None of the sec guards spoke, one of them hitching his pack higher on his shoulders. Trader simply nodded his agreement. Ryan shrugged.
“Guess so,” he said.
They were to take the eastern trail, Buford the center and Ellison the west. They’d meet at the small lake by three. It would begin to get dark a couple of hours after that, so time was somewhat of the essence for them all.
“Anyone finds the grizzly or recent spoor, fire two spaced shots in the air. Rest of us’ll come running.” The sec boss looked around him. “Good luck.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Wolves,” Trader stated.
“Too far away to bother us,” the woman scientist replied. “Off near the Narrows to the mainland.”
“Sounded less than a couple of miles.” Ryan put his head to one side, closing his eye, concentrating on listening.
One of the sec men, a short man with a pocked face, chose that moment to have a coughing fit.
“Shut the fuck up,” Trader snapped.
Thea Gibson pointed a bony forefinger at him. “Watch your language, outlander. You aren’t lying with your filthy stupe whores now.”
Trader bowed to the scientist. “No. Plenty of times I wish I was.”
“Shut up, both of you.” Ryan held up his hand. “Yeah, there it is again. Definitely only a mile or so away. Sounds like a hunting pack to me.”
Thea Gibson tightened her fingers in her gloves. “I have read research that there is no evidence whatsoever, throughout history, of wolves voluntarily hunting human beings.”
“I been attacked by hunting wolves,” Trader snorted. “So’s Ryan here.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, we have ample firepower, assuming that you are capable of using your firearms. Eight guns should be enough to hold off a few scrawny dogs.”
It was a fair comment, unless it was a particularly savage mutie pack, in which case a war wag and a few cases of implodes and frag grens would come in useful.
DESPITE THE HANDICAP of his stick, Ladrow Buford led his group along the narrow trail that ran down the center of a steep valley, sparsely wooded on both flanks. It was far more rocky than any other section of Acadia Park, with a number of narrow streams flowing fast among the frost-riven boulders.
“We shall be at the rendezvous in good time,” he said to J.B.
“This the easiest of the three routes?”
“I believe so. There are few places where we are likely to come unexpectedly upon our prey. To the east of us, where Ellison is leading, the trail is more hazardous.”
“What about the other side, where my father is?” Dean asked. “That dangerous?”
Buford considered the question. “Possibly. Yes, in a couple of places, most certainly.”
JAK WAS FEELING the cold, aware of the threatening weather that was looming from the far north. The wind was rising, blowing the lying snow into deeper and deeper drifts, some of them already deeper than a man’s shoulder.
He moved forward, passing Abe who was struggling over an icy patch, catching up with the powerfully built sec boss. “Why not hunt tomorrow?”
Ellison glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “Why?” He spoke again before Jak could answer him. “I wanna ask you a question. Been a lot of argument about this, you understand, back at the base. When you bleed, what color’s your blood? I say it’s white.”
Jak’s expression didn’t alter. “I say better wait until you see it.”
“Right enough, outlander. Now, why should we think about aborting the mission?”
“Didn’t start until noon. Going to move get back institute by dark.”
“Fair comment, outlander Lauren. But Crichton decided, and what Crichton decides gets done.”
“Or else what?”
Ellison laughed, his finger rising to touch the scar by his mouth. “Or things can become terminally unpleasant and unpleasantly terminal.”
THERE HAD BEEN a serious avalanche ahead of Ryan’s group. From the weathering and the plant growth, it had probably happened at least ten or fifteen years earlier. A slab of the hillside, a hundred yards long and fifty yards high, had fallen away, tumbling into a heap of lichen-dappled rocks and scree.
The group now had to detour above it, following what looked like it was some kind of animal trail.