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  Too late.

  The tracker was approaching, taking his time, doing it right, but still a human presence in the forest that could not be masked entirely if he chose to move at all. A stationary watcher always had the edge over a moving target, even when that target was an expert versed in the terrain. The watcher didn’t need to move or make a sound, aside from breathing, while the object of his scrutiny had to advance, however slowly, cautiously, into the killing zone.

  His first glimpse of the hunter was a rifle’s barrel, followed by the arms supporting it and then the total man. The hunter was a husky six-footer, dressed in a camo jacket and a pair of faded blue jeans over well-worn boots. His gray hair had begun to thin around the crown, above a craggy, weathered face.

  The rifle had no telescopic sight, which made it easier to aim in an emergency, but its bolt-action would delay a second shot, however briefly, if the first one missed. Bolan had no way to determine caliber from where he crouched above the rifleman, but hunters in the Highlands would be armed for red deer—Britain’s largest mammal—and whichever gun Macauley’s ghillie chose for that job would be powerful enough to drop a man.

  Bolan drew the KA-BAR from its leather sheath, choosing the knife over his pistol in a bid to minimize the noise of what had to happen next. One shot would be enough to rouse Macauley’s other men, however many there might be, but it would take a second shot—perhaps even a third—for them to pinpoint where the sounds came from. Add natural reaction time to random searching of a spread that covered several hundred acres, and he should have ample time to slip away.

  If he survived that long.

  The ghillie—MacKinnon—was almost below him, slowing his cautious pace as if he could smell danger in the air. Was that improbable? Why should Bolan be the only one endowed with warning senses in a life-or-death encounter?

  Just a few more yards to go. But if he stopped or veered away, the ambush would be ruined. Worse, if he looked up into the tree…

  But he came on, pausing where Bolan had deliberately scuffed the soil in passing, as if accidentally. Hardly the perfect bait, but if it held MacKinnon for a moment it was good enough.

  Bolan pushed off and fell through space, rustling past pine boughs as he plummeted toward impact. Fifteen feet below, the ghillie heard him coming, spun and tried to raise his weapon, but there wasn’t time to find a moving target. Bolan’s right heel struck MacKinnon squarely in the face, his left impacting on the tracker’s clavicle and snapping it, leaving MacKinnon’s right arm useless as he fell.

  It didn’t stop his index finger from contracting on the rifle’s trigger, though. A single shot rang out and echoed through the forest, sounding the alarm for Macauley and his men.

  Before the ghillie could reverse his grip and work the rifle’s bolt with his left hand, Bolan was kneeling over him and lunging with the KA-BAR, burying its clip-point blade between MacKinnon’s ribs. The fallen man went stiff and shivered, as the knife’s point found his heart. Bolan’s free hand clamped down across his mouth, stifling a cry of pain and hanging on until the thrashing ceased at last.

  So much for scoping out Macauley’s property and finding out what he was up to with the DeepScan on Loch Ness. The probe had failed. Bolan would have to find another way inside his adversary’s mind.

  But first, he had to get the hell away from there.

  Wiping the KA-BAR’s crimson blade on camo cloth, he sheathed it and began the long jog back to where he cut a passage in the fence, checking his watch along the way to see how long he would be waiting for Beacher.

  Chapter 13

  Alastair Macauley stood over the body of his longtime aide, chief of security and trusted friend. He felt a welling of emotion as he viewed the corpse: wool shirt and camouflage stalking jacket drenched with blood, pale face upturned, eyes blank and open to the dappled sunlight.

  “Stabbed once in the pump,” Graham Wallace said, with a measure of detachment that Macauley found insulting. “Looks like he took a stompin’, too.”

  Macauley swallowed bile and anger, and said, “I wouldn’t have believed he could be taken by surprise. Not in these woods.”

  “It took this long to find him with the acreage we had to cover,” Wallace said. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Sorry ’bout your loss, sir.”

  “And the men who did it? What of them?” Macauley asked.

  “One man, as far as we can tell,” Fergus Gibson said, standing at the laird’s left elbow. “Any more, and he’d show marks from further beating.”

  “One man,” Macauley said, insult heaped on injury.

  “I ain’t a woodsman,” Wallace said, “but the way it looks to me, this fella climbed the tree and waited for your man to come along below him. Then he jumped down, like and finished it.”

  “It was his gunshot, then,” Macauley said.

  “Yes, sir,” Wallace replied. “Rifle’s been fired, but with a bolt-action he never got another.”

  “And no evidence that Ewan wounded the intruder?” Macauley asked.

  “No blood anywheres around, ’cept his,” Wallace confirmed.

  “And the escape?”

  “We found a hole cut in the fence,” Gibson explained. “Along the south edge of the property, before it slopes down to the loch. The cuts are fresh. He used wire ties to close the flap.”

  “So, either Ewan found that,” Macauley said, “or he met the prowler during his routine patrol.”

  “Whichever, sir, the creeper got the best of him,” Gibson said.

  “Like your own two men,” Macauley said. The sudden color that he saw in Gibson’s face was gratifying.

  “Yes, sir. If it was the same man did both jobs, and all.”

  “You doubt it?” Macauley asked. “Are you saying that we have two different enemies at large in the vicinity?”

  “I’m sayin’ someone’s pinned a target on us,” Gibson answered, “but I cannot say how many are involved.”

  “Some kind of a conspiracy,” Macauley said.

  “Some kind. Yes, sir.”

  “And its object?” When Gibson merely blinked at him, he said, “I mean, its purpose?”

  “Could be one thing or another,” Gibson said evasively. “Maybe somebody doesn’t like you helpin’ out the TIF.”

  “And who would know that?” Macauley asked. “Have you broadcast our association, Mr. Gibson?”

  “Me? No, sir. You need have no fear on that score.”

  “Well, then?”

  “It could be somethin’ personal to you, sir. Somethin’ with your neighbors, like.”

  “Ridiculous! My neighbors hold me in the very highest of esteem,” Macauley said. And yet, a portion of his brain was sifting names, in search of covert enemies. “What else?”

  “The old kraut,” Wallace interjected. “Let’s not be forgettin’ him, eh? A plain ol’ Nazi, isn’t he? I could name all kinds of folk who’d like to get their hands on him—or plug him, if they’d rather not be bothered with a trial, and all.”

  “What are you saying?” Macauley asked. “The Israelis? After all this time?”

  Wallace responded with a lazy shrug. “I’m only sayin’ it’s a possibility, your lordship. If the Jews knew where to find him, or the lefty radicals from Germany, maybe…who knows?”

  “We can be sure it’s not the police,” Gibson said, cutting off any further speculation from his second in command. “They might enjoy doin’ a creep around your property, but knifin’ people’s not their style.”

  “On that,” Macauley said, “we can agree.”

  “Unless they was the cloak-and-dagger types,” Wallace said. “MI-5 and all, ya know?”

  “I need to think about this,” Macauley said. “And we still have preparations for the salvage
operation. First, though, Ewan needs a proper burial.”

  “You don’t mean callin’ someone in?” Wallace asked.

  “Don’t be stupid,” the laird growled. “I have all the equipment necessary, and he’s already at home. Pick two or three of your best men to get it done.”

  WAITING WAS the worst of it, but long experience had trained Bolan to quell impatience, agitation, anger, all forms of anxiety and apprehension. While he was aware of passing time—and likely could have told Beacher what time it was without checking his watch, within two minutes either way—his face and attitude betrayed no urge to stir.

  They had been parked and sitting in a scenic turnout for the past half hour, taking turns with Beacher’s Bushnell glasses as they watched Macauley’s wrought-iron gate, fully a quarter mile away. Bolan believed they were outside the range of any probable surveillance from the laird’s estate, but close enough to pick up any vehicle that might depart from it. For props, they had two open maps, a makeshift lunch and sunglasses that would have done a tourist couple proud.

  The only risk, in Bolan’s mind, involved the Camry. Someone on Macauley’s staff had seen it pass the gate the previous night and had decided it deserved a closer look. The men dispatched to stop them hadn’t made it home, hadn’t reported any further details on the car, its license number, or its passengers. Toyotas were a staple of the UK rental market, common on the roads. Easy to overlook.

  They should be fine—unless they weren’t. In which case, Bolan’s Plan B sat behind the driver’s seat in duffel bags, already locked and loaded.

  “Still no police,” Beacher observed. “That’s good, at least.”

  “Macauley won’t invite them back,” Bolan said. “The last thing he wants is to explain another corpse right now.”

  “You think he’ll just dispose of it himself?”

  “Yes,” Bolan replied. “He’s got the land and an incinerator on the property. No sweat.”

  Beacher was peering through the glasses as they talked, when she said, “Here comes someone.”

  Bolan looked downrange and saw a gray sedan emerging from Macauley’s gate. “Looks like another Benz,” he said. “The laird likes German cars.”

  “To match some of his friends, apparently,” Beacher observed. “We have a driver by himself, and…yes. It’s Graham Wallace. Turning this way.”

  “Maps up,” Bolan said, and they concealed their faces, leaning into each other like an average tourist couple plotting routes for a day trip, or maybe trying to determine where they’d gone wrong earlier. Moments later, when the Benz swept past, its driver barely glanced at them.

  Sloppy.

  Bolan gave Wallace time enough to pull away, then revved the Camry’s engine, cranked it through a sharp K-turn while Beacher watched the road and set off in the TIF guerrilla’s wake.

  He led them back through Foyers without stopping in the village, to the B852 southbound. They followed at a cautious distance, speeding up to keep the Benz in sight on dips and winding curves, then falling back on straightaways so Wallace wouldn’t pay them any mind. Arriving at the intersection with the B862, Wallace turned right and started back toward Fort Augustus.

  “If he stops there, we can take him,” Bolan said.

  “You hope.”

  “It’s not a problem.”

  “And if he keeps going? What if Gibson sent him to Fort William, then, or somewhere else?”

  “I’ll stop him on the way,” Bolan assured her. “Either way, he’s ours.”

  WALLACE HAD BEEN relieved when Gibson asked him to drive down and have a look around the town for anyone suspicious. How in hell he was supposed to spot a ringer? With the tourists passing through, hired cars and coaches everywhere, it was anybody’s guess. But getting out from under Macauley’s beady eyes was worth the drive, all by itself.

  Wallace was sick and tired of kissing up to the old man, not that his view had been requested on the subject. Since they had found what they were looking for, sunk in the loch, he guessed they would be bound to Mr. High-and-Mighty Laird Macauley until the cows came home.

  Or could they find a way to cut him out of it?

  Wallace drove to the tourist car park, by the information kiosk and the BP station, parked and left Macauley’s car, remembering to lock it with the button on the key fob. Thirty paces to his left, a mob of Japanese tourists were just unloading from a Highland Heritage coach. Two others were parked beside it from Timberbrush Tours and Highland Explorer. The clash of foreign languages bemused Wallace and made him think again of crazy Jurgen Dengler in his motorized wheelchair.

  Except the old man wasn’t crazy, after all.

  They’d found the object that he claimed was waiting for them in the loch. Next, all they had to do was find a way to make it pay off for the Tartan Independence Front.

  And Wallace wasn’t looking forward to that aspect of the plan at all.

  He passed along the sidewalk toward the swing bridge, rubbing shoulders with the tourists, trying not to scowl at all their jostling and jabbering. Bloody rude they were, he thought, the lot of them, acting as if they owned the place. But if they ever ceased their trips to look for Nessie, he supposed that Fort Augustus would dry up and blow away like some old mining camp from the American Wild West.

  It galled him, knowing that his homeland was dependent for a great part of its income on the whims of foreigners—and all the more so when he thought about a great chunk of the profits being funneled off to England. Most of the Nessie models in the shop windows he passed were made in China, all that money gone for good behind the Bamboo Curtain to a bunch of Communists and coolies.

  Could they change that, if the TIF succeeded in its bid for Scottish independence from the Crown? Wallace was hopeful, even though he didn’t have a clear idea of how such changes were accomplished, or the pinch that Scots would feel during the process. Still, the Cubans had been through it, the Vietnamese, and other countries all around the world. They’d thrown off foreign dominance and still survived—thriving, most of them, with new leadership and new ideas, in his opinion.

  Suspicious strangers, Wallace thought. He hadn’t seen a one so far, though damn near everyone he passed was strange in one way or another. Stop a hundred people on the street in Fort Augustus, and he’d be surprised if five of them were locals.

  To hell with it.

  He was ready for some food, a pint or two to wash it down, and then he could go back to the manor with a clean report. Who’d know the difference, anyhow?

  He stopped outside the Bothy Restaurant and Bar, examining its menu posted on the wall. It all smelled good from where he stood—but what was that, a whiff of perfume to his left?

  Wallace inhaled, smiled, was about to turn and see if he had company, when something nudged him in the ribs.

  “It’s a Beretta with a silencer,” a male voice to his right informed him. “You can die or take a walk. Time to decide.”

  INSTEAD OF WALKING Wallace back through town to the car park, Bolan and Beacher escorted him along the canal’s southern bank, past small stores and a newspaper shop that served as the local post office. Where the buildings thinned out, they took him aside for a frisk, Bolan relieving the Scotsman of a Browning Hi-Power pistol.

  “What now?” Wallace asked.

  “We go for a stroll,” Bolan told him.

  “You’re not the police,” Wallace said, frowning.

  “Keep that in mind,” Beacher advised him. “And your dear departed, too.”

  Wallace went pale at that and offered no resistance as they led him back the way they’d come, to reach the nearest foot bridge spanning the canal. Their footsteps echoed as they crossed dark water, not a boat in sight waiting for passage through the locks.

  On the north side they turned right, moved past mo
re shops and a grocery store, then turned toward the stone bridge spanning the River Oich. Across it, Bolan stopped short of the final bustling shops and car park, steering Wallace to his left. A sign directed them along a narrow gravel path to see Rare Breeds.

  “In there,” Bolan directed him.

  Momentarily, they reached a small freestanding structure, like a ticket kiosk, which was padlocked from the outside. By the door, a drop box urged them to observe the honor system for admission fees.

  Bolan stuffed a ten-pound note into the slot and told his hostage, “Go ahead.” Wallace complied.

  The Rare Breeds Park was larger than Bolan expected, not a petting zoo at all, but a layout spanning several acres, with separate fenced enclosures for various breeds of sheep, goats, pheasants, ducks, geese, chickens and potbellied pigs, along with Highland cattle and red deer. One of the goats sported three horns and didn’t seem to mind.

  The footpath they were following skirted an area roughly twice the size of a football field, with pens on both sides as they walked. As far as Bolan could tell, they were the park’s only customers. He marched Wallace to the point farthest from where they had entered, beside a cluster of maintenance sheds, and announced, “Here we are.”

  “And where’s ‘here,’ then?” Wallace asked, regaining a bit of bravado.

  “The place where you choose if you want to survive.”

  “It’s like that, is it?”

  “In a nutshell,” Bolan said.

  “So, you want me to spill my guts, and you’re not even coppers?”

  “Three questions,” Bolan told him, “and no one’s expecting you to testify in court.”

  “I’ll listen, but I promise nothin’.”

  Bolan let him see the 93-R with its attached sound suppressor and asked, “What’s Macauley looking for, with the DeepScan?”