"Give me five minutes," he said. "Then take off. Just roll around for a while. When they find you, tell them I'm headed for Jack's."
"What'll you do?"
"I'll stop the first car coming down the road and take it," he said.
"Jesus." She looked up at the faint light, then cocked her head and frowned. "Somebody's coming."
"What?" The Iceman looked up at the bridge.
"Not that way… from behind us."
"Motherfucker," he said. "You go, go."
Lucas and Climpt were moving again, the track filling in front of them, nothing in their world but a few lights and the rumble of the sleds.
Climpt's taillight came up and he leaned to the left, taking the sled through the turn. Lucas followed, pressed the radio button, trying to talk through the bumps. "How long will it take him to get from Whitetail to the bridge?"
Feds: About two minutes.
Lucas flashed Climpt, pulled up alongside, shouted, "We're coming up on him in maybe a minute. They're gonna let him see them."
He's stopped.
Carr: Where?
Two or three hundred yards out, maybe. Can't really tell that close.
Can he see our lights?
Maybe.
"I'll take the lead from here. I'll count it out. You get the rifle limbered up."
Climpt nodded, pulled the rifle down. Lucas started counting, rolled the accelerator forward with his right hand, touched the pocket on his left thigh where he kept the pistol. The pocket was sealed with Velcro, so he could get at it quickly enough once he'd shed his gloves… one thousand six, one thousand seven, one thousand eight. Seconds rolling away like a slow heartbeat.
Radio voice: Don't see him, don't see him.
Lucas slowed, Climpt closed from behind. One thousand thirty-eight, one thousand thirty-nine…
Lucas rolled forward, straining to see. His headlight beam was cupped, shortened by the snow. Looking into it was like peering into a foam plastic cup. They hit a hump, swooped down over the far side, Lucas absorbing up the lurch with his legs, beginning to feel the ride in his thighs. One thousand sixty… Lucas rolled the accelerator back, slowed, slowed…
There.
Red flash just ahead.
Lucas hit the brake, leaned left, dumped his speed in a skid, stayed with the sled, got it straight, headlight boring in on Helper's sled… and Helper himself.
Helper stood behind his snowmobile, caught in the headlight. Climpt had gone right when Lucas broke left, came back around, catching Helper in his lights, fixing him in the crossed beams. Lucas ripped his gloves off, had the pistol…
Helper was running. He was on snowshoes, running toward the treeline above the creek. Couldn't take a sled in there, too dense. Lucas hit the accelerator, pulled closer, closer. Helper looking back, still wearing his helmet, face mask a dark oval, blank.
The Iceman lumbered toward the treeline, but the sound of the other snowmobiles was growing; then the lights popped up and suddenly they were there, careening through the deep snow. The lead sled swerved toward him while the other broke away.
He lifted his pistol, fired a shot, and the sled swerved and the passenger dumped off. The other sled broke hard the other way, spinning, trying to miss the fallen man, out of control.
The Iceman kept running, running, his breath beating in his throat, tearing his chest, running blindly with little hope, looking back.
The muzzle blast was like lightning in the dark. Lucas cut left, came off the sled. Stunned, he thrashed for a moment, got upright, snow in his eyes and mouth, sputtering, put too much weight on one foot, crunched through to the next layer of snow, got to his knees, the.45 coming up, felt Climpt spinning past him.
Helper was at the treeline, barely visible, nothing more than a sense of motion a hundred feet away.
Lucas fired six shots at him, one after another, tracking the motion, firing through brush and brambles, through alder branches and small barren aspen. The muzzle flash blinded him after the first shot and he fired on instinct, where Helper should have been. And where was Climpt, why wasn't he…?
And then the M-16 came in, two bursts at the treeline.
Radio: Gunfire, we got gunfire.
Carr: What's happening, what's happening?
Snowshoes. They'd need the snowshoes.
Lucas' sled had burrowed into a snowdrift. He started for it, then looked back at Helper's sled, saw the yellow-haired girl. She was on the snow, trying to get to her feet. Struggling. Hurt?
Lucas turned toward her, pushed the transmit button:
"He's on foot-heading up toward the road-he's in the woods-we got the kid. She's here-we're on the creek just below the bridge. Watch out for him. We shot up around him, he could be hit."
Ginny Harris was squatting next to Helper's snowmobile, her hair gold-yellow in the lights of the snowmobiles, focused on the woods where Helper had gone. As Lucas ran up, struggling with the knee-deep snow, she turned her head and looked up at him, eyes large and feral like a trapped fox's.
The yellow-haired girl crouched by the sled as the man on the first sled fired a series of shots into the wood. He looked menacing, a man all in black, the big pistol popping in his hand. Then there was a loud ratcheting noise from the man on the second sled, the stutter of flame reaching out toward her man like God's finger.
The first man said something to her, but she couldn't hear him. She could see his lips moving, and his hand came up. Reaching out? Pointing a gun? She rolled.
She rolled away from him and he called, "You're okay, okay," but she kept rolling and her hand came up with what looked like a child's shiny chrome compact.
A.22, a fifty-dollar weapon, a silly thing that could do almost nothing but kill people who made mistakes. He was leaning forward, his hand toward her, reaching out. He saw the muzzle and just before the flash felt a split second of what might have been embarrassment, caught like this. He started to turn, to flinch away. Then the flash.
The slug hit him in the throat like a hard slap. He stopped, not knowing quite what had happened, heard the pop-pop of other guns around him, not the heavy bang-bang, but something softer, more distant. Very far away.
Lightning stuttered in the dark and flung the girl down, then Lucas hit the snow on his back, his legs folding under him. His head was downhill, and when he hit, the breath rushed out of his lungs. He tried to take a breath and sit up, but nothing happened. He felt as though a rubber stopper had been shoved into his windpipe. He strained, but nothing.
The snow felt like sand on his face; he could feel it clearly, the snow. And in his mouth, a coppery, cutting taste, the taste of blood. But the rest of the world, all the sounds, smells, and sights, were in a mental rectangle the size of a shoe box, and somebody was pushing in the sides.
He could hear somebody talking: "Oh, Jesus, in the neck, call the goddamn doctor, where's the doctor, is she still riding…"
And a few seconds later a shadow in his eyesight, somebody else: "Christ, he's dead, he's dead, look at his eyes."
But Lucas could see. He could see branches with snow on them, he could feel himself move, could feel his angle of vision shifting as someone sat him up, he could feel-no, hear-somebody shouting at him.
And all the time the rectangle grew smaller, smaller…
He fought the closing walls for a while, but a distant warmth attracted him, and he felt his mind turning toward it. When he let the concentration go, the walls of the square lurched in, and now he was holding mental territory no bigger than a postage stamp.
No more vision. No more sense of the snow on his face. No taste of blood.
Nothing but a single word, which seemed not so much a sound as a line of type, a word cut from a newspaper:
"Knife."
CHAPTER 30
The Iceman was there, almost in the treeline, when the shot ripped through his back, between his spine and his shoulder blade. He went down facefirst, and a burst of automatic weapons fire tore up the aspen overhe
ad. His mind was clear as ice, but his body felt like a flame.
There was another burst, slashing through the trees, then another, but the last was directed somewhere else. The Iceman got to his feet, pain riding his back like a thousand-pound knapsack. He pushed deeper into the woods, deeper. Couldn't go far, had to sit down. With the sudden profusion of lights below, he could see the vague outlines of trees around him, and he fought through them, heading at an angle toward the road. Behind him, his tracks filled with snow almost as fast as he made holes in it.
Then he was out of the light. Caught in the darkness, he probed ahead with his hands. The pain in his back grew like a cancer, spreading through him, into his belly, his legs, turning his body to lead. A tree limb caught him in the face mask, snapped his head back. His breath came harder: he pulled off the helmet, threw it away. He needed to feel…
He was bleeding. He could feel the blood flowing down his belly and his back, warm, sticking between his shirt and his skin. He took another step, waving his hands like a blind man; another, waving his hands. A branch snapped him in the face, and he swore, twisted, tripped, went down. Swore, struggled to his feet, took another three steps, fell in a hole, tried to get up.
Failed this time.
Felt so quiet.
Lay there, resting; all he needed was a little rest, then he could get up.
Yukon. Alaska.
Weather, coming up, saw Lucas on the snow and the blood on his face, screamed, "No, God…"
"He's hit, he's hit," Climpt screamed.
He was cradling Lucas' head, Henry Lacey standing over both Lucas and Climpt, Carr beside the yellow-haired girl, other deputies milling through the snow.
Like a scene shot in slow motion, Weather saw Lacey's teeth flashing in the snowmobile headlights, saw the face of the little girl, serene, dead, her coat puckered with bullet holes, and she thought, Gone to the angels, as she dropped to her knees next to Lucas.
Lucas thrashed, his eyes half open, the whites showing, straining, straining. She grabbed his jaw, found blood, tipped his head back, saw the entry wound, a small puncture that might have been made with a ballpoint pen. He couldn't breathe. She pulled off her gloves, pried open his jaws, and pushed one of the gloves into the corner of his mouth to keep him from snapping his teeth on her fingers. With his mouth wedged open, she probed his throat with her fingers, found the blockage, a chunk of soft tissue where there shouldn't have been anything.
Her mind went cold, analytical.
"Knife," she said to Lacey.
"What?" Lacey shouted down at her, shocked. She realized that he had a gun in his hand.
"Give me your fuckin' knife-your knife!"
"Here, here." Climpt thrust a red jackknife at her, a Swiss Army knife, and she scratched open the larger of the two blades.
"Hold his head down," she said to Climpt. Lacey dropped to his knees to help as she straddled Lucas' chest. "Put your hand on his forehead. Push down."
She pushed the point of the blade into Lucas' throat below the Adam's apple and twisted it, prying… and there was a sudden frightening croak as air rushed into his lungs. "Keep his head down-keep his head down."
She thrust her index finger into the incision and crimped it, keeping the hole open.
"Let's get him out-let's get him out," she shouted, slipping off his chest. Lucas seemed to levitate, men at each thigh and two more at either shoulder. "Keep his head down."
They rushed him out of the woods, up to the sheriff's Suburban.
With each awkward, bloody breath, Lucas, eyes closed now, said, "Awwwk… awk" like a dying crow.
A siren screamed away down the road just above him. Helper was lying in the ditch below the road, he realized. All he had to do was crawl to the top, and when the cops were gone, flag a car.
A small piece of rationality bit back at him: the cops wouldn't be going. Not now. They knew he was here, now.
The Iceman laughed. They'd find him, they were coming.
He tried to roll, get up; he would crawl to the top, flag the cops. Quit. After he healed, he could try again. There was always the possibility of breaking out of jail, always possibilities.
But he couldn't get up. Couldn't move. His mind was still clear, working wonderfully. He analyzed the problem. He was stiff from the wound, he thought. Not a bad wound, not a killer, but he was stiffening up like a wounded deer.
When you shot a deer and failed to knock it down, you waited a half hour or so and invariably found it lying close by, unable to move.
If he was going to live, he had to get up.
But he couldn't.
Tried. Couldn't.
They'd come, he thought. Come and get him. The trail was only a couple of hundred yards long. They'd track him, they'd find him. All he had to do was wait.
"If he's not hit, then going in there'd be suicide. If he is hit, he's dead. Just set up the cordon and let it go until daylight," Carr said. Lacey nodded, stepped to another deputy to relay the word.
"I want three or four men together everywhere," Carr called after him. "I don't want anyone out there alone, okay? Just in case."
They found him lying in the ditch beside the road. Still alive, still alert.
The Iceman sensed them coming; not so much heard them, but simply knew. Cocked his head up; that was as far as he could move now. But still: if they got him right into town, they could save him. They could still save him.
"Help me," he groaned.
Something skittered away, then returned.
"Help."
Something touched his face; something colder than he was. He moved and they fell away. And came back. Nipped at him; there was a snarl, then a twisting flight, then they were back.
Coyotes. Brought by the scent of blood and the protection of the dark.
Hungry this year.
Hungry with the deep snow. Most of the deer dead and gone.
They came closer; he tried to move; failed. Tried to lift his hand, tried to roll, tried to cover his face. Failed.
Mind clear as water. Sharper teeth at his face, snapping, ripping, pulling him apart. He opened his mouth to scream; teeth at his lips.
Nine deputies were at the scene, four of them as pickets, guarding against the return of Helper. The rest worked over the scene, searching for blood sign and shells, or simply watched. The yellow-haired girl was a bump under a blue plastic tarp. Lacey and Carr stood to one side, Carr talking into the radio. When he signed off, Lacey was looking into the dark. "I still think if we went slow…"
"Forget it," Carr said. "If he's laying up, he'd just take out more of us. Keep the cordon along the road. Davenport got off a half-dozen shots at him, Gene chopped up the woods-I think there's a good chance that he's down. What we need…"
"Wait," Lacey snapped. He held up a gloved hand, turned, and looked northeast at an angle toward the road. He seemed to be straining into the dark.
"What?"
"Sounded like a scream," Lacey said.
They listened together for a moment, heard the chatter of the deputies around them, the distant muffled mutter of trucks idling on the road, and beneath it all the profoundly subtle rumble of the falling snow.
Nothing at all like the scream of a man being eaten alive.
Carr shook his head. "Probably just the wind," he said.
CHAPTER 31
He was on snowshoes, working along the ridges across the access road to his cabin. After the first mile, he was damp with sweat. He took his watch cap off, stuffed it in his pocket, unzipped his parka to cool down, and moved on.
The alders caught at his legs, tangled him. They were small, bushy trees with thumb-sized trunks marked with speckles, like wild cherries. In some places they'd been buried by the frequent snowfalls. When he stepped over a buried bush, his snowshoe would collapse beneath him as though he'd stepped in a hole, which, in fact, he had-a snow dome, held up by the flexible branches of a buried alder. Then he'd be up to his knee or even his crotch, struggling to get back on
the level.
As he fought across the swamp, a rime of ice formed on his sunglasses, and his heart thumped like a drum in the silence of the North Woods. He climbed the side of a narrow finger ridge; when he reached its spine, he turned downhill and followed it back to the swamp. At the point where the ridge subsided into the swamp, a tangle of red cedars hugged the snow. Deer had bedded all through the cedars, shedding hair, discoloring the snow. There were pinkish urine holes everywhere, piles of scat like liver-colored.45 shells; but no deer. He would have been as obvious to them as a locomotive, and they'd be long gone. He felt a spasm of guilt. He shouldn't be running deer, not this winter. They'd be weak enough.
His legs twitched, twitched against the pristine white sheets, white like the snow. The winter faded.
"Wake up, you…"
Lucas opened his eyes, groaned. His back was stiff, his neck stretched and immobile in the plastic brace. "Goddamn, I was out of it," he said hoarsely. "What time is it?"
"Four o'clock," Weather said, smiling down at him. She was wearing her surgeon's scrub suit. "It'll be dark in an hour. How're you feeling?"
Lucas tested his throat, flexing. "Still hurts, but not so bad. Feels more like tight."
"It'll do that as it heals. If it gets worse, we'll go back in and release some of the scar tissue."
"I can live with the tight feeling," he said.
"What? You don't trust me?" The.22 slug had entered below his jawbone, penetrating upwards, parallel to his tongue, finally burying itself in the soft tissue at the back of his throat. When he'd tried to inhale, he'd sucked down a flap of loose tissue not much bigger than a nickel and had almost choked to death. Weather had fixed the damage with an hour of work on the table at Lincoln Memorial.
"Trust a woman, the next thing you know, they're cutting your throat," Lucas said.
"All right, so now I'm not going to tell you about the Schoeneckers."
"What?" He started to sit up, but she pushed him down. "They found them?"
"Camping in Baja. This morning. They used a gas credit card last night, and they found them about ten o'clock our time. Henry Lacey called and said the folks don't know nothin' about nothin', but one of the girls is giving them quite an earful. Henry may fly out there with a couple of other deputies to bring them back."
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