Snow Rising (The Great North Woods Pack Book 4)

by Shawn Underhill

  ***

  Lars and David took off their heavy packs and dropped them to the floor. David began moving through the house, searching for computers, phones, flash drives—anything which might contain useful information. Lars took coiled lengths of thin rope from the pack and pocketed them. Stepping back outside, he moved toward the distant trees bordering the large grounds. He picked up small stones and piled them before him. He tossed a few stones toward the gatehouse until one of the two men stepped out. The guy looked around, listening. Then he whistled for the dogs. Nothing. Then Lars tossed another stone, watched the guy draw a handgun, and waited for him to get closer.

  The guy started saying names. Evidently the names of the dogs. Lars tossed a tiny stone a few feet from the guy and then held absolutely still, sighting his weapon on the guy. Then he fired. The little projectile struck the man and began conducting voltage into his body. The guy screamed and shook and drooled and flopped on the ground.

  The second guy came rushing from the gatehouse. He fired a few aimless shots into the woods before getting the same shock treatment. Then Lars tied them both up and dragged them out back, well behind the house.

  “Sorry, boys,” he said before leaving them. “Just doing my job. You know how it is sometimes.”

  Back inside, he met up with David.

  “Not finding a lot,” David told him. “There’s a big safe in the basement.”

  They went down the stairs with their packs and Lars began unpacking the detonating wire and thin sticks of dynamite. David taped the sticks along the door’s outline and then Lars wrapped the safe’s edges with yards of the explosive wire. Once satisfied, they went upstairs to wait for Kraft.

  Lars inspected a spacious room at the center of the house. There were monitors to multiple security cameras, controls to adjust the cameras, and six separate TVs broadcasting varying news networks—all muted. The house was enormous, yet it seemed Kraft spent most of his time in that large central room, far from windows, monitoring the world around him.

  The sound of a car on the circular driveway passed in through the open door. David ducked back into the shadows of a back room. Lars stepped beyond the front door, behind it, waiting for his first view of Kraft.

  ***

  Kraft was practically snarling with rage. He was so focused on the cases that it took him a moment to realize that his men and dogs were nowhere to be seen. Regardless, he opened the trunk and hoisted the heaviest case. Walking carefully, he grunted toward the house and through the open door. Looking round quickly, he dropped the case and called for one of his men by name.

  Lars could tell by the grunting and muttering alone that he had certainly found the right man. He hit him with the heavy door, sent him staggering back. Kraft turned in time to see a fist coming straight for his face. He tried to duck but was too late. Lars caught him square on the nose, and Kraft sat down unnaturally fast.

  “Ready to talk?” Lars said, looking down on him, shaking the stiffness from his knuckles.

  “You,” the man croaked, holding his face. “You never checked in. I thought you were dead.”

  “Almost was dead,” Lars answered. He grabbed Kraft by the coat and hauled him to his feet. Shoved him back until he finally fell onto a couch. “Thanks to you and Rowan Merrill.”

  “Wait, wait.” Kraft held out a shaky hand. “We can fix this. Listen to me. We can fix this.”

  Lars stepped back a few paces. David came forward into the room. Kraft sat there looking at them. Shocked, angry, confused. He had not felt out of control in any situation since sometime in his early thirties—back when he was still subject to the military’s chain of command.

  “Where are my dogs?” he finally asked. “You bastards kill my dogs?”

  “Got no interest in killing dogs,” Lars said.

  “They’re feasting on T-bones,” David said.

  “And who are you?” Kraft asked him, scowling.

  “Just one of the folks you sent Lars to hunt.”

  Kraft looked back and forth between them and said, “Just wait. None of this is personal. This is business with a few hitches, but business all the same. We can fix it.”

  “What’s in the safe?” Lars asked.

  Kraft scowled. Not in anger but apparent disgust.

  “A lousy half mil in cash. Few collectable guns. Few bonds. A drop in the bucket compared to the value of Merrill’s cases.”

  Lars instructed him to get to his feet. Kraft obeyed and was compelled to lead the way. They went around to the basement steps and walked to the safe. Kraft grumbled when he saw the explosives.

  “Think bigger, Lars,” he said. “I’m not worried about the safe.”

  “Just Merrill’s technology?”

  “I don’t give a damn about that, either,” Kraft croaked. “The cases will bring a hundred million. Maybe more.”

  “From who?” Lars asked.

  “Who do you think? American bidders on behalf of the Pentagon. Russians. Chinese. They’ll pay my price gladly. Then, no more jobs for me. I’ll be off to my secure place in the Canadian Rockies to enjoy a quiet retirement.”

  “Assuming I don’t shoot you tonight,” Lars pointed out.

  Kraft narrowed his eyes.

  “I’m not planning on it,” Lars said. “Not unless you do something real stupid.”

  “So you’re with the Ludlow’s now,” Kraft said next. He smiled thinly. “Dances With Wolves. Never figured you’d fall for the natives while on a job. They must be paying you better than I did.”

  Lars nodded, though it was a false assumption.

  “Twenty-five percent of the cases,” Kraft said. “That should keep you comfortable.”

  David looked quickly at Lars. “Don’t listen to him. Let’s just kill him now.”

  “Keep calm,” Lars told him. “The man is worth listening to, if, say, he moved the percentage up.”

  Kraft glared hard. “No more than forty percent,” he said. “I’m the one with the contacts, taking all the risks.”

  Lars leaned closer. “And I’m the one you threw to the wolves on Rowan Merrill’s bad credit.”

  Kraft’s face sagged like a bulldog. “Fine,” he groaned. “We can split it. Just keep the Ludlow’s off my back, all right?”

  “What are you doing?” David said to Lars. “I can’t believe you.”

  “Easy, kid,” he replied. “Like Mr. Kraft says, it’s only business. We can all come out of this all right.”

  “That’s right,” Kraft chimed. “Don’t fool yourself into thinking a mercenary is on your side. There are no real sides, no right and wrong. Good and bad is for comic books. In the real world, it all comes down to having and having not. Business keeps the world spinning, kid. Deals. Smart ones. Remember that. Even your old man isn’t above making a profit. He took my money gladly.”

  David made no reply. He gave both men a dirty look, then walked away and up the stairs.

  ***

  “What have you got on the Ludlow’s?” Lars asked.

  “No one knows who the old man is or what he is,” Kraft said. “No one really knows enough to care. Merrill cared for her own reasons. She had something on them. Kept most of her information to herself. I assume they took care of her.”

  Lars nodded. “You’re saying you’ve got nothing solid on them?”

  “There’s no money in investigating them apart from Merrill’s interests. Why would I waste my time and resources?”

  Lars took the little dragonfly drone from his shirt pocket and showed it to Kraft.

  “It malfunctioned,” Kraft said. “It was on lease. Mr. Brown will be grateful for its return.”

  “It’s yours, if you give me fifty percent of the cases,” Lars said.

  “Deal.”

  “And I want the cash from the safe now, up front. Operating expenses.”

  Kraft scowled for a moment, then stepped forward and carefully turned the dial on the lock. He hefted the heavy door. Lars saw cash and guns and some papers. H
e moved forward and began cramming cash into the cargo pockets of his pants. Wads of hundreds.

  “Happy?” Kraft said.

  “Almost,” Lars answered.

  “Now, what about this dynamite?”

  “Worry about it later.”

  The two men went up the stairs to the big living room. Looking across the open space, Lars could see the front door still standing open. He wondered where David was. Kraft took his coat off, sat down and began dabbing his broken nose. He left the drone on a big coffee table.

  “The Ludlow’s will be here to pick me up soon,” Lars told him.

  “Fine, just keep them off my back for a few days. Long enough to get our money secured.”

  “The kid took your laptops and some storage disks.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Kraft said. He tapped his forehead. “All the important stuff—the stuff that really keeps me safe—is right here.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything that matters to me.”

  Lars nodded. “Tell your boys to be real careful getting that dynamite off your safe.”

  “Can’t you do it?”

  “Not possible. I was only paid to carry it in, not to carry it out.”

  Kraft scowled. “You think that’s funny?”

  Lars grinned, made a mock solute, said, “I’ll be in touch,” and walked to the door.

  As he stepped out, David came out of the dark towards him. Lars figured the rest of the crew would be watching him from a distance. He reached to his thigh and unsnapped his .45. He held it out toward David Wilson, his friend. He glanced down the long driveway toward the gatehouse. Saw Joseph and his sons with Ohan and both SUVs. Then he looked back to David. It felt very strange to be holding his trusty old sidearm out toward the kid. He was holding it by the muzzle, not the handle.

  David closed his hand around the grip.

  “Bump the safety and she’s ready to roar,” Lars said.

  ***

  David stepped in coolly and strode toward Kraft. The man, tending to his sore nose, looked up at him in surprise. His expression soon turned to one of horror as David, without a word of warning, fired a bullet into his knee. He screamed.

  “It’s funny,” David said as the roar faded and the smoke cleared. “You can pay to have your dogs trained, cap their teeth with titanium, and teach them fancy commands. But none of that will make them care about you.”

  Kraft snarled and cursed him, clutching his knee as he rocked on the couch.

  “And you can pay a gunman to do your dirty work,” David said. “But you can’t buy loyalty from a guy who respects loyalty more than cash.”

  Then, with great concentration, David willed himself into a partial change. His head became his dark wolf’s head atop his human frame. He leaned toward Kraft, snarling, bearing his teeth, watching the man’s horrified expression.

  After a moment he was fully human again and said, “See, Rowan wasn’t wrong.”

  Then he shot Kraft’s other knee. After taking the little drone from the table, he stepped outside.

  Lars took the gun and replaced it in its holster. He tossed Rowan Merrill’s second case into the house, closed the door on Kraft’s screaming, and walked with David toward the gatehouse where the others were waiting.

  “Nice performance, kid,” he said.

  “You too. I mean, you’re no Pacino, but it was solid.”

  “Ohh-ahh, Charlie,” Lars said—his best Colonel Slade imitation.

  They all stood in a line in the road as Lars pushed a button on a remote which detonated the dynamite in Kraft’s basement. The earth shook. The house as a whole rose up slightly in the center, then fell again with a deafening roar and blast. Debris and smoldering bits of wood rained down. Flames began climbing up through all the shattered windows and broken walls.

  “Beautiful,” Paul said.

  Lester dabbed his eyes, as if crying.

  Ohan, in his robe, nodded to everyone.

  Lars said to Joseph, “I would rather be your friend than your enemy.”

  Joseph nodded and said, “Let’s get this show on the road. The neighbors may all be distant but they can’t all be deaf.”

  They moved east as fast as the SUVs would safely go. On their way by Kraft’s bound guards, now staggering along the road in a clumsy mass, they tooted the horns and waved. In forty minutes they were back in the jet. Two hours from the quiet safety of Ludlow.

  32

  Lars couldn’t recall much from the flight home. After days of action and weeks of very little sleep, he found himself feeling groggy and spent. The jet’s cabin was full of discussion but he just slipped off into a quiet nap. He remembered landing and driving his junky truck back to McCall’s. Creeping up the stairs. Kicking off his boots. Lying back on the bed and feeling completely at ease. Not joy or pleasure, but simple, quiet ease. Like a great weight had been taken from his shoulders.

  As he slept, there was a great, wild celebration held at Moon Rock. Basking in victory and strength, the pack lifted their old songs of gratitude to the stars and the faint green glimmer of the aurora borealis, a rarity in the east. And when the gathering finally broke up, just before dawn, Abel spoke with his brother before departing.

  “I have witnessed the quality of your gunman, the killer of killers,” he said. “I grant him leave to travel freely in my territory, as long as he remains true.”

  The white wolf nodded and said, “Safe travels, brother.”

  A flatbed truck bearing a wooden crate started off for the Maine woods. It would go north beyond the grand hotel before swinging east. Many miles of secondary roads and logging roads lay ahead, and inside that dark crate, Rowan Merrill lamented her fate as she descended into madness. It was the sensation of falling, sinking, and being unable to resist the strong undertow of intolerable suffering that was pulling her under. She cried and screamed until she could no longer make a sound, until all the world became to her eyes the realm of nightmares—a dark passage, endless, with no light beckoning.

  Two black wolves, the younger completely healed, escorted the truck bearing her crate from the cover of trees.

  Lars slept soundly through the dawn and the early morning hours. He finally rose shortly after 10:00, showered, and dressed in clean clothes. He agreed to a cup of hot tea with Mrs. McCall before heading to Grandma’s Kitchen for a late breakfast. He was ravenously hungry. Looking through the kitchen window as the tea steeped, he saw snow flurries swirling in a cold sky. The autumn colors were fading fast but were still striking against the snow.

  Outside, he discovered that his truck was missing. But he wasn’t worried in the least. In its place sat a brand new truck with dealer plates. Black, shiny, perfect. Snow flurries landing on it. He walked all around it and then tried the door. Unlocked. There was a brief note along with a ring of keys.

  You earned it. Key on ring to back door of store. Upstairs is yours if you choose. Let me know. -Joe

  He slid into the truck. The seats were cold and comfortable. Plenty of leg and shoulder room. He fired it up and let it idle. The cabin was quiet. Cracking the window, he heard a nice note from the dual tailpipes.

  It seemed absurd to drive the short distance to the little store, but he did anyway. He felt like a kid with a new toy. He glanced over to where the navy Chrysler had been and saw empty space. He moved on by, parked, got out and he tried the store’s solid back door with the key. Just ahead there were stairs leading up from a little landing. He climbed up and opened another door, which was unlocked, and looked around at a nice furnished one-room apartment. Wood furniture, country décor. Spacious. Full kitchen and large appliances rather than the typical tiny stuff. A small iron woodstove, just enough to heat a small place. A TV in one corner, a couch across from it, and a big bed against the back wall. He stepped over to a door near the foot of the bed and looked into a nice bathroom with a deep closet. The place wasn’t huge, but wasn’t cramped, either.

  He went back downstairs and outside. He lef
t the truck and walked to the Kitchen. It was cold and the air was refreshing. He liked walking in cool weather. Just walking slowly.

  Old Edmond was inside, enjoying his free coffee at the counter and chatting with Evie. She gave Lars a civil greeting as he neared the counter. That was a first.

  “I heard you got a new truck,” she said, pouring his coffee. Not the muddy coffee from the pot on the back burner. It was the fresh stuff.

  “New truck?” Ed said. “New dog for me, new truck for you. Guess things are looking up around here.”

  “Yeah,” Lars said. “I didn’t ask for it. Just found it when I woke up. Nice surprise.”

  Evie made a face. “See if you can get my Papa to buy me one, since you’re in his good graces now.”

  He laughed and said, “I’ll put in a good word for you.”

  ***

  After breakfast he drove up the long driveway to the big farm. The flurries had become a light storm and everything was powdered white. He saw Joseph Snow sitting in a rocker under the overhang of the porch, sipping coffee, watching the winter settle in on his lands. Indifferent to the cold. A man capable of appreciating the small things, but at the drop of a hat, a being capable of facing whatever the world threw at him, besting it, rising above it. A few hours of sleep and he was back to enjoying the little things.

  “How do you like it?” he asked as Lars stepped out of his new truck.

  “Love it.”

  “Good. Have a seat, if you don’t mind the cold. We’ll go in for a coffee in a few minutes.”

  Lars settled back in a rocker as the old man watched him. He looked around at the fading color of the fallen leaves, the dark evergreens, and the pure mountain snow mingling with those colors.

  “Did you check the apartment?”

  “I did,” Lars answered. “Nice little place. Appreciate the offer.”