The John Milton Series Boxset 2

by Mark Dawson

  He hurried across to it.

  THE BREAK in the storm had been temporary and, now that the thunderhead had rolled back across the moon, the rains were falling once again. He clambered up to the rocky outcrop. The ravine bulged outwards here, and the face was twenty feet from the water’s edge. There was a carpet of scree beneath the ceiling that was, at least where it was close to the overhang, reasonably dry. The outcrop itself was sheltered by a canopy of leaves from large red and silver maple trees, and a comfortable nook was fashioned between two large dogwood bushes. Milton decided that the spot was as good as it was likely to get, and besides, he was tired and starting to feel very cold.

  And his arm ached. It really ached, but he didn’t think it was getting any worse. It could wait. His priority had to be shelter and then fire. He needed to get warm and dry his wet clothes. He would risk hypothermia if he didn’t.

  Shelter first.

  He went back down the slope into the trees and located three six-foot branches that had fallen to the ground. They were reasonably straight, and notched with nubs and small branches all the way down their lengths. He took the bag and removed the kitchen knife that he had taken from the RV, using it to saw into the ends of two of the branches, then used his hands to split them apart into shallow Vs. He rested those two branches against the rock wall and slotted the third branch into the grooves that he had cut. He used the nylon cord to lash the central pole to the struts and then stood the frame against the wall at a sixty degree angle, rolling two small boulders to provide stability at the base and a head start on the thatching he was going to have to do. He went back down to the woodland floor and collected a double armful of coniferous branches and large leaves. He started at the bottom of the frame, above the log, and worked up, thatching the smaller branches and then stuffing the holes with the vegetation. He returned to the wood again. A large pine had fallen, and since the wood inside rotted faster than the bark outside, there were large plates of it that could be easily removed and used as tiles. It took him thirty minutes, but, when he was done, he had shelter from the rain.

  Now, fire.

  He went back down to the trees and gathered tinder: dry grass he found in the lee of a tree, dead cleavers, nettles and parsley, honeysuckle bark, pine needles, fluffy seed heads, dry lichens and mosses. He returned to the outcrop and used the knife to dig out a shallow fire pit, lining it with small rocks and handfuls of scree.

  He took the Beretta from his pocket. One round left. Hypothermia was his most immediate danger, and he couldn’t waste time waiting for a fire to start. He would have to sacrifice the bullet. He released the magazine, racked the slide, and the round fell into his hand. He gathered up the tinder and fashioned it into a nest and added a squirt of the alcohol-based sanitising gel. He used his knife to prise off the end of the bullet and poured out the gunpowder onto a dry shard of wood. He placed the tinder over the gunpowder and used his fire steel to drop a cascade of sparks onto it. The gunpowder fizzed and spat, and a flame caught hold. He curled his hands around it, feeling the negligible fire on his calloused skin, shielding and shepherding it, and then, as it took better hold, he added bigger pieces of kindling, careful not to smother it, nursing the flame at each step until it was strong enough to take the dry twigs that he had scavenged. It took him thirty minutes, but when he was satisfied, the fire was healthy, and it radiated a strong heat.

  All right, he thought. Now the arm.

  He took off his jacket and sweater and unwound the torn curtain. He set up the flashlight so that the beam played back against him. He could examine the wound more carefully now. The bullet had passed through his bicep and left through his tricep. That was fortunate on the one hand, not so fortunate on the other. While there was no slug to remove, the journey through his skin and muscle had slowed the bullet down, the friction exerting enough force to start spinning it. The entry wound was neat and tidy, a perfect little blackened circle that would heal on its own with no need for any serious ministration on his part. The exit wound, though, the round punching out more slowly and rotating as it did so, was wide and messy.

  He went to the water’s edge and rinsed out the grit and debris and, for a moment at least, he numbed the pain. He slathered sanitising gel over the two wounds, wincing from the sudden sting. He reached into the bag and took out the sealed plastic container that held the first-aid kit. There was a needle and thread, but he knew the wound was not ready to be sutured yet. It would be better for it to be left open so that if it did become infected, the pus could drain away. As long as it could drain, it was unlikely to become life-threatening, regardless of how unpleasant it might look or smell. He unfolded one of the dressings and laid it across the entry wound. He attached it with a roll of adhesive tape and then repeated the procedure for the exit wound.

  Milton spread the remaining ferns on the ground and lay down on them, feeling the warmth on his skin. The smoke from the fire issued out of the chimney he had left against the rock, but he wasn’t concerned. It would be invisible in the dark, and the glow of the flames would be masked by the thatch and hidden in the cleft of the ravine. He looked at the flickering glow as it cast patterns against the moss-covered rock, picking out a glittering vein of quartz that ran down from the top and disappeared into the scree. He added more wood, raising the fire to a happy blaze.

  He closed his eyes. He hadn’t slept for nearly forty hours. He needed to rest. He trusted his body to wake him with the dawn, his habit for twenty years, and then, the fire warm on his face, he was quickly submerged by sleep.

  Chapter 28

  MORTEN LUNDQUIST saw his son at the same time as he heard the barking from the field behind him. Michael had built a bonfire, and he was sitting in front of it, cross-legged, facing into the woods. He had a rifle resting across his lap. Lundquist tramped on, leading his squad of six men out of the field and down to the fringe of the woods. The fire was warm.

  “Morning, Pops,” Michael said to him. “Everything all right?”

  “All good.”

  The men settled around it, some extending their hands to the flames to drive away the cold damp of the early morning.

  “Any sign of him?”

  “He hasn’t come out, least not this way.”

  Lundquist grunted, not ready to start praising his boy after the eternal fuck up he had brought down on them all by letting the Englishman and the agent round them up in the first place.

  The sound of barking drew closer.

  Michael looked up.

  “It’s Walker,” Lundquist said.

  He swivelled and looked over his shoulder. He could see Walker Price coming towards them on the track that cut through the cornfield, his three hunting dogs surging ahead, straining at the master leash. Walker was a lieutenant in the militia, a good and trustworthy man. He was a hunter, too, and a good one. His dogs had keen noses, and he knew that they would be able to track the Englishmen wherever he went. They would give them the advantage in finding him. He supposed that he could have assigned Walker to another team, but, he admitted, he wanted Milton all for himself. God willing, he wanted to be the one to make an example of him. It would be perfect, a chance to underline his leadership just before they started to follow God's word.

  Lundquist stretched his arms. He hadn’t been out in the open like this for years. Hell, he couldn’t recall the last time. He remembered nights that he had spent with his old man, weekends that involved hauling their gear up and down the hills on the other side of the peninsula, days spent outside because the old bastard said he needed to be “toughened up” and this was the best way to do it.

  Lundquist came from an old military family. His father said he had been one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, that he had run guerrilla units in the Philippines during World War Two and that he had been promoted to lieutenant colonel at twenty-six, a full decade ahead of his army cohorts. “I killed Japs,” he bragged. “Plenty of them with a knife.”

  His father had been a hard, sev
ere man, and Lundquist knew that some of that tough attitude had been passed down to him. That was the reason why he had always been hard on his own kids when they were growing up. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? Like father, like son. Michael had been brought up by the slut in Green Bay that he had knocked up on that drunken evening with Lester twenty-five years ago. He had no hand in the boy’s upbringing until he had come to his door, five years ago, a stupid expression on his face, his hand held out, saying, “Dad?”

  Lundquist remembered that day like it was yesterday.

  The sound of the dogs drew closer.

  His thoughts settled on the story that he would tell when the authorities came back into town. He knew that it would hold up. There was the record of John Milton’s arrest after the brawl with the out-of-towners in Johnny’s Bar. Witnesses, too, if he needed them. That was evidence of his violent disposition. Lester had written up how he had picked the man up on the outskirts of Truth and driven him to the other side with the instruction that he keep on walking. Milton had ignored him, evidence of his disregard for authority and, maybe, something else to add to his motive.

  Lundquist thought about it, laid the story out, and it all made perfect sense.

  What had happened next? Milton had come back to find Lester, shot him, and then fled as Lundquist and Olsen arrived just in time. They had gone in pursuit, and Olsen had found him and had been killed for it. George Pelham ran into him as they had given pursuit, and he had been killed, too. Three policemen dead. Shit, Lundquist would be able to bring the National Guard down on his head if he wanted to.

  He took out his tin of tobacco, rolled a cigarette, and lit it.

  “What’s the plan?” Michael asked him.

  “We let the dogs find his scent, and then chase him down.”

  “Now?”

  “No. We’ll wait until dawn. A couple hours. I want some light.”

  “But he could’ve kept going. He could be halfway to the lake by now.”

  Lundquist had a speck of tobacco in his mouth; he spat it out. “You see his arm? How he couldn’t carry it right? No way on earth he can keep going without stopping to get that seen to. Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing; maybe we find him bled out somewhere.”

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Michael said. “He’s tough.”

  Lundquist drew down on the cigarette. “‘But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.’ You know what that means, Michael?”

  “Patience.”

  “Patience. God willing, we’ll find him.”

  “Yes, Pops.”

  “He tell you anything that might tell us who he is?”

  “Nah.” Michael shook his head. “He’s pretty quiet. But he’s good with a gun, and he can handle himself. He took all four of us down, right?”

  “Says more about you than it does about him.”

  “I’ve apologised for that. Won’t happen again.”

  “Make sure it doesn’t.”

  Lundquist knew that he was riding him, but he knew that it was his responsibility to correct the flaws in his character. He thought of the words in Proverbs: “‘Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.’” That was a message that he would do well to heed. Michael needed discipline in his life. He was full of the foolishness and stupidity of youth, and Lundquist intended to see that it was all erased. Only when that was done would he feel comfortable in trusting the boy completely.

  THE NINE of them sat around the fire, waiting for dawn to break. Lundquist was anxious to start, but it wasn’t difficult to remember what Milton had already done to four of his soldiers. The man was dangerous. He would be even more dangerous in the dark.

  No, sir, he thought. This is better. Balance the disadvantage of giving him a little head start against the danger of getting yourself killed. That’s not a tough call to make.

  Michael had been chomping at the bit. He tried to persuade him again that they should get going, how they were giving him a chance to get away. He had been persistent, on and on at him for a full five minutes until it had started to look like he was questioning his orders, and Lundquist decided he had no choice but to shut him down. He had made a cruel jab at him about the mess up at the mine, embarrassed him in front of the others, but it had quietened him for the time being.

  Lundquist looked through the flames at him now, watched as he hugged his legs to his chest and stared into the fire with a baleful expression. He had the passion of the zealot mixed with the insecurities of a young man who was lost in the world.

  He needed guidance. He needed the succour of God’s word to help him see the righteous path. Lundquist would help him find that.

  He was reminded again of how Michael always tried so hard to impress him. He wasn’t a headshrinker, but all his time in the police meant that he had come to see plenty of human life, and he thought he could read people pretty well. Michael was easy to work out: Lundquist had abandoned him as a kid and, now that he had found him again, he was doing everything he could to impress him, show him that he was worthy of his love.

  Yeah, well.

  That had been useful to start with. Lundquist needed good young men, men who would be loyal and who he could trust, and his own flesh and blood was the perfect place to start. It had been easy enough for him to show the kid where the country was going wrong and who was to blame for it all. He was ready to be persuaded, like a bottle into which Lundquist could pour all of God’s teachings. Lundquist showed him what was happening to the country, how intrusive politicians were stripping away their rights, softening them up, getting ready to subjugate them. Fattening them up like hogs for the slaughter. Michael was a willing student. He had seen the truth in it.

  The boy had been working at the gas station on the edge of town. There was no profit in that for the militia, so Lundquist told him that he needed to sign up for the army. It would be useful training, he said. And wasn’t it kind of ironic, getting the federal government to train the soldiers that Lundquist would use to bring it down? And, he knew, it would be another chance for Michael to see what the politicians were doing to America. It would show him how the government was an evil entity, Satan’s puppet, perpetrating violence on its own people and on others abroad.

  It had worked.

  Michael had been a good soldier. He had served for three years, Iraq for the most part, his commanding officers commending him as the epitome of infantry, but when Lundquist felt his training was complete, he called him home. He had fallen in with the three other boys—Sellar, Sturgess, and Chandler—and recruited them, too, bringing them back to Truth with him. He had left for the war a believer, but he came back again a zealot. He was passionate and hot headed, but with the right direction he had demonstrated that he could be effective. He seemed to exert swing over the other boys in his crew, too. Lundquist had seen the way they all looked to follow his lead, and had seen the way his instinct to violence had kept them in line.

  The Sword of God needed money for armaments. Lundquist had been thinking about how easy it would be to hit the banks hereabouts for years. He could use his police credentials to get information on their security set ups that would have been impossible otherwise. He had worked it all out. He would craft the plans, and Michael and the others could carry them out. He ironed out the risks that their inexperience might have created and turned them into a smooth and effective crew. He suggested that they use dirt bikes to get in and out of the towns, following routes that he had plotted in advance to make sure that it was practically impossible to chase them. He knew about the old mine up by the lake and suggested that they should hole up there for a week after each job, at least until the temperature had cooled down.

  Michael had not needed persuading to get involved, and he had delivered the others just like he said he would.

  The first four heists had been flawless.
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br />   Houghton.

  Ironwood.

  Barksdale.

  Duluth.

  Then Marquette, and the dead guard.

  He should have called a halt to it then, but he had been greedy. Each time they had returned to the mine with sacks full of money.

  The money went a long way. Guns, ammunition, explosives. Everything that they needed.

  It was difficult to turn the flow off.

  So they had dropped down into Wisconsin instead.

  Wausau.

  Green Bay.

  No more problems.

  It had been going well.

  Until now, and the Stanton kids, the FBI.

  Until John Milton.

  But Lundquist was on top of it.

  All of it.

  He would get it straightened out.

  MICHAEL WAS tending to the fire, dropping a large branch across the middle of it, the sap spitting and hissing as the wood started to combust. The shadows around the camp were fading, the early dawn light spreading lazily up from the horizon. It would stay dim for another twenty minutes, and then the sun would rise, and the darkness would be pushed away.

  Lundquist looked into the depths of the forest. John Milton would be watching the same sunrise. Wherever it was that he had hidden overnight, it would feel a lot less secure with the darkness banished for the day.

  The dogs became agitated.

  He turned and saw Leland Mulligan approaching through the field. He had sent him back into town earlier to check that everything was in hand.

  “About time,” he said impatiently when the deputy had reached the fire.

  Leland spread his hands helplessly. He was another youngster who had been easy for Lundquist to recruit. His late parents had been God-fearing folk, and they had brought their son up the right way.