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anything that moved and many things that did not. Though his meandering search finally brought him just a stone’s throw away, he never did see the man he came looking for. A single shot through the chest put him down, and then there were two.
    The second was harder, and only a stroke of chance saved Thom Hollis from an early, shallow grave.
    He’d taken up a cramped but hidden perch in the gnarled lower branches of a nearby cottonwood, on the premise that the earlier noise of combat might draw the others to the scene of their partner’s demise. He was correct in predicting the response, but dead wrong on the approach.
    From the only narrow angle of view where Hollis had no cover at all—that was the unlikely direction from which the second man had come. Quiet as doom he’d stolen up close, his target not yet sighted.
    With a single glance upward the hunt would have ended differently. At less than twenty paces, though, a hiss from the two-way radio on his belt gave the hunter away.
    Prey and predator then met eyes at the same instant, each frozen in momentary disbelief at this unexpected turn of events.
    Hollis was pinned among the branches in his hiding place; there was no room to swing the long barrel of the shotgun around. The man on the ground backed away, calling out for the others and firing wildly at full auto as he retreated. Amid a storm of flying lead and splinters Hollis drew his pistol from the back and fired into the heart of the fray until the magazine was emptied.
    At length the echoes faded and the deep woods grew quiet once again. He climbed down, reloaded, and set out to see if their fight was really done.
    The other man had succumbed to his wounds by the time Hollis found him, but he hadn’t died too quickly. He’d crawled to a sly lair in the heavy brush to lie in wait for the approach of his enemy. He’d lost consciousness just that way, still waiting, and bled out from the effects of a damned lucky shot in the dark.
    And then, the third and last of them.
    This last one was smart; he’d done his job right. Hollis had picked up the two-way handset from the second man’s body and listened for a while, until it became clear that the enemy had wisely gone to radio silence. His two compatriots would be directly tracking the sniper, the last man had likely reasoned, so in the event that they failed he would choose instead to find his quarry’s destination—his rendezvous point with the other, unarmed escapees—and then take them down all at once, by surprise.
    The traces of a group bearing a wounded man were easy enough to follow, even at a prudent distance from their path. Still, the man hadn’t lapsed into carelessness. He was wary and took cunning precautions against pursuit, though he had little reason to suspect he was followed. Ittook hours, in fact, not only to find him, but to catch him briefly unprepared for a hostile confrontation.
    Near to his goal, less than a mile from the dim glow of a sheltered campfire up ahead, he’d stopped to rest and drink some water. That’s when Thom Hollis stepped from the shadows behind him.
    “I got you cold, son,” he said.
    The man had begun to turn toward the voice before stopping himself, his weapon still hanging at his side. A half-moon had risen as the night progressed, and by its pale filtered light it was the youth of this man that was most immediately apparent. His features were strong in profile but not quite fully mature, with that first sparse attempt at a beard that some adolescent rebels will try on at their first opportunity.
    For seconds more he didn’t move. Neither of them did; both knew well enough by then how this would end.
    “I can’t let you go,” Hollis said quietly. “And I ain’t taking prisoners.”

Chapter 5

    O nce Hollis had caught up to the others it took only a few minutes to take stock of their situation. Anyone inclined to count the blessings of this tattered band of fugitive patriots would find only this one: by