Chapter 13

"The Bexar County District Attorney's office was rocked this afternoon when a petition was filed with 121^st District Court Judge Roy Farmer on behalf of fugitive Miles Underwood. The petition seeks the dismissal of all charges brought against the alleged rapist and murderer of San Antonio College coed Virginia Rogers.

"Citing new evidence showing the former Army NCO could not possibly have been responsible for Ms. Rogers's death, the petition denies a rape ever took place. Affidavits accompanying the petition from witnesses who could not be located earlier confirm Underwood's only involvement was an attempt to assist the victim.

Attorneys for Mr. Underwood also claim an exculpatory autopsy report was deliberately suppressed by the prosecution and another substituted in its place. The newly discovered report allegedly shows Ms. Rogers probably died from complications resulting from a botched abortion attempt and found no evidence of rape.

"A companion lab report, unreleased until now, indicates DNA material collected from the body of the victim was NOT that of the defendant. The District Attorney's Office issued a brief denial of any wrongdoing in the matter. The DA refused further comment and has not replied to any of our phone calls requesting additional information."

San Antonio World Telegram
June 12

Content with the end of the day, Miles rocked slowly back and forth as he watched the shadows creep across the valley. He'd worked hard today, hoeing the small cornfield he'd planted north of the crossing. The peas and beans were coming along nicely too. It was hard learning high altitude farming from a book, but he had plenty of time to read.

He'd packed in the rocking chair last fall along with the winter supplies and seeds for his small farm and a number of books to read. The rocker had perched on top of one of the packs, waving around with the packhorse's motion and fouling several times a day on low hanging branches. It still had a number of tiny scratches and scrapes from the journey. All the trouble had been worth it though.

When the snows melted, he quickly decided sitting and rocking on old Zeb's courtyard under fragrant pine boughs while the sun dove for the southwestern horizon was one of life's most underrated pleasures. He still hadn't had time to read all the books he brought with him, but he was working on it.

A small herd of whitetail deer ventured out of the forest and made their way close to water's edge directly opposite the stone house. The movement caught his eye and he watched them closely. His four horses looked up as the wild animals came near but dropped their heads back to the deep grass without doing more than take notice of the approach by the wild herd. There was plenty here for all. The evening breeze made the tall grass wave in gentle ripples from south to north.

Abruptly the horses shied away from the water and trotted away from the river crossing. They stopped and turned, their attention focused on something high Miles couldn't see past the southwest wall of the cavern. The deer scattered, running hard for the safety of the forest to the northeast. Miles stood, a thumb inserted into the book he'd been reading to hold his place.

Running warriors from the Bear Clan raced by, en route to the city. They pointed behind them at the butte rising above and behind Miles. He cocked his head as his ears caught a faint sound. He edged toward the open door. The horses bolted, galloping toward Needle Mountain.

The big MH-53J Pave Low III Enhanced helicopter was a modified helicopter specifically designed to be one of the quietest aircraft in the Air Force inventory. Used widely for covert operations, it dropped out of the western sky behind the towering mesa with scarcely a sound and dove for the wide grassy area just east of the river ford, just far enough away from the cliff to avoid backwash air currents. The machine had been borrowed from the Air Force's Special Operations Command along with its four-man crew for this single short mission.

The pilot of the huge Sikorsky chopper worked the controls to flare at the last moment, applied power liberally and allowed the heavy machine to settle gently to the ground. The wash from the rotors flattened the thick grass for fifty yards in every direction.

A dozen men in combat boots and black jumpsuits erupted from a side door abruptly thrown open from within. Jumping to the ground, they raced toward the slender sliver of river and threw themselves to the ground in a rough line facing west. They aimed their rifles toward the cavern and waited for some aggressive action from the fugitive.

Frozen for one disbelieving instant, Miles dropped the book and dove through the doorway before the chopper's wheels touched the ground. He slammed the door shut and stepped quickly to the side for the protection of the stone wall. He tried to slow a suddenly pounding heart while his mind churned. The noise of more, less stealthy, helicopters landing across the river reverberated through the cavern making it harder to think. He'd been caught off guard and had no idea what to do next.

The Pave Low lifted off, its engines roaring. There was no need for stealth now and the crew took full advantage. The big machine rotated around its own axis to face south. Dipping its nose, it gathered speed rapidly as it sped away from the scene.

A half mile away, and too far south to be seen from inside the cavern, a tall figure in camouflage BDUs stepped down from a chopper owned by the Colorado Army National Guard. The crew's pay and allowances, as well as operating costs for all the rotary-winged aircraft, were being paid by the Department of Justice for this mission. From his point of view, it looked like all the money the DOJ had been funneling to the Pentagon and National Guard Bureau was finally paying off.

They'd obviously caught Underwood flatfooted. The pilot of this cargo helicopter had passed on a report from the Air Force stealth helicopter as it departed. Underwood had been seen running for the door of the concealed little house in the wide, shallow cave across the stream. They were absolutely certain it had been the fugitive.

U.S. Marshal David Owens suppressed an urge to smile broadly at how easy it had been. The Air Force surveillance flights hadn't been able to detect one man alone in the wilderness, but some hot new software and a conscientious analyst noticed a set of regular lines in one photograph ... and nature doesn't have such a thing as a straight line, much less eight or nine running parallel to each other.

Once they found the crop fields, they concentrated on this small area and finally located a man tending a group of horses in the tiny, inaccessible valley where no one was supposed to be.

Two more high altitude flights, centered exclusively on the valley, had been enough for the big, high resolution cameras to make a tentative identification and then nail it down with an enhanced photograph of the man's face when he'd looked up at the sky one afternoon.

Everything had come together and all that remained then had been to execute the assault. The plan was to insert a big team of law enforcement officers in such a fashion that Underwood would have no chance to flee, and it worked to perfection.

The tall officer sauntered north beside the stream until he reached a point just inside a small group of trees where he could see most of the cavern. He used his binoculars to examine the structure inside the concave rock formation. Obviously, the little house was built of heavy stones and that big door looked solid. If they had to go in after him, it was going to be tough. The equipment normally used to assault barricaded suspects wasn't going to do the job here. Marshal Owens replaced his field glasses in the case and snapped it shut.

It didn't matter; they could starve him out if it came to that. They had everything on their side and a few more days weren't going to make any difference. There was no escape down the rocky slope descending from the cavern--he'd be seen before he got more than a few yards downhill. Underwood was pinned as effectively as a butterfly on a pegboard. Owens walked north beside the stream of icy water watching all the activity as it spread out in front of him.

More choppers began to arrive in the deepening twilight, bringing in more men and beginning to deliver the equipment Owens had requisitioned from Department of Defense and Colorado National Guard sources. A couple of hundred yards--give or take--back from the river, six groups of floodlight stands were offloaded and connected to leads from three powerful generators. The six stands, each stand holding a dozen individual lamps, were then set up in meadows between small tree groves. They were arranged in a loose semi-circle with the cave as their focus; the arc of lights was slightly offset to the south of the cavern because of some thick groups of trees just to the north of the ford.

In moments, the raucous clatter of gasoline engines shattered what remained of the tranquility in the remote mountain valley and the cavern was lit up by the thousand-watt floodlights. In the harsh brightness, a mouse couldn't move up there without being seen and the law enforcement officers relaxed. It was time for phase two.

Marshal Owens moved into the light and held a portable megaphone to his lips. "MILES UNDERWOOD," he started. The high-pitched electronic squeal of feedback from the walkie-talkie on his equipment belt made him wince and jerk the earphone from his left ear. He turned the radio off and tried again.

"Miles Underwood," he said again ... more tentatively this time. When there was no feedback he continued in a stronger voice. "This is Deputy United States Marshal David Owens. Open the door and throw your weapons out. You will not be harmed. I repeat ... you will not be harmed."

The tall federal officer waited for a minute to see if his orders would be followed. When the heavy door remained firmly closed, he sighed and raised the megaphone again. He hadn't thought it would work--had said so at the briefing this morning in Salida.

Some had been sure the wanted man would give up when he saw it was hopeless. The marshal had read the reports written by that FBI agent however, and he had news for everyone. This wasn't going to be quick or easy. Give this guy an opening and he'd be gone again just as quickly as he'd given the slip to that big group of searchers a year ago.

He hesitated, wondering just how he should start. Normally, with a barricaded suspect, you got a negotiator set up nearby and started making phone calls to the fugitive. He had the negotiator, a specialist who did nothing but sit and talk to trapped bad guys, but he didn't have a clue how to get a phone up there.

Word was the guy had three or four weapons; at least two of them were automatic rifles courtesy of the United States Marine Corps. The terrain forced them to set up over here, across that river and a long way from the house. Add in the fact that the fugitive had automatic weapons, and was highly trained in their use, and this whole operation was short on specific guidelines and long on guess-timates and hope.

Lovely, just lovely. Marshal Owens raised the megaphone again and pressed the button on the pistol grip to start the long process of talking the suspect into surrendering.

Inside the stone dwelling, Miles sat on the stone floor listening to the Marshal's words but few of them registered in a mind torn by shock and apprehension. His back was against the rock front wall, his knees bent and feet braced solidly on the floor. He leaned over to rest his forehead on arms that he had folded over each other across his knees. He tried to think.

The brilliant light shining in through the windows had been almost blinding when the floodlights had initially been turned on but he'd knocked out the old glass panes and reached out to pull the shutters closed. The light was bearable now, though the comfortable nighttime dimness of the cabin was gone.

He gradually shed the bewilderment that clouded his mind. Deferring the recriminations with which he would berate himself sometime soon, he calmed himself and worked to steady his breathing and runaway heartbeat. Hyperventilating would solve nothing.

He thought briefly of giving up but dropped the idea just as quickly. On the contrary, he was slowly working himself into a mood that accepted ... even welcomed the fight that was brewing. It had been a long time coming and he was truly tired of hiding and running. The violence he'd felt rising within him in conflict with other men over the past few months burned hot, surging high within him. He began to relish the coming confrontation.

The problem was to figure out a way to get away from the cabin and then to some cover in the forest. Rising to stand in the deep shadow between the door and the front window, he looked between the slats in the shutter toward the southeast at the officers across the river as they settled in for a siege.

They were keeping to cover as best they could over there, and several positions were marked with sandbags piled up for added protection. No one over there was closer than three hundred yards or so from where he stood. That was an awful lot of territory for the manpower resources Miles could see were available to Mister Deputy Marshal David Owens.

That distance had to be an opportunity for him, if only he could figure out a way to exploit it. The biggest, most immediate problem was the way those floodlights lit up the house and this whole section of the cliff wall.

He backed away from the window and retreated into the interior of the room. Shoving the rough wooden table out of the front corner of the house, he crawled into the corner and got up, taking care not to expose himself through the window on the south side of the house. From where he was--to the right of the front window--he could see much of the valley to the northeast.

It was there that he found some hope.

Carl Brady was almost beside himself. Disappointed that Underwood had not immediately surrendered, he was getting more and more irritated with the U.S. Marshal who served as his personal envoy. Though he couldn't actually say so, Brady really wanted the deputy marshals and FBI agents out there in Colorado to rush the stone house immediately and take the fugitive prisoner. This was Thursday; if he could get Owens moving, he would be on every TV talk show in the country Sunday morning.

"Mr. Brady, I'm sorry but we're going to have to take things slow here," remarked the Marshal. Perhaps it was the satellite phone link. He didn't sound to Brady like he was very sorry at all.

"So far, sir, there hasn't been any gunfire and I want to keep it that way," Owens continued. "If we try to blast our way in there, someone is going to get hurt and chances are a lot of those someones are going to be law enforcement officers."

He motioned at the cavern as if Brady could actually see it.

Brady actually could see it if he wanted to. A remotely controlled unmanned aerial vehicle borrowed from the DOD was orbiting over the valley. But Brady didn't have the patience to sit still and watch the UAV turn lazy figure-eights over a darkened valley.

"Sir ... you've got to see this place to believe it. I don't know how, but Underwood has built or found a place that is, literally, a fortress. He's behind stone walls and we'll be out in the open if we try to get closer and these "bullet proof vests" just aren't ... bullet proof, that is ... to high velocity rifle bullets fired from close range."

Static threatened to overcome the conversation as Owens walked deeper into the shadow of the western mesa. He stopped and retraced his steps to get a better signal on the satellite link.

"Look," he continued. "We know this guy has a couple of assault rifles and the word is he knows how to use them. He spent over twenty years in the Army, for God's sake. From up there, he can take out every one of us if we rush him and we won't be able to touch him. We'll have a dozen dead, Mr. Brady ... maybe more."

Two thousand miles away, Brady looked at a copy of one of the aerial surveillance photographs he did have in front of him showing the shallow cave and the house where Underwood was hiding. Reining in his impatience, he examined the view of the cliff and small stretch of river visible in the picture.

"Can't you get people up there and have them ... uh, drop down until they're just above the house?" he inquired. "He can't shoot at them then, can he?" The Marshal held the phone away from his ear and looked at it incredulously for a long moment. He couldn't see Brady pointing to a spot on the photo but the reference by the politician was clear.

"Sir, that cliff is so nearly absolutely vertical as makes no difference," he continued. "It's a good four or five hundred feet straight up to the rim. They don't make ropes long enough for our guys to rappel down that face and even if they could, anyone who did would still be stuck like a fly on a wall if he decided to come out shooting.

"There's nowhere for them to come down except right in plain view of the house and I don't think Underwood's about to let that happen without doing something."

Brady's pale features flushed at the faint derisive note in Owens's voice. "What about a helicopter? Couldn't they get in close and... ?" He couldn't see the Marshal but in the lengthy silence, Brady could sense Owens shaking his head at the suggestion. He flushed in the dimness of his office though no one was there to hear the exchange.

"Mr. Brady, a chopper operating that close to a sheer wall of rock is going to be buffeted its own backwash in addition to every puff of wind that comes up the valley. The Air Force chopper tried to stay close to the cliff when they were coming in and he had one hell of a time. He nearly lost it more than once and had to move away ... across the river to get some clean air."

Owens stopped and considered what he knew about the former Texas district attorney. It had occurred to him Brady had seen too many movies. You could do almost anything in the movies ... and the good guys never took any bullets in the stomach.

"Okay. I want regular reports, Owens," Brady ordered. "Let me know the minute something happens. Push him, Owens. Push him hard. I want him cracked wide open and I want him in custody one way or the other, sooner instead of later. Do you hear me, Marshal?"

There was another silence at the other end of the line.

Frustrated, Brady swung his padded chair around to look into the DC night. His right hand drifted down to touch the M-16 leaning against the wall. He'd checked it out of the FBI's Quantico training armory and had it with him almost constantly these days. It was a great comfort to a man. Brady felt his jaw clinching and had to consciously relax the tight muscles before he could speak again.

"Are you still there, Marshal," he asked, more or less calmly.

"Yes sir, I am. Goodbye." Owens replied.

He punched the off button viciously and tossed the phone to an aide. He turned and walked away to see what he could do about generating a little pressure on the fugitive holed up across the way.

He couldn't stay where he was. Miles didn't need anyone to tell him that. He had enough smoked meat and jerky in the smokehouse out back to last for weeks and there was an inexhaustible supply of water from the cold spring that emptied into the tank inside the stone house. All that was good, but neither mattered much simply because a siege, whether long or short, would be fatal for him in the end.

No, his best chance ... his only chance ... was to find a way to get out the cavern as soon as possible and get into the woods where he would have the advantage. He shifted his position several times around the front window, bending low beneath the sill to come up on either side of the window frame to look in different directions outside.

Right in front of the stone house, there was a near vertical drop of fifteen feet or so down to the gentler rocky slope that led down to the river. The drop was only a couple of feet if you stepped off the cavern's rim near the center of the cavern and it was there that Miles usually came up. He couldn't go that way tonight. It would take too much time to get to the cavern's center, way too much time to go down the slope to the water's edge and he would be exposed the whole time.

The problem as he saw it was to first find a way to get out of the house quickly and down to some cover beside the stream. From there ... he could try to go south beside the stream, but there seemed to be a lot of foot traffic on the other side going and coming from that direction.

On the other hand--after some initial patrols he'd seen pushing off to the north--there had been no activity up that way. That suggested he had an opportunity to slip through the thick screen of trees and underbrush between the point of the cliff just north of the cavern and the river.

He would gain a little separation from the posse across the river and he should be able to move rapidly north along the west side of the river to get even more distance. Then he'd have a couple of good options. Without crossing the river, he could go up the steep walled gorge that led north and west out of the valley.

Huh-uh ... scratch that. The trail up the gorge was far too treacherous in many places. There was no way he could get through some of the more dangerous points in the dark. No, a much better path was to cross the river downstream, circle around the lawmen and get into the forested mountains off to the south.

He came back to the first problem ... the initial break--getting from the cavern down to the river. He needed a couple minutes of darkness and surprise. If they figured out what he was doing, they could stop him cold. Darkness and surprise were what he desperately needed. Gradually he pieced together a plan.

It had the crucial advantages of being simple and, even better, no part of it depended on any particular response from the force across the river. In fact, a complete lack of any reaction for a few precious seconds was advantageous to Miles ... and predictable.

It takes long, intense training and much experience to recover from shock quickly. The best thing Miles could do was to stun them badly with his first aggressive act--rock them back on their heels--then move and move fast.

For the necessary darkness--cover in which he expected to be able to have some freedom of movement for at least a short time--he was going to shoot out the lights they'd set up over there. The fugitive would open fire when they'd had long enough to think they had him cornered and he was helpless.

Miles would use the inevitable confusion with swift, purposeful action once the floodlights were out. A few seconds were all he needed and then it didn't really matter what they did when their surprise faded.

He'd be gone and moving further away every second.

The Deputy Marshal down there across the ford surely had his men watching the door of stone house ... and both windows ... very closely. Any hint of motion there and the alarm would be sounded. If he opened the door and then shot at the lights, they would be forewarned and could shoot back immediately ... and there were enough of them to lay down a heavy fire and make it impossible for Miles to move through the courtyard, jump the wall and run to the lip of the cavern.

There was another opening though--a potential way out of the house no one knew about but himself. Well, no one alive. Zeb surely knew but he hadn't never told nobody, he assured Miles.

Miles absently corrected Zeb, pointing out the double negative but Zeb snorted derisively. He wondered aloud about smart alecky, edicated folks who let themselves git trapped by strangers with long guns. Miles determinedly ignored the lengthy series of suggestions, none of them having anything to do with the current situation, which followed.

The route out to the floor of the cavern had to do with the way Zeb had built the house. Miles had thought the northern wall of the rock house was set tightly against the cavern wall when he'd first explored the structure a year ago. A close examination--involving some serious squeezing of his body through a tight opening--had been necessary to find it wasn't. The lawmen couldn't possibly know about the passageway yet.

The floodlight stands were thirty-five or forty feet below the lip of the cavern and could light up only the top three-fourths of the house. Additionally, shadows caused by the positioning of most of the lights to the south of the cavern concealed the narrow gap between house and cavern wall very effectively.

Once outside the house, he could crawl alongside the courtyard wall almost all the way to the lip of the cavern. The drop-off would just be a couple of yards away when he got to the end of the wall. He would shoot from there. Then, with the lights across the way shot out, he would quickly rope down the nearly vertical slope immediately in front of the house until he reached the gentler slope that eventually terminated at the river. From there, he would take off on a hard run north past the point and far enough downstream to be able to cross the river unobserved.

The only problem he could see was that the law enforcement types over there might have some infrared attachments for those black helmets they wore. Some might even have some light enhancement scopes they could use when the flood lamps went out.

But such devices couldn't be used in the glare of that arc of lights ... and it would take some measurable amount of time to find the equipment--in the dark--mount them and then do a scan of the stone house cavern. Time Miles would be using purposefully, instead of reacting to events happening without rhyme or reason ... from their point of view, anyway.

The decision made, he checked a final time to make sure the group of law enforcement officers were still across the river and not sneaking up on him. Keeping low, he slipped to the back of the house along the north wall.

Working the first few rocks loose wasn't easy. They'd been shaped to fit with their neighbors so tightly a knife wouldn't fit between them in most places. One of them though--down at the bottom of the wall--had been loosened by Zeb to drill a hole through one rock for the overflow from the water reservoir to drain outside. Zeb had used some adobe to fill tiny chinks where the stone had been knocked loose.

Dried adobe wasn't as hard as rock by several orders of magnitude and Miles was able to dig out the mud and straw mixture with his hunting knife in a few minutes. He used his axe to hammer on the stone part of the wall. It wasn't difficult to break loose the first stone from the wall and creating a small opening.

From there, it was a matter of expanding the gap rock by rock until he had a hole big enough to crawl through. He worked steadily, not bothering to be quiet. The people across the river couldn't have heard a jet airliner taking off over the noise of the generators.

Near 11:00 PM, a tired Marshal Owens took a last walk around the camp, making sure the night guards already on duty were alert and that they knew who would be relieving them. The officers who would relieve the first shift were identified and sent to their bedrolls. The gasoline generators powering the floodlights were creating an awful noise but he was already getting used to the racket.

After forty-eight hours or so of the bright lights at night, Owens would up the ante by playing a loud cacophony of 'music' all night. A few days of that and most people were eager to give themselves up. It had worked with Noriega down in Panama and in every barricaded suspect case Owens had ever been involved in. It would work with Underwood. It was only a matter of time.

He lifted his binoculars for a last look at the cavern. That house over there sure looked like one hell of a good place for someone who had nothing to lose to make a last stand.

For no good reason, he had a gut feeling Underwood considered himself in that category. The marshal had no idea how much food or water the man had up there, but if he had any, he could probably hold off the taskforce of U.S. marshals, FBI, and ATF agents for a long, long time. Only a matter of time, but time could stretch out forever ... and who knew what might happen down the road?

The open space in front of the dwelling up there had a low wall around it--from down here, only the top few inches of it were visible--but it looked to be about waist high. Two rocking chairs and a small table to the left of the door was an indication the little courtyard was a pleasant place on a summer afternoon.

For the first time, Owens thought of what kind of man Underwood must be ... wondered how he had come to be a fugitive and why. This place was one that Owens himself might have sought out if he were free to find a home in the wilderness. A very comfortable place...

Unexpected motion caught his eye and he jerked the glasses around in tiny increments until he found it again. A slender form, darker in color than the adobe wall on which it moved, was moving slowly from the deep shadows beside the courtyard wall.