... without a doubt his hand was bleeding. The sharp strands of razor wire had cut him as he crawled under the fence and into the culvert that ran around the perimeter. Oh great, he thought ... now they will have my DNA ... and then he laughed out loud. It didn't matter, did it?

The FBI didn't have his fingerprints on file and so the preponderance of evidence they had used to convict him had not included any criminal history. Didn't matter, there was no public record of his existence. For the first six months of his incarceration the State of California considered him a John Doe. Then the first letters had arrived.

The guards had him shackled hand and foot before they allowed him out of the maximum security wing of the prison. Most of the officers thought he was getting a bum deal locked in a solitary cell twenty-three hours a day, but this form of punishment was just the warden's aggressive stance to make him talk.

From the first day of confinement Michael had refused to reveal his name. They had his body but not his persona because he could hold that back for a long, long time. He shuffled up the hallway to the locked door and waited for his jailers to lead him onwards. No sense in hurrying to see the warden. Whatever the reason, it could not be to his benefit.

The warden was a dapper man, always wearing expensive suits and designer ties. Maybe he was a faggot, but Michael hoped not. He was high strung, like a Manhattan high-rise poodle, only not as cute. In fact, Warden Rouse was terribly obese with fat jowls and a bug eyed countenance that was hard to look at with a straight face.

"I have a letter here," Rouse said. "I think it's meant for you, but it isn't addressed to John Doe. It's from a woman in Wisconsin who seems terribly distraught that her brother might be an inmate in my facility. I don't really give a shit if it's you or not, but if postal regulations didn't require me to deliver mail in good faith I would have burned it ... aw, what the fuck."

With that the warden pulled out his cigarette lighter and set fire to the envelope. Michael stood calmly through this little power display and said nothing. Rouse had expected some kind of reaction and got nothing.

"The letter was from Rebecca Melton ... does that name mean anything to you?" Rouse asked.

"That's my sister's married name," Michael admitted.

"Ah ha, finally we make some progress. So who would she address it to?"

Michael smiled, tired of playing the game. "Michael Pruitt."

"Bingo ... we have a winner," Rouse said.

"So I don't get to see it."

"Sure you do, I just burned the envelope. In fact there were two letters. Your sister and her preacher, both of them are urging you to find God to ease your remaining days." Rouse laughed. "Two life terms plus forty years ... maybe you should take their advice."

"Thank you, Warden. I'll take that under advisement."

Rouse handed Michael the letters and waved him off. The guards stepped forward and turned Michael back towards the door.

"Oh, Mr. Pruitt. Now that we have your name I imagine the FBI will be around for a chat."

"You're probably right," Michael said, knowing it would not be true.

There was no Michael Pruitt no matter how far the authorities dug in their computers. There was no Rebecca Melton either as he had no sister In Wisconsin. That name was fake, part of an identity forged by Terrance Bolton and his group of Principals. The letter from the preacher was the really important document and Michael had the key to read the code back in his cell.

Michael was grateful that Terrance still regarded him as one of their important assets. He might be locked up but it would not stop the killings. All along Michael figured Terrance had others in the game, others who might be as good as he was ... or probably not, but they got the job done.

The prison had television and newspapers so the stories about a death here and there caught Michael's attention once he was out of solitary. The FBI had visited several times asking him if he had any information about the reported killings, but he did not.

He could have told them about the other assassinations he'd pulled off in past years, but he didn't do that either because those were legal according to the government. They had Michael Pruitt for two murders and that was it, two life terms which he was not planning to serve. And all because of one little detail ... but that's how it goes.

The FBI lab technician who first detected the truffles in the contents of the victim's stomach had been surprised, but that was not what killed them. The elderly politician and his wife had succumbed to a poison several hours after going to bed. Michael thought he was being clever and had been sure the coroner would discover the muscarine in their system, but not who had delivered it.

The Inocybe erubescens, the fiber capped mushroom, was cooked right into the stuffing of the chicken breasts the old couple had ingested at their final meal. The truffles were a mere garnish ... a chef's flourish, and Michael's big mistake.

The rare truffle was imported from Italy for only several months of the year when it was available. Once harvested these valuable commodities were shipped round the world to a select few outlets which catered to the food industry.

Once identified, the FBI put a trace on all the shipments that had entered the United States in the past four months. With a whopping cost of over two thousand dollars a pound each truffle was well documented, and so were the buyers. In this case, it was Chef Andre at the La Grande caterers in Los Angeles.

Terrance had arranged the job as an assistant cook to facilitate the assassinations. Michael was familiar with kitchens having worked in one as a summer job when he was younger. But Chef Andre was a hard taskmaster and Michael put up with the abuse just to keep his focus on the mission.

There were few meals served in Los Angeles with truffles, and of course none of those clients had died of food poisoning. Then somehow, just as Michael was about to board a flight to New Jersey, the FBI descended upon him and took him into custody. Score one for law enforcement, but now it was time to change the game.

It took a year to plan the escape in an exchange of letters with that preacher. The code they used was deciphered with Bible verses and through that Michael learned that Terrance had the prison under observation. They shared ideas, settled on a plan and things began to happen.

The county landscaping crew mowed outside the fence, clearing a wide swath of growth so the guards in their towers could see the perimeter. But a different crew also worked on the drainage issues along the south fence, cutting the swale deeper to carry the runoff.

All this was done under the supervision of a prison staff that enjoyed the easy duty of watching some guy in a backhoe move dirt around. But they were inside the fence about thirty yards away and could not see the finer points of the work. Details like noticing that every time the backhoe had to shift position the bucket was brought down on the hard ground in exactly the same place next to the wire.

That had been a winter operation and spring rains had furthered the erosion of the depression caused by the backhoe beside the culvert. Throughout the summer Michael watched that area along the fence as he took his walks in the yard. Nothing was apparent from the inside, but Terrance said a slight channel was coming along nicely and would be ready by fall.

The warden firmly believed that every inmate should work off his debt to society, and no exception was made for Michael after his first year of incarceration. Not that the guards would assign him an easy job, but they did send him into the laundry and that is exactly where he needed to be.

Four months of sweat and toil in the steaming heat of a prison laundry cost Michael twenty pounds of weight and earned him the trust of several staff members. Piece by piece he carried extra clothing back to his cell until he had the makings of a good life-sized dummy.

Now the weather changed with hot days and cool mornings giving them rare fogs so dense the guards had to come down out of the towers during their shift and begin a foot patrol along the fence. Rather than increasing security the patrols made them tired and lax ... it was just about time to go.

Dinnertime rolled around and the chow hall was open, except Michael was not there. The hall guard looked in the window of Michael's cell and saw him asleep on his rack. Of course he'd been in the laundry all day so he must be exhausted, and the guard decided to let him sleep.

But Michael had responded to the chow call and closed his cell door as he left. If he was lucky they would not discover the dummy until the prisoner count at shift change which gave him until ten o'clock. He walked back to the laundry and hid in a cart full of soiled sheets until the staff went off to their own dinner. The laundry was closed, the lights went out and Michael headed for the roll up door by the loading dock.

The automatic door had been malfunctioning all week long thanks to Michael's ministrations. The sensor on the track had been hit so many times by an errant laundry cart it failed to register and kept tripping the alarm. Maintenance was called and had to get a new sensor which would be replaced tomorrow. Not soon enough, Michael thought.

He took a washing machine wrench and removed the track bolts on the bottom frame and those on the first three slats. Lying on the concrete floor in the middle of the eight foot door he looked over at the sensor and pulled the frame and slats towards him. The alarm was disabled and so he slid his arm, shoulder and chest under the opening.

His head barely fit and the door pressed down on his ear but finally he was through and his torso soon followed. He reached back and pulled the rubber rain slicker under the door and clutched it to his chest. Now he was prepared.

They had chosen a foggy night and Mother Nature had come through in spades since he couldn't see the fence forty yards away. Michael stayed on his belly and crawled across the dock to the stairs, slithering down them like a snake to the ground.

Out in the fog there would be guards on patrol, and like fools they had flashlights which were useless except to make it easier to spot them. He watched a glow float near the fence as a guard passed by. Michael stood up and made his dash to the wire.

The inner fence was electrified with thousands of volts that would cook a man if he touched the wire. Michael had never seen it happen, but he had heard stories ... and thus the rain slicker. The fog was so dense and wet he was already soaked to his skin, but what did that matter? He counted his steps like he had several dozen times before and went to his knees.

The support for this fence was comprised of concrete posts with the electric wires affixed to insulators spaced six inches apart. He would only have to worry about two of the bottom strands and these he wrapped with the rubber material of the slicker.

He rolled on his back, pushing up the wire which seemed to hum in his hands beneath the rubber. First one leg and then the other went under followed by his torso. His hands held the wire mere inches from his nose, and he was under. He unwrapped the rain slicker and slithered away from the fence just as the flashlight glow came back his way.

The outer fence was not electrified, but it was a physical deterrent covered with coils of razor wire from top to bottom. Michael looked back at the prison building, what little he could see of it, and adjusted the angle of his crawl. It was only ten yards between the fences and he soon reached his objective.

The razor wire gleamed even in the fog and it looked menacing. He slid a hand along the bare ground under the fence and felt the soil start to crumble under his touch. He scratched deeper and felt the surface give way revealing a channel about sixteen inches deep. He pulled the soil towards him and in doing so nicked the skin on the back of his hand, a reminder that the razor wire was deadly sharp.

He pushed the soil to the sides and kept on digging under the wire. The rain water had cut a good sized channel which the backhoe had created in the hard soil. The fog seemed to thicken as Michael worked on the trench until it was big enough for his body. It seemed like he had been at it for hours and that ten o'clock deadline loomed in his mind. He had to give it a try.

He ripped the sleeves off the rain slicker and tied the razor wire back as far as he could to create the gap he needed. This time he went head first down into the slight depression and hoped it was deep enough, His head and shoulders were under the razor wire when the weight of his body pushed through the final layer of loose soil and the ground gave way.

He almost yelped aloud as the channel seemed to collapse around him and he slid forward straight into the drainage culvert ... he was out. He was covered in mud for the first time in years and it felt glorious. Everything behind him was quiet as he disappeared into the fog and reached the cover of the trees and brush.

Michael managed one quick look back towards the prison but all he could see were the security lights dimly penetrating the wall of fog. He headed for the sounds of the surf breaking on the cliffs along the shore and within minutes he reached the dirt road Terrance had described where he turned north.

Now he was totally dependent on Terrance's good graces and the promises that had been made. He walked quickly, still wondering at the time and what might be happening back at the prison. His focus was on the road and so he almost ran into the car that was parked and waiting.

A small nondescript Honda just as they had discussed. Michael opened the trunk lid and pulled out the five gallon container of water. Stripping off his prison clothing he upended the container and rinsed himself off removing all traces of the mud. Then he dried off and donned the clothing that had been chosen for him.

There was a sturdy pair of work boots and a parka which he would need later on, but for now he just enjoyed the feeling of being dressed like a civilian. On the driver's seat there was an envelope containing maps, a wallet with his new fake identification, and a huge pile of cash. Michael pushed that aside as he sat and turned the key in the ignition. The clock on the dashboard said it was almost nine o'clock, time enough to get far away.

Good Bye, Warden, Michael thought ... I hope you handle your next job better than you did this one. The Board of Corrections would not be forgiving when they discovered the warden had allowed his most notorious prisoner to escape.

Michael figured they would think he was headed south towards Mexico. No one would be looking at a small plane heading north. It was lovely this time of year in British Columbia, and he now had a Canadian passport with his new identity.

He followed the road for several miles before reaching a suburban street where he turned away from the ocean. It would take him an hour to reach the freeway and head west towards Las Vegas and the airplane. Vancouver, here I come.

Michael was almost sixty miles away when the late shift began its prisoner count. He was not there to hear the wails of the siren announcing his escape or hear the screams of the warden echoing down the hallways. He might have appreciated the smiles of the other prisoners locked in their cells.

"You let that murderer escape ... how could you? Call the State Police and the governor. By God, someone do something right for a change ... we let the most dangerous man in the prison escape."

There was laughter from the inmates of the security wing ... and then the catcalls. "Hey, Warden ... did you lose something?" Michael Pruitt aka John Doe aka ... who knows what, had escaped. But what everyone wanted to know ... who he would kill next?

It took Michael about six hours to reach the airport outside of Las Vegas. First the car and now the plane had been exactly where Terrance had said they would be. It meant that the Principals still regarded him as one of their important assets. The fallout from his capture, trial and incarceration had been a terrible inconvenience for them.

Until Michael had his new identity washed clean he could not return to business and that was a concern. So far Terrance had been a patient man ...

Michael leveled off at ten thousand feet as he headed the Cessna north through Idaho. He had been on a heading for Calgary for several hours and planned to cross the Canadian border from Montana in some of the remotest hills north of Glacier National Park.

The twists and turns of the Flathead River looked so different from up here. The long ago fishing and camping trips in those hills as a boy were some of his fondest memories, and now he could relive those experiences for a while in Canada.

It had been a long time since he had piloted an airplane. He didn't have a license, in fact he never did. The skill was something he had learned after joining the Civil Air Patrol his first year of college ... there was no second year. But Michael was one of those people who could learn the basics of something and extrapolate the rest. Flying was not as hard as some of the other things he had learned.

The bulk of his money and an untraceable vehicle would be waiting for him at the small private airstrip two hundred miles above the border, Terrance had guaranteed that. But he would have some time off to rebuild his identity, become someone else. Michael Pruitt would vanish from this earth ... he was now Michael Wilson according to his passport.

He looked at the instrument panel and read the GPS heading, he was right on target. The plane had flown almost eight hundred miles at this point, most of them on auto-pilot. But with less than two hundred more to go he was tempted to fly the rest by hand. The plane was good for twelve hundred miles and the readout said he still had a quarter of a tank.

The high peaks in the park seemed to spread out before him, some of these mountains rising to nine thousand feet. He needed to stay away from populated areas since there was no flight plan and the transponder had been cut off. No one knew he was there, except of course Terrance.

The mountains grew closer tempting him to pull up to a higher altitude but he was safe where he was. The GPS was programmed to take him through the valleys and below any radar guarding the border. Michael was just about to reach in the cooler for another bottle of water when he heard the loud clunk and immediately smelled smoke.

The auto-pilot dropped out and some of the instruments started going haywire. He grabbed the joystick with his left hand only to discover that it was completely locked up. What the hell? Hydraulic failure, no control.

The altimeter started to register a small loss of altitude but readouts on the screen could not be trusted. If he kept flying like this he knew the point of impact would be well above the snowline. No one knew he was here, there would be no rescue. He turned on the radio and got nothing, it was dead. Terrance had done this to him.

The rudder and flaps could not be controlled and were locked in place. He could neither go up nor down, and he couldn't turn the aircraft away from the approaching mountains. He was nothing but an intelligent missile headed for ...

Michael reached over and eased back on the throttle until the engine died. The upper peaks of the mountains were rock and snow, but the lower reaches were covered in forest. Trees ... if he could belly flop into the trees he might survive a crash landing.

The plane was hardly a good device to serve as a glider ... it was just too damn heavy. He was already at five thousand feet and dropping fast. The hillside covered in trees was coming up and he would impact in less than thirty seconds. He had such little fuel left there would probably not be an explosion ... and then he thought of something.

He tugged on his shoulder straps and noticed the trees he was about to hit were full-bodied pines. The prop was still windmilling and he shoved the throttle back in and engaged the starter. The engine coughed and sprang back to life, bringing the nose of the plane back up just enough ...

The pines grabbed at the plane and Michael killed the engine as he hit. The wings sheared off and the windscreen shattered as the fuselage speared its way into the cluster of trees. All he could think about was that he wasn't dead yet.

The forward motion seemed to go on for minutes and then the plane nosed over and headed for the ground. The final thing he recalled thinking was that it would be cold outside. Then the cabin collapsed around him as the nose hit the ground so hard it knocked him unconscious.

He came to with the feeling of immense pressure on his chest, the harness had saved his life but it was now making it impossible to breathe. There were bits of pine scattered across his face and his legs felt trapped under the wreckage of the instrument panel. He reached for the harness release and realized once it was free he would fall out of the plane.

Pine branches obscured his view through the shattered windscreen so he didn't know how far off the ground he was. Suffocate or die from a fall, it seemed about the same so he struggled to release the harness catch and it popped. There was little to grab onto in the smashed cabin so his body was launched down through the branches and he cringed until he hit the snow several feet away.

His right leg was still inside the cockpit, held by the remains of the instrument panel and assorted wiring. Michael struggled and then realized his right foot was trapped. The wiring would not release him and he had to change the angle of his struggles or the damn cables would cut off the circulation.

He pulled at a pine branch stuck in his side and raised his body enough to reach the remnants of the windscreen. The safety glass crumbled at his touch and he pulled a section out of the gasket until the whole mess fell out. Now he could reach into the cockpit and grasp the remainder of the seat to pull himself up.

The move brought a flash of pain to his leg, just a reminder to slow down, but it gave him enough leverage to slide his arm back into the harness. He set his left foot on the stump of the propeller which had sheared off during the initial impact and stood up. With hands slowing growing cold he managed to rip off the wiring harness and free his leg.

He looked up into the fuselage of the plane and saw some things he would need. There was a first aid kit clipped to the wall, a fire extinguisher, and several bottles of water in the cooler. Then he noticed a heavy metal box against the wall he did not recognize.

His parka had been draped over the back of the passenger seat and he pulled it towards him. It was a struggle but he managed to put it on and immediately felt warmer. He had been lucky to come out of this with nothing broken and only a few cuts and scrapes.

He tossed the fire extinguisher and first aid kit to the ground but he could not move the heavy metal box which was bolted to the wall. What he needed was a supply of food and a knife, but the Cessna people obviously did not anticipate that need ... and if they had Terrance would have removed all such items.

He really didn't have time to think about the betrayal, there were other more urgent needs. He figured the crash site was somewhere on the western slopes of Kintla Peak which would put him less than fifty miles below the border. This was beyond civilization, but there should still be some fire roads within a handful of miles because of the lake.

The nearest paved road was forty miles away to the west, but he wasn't going to walk that far. He had been to Kintla Lake as a young boy, flying there with a friend and his bush pilot father in a plane with pontoons.

It was about as remote as you could get in Montana, but there was a campground at the south end of the lake. He recalled some cabins, rubber rafts on a fast moving creek. But it was late in the year and the campground would be closed for the winter.

It would be dark in about three hours and up here on the mountain a September night would be freezing ... Michael needed a source of warmth. He could start a fire with some of the aviation gas and a spark from the battery, but what would he use for fuel to keep it going?

He climbed out of the cockpit and lowered himself to the ground. Pushing through the broken pine limbs he looked towards the remains of the tail sticking up into the trees. The forest was dense enough that the plane would not be easily spotted, and then he noticed something.

There was a hole in the fuselage just about where that metal box was bolted to the wall inside. A splash of hydraulic fluid on the skin of the plane told him that the control lines had been cut with a small explosion. If he could remove the box he would probably find explosive residue and what was left of a trigger mechanism. The crash was made to look like an accident, but it wasn't.

Terrance had sent another assassin to make this happen ... but it had failed. Michael didn't know who the other guy was, but he would find out. He had to survive this ordeal because there were now at least two people he had to kill. It would take time to find them, but that didn't matter ... this is what he did best.

Coming down in a pine forest had several advantages. Pine was a soft wood and as such was a terrible source of fuel for the fireplace at home. But out here the forest had a huge accumulation of pine needles. What Michael needed was a deadfall tree and so he began the search.

The snow on the ground was only a few inches deep at this point, but later in the winter that would change to several feet. The dead tree he found was probably struck by lightning in years past, but it was only thirty feet from the plane. The upslope side of the fallen tree was buried in debris and snow while the downslope side was open.

Michael used the fire extinguisher to knock away the decaying branches and get closer to the trunk. He scooped out all of the wet pine needles he could see and tossed them aside until he reached the dry layer underneath. He stacked the downed pine branches from the crash against the deadfall and heaped the wet pine needles on until it covered the outside.

He did not want to risk a fire ... not that he had any good way to start one. But the man who had tried to kill him would not be far away and a fire would suggest that he had survived the crash. If he had been armed, Michael would have welcomed the bastard coming to look for his body, but he had no means of defense.

The first aid kit had the gauze and antiseptic he needed to treat his wounded hand, better to do that now before infection set in. The minor cuts and scrapes to his face and arms could wait until he had some boiling water to wash them. He would stay in this lair overnight and set off for the lakeside campground in the morning before they came looking for him.

With that in mind he took a pine branch and starting sweeping the ground at the plane, trying to erase all signs of his movement among the trees ... and then he heard the helicopter in the distance. That was a bad move as the vibrations would echo off the mountain, unless the searcher figured Michael was dead.

So I need to give him dead, Michael thought, and stopped the sweeping. It was nearly twilight here, a gloomy shadow ridden time among the tall trees that blotted out the setting sun. When the man came, and Michael was sure he would, he would be armed and probably have night vision goggles. Then there needed to be something for him to see.

Michael heard the blades of the helicopter cutting through the cold air as it came closer. Somehow they knew where the plane had crashed so there was probably a tracking device onboard. That's what I would do, Michael thought.

He unwrapped his hand and scratched at the wound until it started bleeding. He shook a small quantity of blood on the nose of the plane below the opening for the windscreen. Then with mounting concern as the helicopter swung around the side of the mountain towards him he got down on his knees and crawled towards his lair leaving a clear track to follow.

The helicopter could not land here and it would have to set down uphill on a flat spot in the snow pack. Michael pulled himself into the nest under the tree to wait. He wondered what this guy would do once he landed. Their objectives were much the same, their methods were different, and to some degree that gave Michael the advantage.

He'd been an assassin for years, although the last two behind bars had made him inactive. His mind was still sharp, his senses just as keen. Between his early life with years of training in the mountains, and a military service that taught him about the dark side of killing, Michael was probably the most dangerous person around.

So who was this guy Terrance had hired? Ex-military no doubt, as most of the truly skilled mechanics of death were ... but Michael guessed the man was younger without all the field experience of an older man. He almost laughed aloud ... older indeed ... he was only thirty-two.

But his opponent relied on demolition skills, electronics, and other sorts of technical support to make his kill. He could have learned that in almost any branch of the service, but it was not subtle. A good assassin was invisible and did not fly into kill zones in a helicopter. No, not subtle at all.

It took the patience of a sniper to lay in wait for hours, even days if necessary. Michael's hand rested on the fire extinguisher, his only weapon, and readied himself to kill.

"Be the bush, become the tree, meld with nature...but do not become complacent. You are courting death. Your life and that of your target are entwined in a slow dance to the end. You will win only when the target becomes a part of your thought process. If you are skilled enough he will never know you are there."

His chief instructor in sniper school had made speeches like that on a daily basis, and then put them through hell for weeks on end. It was necessary pain to focus their commitment, but few succeeded in passing the course. At the time Michael thought he should have gone out for Seal training, maybe it was easier.

Yes, his opponent tonight was going to be younger and when Michael was done he would not grow a minute older. He'll be coming soon ... such arrogance. It was now dark outside and his view through the screen of pine branches and needles was opaque. "Use the force, Luke." He had laughed at that phrase in the Star Wars film, but he understood it only too well.

Michael sat very still, his breathing shallow as he reached out with the only useful sense he had ... his ears. The wreckage was not far, close enough to hear footsteps crunching in the snow, but he didn't think his opponent was that dumb. No, the man would come without a light to give himself away, his moves would be stealthy.

The fire extinguisher was cold in his hand, but the safety ring had been pulled before he pointed the nozzle at the pine brush where the target would be. Michael sensed the presence outside even as his ears detected the sound of cloth rubbing against itself. The man was here and standing still looking at the pile of branches through his night vision equipment.

Michael flicked the safety ring from the extinguisher towards his left even as he pushed up and out through the wall of his nest. An apparition awaited him in the darkness, but the guy was looking towards the left and his rifle was pointed in that direction. Michael squeezed the trigger on the extinguisher and aimed it right at the dull green glow of the night vision goggles. The dry white powder erupted from the container and blasted straight into the man's face, filling his nose and mouth with the chemical retardant and blinding him.

The debilitating effect would only last seconds and so Michael released the trigger. The man tried to swing the rifle around but Michael blocked that move with his left hand even as he swung the fire extinguisher like a club, hitting the man on the side his head. The goggles flew away as the guy crumbled and Michael ripped the rifle out of his hands.

He was tempted to finish it right now, but he wanted answers. The guy was wearing a nice camouflage snowsuit, military grade. Michael went through the pockets and found a treasure trove of things he could use, but first he wanted that suit.

The man remained unconscious as the suit was stripped from his body leaving him in an insulated body stocking. Michael donned the suit and then bound the guy hand and foot with the plastic zip tie cuffs he found in a pocket.

The rifle was an absurdity of multi-function, the German HK G-36. It had a grenade launcher ... a frickin grenade launcher attached under the barrel. Who was this clown at his feet ... some kind of killer cowboy? Terrance must have been desperate to send this kid ... either that or he figured the guy was expendable.

This was not some monster Marine, but even as Michael was trying to figure out his age the guy came around with a groan.

"Hello stranger, you looking for me?" Michael asked.

"Shit ... cold."

"Better than shit ... dead. Who the fuck are you?"

The guy struggled against his restraints and then relaxed, resigned to his fate. "Who hired you?" Michael asked.

"You know ... you used to work for them."

"Who is in the helicopter waiting for you?"

"No one, it's a Bell 206B ... a rental."

So the kid was a pilot, carried a German assault rifle and had access to military grade equipment ... a mercenary.

"Iraq or Afghanistan?" Michael asked.

"Blackwater Bagdad ... why do you want to know?"

"I'm just trying to judge how desperate Terrance is to kill me. Did you set the charge in the plane?"

"No, demo isn't my thing. I just followed the beacon signal up here ... they were expecting me to bring back a body."

"Sorry to disappoint you. Where were you supposed to drop off the body?"

"Boise. Look, I know who you are ... they said you would be dead."

The helicopter was useless to him and there probably wouldn't be any supplies in it either. The kid had hired onto a fool's mission and Michael wasn't going to be responsible for him. He probably had a serious concussion and once his brain swelled up he wouldn't be able to walk. All this talk was useless.

Michael swung the rifle around and without a second thought put two bullets in the kid's forehead. A mercy killing was best since he would not survive up here if left behind. A frickin mercenary and Blackwater at that, although that was probably a lie since the kid was too young. Some college dropout with militia experience and a pilot's license was more likely ... didn't matter now.

Yes, Terrance must be desperate to send this yahoo after him. That meant his active assassin must be on a job. All the more reason for him to disappear for a while. He couldn't trust the Canadian passport or the new identity so he was off the grid for a while.

He could winter at a cabin on the lake and figure out his next move. The pockets of the snowsuit were filled with clips of ammunition so he could hunt. Michael looked down at the dim figure of the mercenary ... at least the kid deserved a funeral.

It was well past midnight when Michael was done. The helicopter was an expensive vessel for travel to the underworld, but what the hell ... the kid would go to Valhalla in style. Michael put four bullets in the fuel tank and allowed the aviation gas time to spread before he tossed a torch at the machine.

The flames would be like a beacon on the side of the mountain and attract attention, so be it. He watched the helicopter burn for a while and saw the kid's body in the pilot's seat consumed with flames. Michael turned away from the scene and walked back down the hill into the trees.


On to Chapter Two

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"No Reason to Kill" Copyright © Chris James. All rights reserved.
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