"What do the guys in the third 'copter say they were doing here?" another man asked.

"That's what they'd like to know," Krause answered, ignoring the first deputy. "You see, the third helicopter has not yet come home." He looked at his watch. "And since it's been a good sixteen hours since he took off, it seems safe to assume that by now he's put down somewhere. And the feds do wish he'd call," Krause added in a high-pitched girl's voice. The other men in the room laughed heartily. Like most local law enforcement men, they had no great love for federal police usurping their authority.

"What's this Blair guy say about all this?" one of the other men asked.

"He is 'currently occupied elsewhere', according to the pencil-pusher I talked to," Krause answered. "Sounds to me like they can't find him, either."

"So what do we do?" asked one of the deputies.

Krause shrugged. "Tate checked Henry's property. Everything looked okay, didn't it, Spud?"

"Gate was locked, like I expected, so I hopped the fence and walked in. House looked okay-no windows busted or doors jimmied. Same with the garage. Pried the hangar door out a little, shined my flashlight in, and his plane was still there, didn't look like nobody had bothered it. When's he due back, Skip?"

"He told me end of June," the Sheriff answered.

"So what do we do?"

"Hell," Krause said in a tone that showed he didn't know what to make of all this, "looks to me like Henry's okay, and his property's okay, except for some trees. Let the feds hash it out."

"Pass your quizzes up to the front of the room," the SHAT instructor told the class of FBI agents. "I'll grade them over the lunch hour. Let's break for lunch, and when we come back, we'll do a role-play involving some of the material you read for today. See you in an hour."

Oh goody Alex Neumann thought as he heaved himself out of the classroom chair. Just like fucking grammar school. He looked around at the middle-aged men who were also standing up to stretch their legs. There's one other guy here younger than I am. Wonder what the role-play's going to be this time. Probably have to put on a dress and take turns playing grab-ass. Neumann smiled involuntarily at the mental image. Then he laughed out loud, and several of the other agents turned to stare at him. Probably think I'm cracking up. Hell, maybe I am. He was out in the hall when he felt a hand on his arm.

"Agent...Neumann, is it? Angela Riggs." Neumann turned to face a tall, brown-haired woman of about thirty-five with a slender figure and an engaging smile. Great eyes he thought. Her suit was tailored to fit, and although Neumann focused on the woman's face, the second thought that came into Alex Neumann's head was that Agent Riggs had a nice-looking chest.

"Alex," he said, shaking her hand. "Pleased to meet you."

"Would you like to join me for lunch, Alex?"

"Think the teacher might give us any demerits? Two agents having lunch together?"

"I'm not an FBI agent. I'm a psychologist. I've been asked to audit this class because they're thinking of having me teach it."

"And you picked me to have lunch with because of my obvious disgust for the whole process."

"Actually, I picked you to have lunch with because you were the only man in the room within twenty years of my own age who wasn't wearing a wedding band. And you have a flat stomach." Alex Neumann laughed, and he had a third thought: / like this woman.

"So let's go eat."

The 172 was showing a little over three hours fuel remaining at 65% power. Henry did not want to use a power setting much lower than that with mountains around. Henry Bowman had found Borah Peak, the tallest in Idaho, and had been flying a zigzag search pattern over the Pahsimeroi Valley which lay below it. He'd been at it for a little over an hour when he spotted the 2 1/2-ton Army truck.

Flew right over it the first time he thought with a grin. / should have figured Allen would try to find some shade. He brought the Skyhawk down to about 500 feet and made three passes, but saw no sign of his friend. Probably hiked off somewhere he decided. Well, with three hours fuel, I can afford to look around some more, now that I've found his camp. Henry Bowman gave the airplane full throttle and climbed another two thousand feet.

While he was out over the open valley he uncapped a felt-tip pen and wrote a message on one of the plastic orange juice jugs to which he had earlier tied one of his T-shirts. It was a shirt that Allen Kane had given him at Knob Creek a few years before. The black fabric had a yellow silkscreened logo on it which said DON'T TELL MY MOTHER.

I'M AN NFA DEALER.

SHE STILL THINKS I OWN.

A CHAIN OF WHOREHOUSES.

That way he won't think I'm some fed from the Bureau of Land Management, going to nail him for salting a lead mine Henry thought with a smile as he began a back-and-forth search of the lower levels of Borah Peak, which rose up from where Kane had made camp.

He had just finished making a one-eighty at the far edge of the area where he thought his friend might be when red streaks in the distance caught his eye. Henry Bowman grinned.

Nothing like a magazine full of tracers to announce your position he thought as he guided the plane towards the source of the pyrotechnics. Just then, another, much longer burst of red dots arced out down the valley and peppered a dark spot on a distant rock face. This time Henry Bowman laughed out loud. He's got a belt-fed. Allen Kane carried a belt-fed gun up the mountain so he could shoot tracers out over the valley.

Henry eased back on the throttle and lowered the nose to maintain airspeed. Let's not slam into the mountain he admonished himself. That would be most embarrassing. He flew parallel to the slope of the hill with the mountain on his right, and when he passed over Allen Kane, he banked to the left and waggled his wings several times. As he headed out over the valley, Henry stayed in a very gentle turn to the left. He wanted to make a big circle and come by the same way he had before, now that he had his friend's attention. Flying near mountains was nothing to take lightly, especially in a non-aerobatic aircraft. Air currents were unpredictable, and he was going to be flying low and slow, close to the hillside when he dropped the plastic jug.

Allen Kane watched the aircraft fly directly over him and turn left, over the valley. "Stupid buttfucker ought to mind his own business when a guy's shooting tracers," he said out loud. Kane figured the pilot was using the radio to report him when he saw the plane waggle its wings and come around for another pass.

By the time the aircraft had circled around and was about to fly over Allen Kane again, it was considerably lower and its engine made a lot less noise. Just before it passed over him, Kane saw something appear below the white-and-blue aircraft and fall towards the ground as the plane accelerated away. The way it fell through the air, it was obvious the object did not weigh very much, and Allen saw it land behind some rocks on a talus slope about a hundred yards in front of him. He realized it was probably some kind of message as he started walking over to where the thing had fallen. Henry Bowman was the first person he thought of, but it didn't make sense that his friend would be this early, and flying a strange airplane.

Allen Kane found the plastic jug in the rocks, and when he saw the t-shirt tied to it, he knew who was flying the aircraft. He looked at the message written on the plastic, and his brows knitted together. FIND ME IN THE VALLEY it said simply. Underneath those words were the letters RFN, printed much larger than the message itself.

Allen Kane did not know anyone with the initials R.F.N. He did, however know another meaning for those three letters, an abbreviation that he and Henry Bowman used occasionally.

It stood for Right Fucking Now.

Henry Bowman was stretched out in the grass, lying under the shade of the Cessna's right wing when Allen Kane drove his deuce-and-a-half up to where the plane was parked, a mile down the valley from where Kane had made his camp. Henry got up and brushed himself off as Kane climbed down out of the big military vehicle.

"You're here early," Kane said with a big grin. "With new wings." The grin faded when he saw the look on his friend's face.

"I got problems, Allen. Serious ones. Some people are dead. You want to risk being charged with harboring a fugitive?" Henry said without preamble. "If not, I'll fly out of here right now."

"Was it anybody I liked?" Allen Kane asked with a skeptical expression on his face. Henry smiled involuntarily.

"No, I don't think so."

"Then spell it out, dipshit."

"Before I do, is there anyone you talked to on your phone before you left, that you told I had planned to drive out with you, but couldn't?" Allen thought for a moment, then shook his head.

"I turned the recorder on a day or two before you changed your plans. Wanted to pack up without a bunch of guys bothering me. Only calls I made out were a couple to guys that were transferring guns to me. Nobody that knows you."

"Well, was there anyone you talked to, about that? Guy at a gas station near your place? Someone near my house when you picked up my ammo, or at Lindbergh's in Mackey when you were buying dynamite, or anything like that?" Kane considered the question.

"No, I don't think so. Haven't been to Lindbergh's yet. Talked to a guy in a cafe in Arco who asked about my truck, and told him I was out here to shoot some jacks. Said 'I', not 'we', and didn't mention you or anyone else, and I guess he figured I was out here alone, but that doesn't mean anything. You could just have easily been back at camp, or across the street getting a haircut, or whatever, and I just didn't mention it."

"What about when you went to my house?"

"Didn't see anybody. Unlocked your gate, drove in, got your ammo out of the garage, locked up, locked the gate on the way out, drove here." Henry nodded in understanding, then smiled and licked his lips.

"And if anybody did see you, it was our plan to go by my house and pick up my stuff anyway. If they saw just you in the truck and not me, I could have been asleep in the back, or picking something up off the floor-"

"Or giving me a blow job," Allen suggested agreeably. Henry shook his head and took a deep breath.

"Right. Anyhow, if that's the case, then you are the only living person who knows that I stayed at your house instead of riding with you when you left Indiana driving this truck. You are the only living person who knows I was not riding with you the entire way across the country, and you are the only living person who knows that I have not been out here in Idaho with you the last seventy-two hours. And I would like to keep it that way," he added.

"Okay," Allen said. "I understand. Now what happened?"

Henry told him.

Kane listened without comment, although his eyebrows went up and his nostrils flared several times. When Henry had finished, Allen Kane was silent for a moment, then he asked one question.

"How'd they decide to hit us right then?"

"I forgot to mention-all three of our phone lines have been tapped for more than six months now." "Six months? All of us? Christ!"