Finally, then, Boone dropped us off at the trail and headed around for the Festival.
Here I was totally incompetent, so I just followed Jim. He was wearing a kind of bulky, tattered overcoat that he kept in his truck for purposes like changing the oil. He had his bow underneath. It looked kind of stupid, but anything was better than brandishing a primitive weapon around the SS. He was half-running down the trail in kind of a crouch, keeping his head turned to one side. I was glad he knew bow hunting, that would help us. But I got to thinking about Dolmacher's black belt in survivalism, and I wondered just how clever and paranoid he was. There was only a mile, maybe a mile-and-a-half, of forest between us and the festival site: across some flats, up a ridge, down the other side. He had plenty of time. Wouldn't it make sense to go in a ways, then double back on the trail to see if we were being followed?
Naah. Who would follow him, why would he worry?
Because he'd been holding up drugstores. Maybe someone had gotten his license plate number. Maybe - I was just putting myself in his shoes, here - maybe his car had been noticed and they were sending in the cops.
How would cops do it? A frontal assault. Dozens of men, spaced a few feet apart, combing the whole area. He couldn't gun them all down.
Well, maybe he could, if he had a silenced weapon. And I wouldn't put it past Dolmacher to own a silencer, or even a submachine gun. He'd always had an obsession for Uzi's and MAC-10s and such in college; this had clearly continued into his wiser years, and now, God help him, he had enough income to supply an arsenal.
Poor Dolmacher. All that priceless knowledge, that world-saving information about the bug, attached to a stunted personality. If we could stop him - not if, damn it, we were going to stop him - we'd have to deal with that personality for the next several days. A grim prospect either way.
Next question: what would he do if a couple of individuals came after him? First of all, they'd never find him without a dog. Jim knew a few things about tracking, but I doubted he was that good. If they did find him, they'd be in danger. Witness Bathtub Man.
Where the hell was Jim, anyway? I'd looked away and then he was gone. I went on for a few yards and stopped. Wouldn't be very smart to call out his name. There was kind of a gap in the foliage along the trail, so I stepped into it, wandered a few yards into the forest, and there he was, pissing on a tree.
“He probably came this way,” Jim said.
“I don't get it. How can you tell?” I've never understood trackers.
He shrugged, continuing what was turning out to be an epic piss. “I can't tell. But the festival is off in this direction. There's an obvious opening in the trees here, it's just the easiest way to go. There are some tracks right there that look pretty fresh.”
He nodded and I looked. The ground was wet and kind of muddy. Someone's size 13s had definitely passed through here. Not that Dolmacher was that tall. His wrists and ankles were like broomsticks. But his hands and feet belonged on a pro basketball player. Whoever it was, he'd been wearing those heavy-duty Vibram-soled running shoes that affluent people nowadays used instead of ten-ton waffle-stompers. Good traction combined with light weight.
And either he didn't care about being followed, or else he wanted us to find these tracks. I looked around at the forest and suddenly it all looked dangerous. The undergrowth wasn't that thick. If you squatted down and hid yourself, you could see of a hundred yards, but you'd be invisible to within ten. It was no fair.
“Change of plans,” I said. “What if Dolmacher's waiting for us?”
“You know the guy, I don't.”
“He's just the type who would do it. It wouldn't be complicated enough to just run through the woods and bore a few holes in Pleshy. He'd have to turn it into a war game.”
“So? I thought you said you were smarter than this guy.”
“Yowza, Jim! My eyes are watering.”
Jim just shrugged.
I said, “Let's just go to the festival site. Let's take kind of an indirect route. We've still got an hour. We don't have to track the guy, we already know where he's going, so the only thing we can do by following his tracks is fall into a trap.”
“We can swing way around and avoid the ridge,” Jim said.
“Which would put us on the highway.”
He sighed. “Or go over the ridge up there.”
“Are you up to it?”
“We'll have to hurry.”
“You have a watch, Jim?”
“Do you?”
“Shit no.”
“Wonderful. We just have to go as fast as we can.”
Time stretches out when you're in the woods and in a hurry. What seems like two hours is actually one. So if you have a deadline, you're always anxious about it. Usually you get there way ahead of time.
That's what I kept telling myself, anyway. It didn't make me feel any better. Actually I just felt like an asshole. We'd gone in all hot to track Dolmacher down and then realized we were in mortal danger. Meanwhile, Boone was out on his own. He was easily a match for two dozen SS men, but I at least wanted to see it.
When we got to the place where the ground went from flat to approximately vertical, we were already hurting. I was sick and starting to get cramps in the gut, and Jim had stepped in a hole and twisted his ankle.
I was opening my mouth to suggest that we run back and hitchhike to the festival when I heard a crinkling noise. Jim was unfolding a tinfoil packet that he'd taken from his pocket.
“Lunch already?” I said.
“Most people associate hallucinogenic mushrooms with the Southwest,” he said, “but the Northwest tribes are familiar with fourteen varieties. I was there last summer.”
“Studying their culture.”
“That's for whiteys. I was taking my family to Expo in Vancouver. But I did stop in for a while, and look what I brought home.” He popped something dry and brown into his mouth. “Legal for me, but not for you.”