Snow Rising (The Great North Woods Pack Book 4)

by Shawn Underhill

  Merrill stuttered and looked pale as a ghost.

  Joseph quickly looked to Jason, then back at Merrill again and said, “Your driver is not human.”

  “I know, I know,” Merrill said. “I—I thought … I didn’t know it would … I mean, he means no harm to you, sir.”

  “Better not,” Paul said under his breath.

  “Is that true?” Joseph said to Jason.

  “Mostly,” he answered. “I would fight to the death to defend my master.”

  Joseph exhaled heavily and said to Merrill, “You keep him as some sort of guard?”

  “No,” Raymond said. He was inching around the nose of his car. “Jason stays with me of his own will. He is a free man. He serves me out of loyalty.”

  “He speaks almost robotically.”

  “He has, in a way, been brainwashed,” Merrill confirmed. “My sister. She—”

  “All right.” Joseph held up his hand. “Say no more.” He looked at Jason and asked for confirmation.

  “I was held captive by Rowan Merrill for some years,” he said. “Raymond rescued me from her.”

  “How old are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where were you born?”

  Jason just shook his head.

  Joseph turned away. Stepped back up onto the porch and lifted one of the cases. Paul lifted the other. They walked together toward Merrill’s car. With his free hand, Joseph handed Merrill a prepaid phone.

  “Use this to contact me from now on,” he said. “Take the cases and play along with Kraft’s game. The nearer you get to him, the more updates I’ll expect.”

  “Okay,” Merrill said, taking the phone. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. That truly was not my intention.”

  “I see that now,” Joseph returned. “Just understand the level of stress we’ve been under.”

  Merrill nodded.

  “I’ll be needing the cases back, after we’ve taken care of Kraft,” Joseph said next. He was still keeping an eye on Jason. “I know that wasn’t the original plan, and I apologize. But, I’ve had a change of heart regarding this technology. I can’t condone it.”

  “I see,” Merrill said, glumly.

  “You’ve got assets,” Joseph said. “Sell them and start fresh elsewhere. Once Kraft is out of the picture, you and your family should be left in peace. And if you require a little assistance, I may be able to help.”

  Merrill looked to Jason. Jason nodded approvingly.

  “All right,” he said, holding his hand out to Joseph. “Very well.”

  They shook. Joseph tried not to hurt the man’s trembling hand.

  Jason opened the trunk and then stood well aside as the two Snow’s loaded the cases.

  “Get as close to Kraft’s place as you can,” Joseph said. “Don’t jeopardize your safety. Just do your best. We will handle it once we have a general space to search.”

  “Will do,” Merrill said. “And thank you again.”

  Joseph nodded as the man got back into his car.

  Jason backed it around and Merrill lowered his window.

  “I almost forgot,” he said. “We’ve been followed by a dark Chrysler for the past two hours.”

  “We’ve got it covered,” Joseph said, and just as he spoke, his brow furrowed. He could hear the distant tapping of gunfire.

  ***

  “Guns,” Evie said nervously, her ears twitching.

  “Stay here,” Mathew warned her. “Grandpa will be furious if you go.”

  She stared down the hill toward the trail. She had heard gunfire. Now she sensed someone approaching. It was a familiar scent. She lay there staring, scenting, and listening.

  A moment later a lone gray wolf appeared. Evie had never laid eyes on this wolf before, but she knew exactly who it was.

  28

  Lars raised his rifle to use the scope. He saw the lookout man clearly. He was chewing gum nervously. Wore a vest under his shirt and held an M4 in his grip. Panning to the others, he looked for any sign of badges or FBI logos on a coat or a vest. Nothing. All blank and generic. No patches or insignias anywhere. None of their apparel matched perfectly as standard field dress or the suits of ranking investigators. They weren’t agents preparing to make an arrest or take someone into some sort of protective custody. They were a private outfit.

  Lowering his rifle, Lars turned back to the wolves and whispered, “These are Kraft’s men by the looks. How do you want to do this?”

  The wolves began to confer. Lars watched, waiting, the seconds feeling drawn out. Then from the corner of his eye he saw a lone wolf approaching. Gray and agile. It made eye contact with him. Was it the woman from the roadblock car?

  Suddenly he looked back to the road. He had heard a door close and now, looking through the scope, he saw that a few of the men had entered the south-facing vehicle. Two more were making ready to do the same. They were planning to go south and become a third wall of resistance, should Merrill somehow make it past the first two.

  “We gotta move,” Lars whispered, looking back to the wolves. “Either fight or get out of here.”

  He was thinking how much harder it would be to have two separate fights with two clusters of men. The first fight would give the second group time to prepare.

  As he had spoken he’d taken the full mag from his rifle and replaced it with the one filled with the special rounds. He locked it in as he watched the wolves.

  David looked at him. He nodded slowly.

  “Go now?”

  He nodded again.

  Lars acknowledged him. With his thumb he switched the selector lever from safe to single fire. The plan was to use the thirty rounds precisely rather than spraying them all out in a few seconds. Spraying them would be a hell of a show and a big shock to those men, but then he’ be left with only six of the hot rounds in the other magazine.

  Kneeling beside the tree, he obscured himself from the perspective of those on the road. The oak’s firmness steadied him as he felt his heart thumping. Its gnarly bark pressed into his left shoulder. It felt like his heart was drumming against the tree. He breathed in. Breathed out. Slipped his finger through the trigger guard, barely brushing the trigger. Sighted the nearest man—the northern lookout man. He held the sight in the center of the man’s head. He breathed in. Breathed out. Then squeezed a single round.

  The shot roared and crackled in the silence under the canopy of trees and rushed down the open space over the pavement like a rumbling wave. The victim slumped over and Lars moved his sights away quickly, not wanting to see what the round had done to him. He heard reactionary, panicked yelling and saw men making their first moves after the sudden shock and likely surreal feeling of the surprise shot and the ensuing realization of the lone man doubling over in the road before them. In the following seconds they were rushing and ducking, reaching for weapons, searching the woods all around. Lars knew they were feeling pulled in multiple directions at once. Hide. Take cover. Identify the shooter. Return fire. Or jump in the rig and drive like crazy.

  Less than two seconds after the first shot, Lars had acquired his second target. The rolling crackle of the single shot was still fading when the air began to vibrate with the steady bark of consecutive rounds. He put a burst into the lower rear end of the southern SUV—the one facing away from him. The first few rounds pierced the gas tank. Gasoline leaked out. The rest of the rounds merely added to the puff and crash as flames erupted around the SUVs rear half. A slight adjustment, and he went to work on the northern SUV. He put a burst of rounds in along the rear panel behind the fender, entering at a downward angle toward the fuel tank. Eight or ten shots, and the second vehicle was catching fire. Roughly ten shots remained in his mag before having to reload. He felt quite sure that he could do considerable damage with the remaining rounds before reloading or switching to his sidearm.

  A second after the fire started in the northern SUV, he began searching for human targets. Panning carefully, he watched for movement or the
flash of a white shirt against the dark backdrop. He found a target at the exact moment one of the men spotted him. He heard the crack of shots, followed by the hissing of rounds passing over his head. They clipped leaves and thumped into trees. Then a few hit his big oak tree and he drew back fully behind it. At least one of them had seen the muzzle flash from his gun. He was sweating and forcing himself to breath as deeply and slowly as possible. The air around him was thick with burnt powder. He wished the wind would rise and take it away.

  This was supposed to be a piece of cake, he thought. Oh well. Get to it, man. Knock ‘em down so these wolves can get in closer. Sooner you do it, sooner it’s over.

  More shots flew past as he inched around the oak.

  “Quit now,” Lars shouted, his throat dry. “Give up. Or you’re all dead.”

  Some choice phrases and insults came back to him.

  “Use your heads, boys,” he said between breaths. “You’re all about to die if you don’t quit now. The cases ain’t worth dying for.”

  Another defiant reply.

  Edging around the tree, with his right eye he spotted the white shirt sleeves of two men lying in the shallow ditch on the opposite roadside. They were hugging the ground and firing up, and, unless Lars had stood up straight and still, it was unlikely they could do anything but send rounds overhead. His eye kept searching and realized a man or two huddled on the far side of the burning SUVs. He could hear them shouting and choking, desperate to escape the acrid smoke, but unwilling to take leave of the cover it was providing.

  To the south he spotted a few guys down the road. He counted three. They were huddled low, edging along, and trying to cover themselves on all sides as they escaped. He settled on one target through the scope. The guy looked like he’d been on fire briefly as he escaped the burning vehicle. Lars steadied the sight on the man’s torso. Saw his singed shirt, dark vest, dirty skin. Breathed in. Breathed out. Squeezed the trigger twice. Watched the guy curl into the pain. He leaned on his rifle like a cane momentarily, then dropped it as he settled forward awkwardly on his chest. One arm was bent under his weight. He wasn’t dead yet but wasn’t going anywhere.

  In the next seconds Lars saw the other two guys hovering momentarily in indecision as the first one slumped over. They were considering helping their buddy while Lars was considering which of them to fire on. They soon realized that the guy was beyond their help. One took off at a dead run down the road, while the other jumped down into the ditch and went off into the woods. The runner had been the southern lookout man. He had seen enough.

  Bullets were still hitting the oak tree. One suddenly tore through the excess material of his coat and Lars cursed, jumping back, ducking fully behind the oak for a moment of rest. Those impacts briefly extended the runner’s life. Lars felt no sting or heat in his arm and he knew he was not hit. He looked to David and the other wolves. The two big grays were gone now. In a second’s reasoning he assumed they’d been watching the men sneaking south and had followed, using the woods for cover. They must have watched him hit the first guy and saw the other two take off. He hoped they could get close enough to render the rifles useless and then spring on them like hell’s fury and end it all instantly.

  For ten seconds Lars leaned against the tree. He breathed slowly, wiped his brow with his sleeve, and listened to the men across the road firing at him. Then the firing stopped and he heard steps on the pavement. Hurried steps. At least one guy—maybe two—were making a mad dash for his side of the road. They were either tired of playing defense, or else guessed their attacker to be having trouble exchanging magazines or some other gun troubles.

  Their miscalculation worked out well. But not for them.

  The ten seconds ended and Lars twisted around. Raising the rifle, he sighted movement, close, held steady and fired two shots into the guy’s torso. The guy staggered and went over on his side into the ditch, his finger on the trigger. The automatic emptied, kicking itself out of the guy’s hand with the last few shots. As soon it ceased and Lars felt himself unharmed by stray rounds, he gave the guy one more armor-piercing round to make sure he was down for good.

  He was.

  Lars ducked back behind the oak again. Only one man had crossed the road. More shots came at him and went harmlessly but unnervingly overhead. He only heard one gun now. The guys behind the SUVs had no way of seeing him to shoot at him. He held slightly higher ground and, unless the remaining guy in the opposing ditch was an exceptional marksman, he knew the advantage was his as long as he held tight. As long as the sound of rounds hissing by didn’t unravel his nerve, he could win by himself, even without his unusual backup. He only had to be careful.

  Suddenly he heard a burst of firing and screaming across the road. Multiple automatics fired at once, but this time no rounds hissed by him. He peered around the oak and in the same instance felt David and the other wolf suddenly rushing past him. He sighted one guy scrambling to his feet, trying to come up out of the shallow ditch. As he stood Lars shot him with the last rounds of his mag and then, in the seconds it took to replace the magazine, he realized what had happened.

  Across the road, the men in the ditch behind the SUVs had all been looking toward him—where the firing had started from. In their shock and frantic struggle to defend against the rounds coming at them from higher ground, they had neglected their backs for half of a minute. In that short time, two black wolves had crept up on them from the shade of the trees. The screaming and firing had started when the wolves suddenly struck and began tearing them apart alive. They had died with their fingers on the triggers.

  Now, Lars saw three or four wolves working together, sounding dreadful, and there were no more shots but plenty of screams. Those men were accounted for. That left only the two men to the south remaining.

  He went down the slight embankment. The ground was slick. The leaves which had been frosty and stiff overnight were now damp and slippery. He skidded into the ditch, leveled his balance, and then sprang up onto the flat pavement. He looked south, searching for the lone guy hiding in the ditch. No sign of him. He started off jogging. The rifle was trained high and he watched over the sights. He huffed and puffed, trying to expand his lungs and gulp in as much fresh oxygen as he could. He wanted to make sure that the two old brothers got their men without being shot.

  He moved on and the bend in the road began to straighten to the south. As it did, Lars caught sight of the distant runner, now well down the road. He slowed and tried to sight the guy. Then, closer by, through the scope he saw a big gray burst from the trees and onto the road from the right. He halted and looked at Lars with a sort of purposeful stare, as if saying, no need, these two guys are accounted for.

  Lars lowered his M4. He stood and watched the distant runner. The guy was hauling like a receiver for the end zone. Like his life depended on it. It did. Then, just before the road went into another bend, he saw the second big gray break from the trees and bowl over the runner before he could hope to slow and raise his gun. Lars heard the distant sound of a rifle clacking on pavement. But there was no scream. The guy had no air left to scream with. There was a faint growling sound and from that distance Lester looked like a husky shaking a rag doll to death. Very quickly the guy was reduced to nothing but a mess in the road.

  It was over. Nothing had gone according to plan. But it was over.

  Barely a minute had passed.

  Lars turned back to the smoldering SUVs. His pulse was drumming in his ears and he was working to steady his breathing. His eyes burned from sweat and smoke. There was a slight ringing in his ears. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve as he strode toward the wolves north of the SUV. He looked at them from a distance once he’d wiped his eyes and that’s when he realized that something was wrong.

  The big black one was just standing there, glaring. David and the female wolf seemed to be tending to a second black wolf. It wasn’t as large as the huge brother of Joseph. It was Earl’s daughter. She was snarling and yelping and cr
ying, struggling to stand and limping slowly toward the western tree line.

  After wiping his sweaty palms on his cargo pants, Lars got out his phone. He called Joseph as he ambled forward, his rifle pointed at the ground. It rang three times but felt like thirty.

  “Why do I hear firing already?” Joseph answered, irritably.

  “Get a truck or something down here,” Lars blurted between breaths. “The black wolf. Earl’s daughter. In bad shape. Shot. Badly.”

  The words had barely left his mouth when he noticed a truck approaching from the north.

  He ended the call abruptly and put his phone away and kept on striding toward the big black wolf. He was keeping one eye on big black and one on the truck. He heard the grays behind him, their nails tapping on the pavement as they trotted. Then he heard a roaring sort of sound as Earl rushed by him. Felt the wind he generated coolly touch him. Saw him move up near his wounded daughter and then whip around in a flash and charge toward big black. Lester passed by next, just as his brother lit into big black. The three of them went round and round in a mass of muscle and snarling rage. Their clacking jaws were as loud as snapping fingers. Big black backed away without seriously defending himself. He took his scolding and then just stood there absorbing it without as much as a yelp.

  Now Lars looked to the approaching truck, hoping it was family. It wasn’t. Not exactly. It was Edmond. Old, defiant Edmond. Getting involved though he’d been warned away. The truck skidded sideways to a stop and Lars ran toward him and bumped to a stop against Ed’s door.

  “Just what in hell is happening here?”

  “Get turned around,” Lars said between breaths. “The girl. Earle’s daughter. She got shot. Take her to the big farm.”

  “Cripes sake, she’s just a kid,” Ed blurted, and went off into a string of curses and excited jabbering.

  Lars stepped back as the old timer started cranking his truck around. The power steering belt screeched from the strain. He saw the injured black wolf leaning on David Wilson, shaking and practically crawling toward the truck’s bed. Her fur was matted with oily-looking blood in several places. The others pushed her in and she flopped onto her side, panting nasally, her tongue hanging like a dead dog. Her eyes looking dim and vacant. The gray bulk of her father got in, crouched low at her side, the two of them filling every inch of the long bed. Lars stepped onto the bumper after closing the gate, his rifle in one hand and his other gripping the steel gate. Ed started off north.