Liars & Thieves Read Online Free PDF Page A

it, the pathway up here showed no footprints. I glanced at the radio—it had a half dozen bullet holes in it. The telephone … I picked it up, didn’t get a dial tone. I put it back on its cradle.
    Something was going down, but what?
    I stepped to the door and looked at the porch. I could see other wet footprints. I slipped out onto the porch, walked along it to the end. Depressions in the leafy forest detritus were visible, at least two trails. One coming, one leaving? Perhaps the shooter had come this way, along the side of the hill through the forest, parallel to the road below. Then he retraced his path leaving. I knew what lay in that direction—the main complex.
    I went back in the cabin and looked at the surveillance camera monitors. They were still working. The killers must have shot these men immediately before I pulled up at the hangar or after I left it. Or perhaps they were so busy drilling these guys they didn’t notice me on the monitors. If they had seen me, they would have met me down on the road or here at the cabin and killed me, too.
    Later on I realized that this would have been an excellent time to jog down the hill to my car and beat a tactical retreat to the safety of the nearest village, where I could have called Washington with the news. There was nothing I could do for the men in the cabin. Unfortunately that thought didn’t occur to me then.
    I checked the pistol. There was a round in the chamber and the magazine was full. I put the safety on and, with the pistol in my hand, started off through the forest following the tracks.
    The thought occurred to me that if I wasn’t real careful, I could end up like Fred and his colleague. Whoever shot them used an automatic weapon, and I was carrying a peashooter.
    I’m no hero—far from it. I’ve been around long enough to know I’m not bulletproof. I also know that revenge is something people only get in movies—not in America in this day and age. I kept going anyway. I wanted this guy. Wanted to shoot him my very own self … as long as I could do it safely, without doing any serious bleeding. I liked Fred, but friendship has its limits.
    I took my time walking through the woods, pausing frequently to look and listen. The sound of rain hitting the leaves and big drops falling off the trees masked all other sounds. With the leaves on the trees and brushy plants and the reduced visibility from fog, I couldn’t see far. Still, the depressions in the wet leaves were easy to follow—even for a city boy like me.
    It took about twenty minutes at my slow pace to get to the edge of the main complex clearing. Using the trees as cover, I sneaked to a spot where I could see, right behind a large tree. Flat on my face, I inched my head around the trunk. The main complex consisted of a two-story log structure that functioned as a dormitory, a garage for vehicles, and the main building itself, a huge, two-story log house with a covered porch that wrapped all the way around it. There were no vehicles in the gravel driveway.
    A body lay on the front porch. From the way he was sprawled I knew he was dead.
    A muffled ripping reached me, a second or so of sound, then another burst. The sounds seemed to be coming from the main house. I knew what those sounds were—bursts from a silenced submachine gun. The killers were still hard at it, slaughtering people.
    Killers. There had to be more than one. The pistol felt useless in my hand.
    Only a suicidal fool would charge in there with a pistol to face an unknown number of men armed with submachine guns. I’d certainly played the fool on numerous occasions in my life, but I sure as hell wasn’t suicidal. Lying behind that tree on wet, soaking leaves, I knew there was simply nothing I could do. I checked my watch. It was seventeen minutes after twelve.
    Several minutes passed. The shooting seemed to be over. After those two bursts I heard, there had been nothing else. Now black smoke began to waft from the