“You should take off your boots,” he advised her, “and put your feet on the heat vent. You need to warm up.”
Removing her footgear, she propped her stockinged feet up on the dashboard, wiggling her toes. “Frank,” she said, somberly, “what happens if we do catch up to them?”
“I reason with them.”
“That’s it? That’s your plan?” She turned her head to stare out the side window. “These are not the kind of guys who listen to reason.”
Slater was aware of that, too.
“I hope you have a Plan B,” she said.
“I did take the guns from their house.”
She didn’t seem overly impressed with that plan, either, but Slater hoped it would never come to that. The roadblock was still somewhere up ahead, and he prayed that when he got there he’d see Charlie’s van pulled over on the shoulder and the Vane brothers under arrest.
He drove on, the road winding now through rougher terrain. He wondered if Eva Lantos had arrived at the containment unit in Juneau yet … and if she was still fighting for her life. It was a miracle that she had survived at all. The wolf attack could easily have killed her, and so could the viral exposure in the demolished lab, but it was a testimony to her stubborn spirit that she had not succumbed to either one. It was her hardheadedness that had convinced him to enlist her for this mission in the first place.
As he came around a bend, he saw the neighboring hills flickering in the rosy glow of highway beacons that had been set up along the road. Bobbing his head to see around the mitten in the windshield and past the network of cracks in the glass, he still caught no glimpse of a van. He had switched his one headlight to bright, and he slowed the ambulance as he saw an Army officer in a combat helmet stepping out of an armored vehicle parked in the center of the pavement. The officer had lifted both of his hands to indicate that they should stop, and if that wasn’t clear enough, two National Guardsmen were kneeling on the asphalt, with their rifles pointed at the grille of his car.
“Looks like they mean business,” Nika said.
“They should.”
Slater stopped the car and waited until the officer approached. A soldier walked to the other side, his rifle slung over one shoulder but a finger on the trigger. Both of them, he was pleased to see, were wearing gauze face masks over their mouths, latex gloves on their hands, and keeping to a safe distance. Though they had probably never imagined that they’d have to observe these protocols, at least they’d been properly trained in them.
“Okay,” the officer said, “let’s start with who you are.” He had lieutenant’s bars on his helmet, and the mask billowed out with each word. “ID, please.”
Nika passed her driver’s license over, and added, “I’m the mayor of Port Orlov.”
Reaching out his arm at full length to take and inspect the license, he said, approvingly, “You don’t look like any mayor I’ve ever seen.” Wet snow was starting to settle on his helmet.
“Yeah, thanks,” she said, with the weary tone of someone who had heard that line one too many times. She took the license back.
The back doors of the ambulance were thrown open, and the soldier nosed around with the muzzle of his rifle.
Slater proffered his laminated, AFIP badge, and when the lieutenant saw the name and picture on it, he did a double take. “You’re Dr. Slater? The one running the mission?”
“Yes.” For once, inefficiency was his friend; he was still nominally in charge, it appeared.
“Then what the hell are you doing out here, and driving this piece of junk?” He surveyed the broken headlight and windshield. “You hit a moose?”
“No, but we ran into some other trouble.” He was not about to elaborate. The back doors were slammed shut again.
“What have you heard about the Vane boys?” Slater asked, taking back his ID. “Has anyone spotted them?”
“Not yet.”
“Keep an eye out for a blue Ford van. We have reason to believe they’re out in it.”
“Nothing like that’s come through here. We’ve stopped one logging truck and one old lady driving a pickup.”
“Are you sure that’s all?” Nika said, leaning toward the officer. “They must have hit this roadblock by now.”
“No, ma’am, they didn’t. We’ve been up and running since 1800 hours.”
“Then they must have gotten around it,” she muttered to Slater. “Maybe on one of the old logging trails.”
Slater didn’t doubt her.
“But even if they got around this, they can’t get around the Heron River Gorge,” she added. “It’s long and it’s wide, and there’s only one bridge across it.”
“How far ahead?” he asked her.
“Forty miles, maybe fifty.”
“Listen carefully, Lieutenant,” Slater said. Between the helmet and the face mask, all he could really see of the young man’s face was a pair of bright brown eyes. “I need you to call whoever’s in charge, and tell them to set up another roadblock at the Heron River Bridge. Tell them to do it right away, and to keep an eye out for that van.”
He put the ambulance into gear, and the lieutenant said, “Hey, wait—where do you think you’re going?”
“The bridge. Now clear the road.”
The lieutenant looked torn. “My orders are still in effect, and I’m supposed to stop all traffic in both directions.”
“And you’re doing a fine job,” Slater said. “But I’m the one in charge of this operation—you said it yourself—and I’m telling you to move your vehicle.”
Just to shut off any further debate, Slater rolled up his window and flicked the switch that activated the siren and flash bar atop the ambulance. The lieutenant hesitated, but when Slater glared at him and pointed his finger at the truck, he waved to his soldiers to move the vehicle out of the way. A couple of others peeled up a spike strip that Slater only now saw had been placed in the roadway just beyond. He was glad that he hadn’t run out of patience and simply decided to barrel through the barricade.
The moment the path was clear, he steered the ambulance through the opening and pulled the mitten out of the hole. He needed the windshield wipers more than he needed the windbreak. And once the roadblock was no longer visible even in his rearview mirror, he killed the siren and flashing lights.
“I don’t want to give the Vanes any more warning than I have to,” he said, speeding up as much as the slippery pavement and damaged car would allow.
“By now, I’m sure they’ve figured a few things out,” Nika said. “They know that somebody must be coming after them, or they wouldn’t be off-roading.”
True enough, he thought, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel and plowing on through the rising snowstorm. But did they know that the gravest danger of all was riding right along with them in their van?
Chapter 53
Charlie’s mind was churning. He hadn’t seen a single other vehicle moving on the highway in either direction, but on a night like this, who in his right mind would be out? Only long-haul truckers would brave it, and that was only because they had to. The snow was coming down so fast, the windshield wipers were having trouble handling it, even at their top speed.
Glancing into the rearview mirror, he saw Harley huddled in the backseat, and if he thought he looked sickly before, it was worse now. His forehead was beaded with sweat, his eyes had a weird glaze, and his fingers kept picking at that damn wound on his leg; all Charlie knew was that he must have gotten into some mean shit on that island. Mean shit, which was probably infecting the whole car by now. He’d have to tell Rebekah and Bathsheba to scrub down and sanitize the whole van once he got back to Port Orlov.
With the back of his hand, Charlie checked his own forehead, and he was as cool as a cucumber. Didn’t have a cough or anything else, either. At least not so far. But if Harley did have something contagious, and he gave it to Charlie, there was going to be hell to pay.
A sign flashed by in the darkness, saying NEXT FO
OD AND FUEL—50 MILES, and Charlie glanced at the gas gauge; he had about half a tank left, but with the extra canisters in the back he could easily make it to Nome without stopping. He didn’t want to risk using his credit card at a service station, or showing his face at a diner. One thing he’d learned was, people remembered the guy in the wheelchair, and just in case anyone came along trying to follow his trail, he didn’t want to leave any more clues than he had to. Let ’em guess what the Vane boys were up to.
In a weird way, he found it exhilarating to be out on the road like this. It reminded him of his former life, before he’d given himself over to the Lord. When they weren’t out crabbing, he and Harley had always been off running some scam, or hijacking somebody’s boat, or burglarizing some rich bastard’s vacation home. He knew now that what he’d been doing was wrong, that he was breaking the third, or was it the fourth, commandment, the one about not stealing, but he also knew that he’d felt a rush nothing else could come close to. These days, when he was preaching and really getting into it, really feeling the Presence of the Lord, it was sort of like that.
But if he was completely honest with himself, it still wasn’t as good as cracking open somebody’s wall safe and finding a stack of hundreds inside. Why was that? It was something he would have to take up with Jesus during his next heart-to-heart.
Fumbling inside his coat, he pulled a cigarette and a Bic lighter out of his shirt pocket. With the women gone, he could sneak in a smoke. He inhaled deeply, and dropped the lighter on the passenger seat. Funny, how a cigarette could make your lungs feel bigger even as, in actual fact, it shrunk ’em up.
A gust of wind slapped the side of the van so hard it roused Harley from his stupor. “The icon,” he said, in a worried voice, “what did you do with it?”
“It’s right here in the glove compartment. Same as the cross.”
“I need it.”
“What for?” Charlie couldn’t tell if his brother was in his right mind or not.
“To save me.”
Now he knew. “How’s it gonna save you, Harley?”
“It’s got the baby Jesus on it. Jesus saved you, right?”
“Yes, He did. But you don’t need an old icon for that.”
“I do,” Harley croaked. “I need something ’cuz I’m gonna die tonight.”
Charlie had never heard his brother say anything like that, not ever, and when he looked in the rearview mirror again, he saw that Harley’s eyes were burning like black coals and his whole head was shaking.
“Nobody’s dying tonight,” Charlie said. His mind went back to the night he’d seen—imagined—the hollow-eyed man in the long coat, reaching for the cross from the backseat. He didn’t care how much this Russian stuff was worth anymore—he was starting to wish he’d never laid eyes on any of it. “As soon as we get to Nome, we’ll take you to a doctor. Get you fixed right up.”
The road was veering now, as it began to track along the rim of the Heron River Gorge. Normally, that alone—the site of the accident that had left Charlie a paraplegic for life—was enough to rattle him, even if all this other crap hadn’t been going on.
But it was going on, which made his apprehension just that much worse.
A sign said the bridge was coming up ahead. Huge, snow-covered hunks of granite, left by ancient glaciers, lined the shoulders like train cars waiting to be hitched.
“There’s not enough time,” Harley said. “Give me the icon now.”
“I can’t reach over that far. I’ll get it for you once we cross the bridge.”
“Too late,” Harley said, with chilling certainty. “That’ll be too late.”
The van rocked and swayed as it hit a stretch of asphalt buckled from frost heave. Every year, the highway department had to come out in the spring and repair the damage done in the winter. Once in their youth, Charlie and Harley had tried to make off with one of their road graders, before realizing that its top speed was about ten miles per hour.
The gorge cut a deep swath through the land for nearly nine miles, and the bridge over it had been built at the narrowest spot available, between two rocky bluffs. He kept a close eye on the road, which was rapidly disappearing under a shifting scrim of snow and ice. Even with four-wheel drive and chains on his tires, he was losing traction now and then. His brother moaned, and when he glanced in the rearview mirror to check on him, what he noticed instead was a tiny pinprick of light, way down the road behind them.
A tiny pinprick that was moving.
“Harley, quit your moaning and turn around!”
“Why?”
“Just tell me what you see down the road!”
The blanket still wrapped around his shoulders, Harley turned and looked.
“Looks like a headlight. Maybe just a motorcycle.”
Charlie studied the tiny light, and damn if it didn’t look like it was a single headlamp after all. But who’d be trying to navigate these dangerous roads, in the middle of a blizzard, on a motorcycle? That’d be crazy. Cops would be using a heavy-duty cruiser, the National Guard guys would be in a jeep. The only thing he could tell for sure was that it was moving along at a good clip.
“Keep an eye on it,” Charlie said, turning off the cruise control and pushing the accelerator lever.
“Shit. What if it’s Eddie on a snowmobile?”
He heard the click of a safety being taken off a gun. A Glock 19, from the sound of it. Oh, Christ, Harley was not only nuts … but armed?
“Where’d you get that?” Charlie demanded, though it had undoubtedly come from his own gun cabinet. “Put it away. Now.”
But Harley was off in his own delusion again. “Fuckin’ Eddie,” he muttered, staring out the back of the van.
“Eddie’s dead. You told me so yourself.”
Harley, still staring, clucked his tongue and said, “Eddie never did know when to call it quits. I never should have let him come back with me.”
Come back? Charlie thought Eddie had fallen off a cliff on the island.
“Well, this time I’m going to cap his ass for good.”
Charlie stopped trying to make sense of Harley’s ravings. All he could do was drive … and pray he got to Nome before Harley went off in his van like a bomb.
Chapter 54
Stepping into the tavern, Ana was careful to remain behind Sergei. Dressed in rough old clothes, her hair chopped short, and her eyes downcast, she appeared to be the perfect peasant wife, beaten into subservience and silence. After so many weeks on the run, it was an act she was finally growing used to.
Sergei, in a brown-wool tunic buttoned all the way up the side of his neck, and a black sealskin coat, furtively scanned the tavern and its occupants. A couple of dozen men in leather jackets were playing cards and dominoes and swigging from bottles of beer and vodka. A fire was crackling in the immense hearth, and gas lamps burned along the walls. A phonograph on the bar played a scratchy version of the country’s newly inaugurated anthem, the Internationale; every note of it made Ana want to smash the record.
Sitting alone at a table in the corner, a bald man in a pilot’s uniform raised his chin in acknowledgment. Sergei and Ana threaded their way through the cluttered room, drawing a few glances and a couple of coarse remarks about the rubes, before drawing up chairs at the table.
“You are Nevsky?” Sergei asked in a low voice.
The bald man didn’t answer but motioned to the innkeeper to bring two more glasses. Above the bar, a placard promoting the Imperial Russian Air Force had been defaced, and written in red paint on the wall beside it was the new name for the Soviet air force—the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Air Fleet. The bald man had several bright medals and ribbons pinned to his shirt.
The innkeeper plunked the glasses down on the table, filled them from a brandy decanter, and said, “Your bill is overdue, Nevsky.”
“I’ll pay it after you’ve shot down your first enemy fighter,” Nevsky said in a hoarse grumble.
The innkeeper grunted in d
isgust, and went back to the bar.
“And who is this?” Nevsky said, gesturing to Ana.
“My wife.”
“I wasn’t told there would be two of you,” he said, trying to stifle a cough.
“What difference does it make? The airplane can carry one more passenger, can’t it?”
Nevsky threw down a shot of the brandy. “Not for the same price it can’t.”
Ana wasn’t surprised. Although she kept her composure and said nothing, this was the same story they had encountered throughout their journey from the monastery at Novo-Tikhvin. They had been forced to bribe everyone, from wagon drivers to lorry loaders to ticket agents on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Everyone in Russia had his hand out, and nothing could be done or had without some special compensation being offered. The entire nation was starved and desperate and teeming with violence, and much as she tried to find some sympathy in her heart for these people—the people her own father and mother, despite what was said about them, had held so dear—she could not. In every soldier and peasant she encountered, she saw nothing but another murderer.
“What is the price then?” Sergei asked.
“Double. What else would it be?” He refilled his glass. “Do you take me for a thief?”
Sergei didn’t even have to look at Ana for approval; funds were the one thing they had. “We’ll pay it, but only after you take us to the island.”
“And only after you show me that you actually have it,” Nevsky said, pointedly looking Sergei up and down. The sealskin coat was weathered, his tunic was soiled, his boots were worn. Nevsky appeared dubious.
Sergei turned slightly toward Ana, and she pulled from under her full skirts a drawstring pouch. Sergei took it into his own lap, and with his hands concealed beneath the scarred tabletop removed two white diamonds the size of teardrops. He held them in his palm as Nevsky craned his neck to look under the table and see.
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