The Knight

by Steven James

  And I realized what it was.

  “Be still!” I yelled.

  The rattlesnake glided across Cheyenne’s shoe and began to entwine her ankle.

  She froze.

  I would have grabbed something to attract the snake’s attention, but it cocked its head back, and I was afraid it might strike, so I flashed my hand toward its face so it would bite me instead of her. It bared its fangs and rattled, but with my other hand I was able to grab it just below the head before it decided to strike.

  The snake’s ropey body writhed wildly in my hand, but I held on.

  With my free hand, I went for my knife. I didn’t really want to kill the snake, but considering the circumstances, I thought even Tessa would forgive me.

  There comes a time for all things to die . . .

  The rattler hissed and thrashed. Tried to twist its head toward my arm.

  And this snake’s time had come.

  I pulled out the Wraith. Flicked out the blade. And took care of the rattlesnake.

  Its body flopped to the floor of the helicopter, I dropped the head beside it and ended its misery with the heel of my shoe.

  Cheyenne swallowed. “Thank you.”

  “Lift your feet. There might be more.”

  She propped her feet against the seat in front of her. “I saw that,” she said. “You were going to let it bite you instead of—”

  “Shh. Please. Help me look.”

  And together we scoured the cabin, hunting for more snakes.

  Giovanni left Amy Lynn’s body on the helicopter.

  He’d warned her to sit still. If she had, the rattler might not have struck the front of her neck, and her throat might not have swollen shut in less than a minute.

  Having a hostage would make it easier to lure Agent Bowers into the tunnel, so he decided to let the pilot live for the time being. He made sure he could control the man’s bleeding, and then took him into Bearcroft Mine.

  I didn’t find any more snakes in the cabin and I was about to check the cockpit when I heard Cody cry out in pain.

  The helicopter dipped toward the mountains, pitching me forward.

  “It bit me!” he cried.

  “Get the stick!” I hollered, but he wasn’t listening. I scrambled forward and grabbed the control stick but only managed to momentarily stop our descent. “You have to—”

  “Cody, get the controls!” Cheyenne cried. She dove toward the cockpit, and I slid to the right as she took the stick, then I scoured the floor for the snake. Saw nothing.

  “It got me!” Cody yelled. Thankfully, he’d kept his left hand on the collective pitch lever, but he was holding his right hand against his thigh.

  Cheyenne was trying to level us off. Two days ago she’d told me she was taking helicopter flight lessons. I really hoped she knew how to land.

  “Where’s the snake?” I yelled. Cody just shook his head.

  Based on where he was pressing his hand against his leg, I guessed the rattler had struck him on the inside of his thigh near his femoral artery—a terrible location for a bite.

  With every beat of his heart, the venom was pumping through his body, destroying more tissue, causing more bleeding, slowing his respiration.

  The more his heart races, the quicker he’ll lose consciousness.

  “Relax, Cody.” I was still searching for the snake. “Try to stay calm.” He was shaking. I let my eyes tip toward the window for a moment, and I recognized the surrounding mountains. We were close to Bearcroft Mine, less than a mile away.

  I scanned the floor again.

  And saw the snake weaving beneath the control pedals.

  “Everyone be still.”

  But Cody followed my gaze, and then shrieked and yanked his feet off the pedals. The helicopter pivoted sideways through the air and started to drop.

  “No!” Cheyenne hollered.

  The world was whipping around, spinning. A blur. I saw the snake slide across the floor toward me.

  I grabbed for its neck. Missed. Got the body.

  Cheyenne shoved Cody against the door to get her feet to the pedals.

  Another rotation, another, and then finally, somehow, Cheyenne pulled us out of the tailspin, but we were less than a hundred meters from the ground and falling fast.

  “Level us off!” I yelled.

  Still holding the snake I reached for the knife but realized I must have dropped it when I rushed to grab the controls.

  I felt the snake’s body tense for a strike.

  OK. Drastic measures.

  Rattlers can strike faster than the human eye, but not faster than a speeding bullet.

  109

  I drew my SIG.

  The chopper was so wobbly and the snake was wavering its head so much that I wasn’t sure I could hit it, but I could definitely shoot something else.

  Even though the cockpit wasn’t pressurized, with the downward force of air from the rotors I figured there’d be enough suction.

  I fired at the window to my right.

  As the glass exploded outward, the air in the cockpit rushed after it, tugging the snake’s body with it.

  I let go.

  No more snake.

  “I’m taking us down!” Cheyenne yelled.

  I was cool with that.

  A pair of sunglasses and a storm of papers shot out the broken window.

  I studied the terrain below us.

  The road leading to Bearcroft Mine was just a few hundred meters north of us. A meadow that looked flat enough for Cheyenne to land in lay beside it.

  “There!” I pointed.

  About half a mile further up the mountain, the other helicopter was already on the ground near the entrance to the mine.

  Good enough. I could run from here.

  As Cheyenne took us down, I radioed for backup and requested an ambulance for Cody, and then, remembering the mine’s deep, narrow shafts and the killer’s intention to bury someone—me— alive, I told them to call in the Arapaho National Forest’s high angle rescue team. I sometimes climb with the guys on the team, and if we needed a vertical rescue, they were the ones to do it.

  We were twenty meters from the ground.

  Cheyenne fought to keep us steady.

  Cody was drifting into and out of consciousness.

  Ten meters.

  I swept my eyes across the floor, looking for more snakes.

  All clear.

  Five meters.

  And then we were settling onto the field. A small jostling, but that was all.

  “Beautiful landing,” I said. We were alive. We were on the ground. “Perfect.”

  A breath.

  A small moment.

  A chance to think.

  Both Cheyenne and I were OK, but Cody appeared to be only partially conscious. I tried rousing him. No response. I felt his pulse. Thready. Gauged his breathing, considered the EMS response time. It didn’t look good. “Cheyenne, I’m not sure he’s going to make it unless we can get him to a hospital.” We still had our headphones on; the rotors were still spinning overhead.

  She stared at me. “How?”

  “Fly him.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t do that.”

  “I have to go after John. We can’t leave Cody alone.”

  “I know, but I’m not . . . No. I can’t do it.”

  “Yes, you can. You just brought us out of the tailspin and landed with no problem.” I saw my knife on the floor. Retrieved it. “Trust your gut––”

  “We’ll get some paramedics up here.”

  Arguing about it was getting us nowhere. I carefully sliced Cody’s pants leg to take a closer look at the bite.

  The area surrounding the wound was already black and distended. We both stared at it.

  He was in bad shape, and she could tell. She laid a gentle hand on his knee and closed her eyes, took a long breath, then let it out slowly. “OK.” She opened her eyes. “But I’m coming back to help you.” A fiery intensity shot through her words.


  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  We moved Cody to another seat, then she situated herself in the cockpit.

  “You’ll do fine!” I yelled. I’d exited the helicopter and was standing just outside her door. I had to shout to be heard over the roar of the motor.

  “Find him,” she hollered. “Stop him!”

  “I will!”

  I reached for the door, but before I could close it, she grazed her hand against mine. She said nothing, but communicated everything.

  But in that moment I found myself wishing it was Lien-hua with me instead of her. I felt vaguely guilty and squeezed her hand gently, then let go and waved her off. “Go!”

  I closed the door and she repositioned her headphones and tapped at the controls in front of her. Then I ran from the churning whirlwind kicked up by the rotors, and after I’d made it about ten meters I turned and watched her lift off into the purple Colorado dusk.

  A little shaky, but not bad.

  As she flew away, I bolted up the road toward the mine.

  Tessa was having a hard time wrapping her mind around everything that Dora was telling her.

  Apparently, it wasn’t Paul’s letter that had changed her mom’s mind about the abortion. “You’re telling me it was a bunch of magazine ads?” she said. “Like that picture of the girl and the jewelry box?”

  Dora nodded. “That’s what she wrote in her diary.”

  The doorbell rang.

  The two officers stared at each other for a moment.

  Another ring. Martha stood. “I’ll get it.”

  “No,” the shorter of the two cops said. “We’re on it.” Both officers headed to the door.

  They unsnapped their holsters.

  The taller cop eased the door open, and Tessa saw Dora’s dad, Dr. Bender, standing on the front porch. “What’s going on in here?” He sounded upset. “Is it true you wouldn’t let my daughter call me?”

  Tessa glanced up and saw Martha smile at her with a sly, grand-motherly smile, and she remembered seeing her on the phone a few minutes earlier.

  Yeah, you go girl.

  “Dora,” Dr. Bender said. “Go get your things. I’m not leaving here without you.”

  I arrived at the other helicopter and found a pool of blood on the floor of the cockpit and thin streaks of it splayed across the control panels, the seats.

  He cut Cliff. Cut him bad.

  No sign of Cliff or the killer, but Amy Lynn’s body lay in the backseat.

  She wasn’t moving, and when I felt for a pulse I realized that her neck was grotesquely swollen. With no pulse, no breathing, and a blocked airway, I couldn’t administer CPR. There wasn’t anything I could do for her—then a thick ridge gliding beneath her shirt confirmed to me what the killer had done.

  I felt my teeth clench.

  As a small gesture of respect, I shook the snake out of the bottom of her shirt. Kicked it out of the chopper.

  I knew the killer would be ready for me, but Cliff was obviously bleeding profusely, and I wasn’t about to wait around for backup to arrive. I grabbed the chopper’s first aid kit, removed a roll of athletic tape, and jammed it into my pocket.

  A trail of blood led from the helicopter to the mine. I aimed my gun at the entrance. Pulled out my flashlight.

  And entered the tunnel.

  110

  Just inside the entrance.

  Cool air.

  Silence, except for the faint plink of water dripping somewhere out of sight.

  I swept my light around the tunnel. Saw the rough-hewn support beams, the minerals shimmering in the walls, the narrow-gauge tracks at my feet. The place where John had left Heather Fain’s body.

  For a moment I envisioned her corpse lying there, Chris Arlington’s disembodied heart resting on her chest, the ten candles surrounding her. I felt my anger grow into resolve. John’s gruesome story had started in this abandoned mine a week ago, and it was going to end here, tonight.

  No sign of anyone in the tunnel.

  The blood trail ended at my feet. At the far reach of my flashlight’s beam, an intersecting tunnel led to the east. I jogged to it, turned off my Maglite, and crouched low. After a breath to steady myself and my gun, I stepped around the corner, flicking on my light again. Its beam sliced through the black air.

  No one.

  I shut off the flashlight and peered into the darkness—first this tunnel, then the main one, but saw no other lights. Heard nothing.

  Which tunnel did they take?

  Maglite on once again, I inspected both branches of the mine.

  Nothing in the main passageway, but at last, about five meters into the adjoining tunnel, I found more blood.

  After only a few paces it disappeared.

  The drops of blood were oval, and based on their size, shape, and proximity, I decided the men must have been moving quickly. The trail was still damp but easy to miss on the dark soil.

  I took a moment to mark the tunnel so Cheyenne and the high angle rescue team could find it when they arrived, then I sprinted down the passageway toward the next intersection.

  Dora zipped her school backpack closed. “So, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Yeah,” Tessa said. “And hey, thanks for all your help today, you know, with the diary.”

  “No problem. I hope you find your dad.”

  “Me too.”

  Dora swung her backpack over her shoulder and as she turned toward the door, it bumped Tessa’s jewelry box off the dresser and all her necklaces and earrings spilled across the carpet.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s all right.” Tessa leaned over to pick them up. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Almost ready?” Dr. Bender called from downstairs.

  “I’ll be right there!” Dora shouted. She was kneeling beside Tessa, helping her pick up the jewelry. “Seriously, I should have been more careful. Making a mess of things. Pandora, right? Makes sense.”

  Tessa paused, her hand on the jewelry box. “Wait. What did you say my mom wrote? About this box?”

  “She wanted to remember the day she changed her mind.”

  “Right.” Tessa lifted the box, tipped everything out of it and handed it to Dora

  “What are you doing?”

  “I want you to have it.”

  Dora’s face was full of surprise. “No, your mom gave this to you.”

  “Remember the story, your story? The last thing out of the box?”

  “Dora!” Dr. Bender’s voice rolled up the stairs. “Everything all right?”

  “I’ll be right there!” she yelled.

  “This morning Martha told me I shouldn’t punish myself for something I had no control over.”

  “You mean your mom not wanting to have you.”

  “Right. But you’re doing the same thing. That baby’s death wasn’t your fault. I want you to remember that. Hope. A new start. The last thing out.”

  Dora finally accepted the box. “Thanks,” she said softly. “I get it.”

  As they were leaving the room, Tessa saw the diary lying on the bed.

  She picked it up and headed for the stairs.

  Nothing.

  I’d been traveling through the tunnel as quickly as I could, but after ten minutes I still hadn’t found either Colonel Freeman or the killer.

  The trail of blood stopped and started intermittently but always appeared at intersections or at the top of the wooden ladders that led deeper into the mine. John was controlling Cliff’s bleeding, using the blood to guide me.

  Like a lamb to the slaughter.

  I would descend a ladder or series of ladders, come to another tunnel, head in the direction of the blood, then the trail would disappear until I arrived at another intersection or shaft marked with more blood, and then I would descend once again.

  All one elaborate game.

  But this time he wasn’t going to win.

  Earlier, when I’d started wondering if Grant Sikora
had told me Ari’s name and I’d learned that Ari had been seen in public with Amy Lynn, I’d started to doubt that he was John.

  The real killer was too meticulous, too careful. Based on all that we knew about him, with his intellect, his aptitude, he never would have told Sikora his real name. Or for that matter, been seen publicly with Amy Lynn.

  Even the idea of calling in the tip from the dispatch room was too perfect. Too tidy. It left a giant arrow pointing directly at him.

  The circuitous route marked by blood led me deeper and deeper into the more primitive, less maintained sections of the mine. Here, more fissures and cracks ran through the walls. Fewer support beams braced the ceiling, and I could see evidence of more cave-ins.

  But if Ari wasn’t the killer, who was?

  I still didn’t know.

  I descended three more ladders, all marked faintly with blood, and I was about to start down a fourth when I heard movement below me. I clicked off my light. Listened.

  Nothing more.

  I stared through the darkness and saw a faint hint of light coming from somewhere in the tunnel where the ladder terminated about fifteen meters below me.

  Keeping my light off, I descended as quickly as I could, feeling for the rungs with my feet, my hands.

  I’d made it to the tenth rung when I heard a voice, definitely a voice. I froze. Listened.

  Yes, it was Cliff, that much I could tell. And though I couldn’t make out most of what he was yelling, I did hear the words “rigged” and “blow” before he was abruptly cut off.

  I began to descend again, watching carefully for any movement below me.

  Thoughts tumbled through my mind.

  The evidence room in Chicago . . . the dispatch center in Denver . . . the location of the hospital’s security cameras . . . who could have gained access to them all?

  He’s forensically aware. He knows poisons and toxins, arson, self-defense, how to mask GPS locations . . .

  I reached the tunnel.

  Strategically, I was in a terrible position. If John had a gun trained on the end of the ladder, as soon as I climbed down it would all be over.

  I needed to find out if there was anyone waiting for me, and it looked like there was just enough light to do it. I wedged my legs against the side of the shaft, clung to a rung with one hand like I did when I climbed across the ceiling of my garage, and held my gun in my other hand. Then, I dipped my head down into the tunnel for a fraction of a second. Saw no one.