by Lee Child
It was gone, as if it had never been.
“If that doesn’t take the cake!” exclaimed the Reverend Jim Bob Bryant. “The bastard stole it!”
“Adam, this is Star Voyager. So good to hear from you.”
“I am alive. I have a saucer. I can meet you above the savage planet.” The voice from the starship told him when their ship would reach orbit. Solo mentally converted the time units into earth weeks. Three weeks, he thought. Only three more weeks.
“I must pick up the others,” he thought, and the com system broadcast these thoughts.
Adam Solo topped the cloud layer that shrouded the sea and found himself under a sky full of stars.
*
STEPHEN COONTS is the author of fifteen New York Times bestsellers, the first of which was the classic flying tale Flight of the Intruder.
Stephen received his Navy wings in August 1969. After completion of fleet replacement training in the A-6 Intruder aircraft, Mr. Coonts reported to Attack Squadron 196 at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Washington. He made two combat cruises aboard USS Enterprise during the final years of the Vietnam War as a member of this squadron. His first novel, Flight of the Intruder, published in September 1986 by the Naval Institute Press, spent twenty- eight weeks on The New York Times bestseller lists in hardcover. A motion picture based on this novel, with the same title, was released nationwide in January 1991. The success of his first novel allowed Mr. Coonts to devote himself to writing fulltime; he has been at it ever since. He and his wife, Deborah, enjoy flying and try to do as much of it as possible.
RYAN BROWN
Howard Boyd’s time was up.
Twilight had descended on the mountain by the time he exited the dining hall at the base of the slopes, clipped back into his skis, and returned to the chairlift.
He was met with disappointment.
“Lift’s closed, pal,” said the terminal operator as Howard approached. The man was clearing dirty sludge from the loading area with a shovel.
“Already?” Howard skied forward until his waist met the yellow rope blocking the line entrance. “But can’t I just make one more run, buddy?”
“It’s Freddy, and no you can’t.” The operator dodged an empty lift chair moving past. “It’s five o’ clock. Last skiers are coming down now.”
Howard slid his sleeve off his Rolex. “I got four fifty-one. And I can make this run in a hell of a lot less than nine minutes.”
“Swell. Trouble is it’s an eighteen-minute ride to the top.”
“Come on, man. The cell service up here is for shit; I had to go inside to phone the office, and I just got tied up. Give me a break, will ya?”
“Forget it, we’re closed.” The operator jammed the shovel into the snow. “Marvin’s probably already left the terminal up top anyway.”
“Marvin, eh? Well can’t you check if he’s still working up there? Come on, Freddy, have a heart.” Howard unzipped the breast pocket of his bib and presented a fifty-dollar bill to help change the man’s mind. It wasn’t until he brought out a second fifty that Freddy finally gave in.
“Ah, hell.” The operator brought his walkie-talkie to his lips. “Marvin, come in . . .” Getting no response, he banged the squawking radio against his knee and tried again. “Marvin, you reading me up there?”
“Go ahead,” came a voice through thick static.
“Yeah, Marvin, you still up top? Got another asshole down here, wants to make a run. It’ll mean fifty . . . uh, twenty-five bucks to you if you’ll wait.”
Seconds passed before the radio squawked again and Marvin’s voice came back. “Yeah . . . go ahead.”
Freddy switched off the walkie-talkie with a shrug and cut his eyes back to Howard. “It’s your funeral.” He took his time approaching, but was quick to snatch the two bills from Howard’s glove. He unhooked the rope and allowed Howard to push past. “I’s you, I’d ski down with Marvin. He’s the best skier on the hill, knows every inch of this mountain.”
“I hardly need a babysitter,” Howard scoffed. “Been riding black diamonds for more than twenty years.”
“Yeah? In the dark? With weather moving in? We’ll be under an avalanche warning come tomorrow, mark my words.”
“Piece of cake,” Howard said, swishing through the maze of rope leading to the loading area.
“Just get down quick, fella, or it’s my ass.” Freddy waved him off and disappeared into the bull-wheel shack.
Howard allowed an empty chair to pass, then side-stepped into the loading space and let the next chair scoop his backside. The chair accelerated through a sharp ascent before rattling over the sheaves of the first tower and slowing into a smooth, quiet glide.
He closed his eyes and drew crisp air into his lungs, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Snow began to flurry as the chair crept over a steep, pine-wooded peak. The terrain then fell away sharply, opening into a wide treeless valley already clear of all ski traffic.
Minutes passed.
The chair chattered past another tower and continued on for seventy- five more yards before the drone of the lift suddenly muted and the cable came to a gentle halt. Momentum swung the chair back and forth some until it eventually hung motionless.
Howard cursed under his breath. The clouds seemed to close in more quickly in the stillness. The base of the slopes and the resort village far below were already completely obscured.
Boredom set in immediately. He took out his cell phone hoping to check messages, but when he saw that he still wasn’t getting a signal, he set the phone down beside him, thinking he’d check again from a higher elevation.
The snow fell more heavily now, landing thick and wet against his goggles, stinging his cheeks. He huddled his arms across his chest to fight the chill that was seeping through his clothing like acid.
Christ, what I would give for a . . .
He paused, then fumbled into the breast pocket of his coat. To his relief there remained a crumpled box of Salems pressed against his monogrammed Zippo. Setting his gloves on the seat next to the phone, he tapped out the single remaining cigarette and thumbed the lighter until it sparked a flame. He drew quickly and heavily off the cigarette, burning it down to the filter.
Three minutes later, still chilled to the marrow, he flicked the dead butt away and cursed again. “Come on, Freddy, Marvin, you asshole, crank ’er up.”
Looking down to check his watch, he caught movement through the gauze of cloud between his knees—a lone skier, some two hundred feet below, swishing with perceptible skill down the slope. Howard watched the man until he disappeared under the chair.
Hell of a skier, he thought. Quite a pro.
Then he jumped, startled by the unexpected sound of laughter.
“I think your fate has just been sealed, Howard.”
Howard turned toward the voice and found sitting on the other side of the chair a man he’d watched die months before.
“Jesus Christ!” He yanked his goggles down to his neck and looked the man up and down, his eyes wide with horror, his jaw hanging slack.
Another liquid chuckle left the dead man’s throat. “Miss me, Howard?”
It was Terry Choate, Howard’s former business partner, in the flesh.
Only the flesh was gunmetal gray, slightly transparent, and peeling off of grossly mangled bones. The dead man’s smile was toothless and glistened red. His misshapen skull was split open at the crown. Gray liquid oozed from the ghastly wound and trickled down past sunken, ink-drop eyes.
Howard’s heart became a piston in his chest. He tasted a bitter sickness rising in his throat. “Terry, what are you . . . how can you be—”
“I’d say Freddy was right, wouldn’t you, Howard?” The corpse’s words slithered off a sluglike tongue. He aimed a thumb over his shoulder. “That Marvin might truly be the best skier on the hill. Certainly looked like an expert to me.”
Howard could only stare at the dead man, stunned with terror, until at last he blinked back to
attention. “What . . . what did you say?”
Terry pointed toward the slope behind the chair. “Marvin. It doesn’t appear that he waited for you.”
“Marvin?” It took a moment for Howard to understand the corpse’s meaning. He turned slowly around in the seat. The skier he’d seen a moment ago had long since vanished under the cloud. “Marvin.” Howard blinked again. “Yes. Marvin. But . . . but he said—”
“Yeah, go ahead,” Terry finished. “I believe those were the exact words Marvin used. But the static coming through that radio was rather heavy, wasn’t it Howard? Couldn’t it be that Marvin’s words were not an instruction for you to proceed, but an indication that he was still awaiting a response from his coworker below?”
Howard’s stomach knotted, his terror now compounded. He spun around in the chair and screamed Marvin’s name until his voice went hoarse. In response he heard only a desperate echo. It wasn’t until he turned back that he realized he’d just knocked the gloves and cell phone off the seat.
“Looks like we’re in for a long, cold night, Howard.” Terry grinned with malice . . . then vanished.
Howard’s gaze darted all around. He called out to Terry, but heard only the corpse’s cryptic laughter, which seemed to come at him from all directions, taunting and threatening at the same time.
Darkness fell quickly then, even as time stretched out.
It wasn’t long before the weight of Howard’s skis began to pull painfully on his tired knees. Deeming the skis useless, he kicked them off into the night and listened, to no avail, for their contact with the ground.
Faced with the knowledge that he would never survive a drop from the chair, he was left to wait and listen and watch as the storm rolled in.
The dead man didn’t appear again until seven hours and nine inches of snow later.
“I see you haven’t gone far, Howard.” The corpse’s voice snaked out of the darkness. “In truth, neither have I. I have always been with you, every minute of every day. Since the very beginning . . . or end, I should say, my end.”
Curled with his knees tucked under his chin, back pressed against the armrest, Howard lifted a trembling hand. With fingers made bloodless by the cold, he pried open an eyelid, sealed shut by frozen tears. Through his blurred vision he saw only swirling snow on a field of black.
“I suggest you reach into your pants’ leg pocket,” Terry said. “Down by your right calf. Go on, Howard.”
It was some time before Howard mustered the energy to do as instructed. Struggling with dead hands on the zipper, he reached into the pocket and came out with the plastic glow stick he had mindlessly tucked away three days before—a precautionary handout from the ski-rental shop in a place where avalanche warnings were not uncommon. Howard bent the stick until it clicked, bathing the space around him with its green luminescent glow. He hooked the stick to the shoulder strap of his bib, then raised his head to face the man across the chair.
“Boo!” A grin parted the corpse’s livery lips. “That’s much better, isn’t it, Howard?”
“You . . . are . . . not . . . real,” Howard rasped.
Terry’s laugh was guttural, yet eerily childlike. “Search your conscience, Howard. I think you’ll find I most certainly am real. You’ve only been stranded a few hours; delirium couldn’t have possibly set in yet. Anyway, I know you too well. You’d never allow your mind to go. No, never your mind! It’s that mind for which I partnered with you in the first place. Such a brilliant architectural mind, it is . . . a mind clever enough to get away with murder.”
“I . . . didn’t . . . murder—”
“Stop it!” Terry spat. “You’ve already killed me, Howard, don’t insult my intelligence.”
“The hook . . . the safety hook on your lanyard . . . it was just an accide—”
“Yes, my fall did appear a terrible accident, didn’t it? I must say, as you read my eulogy, I almost believed you’d even convinced yourself that it was accidental. Fortunately for you everyone thought so. Makes sense, after all. It’s dangerous work we do, marching in our slick-soled Italian loafers across the narrow beams of our towering structures, only a hardhat and a measly nylon strap to insure our safety.” His face contorted into a scowl. “Who knew that the hooks on those straps could ever prove faulty, right?”
Howard studied the corpse’s designer suit, once spotless and impeccably tailored, now shredded and caked with spilled entrails. “What do you want, Terry?”
“Only the same privilege you were granted last September. To look into the eyes of my partner as he falls.”
“Fuck you!” The words shot from Howard’s mouth in a voiceless hiss.
“You have already done that, Howard. Now it’s my turn to return the favor.”
“You deserved everything you got, Terry. You rode on my coattails for a de cade, taking credit for my work. The vision was mine!”
“The vision was yours, Howard, I never failed to grant you that. But we were partners, and your vision was nothing without me to sell it, to make others see it and feel it.”
Howard looked away, hugging his arms close, his teeth chattering.
“I’m curious to know, Howard, if you’re prepared to freeze to death arguing with me, or if that creative mind of yours is considering how you’re going to get off this chair.”
Howard leaned forward and looked into the black void below.
“I think you’ve already determined that you’d never survive a voluntary fall,” Terry said. “And of course you’ll never make it through the night in these temperatures.” He leaned across the seat and winked a pupil-less eye. “Not without a fire, anyway.”
Howard met the corpse’s gaze for a beat, then dug hastily into his pocket for the lighter, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it before.
“There’s that brilliant mind at work!” Terry said. “I knew you still had it, Howard.”
It took several tries for Howard to get a flame out of the lighter. With a cupped palm, he guarded the struggling flame against the wind and relished the warmth it brought to his frostbitten fingers. But within seconds, the flame died in the icy gusts.
“Don’t you have anything to burn, Howard?” Terry tapped his jaw in thought, then snapped his bony fingers. “A cigarette box, perhaps?”
Howard came out with the box of Salems and crushed it flat. He thumbed the Zippo repeatedly until he was able to bring a flame to the box, but in the whipping wind the cardboard wouldn’t catch. After some consideration he pulled the lighter apart, exposing its inner workings. He removed the soaked piece of rayon from the canister and squeezed a few drops of fuel onto the cigarette box. Then he closed the lighter again, raked the flint, and instantly set the box aflame.
The paltry fire turned the box to ash in less than a minute, and provided only a scant amount of heat.
Still, at the corpse’s urging, Howard employed the same procedure to his lift tickets, which burned even more quickly than the cigarette box.
Four business cards and six-hundred-and-thirty-dollars worth of folding money went next. When Howard’s credit cards refused to catch fire, the corpse raised a finger and made another suggestion.
“Your clothing, Howard,” he said. “It might produce a bigger flame that would act as a signal fire. Isn’t there anything you can spare?”
There wasn’t. But Howard’s body was stiff with cold, and the promised warmth that a fire would provide was just too hard to resist. Within minutes he had forcibly ripped his thermal undershirt and his boxer shorts from beneath his outer clothing and burned them both down to smoking embers. The corpse went on to tempt Howard into sacrificing his stocking cap, and, finally, his thick woolen socks, on which he’d had to squeeze the last drops of fuel left in the lighter in order to spark a flame.
The corpse’s grin widened when only a faint whiff of smoke remained between the two men. “Well, Howard, it appears you’re out of recourses.”
The dead man’s cackling laugh was infuriating, but Howard re
fused to let Terry see his rage.
He looked into the corpse’s cobalt eyes and shook his head with pointed resolve. “No.”
“What’s that, Howard?”
“I said no, Terry! This isn’t over.”
The dead man clasped his hands with a bony click. “Of course it isn’t! It’s only getting more fun.”
Howard swallowed a fistful of snow from his lap to wet his parched throat. He straightened his legs, sending searing pain to his frozen knees. He reached up and took hold of the center pole from which the chair hung. His hand slipped twice from the bar as he attempted to hoist himself up on cramped legs.
“So, what’s the plan now?” Terry asked. “Climb up to the cable above, then go hand over hand back to the tower, right? Yes, it is the only way. There’s a ladder on the tower that would lead you all the way down. But it must be nearly a hundred yards back, maybe more—not an easy journey for a man of your size.” His tongue made a rueful click. “Those four-course lunches and hourly lattes have done you no favors over the years, Howard. I suggest you use your ski poles, bridge them over the cable and zip along the line.”
It was a thought that had occurred to Howard just seconds before. He raised his backside off the seat and reached beneath him for the poles, which he had been protecting at all costs. But just as his hand fell on them, the corpse leaned across the chair, yanked the poles from Howard’s grasp, and tossed them away.
“What are you . . . No!” The poles were out of sight before Howard could even scream the word. Fury erupted inside of him. “You son of a bitch!” In a burst of madness he lunged across the chair, hands outstretched for the corpse’s neck.
But his hands—in fact his entire body—moved straight through the specter unimpeded. With nothing to halt his momentum, Howard toppled forward out of control. The lower half of his body slipped off the front of the chair. His hands clawed madly for the rear edge of the seat and somehow took hold. The next instant found him dangling in open air, legs kicking in the wind, arms outstretched across the seat.