Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

  He started to move again, crabbing his way up the hillside, then stopped. Another truck was rolling across the grass outside the compound. Jesse had stopped and was shouting something to Slusher. Harrison took the opportunity to get higher, climbing over boulders and rocks and pressing himself between the trees until they thinned. He was getting ahead of them and he looked back and saw Salvesen get out of the truck, carrying a rifle. There was no mistaking his bulk in outsize cam’ gear. He handed something to Jesse. Then they went to the back of the truck and Harrison heard the barking of pit bulls.

  Wilson and Johnson climbed to the twenty-third floor. The early hours now. Outside, the moon pressed a sickle-shaped hole in the cloud. Johnson carried the drawings and the NVGs. The flat was still in darkness, and they could not risk switching on a light until at least the booby traps were taken out. There were four movement sensors in total, one in each corner of the room, all wired to one another and then down into the box. They laid the drawings on the floor and Wilson put an infrared torch to the paper. He traced the line of the sensors with his finger, muttering to himself through his respirator. There was so much wiring he could not be sure, so he stopped, checked himself and analysed it all over again. Johnson did the same and they compared. ‘The four here,’ Wilson said, ‘and the other four there. Yes?’ They spoke with their heads close together. Johnson thought it over again and then nodded.

  ‘You sure?’

  Johnson twisted his face round so their eyes met through the masks. ‘I’m sure,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’

  Wilson traced the first set and worked his way very gently round to the back of the box. They had to snip the wires low down, for fear of setting off the sensor. ‘Red?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ They did not know the colours from the X-rays but the diagnostic team had told them red and green. Webb and Cregan confirmed it. Storm Crow configuration: every TPU man liked his own way of doing things, and the booby-trap wiring would be the same. ‘They better be fucking right,’ Wilson muttered, and felt in his jacket pocket for wire cutters. He had to prise the red wire so gently away from the green, in order to get the jaws round it. With mercury tilt switches in the box, he dare not jog against it. He cut the first wire, just a little snipping sound, barely audible through the weight of the masks. Sweat ran into the corners of his mouth, the pressure of the rubber making his forehead ache just above the bridge of his nose. His eyes seemed to be pulled down in their sockets. Between them, they disarmed the rest and finally were able to stand up.

  Wilson could feel the moisture working over his body and he knew that when he finally got to shower, his skin would be black with charcoal. His palms were soaked and all he wanted to do was wipe them down on his thighs. He looked across at his colleague. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Call it in.’

  Johnson squatted down on his haunches. ‘Control from Johnson.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘The booby traps are neutralized. We’re just left with the box.’

  Harrison got to the outcrop of rock and his highest observation point before the saddle. It was getting darker now, but he counted ten men coming up the hill after him, maybe a hundred yards away. Shots rang out and a slug zipped off the rocks by his feet. Jesse’s pistol was good for two hundred yards, let alone the rifles. He needed to get to his cooler and his own guns. The pit bulls were tearing up the hillside after him. Harrison took Wingo’s gun from his belt and worked a round into the chamber. The dogs were almost to him. Taking cover behind the rock, he gripped the pistol in both hands and aimed. He shot the first one in the chest. It yelped and spun and came down on its back. The second paused, looked at its mate and sniffed. Harrison shot it through the head. It gave him a certain amount of pleasure. They were Jesse Tate’s dogs.

  He scrambled to the saddle, ducked over the rise and then he was racing, stumbling down the other side and the adrenalin rush buzzed through his veins. Anger; taut, hard anger flaring inside him. No more fear. The odds were ten to one, so let them come. He knew exactly where he’d take them. He was still a mile from Dugger’s Canyon and he needed the cover of the trees in the draw to keep their fire off him. He jumped over some rocks and lost his footing, tumbling head over heels, crashing through the sage and the bunch grass that crusted out of the loose snow, which was still clinging to the upper slopes of the hillside. Two minutes, maybe three and they would be on the rise and could take all the time they needed to sight and pick him off.

  He would not lose now. He had lost before and he would not do so again. He thought of the gallows and the crazy light in Jakob Salvesen’s eyes, and he fell into the trees as Jesse’s tall frame appeared over the rise above him. Harrison was on his feet again, pushing himself up from the dirt. A startled black-tailed doe skittered away from him and crashed out into the open. He heard the crack of rifle fire, glanced left and saw the deer cartwheel in the snow.

  The gulch dipped away from him now, down to the valley floor, then the next rise cloaked with thick douglas fir that would bring him to the lip of the canyon. He started running again, the breath sticking in his lungs, a firelike acid in his side. Shouting from above him. He looked back, but could not see them through the trees. He hit the gully floor and started to climb again, on a crude track that once upon a time had been a partial logging road. The saplings had become new trees, and he picked his way through the weight of them, then vaulted ancient stumps of fir, which the English had used to mast their ships.

  He heard more shouting behind him—Salvesen’s voice booming out across the expanse of the hillside. Then rifle fire and a branch split thirty feet in front of him. They had spread out: Salvesen in the middle, Slusher and Drake to his right, the others to the left of him, with Jesse way out on the flank. Harrison saw him feeding fresh 300-grain shells into his 454.

  He climbed on, crested the rise and looked down through thick vegetation to the mud roof of Chief’s hogan below him. From here, he could see the slim fissure of darkness backing into the clay that was the half caved in portal of the Magdalena mine. He smiled then. He had been in that mine before. Danny was proud of his past and delighted in taking him down. They should’ve had a gun that day, should’ve looked for tracks around the entrance, but they didn’t. The cougar heard them long before they heard her. Fortunately, she gave them warning and they backed out slowly, then stood stock-still as she slunk into the cottonwoods. Harrison looked at the mine now and something stirred in his heart. Out here, he was chicken feed. Ten on one, the odds were stacked against him. But in there, the darkness of tunnels stretching over a mile into the hillside. The past grew up in his mind and he heard that VC’s voice and a shiver ran through him again. But it remained his turf: he had crawled tunnels alone and killed with just a pistol.

  He pushed his way down the slope, keeping off the track and hacking a path with his arms through the thickest layers of undergrowth. It was much darker now. Within five minutes, he was deep in the cottonwood trees and heard the sound of his pursuers above him. He scrabbled at the earth and ripped away the top layers of dirt, revealing the green lid of his cooler. His MP5, with its retractable stock and three clips of ammunition, was wrapped in black plastic. He slung it over his shoulder and reached for the flashlight, his Glock and his knife. His cheesewire garrotte he stuffed into the pocket of his shirt, and then he pulled on his cam’ suit. The blood fizzed in his veins. He was back in Vietnam, contemplating the enemy, and the rush was building inside him. At the bottom of the box, he had four stun grenades, nine explosives in each. He slipped these into his breast pockets and spread cam’ cream over his face. Then he crouched and waited. Somebody was moving close to him, a matter of yards away. He heard the crunching of twigs underfoot.

  The sound moved closer and for a second Harrison thought he could be seen, but the vegetation was thickest here, which is why he had chosen the place for his hide. Footsteps and breathing, laboured, somebody not used to such exertion. Tyler Oldfield, one of the Pass
over marshals, and he was holding an automatic rifle against his chest. Harrison heard the crackle of static and realized they had radio contact. Oldfield was ahead of him now and Harrison slowly rose. He could see the butt and barrel of the rifle poking out on either side. Three feet away. Harrison lifted one foot and pivoted, hunting knife in his hand.

  ‘Can’t see a damn thing,’ Oldfield muttered. ‘Everything’s fucking green.’

  Harrison slipped a hand over his mouth and rammed the knife to the hilt, up under his ribs. He twisted the blade sideways before pulling it out. The warmth of Oldfield’s blood spilled over his fingers. His body went rigid, then slack and a little bubbled gasp escaped his lips. Harrison lowered him gently into the undergrowth. He bent over him before he died, looked into his eyes and lightly patted his cheek. Oldfield stared and stared, the terrible fear of sudden and violent death.

  ‘You lose,’ Harrison whispered.

  For a moment he crouched like a lion on her kill, and tasted death on his lips. He felt nothing, no sensation, no emotion. Oldfield’s headset crackled, and Harrison placed it over his own ears and listened.

  ‘Tyler, you copy? Where is the sonofabitch?’ Jesse Tate’s voice.

  Harrison looked through the clearing to Magdalena’s portal. ‘He’s gone into the mine.’

  He moved swiftly and ducked into the blackness. He could smell the water, probably still eighteen inches deep in some places with the last of the ice-melt. He could see Jesse now, moving towards the entrance from the trees. It was sand and clay around the edges, and the roof had dropped in some more. Jesse stepped towards it like someone walking on eggshells, gun extended in front of him. Harrison backed up and listened. He could hear Jesse talking to Salvesen. ‘Tyler said he went into the mine.’

  ‘Then go in after him. Slusher. Where you at?’

  ‘Back of you.’

  ‘Get down there with the others. Tyler, get down there. Tyler, you copy?’

  Harrison straightened up. ‘Copy,’ he whispered.

  Drake and Jesse hesitated at the portal and Harrison moved further into the drift, the darkness complete within a few feet of the entrance. He saw Salvesen step into the clearing by Chief’s hogan, then Slusher behind him. He could shoot one of them here, but one was all he would get. He needed them deep in the mine.

  Drake and Slusher looked at one another and Harrison dared them to come inside. The vein ran the length of the Bloodline drift, at an angle of thirty degrees, with adits coming off it in three separate places. The Duggers had opened new tunnels, packed them with wooden supports and cut fresh stopes for the ore. The drift ran for two hundred yards, with the Star Raise climbing to the top of the mountain, some fifty yards in from the portal. There the drift sloped down and gradually steepened, with the Widow-maker tunnel dropping from the shaft and heading back underneath it. The roof had never been good and three men that Danny knew of had died there.

  ‘Tyler, you copy? Where the hell are you, Tyler?’ Salvesen was talking into the radio.

  Harrison moved back a further ten yards to where the drift bent to the left, and spoke very softly. ‘Tyler’s dead, Jake.’

  Static and silence, and then Jesse’s voice. ‘He’s got Tyler’s radio.’

  ‘Fucking A, asshole.’

  Shots split the air, the savage boom of Jesse’s 454 Casull. Harrison laughed at him. ‘I’m still alive, motherfucker.’

  He heard Salvesen’s voice. ‘I’m going back to the house, Jesse. Find him and kill him. Leave his body in the mine, but bring me the tattoo off his shoulder.’

  Harrison felt a little cold then. Jakob Salvesen, good Christian boy that he was. He saw the bob of the first flashlight bounce off the rib walls and he thought very quickly. He wanted Salvesen alive, but he needed to change the odds first.

  Lisa Guffy had been phoning Harrison all day and kept getting his answerphone. She tried again halfway through the evening and got no reply, so she got her battered Subaru and drove over to the trailer park. His lights were on, the door was open and his ’66 Chevy Rig parked where it normally was. She drove into town and checked Joe’s club and the Silver Dollar, but nobody had seen him. She asked Tracey Farrow and Cody and Fathead, but none of them knew where he was. She drove back to Westlake and called into the hotel. Smitty and Junior were shooting a game of pool with Wayne O and Big Kevin. Patty was cocktail waitressing and Danny Dugger sat with Cecil from Galveston Bay, but none of them had seen him at all. She phoned Chief, who was at home with Belinda.

  ‘I haven’t seen him,’ Chief told her. ‘You checked the water holes?’

  ‘All of them. I’m in the hotel right now.’

  ‘Well, don’t worry, honey. He’s a big boy.’

  ‘Don’t patronize me, Chief. I am worried.’

  ‘OK. OK. Drive by his trailer. I’ll meet you there.’

  Chief was there when she got back, looking at the open Bible on the table, with a frown creasing his face. It was dark now and she could hear TexMex music coming from Tony’s trailer next door. ‘What’s with this?’ Chief asked her.

  ‘I don’t know. He’s been looking at it ever since he went to Jake Salvesen’s church.’ She frowned then. ‘He told me you got him into it. Something about being a Pentecostal.’

  They knocked on Tony’s door and he answered, a half-empty bottle of Cuervo in his hand.

  ‘Hey, Chief. You wanna drink?’

  ‘No thanks, Tony. We’re looking for Harrison. You seen him?’

  ‘Amigo, look at me.’ Tony lurched against the door frame. ‘I’m all fucked up, man. I don’t see nothing.’

  They left him and wandered over to Harrison’s truck. ‘I’m worried, Chief,’ Lisa said. ‘It’s not like him to take off without his truck.’

  ‘Pssst.’ The sound came from behind them. ‘Hey.’ They looked through the gloom towards Tony’s trailer and saw Little T’s head poking out of the bedroom window.

  ‘You should be asleep.’ Chief walked over to him. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘You looking for the Rat man?’

  ‘Yeah. You seen him?’

  Little T nodded. ‘Three guys come and drive him away.’

  ‘Which three guys?’

  ‘The big one with the dogs. The one that whopped me.’

  Chief stared at him. ‘You sure about this?’

  ‘I seen them. This afternoon.’

  ‘OK. Go to sleep, and thanks.’ Chief cuffed him about the head and turned to Lisa. ‘Go home, honey. I’ll handle this.’

  ‘What d’you mean, go home?’

  ‘What I say, girl. Stay home and lock your door. I’ll come over when I can. Harrison’s in trouble, and I gotta make a phone call.’

  She went reluctantly, Chief promising to call her later. He got in his car and drove to the Passover marshal’s office. Red Mayer, the oldest one of the team, was behind the desk.

  ‘Hey, Chief. What’s happening?’

  ‘Need to ask you a question, Red.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Where’s the nearest FBI field office?’

  Mayer stared at him. ‘What d’you want with the Feds?’

  ‘Oh, nothing much. Just need to know, is all.’

  ‘You ain’t starting any of that Indian shit, are ya, Chief. We got enough trouble in Idaho.’

  Chief grinned. ‘Red, those days are over.’

  ‘I know about you, buddy. Wounded Knee and all that.’

  ‘History, Red. But I do need to talk to the Feds.’

  ‘You a narc, Chief?’

  ‘Red, if I was a narc I’d know where they’re at, now wouldn’t I.’

  ‘OK. Just kidding.’ Mayer scratched his chin. ‘It’s Salt Lake, I think. They got a resident agent’s office in Pocatello, but Salt Lake’s the field office.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Chief turned to go.

  ‘Anything I ought to know about, Chief? I am the law round here.’

  Chief winked at him. ‘Naw, just gotta check in, is all.’

  He wa
lked back out to his car, stopped at the payphone by the laundromat and called the field office in Salt Lake City.

  ‘FBI,’ the voice answered.

  ‘I’m calling you from Passover, Idaho. I think your undercover agent’s in trouble.’

  At his cabin, Chief took his high-tension hunting bow from the wall and his quiver full of arrows.

  Yves Mercier called Swann at three o’clock in the morning and told him the E-fit was ready. Swann ordered a cab and they drove to Mercier’s office.

  ‘The picture looks pretty good,’ he said. ‘The waiter has an eye for the ladies.’ He took a printed computer sheet from his drawer and slid it across the desk.

  For a long time Swann stared at it, eyes bunched at the corners. ‘That’s Pia,’ he said.

  27

  WILSON AND JOHNSON WERE considering the box. It was almost thirteen hours now since they had received the initial call. Wilson was tired, aware of every breath, the bomb suit over the charcoal restricting every move he made; his arms felt like lead, hands heavy, the blood full in the veins. Johnson had the salt of his sweat in his eyes and he stared with his head cocked to one side. He touched the box with his shoulder, recoiled and reached for his Fuller’s Earth. Wilson had a small hand-held drill ready and was adjusting the bit in the chuck.

  ‘Drill a little hole,’ he said, kneeling down and indicating the middle of the box with his fingertip. ‘Put in a fibre-optic torch and take a look. We need to see how much time we have.’ He handed Johnson the drill.

  Four TPUs linked to thirty-five tubes of metal and thirty-five detonators pressed into shaped Semtex charges. God only knew the potency of what was in the liquid. Wilson thought about the blood vessels expanding and the pressure on the brain that the scientists from Porton Down had told him about. Not that it would matter to him. Semtex exploding at seven thousand metres per second, he would know nothing about the disaster that followed. He shook his head, trying to clear the thoughts and the heat from his face. He blinked hard and watched as Johnson drilled the hole for the fibre-optic probe.