Hunting Season by Nevada Barr Page A

to hide. These men would not long be fooled by the dark and a few hastily raked-together leaves.
    "Let's go home," one said. Anna was pleased to hear the fear she'd been suffering creep into his words.
    Co home, she prayed silently.
    "What now?" another asked. A time of quiet followed, broken only by the shuffling of feet and the crisp sounds dry winter scrub made near Anna's ears where crushed branches struggled to reassert themselves.
    "Lights." Then in a whisper, hissed loud and commanding. one by one the flashlights were switched off. A wave of fear and disorientation swept over Anna as the beacons pinpointing her pursuers vanished. She thought to scramble free of the bushes and run, but she knew she'd never make it. Had she had a tail with rattles, the clatter would have given her away. As it was, she waited in stillness, listening so hard she felt as if her ears grew out to wave around above her on stalks.
    The hunters were conferring: murmurs, whispers, an occasional sharp and shining note of dissent but no words.
    "Okay then," was shouted. "Fan out." Laughter followed, but it was hollow and nervous, not the full-throated baying glee of before. Something had changed. Perhaps the knowledge that one or more of them were going to die. At least that's what Anna hoped.
    Flashlights were turned back on. Boots pushed through the undergrowth. A few mildly obscene catcalls were attempted, but they were half-hearted. The tenor had changed.
    "Look both high and low," the leader said distinctly. "She coulda treed herself."
    The lights separated and began moving more purposefully toward Anna's makeshift den.
    This was it then. A cool and amoral calm settled over her. Breath and heart slowed perceptibly. Her mind cleared, leaving a cold, watchful place where heated thoughts had recently clamored. Time changed. It seemed she had leisure for idle contemplations.
    Soon, she suspected, she would be taking a life. The thought bothered her not at all. The aftermath, the justification, the investigation, the paperwork that ensued when a ranger was forced to use her weapon was of greater concern than breaking whatever the hell commandment "thou shalt not kill" was.
    Early on, before she'd run, one of the men had said she could not shoot them because they didn't intend to hurt her. Proper use of force was pounded into modern federal law enforcement. The rule was the officer could only go one level higher in the force continuum than his attacker. If the villain used fists, the officer could graduate to a baton. Only when the attacker evinced a clear and present danger to the life of the officer or the lives of others would the officer be justified in using deadly force. Why had these guys known that? Was one a policeman, a highway patrolman, sheriff's deputy?
    Anna smiled a mean little smile. Her mind flashed back to her training at FLETC, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia. She'd been the only woman in a class of twenty-eight, the only woman and, by at least thirty pounds, the smallest. Mike Hurly, a man from the Tennessee Valley Authority, had been the biggest, close to six foot three and weighing in at two-ninety-three.
    Instructor after instructor used Anna and Mike as examples of the sliding scale of lethal threat. Who could use fists and batons and pepper spray and bullets and when. Mike, being a monolith of a man, could not legally claim he feared for his life till his assailant at least pulled a knife.
    The consensus was the diminutive Anna could pretty much kill anybody anytime if they were taller than an eight-year-old and threatened her with anything more substantial than a ripe banana and still legally claim she'd feared for her life.
    Yelling stopped; lights spread out. Anna's brain focused sharply. In stillness more frightening than the shouting, she could hear each shuffling step, each grunt and muttered expletive. She fancied she could even hear them breathing, the serrated panting breaths of excited dogs.