Anna Pigeon - Track of the Cat Part 20

Harland, protective instincts born of years of painstaking care of "the family jewels," pivoted and her knee struck the inside of his thigh. Pain forced a grunt from him but he did not collapse and Anna knew, with her first rational thought since the lion's tail had moved, that the fight was not over.

Banking on the surprise of sudden reversal, she let all pressure off the rifle, turned her energy with his, and he helped her to shove the gun hard against his chest.

A round fired into the air. The powerful recoil jerked them both off-balance. Stumbling back, Harland tripped over the goods he'd dropped at her first command. Anna felt herself falling with him. Neither dared relinquish their hold on the weapon to break the fall. The rifle b.u.t.t struck first and another round ripped down the barrel just as Anna's shoulder pounded into the hard earth.

The report was m.u.f.fled. Flesh and bone had silenced the bullet. Anna didn't know whether it was she or Harland who had been hit.

"Oh no..." she heard him whisper.

There is a G.o.d, she thought. And She is on my side. With renewed energy, she pulled herself to her knees, her fingers still locked tight around the weapon.

"Give it up! You're dying!" she screamed, willing him to believe, to die. "You've been hit. You're bleeding to death. Give it up. You'll die."

With a suddenness that caught her off-guard, Harland wrenched the rifle from her grasp. Anna lunged across him, slamming her weight into the arm that held the Sako and heard the rifle skitter downslope into the black ravine.

Harland closed her in a deadly embrace. "I'm not dead yet." The words were harsh and hot in her ear, more air than sound. "But I'm the last lover you'll ever know." His arms began to clamp down, crushing her.

Anna's legs were tangled in his, held tight, but her arms were free. She dragged at his hair, pounded his skull, but the grip never loosened. He'd tucked his face tight into her neck, his throat, his eyes were protected by her flesh. She sank her teeth into his shoulder and felt an answering bite on her neck, an animal bite tearing down through skin toward tendon and vein.

Like a jackal, he was ripping her throat out with his teeth. Terror gripped her, paralyzed her. Unrelentingly he was bending her spine. Soon it must snap. She could not breathe. The soft flesh of her throat was being eaten away.

Like the blind things they were, Anna's hands scrabbled over the stony ground above Harland's head. A long smooth stick came under her fingers. A flare. Hope sparked thought; hope made life possible. Hope blanked the fear and the pain that froze her mind. With every ounce of concentration she had, Anna forced her hands to uncap the flare, strike its tip against the safety cap.

Searing pain in her right wrist and hard pink light burning beyond her closed eyelids let her know she had been successful. Yelling, Anna drove the flare down inside Harland's shirt, pushed the spurting, chemical-driven torch into the back of his neck.

A scream pulled his teeth from her throat. Convulsively, his arms released her and he began clawing at the dragon consuming him from behind.

Crawling free, Anna struggled to her feet. The .357 was lost in the shadows. s.n.a.t.c.hing up a second flare, she struck it to life. In its hot light, she watched Roberts, mad with pain, ripping at his shirt. The flare fell free, tumbled downslope.

Crying, Harland sat up. Blood seeped from a hole in his left shoulder. His back, Anna knew, would have a gaping wound where the bullet had exploded from his body. The smell of burnt flesh polluted the night.

The lion was gone.

Silently, her breath coming in gasps, Anna was crying, too. Ready to push it into his eyes, she held the gout of flame from the flare toward Harland. Roberts's face was ragged, wild with more than pain: with unacceptable defeat. Drawing on reserves Anna would marvel at later, he pushed himself upright, stood swaying in the wavering light. Like an angry bull, his head dropped and he glared at her from beneath straight dark brows.

Rage had taken the place of cunning. With a roar, he charged. Anna stepped aside and he stumbled over the lip of the ravine, crashing down the talus slope into the darkness. One final cry broke up through the shadows. Then silence.

Anna hung back. Harland's fall had taken the same path as Paulsen's hunting rifle. Using her flare, she found the .357. The moon had moved scarcely at all since she'd cut the lion free of its lighted collar. Minutes only had pa.s.sed. Soon Paulsen would be returning with the "clients."

Shoving the burning end into the earth, she stubbed out the flare like a gigantic cigarette. Cool white light returned and she saw the trails of black on her hands: blood. It seeped down from her throat, dripped to the ground. Anna chose not to worry about it. Had an artery been severed, she'd be dead by now. Next time she was in town she could get her rabies booster.

Free of the chemical glare of the fire, her eyes began to adjust again to the semi-darkness. The garish ghosts receded from her peripheral vision. Making her breathing as even and soundless as she could, Anna watched and listened. From beyond the lip of the ravine came a pink glow and the insistent hissing of the first flare. Other than that, no sound. Even the skritching and slithering natural to the desert night was hushed.

She ran quickly twenty yards to her right, approached the edge of the ravine from an unexpected-she hoped-direction. Leading with the revolver, she looked down. The inky shadows were given unholy life by the guttering flare. First Anna sought the dark and bright wood and metal of Paulsen's hunting rifle. It had lodged fifteen or twenty feet down, b.u.t.t wedged between a small rainbow cactus and a rock. Below, perhaps twenty yards, crumpled at the edge of the uncertain light, was Harland Roberts. He did not move.

Crablike, Anna scuttled down the loose stone of the ravine's side. Partway down she stopped and picked up the hunting rifle. For a moment she watched Roberts. He seemed not even to breathe and it crossed her mind that he'd broken his neck in the fall. Or he was playing possum.

She slung Paulsen's Sako across her back on its strap. Her shoulder was aching. The collarbone, incompletely knit, had cracked again. Once more she started her slow descent. A dozen feet from Harland she stopped. The moonlight didn't penetrate this far and the flare, burning its way out in the arid soil, made little of Harland but a shadow darker than the rest.

"I'm not coming any closer, Harland," Anna said. "Maybe you're dead and maybe you're not. Either way, I win."

The lump never moved. Anna turned and started up the slope. She was past the raided cache when his voice brought her to a halt.

"You can't win, Anna." Though he tried to keep it out of his voice, she could hear the pain. He was shot. He was burned. Maybe he'd broken something in the fall. Still Anna didn't trust his helplessness.

She turned back but went no lower.

"You can't ever win, Anna. Your system is against you. Maybe I'll get fired. Maybe not. They won't put me out of business, though. One good hunt will pay off any fines for poaching. n.o.body cares, Anna. They're just animals. In Texas they may even give me a medal."

"Craig, Sheila-even in Texas that will be considered murder," Anna said.

"No murders. Just the ravings of a crazy lady ranger. Your word against mine."

The dull chopping of a helicopter engine sounded as it marched down the northern sky, toward the ravine.

"Jerimiah and I and every sc.r.a.p of evidence will be gone in thirty minutes. Your word against mine. And you may not live long enough to talk too much. You don't win."

The helicopter was in the ravine, flying up from where the hills opened onto the salt flats to the west.

"He's coming, Anna, Jerimiah D. and three men. Maybe if you run we won't find you. We won't find you tonight," he amended and laughed. The laughter was cut short. Anna hoped it was from pain.

She unslung the hunting rifle, put it to her shoulder, and braced for the recoil. As the helicopter flew over, she fired four rounds. One sang off metal. There was a light tinkling sound as fragments of Plexiglas rained down onto the rocks.

The helicopter climbed abruptly, was silhouetted against the moon. A spotlight beneath the fuselage switched on and a white finger of light began probing back down the narrow canyon. Anna fired again. The light shattered.

The helicopter spun on its axis and flew north, straight over the hills, not even attempting to seek cover from prying eyes. The pounding noise of the blades receded.

"You can bring the law down on me, Anna. But you won't win," Harland said. He was only a voice from the shadows. The flare had died, and the helicopter's light had robbed Anna of her night vision.

"You can beat the law," Anna said. "But you can't beat the desert." She started up the slope.

"You can't leave me here," he called after her and there was fear in his voice for the first time.

"Fence crew will find you in a couple of months," she returned without stopping. "What's left of you."

"I'll die of thirst. Anna, I broke my ankle. Swear to Christ."

Anna said nothing. She didn't much care.

"Paulsen'll be back in the morning. He'll get me," Roberts cried.

Anna doubted that. For all Paulsen knew this was a trap and the place was crawling with Feds. He'd steer clear of the West Side for a long time to come.

Reaching the flat of the saddle, she unslung Paulsen's fancy rifle. Using the tail of her shirt, she smudged her prints from the stock and barrel but didn't wipe the stock clean. Half New Mexico knew Paulsen's gun, knew he never let anyone touch it. And it was the gun that shot Harland Roberts. Anna set it on the ground.

"What're you doing, Anna?" Harland called up the hill.

"Leaving."

"I'll die of thirst," he cried.

Anna walked over to the ravine, looked into the depths. She couldn't see Roberts. "You never know," she said. "You might not live long enough. That lion could still be around. Here kitty, kitty, kitty," she called.

"Don't!" Harland screamed.

Anna walked across the flat toward the ridge where her camp was. The moon had moved partway down the sky. A silver trail led down the ridges: the path she would follow home. She began to run.

"Please!" she heard Harland yelling.

Maybe she'd saddle up Gideon, ride out tomorrow with water and bring Harland in. Then again, Gideon's hoof wasn't healing like she'd hoped.

Maybe she'd give him the day off.

Turn the page for a sneak preview of Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon mystery FLASHBACK.

Available now from Berkley Books

Until she ran out of oxygen, Anna was willing to believe she was taking part in a PBS special. The water was so clear sunlight shone through as if the sea were but mountain air. Cloud shadows, stealthy and faintly magical at four fathoms, moved lazily across patches of sand that showed startlingly white against the dark, ragged coral. Fishes colored so brightly it seemed it must be a trick of the eye or the tail end of an altered state flitted, nibbled, explored, and slept. Without moving, Anna could see a school of silverfish, tiny anchovies, synchronized, moving like polished chain mail in a glittering curtain. Four Blue Tangs, so blue her eyes ached with the joy of them, nosed along the edge of a screamingly purple sea fan bigger than a coffee table. A jewfish, six feet long and easily three hundred pounds, his blotchy hide mimicking the sun-dappled rock, pouting lower lip thick as Anna's wrist, lay without moving beneath an overhang of a coral-covered rock less than half his size, his wee fish brain a.s.suring him he was hidden. Countless other fish, big and small, bright and dull, ever more delightful to Anna because she'd not named them and so robbed them of a modic.u.m of their mystery, moved around her on their fishy business.

Air, and with it time, was running out. If she wished to live, she needed to breathe. Her lungs ached with that peculiar sensation of being full to bursting. Familiar desperation licked at the edges of her mind. One more kick, greetings to a spiny lobster (a creature whose body design was only possible in a weightless world), and, with a strong sense of being hounded from paradise, she swam for the surface, drove a foot or more into the air and breathed.

The sky was as blue as the eye-watering fishes and every bit as merciless as the sea. The ocean was calm. Even with her chin barely above the surface she could see for miles. There was remarkably little to soothe the eye between the unrelenting glare of sea and sky. To the north was Garden Key, a sc.r.a.p of sand no more than thirteen acres in total and, at its highest point, a few meters above sea level. Covering the key, two of its sides spilling out into the water, was the most bizarre duty station at which she had served.

Fort Jefferson, a ma.s.sive brick fortress, had been built on this last lick of America, the Dry Tortugas, seventy miles off Key West in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time construction started in 1846, it was the cutting edge of national defense. Made of brick and mortar with five bastions jutting out from the corners of a pentagon, it had been built as the first line of defense for the southern states, guarding an immense natural-and invisible-harbor; it was the only place for sixty miles where ships could sit out the hurricanes that menaced the Gulf and the southeastern seaboard or come under the protection of the fort's guns in time of war. Though real, the harbor was invisible because its breakwaters, a great broken ring of coral, were submerged.

Jefferson never fired a single shot in defense of its country. Time and substrata conspired against it. Before the third tier of the fort could be completed, the engineers noticed the weight of the ma.s.sive structure was causing it to sink and stopped construction. Even unfinished it might have seen honorable-if not glamorous-duty, but the rifled cannon was invented, and the seven-to-fifteen-foot-thick brick-and-mortar walls were designed only to withstand old-style cannons. Under siege by these new weapons of war, the fort would not stand. Though destined for glorious battle, Jefferson sat out the Civil War as a union prison.

Till Anna had been a.s.signed temporary duty at the Dry Tortugas, she'd not even heard of it. Now it was home.

For a moment she merely treaded water, head thrown back to let the sun seek out any epithelial cell it hadn't already destroyed over the last ten years. Just breathing-when the practice had recently been denied-was heaven. Somewhere she'd read that a meager seventeen percent of air pulled in by the lungs was actually used. Idly, she wondered if she could train her body to salvage the other eighty-three percent so she could remain underwater ten minutes at a stretch rather than two. Scuba gave one the time but, with the required gear, not the freedom. Anna preferred free diving. Three times she breathed deep, on the third she held it, upended and kicked again for bliss of the bottom.

Flashing in the sun, she was as colorful as any fish. Her mask and fins were iridescent lime green, her dive skin startling blue. Though the water was a welcoming eighty-eight degrees in late June, that was still eight point six degrees below where she functioned best. For prolonged stays in this captivating netherworld she wore a skin, a lightweight body-hugging suit with a close-fitting hood and matching socks. Not only did it conserve body heat, but it also protected her from the sometimes vicious bite of the coral. Like all divers who weren't vandals, Anna a.s.siduously avoided touching- and so harming-living coral, but when they occasionally did collide, human skin was usually as damaged as the coral.

Again she stayed with and played with the fish until her lungs felt close to bursting. Though it would be hotly debated by a good percentage of Dry Tortugas National Park's visitors, as far as she was concerned the "paradise" part of this subtropical paradise was hidden beneath the waves.

Anna had never understood how people could go to the beach and lie in the sand to relax. The sh.o.r.e was a far harsher environment than the mountains. Air was hot and heavy and clung to the skin. Wind scoured. Sand itched. Salt sucked moisture from flesh. The sun, in the sky and again off the surface of the sea, seared and blinded. For a couple of hours each day it was heaven. After that it began to wear one down as the ocean wears away rock and bone.

Two dive sites, twenty dives-the deepest over forty feet-and Anna finally tired herself out. Legs reduced to jelly from pushing through an alien universe, she couldn't kick hard enough to rise above the surface and pull herself over the gunwale. Glad there were no witnesses, she wriggled and flopped over the transom beside the outboard motor to spill on deck, splattering like a bushel of sardines. Her Sunday was over. She'd managed to spend yet one more weekend in Davy Jones's locker. There wasn't really any place else to go.

The Reef Ranger, one of the park's patrol boats, a twenty-five-foot inboard/outboard Boston Whaler, the bridge consisting of a high bench and a Plexiglas windscreen, fired up at a touch. Anna upped anchor, then turned the bow toward the bastinadoed fortress that was to be her home for another eight to twelve weeks. Seen from the level of the surrounding ocean, Fort Jefferson presented a bleak and surreal picture: an overwhelming geometric tonnage floating, apparently unsupported, on the surface of the sea.

Enjoying the feel of a boat beneath her after so many years in landlocked parks, Anna headed for the fort. The mariners' rhyme used to help those new to the water remember which markers to follow when entering heavy traffic areas rattled meaninglessly through her mind: red on right returning. red on right returning. Shrunken by salt and sun, her skin felt two sizes too small for her bones, and even with dark gla.s.ses and the sun at her back, it was hard to keep her eyes open against the glare. Shrunken by salt and sun, her skin felt two sizes too small for her bones, and even with dark gla.s.ses and the sun at her back, it was hard to keep her eyes open against the glare.

The opportunity to serve as interim supervisory ranger for the hundred square miles of park, scarcely one of which was above water, came in May. Word trickled down from the southeastern region that the Dry Tortugas's supervisory ranger had to take a leave of absence for personal reasons and a replacement was needed until he returned or, failing that, a permanent replacement was found.

Dry Tortugas National Park was managed jointly with southern Florida's Everglades National Park. The bra.s.s all worked out of Homestead, near Everglades. Marooned as it was, seventy miles into the Gulf, day-to-day operations of the Dry Tortugas were run by a supervisory ranger, who managed one law enforcement ranger, two interpreters, and an office administrator. Additional law enforcement had been budgeted and two rangers hired. They were new to the service and, at present, being trained at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia.

"Supervisory Ranger" was a t.i.tle that bridged a gray area in the NPS hierarchy. For reasons to which Anna was not privy, the head office chose not to upgrade the position to Chief Ranger but left it as a subsidiary position to the Chief Ranger at Everglades. Still, it was a step above Anna's current District Ranger level on the Natchez Trace. To serve as "Acting Supervisory Ranger" was a good career move.

That wasn't entirely why she'd chosen to abandon home and hound for three months to accept the position. Anna was in no hurry to rush out of the field and into a desk job. There'd be time enough for that when her knees gave out or her tolerance for the elements-both natural and criminal-wore thin.

She had taken the Dry Tortugas a.s.signment for personal reasons. When she was in a good frame of mind, she told herself she'd needed to retreat to a less populated and mechanized post to find the solitude and unmarred horizons wherein to renew herself, to seek answers. When cranky or down, she felt it was the craven running away of a yellow-bellied deserter.

Paul Davidson, his divorce finalized, had asked her to marry him.

Two days later, a car, a boat and a plane ride behind her-not to mention two thousand miles of real estate, a goodly chunk of it submerged-she was settling into her quarters at Fort Jefferson.

"Coincidence?" her sister Molly had asked sarcastically. "You be the judge."

The fort had only one phone, which worked sporadically, and mail was delivered once a week. Two weeks had pa.s.sed in sandy exile, and she was no more ready to think about marriage than she had been the day she left. But, given the paucity of entertainments-even a devotee could only commune with fish for so long-she was rapidly getting to the point where there was nothing else to think about.

Under these pressing circ.u.mstances, she'd done the only sensible thing: she stuck her nose in somebody else's business. Daniel Barrons, a maintenance man-of-all-trades and the closest thing Anna'd made to a friend at the fort, had a weakness for gossip that she shamelessly exploited.

He was a block of a man, with what her father would have referred to as a "peasant build," one designed for carrying sick calves into the barn. Perhaps in his late forties, Daniel covered his blunt face with a brown-black beard. On his left arm, seldom seen as the man wasn't given to tank tops, was a tattoo so cla.s.sic Anna smiled whenever she glimpsed its bottom edge: a naked girl reclining on elbows and f.a.n.n.y under a cartoon palm tree.

Given this rough and manly exterior, tradition would have had him strong and silent. Every time he snuggled down in his favorite position to dish the dirt, elbows on workbench, hindquarters stuck out and usually bristling with tools shoved in his pockets, furry chin in scarred hands, Anna was charmed and tickled.

With only a small nudge, Daniel had a.s.sumed the position and filled her in on why she'd been given the opportunity to explore this oddly harsh, boring, beautiful, magical bit of the earth, Her predecessor, Lanny Wilc.o.x, hadn't taken an extended leave willingly. It had been forced upon him when he'd begun to come unglued.

"His girlfriend, a little Cuban number as cute as a basket full of kittens, ran out on him," Daniel had told her, his voice low and gentle as usual. He consistently spoke as if a baby slept in the next room and he was loath to wake it.

"Lanny was a terrific guy, but he was getting up there, fifty-one this last birthday. At his peak he couldn't a been much to look at. Hey, I like Lanny just fine, but, well, even he knew he was about as good-looking as the south end of a northbound spiny lobster. Five, six months ago he hooked up with Theresa. She's not yet thirty, smart, funny and a nice addition to a bathing suit. Next thing you know, she's living out here. When she cut out, Lanny just sort of lost it."

From what Anna had gathered, the old Supervisory Ranger's "losing it" consisted of increasingly bizarre behavior that revolved around the seeing and hearing of things that no one else saw or heard. "Ghosts," murmured a couple of the more melodramatic inhabitants of the fort. "Hallucinations," said the practical ones, and Lanny was bundled up and shipped off to play with his imaginary friends out of sight of the tax-paying public.

On first arriving, struck by the beauty of the sky and sea, the fishes and the masonry, Anna couldn't understand what stresses could possibly chase even a heartbroken man around the bend. Piloting the Reef Ranger Reef Ranger into the harbor, the glow of her swimming with the fishes burned and blown away, she realized that after a mere couple weeks of isolation, wet heat, and scouring winds, she was tempted to dream up companions of her own. She needed a sense of connection to something, somebody to keep her on an even keel. into the harbor, the glow of her swimming with the fishes burned and blown away, she realized that after a mere couple weeks of isolation, wet heat, and scouring winds, she was tempted to dream up companions of her own. She needed a sense of connection to something, somebody to keep her on an even keel.

She laughed. The sound whipped away on the liquid wind over the bow. Soon she was going to have to relinquish her self-image as a hermit. Paul-or perhaps just the pa.s.sage of years-had socialized her to some extent. Molly would be pleased. Anna made a mental note to tell her sister when next she phoned. It could be a while. Not only was the fort's only phone in much demand, but it also had a one-to-two-second delay, like a phone call from Mars, that made communication an exercise in frustration.

Red on right.

Anna slowed the Ranger Ranger to a sedate and wakeless speed as she entered the small jewel of a harbor on the east side of Garden Key. Eleven pleasure boats were anch.o.r.ed, two she recognized from the weekend before, to a sedate and wakeless speed as she entered the small jewel of a harbor on the east side of Garden Key. Eleven pleasure boats were anch.o.r.ed, two she recognized from the weekend before, Moonshadow Moonshadow and and Key Key to to My Heart, My Heart, both expensive, both exquisitely kept. They were owned by two well-to-do couples out of Miami who seemed joined at the hip as their boats were joined at the gunwale, one rafting off the other. Anna waved as she pa.s.sed. both expensive, both exquisitely kept. They were owned by two well-to-do couples out of Miami who seemed joined at the hip as their boats were joined at the gunwale, one rafting off the other. Anna waved as she pa.s.sed.

At the end of the harbor away from the tourists, as if there were an invisible set of tracks running from Bush Key-Garden's near neighbor-to the harbor mouth and they had been condemned to live on the wrong side of them, two commercial shrimpers cuddled up to one another.

Commercial fishing and, much to the shriek and lament of the locals, sport fishing was banned in the park, but right outside the boundaries was good shrimping. The boats stalked the perimeters, the honest-or the cautious-keeping outside the imaginary line established by NPS buoys. Perhaps a few sought to poach, but there were plenty of shrimp outside. Most came for the same reasons ships had been coming for two hundred years, the reason the fort had been built in the middle of the ocean: the natural safe zone of flat water the coral reefs provided.

Shrimp boats, their side nets looking like tattered wings falling from a complex skeleton of wood and metal, were a complication Anna'd not foreseen. They sailed from many ports, most in the south and southeast, following the shrimp: four weeks in Texas, then through the Gulf to the Keys. Some boats were family owned, most were not. All were manned and kept in a way unique to an idiosyncratic and inbred culture. Daniel called them "bikers of the sea." Having spent an unspecified and largely undiscussed number of years in the land version of that violent fraternity before, as he put it, "breaking my back and seeing the light," he would know.

The shrimpers were a scabrous lot, not just the boats, which reeked of dead fish, cigarette smoke and old grease-part cooking, part engine-but the sailors themselves. The family boats were crewed by men and women, three or four to a boat. The others were all male, but for the occasional unfortunate who, like a biker chick out of favor, was pa.s.sed from boat to boat, usually fueled for her duties with drugs and alcohol.

Anna had yet to see a shrimper with all his or her teeth. The violence of the culture coupled with months at sea away from modern dentistry marked their faces. A lot of them went to sea to kick drugs and found more onboard. A startling percentage had felony records.

This borderline lifestyle would not have affected Anna had not a symbiotic relationship sprung up between them and the tourists and park employees at the fort. Fresh gulf shrimp were delicious. The shrimpers were glad to trade a few for the culinary delight of those in the park. The problem was that the currency was alcohol-mostly cheap beer, but enough whiskey to make things interesting. Drunk, the shrimpers lived up to Daniel's name for them. They came ash.o.r.e; they yelled, disrupted tours, urinated in public, knocked one another's few remaining teeth out, beat their women and occasionally knifed one another.