He didn't seem to be making much progress, Charlie thought to himself. He'd gotten the one arm free, and the rest of him decided that it was sufficient for the time being. He could scratch his nose, and he could look up at the sky. He could think—a challenging point of Cognitive Emergence had floated through his brain and he'd scratched some figures into the mud so that he wouldn't forget the details. If alpha sub-one defined the pre-emergent state of cognition, and alpha-sub two the post-emergent state, then the difference multiplied by the cognition awareness factor as proposed in sub-section G of the proof would theoretically demonstrate the progression of cognition across the spectrum of time…Charlie's thoughts drifted off.
He hauled them back irritably. Why couldn't he think clearly? He wasn't in any pain at the moment—not much, at least. Quite a bit of him had gone thankfully numb. He was uncomfortable in the extreme, but that shouldn't matter.
Charlie looked around. Surely that wolf over there was an hallucination. Maybe it was a coyote. It looked small for a wolf, but he thought that coyotes generally liked more open terrain than this tree-covered mountain. He threw a handful of mud at it, and the hallucination loped off in pursuit of some imaginary rabbits.
He was hot. He was cold. He was both, and at the same time. He was hungry, and thirsty, and miserable, and above all: stuck.
No help for it; they needed more bodies to assist in the search. A dozen FBI agents wasn't going to cut it, not for an operation as this had turned out to be. The local sheriff's department had pitched in, all three of them, and it wasn't enough. Don couldn't wait for the additional thirty men that the Area Director had dispatched. They would arrive within two hours, scrambling to get here fast, but Don couldn't wait.
They needed men to process the lodge staff that had been stuck in the kitchen and they needed a minimum of two agents a piece to cover each researcher. No matter what, those researchers held between their ears most of the details of that novel weapon plan and Washington was going to be extremely interested in what they had to say. Leaving them unguarded would be a stupid move. From what he could tell, it seemed as though the mercenaries had dragged along one of the laptops that the research had been copied onto during the researching process but that would be of limited value to the mercenaries. They had four pass codes, and they needed five. The fifth pass code was somewhere out in the forest, along the jogging trail, trying to escape.
It would be stupid to wait for help to arrive to go after Charlie. Don had at his fingertips the country's finest tracker. They would be going after a well-trained group that out-numbered them by a factor of three or more, but he had to try. If the mercenaries from DarkSeas or AutoDyne or whichever hell company they worked for got hold of Charlie, they'd work him over for his pass code and escape into the dark recesses of the underground. Don was under no illusion that his brother could hold out for any length of time, and the mercs already had more than an hour's lead. They needed to move.
Colby was waiting for Don and Ian at the entrance to the jogging trail, rifle in hand and a field pack strapped to his back.
"Colby—"
"What?" Colby looked—and sounded—truculent. It would have been cute when he was four. Now, Don just found it to be dismaying.
"Colby, you're lucky that I allowed you to come along—"
"Don, I've been hunting and tracking in woods like these since I was four years old," Colby interrupted, "and dammit I want a crack at these bozos! They are seriously interfering with people I care about, Don." He hit him with the big one. "Besides, you need me. You need me on the trail."
"He's got you there, Eppes," Ian put in, refusing to smile. He eased the strap to his field pack across his shoulder. "There's a lot of ground to cover."
Don scowled. He could object. He could say no. He could tell the ex-Army Ranger to return to the lodge and shuffle personnel around to cover all the possibilities, not just this one.
Charlie was out there somewhere, with a crack squad of mercenaries after him.
Don glared. "You can keep up?"
"Watch me."
"You make sure that you do." Don turned away, leading them onto the jogging trail. Like, what was he going to do if Colby over-judged his capabilities? Send him home from the middle of the mountain with mercenaries all around? What kind of dumb ass operation was Don running?
No help for it. No time to waste. With the other two close on his heels, Don broke out into a ground-eating trot.
Charlie was out there, and they needed to find him first.
Seriously thirsty. Charlie could hear a babbling brook some hundred yards away, and it tantalized him with the sound. The picture played itself out in his mind's eye, the water trickling over stones rubbed smooth by the years of water filtering down from the snow-covered mountain tops. The water itself would be crystal clear, a fish or two dancing in between those smooth stones and trying to avoid notice from some feral fisherman.
Thirsty, but not hungry. Hurting; his leg had begun to throb and he suspected that he was feverish. He felt cold at the same time; must be the cold mountain air. That must be what was taking away the hunger. Small gifts to be grateful for.
Charlie scraped away another minute layer of dirt with the broken fingernails of his free hand. Soon his other arm would be released from its muddy prison. In fact, the dirt was now so thin that he ought to be able to lift his arm and break through the final chunks of mud. He heaved at it, muscles bunching in his chest.
No good. The hardening mud stubbornly refused to let go.
Or was it that Charlie himself was growing weaker?
This was crazy. Charles Eppes was a respected CalSci professor, and professors of his ilk didn't find themselves trapped in a mudslide trying to escape from businessmen of dubious practices. This was crazy!
Charlie started shivering, and couldn't stop.
The trail came to a fork, and Don, in the lead, slowed to examine their choices.
One side was clearly more traveled and made for better running. If Don himself were out for the exercise alone, that would be the trail that he would select. The other path was off-limits, according to the yellow sign that blocked it off. There had been recent mudslides in the area, he read, with the possibility for more and guests were warned not to take that route.
Which way had the mercenaries gone? Don looked at the ground and saw evidence of several feet passing through on the more traveled side.
Colby nodded. "Left," he said. "The mercenaries went left."
"They did," Ian agreed, "but look at this." He pointed to a twig. It had snapped, and the sap was only now hardening. "Recent."
"There's bear in these hills," Colby argued. "I'm not seeing any footprints. Nothing human, that is."
"Neither am I," Ian said. "Don?"
Don stared at the two paths. The mercenaries had clearly taken the left path, and they were almost certainly after Charlie. By rights, the trio should go left and track the group down to retrieve his brother. But…
"There's no footprints," Colby insisted. "I'm seein' a wolf print here. That's probably what bent the twig. Look, there's another one here. They probably use this trail all the time, during the night. We want the mercenaries, we gotta take the left fork."
Absolutely correct. That was if they wanted the mercenaries. But Don and his team didn't want the mercenaries, they wanted Charlie. And Don's stupid little brother was never one to take the easy path, not when there was something more convoluted available.
"The right fork," he decided slowly. "We're taking that one."
"Don?" Colby couldn't believe his ears.
"The right." It had the correct feel to it. Don looked up at Colby. "I'm thinking—" hoping!—"that Charlie would want to get as far away from the lodge as possible, as quickly as possible. The left fork will spin around and lead back pretty quick. Charlie would take the right fork."
"But, the mud slides—"
"Charlie would calculate the probability of a mudslide and compare it to the probability of getting caught," Don interrupted. "Which do you think he'd decide?"
That put a new spin on things. Colby finally agreed with Don, and nodded. "Let's go."
Charlie regretted his return to consciousness. At least while he was asleep, he didn't hurt.
His leg was hurting more now. The blessed numbness had vanished, leaving him trying not to move if at all possible. Every little twitch, every gesture translated into a wave of pain that started mid-thigh and wracked through him to where he wanted to cry for the futility of it all.
He couldn't even work to free his other arm. That possibility had vanished along with the purple elephant that had come to taunt him with his predicament. Hallucinations, that's what they were. The thirst and the hunger and the fever were all combining to show him purple elephants and green mosquitoes the size of helicopters.
He wondered what had happened to the other professors, now that he was beyond the reach of AutoDyne. Jeter and Husinger and the other two could cheerfully give up their pass codes without a struggle, secure in the knowledge that the weapon design was safe without Charlie's own password. Jeter would make them work for it, of that Charlie was certain. It would be her style: make the bastards hustle. Nothing easy. Jeter herself hadn't had it easy coming up through the ranks of academia; no reason to make things easy for their captors. Charlie liked her, liked them all for their quick acceptance of each other's expertise.
Eventually the mercenaries would puzzle it out. There wasn't a cipher in the world that couldn't be deciphered, given enough time and resources. AutoDyne might not have enough resources, though, and certainly wouldn't want to put in the time.
That wasn't going to be Charlie's problem. The chartreuse wolf skirting the edge of the mud-covered slope would be, assuming that it was real and not just another hallucination.
Maybe it wasn't a problem. Maybe the wolf, if it was real, would be the solution. Wolves were quick and efficient killers, and a quick and efficient death would be wonderful way to avoid feeling any more pain. Feeding wildlife in an ecologically approved environment would be an added benefit. After all, it wasn't as though anyone was likely to stop by and haul Charlie out of his predicament. He was out in the middle of nowhere.
Don knelt and picked up some of the mud that obliterated the trail. He rubbed in between his fingers, judging the moisture. "This is fresh. Within the last day."
Ian stared off across the expanse. "It also washed away the trail. His tracks are now history."
"It'll take us hours to go around," was Colby's contribution. "Who knows if we'll be able to pick up his prints on the other side?"
"Yeah, but we're ahead of the mercs," Ian pointed out. "We found proof positive that he went this way. The mercs took the wrong fork," he said, reminding them that not half a mile back they'd seen footprints in Charlie's size. That had cheered them and sped them on to this point. "We know that we're closer than they are."
Don looked around. The mudslide had been an extensive one, pulling down trees and even moving boulders. Here and there a branch stuck up a forlorn twig, leaves twisting in the breeze that was doing its best to dry the mud into fertile ground. The devastation was a great swath of brown that traveled downhill like a brown river frozen in time. The lodge had done the right thing by prohibiting the trail to its guests.
And yet, there was something that he was missing; Don was sure of it. There was something that he was seeing and not comprehending. By rights, he should direct the team to go up and around the mudslide. There was less of a chance of getting caught in a repeat slide, less chance for the still moist dirt to begin to shift once more. They would pick up Charlie's trail again on the other side of the slide and find the errant math professor. If they were lucky, they'd even find him coming onto the main road that wound around the mountain, trying to thumb a ride from a tourist returning home. They'd repossess their professor and call for a better ride for him, one equipped with FBI agents armed with weapons so that a certain group of mercenaries didn't try to hijack him and his pass code.
"C'mon, Eppes." Ian was eager to get moving.
"Hold on." Don pulled his field glasses out and put them to his face. He scanned the brown expanse.
Nothing. A twig here and there. A larger lump with gray sticking out it: a boulder all but submerged in the solidifying flow of mud. A lone tree that had withstood the onslaught of the semi-solid mess. A flash of something dark against the brown—
What was that? It wasn't a twig. It wasn't the right shape for a boulder. The carcass of a deer, caught in the slide? Maybe. Probably. Likely—wasn't that a wolf closing in on it? Free eats here.
"What do you think?" Don handed the glasses to Colby, the closest to him. "Look just about two o'clock. What's that shape?" Don didn't wait for an answer. A scary thought was driving him toward the unknown object. He stepped out, slipping on the muddy surface.
"I don't know, Don." Colby tried to lurch forward and still look through the field glasses. "I see a wolf, broad daylight. What's it after?"
"Let's find out." Ian too began to pick his way down the slope, using the devastation of the edge of the mudslide to remove the obstacles in his path, helping him to move more quickly. "Let's not take too much time about it, either."
"It's him." Don didn't need a positive identification to be certain. He could feel it, in his gut. It was his brother, and there was a wolf licking its chops not ten yards away. Heedless of the danger to himself, he broke into a run. The mud held him back by dragging at his feet; too much effort for so little progress. "Charlie!"
The wolf was ready to spring. It could see the approaching competition for its prey, and it was hungry. It wasn't willing to give up, not yet.
Too far. Don was several hundred yards away, and the wolf was only ten. Even shooting the wolf was out of the question; out of range. Charlie wasn't moving—was the man still alive? Had he been killed in the mudslide? Was all of this for nothing?
Blam!
A bullet whizzed by him—Ian!
The sniper's weapon was the most powerful among them, a gun designed for long range accuracy. It was the only rifle capable of traversing the distance between them and Charlie and his canine attacker.
Ian missed. The bullet spat up a tiny geyser of mud at the wolf's feet.
But the wolf got the message. With a yelp, it jumped straight up in the air. When it came down, seeing three large men pelting down toward it and its prey, it chose the prudent course of action: it fled. There were easier targets to hunt, ones that didn't have such vigorous defenders.
The mud was deeper here, and Don was sinking in to his ankles. It didn't matter; he kept on going, muscling through the sticky depths to reach his brother. Charlie was thoroughly trapped, only his head and one arm exposed, his eyes closed.
Eyes closed; good. Corpses, especially unattended ones, tended to die with their eyes open, unseeing into the distance. Charlie's eyes were closed, suggesting…
Don flung himself flat onto his belly next to his brother. "Charlie!" No answer, and Don thrust his fingers next to Charlie's neck, seeking a pulse. Cold, the skin was corpse-cold—wait! There it was! The slow throbbing of a heart, just barely alive.
"He's alive," Don snapped to the other two. "Help me get him out of here. Charlie!" he pleaded. "Charlie, talk to me. Say something!"
The eyelids slowly dragged themselves open, trying blearily to focus and failing. The lips moved; nothing emerged.
That was okay. His brother was responding to him. Actual noise didn't matter, and neither did the return closing of the eyes. His brother was alive!
Now to keep him that way. Don dug frantically at the mud, trying to figure out how far down it went and how best to free his brother. Colby too dropped beside them, and dug a metal cup out of his field pack to speed up the process.
Ian loomed above them, and Colby gave him a glare filled with pent-up worry. "You missed," he told the sniper.
Ian's eyes went cold. "No, I didn't." I didn't have to kill the wolf, just because it was doing what Nature told it to. Scaring it away did the job.
Colby accepted the correction. "Help me get his arm out."
Don paused to look around them. "We won't have much time. We have to assume that the mercenaries heard the shot and will figure out what it means. They'll be coming this way to investigate."
"And we're out in the open, on top of this river of mud," Ian agreed. "We'll be sitting ducks. No cover."
Don didn't bother saying the obvious: I'm not leaving him. None of them intended for that to happen, but that didn't mean they were oblivious to the danger. Don issued orders. "I figure we've got maybe an hour before they arrive. Maybe more, depending on how far down the other trail they went, but we'd better not count on it. Here's what we're going to do." He indicated the still figure in the mud. "I'm going to stay here with Charlie, keep digging him out." I'll check his pulse periodically, too, just to keep from panicking. "Colby, you call for help. I'm thinking that the signal isn't going to be too good around here, so you may need to travel back a ways to get through to Murphy and the others. Tell 'em to get all available hands out this way, and fast. You got that?"
"Going." Colby scrambled to his feet, pulling out both his walkie-talkie and his cell. If one didn't work, the other one might.
Maybe not. Both sent back static and dead air, and Colby took off at a run to find a place with an adequate signal.
Don wasn't finished. "I figure we've got a little under an hour," he repeated. "You?"
"Pretty much," Ian agreed.
"Right. Help me here for about forty-five minutes, then—"
"Not leaving either of you alone, Eppes," Ian interrupted.
"And I'm not asking you to." These weren't just friends. These were brothers in arms. Abandonment was out of the question, even in the face of sure death. "In forty-five minutes, I want you to scout the area, see what's happening. Figure out how close they are. If you need to, use that pea-shooter of yours to knock down the odds a little. Discourage 'em from getting any closer. Hear me?"
"I hear you." Ian kept his face as stone. "I'll hold them off, even if it means putting one through the eye instead of the knee."
"Right." That was a lot to ask of anyone, to deliberately shoot to kill. Don knew how it felt, and both Ian and Colby had gone through the same horror. There's a reason they say War is Hell—Don interrupted that train of thought. "Help me here, for now."
They worked in silence, the better to hear anyone approaching. Neither man believed that the mercenaries were close enough to sneak up on them, but neither believed that they were infallible. Don surprised Ian by pulling out a small collapsible shovel from his field pack, digging in around his brother and pulling out large quantities of mud. Ian raised his eyebrows at his fellow FBI agent.
Don grunted, and heaved away another shovel full. "Amazing what comes in handy in the Badlands," was all that he said.
It went slower than anyone wanted. For every cubic foot of mud that they pulled out, another half foot tumbled back in around Charlie. The mathematician, after the first few inches that freed his other arm, sank back into a semi-stuporous state, rousing only when the mud shifted and caused his leg to move. Don winced at every groan that came forth but kept going. None of them could afford to stop.
Colby rejoined them. "I got through to Murphy," he told Don. "Cells won't work here consistently; the towers are too far out. He heard me on the walkie-talkies, and he's calling for more help. Since this falls under Homeland Security, he's going to see if he can mobilize either the National Guard or a squad from the base at El Toro. If he can find a team of jumpers, he's going to have them parachute in on top of us." He looked at Charlie. "How's he doing?"
Don couldn't answer. The words stuck in his throat, so it was Ian who responded. "He's hanging in there. Start pulling out more mud. The sooner we get out of here, the safer we'll be."