Long Road to Mercy (Atlee Pine, #1)(95)

But Pine knew this really wasn’t an option. Her fellow feds had been acting weird on this all the way through. The two guys at the airport, if they were feds—and she strongly suspected that was the case—were planning to murder them.

I can’t trust my own people.

It was a gut-wrenching admission.

She hiked to the spot where they had found Sallie Belle. The ground was fairly level here, and there was clearly enough room for a chopper to land. She looked around for evidence of damage or disruption caused by the chopper’s skids or its prop wash. The thing was, in the Canyon things settled back down, or critters came out and made marks and moved things around. Plants grew, water trickled, the wind blew, the rains washed away traces.

There was nothing.

She looked due west, and then to the north.

One would think that every inch of the Canyon had been explored by now, but Pine knew that the vast majority of visitors saw the Canyon only from the South Rim. And from that vantage point, only about 4 percent of the Canyon was visible. The folks who ventured down here had permits to camp in certain spots, and they were told to keep to certain well-marked trails. Almost none of them ventured out into the wild. Even the rafters would go only so far up any of the side canyons, because it was damn rugged and snakes and other biting creatures lurked everywhere. Pine had one ranger tell her that while he’d been there thirty years, he’d only set foot on a small portion of the Canyon.

Pine felt her spirits collapse. Was her plan getting chewed up in the face of the reality on the ground? Did she really think she was going to come down here and, in just a few hours, find Roth and the cave and the nuke?

But she shook off these thoughts and regrouped.

Side canyon. It had to be a side canyon where Roth would have gone. That actually would line up with the navigation points on the flash drive.

She checked her watch. Another hour before the light would start coming. She set out.

The Canyon flattened out near the Colorado; the river had seen to that, of course. Yet when one veered away from the water, the land quickly steepened and there were a great many side canyons down here.

Thirty minutes later she reached the first one. After exploring it as best she could by foot, she pulled out a pair of night optics from her pack and surveyed the rest of the area.

The next moment Pine went into a crouch and slipped her Glock from its holster while she trained her optics onto the entrance to the side canyon.

She had heard the clink of boots on rock.

To her experienced ears, they were not the casual footballs of hikers. The footsteps were too stealthy, not that any sensible hikers would be exploring a side canyon in the middle of the night.

She slid to the right and took up position behind a boulder.

Ten seconds later three men appeared from out of the dark.

She saw them clearly through her optics.

She was pretty sure they weren’t rangers.

Pine had seen many rangers.

But she had never seen any of them wearing full body armor and combat helmets, and holding M4 assault rifles.





Chapter

53



PINE DREW FARTHER back against the rock as the men drew closer.

She silently cursed, because as she crouched there, the dawn was beginning to break over the Canyon. Light coming here could be breathtaking. She had hiked over the Canyon at various places and various times simply to see the sunrise. It was a surreal, one-of-a-kind experience.

Now she hated it, for the first time ever.

She could tell the men were real pros simply by the way they moved over the ground. They worked as a team, spread out, one point, two flanks, and communicating efficiently by hand signals, their gazes scanning all points on the compass, methodical, missing nothing.

And, at some point soon, they would not miss her.

They also had night optics, but their models looked far superior to hers. They were dressed in cammies but were not wearing military uniforms. No insignias, no name tags, no indicia of rank.

But they certainly looked military.

As the light began to deepen and then diffuse, they lifted their optics and trained their eyeballs on the terrain ahead.

Her Glock versus three assault rifles. It would be a short fight. She wondered where they would bury her, if they even bothered with that.

They must have come to the same conclusion that she had: namely that Roth was down here, in one of the side canyons.

And that told Pine something else.

They’d gotten the knowledge of Roth’s plan…from Ben Priest. After enhanced interrogation? And what about poor Ed Priest, whose only sin was being Ben Priest’s concerned sibling?

As Pine focused on the M4s coming her way, she slipped out her phone. One of the major carriers had put a tower in the park, and its customers sometimes could get reception. Well, Pine was a customer.

“No Service” was displayed across the top of her phone screen.

Note to self: If you get out of this alive, cancel your fucking provider contract.

She stiffened as the man on the point reached up and pulled a small communication unit that was Velcroed to his armor. He spoke into it and then listened to the response.

Okay, he’s probably got secure satellite communication down here. He would probably have it in Siberia, or Antarctica, too.

If these guys weren’t American military or CIA paramilitary, she wasn’t sure who they were. The fact that they probably served the same country as she did brought her no comfort. Those had been feds back at Simon Russell’s house, too. And they were planning to fly him to a place where torture was considered perfectly legal.