.

  “Strange duck,” Nick remarked.

  “Let’s get gone,” Mike said. “George can take care of himself.”

  * * *

  Darry whistled for Pete and Repeat, and they came running across the clearing to flop down beside him in the timber. Darry looked behind him and motioned for the women to come forward.

  “The cabin is secure,” he told them. “But I don’t know for how long. Both of you wait right here with the dogs. I’ll get your gear and some of mine and we’ll clear out. The feds are sure to visit this place. Stay put.”

  He was back in less than fifteen minutes, after turning the horses loose and gathering up some supplies. “The shooting over there”—he pointed—“came from around Jody Hinds’ cabin. Jody’s got a bad temper. He’s no troublemaker, but he is a man that is best left alone. If the feds struck his cabin—although I don’t know why they would—he put up a fight. Bet on it. Let’s go check it out. Now listen to me, ladies. You stay behind me, and you do exactly what I tell you to do, the instant I tell you to do it.”

  “This is the work of our government,” Stormy said. Darry suspected she was still in some sort of mild shock. “We’re not supposed to be afraid of our own government!”

  “Wake up and smell the coffee, Stormy,” Ki said, adjusting the straps on her pack. “We just witnessed federal agents shooting down unarmed men and women. Worse yet, they know I got part of it on film. You think those hot dog cowboys are going to risk, at the least, loss of careers, and at the worst, long prison sentences or maybe the gas chamber? No way. They’ve got to shut us up, Stormy. And that means they’ve got to kill us.”

  Stormy shook her head. “That’s . . . unconscionable. It’s unthinkable. I . . .” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes glazed over. She looked lost.

  Ki slapped her. It was a hard, open-handed blow that rocked the taller woman and left a red mark on the side of her face. Stormy’s eyes flashed.

  “Don’t lose it now, Stormy,” Ki said. “I’m sorry I had to do that, but you’ve got to come back to reality and stay with it. You’ve got to understand that we’re in greater danger here in the good ol’ U S of A than we ever were in Bosnia or Beirut or Central America or Somalia. Those goddamn government jerks out there”—she waved a hand—“are hunting us. And what they’ve got in mind sure as hell isn’t flowers and chocolates. They’re going to kill us, Stormy. We’re going to have a tragic accident out here in the wilderness. So you get mad, Stormy. Right now. You get mad and you stay mad. And we’ll stay alive and blow the lid off this thing. Okay?”

  Stormy slowly nodded her head. “Okay, Ki. Okay. Let’s do it.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Darry said. “I think we’ve worn our welcome a little thin.”

  11

  “We don’t have any choice in the matter,” the team leader of this op was saying. “I don’t like it any better than any of you. But we just don’t have a choice.”

  “Makes me sick,” one agent muttered.

  “You want to go to prison?” another asked.

  “What about the prisoners?” a young federal marshal asked.

  “It’s their word against ours,” an older man said, walking up. “Who the hell
is going to believe anything they say?”

  “Wilson said that Jody Hinds guy got away.”

  “He won’t last long. I just spoke with Washington and told them what happened out here.” He smiled. “Sort of. I told them about our own dead and got a free hand in dealing with this situation. As for the others . . . we got this area blanketed. We’ll find them.”

  “Max?” a young agent said. “What if . . . ?”

  The team leader cut him off. “There is no ‘what if,’ Jerry. It’s the only way. As soon as those reporters understand what we can do to them, they’ll hand over the film. We can intimidate the guy with them—we’re running a make on Darry Ransom right now. Don’t worry. We’ve got a hundred and twenty-five people out there looking and more coming in. The roads are being watched. It’s just a matter of time before we find them.”

  “Santo’s body was just found,” the call reached the knot of agents. “He took one through the armpit. Whoever did it took his weapon.”

  Max Vernon kicked at a rotten limb on the ground. “Five people dead. Two missing.” Jack Speed and Kathy Owens had not been found. “All because of a bunch of goddamn survivalist crap.” He cussed for a moment. “Has that nose candy arrived yet?”

  “We got three kilos of cocaine coming in, Max. Be here late this afternoon.”

  “All right. Peter, you tell those guys over at the Hinds’ cabin to leave everything just as it is. Preserve the scene. Have all the weapons in this camp been found?”

  “We think so.” He was wrong. There was a hidden cache of weapons and ammo and food and water under the floor of the barracks where Sam Parish and his people were being held. “Pretty standard stuff. Mini-14s and AR-15s. Nothing illegal,” he added softly.

  “Hey, fuck that!” Max yelled. “These people are subversives and seditionists. We were sent in to secure this area, and by God that’s what we’re going to do.”