Last Man Standing

by Cindy Gerard

“For the record,” Brown bellowed four hours later, “just once, I’d like to fly a mission with you Black Ops boys that didn’t involve gunfire, explosives, or impossible takeoff or landing conditions.”

  “You weren’t singing that song on the ground,” Joe yelled back from the cabin, bracing as the jet descended through major turbulence and Brown attempted to line them up with the runway.

  “That’s because I didn’t know ‘snowstorm’ meant ‘epic fucking blizzard,’” Brown countered.

  The jet was taking a pounding. Beside him, Stephanie looked pale and shaken in the dim cabin lights.

  He hadn’t wanted her to come along. He hadn’t wanted her anywhere near the action they might face, and he’d told her so.

  She, of course, hadn’t wanted to listen.

  “He can land this plane, right?” she asked now.

  Joe heaved a huge breath. “He can land it,” he said, then held on when the wheels hit the icy tarmac and Brown reversed thrust with a G-force that sucked his breath from his lungs.

  The jet engines roared, inertia fought velocity. Ice and wind joined the party with a vengeance as the plane bumped and skidded, finally coming to a sliding stop just fifty yards from the end of the runway.

  For a long moment, silence filled the cabin.

  Brown turned in the pilot’s seat, a broad grin on his face. “Can I get a ‘yee-haw,’ pilgrim?”

  Joe flipped his good friend the bird.

  Brown chuckled. “And you, my friend, are very welcome.”

  While the guys finished up the paperwork for the four-wheel-drive truck they’d arranged to have ready for them, and Mike did some checking on other incoming flights, Stephanie called the St. Louis County sheriff’s office.

  “What’s happening?” Joe joined her by the pay phone a few minutes later.

  “The deputies didn’t make it to the cabin. They didn’t even get out of Duluth. There was some bizarre murder/suicide, and a string of snow-related accidents and emergencies.”

  Her anxiety level was off the charts, but she made herself keep it together. “Did you find anything out?”

  “Brown schmoozed the air traffic controller. There were no commercial flights in or out today.”

  “But?” She knew that look; there was more.

  “A small corporate jet arrived a couple hours ago. Pilot and four passengers.”

  Her heart skidded. “Oh, God. That means Dalmage knows she’s up here.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, Steph. We don’t know that yet.”

  “What do we know?”

  “Brown said that according to the receptionist, they rented a black Suburban. Told her they were here on business with Boise Cascade. Biggest employer in the area,” he added in response to her questioning look. “Exec types fly in and out on a regular basis.”

  “So you think their story was legit?” Stephanie asked hopefully.

  He shrugged. “Apparently the receptionist did—although she thought it was unusual that none of them had any luggage—only large attaché cases.”

  “Large enough for disassembled assault rifles?” she asked. From the grim set of his mouth, he was thinking the same thing.

  “Mike talked the air traffic guy into letting him check out the plane. We’ll see if he learns anything suspicious.”

  “I did.” Mike walked up behind them, looking sober. “Their flight log shows they flew here out of D.C.”

  “Oh, God.” Stephanie turned to Joe. “We have to find my parents before they do.”

  “Come on.” Joe took her by the elbow as Ty pulled up in front of the terminal doors in a club cab Chevy pickup.

  They all scooted inside, Joe up front riding shotgun and Mike and Stephanie in the back.

  “According to this,” Joe said studying a map, “the lake is twenty-five miles south of here. We’ve got a good hour-long trip in this weather, and we need to hit a sporting goods store before we leave town.”

  Because they had no weapons, Stephanie realized grimly. It took days to arrange for weapons permits out of D.C., and the strict security inspections of every pilot, passenger, and crew member had made it impossible for them to bring anything on board.

  Yet Dalmage’s men—and Stephanie knew by the look on Joe’s face that he agreed, they were Dalmage’s men—were most likely carrying weapons in their attaché cases. Weapons that could easily be broken down for transport.

  “Hurry,” she said swamped by a renewed sense of urgency. Ty stepped on the gas.

  “For the tenth time, can you crank the heat up? I’m getting frostbite back here,” Mike grumbled. “What kind of idiots voluntarily live in this icebox, anyway?”

  Ty snorted. “We grew up in Colorado. When did you turn into such a candy-ass?”

  He got a jab in his shoulder for his disrespect. “When my blood reset for South America.”

  “We need more weapons.” Joe was driving now, drumming his gloved fingers on the wheel. Stephanie sat tensely in the front seat beside him.

  Due to a stop at a sporting goods store they weren’t completely unarmed, but guns had been out of the question. The store clerk made references to IDs and state gun regs when Joe had tested the waters by checking out a rifle. They was no way they could legally walk out of there with guns.

  They’d settled for two compound bows, plus arrows with razor-sharp tips big enough to take down a bear.

  “Gifts for my dad,” Mike had said, flashing the clerk a good-ol’-boy grin. “He’s going to love these. Toss these bad boys in, too,” he’d added, pointing to a pair of hunting knives beneath the glass countertop.

  After a five-minute shopping spree, they’d walked out of the store with two compound bows, two dozen arrows, three knives, two coils of rope, a pair of high-powered binoculars, four pairs of white hooded coveralls and matching gloves, and two sets of walkie-talkies. It was the biggest sale the clerk had made all winter.

  “We should have lifted a couple rifles,” Mike lamented as the wipers whipped back and forth, swiping the rapidly accumulating snow from the windshield.

  “Not a risk I wanted to take,” Joe said. “That little town was crawling with patrol cars on the prowl for snow-related accidents. If we’d gotten caught we’d be no use to Ann and Robert.”

  “According to this,” Stephanie said, “there’s a general store right when you turn off the main highway to go to the lake.” She had flipped on the dome light to study a brochure featuring Lake Kabetogama she’d picked up at the airport. The lake was a popular tourist destination for its fishing, snowmobiling, and scenery. “Maybe someone there will recognize the cabin from the photos.”

  She’d printed out the magazine article with photos of the cabin that her father had e-mailed her. Other than the name of the lake, the article was the only thing they had to go on. No one at the airport had been able to help.

  Luckily, someone at the store did.

  24

  The Gateway General Store was out in the middle of nowhere, at the junction of Highway 53 and a county road that led to the lake. The lights over its three gas pumps cast ghostly beacons through the rapidly thickening snow.

  Other than the four of them, there were few signs of life at 6:30 p.m. on this storm-whipped night. A red neon OPEN sign blinked on and off in the center of the windowed door and a light burned in what appeared to be an apartment above the store.

  “Somebody’s home.” Joe shouldered open the driver’s side door and got out.

  They left the truck running, the heater on full blast, high beams shining into a front window peppered with signs that announced: LOTTERY TICKETS SOLD HERE GROCERIES, TACKLE, and LIQUOR. A buzzer sounded as they rushed inside, slamming the door against the swirling snow and frigid air.

  They were stomping snow from their boots when they heard footsteps on creaking stairs. A door opened and a lean, attractive woman wearing worn jeans, a blue and brown–plaid flannel shirt, and soft leather moccasins entered the store.

  “You folks lost?” she a
sked with a curious smile. “Or just crazy to be out on a night like this?”

  “A little bit of both.” Stephanie forced a smile. “I’m Stephanie Tompkins. This is Joe, Mike, and Ty.”

  “Jess Albert.”

  She had a pleasant face and a kind but slightly wary expression. Short brown hair curled prettily around her face.

  “What can I do for you tonight?” She moved behind a tall service counter loaded with everything from lottery tickets to hunting and fishing licenses to candy bars to tackle.

  “We’re trying to find my parents. They flew up here a week ago.” Stephanie pulled the folded article out of her coat pocket. “We know the cabin is on the lake but don’t have an address. Do you recognize this place?”

  Jess glanced at the pictures. “Sure. That’s the Nelson place.”

  Stephanie breathed her first breath of relief since she’d seen the TV news report. “Can you give us directions?”

  “I can do better than that.” Jess found a notepad under the counter and drew them a quick map. “Left on Gamma Road, right on State Point. It’s about five miles, give or take, at the end of a dead-end road. You hit the lake, you’ve gone too far.” She paused. “It’s one popular destination today.”

  Stephanie’s senses jumped into overdrive. “How so?”

  “You’re the second wave to come in here looking for that cabin.”

  “Oh, God.” Stephanie felt her knees go weak.

  “Five men?” Joe asked while Stephanie struggled for a breath.

  “Yeah.” Jess narrowed her eyes, clearly disconcerted by the edge in his voice. “Friends of yours?”

  “How long ago were they here?” Mike’s tone let Jess know that, no, they were not friends.

  “Couple hours. Maybe a little less.”

  A shotgun suddenly materialized from behind the counter. Jess expertly pumped the forearm, making it clear that she knew how to use it. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Stephanie looked from the gun to the other woman’s face.

  “Tell her,” Joe said.

  So she did, trusting this stranger with her parents’ lives.

  “I knew there was a reason I played dumb.”

  “You didn’t direct them to the cabin?”

  Jess shook her head. “No. But Russ Cramston did. He stopped in for a cup of coffee. I saw him talking to them out by the gas pumps, pointing in the direction of the lake, then drawing a map in the snow.”

  Stephanie’s heart sank.

  “Sorry, hon,” Jess added with an apologetic look before addressing the guys. “You boys armed?”

  “Against rabbits and raccoons,” Ty said grimly.

  After a moment of indecision, Jess moved out from behind the counter. “Follow me. I have something in the back room you might be able to use.”

  She led them around the empty bait tanks and several shelves of groceries to a storage room; a massive gun safe took up the bulk of the 10 x 10 foot area.

  “Motherlode,” Ty muttered after Jess had spun the combination and opened it up. A pair of AR-15s sat alongside several hunting rifles, shotguns, and handguns.

  “They were my husband’s.” Jess crossed her arms, stood back, and invited them to take whatever they wanted.

  Ty, who Stephanie had noticed seemed interested in Jess, asked quietly, “What happened to your husband?”

  “IED in Afghanistan two years ago. Jeff was Spec Ops, too,” she added with a sad smile. “I can spot one of you guys a mile away.”

  “What kind of a read did you get on the other guys?” Mike asked.

  “A bad one,” she said. “They were not boy scouts.”

  “Don’t suppose you’ve got any body armor or flash bangs.” Mike was only half joking. “Every former SFer I’ve ever known has a stash of stuff that ‘fell off a truck.’”

  Meaning things they’d brought back that they probably shouldn’t have.

  “No body armor,” she said with a wistful look, and Stephanie wondered if Jess was thinking that body armor hadn’t saved her husband. “No flash bangs, either. But I do have some bear bangers. Hold on a sec.”

  She dug around on a lower shelf until she came up with a box containing half a dozen exploding flares and a launcher. “Every once in a while, I’ll get a pesky black bear or a couple of cubs who think my Dumpsters are their smorgasbord. Lotta bang, lotta smoke, but nothing lethal.”

  Ty tucked the box of bangers under his arm along with the launcher. Their eyes held for a long moment before he thanked her with a nod.

  Stephanie reached out and laid a hand on Jess’s arm and thanked her for her help.

  “That’s okay,” Jess said. “Just don’t make me sorry I gave you those guns.”

  “Call the police,” Joe told her as they gathered ammo for the rifles and shotguns, then headed for the door. “Tell them jurisdiction or not, they need to haul ass out here ASAP. And tell ’em they’d better bring an ambulance with them.”

  “In a storm like this you’re not going to get any help from them anytime soon.”

  “We don’t need their help,” Mike said with a warrior look on his face that Stephanie had never seen before. “We need them for cleanup.”

  “Please. If it’s money you want, we can get it. Just tell me what you want. None of this is necessary.”

  Carl Wilson scowled at the two bound, hooded captives. They’d been here almost two hours and he’d grown weary of Ann Tompkins’s attempts to invoke reason.

  “Gag her,” he told Simpson.

  His second-in-command walked over to the woman, pulled a roll of duct tape out of his pocket, and jerked the hood off her head. He roughly slapped a piece over her mouth and replaced the hood.

  Finally. Quiet.

  These people were pathetic. The husband had made a decent attempt to stop them, but really. It had been over before it started.

  Robert Tompkins may have once been former president Billings’s right-hand man, but his situational awareness was for shit. So were his self-preservation instincts. That’s why he was now slumped in a wooden chair back-to-back with his wife, and both of them bound with their hands behind their backs. It was also why Tompkins was bleeding from a sharp rap to his temple.

  The cabin had been lit up like Times Square when they’d pulled up. He’d give one point to that hick town. The rental car agency knew what kind of horsepower a man needed to get around in this weather.

  Fuck, he hated the cold. Give him camels and sand fleas any day. Just spare him the snow and the deep freeze. Despite the weather and his aversion to it, it had been a textbook siege. Kill the Suburban lights a quarter mile away. Gear up and approach the cabin, assault rifles shouldered. Split up and block all exits. In this case, there were three. The front door, a back door that led out to a deck, and the door to the attached garage.

  A look inside had revealed a Christmas card–perfect scene. A blazing fire in the hearth. Husband and wife snuggled together on an overstuffed sofa in front of it, reading books. Mugs of steaming hot chocolate sitting on the low pine table in front of them. A checkers board laid out and ready for the next game.

  How cozy.

  And how rude, he thought with a smug grin, that he had blasted into the little love nest and turned paradise into the Tompkins’s worst nightmare.

  The Suburban was now hidden out of sight, parked beside the Tompkins’s vehicle in the garage. His men were positioned for optimum observation and defensive positioning.

  He flicked on his commo mike and raised Benson. “Anything?”

  Benson and Janikowski were on lookout outside. Benson was positioned a quarter of a mile down the drive, concealed by trees and snow. Janikowski was perched on the garage roof, his sniper rifle aimed at the only vehicle approach.

  “Negative,” Benson, an L.A. transplant, responded through chattering teeth. It was their third shift in the cold, and even though Wilson had been cycling them in and out at twenty-minute intervals, the weather was starting to take a toll.
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  “Same,” said Janikowski.

  Ski was a short, stocky Pol from Milwaukee. He was handling the sub-zero temps better than Benson. Still, it wouldn’t do to lose two of his best men to frostbite.

  “Relieve them,” he told Simpson and Duvall.

  Neither man said a word. They just zipped into their heavy parkas, boots, and gloves and, grabbing their weapons, headed for the door.

  “Don’t fall off the ladder this time,” he warned Duvall, who would scale the fourteen-foot extension ladder at the back of the cabin to get to their rooftop perch.

  “I only make a mistake once.” Duvall was a former recon Marine who’d become disenchanted with the system. He walked outside, limping. His shin had taken a beating in the fall.

  Five minutes later, Benson and Janikowski walked stiffly inside, snow swirling in their wake. They wore the frigid air on their coats. Their cheeks glowed red with cold. And he could tell by the way they moved that their feet were half frozen.

  Neither said a word. They just shrugged out of their heavy outerwear and headed straight for the coffeepot in the kitchen.

  Tough bastards, Wilson thought with satisfaction. He’d chosen well.

  He’d give them twenty minutes to thaw out and warm up, then the shift would change again. Company would be here soon. In the meantime, everyone had to be in tip-top shape for the big party.

  He’d planned for two—the daughter and Green, who couldn’t anticipate that Dalmage was aware he’d been found out. They’d be as clueless as the hostages bound and gagged in the middle of the great room.

  Or not. He was prepared for not, just as he was prepared for the possibility of accomplices.

  Success was all about contingencies, and all he cared about was the win. He didn’t give a fuck about these people. Didn’t give a fuck about Dalmage. It was the game. It was the money. You won the game, you got the prize. That was enough for him. But he found himself hoping that Green, who he’d been told was a warrior, might give him a bit of a challenge.

  25

  “This is as far as we go in the truck.” Joe killed the Chevy’s lights and rolled to a stop in the middle of the road. “According to the map Jess drew, the cabin is about a half a mile up this road.”