Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [84]
“I feel better already,” Jack said.
Paull forged on, ignoring Jack’s remark. Farther ahead and below them lay the soft lights of Dolna Zhelino, nestled in its funnel, so inviting to its residents, so dangerous for their little group.
At the very edge of the trees, Paull stopped them for a moment. He pointed at two spots. “There and there are the two high points, the best place to station lookouts. The geotech boys saw that in their three-D renderings so they plotted our course accordingly.”
“Better and better,” Jack said.
“Button it,” Paull snapped. “We have superior resources and capabilities, and I plan on using all of them to get us inside Tetovo’s perimeter and blow Xhafa’s tin-pot empire to smithereens before he knows what hit him.”
They took up their ArmaLite assault rifles and struck out single file. Paull took the lead with Alli just behind him. Jack, as ever, was on rear guard.
The wastrel light had taken on the element peculiar to the dwindling of the day, when the sun has slipped below the horizon but night has not yet risen from its grave. There were no shadows; instead, there were, as Paull had pointed out, layers of illusion, within which they could safely make their way into the hammock and through it to the far end, where the watercourse tumbled down between enormous boulders.
They moved through the dense foliage of the western slope in a winding path that several times seemed to fold back on itself, though that couldn’t possibly be right. As they progressed, Jack had to admit to himself that the course was a good one, complicated enough to keep potential sight lines to them constantly changing.
They trekked up a steep rise, then down into a shallow dell dotted with saplings and vigorous understory growth, as if a fire had torn through here in years past, burning off the older, established trees. Paull used hand signals to keep them crouched low to the ground as they passed through this relatively open patch.
Jack breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the far side and slipped in among the tall trees again. Shadows moved with them through the forest. For a time, they lost sight of both the valley and the village as the path took them higher onto the western slope, into denser, first-growth trees, which towered over them like titans.
Keeping one eye out for movement behind them and the other on Alli, Jack felt Paull step up the pace. It was at that moment that they began to take fire from the left. As one, they dropped to their bellies and, following Paull’s hand signals, began to creep down the slope where it fell off on their right. Then more firing targeted them from the right. Jack crabbed his way over to Alli but she had already sought shelter in a thicket of underbrush. He stuck his head up, searching for Paull, but the withering fire almost took off the top of his skull.
They were trapped in a merciless cross fire.
SEVENTEEN
THE PRESIDENT met with Carson in the Rose Garden. It was well known that they were friends. Friends met in open, pleasant places, not behind closed doors, places where tongues could wag and create problems for both of them.
“I don’t think giving Dennis Paull permission to take Alli away was a smart move,” Carson said.
“That remains to be seen.” The president, walking without an overcoat, hunched his shoulders against the wind. “But I had no choice. I couldn’t give him any reason to think I was micromanaging his assignment or undermining his authority.”
“I understand that, but—”
“No buts, Hank, we can’t have him looking our way.”
“You mean McClure.”
“Of course I mean McClure,” the president said. “But it would be the height of folly to underestimate Dennis.”
They came to the end of a row and turned into the adjacent one. Across the lawn, the daffodils were up, and tulips had already opened their colored bells.
Carson sniffed the warmth of spring in the air. “I can take care of him, if it comes to that.”
Crawford glanced at his security detail. “Damnit, what have I told you about that kind of talk?”
“My arrogance has gotten me where