by Craig Thomas
He flinched at an owl's delight in its ability to kill… In the silence of the lit room, the owl's cry intruded sufficiently to alarm them.
Strickland's shoulders twitched as his eyes automatically swept the bank of monitors. The four cameras revealed nothing. His stomach was cramped with sitting, with the effort of calm. It was hours now since he had begun to want Gant to be out there, his imagination describing the manner, the exact distances, the precise route by which Gant could fox the radar. Strickland knew Fraser wanted him dead. He had orders to that effect and no other. That much was obvious he'd traded Gant for himself, and the FBI agent had gone for it.
"He's not coming," he heard Fraser taunt Mclntyre in a whisper.
"Yes he is," Mclntyre snapped back.
Strickland watched the screens. Nothing. Fraser's next words surprised him.
"You would tell us, wouldn't you, son, if and when the man comes walking out of the trees? You wouldn't keep it to yourself, just for long enough to give him the smallest chance?"
"No," Strickland replied sullenly as a schoolboy.
"He wants to kill me, doesn't he?"
Fraser merely chuckled.
"Leave the guy alone," Mclntyre said.
"Christ, you'd give anyone the heebie-jeebies with that laugh of yours."
"Sorry, Mac I didn't realise you were so sensitive."
Fraser lit a cigarette. Strickland's inside knotted with a puritanical, angry revulsion.
"Eleven-forty. Is he waiting for midnight, do you reckon? It's when most suicides happen."
Mclntyre's stomach rumbled. There were faint noises from the kitchen as the two men relieved of patrol duty made them selves something to eat. His impatience bubbled and grumbled like indigestion.
Where in hell was Gant? Was he even coming?
"Anything?" he asked Strickland sharply.
"Nothing."
"He isn't coming," Fraser taunted, his features smug with assurance that Gant would come.
"You've screwed up, Mac."
"I'm right," Mclntyre replied, as if rehearsing some old and boring script… and so it had gone on, hour after hour, Strickland's hunched, aching shoulders reminded him. The window he could watch without attracting their attention was a black square, looking on nothing. It failed to promise Gant, who had become Strickland's only image of rescue. Listening to their pathetic banter during the last eight or nine hours had worn him down. He'd been so confined.
They could never, even with a psychological profiler on hand, have devised a better means of undoing him. Exposure at the lit windows was less wearing than the time-tunnel of their slow wrestling for dominance.
"Put money on it," Fraser mocked.
"Shove it," Mclntyre sulked in reply.
Cat-and-mouse, cat-and-mouse, endlessly… His temples tightened as the idea came to him… Expose them, make them move into the light.
Gant had better be watching' There he announced quickly.
They lurched together out of their chairs, towards the console and himself.
"Where?"
"I thought there was something…" But he could not keep them within the frame of the window any longer.
"Arsehole," Fraser concluded, but without suspicion. His breath was hot on Strickland's ear, his hand heavy on his shoulder. Strickland shivered with sudden, icy cold, at once regretting what he had done.
Eraser's intention had somehow communicated itself through the man's touch. If anything went wrong, if Fraser felt threatened, then his first move would be to kill him. If Gant looked remotely like succeeding, he knew Fraser wouldn't hesitate.
Mclntyre and Fraser sat down again, unaware that they had walked on to a stage.
Had Gant seen them? Strickland almost hoped not… The thermal sight was at his eye, the rifle butt resting against his shoulder. Two others were obviously in the room with Strickland. He recognised Mclntyre's blunt, thick-necked head and broad back. And the face that glanced sidelong at Strickland, with an evident sneer. It was Eraser
… he remembered the picture Aubrey had shown him… Winterborne's man. With Mclntyre and Strickland. They would see nothing on any of the screens, except their own two-man patrol moving in regular, undeviating progression.
The two men dropped quickly back out of sight. The screens had been blank.
Could it have been a signal from Strickland…? Gant was nervous of completing the idea. Strickland could just as well be working to their game plan. Even so, it had shown him not only who was in the room with Strickland but also that they couldn't see the screens for themselves if they remained concealed.
Eleven-fifty… The moon was reflected like a pale lantern in the smooth water of Bonner Lake. Time narrowed. The images through the thermal sight and binoculars, the sense of the Ruger and the Calico beside him, all fitted like the technology of a cockpit. The hours of waiting had drained him of Aubrey, Vance, Barbara, the general's daughter, the general even his own circumstances. He stood upright, away from the hole of the stunted tree, holding the Ruger in one hand.
The Calico was slung across his chest. There was a target and, like a missile, he locked on to it. He swung the rifle across the trees below him, picking up the first man then, after a few seconds, Chris.
The young man's features, white-on-grey, were distinct and recognisable. The map of the terrain in Gant's head began to unroll as clearly as on a screen he had just switched on. He began moving silently down the slope towards the first man, his awareness a receiver to be updated by his senses. An owl's cry, something rustling through the undergrowth, disturbed by his passage. Distances, time, location, all precise.
He stopped, using the binoculars now that he was closer to the first man. Waited-struck the man from behind with the butt of the Ruger, then squashed his limp form upright against a pine until he could safely let it slide soundlessly to the ground. He heard his own breathing, the FBI man's unconscious snores. The earpiece had flown from the man's ear as he'd struck him, his throat mike had risen above the collar of his shirt. Gant listened for Chris, for any noise. The light from the lodge was visible through the outlying trees. Chris-He slipped away from the unconscious man, towards the sound of dull, regimented footsteps. Their clockwork patrol brought them together at-this point.
Ten seconds. Chris' footsteps, the hoot of an owl, Chris' footsteps on the other side of the tree, his breathing. Gant raised the Ruger and-Chris' voice.
"Nothing, sir—" Chris' features half-turned to him, his shoulder and head already flinching away from the rifle butt. Mouth open, throat moving, struggling to shout. Chris' weapon half-parried the Ruger's swinging butt, jarring Gant's grip. His hand left the rifle, grabbing at the short-barrelled, folding-stock Springfield, twisting the barrel up and away from them as they plunged together like awkward bullies.
The Springfield flashed, deafened. Chris fell back with a groan, his only sound. Through the retinal flare of the gunshot, Gant could not locate the source of the noise. His boots touched something yielding and he bent down.
Blood on his fingers.
'-can't see," he heard.
"Can't see, Christ—" There was the tinniness of an urgent voice coming from the loosened earpiece.
Chris' curled, terrified body became an outline on the ground. The tiny voice squeaked like an injured mouse. They were alerted. Move He assessed his alignment with the lodge. Moved thirty yards farther. The cameras would pick him up, but he was in the radar's blind spot where the main chimney jutted from the deep rake of the roof. Ten seconds since Chris went down nearer fifteen his eyesight would be coming back by now, the muzzle flash clearing from his vision. No one on the verandah, Strick-land still at his console.
He placed the rucksack on the ground after removing the flare pistol he had taken from the aircraft. One hundred and twenty thousand candela, burn time five seconds. He raised the pistol and fired it into the air. Tension gripped his stomach like a steel band.
Starshell burst. The clearing seemed to be blanched,
made lifeless by the exploding flare cartridge. Anyone watching would be dazzled, he no more than a guessed-at moving shadow on their retinae, and the low-light TV cameras would be glare-blind. He ran, head down and in a straight line, across the narrow clearing-Strickland knew Gant was there, coming straight out of the trees. There was something moving on two of the screens, insubstantial as a bird's wing that had fluttered too close to the cameras. He felt himself tense, as if the flare-wash in the room was a fire.
"Is he there?" Fraser demanded, almost thrusting him off his swivel chair, his large hands seizing the console as if to shake some confession from it. Already, the light from the flare or whatever it was was lessening.
"What's that—?" His finger jabbed at the betraying screen. On the radar, there was nothing. Gant was in the blind spot
"I can't see, dazzled—" Fraser didn't believe him. Mclntyre was on his other side, the material of his coat sleeve rubbing against Strickland's cheek. There was a gun in his hand, at the corner of eyesight.
"I can't see shit! Mclntyre bellowed as if in pain.
"Is there anyone there?"
"Maybe there is," Fraser grunted.
"Maybe—" He turned towards the windows, then glowered at Strickland.
"And where is…"
"He can't be trying to get in-."
There are two men down! He's stopped playing with us, you pillock!"
Do it now, Fraser told himself, as night returned beyond the windows.
Just in case.
He moved towards Strickland, drawing his pistol as he did so.
Winterborne's priority was the only one that mattered now, whatever deal he had with Mclntyre.
Strickland's eternal silence
"What the hell are you—?" Mclntyre began, but Fraser motioned him away with a waggle of the gun.
He moved on Strickland quickly, as if pouncing at the man, thrusting the pistol towards his head-Gant saw Fraser advancing across the garishly lit window towards Strickland. It was like a bleached photograph taken at the moment of an explosion. He was close enough to recognise the fear on Strickland's features, see his hands trying to fend off Fraser, the purpose in Fraser's movement.
He raised the Ruger to his shoulder and squeezed off three shots. The window shattered. Fraser's head seemed to dissolve in a red, splashing haze in the instant before his body was flung aside and out of sight by the impact of the bullets. Strickland and Mclntyre appeared frozen in the moment. Gant hurtled himself towards the verandah as he glimpsed Mclntyre move from the window-Mclntyre, struggling out of the shock of Fraser's death as if out of a clinging swamp, lumbered towards the door, switching off the lights before opening it, then yelling:
"Any of you see anything?"
— see anything, Gant heard as he crouched on the verandah beneath the suddenly darkened window.
Under the overhang of the roof, the verandah was dark, protecting. He could hear the fizzle of the flare in the clearing. If they'd seen him, they were afraid to come out. He listened above the thud of his heart.
"No, nothing—" '-nearly blinded me!"
Both voices were calling from the direction of what he presumed was the kitchen. The lodge creaked now with their soft movements, echoing their tension. He felt rough wood against his cheek.
"Check every room, every window!" Mclntyre.
Two down and Fraser dead. Mclntyre, three others… Strickland. He was poised like a runner, then crabbed along the verandah, scuttling on his haunches, to the room next to Strickland.
"Are you assholes checking—?"
Panic remained in the air, like the scent of the flare cartridge after its light had vanished. He stood up beside the window as he heard noises, saw the faintest glimmer of light as a door was opened-smashed the window, fired the flare pistol, ducked back. The cartridge exploded against the far wall of the room or in the corridor beyond. The verandah was flooded with a sinister, nuclear light. Two seconds, three The window slid upwards and he heaved himself over the ledge into the room as it fell back into shadow. Listened. Moved quickly as someone stumbled unsurely through the door, head shaking as if to rid himself of plaguing flies.
He struck the body in the stomach with the rifle, then across the side of the head as it came within reach. Hauled the man aside. Corridor…
Mclntyre was in the room to his left, with Strickland. They hadn't moved out of it, even in their near-panic. The flare fizzled at his feet as he crouched back against the wall, the Ruger slung across his back, the Smith & Wesson Calico now in his hands.
Footsteps overhead, from a bedroom, someone coming down the stairs cautiously, one step at a time, long pauses between each movement on the open treads. He could see feet, legs coming into-the Calico ripped gashes in the banister, the panelling of the wall. The legs disappeared and he ducked down, the Ruger banging against the corridor wall.
He heard shots go past his head, imagined he felt the heat. Two more wild shots from the stairs drove him back into the darkened room.
He heard his own stentorous breathing, that of the unconscious man on the floor. Moonlight reflected from the surface of a table. Faces of plates watched him from a dresser.
Mclntyre was still in the room with Strickland and Fraser's body. What remained of the face that had looked out at him from Aubrey's photograph, and which he had recognised in France, would be staring up at them in shattered surprise. Two men upstairs, unhurt.
Feet on the stairs, as his blood ceased to pound in his ears. Creaks faint as beetles in the wood. The slightest of clicking sounds-He flattened himself against the wall, hunched into a position of abject surrender beside the sentry like shape of a long case clock, as the automatic weapon emptied its magazine into the floor, the room, what remained of the window. The rug moved under the impacts, the window frame shattered, the unconscious man was no longer breathing when the noise subsided into silence.
Another clicking noise, a new magazine engaged. The din began again.
Plates on the dresser disintegrated, there were gouges in the walls, along the polished surface of the dining table, in the wall near his head, the inlaid wood of the clock. The body on the floor bucked with the impacts long after it was dead.
Gant pressed his hands over his ears, over his head, curling into himself, hunched smaller, his body jumping involuntarily like that of the dead man.
Silence again, except for the slight, unnerved jangling of the clock's weights, its mechanism. His ears stopped ringing. He waited, watching the torn, pocked door that had swung half-open, pushed by bullets.
Watched the window.
Listened, waiting for the man on the stairs to empty another magazine into the dining room. He crouched back against the wall, swinging the Calico to cover the window, the door, the window, repeatedly.
"Bobby?" he heard hesitantly, a hoarse whisper.
"Agent Mclntyre?" It was the man on the stairs. Bobby's dead… What was Mclntyre doing? Nerves stirred his left foot. The tiny crunch of glass beneath his boot surprised an exclamation of breath from the staircase. Were both men on the stairs? There were no noises.
Window, door, window-The acrid scent of powder on the air, the roll of gunsmoke visible in the pale moonlight. Glass-littered floorboards, glass sparkling from the torn rug. The pale light reached the door. He could not move to the window without exposing himself to the automatic weapon aimed at the doorway.
He heard mouselike stirrings from the room that contained Mclntyre and Strickland. The man on the stairs moved, but he wasn't making any approach to the door that stood half-open. Presumably, the second man was crouched near him. There were no sounds of anyone trying to climb on to the roof, get outside.
If he tried to close the door and escape through the window, the grumbling of glass under his feet would alert them-noise of something slithering, wood against wood?
"Who's left out there?" he heard. Mclntyre's voice.
"Hyams sir. And Billings," from the stairs.
"Can you see him?"
"No, sir. I can see the door and the window. He can't move."
"Good."
"Gant—?" An unfamiliar voice.
"Shut up, Strickland!"
Before long, Chris and the other guy outside would recover, begin to think, start to outflank him. — that sliding noise again, the shuffling of bodies from the other room?
"Mclntyre?" he called.
"What—?" It was as if the man had been caught stealing, his hand in the cookie jar.
"You're finished, Gant. Give it up, asshole."
"Not yet." Beside him, the clock ticked comfortably, as if denying its circumstances.
"It's more like a Mexican standoff from in here…"
He listened. Mclntyre wasn't swallowing the bait. He had only minutes now before-car engine starting. He looked wildly towards the window as headlights leapt out like another flare. Tyres screeched, beginning to retreat almost at once.
"Agent Mclntyre!" he heard Hyams from the stairs.
"What's going on, sir?"
Another voice growled: "Asshole's gotten away-!"
Then Hyams called out: "Strickland? Hey, Strickland!" There was silence from the other room. Both of them were in the car. Mclntyre and Strickland.
Gant stirred, then restrained all movement, listening to the car engine retreat down the narrow, twisting mountain track towards Bonner Lake and Squaw Camp. Mclntyre would be driving very slowly. It wasn't much more than a hiking trail, following the contours of the mountainside for more than a mile before it reached the highway.
The deep, slow ticking of the long case clock was mocking him now, as if to lull him into inertia. He raged inwardly against Mclntyre's easy escape. The guy had just climbed out the window and gotten into his car-! The clock was like someone guarding a prisoner, a matter of feet from him along the wall. He couldn't move. Its ticking was arrogantly assured, certain of his immobility.
Mclntyre was making for his airplane at Redmond, had to be…