Uncertain Justice

Chapter 23

Helicopter controls at eleven thousand feet above sea level were mushy and unresponsive-- pilot rotor blades didn't have the same bite on the air up here they did at sea level. It was a lot like driving a big car with soft power steering over a sheet of ice. The driver could pull on the wheel all he wanted, but it wasn't going to change the car's course very much. Slow and sure was the only way to get things done in the thin mountain air.

By the time the pilot had eased the aircraft through a gentle turn to get back to the power line, Miles had run across the clearing and more than four hundred yards into the woods. When he heard the noise of the chopper's engine getting louder, he threw himself under the dark green shield of a squat spruce tree's low hanging branches. His heart pounded and his chest heaved with the effort to fill his lungs.

The helicopter crew couldn't find Miles when they navigated their way back to the clearing. The tried to hover so the observer could search for tracks, but the best he could manage was a maddening slow creep over the ground. Gaining some height, they did a few circles around the tower without seeing anything suspicious and then began to work southwest in the direction they'd last seen him running.

Miles waited for his heart to slow and his lungs to replenish his body with the oxygen it was demanding. When the chopper didn't reappear, he crawled from under the spruce and jogged northeast diagonally up the incline. He was alert now; he did everything he could to stay under cover. His head was on a swivel trying to keep all points of the compass under observation. He was in big trouble and he knew it.

He couldn't travel very fast in this terrain and the police had the benefit of hunting him from above. Climbing over the smallest of fallen tree trunks and negotiating rock formations to maintain a straight course was beyond him in his current state of exhaustion. He had to go around and that took time--more and more of it as he tired further.

It wouldn't be long before they would have a large search party on the ground and could begin hunting for him in earnest. The only thing in his favor was that it was late afternoon. The sun was dropping quickly.

Stopping to rest his aching legs, Miles faced back in the direction from which he'd come and squatted against the trunk of a thick fir. He couldn't see anyone coming after him. He guzzled water from his canteen, hardly pausing to breathe between gulps.

Suddenly the helicopter reappeared a mile or more south of him, climbing hard. It banked and flew almost due east through a pass ... away from where he was hiding. In seconds, it was over the horizon. It had been moving too fast to be searching for Miles. They were leaving.

After a few minutes break, his chest wasn't hurting quite as badly as it had been. He stood to stretch the muscles in his legs. The mountains loomed dark and massive all around, covered with thick forests of spruce and pine. Bald patches showed where fires had scared some slopes and there were signs of sporadic logging. He marked those as places he had to keep away from ... there was no cover there.

Here and there the stone heart of the mountain poked through the sparse soil and snow still covered some of the higher reaches. He had to stay clear of those spots too. If nothing else, travel was too difficult through them. He shivered as the frigid wind cut through the jacket as if it weren't there.

He studied the shape of the land so he could walk in something approaching a straight line while avoiding places he dared not go. The natural tendency to walk in circles in the wilderness was something he couldn't afford tonight. It was vital to get as far away as possible from the last point of contact. Forgoing the nicety of taking a compass bearing, he selected a tall chimney of rock on the shoulder of a ridge northeast of him that would stand out until total darkness took away all landmarks.

He grimaced. He would be climbing at about a thirty-degree angle across the slope. It was only marginally better than climbing straight up the mountain.

§

"Commander, I don't think you understand what the problem is here."

Sheriff James Barton was beginning to lose patience with the officious senior officer from the Colorado State Police. He might have been a fine policeman in his time, but the gut spilling over the g*n belt testified to the fact the highway patrolman spent precious little time out in the field lately.

"All right, Sheriff. Pray tell, sir, what is the problem as you see it." Commander Prescott Winters bit his lip as soon as the words were out. The sarcasm wasn't going to do anyone any good and he knew it.

It was a sign he was already getting tired though he'd arrived and assumed command of the search only an hour before. He didn't know why, but the locals didn't seem to be as enthusiastic as they could have been.

"Please," he said, gesturing for the local law officer to continue. He tried to be conciliatory. "Let's figure out what we need to do."

"Okay." The sheriff spread a large scale U.S. Geological Survey map of the area open on the hood of the four by four he used as a patrol vehicle. "This is where the helicopter crew reported seeing the hiker," he glanced at his watch after putting a dot on the map with his pen, "about an hour and a half ago. They only saw him for a couple of seconds ... never did find him again.

"Now ... a lot of this country is more up and down than it is level," Barton remarked, "so a hiker isn't going to make very good time unless he's on one of the established trails. The guy they saw was nowhere near the Continental Divide Trail or the Colorado Trail. But there are a number of smaller paths that he could use, as well as some forestry roads. Or ... he could be going cross-country.

"He was seen walking a little bit west of due south, but we don't have a clue whether he's still heading in that direction or not. If the man is even slightly intelligent, he's going somewhere else now."

Working quickly, the sheriff laid his ballpoint beside the distance scale and marked the distance he wanted on the barrel of the pen with his thumb. He laid the pen's barrel flat on the map and used a fingernail to set that distance from the place where the fugitive had last been sighted. Using that as the diameter, the sheriff drew a rough circle on the map. He leaned back, shaking his head.

"In terrain like this, a couple of miles per hour is about the best he can do ... but he's going to have a good two, maybe two and a half hour head start on us. He's going to be somewhere in this circle.