Thirty minutes later Terry was at the cliff’s edge. He was awake and lucid. Peter said, “The trip down is going to hurt. I believe everyone down there is either dead or gone. Bite on this stick instead of yelling in case I’m wrong.”

Bernadette repelled down first. Peter attached the repelling line to Terry’s harness and took a turn around a nearby sapling and eased Terry over the edge and slowly lowered him to the valley floor.

Bernadette waved to Peter to come on down.

Peter used the repelling line doubled so he could pull it down from the bottom of the cliff face. The RV was old and sparsely equipped but there was a pullout bed for Terry. He was awake and said, “You guys are good. I thought I might have to shoot both of you for torturing a senior citizen.”

“We aren’t out of here yet. Somehow this old RV is going to serve as a tow truck to open a lane in the jumble of wrecked vehicles for us to get through.

“Okay, now the real test,” Peter said as he hit the starter. The engine cranked and coughed once before quitting. The battery sounded weak. On the second try the engine caught and kept running. “It’s probably been here for a while and it was left here because no one wanted to trust it in an emergency.

“Bernadette, when we get to the ambush site, you drive. I’ll take our trusty repelling line and use it if we need to pull a vehicle out of the way. Also I found blood on the passenger seat of the Ford pickup. I think the blood belongs to the Russian. I believe he sent the giant thug up on the ridge to see what he could find to explain this disaster to his betters. When the giant, who I heard called Horace, didn’t come back on time, the Russian headed out on foot. Probably to some previously agreed upon rendezvous. He will be watching for a vehicle coming from the valley and will probably believe his friend Horace is driving this RV.”

“How can you think all that out in the midst of everything that has gone down this night?”

“I really don’t know. It just comes naturally to me, like a clear image. This is close enough. I’m getting out to find a path through this mess. Keep your weapon ready. No lights and keep the engine running.”

The moon was now up and the cloud cover was breaking up. Peter could make out the damaged vehicles and the one lane track. His night vision was sharpening. Clearly the RV in front of the Ford pickup ended up sideways on the track blocking the Ford pickup. Peter put the pickup in neutral. The hand brake was not engaged. He turned the steering wheel hard right and walked back to talk to Bernadette.

He leaned in the window and said, “Pull up behind the pickup and when you see me wave my arm push straight ahead. Start out slow and accelerate until the vehicle starts to move. Push until it’s off the road. Keep your RV on the road.”

Peter stood beside the pickup with the door open and one hand on the steering wheel, keeping it locked in a tight right turn. He waved Bernadette up. When the bumpers mated, she increased power and the pickup, on its flat tires, rolled off the road into a shallow low spot.

Moving the other RV from its cross-road blocking position was more complicated.

Peter had to use their repelling rope to drag the rear of the stranded RV downhill toward Bernadette’s RV. Peter stayed in the towed RV until it reluctantly rolled off the road and rocked to a stop against a tree. The road was now open. Bernadette wasted no time in moving out.

Peter opened the sunroof and stood on the seat with his chest and arms resting on the roof, his rifle scanning for any stragglers or the only man he badly wanted to kill. Bernadette had her bright lights on and kept the speed down. The road was deeply rutted and Terry couldn’t take too much rolling around. They were coming to a sharp rise and a narrowing of the track between two boulder-strewn steep hillsides.

Peter came back to the passenger seat and said, “Lights out. Keep the engine running. If you hear gunfire go fast through the small pass. Don’t stop for another half mile. That road feature is exactly the kind of place the Soviet would have remembered. If his guy, Horace, was to pick him up, this is where it would be. He can also easily kill anyone coming through. From behind those boulders he could almost put his rifle barrel against the driver’s window. Keep a close watch for anyone sneaking up while I’m gone. I’m going to the west and then cut back east to come on the choke point from his blind side. Wait here for 30 minutes, then go fast. Watch for a blinking light, three short blinks. A pause, then two more. Pull up into the pass and wait, weapon ready at all times. Okay?”

“Got it. Please be careful. This is as bad as the IRA ever was. Give me a good luck kiss.”