Part 2
The engines came from below the switchback—two of them, climbing fast.
Mara looked at Wade. Whatever bravado he had left drained from his face. “That’s them,” he said.
“Who?”
“The people who own what’s in those cases.”
Mara photographed the second serial plate and sent both images through the satellite channel. A reply appeared almost at once: ACTIVE FEDERAL SEARCH. STOLEN GOVERNMENT MATERIAL. RESPONSE TEAM EIGHTEEN MINUTES OUT. DO NOT LET THE SHIPMENT MOVE.
Eighteen minutes was a lifetime when armed men were less than a mile away.
Mara sent a description of the pickup, requested medical support for the injured men, and added that the cases were exposed but had not been opened in her presence. The dispatcher replied with a single question: CAN YOU WITHDRAW SAFELY?
She looked at the blocked road, the stolen material, and the three men who had tried to rob her. Somewhere below, tires struck loose gravel. Mara typed: NEGATIVE. CIVILIANS OR OTHER HIKERS MAY ENTER AREA. I WILL OBSERVE AND DELAY ONLY.
“How many?” Mara asked.
“Four, maybe five. They said they’d come in two SUVs.” Wade’s voice broke. “They were supposed to pay us, take the truck, and disappear.”
“Where did the cases come from?”
“A freight transfer yard south of Salem. Vale gave us the access information and told us which trailer to take. We never touched the seals.” Wade glanced toward the truck bed. “He said nobody would get hurt.”
Mara had heard that sentence from frightened people in three countries. It almost always meant someone had agreed not to ask who would be hurt.
The engine noise rose through the trees. Atlas turned toward it, ears forward, waiting.
Mara took the pickup keys from Wade’s pocket and slid them beneath a rotting log well off the trail. Then she moved the unloaded revolver, the knife, and the bat into the drainage ditch, where no one could reach them quickly.
“Listen carefully,” she told the three men. “The people coming may decide you’re evidence. If you want to survive, you do exactly what I say.”
Even Cal stopped complaining.
Mara could have taken Atlas into the woods and kept walking until the engines faded. The message on her screen had not ordered her to fight, and she had no intention of doing so. But the truck blocked the only vehicle access to the upper trailhead, and a family could come around the bend at any moment. Leaving would mean handing stolen explosives to men willing to kill for them.
With the straps still around their ankles, Mara guided them behind a thick bank of salal and fallen timber ten yards uphill. She loosened Wade’s restraint enough for him to crawl, then cut a strip from the tarp and tied the men wrist-to-wrist around a cedar trunk. It would not hold forever, but it would keep them from making a desperate choice for several minutes.
She placed her first-aid pouch beside Cal. “If Neal passes out, roll him onto his side. If anyone shouts, I leave you here with them.”
Wade nodded.
Mara and Atlas climbed to a shelf of rock above the trail. From there she could see the pickup without exposing herself against the sky. She pressed two fingers to Atlas’s shoulder, and he folded silently into the damp needles.
The first SUV appeared around the bend at 10:07. A second followed close behind. Both were dark, clean, and wrong for the rutted forest road.
Four men stepped out. They wore ordinary outdoor jackets over body armor, and they carried rifles close to their chests. Their movements were controlled, each man looking in a different direction before the driver’s doors had fully closed.
Mara felt the old part of her mind wake up—not excitement, never that, but a cold arrangement of distances, cover, exits, and risk. She hated how natural it still felt.
The tallest man approached the pickup. His hair was clipped short, silver showing at his temples. “Wade,” he called. “We’re early.”
No answer.
He saw the bat in the ditch, then the dark scuffs where Cal had fallen. His gaze moved to the uncovered cases.
He raised one closed hand. The other three men stopped.
“Vale,” one of them said quietly.
“I see it.” The tall man crouched, touched the mud beside the truck, and studied the prints leading uphill. “Someone interrupted the handoff.”
He pointed to two men. “Find the couriers. Don’t fire near the cases unless you have no choice.”
The searchers separated.
One moved downslope. The other came toward Mara’s side of the trail, slow enough to avoid snapping branches. He was better than Wade’s crew, but he was watching for a person standing upright. Atlas and Mara were lower than the fern line.
The man passed beneath their rock shelf. For one breath, Mara thought he would keep going.
Then Neal coughed behind the cedar.
The searcher stopped.
He turned toward the hidden men and lifted his rifle.
Atlas looked at Mara. She kept her hand flat against his shoulder until the searcher took one more step. Then she leaned close to the dog’s ear. “Take the arm…”
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