The Descent From Truth

by Greer, Gaylon

  Faust tapped nervous fingers on the desk he had appropriated the moment he walked in. An explosion and fire, a devastating accident that no one could survive. But no one could have snatched Pia, either. No one could have taken Frederick out of that second-floor room.

  He turned his attention back to Flanagan, who stood at attention before the desk. “Keep the road down the mountain sealed until I tell you otherwise. Get a search party in the bottom of that ravine. When the fire burns out, have them confirm that there are bodies inside. Meanwhile, post a couple of men on the lip of the ravine where the cat went over. Have them keep everyone away, so any footprints won’t be disturbed. At first light, we’ll see what the pattern up there can tell us.”

  Signaling for his lieutenant to follow, he walked to an isolated room. “If the perp survived that crash, the action’s going to get intense. I don’t want American law enforcement involved, so we’ll have to squeeze Silver Hill’s security guys out of the action. How many of our own men do we have up here?”

  “Ten,” Escobedo said. “That’s counting me and the helicopter pilots. I’ll assign the locals to handle security for Mr. Koenig. That’ll free all of our people for the search.”

  Faust described Alex. “He might have cut his hair and shaved off the beard, but there’s no way he can disguise that scar. You remember what the girl looks like?”

  Escobedo, a Peruvian national close to Faust’s age, nodded. “When we find them, how do you want it handled?”

  “Ship the girl home. Snuff the guy, dump his body where nobody will find it before we’re back in Peru.”

  Too antsy to stay put while his orders were being carried out, Faust commandeered a snowcat and told the driver to take him to the spot where the wrecked vehicle went over the ledge. As he rode, his fury mounted. He had treated Alex like a brother, and the bastard betrayed him for a piece of tail. And what about Pia? He’d promised to take care of her, give her whatever she wanted. This was how she showed her gratitude?

  If they were in that snowcat when it went over the ledge, at least his problem of how to dispose of the boy was solved—a kidnapper had taken the poor little tyke’s life. If they baled out before it crashed, he’d find them, and the kid would have a fatal accident during the rescue operation. Alex was a traitor, and traitors met a swift, certain fate. As for Pia, he would teach her a lesson she would never forget. She would be so grateful when the hurting stopped that their relationship would go back to the way it had been during her pregnancy.

  Chapter 18

  Alex approached Pia’s hiding place at a slow walk. Holding Frederick’s sling steady against his chest with one arm, he raised the other over his head. “It’s Alex. I’ve got Freddy.”

  Pia’s white-sheeted body hurtled out of the tree-shrouded darkness and collided with his. She hugged him for a moment and then tore at the sheet he had looped around his neck as a sling for Frederick. “Baby, baby.” She cuddled the youngster to her breasts.

  Frederick, apparently worn out from screaming and fighting to escape Alex’s clutches, had gone back to sleep. He shifted fitfully but did not awaken.

  “Take him back to the snowmobiles,” Alex said. “I’ve got to do something about our tracks.” He cut another cedar bough and returned to where he had left the road. Backing as he worked, he swept away all boot prints between the road and the trees. Not perfect, but probably okay until daylight.

  Pia had made a nest in the snow under bushes between the stolen snowmobiles. Inside her sleeping bag, she cuddled Frederick. Alex unrolled his own bag and slid into the nest by her side.

  “Alex,” she said, “thank you. I owe you my life, my . . . everything.” She leaned across and kissed him.

  “We have to stay here ’til daylight,” he said, using an officious tone to cover his fluster. “When the lodge has a shift change, staffers will start their snowmobiles. We’re less likely to be noticed then.” With his nostrils flaring at her faint aroma mixed with Frederick’s baby smell, he forced his adrenaline-hyped body to relax and let the sound of her occasional clucking at Frederick wash over him. His lips tingled from the touch of hers.

  Eventually—he had no idea how much time had passed—a shift in the cadence of her breathing signaled slumber. The sound formed a pleasant backdrop as he mulled over the problem of escape. Even if Faust was temporarily fooled by the wrecked snowcat, he would block the road near the base of the mountain as a precaution. When he learned the wreck was a ruse, he would have a search party work its way back up toward the lodge.

  Faced with overwhelming firepower, superior mobility, and massive reserves, Alex realized his only chance was to outwit his old mentor. After daylight, with the sound of other snowmobile engines as cover, he would lead Pia cross-country. When they exhausted their fuel, they would hide the snowmobiles and travel on snowshoes. Moving only at night, they could work their way across Colorado Land and Cattle Company holdings and into the Gunnison National Forest. The forest’s trails would be closed, buried under deep snow That would make for easy snow-shoeing.

  He silently cursed himself for not stashing food. Heading into uninhabited territory with a woman and child in mid-winter with minimal provisions was a wild toss of the dice. But it was the lowest-risk strategy he could devise. The alternative—heading downhill, directly into the jaws of waiting security forces—would be suicide.

  And if they got away, then what? Having stated publicly that Frederick and Pia had returned to Lima, Koenig would hesitate to reverse himself and involve U.S. law enforcement agencies, more so if Pia was right about Faust getting something here to aid Peruvian rebels. But if he did, the FBI would be a lot harder to elude than Silver Hill’s security force and Variant Corporation’s mercenaries.

  With a start, he realized the eastern sky had turned pink. He climbed out of his sleeping bag and walked a short distance through the snow to urinate. When he returned, Pia was nursing Frederick.

  “Is it time?” she asked.

  “Just about.”

  She continued the feeding for another minute. Then she wriggled out of her sleeping bag, twisting to leave Frederick inside. “Mind watching him while I have some privacy?”

  Alex entertained the baby by tripping the alarm on his wristwatch. Frederick never seemed to tire of hearing the tiny chimes. Pia returned, and Alex handed her the diaper bag he had taken from Frederick’s room in the lodge. “You’re just in time to do the honors. Smells like he needs one of these.”

  While she changed the soiled diaper, Alex fashioned a miniature cloak by slicing a neck hole in the center of Frederick’s blanket. As he worked, his concern multiplied. Caring for a baby in the frozen wasteland was a complication he had not thoroughly considered. What if the kid got sick?

  Pia seemed to read his mind. “He is healthy and strong,” she said as she re-dressed Frederick in his flannel pajamas, slipped the jerry-rigged cloak over his head, and pulled his arms through side slits. “I am, too. We will not slow you down.”

  “Think he’ll eat rabbits and birds? We’re not going to have a wide menu selection.”

  “He will eat anything. So will I.”

  By the time they had finished maneuvering the snowmobiles out of their hideaway, the sun had revealed itself in a blaze of light and feeble warmth as it peeked over the Continental Divide. The whine of revving snowmobile engines echoed from Silver Hill.

  “That’s our song,” Alex said.

  Frederick, the booties on his pajamas augmented with a double layer of blanket fragments and waterproofed with plastic sliced from a snowmobile seat, had pulled himself erect by holding onto a snowmobile’s control lever. He seemed to be considering whether to try standing without support. Alex hoisted him. “You ready to rock and roll, Freddy?” He handed the baby to Pia and climbed onto the snowmobile.

  It cranked lethargically, its battery taxed by resistance from oil turned syrupy-thick by the cold. Then it fired—sluggishly, unevenly at first, as if it was going to change its mind and fall sile
nt. When it purred smoothly, Alex started the second machine. With both engines warmed, he mounted the lead vehicle and motioned for Pia to hand Frederick to him. She shook her head, slipped on the carrying sling Alex had rigged from a sheet, and settled the baby in it. Alex conceded and waited for her to mount the second machine. Gunning his engine, he signaled with a waving hand for her to follow.

  To avoid the road, they navigated a circuitous route that led into ever-denser forest and down a perilous descent into the ravine where Alex had crashed the snowcat hours earlier. Giving the charred hulk a wide berth cost them an additional fifteen minutes. By the time they accelerated along the flat bottom of the ravine, Alex worried that time was running short.

  On the stolen radio, he monitored conversation among the searchers. As he’d anticipated, they had sealed off the route down the mountain. Search parties were working their way back up from the roadblock. Someone discovered the bound men in the maintenance barn, then a search party spotted where Alex had hidden the snowmobiles.

  He recognized Faust’s voice directing the search team. The radio chatter was in Spanish, and the airways crackled with cryptic references to a deer hunt. The doe and the fawn must not be harmed, Faust cautioned. The buck, however, was fair game. He reminded them that whoever bagged the quarry received the jackpot.

  Faust’s strategy was puzzling. Why dispatch forces to cut them off from the area Alex had patrolled before all this started, yet leave terrain to the north unguarded? By heading that way, they should be able to reach State Route 92 before exhausting their fuel. The road cut within twenty miles of Silver Hill before turning due north to the village of Hotchkiss.

  Amazed but thankful for Faust’s blunder, Alex searched for a northerly path out of the ravine. Twenty minutes later, he understood. There was no possible route up the ravine’s steep northern wall. They were being herded eastward, ever higher up the mountain. They were above timberline, the elevation where air becomes too thin to sustain tree growth. In that barren terrain, with sunlight beaming from a cloudless sky, their tracks would be easy to spot and simple to follow. And the fuel gauge on Alex’s snowmobile jiggled near the empty mark. He had made a potentially fatal mistake.

  He turned south and gunned the snowmobile. Speeding across steeply sloped terrain, he looked for a route back down into the forest of Douglas fir, where they could hide from searching helicopters. A sheer drop-off separated them from the trees, however, and it appeared to run endlessly. The forest’s evergreen canopy, so close yet so inaccessible, seemed to mock him. Unless he found a ravine or a wash that cut through to the trees, their best bet was to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the hunters before running out of fuel, then negotiate the ridge on foot. But with no foliage for shelter, what chance would they have against a searching helicopter?

  Occasional glances to the rear assured him that Pia had learned her snowmobile-operating lesson well. She maintained a precise interval, and she kept her machine in the tracks made by his to avoid wasting the extra fuel she would burn if she blazed a fresh trail.

  Then came the dreaded but inevitable radio command that could seal their fate. Occasional calls from Eagle One and Eagle Two had told him the resort’s two helicopters were aloft. “Eagle Two,” Faust said, “a ground party is now in your sector. Proceed to timberline and patrol north. Eagle One, check above timberline from Black Oak Ravine to the south.”

  No longer bouncing, the needle on Alex’s fuel gauge rested limply against the empty peg. Frequent rearward glances assured him that Pia’s snowmobile was still running.

  A water-and-wind-worn gully loomed, a possible gateway to tall timber. No time to explore. He had to trust that it was navigable. With an exaggerated hand signal to Pia, he veered into the gully and eased off on the throttle as gravity began accelerating his descent.

  The slope became abruptly steeper. Projecting boulders seemed to leap into his path. He steered around a mobile-home-sized rock and corrected a skid caused by the too-abrupt maneuver.

  With only a practice hour of prior snowmobile experience, could Pia negotiate the descent? By now Frederick would be hungry and tired. His fussing and wriggling in the sling would distract her.

  Whatever the problems, she seemed to be coping. She had lengthened the interval between their machines, so she could monitor Alex’s erratic progress and benefit from his mistakes. She slowed her descent, and he had to throttle back still more to avoid leaving her behind.

  The gully turned marginally less steep. Timberline’s welcoming greenery loomed. Alex, steering between rocks and fallen trees, began to unwind.

  The heavy, air-churning thump of a low-flying helicopter overpowered the sound of his snowmobile engine, and a fresh shot of adrenaline coursed through him. Maybe a hundred yards above the snow, Silver Hill’s two-passenger Bell hovered in his path. A rifleman crouched in the helicopter’s open hatch, one foot braced against a landing-gear strut.

  A dull pinging sound, and a hole materialized in the engine cowling of Alex’s snowmobile. He slammed the control hard left in a desperate evasive maneuver. Glancing back, he saw that Pia had followed his lead.

  Timberline, and the shelter it would afford from the airborne rifleman, was at least three hundred yards away. Another hole erupted in his engine cowling, this one a much closer call. It told him the shooter was good, the trees an impossible goal even if the final sip of gasoline in his fuel tank lasted. He veered into a boulder-strewn area where the gully became a wide, flat wash.

  A third bullet pinged into the snowmobile, and heavy black smoke erupted—oil spewing over the hot engine. The oil pressure gauge headed toward zero. In seconds, the engine would freeze up.

  The helicopter swung around, altering the rifleman’s angle of fire. Sitting in the open hatch, he appeared to be making an adjustment to his sights. He leveled his weapon once more.

  Alex grabbed his backpack and dived from the smoking, slowing snowmobile. He belly-flopped into a snow bank. With his sheet-draped torso blending into the snow, he could burrow into a drift and maybe elude the hunters. Or he could leave himself exposed and occupy the rifleman while Pia made for the sheltering tree line.

  His calculations were subconscious, lightning-quick. Pia had shown resourcefulness, so maybe she could make it on her own. She deserved the chance. He rolled onto his back in the snow, swung his rifle into position, and snapped a shot at the helicopter.

  With peripheral vision, he saw Pia’s snowmobile dart for the boulder-strewn shelter that had been his destination. Working his rifle’s bolt action as rapidly as cold-stiffened fingers permitted, he emptied his magazine at the helicopter to divert the fliers’ attention. Pia’s snowmobile disappeared into the rocky enclave, and a sense of triumph surged through him. After they finished him off, Faust’s minions might yet capture her, but at least she had a chance. He rammed a fresh ammunition clip into his rifle and, more deliberately this time, aimed at the hovering helicopter.

  The shooter ducked back into the helicopter’s Plexiglas bubble. The machine swung around and gained altitude. The rifleman would be directing the pilot to a position that would afford a clear shot with less danger of being picked off first. With nowhere to hide, no way to run, Alex lay on his back in the snow, his rifle cocked and ready, the backpack his only cover.

  Chapter 19

  Lying on his back in the snow, looking up at the maneuvering helicopter, Alex refused to think about the next few moments, the inevitable end of his life. Instead, he kept his mind fixed on his victory. Pia and Frederick had reached shelter. They had a chance, slim but real, for freedom.

  The roar of a ground-level engine distracted him as he tried to fix the swaying helicopter in his sights. He glanced toward the sound. Pia’s snowmobile raced across the snow toward him.

  The rifleman in the helicopter had a clear field of fire at the snowmobile, yet he didn’t take the shot. Alex remembered the radioed caution against harming the doe or the fawn.

  The speeding
snowmobile hurtled directly at him. If he didn’t move and Pia did not turn, it would hit him. The same would happen if he rolled in the direction of her turn. Paralyzed by indecision, he braced for the impact.

  At the last possible moment, she turned and cut the snowmobile’s power. It skidded sideways and came to rest pointing away from him. The engine’s high-pitched whine diminished to an idling purr.

  “Climb on,” she screamed.

  Alex latched onto the snowmobile’s safety rail. “Go, go!”

  She gunned the engine, and his backpack, still looped to his other arm, almost jerked his shoulder from its socket. A rifle bullet chewed the snow next to him as he muscled himself aboard the accelerating vehicle, but no further shots were fired. Faust might be planning Frederick’s death, but he wanted to retrieve his “property,” as he apparently thought of Pia, in one piece.

  The snowmobile careened amid the boulders and side-spun to a brief halt. Gunning the engine once more, Pia maneuvered under a lone evergreen clinging to soil at the base of a large rock. If the hovering helicopter dropped low enough for the rifleman to see under the tree, neighboring boulders would block his view. Pia cut the ignition and held Alex with a strength that reminded him of the power packed into her petite frame.