Chapter 18

"The administration has become embroiled in more controversy tonight. The entire nation was shocked by last night's revelations that agents from the FBI, United States Marshal Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, had opened fire on fugitive Miles Underwood as he walked across open ground deep in the Colorado wilderness. Senate leaders on both side of the aisle have roundly condemned the action, calling for an immediate investigation.

"Even Democrat Thomas Hartley went so far as to call into question the legitimacy of the manhunt, saying most of the original charges against the Texas native have been shown to be completely false and none of the remaining charges are substantiated by concrete evidence. Senator Hartley made his remarks on the floor of the Senate early this afternoon to cheers from the gallery and floor.

"This comes on top of rumors beginning to gain substance to the effect that survivors from the 4^th Infantry Division deployed to Syria were all beheaded by Al Qaeda terrorists working with the regular Syrian Army. Spokespersons from the Department Of Defense deny any such executions have taken place, but independent sources inside Syria are confirming..."

World Information News Network
"Weekly Wrap Up"
August 3

The chopper's harsh engine noises had faded to a low buzz as the aircraft flew to the northeast. With the sound coming from one point of the compass and swiftly receding, Miles took the chance of crawling out of his hiding place. The rest had stiffened his muscles; he was forced to do a quick series of calisthenics to loosen up.

Watching the departing helicopter, Miles set out walking as quickly as he could, crossing to the western side of the crest again. Once across, he turned left and jogged slowly southeast. It was in his mind that the chopper's crew had searched this area extensively and not found him. Maybe when they came back, they'd try another piece of ground to look for him. Then too, he wanted to get behind the ground party that had to be coming up from the southeast on the eastern side of this ridge.

To get around them and out of the immediate area where the helicopter had sighted him was critical in his mind. Anyone in the main camp with a map could draw a line between the place where that guy with binoculars had seen him and this pass through the hogback ridge. He had to put a lot of distance between himself and this pass--and quickly.

The thing was, he probably had a very narrow window of opportunity to break contact with the manhunters. Putting himself in the place of the crew onboard the helicopter that had so suddenly broken off the search and flew off, he decided they must have been low on fuel and were flying back to the camp to refuel. It was the only thing it could have been. They'd had him trapped whether they knew it or not.

He figured he had a half hour--no more--before they returned. It was the heart of the summer; there was still three hours or more until dark. Effectively, there was an eternity before the cloak of darkness gathered around him.

Moving south and east was a decent plan. He wanted to get around behind the patrol approaching from that direction, and they should be on the other side of the ridge. Miles could have turned north but he hadn't explored the terrain up that way much at all. What he knew of it was too dry for easy travel and had less cover than the terrain to the south until one got north of the valley of the People.

If he could find a way to avoid the people coming up from the south and get by them into the more hospitable terrain off the south rim of the mesa, he stood a chance of getting away completely. Searchers tend not to look too closely at what they've already searched. He pushed himself into a jog to cross the open ground more quickly. Fifteen minutes later, he lifted his head to see half a dozen black clad men stretched out in a line abreast coming straight at him.

He didn't know it but the eight officers who had climbed up to the top of the mesa, augmented by the six who had come up by chopper had become fragmented. The team, coming upon the lower extent of the ridge had separated, some of them walking on the western slope, others on the eastern side.

No more than a quarter mile away from each other over the ridge, they were in constant radio contact so the team leader thought nothing of it. It seemed advantageous to have someone on the other side of the jumbled mass of rock to tell him what there was to see over there. Six miles later, he was proven correct.

Miles cursed bitterly when he saw the first head pushing over the rise in front of him. The officer had foolishly exposed himself. Moving and not paying any particular attention to where he was, his silhouette was starkly black against the lighter sky. Miles wasn't in that much better a position. He was cornered and had no way to dodge around these hunters. They were headed directly for him.

Giving up the search for some kind of cover, a place to hide until they passed, Miles turned and ran as fast as he could. He was seen almost immediately and radio calls went out to report the sighting--they weren't heard at the main encampment but they would be as soon as the chopper was airborne again. The commanders at the main campsite would soon have another dot on their map to show where the fugitive had been sighted.

He got back through the pass over the ridge, gasping with the effort and took shelter once more in the narrow space between the two boulders. It was instinctive--this was the only shelter he knew of in the vicinity and he had no time to look for others. He knew the helicopter would be back at any moment. Instead of evading the searchers by moving in an unexpected direction, it now seemed his only chance was to conceal himself until they passed. He waited, trying to recuperate.

The low passes by the big cargo helicopter earlier gave him an advantage he didn't know he had. The prop wash from the huge whirling blades had scoured the passage through the ridge almost clean, the powerful downdraft was a hurricane that picked up dust and gravel and spread them over tens of acres.

With no dust to hold tracks and small rocks and bits of vegetable matter scattered widely, there was nothing to kick out of its natural place in Miles' shambling run up the approaches to the pass. The search party walked by without pausing, thinking their man was somewhere just ahead.

One of the pursuers thought he saw Underwood as he ducked behind a rock far out in a rock field a long way from the ridge crest. It cost them valuable time while they deployed in an informal skirmish line and advanced slowly to investigate the sighting.

After fifteen minutes of rest, Miles had recovered enough to reconsider his situation. He was glad the ground party passed by his ersatz cave, but he didn't know why they had. The old adage about not looking gift horses in the mouth clearly applied here, however, and he was more than ready to accept every small advantage that came his way.

He wondered about the helicopter. Why hadn't it already returned?

Good fortune was holding his hand tightly, though he didn't know it. Chance was an equal opportunity mistress and this afternoon's inadvertent sighting of the fugitive by an out-of-position observer was badly in need of balance.

The chopper fractured a strut on the landing gear setting down on the hardstand and makeshift repairs were underway. It would take a while and it was going to be even longer before the one that had ferried in the fuel bladder was ready to go. They'd had to shift the bladder twice before the engineers were satisfied with its position.

Miles wasted long minutes sitting in the shade for long minutes while he debated what to do next with himself. Already confused and worried, very near complete exhaustion, his thoughts developed ever more slowly and trying to analyze what he knew became a laborious process. With no one in his immediate vicinity, he was safe for the moment. He was beginning to see the shelter as a trap.

He bit his lips. The urge to get back on his feet and go ... anywhere ... was becoming irresistible. Every moment longer the helicopter wasn't in the sky overhead made it all that much more likely it would be in the next.

Abruptly, he made a decision. As worn out as he was, he had to keep moving. He had to get away from the places where he had been seen. The search would be more intense here.

Bolting from between the boulders, he took a quick look around and started southeast along the ridge. If he couldn't go in that direction on the other side, he'd travel its length on this side. Five minutes into his hike, that opportunity was also ruined. The other section of the ground search party, delayed by rougher terrain than the officers on the western side of the ridge, was finally coming up.

Miles was watching for them--they had to be somewhere around here but he'd hoped they would have moved away from the saw-toothed ridge. They had not. If anything, radio transmissions from the other group had brought them closer.

He saw them long before they did him and he backtracked quickly. Desperation was beginning to cloud his judgment. He was dog-tired but he couldn't stop. Without pausing, he took the only direction left open to him.

Hemmed in by search parties to the south and west, he found a dry wash twisting its way north and slipped down into it. His head was on a swivel and he turned his body completely around every few yards to see if there were pursuers behind or above him.

He had a small amount of time left to him that he could have known of only by eavesdropping in the command tent back at the encampment. The crew on the refueled chopper that had come in from Pueblo had run through the preflight checklist and they were ready to go. Permission to take off was not forthcoming--further, they were specifically ordered not to launch.

They waited ... waited longer ... and finally turned off the engines to save aviation gas and avoid overheating. The pilot and co-pilot looked at each other and shook their heads, not needing to speak.

The difficulty, though the pilots weren't aware of it, was that the Deputy Attorney General had decided he and his staff would accompany the searchers in the helicopter and nothing Marshal Owens or anyone else said was going to dissuade him. Isolated at first out in this damned wilderness, he had no intention of going anywhere without his 'people'. He needed them around him.

At first it didn't matter to Mr. Brady that his staff members couldn't do the job the law enforcement specialists could. It was still in his mind that the fugitive would be forced to surrender once he was seen and kept under direct observation for long enough to get ground troops into his vicinity on the exposed mesa.

Eventually, Brady's chief of staff spoke up, suggesting that all of the staff didn't need to go, just a few select individuals. Brady shot the chief of staff a look that promised trouble when they returned to Washington--he wasn't about to countenance even the smallest of defections--but he was caught. The suggestion was entirely too logical.

An hour after they could have taken off, the helicopter crew watched as Deputy Attorney General Brady, armed with an M-16 that looked almost too big for his slight stature. To his credit though, the aircrew thought he handled the weapon as if he knew what he was doing.

It took an inordinate amount of time, but eventually Brady and his two attendants were settled and buckled into their seats in the cargo area along with a reduced rapid response force of five men and one woman ... and Marshal Owens himself.

Long after it should have taken to the air, the helicopter was once more headed for the search zone. It was getting late. There were only a couple more hours of daylight.

They flew slightly north of a course directly back to where the other chopper had made firing passes on the fugitive. Owens knew Underwood had been turned back on the west side of the ridgeline that cut across the mesa and it didn't seem likely the man had been able to get around that search party. It was too open and they'd been too close when they'd seen him. Then, somehow they'd lost contact with him.

Owens made an educated guess and assumed the fugitive had stayed on the eastern side of the saw-toothed ridge. And from the only crossing point the pilots of the chopper had seen, the only way Underwood could go was...

The other ground party was still coming up from the southeast on that side of the ridge, blocking an escape in that direction. The ridge prohibited travel to the west and the sheer cliffs of the mesa cut the fugitive off from going in that direction. His breath quickened.

For the first time since he'd escaped from the siege in the cavern, Underwood was caught in a restricted space ... he was in a sack and the opening was slowly being drawn tight. Owens directed a search pattern that weaved a slow pattern across the line a fleeing man would have to take if he wanted to go north.

A cargo helicopter is a loud machine and a very visible one. Miles saw it clearly as it ran back and forth from near the edge of the mesa over to the ridge and then back again. The floor of the ravine was only slightly lower than the surrounding terrain, ; the gully was worthless as concealment from aerial observation. Worse, it would become a trap.

He scrambled to take cover in a small crack in the rock, lying on his belly as close to a bit of straggly underbrush as he could get. He watched as the helicopter philosophically. Well, trying to get away up that way had been a forlorn hope at best.

Panting--gasping for breath was quickly becoming the norm for him--he considered his choices. There were only two ... one that wasn't very good and one that was downright suicidal at this time of day.

Making his choice, he broke cover and trotted south to try to get around the search party coming up from that direction. If they were still holding tight to the jagged ridge off to the west, he might be able to circle around to their east. If he got that far, he might even be able to get to get to the shallow canyon that meandered down off the mountain in easy stages--where that group of officers had come up, in fact.

The other possibility, that of getting back to the crack in the mesa wall where he'd come up, had to be a last resort. It was a steep climb there, dangerous even going down. The sun was slipping toward the horizon faster now. Trying to get down the cliff wall in the dark was nothing he cared to think about. Once again, he pushed himself into a mockery of a run, trying to put distance between himself and the helicopter to the north.

He shouldn't have been seen. He'd come nearly three miles and put the helicopter below his horizon. He saw it only when it was on an eastbound leg of the search pattern now. Already well away from the ridge and the manhunters on either side of that land formation, he was congratulating himself on having outflanked the ground party completely.

Another mile, perhaps two, and he would have been outside the greatest distance they could have even hoped to detect him and a few miles beyond that lay the entrance to the canyon leading back down to the valley. He'd been extraordinarily lucky in the late afternoon--the chopper leaving to refuel and then being delayed coming back had given him an opportunity.

Luck is also a capricious mistress though, and now it turned on him viciously as if to make up for its earlier forbearance.

The co-pilot saw something. He didn't know what. Something was out there to the south, a long way off. Tapping the pilot's arm, he took the controls and set the helicopter in a gentle bank, leveling out on the bearing where he'd seen the motion. They flew south, increasing their ground speed to get there quicker.

It wasn't the fugitive. Miles had started to use more of the available cover in his advance southward because of the searchers he was sure were off to his right near the Devil's Backbone. He was more than careful now, wanting to avoid notice more than he wanted to make fast progress.

What had attracted the attention of the co-pilot was a small herd of mountain sheep, running in bounding leaps over the broken ground. Following behind it its attempt to get close enough to attack one of the sheep, the mountain lion was finding it hard work. The sheep changed direction often--seemingly at will in spite of the treacherous terrain--and raced away at right angles to their previous path while the big cat's claws scratched the rocky ground to overcome his momentum.

When the helicopter got there, they found the action captivating. One of the officers wanted to shoot one of the sheep. The fresh meat would be more than welcome, he thought. The others suggested the cougar would get to the kill before they could land. The idea was discarded, though not before they'd flown to a point well south of where they intended to be.

While the two pilots discussed whether the cat should be called a puma or a mountain lion, the aircraft continued to move south. Then, abruptly, there he was ... right in front of them. Both flyers saw the fugitive at the same moment and shouted over the intercom.

The crew chief in the back, didn't hear them immediately. He'd taken his headset off to massage an aching neck. The helicopter flew on. They'd been going fast and it wasn't easy to change course quickly at that altitude. When they got back around, Underwood had vanished again.

He turned and ran when the chopper droned by a hundred feet overhead and disappeared. Fear pushed back some of the fatigue and he managed to dive into a deep gully and race back to the northeast. There was only a single hope now. Blocked from moving in every other direction, he could only try to get back to the cut in the rock and climb down it, nighttime or not.

He ran, diving for a split in the rock or bedraggled clumps of brush when the searching helicopter came near. Jumping up after every pass, he would run again to the next bit of cover. In short increments, he was slowly working his way back to the cliff walls on the eastern rim of the mesa. The sun was sinking fast over the mountains to the west.

"PUT US DOWN ... NOW!" Deputy Attorney General of the United States Carl Brady was shouting into the microphone attached to the headset borrowed from the chopper's crew chief. He was furious. They'd been flying around, watching the SOB that had caused him so much pain and humiliation run anywhere he wanted.

He'd listened to Marshal Owens explain that they were fixing the fugitive's position, waiting for the two ground parties to come up before they descended to take the man into custody. He even understood the process but his patience had run out. He wanted the man taken now, period.

The chopper pilots glanced at each other and shrugged their shoulders. They were Air National Guard and technically not under the command of a Department of Justice official but they'd be shooting themselves in the foot, figuratively speaking, if they ignored Brady. The pilot reduced power and let the helicopter settle slowly.

Brady jumped out, brandishing his M-16 and waved his two staff members out beside him. He turned away to march toward the place where they'd last seen Underwood without saying a word.

Marshal Owens had to scramble to catch up, bringing two of his deputies with him. He didn't want this, he hadn't foreseen it, and was disconcerted by Brady's sudden demand, but he knew the Washington politician had to be protected.

Miles thought he'd done it. The sheer cliffs that were the edge of the mesa weren't that far away. It had been several minutes since the helicopter had made a pass over his head. Then it rose in front of him over Skull Rock; the pilots pointed at him triumphantly. Four hundred yards away, the chopper and crew were too far away for his M-4. He fired a few bursts of automatic fire their way but they'd learned to keep well clear. The light bullets couldn't really damage the chopper at this range.

The heavy throbbing of the twin engines set his teeth on edge. Gasping, his lungs burning with the effort to suck in enough oxygen, he stood motionless a moment. Bleakly, Miles regarded the approaching aircraft. All of his options had been used up--there was nowhere to go.

Instead of twisting back in another direction to find cover, Miles ran toward the aircraft, ducking his head to avoid the whirling rotors as he went under the hovering helicopter. It was unnecessary--the chopper was a good two-hundred feet off the ground and increasing its altitude, but instinct is a powerful urge.

Once he'd passed underneath, he ran around the massive boulder over which his enemies had appeared and scrambled into the gaping maw of its "mouth." He was out of sight for the moment; the helicopter crew and passengers lost him when he went behind the stone formation.

They were confused when they didn't pick him up again after coming back around full circle. From the air, the "mouth" where Miles hid seemed too small a place for a full-grown man could hide.

They spent the next ten minutes cruising in a spiral outward from the strangely shaped rock without seeing him. Then they returned to the point where they'd last seen him ... and found him.

Running hard, they saw Underwood drop into a narrow space between two boulders. The helicopter drifted closer so they wouldn't lose him again. The search parties were working their way closer all the time. It would all be over soon.

He'd had enough. They'd cut him off from escape in every direction and for the past hour or so, the damned chopper had dogged his trail without letup. There was nowhere he could go that they couldn't get to first. Even if he got to where he could climb down the mesa wall, they would have plenty of time to set up a welcoming committee at the bottom.

He had to break contact or give himself up; he wasn't going to do that.

Reassembling the sniper rifle was easy. It was specifically designed to be field stripped and put back together without tools and in rough environments. While he worked, he concentrated on controlling his breathing. If he continued to gulp air at his current rate, the movement of his chest would be transmitted through his arms to the weapon itself. The gun muzzle would wander through a big circle, making it impossible to shoot accurately.

Leaping out of the Skull's 'mouth', he ran for a field of boulders some fifty yards away. He was seen ... he hadn't even considered that he wouldn't be ... and the helicopter triumphantly swept closer, the crew apparently intending to land their fast reaction team a couple of hundred yards away.

When Miles rose from behind the concealing rock, the chopper was a slow moving target tracking from right to left. The Barrett was capable of putting a .50 caliber round into a man-sized target at nearly a mile's distance. Two hundred yards was less than pointblank range--with the twelve-power scope, he would have to try hard to miss from here. He wasn't going to try that, not today.

The co-pilot saw it first. The big, ungainly rifle pointing in their direction was unmistakably a deadly threat. He screamed a warning to the pilot, who was on the controls at the moment. He was stammering unintelligibly though; no one could understand him.

The pilot scanned all the cockpit gauges warning lights first, thinking there was something wrong with the aircraft. Finding nothing, his eyes came up. His partner's pointing finger showed him the danger. The pilot began to turn the helicopter away even as he dialed in more power. The thunder of the two engines began to increase, but slowly ... far too slowly.

Miles barely had enough time to catch his breath and he wondered if he'd ever breathe slowly and comfortably again. His pulse rate was still high. This wasn't good for expert marksmanship, but the range was short. Miles focused on the CH-53's left side engine and squeezed off a round.

It was a big target, much bigger than the man-sized targets on which he'd trained in the Army and the bullet hit exactly where he was aiming. The armor-piercing slug cut through the metal skin without slowing down materially and tore into the engine, promptly shattering the gearing and sending shrapnel flying. Two razor sharp fragments of metal ripped into one impeller blade and sheared it off its mounting. Unbalanced by the loss, the other rotating blades began to tear themselves apart.

A second and third round smashed into the engine and then a fourth. The last was an incendiary round and it sparked a flash fire. Ruptured fuel lines poured raw aviation gas poured onto the fire and the flames spread quickly. Smoke poured from the rear of the motor cowling.

A grinding crunch of destroyed machine parts signaled the end of the damaged engine. The pilot starting working fast to shut it off even before fire warning lights blossomed on the instrument panel but the spinning turbo fans inside the engine tore themselves to shreds anyway.

Pieces slashed out through the thin metal skin on the side away from the bullet's impact points and knifed into the other engine. That one began to tear itself apart too. The helicopter lurched in the air and turned away, smoke pouring from both engines.

Leaping on top of a waist-high boulder to see better, Miles watched the damaged aircraft limp toward the mesa's edge. The pilot didn't seem to be trying to gain any altitude but he was trying to put distance between himself and the ambush.

Soon it was clear he wasn't going to make it back to the main camp, or even off the escarpment. Miles watched as the thing descend erratically. The pilot couldn't have had a lot of control, it surged upward only to fall precipitously. In moments, it dropped out of sight over a low rise.

There was a crushing roar of torn metal.

It was more a crash than a landing. The second engine had failed ten feet up and the flailing rotors had been able only to slow the fall, not prevent it. Slamming into the unforgiving rock, the helicopter's underside was smashed and the craft tilted dangerously on the gentle slope where they'd come to rest.

Still moving at high speed, the rotors tried to slash into the rock but were torn apart, the individual blades ripping off and bounding away, tumbling and spinning. Two scrawny trees that got in the way were sheered off and sent flying themselves.

Still, rough as it was, the landing was a good one as defined by pilots ... they would walk away from it. Dazed by the impact with the mesa's rocky surface, the pilot looked out his side of the helicopter without comprehending what he saw. They had come to rest barely twenty yards from the precipice. They'd been incredibly fortunate. If the engine had failed after they passed over the edge, they'd had fallen hundreds of feet to the valley floor below. The crackling of flames above his head finally penetrated.

"Get out," he yelled at his co-pilot. Recovering himself, his partner nodded and opened the big window at his side. In seconds he was out and sliding down the metal side of the helicopter to the ground. The pilot unhooked his harness and turned inside to drop into the cargo area. Bodies were piled on top of each other, but everyone seemed to still be capable of moving. They were getting in each other's way trying to get up though.

Ruthlessly, the pilot grabbed an arm that came within reach and hauled its owner erect by main force. Once that man was on his feet, the pilot seized another limb and then a third. There was room to maneuver through the compartment now and he crab walked up the slope to the cargo doors. They'd buckled slightly and were jammed in the closed position. He wrestled with them for a long moment with help from the crew chief beside him and from the co-pilot outside. The doors gave way and cold mountain air began to flood into the interior of the wrecked machine. The pilot began to throw people out to his co-pilot.

They helped each other to stagger alongside the cliff until they'd gained enough distance for them to feel safe. Many sank to the ground; all turned to watch the burning helicopter. For the most part, they'd forgotten why they were here. They'd survived the wreck and that was enough for the moment.

Miles couldn't see the flames but the thick cloud of black smoke towered into the darkening sky. It marked the position of one group of pursuers very clearly. He didn't know where the other two groups were but he'd managed to destroy their aerial surveillance.

Now there was a good chance he could resume his escape down to the south, assuming there wasn't another chopper on the way; he'd have to leave that God 'cause Miles didn't have a say in whether one was en route or not.

He turned to look south, thinking to check for signs of either of the search parties before he dropped off the boulder. He felt the burn across the top of his right shoulder an instant before he heard the crack of the rifle.

Diving into the space between two boulders, Miles crawled on elbows and knees to the edge of the rock field before stopping. The shot had come from the north and from not far away. He had to move fast. Evidently, one of the bands of hunters had been attracted by the smoke from the crash and had found him far earlier than he'd estimated.