She willed her hand to be steady so that she wouldn’t misdial. She punched out the emergency number, 911.
A man answered almost immediately. “Merrimac County Sheriff’s Office.”
“I need help,” Laura said, her voice tight. She couldn’t get her breath, and her chest hurt. “There’s a man shot here. Bleeding badly. The house is on fire. There are two children in the snow—and some—some people are dead.”
“Ma’am, try to be calm. Where are you?” he asked.
“Outside Hooksett. Off the Londonderry Turnpike. Listen, this man is bleeding a lot. I’m going to drive him into town. Is there a doctor there? We need an ambulance—”
“Ma’am, don’t try to move him. Let us. Now tell me exactly where you are. Stay calm. Talk to me.”
“He’s lying in the snow,” she protested. “He’ll freeze. I can get him to the van. I can get to Hooksett, but we need an ambulance. And police. All kinds of police. Every kind. Please—help us. He’s been shot.”
“Ma’am, I’m dispatching that order. But don’t move him. We can get an Emergency Medical Treatment and an ambulance to you in a few minutes. Give me your location and stay where you are. Do you hear me? Stay where you are.”
“Send the closest doctor, the closest police,” she insisted, fighting tears again. “Hurry. This man’s a federal attorney. We have children with us. Th—there are three men dead, maybe four. Maybe more. The house is burning.”
There was a moment of silence. “Jesus Christ, lady, what is this? Where are you? Pinpoint it for me.”
“Londonderry Turnpike,” she repeated. “Two miles out of Hooksett on Daniel Road … Hurry—please.”
“We’ll be there, lady. We’ll be there. Hang on.”
Numbly she hung up. She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. Leaving the van door open, she ran on unsteady legs into the shelter of the pines.
She found Rickie still kneeling, pushing handfuls of snow against Montana’s side. He was shaking and crying.
“Rickie,” she ordered. “Laura’s here. Get in the van and sit down. Hurry. Do it now.”
He nodded and rose shakily. He staggered toward the glow of the headlights. She knelt beside Trace. Montana lay next to him, his eyes closed.
“Montana,” she begged, “can you hear me? I’ve got the van. I’ve called for help. They’re coming for us.”
His eyelids fluttered, opened, but he didn’t turn his head. “Laura?” he said dully.
“Yes. Lie still until I get back.”
She snatched up Trace and carried him to the van. She carried him awkwardly because she had hardly any strength left. She unlocked the back door and lowered him to the seat. She tried to tuck the sleeping bag around him more snugly, but made a bad job of it. He shuddered and coughed in his sleep.
Rickie sat crouched in the front seat on the passenger’s side, hugging himself, still crying.
She climbed in beside him, searched for the heater, and turned it on. “It’s all right now,” she told him. “Cry if you want. But you can be warm now and rest. Laura’s here. Laura loves you. Laura will take care of you.”
She got out, shutting his door and Trace’s. She labored back through the snow to Montana. She found him kneeling, trying to raise himself. The snow was dark with blood beneath him.
“Lie down,” she said, crouching beside him. “Help’s coming. It’ll be here soon. Lie down. I’ll try to stop the bleeding.”
He ground his teeth as he sank back to the snow. “Laura,” he said, “what happened?”
He lay clutching his side and shivering. She stripped off her jacket and covered him with it. “There was a man,” she said, trying to tuck the jacket around him more snugly. “I—I shot him.”
“Oh, God,” he said and shuddered. “God. D-did he hurt you?”
“No. He never saw me until it was too late.”
His body gave a convulsive jerk. He squeezed his eyes shut. She seized his hand and squeezed it.
“Laura?”
“Yes?”
“Is he dead?”
“Yes,” she said, feeling hollow and lost.
He convulsed again, and his hand tightened around hers.
“But—” he gasped “—you called for help?”
She lowered herself next to him and laid her cheek against his. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had to. I’m sorry.”
He turned his face so that his lips were close to hers. “Listen,” he said. His voice sounded drunken, but she sensed the urgency in him. “Don’t say anything about killing him. Promise me that. Don’t implicate yourself. Tell them only the basics. And get the word to Conlee. Tell him about Hepfinger and Estrada. Say it’s a conspiracy to murder.”
His face contorted and his body stiffened in pain.
“Montana?” she begged, clutching his lapel.
He drew his breath in sharply. “Tell Conlee about Hepfinger and Estrada. Conspiracy to murder, tell him that. But not about Reynaldo Comce. Not yet. Promise me that.”
“Not about Reynaldo Comce,” she repeated.
She didn’t even know who Hepfinger and Estrada were, and she no longer cared about the tape or Reynaldo Comce or anything except the people she loved.
“Promise,” he said. “You’ve got to.”
“I will,” she said, laying her forehead against his. “I promise. Now be still, Montana, please.”
“No,” he said. “Listen. If I can’t talk—if something happens, wait till the tape comes out. Don’t say anything about Comce until then. Maybe I can—maybe I—you’ve got to trust me. Can you—”
“I promise,” she said “Lie down—please.”
He sank back to the snow again. His hand went to her shoulder, tightened spasmodically, then went inert and fell away.
“Montana,” she breathed, frightened, “don’t die. You promised!”
He did not respond.
Behind her the house still burned, casting its queer light on the softly falling snow.
In the distance a siren keened, drawing closer.
Desperately she gripped Montana’s hand. It was a futile gesture.
From another direction another siren wailed, coming for them. Soon they would be in custody.
The whole run had been for nothing.
TWENTY
For Laura, the night passed in a haze of unreality. She realized, dimly, that she was in some sort of shock. She could walk, she could talk, but she felt numb, divorced from herself.
It had seemed to take an eternity before the ambulance came. It took another eternity for them first to load Montana and Trace into the ambulance, then to help her and Rickie.
Rickie refused to go to anyone except Laura, so she held him during the ride into Manchester. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, sucked his fingers, and would look at nobody else.
In Manchester, they let her stay with the boys, but wheeled Montana, still unconscious, away. She stared after him, dazed and distracted.
“Honey,” a nurse said kindly, “that boy’s heavy. Let me take him. You sit down, let a doctor look at you.”
“No,” she said, hugging Rickie closer. “I take care of him. It’s my job. Call Isaac Conlee. Tell him the names Estrada and Hepfinger. Conspiracy to murder. Tell him that.”
The state police shot question after question at her, but she remembered Montana’s injunction and told them only the barest details.
They kept asking, “What happened?”
“Some men tried to kill us. Call Isaac Conlee of the Organized Crime Task Force in Manhattan. Please.”
Why?
“We saw a murder. They didn’t want us to testify. Call Isaac Conlee of the task force. Please.”
Who were the men who had attacked them?
“I don’t know. Two men named Estrada and Hepfinger sent them. They should be arrested for conspiracy to murder. Tell Isaac Conlee. Please.”
The interrogation dizzied her, made her head ache. The questions kept coming, wave after wave o
f them. Who was she? Who were the boys? Who was the wounded man? Why were they in New Hampshire?
“I can’t talk about it any more. Except there was another man with us. His name’s Jefferson. They killed him. He was a good man. He saved one boy’s life. I—it’s wrong he’s dead.”
Whenever she got to the part about Jefferson, she cried.
At last they stopped trying to question her.
The rest of the night, time passed in a slithery, unearthly way. She thought she’d been tranquilized, and Rickie, too. It seemed to her she slept, but she couldn’t be sure. Waking and dreaming were equally disjointed and unreal.
The next day was little better. She was told that Trace had a touch of pneumonia and Rickie’s fingers and toes were frostbitten. She couldn’t stop watching the boys for signs of more serious illness or injury. She watched over them as fiercely as a tigress guarding her cubs.
Rickie was hyperactive; Trace was unsettled and irritable. She had her hands full with them. She concentrated all her energy on the boys so she would not have to think of Jefferson or Montana.
When she let herself think of Jefferson, she went on a crying jag that she couldn’t stop. When she thought of how badly Montana was hurt, she was frightened nearly sick. A nurse assured her that Montana was fine, but she didn’t believe her. She no longer believed anything or anybody except Montana.
That afternoon, she was told that she and Rickie and Trace would be flown by helicopter back to Manhattan, to a bigger hospital. Against her wishes, a nurse sedated the boys with shots. She herself refused to be tranquilized.
A doctor said Montana was in fair condition and would be taken to the same hospital that afternoon. She didn’t really believe him.
At the Manhattan hospital, she and the boys were put in a room guarded by U.S. marshals. Two men who identified themselves as members of the task force came to question her.
She thought of Jefferson, and once again tears overpowered her. “I can’t talk about it,” she said. “There are some men named Hepfinger and Estrada. They committed conspiracy to murder.”
“Now, Laura,” one of the men from the task force said, putting his hand on her arm. “What exactly did the twins see? Do you know? Why would Estrada want them out of the way?”
She looked at his hand on her arm as if it were a large and poisonous spider. She set her chin at a stubborn angle even though her voice was choked. “Where’s Montana? How is he? Is he here?”
The man patted her arm. Perhaps he thought his touch comforted her. It didn’t.
“Montana’s here,” he said reassuringly. “And he’s fine. Just fine.”
She didn’t believe him.
“Laura, I understand,” he said. “But right now let’s think of you. You’ve been through a lot. Is there anything we can get you? Anything you want?”
She took a deep, shivery breath. She straightened her back and looked him in the eye.
“Yes,” she said as evenly as she could. “I’d like a Bugs Bunny lamp and two sets of sheets with Daffy Duck and Sylvester and Tweety on them. And matching curtains. I want a bag of fifty plastic lizards, a Chinese checker game, and two quart jars of pennies.”
He looked at her as if she were certifiably mad.
She set her jaw stubbornly. “And I want them now,” she said with feeling. “I want them right now.”
They wouldn’t let him see Laura. They kept telling him she was fine, but they wouldn’t let him see her or talk with her.
It was the same with the kids. The boys were in good condition, they assured him. But he hadn’t seen this for himself; he wasn’t allowed to.
His hospital room closed in on him like a prison cell. The only touch of cheer was ironic, a cheap bouquet of red carnations from the task force office. Technically, he was under arrest.
The door was guarded by two federal marshals, and Montana’s only visitors were lawmen. Detectives from the New Hampshire State Police came, as well as those from New York. FBI investigators took their turn, and DEA agents, and two men from the task force.
During their earliest visits, Montana was groggy and doped by pain, and he told them little. First, he said, get Estrada, get Hepfinger. The charge was conspiracy to murder, he said. When the two Colombians were in custody, he said, then he might talk.
The lawmen nodded wisely and informed him that they would pursue all leads. Then they tried to pry more information from him. They might as well have gone outside and talked to the rocks.
Everything Montana heard about Laura and the twins was hazy and imprecise. Laura and Rickie, he was told, were in “excellent” condition. Trace, fighting off pneumonia, was “good.”
One of the task force men showed Montana a copy of the World Weekly Record. He’d never had a chance to see it.
On page six was an overblown story about how the twins and Laura had been forced into hiding. Their pictures were there, enlarged, fuzzy, but clearly them, for all the world to see.
Montana had turned away wearily and stared at the wall. This was the story they had tried to outrun. They had failed. Now everyone knew about her, about the boys. But no one would tell him anything.
At last, the second day after the shootings, Montana had a visitor who might be privy to some answers. Conlee appeared, but he looked about as concerned, genial, and charitable as a carrion crow.
Montana had four pints of nice, fresh blood in him, and he could sit up without the world spinning around, but the effort hardly seemed worth it. His head ached, his ribs ached, his whole body ached. He cast an unfriendly look at Conlee.
Conlee sat down without being asked. “Tell me what happened at Hooksett,” he said brusquely.
“I already made a statement,” Montana said, surly. “I’ve got nothing to add. Did you get Estrada? Hepfinger?”
“We’ll come to that,” Conlee answered. “First, what in hell happened? I want to hear it from you.”
Montana didn’t intend to talk about Hooksett. He hauled himself into a sitting position, even though it made his head bang. “I’ve got my own questions,” he said. “What have you done about Hepfinger and Estrada?”
“I said later. Give me your version of events. The woman won’t talk. She won’t say anything except the same goddamn thing: Hepfinger and Estrada.”
Good for her, Montana thought. “How is she? And the kids?”
“They’re fine,” Conlee said sourly. “Except she’s stonewalled us for two straight days. What the hell do you know? Or pretend to know? What did those kids see?”
Montana eyed Conlee coldly. “It’s not just what they saw. It’s what we heard. That bastard on the ice, whoever he was—”
“Santander,” Conlee said. “His name was Santander. He was one of Estrada’s men. Yeah, he’s connected to the Cartel, all right.”
“I told you all along the Cartel was in this,” Montana retorted. “He named names. He said enough to make the Cartel nervous, very nervous.”
“Fine. But why’s the Cartel in it?” Conlee demanded. “All the Colombians we haul in say the same thing—this wasn’t their problem. The problem belonged to Dennis Deeds.”
“Dennis Deeds couldn’t find his ass in the dark with both hands,” Montana said contemptuously. “He couldn’t know about Valley Hope without the Cartel’s help. And he couldn’t have tracked us to Hooksett.”
“Then answer me this. Why the hell do the Colombians care if the kids saw some nickel-and-dime hit man hired by Deeds?”
“Because it wasn’t any nickel-and-dime hit man,” said Montana.
“Then who the hell was it?” Conlee demanded.
“Somebody you’ll never touch,” Montana said. “The CIA won’t let you. So the name doesn’t matter—to you. But it does to the Colombians.”
“What’re you talking about?” Conlee demanded. “You’re talking like you want to cut a deal with the Colombians, for God’s sake.”
“Exactly,” Montana answered. “And I want you to contact them and say just that. We m
ade a tape. The twins are on it. They identify the guy. Positively. Tell the Colombians we can make this tape public at any time. Unless they meet our demands.”
“Your demands?” Conlee said in disbelief. “Who do you think you are?”
“A man with a bargaining chip,” Montana said. “I’m making them an offer they can’t refuse. If they want the tape suppressed, I want four things.”
“Four things,” Conlee mocked. “The Taj Mahal, an emerald mine, eternal life, and what else—Ecuador?”
“First,” Montana said, “have you got Estrada, and second, what about Hepfinger?”
“Estrada, no,” Conlee said, his expression going bitter. “He went to Colombia by private plane.”
“Since when?”
“Since the other night.”
“The night we were ambushed?”
“Approximately,” Conlee admitted.
“Approximately,” Montana jeered. “Listen to you, Conlee. All right, I want four things. Estrada’s one of them.”
Conlee gave a mirthless snort. “We’ve got federal warrants out. But we’ll never extradite him. Not from Colombia. You want him, you’re going to have to wait for him to get cocky and come back to the States.”
Montana went silent for a moment. Then, very deliberately, he picked up the vase of carnations from the bedside table. He drew back his arm and hurled the vase at the opposite wall. Glass shattered, water drenched the wall, and glass, water, carnations, and fern spilled to the floor.
Montana was grandstanding, and he knew it. But he’d gotten Conlee’s attention.
“Fuck your warrant and fuck extradition,” he told Conlee. “I said I want Estrada. I want him, or the tape’s made public. If it embarrasses the CIA, you take the fall.”
“Montana,” Conlee snarled, “why should the Colombians listen to you?”
“Because they have to listen,” Montana said. “And they know it. I said I want four things. The second?—I want Hepfinger.”
“We’re going to have a little talk about that—later,” Conlee said without emotion. “I think we can meet that demand. What else?”
Montana wondered what Conlee meant, but he didn’t stop to ask. “I want to know who leaked our relocation to Valley Hope. I want to by God know that. And fourth—I want the safety of the twins and Laura Stoner guaranteed. I mean guaranteed. Anything happens to them, the tape is made public.”
See How They Run Page 32