The guard with Kains spoke. "She's a friend of the prisoner who escaped, sir. Thought we'd get her to talk."
"About what?" the major sneered. "They don't even know where they are. Fool. You've bruised her face for nothing."
"I'm sorry, sir."
"What's your name, soldier?"
"Dexter, sir. Corporal Robert T."
"You're not here to damage the goods, Dexter."
"No, sir."
"No matter what kind of trouble they cause, you don't go around hitting a woman in the mouth, is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"You hit them in the body, like this," the major said, demonstrating with a powerful right hook to Consuela's abdomen. The woman moaned, her head snapping back as she folded forward with the pain.
Major Deke Bauer brushed his hands together. "That way, they still look good. Understand?"
"Yes, sir," Dexter said.
"By the way, were you two on duty during the escape?"
"Sort of, sir. We were on our lunch break—"
"That's all right, corporal."
Dexter's haggard face relaxed. "Thank you, sir."
Bauer took out his revolver, a Colt Magnum. "Think nothing of it," he said, and fired point blank into the man's face.
When his body with its still-surprised eyes hit the floor, Bauer kicked it toward Kains. "See that this doesn't happen again," the major said in a quiet voice before he left.
Kains felt the blood drain from his face. As he followed Bauer and his men out, he stole a glance at Consuela. She was on her hands and knees on the floor beside Dexter's body. Her head sagged as she tried to raise herself up, Kains wished he could help her. But he knew he was no match for Deke Bauer.
A half-hour later, Bauer sat with his feet propped up on a paper-littered rolltop desk. He took a long pull at his dappled green cigar while, in the distance, the sharp explosive bark of a machine gun punctuated the still afternoon.
His men hadn't caught up with the Lockwood girl yet, but it wouldn't be long. No unarmed female could hide in these mountains for long. Her escape was a minor slipup, nothing to worry about. He blew a spiral of smoke toward the ceiling. A smile played at the corners of his hard-set mouth. Only a very few things elicited a smile from him. The sound of gunfire was one of them.
Swinging his legs off the desk, he crossed to where a fire of piñon logs blazed in the fieldstone hearth. He picked up a poker and idly probed the blaze, setting off a shower of sparks. The sight reminded him of artillery flares. The corners of his mouth went up. Artillery flares were another thing that made the major smile.
On the whole, he felt damn good about having his own command again. True, it was only fifty men, but among them were some of the best combat soldiers to come out of Nam. Bauer himself had whipped them back into shape with an entire month of intensive retraining. They were well armed, well paid, and ready for anything that might come their way.
So far nothing had. The girl's feeble attempt at escape wasn't even worth a thought, as far as Bauer was concerned. His men would test themselves against real fighting men when the time came. Miles Quantril had promised him that chance, and Bauer trusted him, in a perverse kind of way. Despite Quantril's cruelty, there was something, almost military in the man's bearing and in the way his voice carried the weight of authority.
Bauer turned away from the fireplace and ran his hand along a shelf of war mementos near his desk. There were his medals, of course. Twelve of them in two neat rows, pinned on a field of deep blue velvet. Next to them was an assortment of newspaper clippings and telegrams, yellowing now in their carefully dusted frames. The clippings were all about the war. He'd thrown out all the stories about his trial, treating them like the garbage they were. Candy-ass civilians, he'd thought. They don't know what war's like.
Deke Bauer knew. War was excitement. It was challenge. It was the only real test of a man's worth. War was life.
The last item on the shelf was a fading snapshot of a much younger Bauer, standing in a jungle clearing with three other men, all in uniform. He couldn't remember the occasion for the picture, but it must have been something special, because all three of the men in the photo were enlisted men under him, and he'd never particularly liked any of them. Still, it was the only picture of Bauer from the war that had survived, and so it had taken on a special importance for him.
"Tabert, Hancock, and Williams," the major muttered to himself. Hancock had bought the farm three days after the picture had been taken. Bauer had no idea what had happened to Tabert. He'd read something about Williams years ago. He'd become a cop or something. Then he went bad and ended up going to the electric chair.
It came as no surprise to Bauer. There'd always been something not quite right about Williams.
There was a sharp rap at the door. Like everyone else in Bauer's outfit, the sergeant at the threshold was dressed in black. An Uzi submachine gun was slung over his shoulder.
"We've spotted the prisoner, sir," he said.
"Has she been stopped?"
"No, sir. She's keeping close to rocks and vegetation, sir. But she's headed down the south side of the mountain. It looks like she's going to run right into a carload of intruders, sir."
"Intruders?"
"Three men, sir. One of them's an old Oriental. They're about halfway up the mountain."
"Campers?"
"Probably, sir."
The major nodded thoughtfully. "Take a team of eight men and eliminate them. And the girl. Bring the bodies back here. Understand, Sergeant Brickell?"
Brickell understood. He understood that if he didn't bring the bodies back, he didn't have to bother to come back himself.
As he hurried out of the room, Bauer smiled again. Death was one of those things that always made him smile.
?CHAPTER SIX
At 6,000 feet, the juniper and sagebrush of the Sangre de Cristos gave way to towering Douglas firs and thick stands of ponderosa pine.
Sam Wolfshy gunned the jeep's engine, but the wheels only spun helplessly on the steep, rocky incline.
"It's no use," Remo said. "We'd better get out and walk."
"Walk? What'll happen to my jeep if we leave it here?" Wolfshy protested.
"This is the middle of nowhere. Besides, you said yourself that we'd have to leave it."
"Not in the middle of nowhere! How'll we ever find it again?"
"That's your problem," Remo said irritably. "You're supposed to be the great Indian guide."
"I am," Sam protested. "I am a full-blooded Kanton." His eyes hardened with inner conviction. "These mountains are the hunting grounds of my ancestors. Through my veins—"