Ike walked off to be by himself. No one followed him, sensing he wished to be alone. He stopped several dozen yards off and began walking back and forth across the road.

  “Dr. Chase coming in,” the tech called. “ETA three minutes.”

  Ike paused, nodded his understanding, then resumed his restless pacing. He stopped, stared at Corrie. “You’re sure Ben had a good radio in that emergency pack, extra batteries?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All emergency frequencies being scanned since arrival,” the tech said, anticipating Ike’s next question.

  Ike resumed his pacing.

  “Dr. Chase is here,” a Rebel called to Ike. “Sending a vehicle down the road to get him.”

  Ike nodded, then rejoined Ben’s team at the guardrail.

  “Scouts have picked up a lone set of boot prints leading east and south. But they didn’t come from the wreckage,” the tech said. “They came down the hill then cut east.”

  “All right!” Ike said. “Ben got out before the CP went over that first ledge yonder.”

  “Depth of prints indicate the man is limping, but not too badly.”

  Ike smiled. “The ol’ wolf made it out. That’s the hardest man to stop I ever saw in my life.”

  Chase joined the group and talked briefly with Ike, then stood silently by the guardrail, staring down at the wreckage.

  A half hour later, the tech called, “The trackers have found signs of a fire-fight south and east of here. Brass from a .270 found at the bottom of the canyon, blood on the rocks above. Somebody got hard hit. Measuring from elbow indentation to toe marks show a man approximately six feet, four inches tall. The boot tracks lead off to the east.”

  “Ben,” Chase said with an audible sigh of relief.

  “He’s being followed by a team of about ten men,” the tech called.

  “Ben’s heading into some of the roughest country in America,” Ike said.

  “And doing it deliberately,” Chase added.

  “Yes. He damn sure is,” Ike replied. He spread a map on the hood of a HumVee and studied it for a moment, Chase standing close. “There is absolutely no way to tell which direction Ben might take. He might head straight east, he might go north or south, he might circle around and come up behind Bottger’s men.”

  “You’re sure they were Bottger’s people?” the chief of medicine asked.

  “Yes. The bodies are stretched out over there.” Ike pointed to a row of bodies laid out by the side of the road, covered with ground sheets.

  “Any taken alive?”

  “Two. One of them is badly hurt and won’t live out the rest of the day. He’s been talking some. Ben has at least a hundred men, maybe twice that number, chasing him.” Ike waved a hand toward the east. “Out there in all that thousands and thousands of acres of wilderness. I did some training out there years back, Doc. Skilled trackers and experienced woodsmen have gotten lost in that wilderness. Some of them were never found.”

  “Were there any signs of Ben’s being injured?”

  “No traces of blood. Scouts say he’s limping some.”

  “Hell, yes, he’s limping. He’s probably bruised from head to toe. Might have cracked a bone or two. I don’t see how he survived at all.”

  “He’s lucky, Doc. Ben is the luckiest man I’ve ever known.”

  Lamar grunted. “You know, Ike, Ben’s on his own now. No decisions to make, no paperwork to wade through, no one breathing down his neck. And you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “He’s enjoying every damn minute of it!”

  Ben took the time to soak his feet in a stream, the water ice cold. He washed his socks and attached them securely to the back of his pack to dry—slipping them through straps—then dried his feet on his field jacket before slipping on fresh socks and lacing up his boots.

  He sat for a moment, eating a vitamin-packed hi-energy bar, then sipped some water and was off again. He did not want to sit for any length of time, knowing his bruised muscles would tighten up and really start giving him problems. Better to keep moving.

  He found some wild berries and picked a double handful, eating them as he moved slowly along, enjoying the semi-sweet tartness of the wild spring berries. He also kept a wary eye out for bears. They had not been out of hibernation long, and were extremely short-tempered this time of the year.

  Ben also knew that a .270 was not really suitable for stopping a charging bear . . . if it ever came to that, and he certainly hoped it wouldn’t. The last thing Ben wanted was to come nose to snout with a grizzly.

  Stopped to rest on a ridge, Ben stayed low and behind cover and uncased his binoculars, carefully studying the terrain to the west. He could not spot any of his pursuers, but knew they were back there. He wished he had some idea how many. He pulled his small transceiver from his pack and knew the instant he touched the small handy-talkie it was busted. He shook it and it rattled like a tin can filled with marbles.

  “This certainly makes it more interesting,” Ben muttered. He buried the broken radio in the ground, smoothed the ground over, then carefully spread leaves and twigs on the fresh dig to hide it from any experienced tracker. With a sigh and a silent groan of protest from his aching muscles, Ben heaved himself to his boots and continued on deeper into the wilderness.

  He looked up at the sky. Clouds moving in, dark clouds, heavy with rain. He had to find shelter for the night, find it soon, and sit out the storm. He also did not want to be caught out in the open, exposed, when the lightning started, for a lightning storm in the high country is a fearsome and dangerous product of nature.

  Ben came to a small blowdown in the timber, but ignored it, knowing if he were tracking an enemy, that would be the first place he’d look. He plodded on.

  About thirty minutes later, he found what he was looking for. He had pushed aside some brush at the base of a rise of ground, and found a hole, just large enough for him to squeeze into. The hole enlarged to a tiny cave, long enough and wide enough for him to stretch out, and that was just about it. There were no signs that any bear or wolf had ever used the place as a den.

  Ben quickly gathered some twigs and dry wood, then slowly and carefully covered his tracks leading back to the tiny cave. He was careful not to disturb the bushes covering the cave entrance, crawling in from the side and sprinkling leaves and dirt over any tracks he might have left.

  Ben built a tiny fire and took a packet of dry soup mix from his pack, added water, stirred, and brought it to a boil. He glanced at his watch. Four o’clock. It would be dark in an hour. He drank his soup, munched on some crackers, and then using his canteen cup, brewed a cup of coffee and leaned back, rolling a cigarette. He drank his coffee, smoked his cigarette, and then put out the fire just as the first streaks of lightning lanced across the darkening mountain skies; thunder hammered hard, followed quickly by a driving rain. Ben took two more aspirin and stretched out on his ground sheet, pulling a blanket over him. He sighed in contentment as his aching and bruised muscles began to relax. The storm grew in intensity, but Ben was warm and dry.

  The last thing Ben thought before sleep overtook him was: I hope you Nazi bastards drown out there!

  When Ben awakened hours later, he was so sore he could scarcely move. There would be no traveling for him this day. But he did feel more refreshed in his mind; clearer headed. The rain had stopped, the storm having blown on past during the night.

  When Ben crawled out of his blankets, he had to bite his lip to keep from crying out. It seemed to him that he did not have one inch of flesh on his body that did not hurt.

  This morning he decided he would not build a fire, and used a heat tab to warm up his coffee and soup. While his soup was heating he crawled outside and relieved himself, carefully covered the spot, then it was back into the tiny cave.

  A cup of soup, some crackers, and two cups of coffee later, with some aspirin, he began to feel better. He chanced one quick smoke then settled back on his blankets and promptly went to sleep.

  Voices woke him: unfamiliar and very unfriendly voices. He lay still and listened to the voices talking back and forth outside his hidey-hole.

  Ben could not catch all the words, but it seemed the men searching for him were very frustrated. Colonel Runkel was extremely pissed at their failure to find General Raines.

  Ben smiled, thinking: Good, you Nazi dickhead, I hope your blood pressure goes right off the wall and you have a fucking stroke.

  Ben heard bootsteps just outside the brush covering the entrance to his cave, but the bootsteps did not linger long. The man wearing the boots cursed Ben in two languages and then moved on.

  Ben went back to sleep and slept for several hours, awakening at noon. He munched on a hi-energy bar, drank some water, took two more aspirin, and napped the rest of the afternoon away. About an hour before full dark, he crawled out of the cave to have a look around. He was alone; he could sense that. The birds were also telling him news: they were pecking for food and singing.

  Ben used another heat tab to warm up some terrible-tasting glop from a dinner pack—he wasn’t sure what it was—and ate the mess. It filled his stomach. But the coffee tasted wonderful and he enjoyed a smoke. Then it was back into his warm blankets and more hours of healing sleep.

  The next day he was not quite so sore but he still did not feel like running any races. He lounged around the cave for a second day, eating and resting. He neither heard nor saw any sign of his pursuers.

  On the morning of the third day, Ben packed up and moved on. At first he was undecided which direction to go. Runkel would not be so stupid as to throw all his men eastward. He would leave several teams behind in case Ben decided to return to the highway. So Ben plunged deeper into the wilderness, following Runkel and his men. Occasionally, a smile would crease Ben’s lips.

  He had a plan, of course; he’d been dreaming up and rejecting plans one after another during the long hours in the cave until, finally he had formulated a simple plan that he could accept.

  Now Runkel would learn how it felt to be pursued. Ben’s plan was one that guerrilla forces had been using for centuries: when outnumbered, attack!

  “You can’t be serious, man!” Dr. Lamar Chase roared at Ike.

  “Sit down, Doc,” Ike said patiently. “And listen to me.”

  Lamar sat and glared at Ike.

  Ike pointed to the map pinned to the board in his tent. “By now, Ben could be anywhere out there. Thousands and thousands of acres of wilderness. We don’t know where to look. It’s been four days since he walked away from the ambush site. He could have covered fifty or sixty miles in any direction by now. We know he didn’t come back toward the highway. Why? Because he’s being chased, that’s why. For reasons of his own, Ben has decided to lead the enemy away from us. God and Ben alone know why he’s doing that. And I didn’t call off the search, Lamar. I just widened it, that’s all. Whoever planned this op is smart. We’ve got enemy hit-and-run teams attacking us all up and down our western lines, and they’re keeping us plenty busy. I’ve got every helicopter I can spare looking for Ben.”

  “I can’t imagine why he hasn’t radioed in.”

  “I can. His radio’s busted, that’s why.”

  Lamar sighed with great patience. “I will never, ever, understand the mind of a dedicated combat man.”

  Ike laughed. “Ben likes it, Lamar. He loves the thrill of the greatest hunt of all: man against man. Winner take all.”

  “Never entered your mind that it’s your life you’re putting on the line, does it?”

  Ike smiled. “What’s the old saying about, ‘You pays your money, you takes your chances?’”

  Lamar shook his head and headed for the flap of the tent. He turned and looked at Ike. “What would men like you and Ben do if all wars were suddenly ended?”

  “Be bored shitless.”

  SEVEN

  Colonel Hugo Runkel looked up, a smile on his face, as the very faint sounds of two shots echoed through the cool late spring air. He could not tell what direction the shots came from. But that made little difference, for he had ordered his men not to fire unless they had a clear target, and they were superb marksmen. They would soon be checking in by radio with the good news that Ben Raines was dead.

  Hugo poured another cup of coffee and waited.

  Two ridges, a meadow, and a small mountain away, Ben knelt down by the first body. The .270 round had taken the man in the center of the chest, exploding the heart. The man had been dead meat before he hit the ground. Ben took the man’s transceiver, two small packets of field rations, a waterproof container of matches, his grenades, and moved over a few hundred yards to the second man. Just like his partner, the man was dead.

  Ben took the young man’s field rations, radio, matches, and grenades, and left him in a dead bloody and grotesque sprawl on the rocky ground. Ben could not use their ammunition in any of his weapons.

  Five hundred yards later, Ben squatted down and inspected the radios. The handy-talkies had pre-set frequencies, and would be no good in contacting his own people, however . . . Ben smiled, his own people would be scanning every frequency known to humankind! Perhaps he couldn’t talk directly to them . . .

  “Hey, you son of a bitch!” Ben’s voice ripped through the speakers, and Runkel sat straight up, his fresh cup of coffee cooling and forgotten. “That’s right, you, you goddamn Nazi asshole. Are you listening, Rumpelstiltskin?”

  With a snarl that seemed out of place coming from a human throat, Runkel snatched up his radio. “Raines?”

  “That’s me, in the flesh, alive and well, you goose-stepping prick,” Ben said. “I just sent two more of your Hitler look-alikes to that great Aryan resting place. I left them their tobacco; it wasn’t my brand. But I suspect where they’re going they won’t need a light.”

  Runkel cursed Ben for a moment, then managed to get his temper under control enough so he could speak without sputtering in rage. Miles away, a Rebel radio tech was tape-recording every word.

  The radio tech’s listening post was high on a mountain, and these were the first words he’d heard in two days. But he knew General Raines’s voice.

  “You are a very lucky person, General,” Runkel said.

  “Naw,” Ben came right back. “Naw. Just a hell of a lot better man than you and these goons with you. You got all that, liverwurst?”

  Runkel’s eyes bugged out in rage he could no longer contain. He cursed Ben in several languages while his team stood by in shocked silence. They had never, ever, heard anyone speak to their colonel in such a manner.

  Miles away, in his listening post, the radio tech laughed aloud as he kept a careful eye on the VU needle. General Raines sounded as though he was really having fun. General Ike would get a kick out of listening to this exchange.

  “Hey, Bunkel!” Ben called. “Why don’t you and I meet, just the two of us, and settle this mano a mano?”

  “What?” Runkel screamed.

  Ben sighed. “I might have known you wouldn’t understand. You really are a stupid mother-fucker, aren’t you, Colonel Runkel?”

  Runkel screamed in an outburst of undisguised rage. He was so angry he could not form words.

  “Are you still there, Funkel?” Ben asked calmly.

  “You are a dead man, Raines!” Hugo screamed into the mic. “A dead man!”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ben taunted him. “Tell me, puke-face, do you put yourself to sleep each night dreaming of sucking Hitler’s dick?”

  The Rebel radio tech was enjoying the exchange immensely.

  Runkel’s men were standing about, their mouths hanging open in shock.

  Colonel Hugo Runkel calmed himself with a visible effort. He took several deep breaths and felt his heretofore soaring blood pressure fall to normal points. “Very good, General,” Hugo spoke in a calm voice. “Very, very good. That tactic will not work with me again.”

  “You can’t do anything again, Punkel,” Ben shot right back. “Once something is done, it’s done. You might do something similar, but you can’t do anything again.”

  “What?” Runkel blurted.

  “You never heard of Brother Dave? One of the great Southern philosophers of all time?”

  “What the hell are you babbling about now, Raines?”

  “You dumb son of a bitch,” Raines said.

  Runkel fought to keep his temper in check.

  “Who is Brother Dave?” one of his men whispered to a comrade standing close.

  The soldier shrugged his shoulders.

  “I see no need to continue this conversation, Raines,” Runkel said. “It’s beginning to bore me.”

  “Me, too, Runkel,” Ben didn’t miss a beat. “I’d be better off conversing with a jackass.”

  But Ben had played this one out to its conclusion. Runkel wasn’t going to bite. “Good-bye, Raines. The next time we meet, I shall kill you.”

  “Big words from such a little man. Good-bye, Runkel. Pleasant dreams. I’ll be visiting your camp tonight.”

  “We’ll be waiting for you, Raines! Thanks for the warning, you arrogant fool!”

  Ben smiled as he turned off the radio. Of course, he had no intention of visiting the enemy camp that night. He chuckled, thinking of all the sleepy people come the morning. That’s when he would strike.

  “Ben’s having a good time, isn’t he?” Ike asked, laughing at the frown on Dr. Chase’s face.

  Lamar grunted his reply. “Run the damn tape again, you laughing hyena.”

  Ike rewound the tape and together they listened to Ben put the needle to the colonel. “What the hell is Raines up to, Ike?”

  “Having fun.”

  “Jesus H Christ, Ike! The man is outnumbered about a hundred to one and you’re talking about him having fun?”

  “Ben knows what he’s doing, Lamar.”

  “Having fun, Ike?”

  “And buying us a little time by keeping the enemy busy. An enemy that is standing directly in our path. And there is something else, Lamar: You said it yourself in so many words: Ben doesn’t want to be found just yet.”