Shadow of Death, page 9
She glanced around from the cover of her giant spruce tree, but she couldn’t see Hunter. He was on his way, and she knew he would move swiftly. She didn’t want to call him again; she was afraid any noise she made might draw attention to her. But her cell phone camera was silent, so she began to take pictures but then stopped to watch what was coming next. A group of men were carrying a plank carefully up the steep slope that led to the mountain plateau.
And there was a woman on the plank.
She wasn’t moving. She was covered in a white shirt. The moonlight caught her hair; it was blond and long and drifting around the plank.
Amy strained to hear the words of the leader who had raised his hands and was speaking to his “flock.”
“Sometimes, it must be blood that is fed to the earth. Sometimes, the sin is great. Life on this earth means nothing for the great beauty of the true life to come which lies ahead, yet it is open only to those who are cleansed. Some need to reflect on their sins as life slowly seeps away. And yet there are those who may perhaps earn their way to Nirvana by giving their life’s blood to the earth. For the earth is that which must care for us, the caretakers of others. And in serving the true Power, we must care for ourselves, while granting that those who might not know or see the truth, absolution is within their death. This I say verily.”
“And so, we hear, verily!” the crowd called out.
The man moved his white coat aside and drew from it a massive knife. It gleamed under the glow of the full moon that had risen as the group had gathered there. “I cleanse thee of thy sins with blood so that your soul may rise to the Heavens!”
There was no choice. The woman on the plank was about to die.
Amy drew her weapon and she fired. And while she hadn’t wanted to kill the man, an unbidden thought came to her mind.
I cleanse you of your sins, you murdering bastard!
6
Hunter heard the first shot when he was still about a hundred yards from what he believed to be Amy’s position.
Seconds later, he heard a barrage of gunfire.
But he had moved swiftly, and he was relieved to see Amy was fine. She had taken up a perfect position, protected by the heavy trunks and branches of a few giant spruces in an area of scattered, high rocks that edged the flatness of the plateau.
As he reached her, the gunfire stopped as abruptly as it had started.
Amy turned to Hunter quickly.
“I fired the first shot. They were going to kill her,” Amy told him.
“Who?”
“The woman... Look on that plank on the big rock there. I need to get to her. They left her...thank God. But they shot back in seconds while they were running away. They’ve scattered now. They took off, some into the trees that way...” She paused and pointed across the plateau. “And some down the trail that leads to the other side...or somewhere. But they’re gone. Hunter, I think she’s alive. Drugged or something, but alive, we’ve got to get to her—”
He nodded, understanding her urgency, but he had been an agent long enough to know someone could still be waiting for a chance to get a shot that might mean something.
“Slow down, move out slowly. You get to her, I’ll cover you!”
He was watchful, moving ahead of her and toward the trees and trail to the left. The right edge of the plateau was clearly visible in the moonlight, and there was no place there to shield a shooter.
But moving carefully, shielding Amy as she reached the woman, he met with no resistance. Whoever had been there—the shooters—had fled. Still watchful and wary, he headed back toward Amy just as he felt his phone vibrating.
It was Andy, calling from headquarters to assure them an FBI SWAT team was heading up to meet them. Hunter quickly informed Andy of what had occurred, and Andy in turn warned the team to take it slow until their backup arrived.
“These guys know the terrain, Hunter. I know you do, too, but...remember, they’re good at what they do.”
A sharp, piercing scream sounded—almost louder than gunfire in the strange moonlit night. He saw the young woman on the plank was now conscious, and Amy was trying to calm her and assure her she’d be all right. He was torn between searching for the scattered shooters, watching over the young woman, and making sure Amy wasn’t put in jeopardy while doing her duty to protect the would-be victim.
But he didn’t have to remain torn; he saw the team Andy had sent out had arrived. Five men and a woman in SWAT gear had arrived with weapons drawn as they moved carefully toward the plateau. The group knew the terrain and was probably extremely well trained.
Hunter lifted a hand in greeting. One of the men moved toward him, quickly introducing himself as Ben Crandon, head of the team.
“I arrived as the gunfire ended,” Hunter informed him. “Special Agent Larson was watching a rite that was taking place when the girl on the plank was brought out. Special Agent Larson fired when the leader was going to plunge a knife into the girl’s heart. Several of the flock had to be armed—her shot brought out a barrage of gunfire and then the group fled.”
Amy was still standing by the plank, her arms around the young woman whose shrieking had turned to a torrent of sobbing.
Amy looked at him a little helplessly.
“She was about to be stabbed through the heart,” Amy explained and turned to the woman. “It’s all right. You’re safe now. We’re law enforcement. Please, you’re all right! I’m Amy, this is my partner, Hunter, and these others are with the FBI. You’re safe. I promise I won’t leave you.”
“Thank you, thank you...” the girl murmured. “I’m Magda, um, Magda Kenward. “I’m... Oh, my God! I heard them when I was taken...hit with whatever that shot was. They were going to...cut out my heart and drink my blood. Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh...”
“Magda, you’re all right now. We’re here.” She looked back at the others. “I had to fire at their leader. And I know I hit him center of the chest, but...” She shook her head, looking at Hunter completely perplexed. “He’s gone. His body is gone.”
“You’re sure you hit him?” one of the team asked her doubtfully.
“Amy is a crack shot,” Hunter informed him.
“I hit him. Dead center in the chest. I couldn’t shout out a warning, and I couldn’t fire a warning shot—he was seconds away from killing this poor girl.”
“If he’s dead...where is he?” Crandon was frowning, not wanting to doubt Amy, but there was no body on the plateau.
“They must have grabbed his body!” one of Crandon’s people said. “Look—there’s blood all over the rock there.”
“So, the leader was shot and is most likely dead, but they couldn’t let his body be found. Carrying that weight, it’s not easy to navigate this terrain. They can’t all have disappeared. Some might have made it to the road, but if others slid back into the foliage,” Hunter said, “we’ve got to get moving and find anyone we can.”
Crandon nodded, quickly giving orders to his team, but Hunter stopped him, telling him, “I want to stay on this here. I need one of your team as protection detail. We need to get this young woman down and to a hospital, and Special Agent Larson needs to stay with her at this point.”
“Right. Driscoll! Take the first car—get this woman to the hospital with Special Agent Larson.”
“On it!” the man named Driscoll said and turned to Amy.
Amy glanced at Hunter, giving him a wince and a nod. Yes, she wanted to stay with the young woman.
“Come on, come on, we’re going to get you to safety,” Amy said gently. “Magda, we’re going to get you to a hospital. And this is Special Agent—”
“Toby. Toby Driscoll,” the man said.
“Thank you,” the young woman murmured. “I can’t stop shaking. I...”
She looked as if she were going to fall. Amy caught her and the girl leaned on her.
Driscoll looked at Amy, arching a brow to make his words as much a question as they were a statement. “I’ll take point?”
“And two of us will take the offshoots of the straight trail down,” Crandon said, nodding to Hunter. “The rest of you, fan out, down the trail, back into the brush! Special Agent Forrest?”
“Into the brush,” Hunter said.
They all moved. The victim’s safety had, of course, been the first order of business. Now they needed to move.
Amy supported Magda Kenward. Driscoll was in front of her. The man was wearing a bulletproof vest. Hunter noted Driscoll took up the position of scout and protector in good form.
As they walked away, Amy suddenly turned back.
“Hunter!”
“Yeah?”
“There was one kid, maybe more, in the group! I saw a boy of about ten.”
He nodded to her. “Gotcha!” he said quietly, turning to look at Crandon and the others.
They all nodded. It was good to know. They wouldn’t be surprised by a child in the line of fire, and they wouldn’t want to risk the life of a child—especially if a parent used that child as a shield. Being forewarned was being forearmed.
Even if the parents had armed the child.
Amy nodded and headed away with Driscoll and the young woman who had been intended as a sacrifice. Hunter nodded to Crandon who spoke to his team. “We move! Stay on earphones and mics and—Agent Forrest! Set up with us, I’ve got an extra set—”
“That’s great. Thank you. Communication may be the key here,” Hunter said, gratefully accepting the tiny mic and earphones that could keep him in contact with the others. Then he nodded to Crandon and started down the trail that led down the cliffs to the opposite side.
They had returned gunfire, but ineffectually. Hunter believed some members of the “flock” were armed, but not necessarily well trained.
Someone out there was, however. Someone had thought to take the body of their leader. Someone who had an agenda.
He moved carefully, staying within the trees. And while he was sure Amy had hit and killed a man, he thought there had to be someone else in charge of the “flock” since they had been savvy enough to pick up the body and see it wasn’t left at the scene.
The moon was amazing tonight, casting down a light that was generous yet soft, allowing for both illumination and shadow. The spruce trees that so richly carpeted the hills and cliffs in the area seemed to glow with a soft emerald sheen.
Colorado was truly beautiful. It offered crystal waters, rushing brooks, the richness of the trees, the sweet scent of the earth. It was pristine here; by day, it was a hiker’s paradise.
And yet now...
He heard a shuffle in the trees ahead and held himself dead still as he listened.
The shuffle came again.
And then whispering. Muffled.
Then words he heard clearly.
“I’m scared!”
Hunter judged the whisperers had to be close—very close—for him to hear them. He heard the slightest rustling, a sound that could have been a bobcat or even an owl moving in the night.
Except now, it wasn’t. The sound came from just a few feet to his left, deep in the cover of the spruce. Very carefully, he moved in that direction. He didn’t want to startle whoever was there and cause them to shoot wildly.
And he kept hearing an echo of the words he’d understood—I’m scared.
Adults could be scared, too, but Amy had said there were kids in the group. He was almost certain there was a kid in the spruce ahead of him.
He heard shots from across the distance of the cliff—and so did the little group hiding in the spruce.
“They’re here! Cops, someone—they’re here! We’ve got to move!” someone said harshly.
And the group was suddenly in the dirt path that led to the valley level below, two men, one woman, and a boy.
The kid was ten to twelve years old, tall and lean, with a thatch of dark hair falling over his forehead. The woman looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties, the man at her side a little older, and the other man a little older still, perhaps in his midthirties. The first two adults were probably the kid’s parents.
He held a gun and while he was startled to see Hunter, he was evidently the trained man in that group because he grabbed the kid, forcing the boy in front of him as a shield and taking aim at Hunter with his weapon.
“I’ll kill the kid,” he said, staring at Hunter.
And he would. There were times when Hunter would have tried conversation, when he might have believed he could have solved the situation without violence.
The woman screamed, lunging to save the boy, screaming, “No!”
The man’s gun went off. The woman went down. The man took aim again as the kid’s father screamed and started forward as well.
Hunter fired, and the man holding the kid went down in a split second, Hunter’s shot having caught him dead center in the forehead.
He holstered his Glock as he rushed forward, falling to his knees next the father and the kid, trying to ascertain the extent of the woman’s wounds. The kid was down next to her sobbing, murmuring words that sounded like, “It was wrong, wrong, wrong, we’re paying! No, Mom, no, Mom. oh, please, God, forgive us!”
“Peggy, Peggy, Peggy!” the man sobbed, trying to draw the woman into his arms.
“May be a through and through, he caught her in the shoulder. Use the jacket—get pressure on the shot. I’m calling for help,” Hunter said, ripping off his jacket, wadding it and pressing it against the woman’s shoulder and grabbing the man’s hand to keep it down on the wound.
He used his tiny mic, letting the team leader know a suspect was down and a woman was wounded. They needed EMTs as quickly as possible.
He wondered again just how quickly help could come.
“You armed?” he demanded of the man.
The man shook his head strenuously. “No, no, I—I am not a killer, I swear it!”
The boy heard his father speaking. His eyes were glazed. He was staring at nothing, looking as if he felt ill. He spoke quietly, with pain and confusion.
“But we were there... We were watching! Father Mateus was going to... Oh, God, he was going to stab that girl and drink her blood and share her flesh—”
The man Hunter presumed to be the boy’s father spoke again, his words passionate and tear-filled.
“That girl was a sinner, boy. She was a sinner! What we were doing would save her eternal soul,” the father cried. “But not my Peggy, my Peggy never sinned, never... Oh, God!”
Hunter wanted to take the man by the shoulders and shake him hard. It hurt far more than he had imagined to hear the horrible credo that was being spoon-fed to the boy.
Somehow, he refrained from hitting the man squarely in the jaw. But he couldn’t resist saying, “Curious. I have read the Bible cover to cover—especially the New Testament. None of us is without sin—and murder is, beyond a doubt, considered to be a sin.”
The man looked at him and again, seemed more confused than anything else.
“You don’t understand! It’s coming—the Apocalypse is coming, and we were just trying to save that poor girl’s soul!”
Hunter stared back at him, frowning. His words had been frightening enough.
That he believed them was even worse.
“Well, give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, right? Caesar considers murder to be a sin—obey tax laws and others—and I’m afraid you’re under arrest for attempted murder.”
“No, no, no, I have to stay with Peggy, she’s wounded—”
“Yeah, yeah, and without sin,” Hunter murmured. “They will get her to a hospital.”
He heard movement in the brush and turned; it was Crandon. Hunter was impressed to see he and one of his men had a canvas sheet between them and were quick to assess the situation. They pushed the husband aside to carefully transfer the woman to their pallet.
Crandon looked at the man who had shot her. “Dead?”
Hunter nodded.
“We have two more teams on the way and another ambulance down the cliff,” Crandon told him. “They’ll collect this guy,” he said, nodding toward the dead man.
“I have to go with Peggy!” the man said.
“Sorry, you have to go straight to jail,” Crandon told him and shrugged. He paused and looked at the boy. “We’ll call children’s services—” he began.
“I’ll take care of that,” Hunter said. “I’ll get him down and to headquarters. If you can deal with the rest?”
Crandon nodded grimly. “We’ve collected another small group. Info on all forthcoming.”
Even as he spoke, another set of the SWAT group arrived at their point by the spruces.
“No!” the man shrieked as the woman was taken by a pair of the men.
“Hey, you can watch her down the trail!” Crandon said, as he slid cuffs on the man and pushed him forward.
“My mom!” the boy whispered.
Hunter stooped down before him. “I believe your mom is going to be fine. Honestly, I don’t lie. I saw where she was hit, and I don’t believe any vital organs were struck. You understand what I’m saying, right? They will take your mom to the hospital.”
The boy nodded. “Am I going to jail, too?” he asked. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t... They just said we were going to go and see a woman cleaned of her sins. And then... I heard people talking before Mateus started to speak and they said... Oh, God, he was going to cut her heart out! We were going to drink blood and... Oh, God, oh... Are we all sinners? Could something so horrible save someone’s soul?”
He set his hands gently on the boy’s arms. “Son, I don’t believe doing something so cruel would ever be anything God would think of as good in any religion.”
“But—but—my dad isn’t a bad man!” the boy said.
“We can be talked into doing bad things sometimes, even when we aren’t bad men,” Hunter said. “I’m Hunter. What’s your name?”
