Working his way down toward the road, he paused occasionally to scan the woods with his night-vision scope, which helped him pick out objects in the morning gloom. Eventually he got close enough to the road to see a couple of the agents and a black Suburban. It appeared that there was only one vehicle—which meant there were probably only four agents.

He moved quickly back up the hill and piled more rocks, indicating that Tillman should continue moving west. Eventually he came across a clear-cut—a broad patch of recently logged land. In the distance stood a ramshackle truck that looked operable. If Tillman or the Verhovens could hot-wire it, they’d be home free. He slid back into the undergrowth at the edge of the clear-cut and waited.

Tillman hit the small rise on the other side of the shooting ranges, then tore down the hill, trying to pass Verhoven. If Gideon was going to leave a sign for him, he needed to be in front.

Just as he passed Verhoven, he saw it—the old danger sign from their childhood.

He slammed on the brakes so hard that Verhoven nearly ran into him.

“What the heck are you doing?” Verhoven said.

Tillman held up one hand, then signaled to turn off the ATVs.

Verhoven shook his head. It was obvious he wanted to plunge down the hill and get the ATVs to the logging trail.

Tillman turned off his ATV, then reached over, grabbed Verhoven’s key and twisted it.

“Are you out of your mind, son?” Verhoven said.

Tillman held one finger to his lips, then pointed down in the direction of the logging trail, still hidden by the trees.

“What?” Verhoven said angrily.

“I thought I heard something. If the FBI’s down there, they’ll hear our engines.”

Verhoven scowled. “We can’t move Lorene without the ATVs,” he said.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

“We have ed em"to.”

Verhoven reached toward the key. But as his hand hit the switch, Tillman heard a muffled thump in the distance. A car door.

Verhoven slowly took his hand away.

“Look, I’ve hiked hundreds of miles with eighty-pound packs,” Tillman said. “Put her on my back. I can make it a mile or two. We’ll follow this ridge to the west. It’ll skirt the road and let us get around the Feds.”

“No,” Verhoven said. “We should go east. That gets us to the county road.”

“That’s the point,” Tillman said. “If they’ve got people on this logging road, I guarantee you they’ll have somebody down there cutting off the county road to the east.”

“We have to take that chance,” Verhoven said.

“This is my world,” Tillman said. “You need to listen to me.”

“He’s right,” Lorene said.

“You need to get to a doctor,” Verhoven said.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

She climbed slowly off the ATV, as if to demonstrate.

“Let me help you,” Tillman said. “Give me your hands.” Tillman grabbed her wrists and wrapped them around his neck, draping her behind him, piggyback style, and hefting her off the ground. “Let’s go,” he said.

Lorene Verhoven weighed a lot more than the standard eighty pounds of gear that he used to carry in the service. After the first few steps, Tillman realized it had been a very long time since he’d done a full ruck march through wilderness terrain.

He began moving gingerly down the hill, trying to distribute her weight evenly across his back. At each footfall she moaned slightly.

“A mile or two, that’s all,” he said. “You’re gonna make it.”

“Yeah, but can you?” she said.

“Piece of cake,” he grunted.

It took about half an hour to get out of the woods. Tillman’s back was aching and his knees felt wobbly. Verhoven had spelled him a couple of times—but he was a decade older and thirty pounds lighter than Tillman, so he wasn’t able to carry his wife very far.

Finally they reached a broad clear-cut. Sitting near the edge was a rusting old pickup truck, attached to a trailer full of branches. Tillman set Lorene down and said, “Let me try something.”

He jogged to the truck. It was unlocked. Among the arcane skills he’d learned in his days with the CIA was hot-wiring vehicles—a skill that he’d hung on to better than his lock picking. Within thirty seconds he had the old Ford belching blue smoke from the tailpipe. He steered it around to where Verhoven and Lorene were crouched.

“Let’s get you both in the trailer,” he called. “The FBI isn’t looking for me, so if we get stopped I’ll 0em as be fine.”

He yanked some of the tangled brush off the back, creating a hollow where Lorene and Verhoven could hide. Once they were situated, he piled the brush back on top of them, then covered the brush with a tarp.

As soon as they were free, he saw a figure emerge from the woods. His heart started to race. But then he saw that it was his brother.

Gideon gave him a silent thumbs-up and a grin, then waggled his hand next to his ear, giving him the universal I’ll-call-you-soon signal. Then he melted back into the thick vegetation.

Tillman smiled and put the radio back in his ear. Then he headed south toward the Virginia border.

22

ANDERSON, WEST VIRGINIA

Sir, I see a white flag in the window.”

Ray Dahlgren turned to the sniper, who had his spotting scope trained on the house from the command post at the base of the hill leading up to Verhoven’s compound.

“It might be a trick,” the head of the HRT unit said. “It might be a ruse to walk our guys into an ambush.”

“Or it might not,” Dahlgren said. He felt the pressure of wanting to resolve this situation as quickly as possible, worried that it could turn into a Waco-type media circus. If it was humanly possible to avoid that nightmare, he was going to do it—even if he had to risk the lives of a couple of his guys. “Sniper, can you give cover from here?”

“Affirmative, sir.”

“All right, have the hostage negotiator talk them out one by one. As they come out, place them under arrest and move them to the command post. If anybody fires on you, you will disengage under suppressing fire from the sniper and the HRT unit. And we’ll start from scratch. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

It was a painstaking process, talking the men out of the house. Dahlgren tried to hurry the process along, but he was too late. Well before the last man had been taken into custody, there were choppers circling the compound, long-lensed cameras trained at the ground. A CNN truck was parked on the road, too, its telescoping antennae thrusting skyward.

Still, two hours and ten minutes later, it was over. All the militia members in the house had been arrested, the house had been cleared, and all the outbuildings were secure.

The militia members were huddled in a group, cuffed at the wrists and ankles. They didn’t look like scary terrorist monsters, just frightened kids with too many tattoos and too few teeth.

“That’s all of them, sir,” the head of the HRT unit said.

Dahlgren studied the faces in fury. “Where’s Verhoven? Where’s his wife?”

The HRT man shook his head. “Not here, sir.”

“Goddamit,” said Dahlgren. His phone rang. It was the head of the FBI.

“It’s everywhere,” Director Wilson said. “CNN, Fox, you name it. Tell me you have this guy Verhoven.”

Dahlgren found himself struck dumb, unable to answer. Which was answer enough for Wilson.

“Dammit, Dahlgren, you better get your shit straight. Until you find that guy, this story’s not going away.”

“We have reason to believe Gideon Davis was here, and he may know where they’ve gone.” Dahlgren imagined his career hanging in the balance. Everything he had worked so long and so hard to accomplish was on the line. He held his breath, waiting for a response from his boss.

Wilson finally answered with a question. “What are you saying?”

Dahlgren explained the situation with Gideon that had caused him to lead a small group of agents to Verhoven’s compound. He discredited Gideon’s theory of a terrorist attack as a paranoid delusion and suggested that Gideon was responsible for what was happening.