Deadly Conditions (David Wolf Book 4)

by Jeff Carson

  Wolf looked down and followed the ski boot prints to the front of the helicopter, and then followed them over to a spot where the person had clearly put on a pair of skis.

  Wolf follow the twin ski tracks as they ran away from where he stood, over the edge, down a little ways to the left, and then off to the right to a ridge that ran away from them and down. On that ridge was an orange rope marking the ski area boundary – out of bounds to the right – and the ski tracks slalomed next to it and went out of sight over a small rise.

  “He’s dead,” Patterson said, walking up behind Wolf. “Gunshot wound to the head. He’s still warm.”

  Wolf looked at her, then walked over to the ski cat and stopped.

  Scott turned off the engine and opened the door. “Is that Cooper’s blood?” he asked with wide eyes.

  Wolf nodded. “Afraid so,” he said, looking into the vehicle at Duke’s feet, and then to the pair of skies in one of the slots on the side of the cat. “Duke, what size feet are you?”

  Duke looked down and then up at Wolf. “Ten and a half? Eleven?”

  Wolf cringed, and then climbed into the back of the cat. “I need to borrow your boots and skis…and poles, and goggles.”

  Duke nodded and climbed into the back of the cat, sat down and took off his boots.

  Wolf took off his Sorels and scooted them to Duke. “Trade ya.”

  It took a few seconds and a lot of toe cramming, but Wolf packed his feet into Bob Duke’s warm, sweaty ski boots. Then he put on the mirrored lens ski goggles and the terrain outside darkened and popped – the optics making it much easier to see gradation and depressions in the otherwise blazing white snow.

  “Good thing you have fat feet, Bob,” Wolf said.

  Bob didn’t respond. He was staring out the window, probably at the red smear on the helicopter window.

  Wolf buckled the boots on as loose as he could and stepped outside. His toes mashed painfully into the front of the boots, and his pinky toenails felt like they were breaking the skin of their neighboring toes. He pulled out the Rossignol skis and clicked into the bindings, pulled out the poles and skated over to the front of the helicopter.

  Rachette held up his hands. “What are we supposed to do?”

  “Secure the scene,” Wolf said. “Let’s get a CSI team up here. Call Lorber.”

  Wolf skied up to the edge of the cirque and looked down. He saw a tiny car driving on the highway far below; then he focused closer and back to the fresh ski tracks that disappeared over the rise.

  “What if the tracks go out of bounds?” Patterson asked.

  Wolf thought about it. “Get someone to drive up the pass right now. Whoever’s closest, and tell them to wait for me. If they see a skier, make sure they know he’s armed and dangerous. Tell them to not engage until back-up arrives.”

  “Where do they wait? The top?” Patterson asked.

  “No,” Wolf said. “At the slide zone.”

  “Okay.”

  Wolf let go of a pole and let it dangle from his wrist, and then took off his glove. He pulled off his radio and twisted the dial, then pushed the button and held it to his lips. “Check,” he said, and his voice was clearly audible from Patterson and Rachette’s radios. He put the radio into his jacket pocket and then felt the pistol on his holster underneath. While mentally rehearsing how he might pull the gun out to use it – drop pole, glove off, jacket up, pistol out – he jumped over the edge and landed on the steep snow with chattering skis.

  Chapter 19

  For how much snow the resort had gotten over the last forty-eight hours, the snow under Wolf was hard and unforgiving, because every bit that had fallen on this bowl had slid to the bottom of the valley the day before.

  The skis scraped on the ice as he cut to his right. When he reached the rope, he slowed to a stop and looked up. Rachette and Patterson were watching him. They waved, and Wolf raised a pole in return. Then he turned to look down the slope.

  There was a clear crack where the snow had slid yesterday. To the left it was ice; to the right, fluffy powder with one set of tracks down it. He looked left across the expanse of the bowl, up to the Antler Creek Lodge on the ridge, and marveled at the huge amount of snow that had to have cleaved and dropped. Wolf shook his head and looked back at the tracks.

  When Wolf had been in his mid-twenties, he and this skier would have been good companions on the mountain. The tracks were long and symmetrical, turning the same arc on the left as the right with a lot of distance in between. They were the tracks of an expert skier flying down the mountain at speeds most people weren’t comfortable with – speed Wolf was no longer comfortable with now that he was pushing forty.

  Wolf pointed Duke’s skis down and entered into the powder. It came up to his knees, and the deep snow helped him check his speed with each turn. The wind blew on his face and was loud in his ears. He bounced up in between turns and sank deep as the wide skis carved against the snow.

  He continued down with a steady rhythm, still marveling at the aggressive distance between the turn tracks he followed. The man he followed was competent on skis for sure, but Wolf thought that they were the tracks of someone running with nothing to lose. Maybe death didn’t even matter to this person. If Wolf caught up to him, he didn’t doubt the man would be dangerous.

  The rope ahead turned to the left, steering skiers back toward the flat zone at the base of the bowl, and then onward to the left and to the rest of the Rocky Points Ski Resort beyond. The tracks, however, ducked the rope and veered right.

  Wolf stopped at the point where the tracks went under. His breathing was labored. His legs ached, already getting a little wobbly and slow. The helicopter was gone, out of view beyond the steep tracks he and his prey had left.

  For a few seconds Wolf took a rest and followed the tracks with his eyes. They continued down for another five or so turns, then abruptly turned right and then straightened, skirting to the right into a swath of dense forest, and then they came out the other side into a powder field.

  Wolf sucked in a breath and squinted. In the middle of the powder field the tracks stopped, and a dark figure was huddled in the snow. It was too far to see anything clearly, whether it was a man or woman, young or old, what color the outfit was, or what.

  Without hesitating anymore, Wolf pointed his skis down, gathered some speed, and then cut right. When he reached the tracks of the other skier, Wolf began to pick up even more speed.

  Had Wolf been seen?

  The man was out of sight now, and all Wolf could see were the tracks that led into the dense copse of trees ahead.

  As he entered the trees, he swerved back and forth, keeping on the narrow snake of depressed snow, and dared not deviate from the tracks an inch. He was going fast, much faster than the man had gone in front of him having less friction underneath him, and a few times he crashed through small branches, narrowly avoiding smashing straight into thick trunks by fabric ripping margins.

  The tracks were crazy lines, snaking downhill and gaining speed where Wolf would have chosen to keep skating across. Just when the trees got so tight Wolf was certain a collision was imminent, they abruptly thinned out, and Wolf could see the man no more than one hundred yards ahead of him.

  As Wolf came out into the open, he kept his eyes glued ahead and began the process of pulling his gun as fast as he could. He took his right pole and tucked it under his other arm, then yanked his glove off and shoved it into his jacket pocket, pulled up the bottom edge of his jacket and lifted the pistol out of its holster. All this he did in the span of a few seconds, and all of it along with his approach had still gone unnoticed by the figure in front of him.

  The person was either unaware of Wolf’s presence, or waiting for Wolf to get nearer for an easier shot. There was no telling from this distance, but Wolf wouldn’t have to wait much longer to find out.

  There was a downed tree that had been uncovered just ahead, and Wolf realized at the last second that he needed to jump to get up o
n top of it, or risk putting the skis under it and clothes-lining himself in the shins. So he jumped, and when he came down his skis thwacked on the log, and the noise startled the man ahead into motion.

  And it was impressive motion.

  In no time he was up and charging straight down the steep glade to the left, this time not turning at all.

  Wolf watched him go, trying to take in some characteristics of the man as he watched. All that stood out for Wolf was the red hat. It was a bright red, the red of the helicopter that sat on top of the mountain. Otherwise, the man was a blurry cloud of powder flying down the mountain at high speed.

  Wolf turned his skis down and cut over. He was traveling painfully slow, the distance spreading between them by the second. But then Wolf realized exactly where they were, and knew things might turn in his favor in a matter of seconds.

  That was because the man was headed straight for a line of cliffs. It was plain as day to Wolf as soon as he realized exactly where they were. The slope seemed to disappear ahead, like they were skiing on the side of a massive barrel, and the edge kept rolling under. Wolf knew that when the edge finally did come, it was a fifty-foot drop at the lowest point, and upwards of eighty feet at the highest. The man looked like he knew this terrain, and if he didn’t want to plummet off the edge of the world he would have to turn one way or the other soon, losing valuable speed.

  Wolf let the ski pole that was tucked under his arm drop, and he made some long turns, still grasping his pistol in his now numb right hand.

  As the terrain steepened, his turns did little to check his speed. The more disturbing part was that the man ahead was gaining speed.

  Options raced through his mind. He knew that young crazy people jumped off these exact cliffs all the time given the right conditions and if enough cameras were capturing it. These were definitely the right conditions, but he also knew young crazy people jumped with the aid of spotters, making sure their lines were right so they didn’t die.

  The man in front of him was gone. No more cloud of powder. Nothing.

  Wolf’s final thought was of the long, kamikaze tracks higher up the mountain, and then Wolf balked with as much conviction as he could muster. He dropped the gun and turned ninety degrees to his right and slid on his side, digging the edges of his skis in, and his right hand into the powder. The terrain steepened, and then steepened some more, and then all he could see was the tops of trees on the distant valley floor below, and a gentle slope to the highway, where an impossibly tiny car drove on the curvy road.

  Wolf slid down, and just when he knew he was going over the edge, he stopped in the thick snow. Before he finished taking a breath of relief the entire mountain started moving downward.

  His stomach lurched as he slid, and then without an instant’s hesitation he twisted to his belly and swam with his arms and dug his hands down into the earth. His right hand was a numb stump, his left pulling and catching no purchase on the foam-like ground underneath him. It was futile, like a man trying to swim up a waterfall, and Wolf knew it.

  Just as he was going to turn back around and make a leap for it so he might clear the rocks below, his hands gripped a jagged outcrop beneath the snow. He grabbed with all his might, hugging the hook of a rock, and felt the snow slough over his head and back, burrowing deep into his jacket, pulling him like a fat man hanging onto his ankles, suffocating his breath, and then just as quickly as it started, the slide passed and his body was light again.

  Wolf flexed his arms and shoulders and shook his head back and forth, flinging the cold snow off his skin. His goggles were caked with powder so he stared at pure darkness, but there was no way he was going to let go with either arm on the rock to wipe them off.

  He needed a foothold. He picked up his right leg and felt the ski flop around, heard it scraping against bare rock. With a grunt he kicked his rear binding with the other ski and heard the released ski tumble down the rocks for a long time and then a hard whack as it landed far below. Then he kicked the other ski off and jabbed the toe of his right boot into solid rock, and realized he needed to feel for a foothold.

  After what seemed like a minute of grunting, staring at the sliver of light that seeped through his blocked goggles, floundering his legs beneath him, he found purchase and stood on the tiptoes of the boots. Only then did he dare a second to reach up and rip off his goggles with one hand.

  A wave of dread hit him when he looked up and saw near vertical rock and dirt for at least twenty feet above him. There were few depressions to dig his hands into, and with clunky ski boots, footholds would be wobbly and tentative at best.

  When he looked down, he saw that his feet looked to be standing on air. Then when he looked to his right, and then his left, he knew he was clinging to one of the highest points of the line of cliffs there was.

  Movement caught his eye below, and he did a double take.

  Red-hat was skiing slowly toward the road, looking up at Wolf with interest as he took wide turns. The man was moving fine. Not injured in the least, or hiding it well if he was.

  “Yee-haw!” The man yelled from below, waving a pole. Then he gained some speed, slalomed through the forest, and stopped at the side of the highway.

  Wolf’s foot slipped an inch, so he pulled himself up into a bent elbow position and felt around for new, more stable footholds. For agonizing seconds there was nothing. He was scraping on a sheer, almost-vertical rock face.

  He pulled his right leg up and pressed a knee into the rock under his belly, and then wondered just what the hell he was doing as he felt even less stable than before.

  As he lowered his body back down to the original precarious position he’d been in to start, he studied the ground above him and picked a line he was going to climb. It was going to happen. He was going to make it. And…

  The rock underneath his hands let out a sickening crack and shifted down, and then the hundred-pound chunk of granite dropped toward his legs.

  He pushed off his toes and kicked his legs back in time to avoid the crushing force of the rock, which would have certainly shattered his leg bones to splinters. As he brought his legs back in, the toes of his boots smacked against the cliff and bounced, and now he was dropping.

  With all his might he twisted his body around, pushing his hands against the rock to help him, then he brought his legs up in a squat, bent forward, and then kicked his legs into the side of the cliff as hard as he could. The boots slapped and gripped for an instant, and then he jumped out head first and looked down.

  “Oh sh…” Wolf whispered as the air rushed against his face, building to a deafening roar.

  The initial shock of dropping eighty feet onto solid ground left him as he realized his rotation mean he was going to land smack dab on his head if he didn’t do something about it.

  It wasn’t solid ground, his mind screamed through the terror, it was a pile of slough on top of a huge amount of snow from the last storm, which made his landing even more important. In the event he survived, landing headfirst was a sure way to suffocate shortly thereafter.

  The air was howling now, rippling his clothing against his body as he accelerated more and more.

  He tucked into a ball and willed his body to spin forward in a front flip. It didn’t seem be working fast enough, as the rocks slid by a few feet from his face. He was still upside down.

  Then, somehow, the wind caught his body just so, pushing him so that he now was looking at blue sky, and then not an instant later he landed.

  He barked involuntarily as he slammed back first into the snow, or maybe he hadn’t. It was so instantaneous that it was impossible to register the events in his mind. One instant he felt the cement-hard impact of the landing, and the next he stared up at the steep walls of a narrow impact crater.

  It was peaceful. A few clumps of snow crumbled off the edge above, widening the oval of blue sky even more. Relief turned to panic immediately as he tried to suck in a breath and couldn’t. His lungs were temporarily collap
sed, the wind knocked out of him. With a long whistle, a breath leaked into his lungs. His vision tunneled while a cold clump of snow sucked into his throat, causing him to cough out the little oxygen his body had managed to inhale.

  The pain in his chest was agonizing, and then everything went black.

  Chapter 20

  Beeping and squawking of voices. A slumping body in an office chair, and a woman sticking her tongue out at him. A man yelled at him to get down, and then he raised a rifle and shot.

  Wolf opened his eyes.

  The oval of blue looked the same as it had…when? He heard the muffled beep of his radio and squawking voices, and he thought he heard his name.

  His breathing was calm and normal. He coughed, clearing his lungs of moisture, and realized there had been no pain as he did so.

  He took a steeled breath and started taking stock of his body. No stabbing sensation. No tingling ache of broken bones anywhere. He moved his left hand, and then tried his right and felt nothing. Then he remembered he’d lost his glove. He flexed his right arm and pulled it free from the heavy snow and extended it out in front of him. His hand was covered with snow and stuck in a writing position. He brought it to his mouth and breathed on it, feeling nothing. He bit it, and felt nothing. He decided to forget about it and wriggled his left arm, and with a grunt he heaved it out of the cement next to him.

  For a few moments he tried to sit up, but his body didn’t budge, weighted down by the hundreds of pounds of snow pressing in on him. Or was it that his back was broken and he was unable to move? Panic slashed at him, but he closed his eyes and took a calming breath.

  No, he decided, feeling his feet wiggle in the compact ski boots, then his knee flex, then his thighs, his butt, his back, his shoulders, and his neck. He was fine. It was just that he was buried, and needed to dig himself out. So he began moving snow with teeth-gritting determination.

  In the end he estimated it had taken him at least thirty minutes to burrow himself out of the hole. After he’d parted the snow on his chest, then he had sat up, and then he freed his legs, and then it was a matter of crawling up and out of the five-foot hole.