“What you mean?”
“There’s only two sleds on the bank, and a big hole in the ice where the others were.”
Danforth cursed and rolled over to look back into the dark.
“Bastard must have mined the ice while he was waiting for us,” he said.
“Well, he’s not all that good with the grenade gun,” said Blackie.
“Don’t believe it,” Danforth told him. “He could have taken us out like he did the sleds. He just doesn’t want a murder beef against him.”
All my eggs in the one basket, he was thinking. Dumb shit.
“Snowshoes on the sleds that are left?”
“It looked like a couple of pair, but I don’t know if they’re busted or not.”
“Keep him pinned,” Danforth said, and skidded back down the bank to the river. The snowmobiles lay on their sides, skis scorched and shattered, but when he rolled one upright he found a pair of trail-model snowshoes lashed, intact, along the lee side of the blast. A couple of lacings were broken but the frames looked uncracked. The same was true of the pair he found on the other sled. The tear gas, unfortunately, was at the bottom of the Alugiak, along with the launcher. What an asshole I am! He looked bitterly at the gaping hole in the river ice. Blackwater gurgled; wisps of steam rose to the snowfall.
“Holt and Petersen, get down here,” he called and then heard the men slithering toward him, breathing short and fast in the excitement of the firefight.
“Jim,” he said to Holt, a lanky man who was his best runner, “you take one pair of these shoes and head back down to the truck park, tell them the radio’s gone and what happened. Tell them Slade is pinned down in the cabin and we’ve got him surrounded, we need reinforcements. Get Healey up here. He knows the layout of that lodge and we don’t. We got to smoke that bastard out of there.” Holt laced on the bindings and slung his rifle across his back. “Tell them to bring more tear gas,” Danforth said finally, clapping Holt on the shoulder. “And make tracks!”
Then he turned to Petersen, the halfbreed Tanana Indian who had been his tracker for all Danforth’s eight years in Alaska. Pete was short and wide-hipped, a dogged runner on snowshoes whose eyes missed nothing, even in a fifty-knot blizzard.
“Go around to the back of the lodge and check with Wiley 172 if he’s seen or heard anything back there,” Danforth told the Indian. “Then head up to this ridge—” he fumbled a map out of his parka pocket and spread it before them, “—up here back of the place. You’ll have a good view of the whole layout from up there. He might have split before Wiley got in place. Check for sign. If you find tracks, give us two blasts on your whistle—you got your whistle, Pete? good—and if no tracks, just hang tough. We got reinforcements coming. Okay?”
Petersen nodded, busy with his bindings, and then shuffled off down the bank to circle in behind the lodge. Danforth bellied back up to where Blackie lay watching the dark blot of the lodge.
“Anything?”
“Dead quiet. Was there any coffee on those sleds?”
“In the river,” Danforth told him.
A brisk wind worked the top of the ridge where Slade lay under the snow-heavy branches of a big spruce. He could see the lodge beneath him, and the dark shapes of the men surrounding it, as well as the mouth of the snow tunnel a hundred yards below his hide. A pink line scored the broken peaks of the Dead Mounties to the southeast and the black night had gone a kind of Prussian blue. He watched the tracker picking his way up and across the face of the ridge, quartering like a gun dog. Moves like an Indian, he thought. I hope the fucker can’t track like one. If it looks like he can, I’d better make dog meat out of him. He slid the Ruger forward and removed the lens caps from either end of the scope, then glassed the man. The face was wide-cheeked and dark, Indian all right, very serious. He wore a muskrat-hide parka with a wolf or wolverine ruff on his hood, homemade, not regulation. A carbine peeked over his shoulder, the front sight hooded also, against the snow. Slade laid the post of the scope sight on the man’s chest, then on his throat and finally on his ear. At this range, it would be a cinch.
The Indian spotted the mouth of the tunnel and froze. Then he crouched and unslung the carbine—looked like a .44 Mag Ruger at this distance, four-power scope. A stopper, sure as shit. How insubstantial he looks through the scope, two-dimensional, like something projected on a white wall! Then the Indian saw the trails. In the days while he waited for the Feds to come, Slade had gotten his legs in shape by running out in different directions on his snowshoes from the mouth of the tunnel. A good tracker would be able to tell the old tracks from this morning’s, but the breeze on the ridge had helped: it had filled the fresh trail with light drifting snow, enough to delay the man for a while as he brushed out the drift and compared the bite of the snowshoes frames for age.
The Indian pulled the hood back off his head and scratched, his face screwed in puzzlement. Slade smiled. No, he couldn’t lunch this woebegone bastard. He eased back under the spruce boughs to where his pack stood, slipped the straps over his shoulders and walked backward along his trail deeper into the woods. It would take time now for the rest of them to come up. He’d make use of it. He turned his face to the west, into the wind, and began to run, short lurching steps with the pack bobbing on his back so that he grunted happily to himself at every stride.
“Christ, it’s a freaking maze,” said Danforth. “Which one is the fresh one?”
“Can’t be sure just yet,” said Petersen. “Looks like a giant snowshoe rabbit flipped out up here, don’t it? One hare can make the tracks of fifty, give him a little time.” He stooped down and flicked blown snow out of the track, then studied the outline of the print beneath it. “This one’s older, I think, than that one back there.” He gestured over his shoulder to the crosshatch of trails behind them.
At Petersen’s whistle signal, Danforth had left two men at the lodge—with orders to brew up some coffee, damn quick, if they could find it—and then joined Petersen on the ridgetop. Now, an hour later, he had finished two cups and was working on a third. That bastard could be halfway to Whitehorse by now, he cursed to himself. Or he could be waiting to zap us?
“Okay,” he said finally, “let’s range out and look for something conclusive in the spruces.”
“Worse in there,” said Pete. “This wind’s knocked down snow from the branches, trails filled deeper in there than out here.”
The sun was already over the peaks, the glacier gleaming pale blue under its snow shroud, by the time the Indian was satisfied that he’d found Slade’s newest trail. They pounded out along it, with Petersen breaking trail and the others wallowing and sweating snowshoeless behind him, their weight dropping them through the layers of crust sometimes waistdeep. From the ridge, which paralleled the river, they could see a party of men heading upriver toward them on the snow, riding snowmobiles and two ATVs. The group was still two miles away, Danforth reckoned.
“Pete,” he said, “you cut on down there and tell them Slade’s heading to the northwest. Have them run a sled with spare snowshoes up here to us, then send a couple more back to the camp to warn them. He may be heading that way, God only knows.” The Indian set off down the slope in a series of long, bear-like leaps that sent fountains of powder spewing from his webs, and disappeared into the dark trees below.
The heavy machinery—D-7 and D-9 Cats, a JD-550 tractor, a grader and two earthmoving trucks—huddled together on the plateau like big yellow bugs against the cold, their hoods .and roofs crowned high and domelike with snow. Slade rolled two barrels of diesel out from under the brush pile where he had hidden them and set them up in the middle of the truck park, then lugged gas cans out from another cache in a snowbank over the lip of the plateau. He had arrived within sight of the camp just as the last of the Feds was leaving. The man had scanned the hills with binoculars before locking the door to the quonset which served as their dormitory and kitchen. What’s he lock it for? Against bears? Probably some federal regulation.
Working quickly against time, Slade pumped a few gallons of diesel into as many of the vehicles as his hose would reach, then topped the oil off with gasoline from the twenty-gallon jerricans. He pulled the coil of det cord from his pack and strung it around and over the huddled machines, knotting it every twenty feet or so. Then he took bricks of C-4 from the pack, broke them in quarters, and molded the soft white plastic over the knots in the det cord. On the two flanking tractors, he dropped lengths of det cord tipped with C-4 down into the fuel tanks and knotted the ends to the main lasso encircling the vehicles.
How much wire have I got? Plenty. He molded more C-4 on the bitter end of the det cord and stuck a blasting cap into it, then fixed the wire into the cap, and unrolled it out over the edge of the plateau down to a sheltering boulder bulldozed off by the road crew. That would be his lie while he waited for them to return. He wanted them to see his handiwork, otherwise he could have used a fuse and been well clear when it all blew.
He lay back in the snow on the sunny side of the boulder and pulled a chunk of jerky from his pack, tore off a mouthful and began to chew.
Danforth halted the snowmobile just short of a narrow arête. The wind had scoured the snow away and ahead of him rose trackless bare rock. Behind him toiled the other men, puffing and pouring sweat as they slogged up the ridge. Danforth dismounted and climbed up to the top. He pulled a pair of 7x40 Nikon binoculars from his hip pack and scanned the slope below him. No sign of Slade’s trail. They had lost it as they neared the bald crest, lost it in a bewildering maze of boulders and drifts and recent spruce blowdowns, and he hoped that from up here he might see his man.
Down below snaked the Alugiak, and ahead to his left he could see the quonset and the truck park. A wisp of blue smoke curled up from the chimney pipe but he could spot no movement. They must all have headed upriver to the lodge when Holt brought the word. Was Slade down there? Goddam. If he was, the whole outfit was his for the grabbing.
Then he heard the growl of engines on the river below him, and three snow sleds appeared around a tree-grown bend, racing full tilt back toward the camp. Good. If Slade was headed in there, he’d find a welcome waiting for him. He sat back against the rocks and watched the sleds skid up to the quonset. Three men spread out, two heading up into the truck park and the third poking gingerly around the quonset, looking for sign of the interloper. They all had their rifles at the ready.
Suddenly the two heading to the truck park stopped short in their tracks. Danforth focused on them, his head aching from the strain. They appeared to be listening, but with the wind on the ridge he could hear nothing. Then the men turned and ran back toward the quonset, waving their arms at their companion. All three of them flopped face down in the snow and covered their heads with their arms.
The vehicles, in that instant, leaped into the sky on a shimmering white fogbank that grew from the snow around them into a giant, flame-filled cloud. Truck hoods, tires, windshield fragments, a ’dozer blade—whirling, turning slowly up through the cloud, shining and bending in the low hard light—and then the blast of the explosion rolled roaring up the slope and knocked the binoculars out of Danforth’s hands. By the time he got them to his eyes again, the whole truck park—or, rightly, what had once been the truck park—was a sea of orange-black flame, burning diesel that spewed and writhed up into a dirty tan cloud topped with black, a cloud that danced and wavered like a mirage on the desert. Minor explosions rocked the plateau and more bits and pieces flew free. Then the noise subsided to a cheery, bubbling crackle, as if a stew were boiling down there.
The heat of the blast washed over Slade where he lay hidden under the lee of the boulder. A burning truck tire whirled overhead and splatted, sizzling and smoking, into the snow below him. Dude had told him the C-4 was potent stuff but he hadn’t reckoned on that much power. He had warned the returning Feds that the park was mined and had waited until the two nearest him ran a good distance away before working the exploder, but now he worried that they hadn’t gone far enough. He clambered back to the lip of the plateau and stared through the acrid heat haze. What a wreck! Treads lay unpeeled in the snow, fuel tanks ripped open as if by a berserker’s can opener, engines canted cockeyed in their mounts, tires melted or burning or both. He saw the three Feds reeling and staggering in the background. They’d be all right.
He grabbed up the pack and set off down the slope toward the mountains and the forest. He was running well this morning, his legs pumping of their own volition, unaware of the weight of pack or snowshoes, and he took the cold air deep in his lungs as he set himself against the first long slope into the Dead Mounties.
He thought about the Japanese marines. They were there all right. His rendezvous with Dude would be in the heart of their country.
But now he had other matters to consider. Where was the party that had followed him from the lodge? Probably up on the arête, he thought, waiting to spot me and then either send me on my way with a parting shot—they can’t hit at this range—or else continue the chase. Either way, he knew he was safe. As he neared the top of the first slope, he heard a snipping sound overhead and saw a spruce twig tumble in a shower of snow. Then the distant roar of the rifle. He turned and looked up onto the arête. The wink of sun on steel and glass. About seven hundred yards, he calculated.
Slade unslung the Ruger and sat back in the snow, his elbows on his knees as he sighted in on them. He had the scope cranked up to nine power and the field was the size of a dime. Finally he saw one of them, taking a rest with his rifle over a bare boulder. The wind was from Slade’s left and he knew that at this range it would push the bullet a good foot to the right when he shot. He held low and to the left, squeezed off, and saw the rock chips fly as the bullet smacked the boulder a few inches below the rifleman.
That’s just to let ’em know I’m here, he told himself. I could have picked his nose for him.
He stood and walked casually to the top of the ridge, where he turned and waved back at them, the rifle swinging high overhead in an easy farewell. Behind him a black wall of storm clouds rose in the west: another blizzard on the way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“IM TOLD YOU he meant business,” Healey said. “How’d you get that nick?”
Danforth dabbed a cotton ball saturated with hydrogen peroxide on the gash under his left eye. When he took it away, more blood welled in the lips of the wound and rolled slowly down his windburned cheek.
“He bounced a bullet off the rock where I was shooting,” Danforth said. “A chip caught me.”
Healey cackled. Danforth looked at him frostily, started to speak, then shut up. It was almost as if this fat cat oilman liked what Slade had done, blowing up their sleds and giving them the slip and then destroying the truck park.
“Those were your goddam trucks and ’dozers he blew up,” Danforth said finally. “And the fucker is still loose out there.”
“Good ol’ Jack-Off,” laughed Healey. “He could have plugged you. If he hit the rock, it was just to show you he could have plugged you right in the snotlocker. If he’d wanted to. How come you didn’t keep after him?”
“The men were dragging ass and we only had the one sled, and anyway I have to get word to Washington. The Secretary wants to keep close tabs on this one. Things are heating up since Slade’s kid talked to the papers in Juneau the other day. We don’t want this becoming any kind of media event.”
Healey got up and went over to the bar at the far end of the quonset. He was a heavy man, tall, white-haired, but with a kind of boyish look still to his blue Irish eyes. Danforth had been told that he came up in Morgan Petro as the old man’s pimp and personal pilot. He must be tougher than he looks, Danforth thought.
“Someone told me you and Slade were partners in the old days,” Danforth said. Healey poured a double bourbon over ice, then another for Danforth, and brought them to the table. The other men were sacked out in the dormitory, or else on watch over the smoldering wreckage of the tru
ck park.
“Yeah, we had a bush flying business after the war,” Healey said, propping his booted feet on the table. “Then Jack went nuts over the Rugged Pioneer Bit. He’d picked up a chick down in Gurry Bay and she worked on him to stay in the woods. I wanted to bring him into Morgan with me but he wasn’t having any. He had a nice little guide business going for him up here, but he never really amounted to much.”
“The girl, that was his wife, right? The one that got killed in the plane explosion last summer?”
“Yeah, Josey.” Healey looked away and sucked on his drink. The ice cubes chinked against his even white teeth. His eyes were clouded. “A real bitch, that one. She turned Jack against me if anyone or anything did. Kept warning him that I was out to take advantage of him.”
Danforth laughed. “Well?”
“Okay, sure,” Healey said quickly, looking back now. “I knew that there was oil here from the first time I set foot on the place. It mucked up my boots. And I knew that sooner or later—later, I hoped, and it turned out that way—I’d get my hands on that oil. Slade and I found this valley together, you know. He had thirty years in it, doing what he liked. Hunting, fishing, running his traplines, living with his wife and kid like there was no real world out there beyond the mountains. He had his day. But that kind of thing won’t wash anymore. Now it’s my turn to make use of the country, and for goodies that everyone needs—fuel and fun. What’s wrong with it?”
“How’d the plane blow up?”
“Goddammit, Danforth,” Healey got up and stomped back to the bar, his back stiff and jolting with every step. “Those are just rumors. There was no bomb in the engine compartment. It was simple mechanical failure due to poor maintenance. And simple bad luck that she was flying into Gurry Bay that day.”
“Rather than Slade?”
Healey turned on him, hate in his eyes. He carried a holstered revolver on his hip and for a moment Danforth thought he might go for it. Then he took a breath and calmed himself down.
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