It didn’t smell like gasoline, though. More like kerosene, or maybe diesel fuel. When the cup was full, he retightened the cap and carefully slid to the ground. He spilled half of the fuel in the process, but truly didn’t care as he moved quickly to shove his hands back into his gloves.
He decided on a spot about twenty yards from the shelter as the location for the signal fire. He knew he should probably burn it all night long, but with such a small container, it would burn out too quickly, and no way was he going to spend the entire night shuttling himself in and out of the cold to refill it. Besides, the plastic thermos cup would probably melt as it burned anyway. Plus, it had started to snow again, so the planes would be grounded. With the cup positioned where he wanted it, he shoved the fusees butt-first into the snow next to it. When he heard engines again, he’d be good to go.
And none too soon. The transition from day to dusk seemed to pass in mere moments, pulling the temperature down another ten degrees. Or, maybe that coldness he felt along his spine was merely the realization that another endless night lay ahead.
The noise from the woods startled him.
“Hello?”
It stopped at the sound of his voice, a rustling sound off to his right. Probably just the wind. Bullshit. The wind’s been blowing all day.
He wanted to think that it was the approach of rescuers, but knew better. Rescuers have no desire to be stealthy. “Hello?” His tongue felt as if he’d licked a chalkboard.
There it was again, only this time from his left, directly opposite where it was before.
“Who’s there?” This time he yelled, his voice cracking in the wind.
The third sound came from behind him, and he whirled to face unyielding forest. Scott’s heart hammered a hard-rock cadence in his throat as he listened intently, wishing he hadn’t left the flashlights in the shelter. As he tried to see through the cloud of blowing snow, the woods growled at him, a basso tone so deep that he more felt it than heard it.
Oh, shit! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…
More growls from his left and his right.
“Only two species of animals hunt in packs,” he remembered Sven telling them. “You’ve got your big cats, and you’ve got—”
The wolves showed themselves one at a time, cautiously approaching from three sides, filthy and gray. Scott stopped breathing as he watched them lower their heads and inch forward one tentative step at a time. Thirty, maybe forty feet separated him from the closest animal; a distance they could close in three seconds.
“Never run,” he remembered. But that’s precisely what his body was screaming at him to do—run as fast and as hard as his legs would carry him. They could tear him apart standing there or tear him apart running away. Did it really make that much difference?
The animals moved with choreographed grace, each step in unison, their faces obscured by the clouds of vapor that rose from their panting jaws. He found himself somehow entranced by their eyes. What had Sven told them? Had he ever said anything about wolves? Where the hell was his photographic memory when he needed it, goddammit? He needed to…
What? What the hell was he supposed to do?
He had to scare them off. That was his only chance. He was bigger than them, after all, and smarter. Plus, they were probably scared, too. What were the chances that they had ever seen a human being before? That had to give him some kind of advantage, didn’t it?
He waved his arms in a giant shooing motion. “Ha! Get out of here! Go on, git!”
The wolves jumped at the sudden motion, and looked for a moment as if they might run. Scott could almost read the curiosity in the faces of the closest two as they looked to the center wolf for a cue. That’d be the alpha dog, he reckoned, the wolf in charge, and he didn’t seem startled at all.
Scott shouted again, but this time to less effect. If anything, it seemed to piss them off. Alpha lowered his head and peeled his lip back to reveal a set of teeth that better belonged on a shark. The growl deepened in pitch. He advanced. The others followed, closing in from all sides but one.
This was it. No negotiating, no bluffing, these beasts were going to attack, and Scott was flat out of options. The knife. Could he possibly be fast enough with the blade? Even if he killed one of them, the others would tear him to pieces in seconds.
Just let it be fast. Don’t let it hurt too much.
The flare gun! Jesus, he still had it in his pocket! At this range, maybe it would fire with enough velocity to hurt the bastards. Maybe even kill. And he’d still have the knife left to take on a second one. As for the third, well…
“Oh, man, I’m so screwed…”
Scott’s eyes locked with Alpha’s as he slowly pulled the glove off his right hand and stuffed it down the front of his coat before searching his pocket for the flare gun. He fought the urge to draw down the way they did in the old cowboy flicks. Right now, his killers seemed hesitant, as if they were waiting for him to seal his own fate with the first move. The flare gun felt like a toy in his hand, all plastic, but for the metal hammer and trigger. As the stubby barrel cleared his pocket, he thumbed back the hammer.
Only Alpha moved now; the others paused and watched, as if waiting their turn to play with their new chew toy. Scott wondered if they somehow knew how terrified he was.
“Please stay away,” Scott begged. He realized for the first time that he was crying. He didn’t want to die. Not here, not this way. “Please just leave me alone. We don’t have to do this.”
Alpha cocked his head as Scott spoke, as if he could understand every word. What he heard seemed to please him. The wolf moved closer still.
And then he charged. The growl transformed to a horrid, guttural roar as he sprinted across the snow, closing with more speed than Scott ever could have imagined. The boy never had time to aim a shot, or even pull the trigger, but somehow, the gun bucked in his hand, and the air filled with the stench of burning magnesium.
The projectile caught Alpha squarely in the face, dropping the beast into the snow, amid a spray of blood, as the flare itself ricocheted off into the trees, there to sputter and dance as it burned itself out.
Startled, the other wolves turned and ran for the woods, stopping abruptly just at the edge of Scott’s line of sight. As if on cue, they both turned to face him again. The growling grew more fierce, but their postures looked somehow less frightening.
“I said get out of here!” Scott yelled. “Leave me alone!”
The wolves jumped again, and even took a couple of steps back, but unless Scott could put on another show of strength, he knew they’d charge.
If only he had another flare. He pointed the empty gun as if it were loaded—as if they could tell the difference—but how long could it take before they tested his bluff? Christ, one lousy flare. Who ever heard…
Fusees. There they were, both of them, sitting at his feet in the snow. They could work. Still keeping the gun trained on the animals, shifting his aim from one to the other, he stooped to his haunches and slipped his hand around one of the road flares.
God, the unbearable slowness of it all. His mind screamed at him to hurry as his heart bruised itself against his breastbone.
Without their leader, the other two wolves seemed confused, but Scott knew the moment would pass. There was no masking this kind of terror, and clearly they sniffed it in the air. They started to close again.
As he went to work on the fusee, he let the empty gun fall to the snow.
The teenager’s hand refused to cooperate in the cold. It felt swollen and useless on the end of his arm, and as he shifted his eyes in the rapidly dimming light to see what he was doing, he noticed that his skin was nearly as red as the flare’s scarlet wrapper. The translucent cap over the striking end of the fusee came off easily in the cold, but not so the smaller, flatter cap that covered the striker. For that, Scott had to use his teeth, and the effort made his gums bleed.
Thirty feet now, and closing. One way or another, in a few seconds, this
would be all over. Holding the striker in his bare fist, he pressed it against the striking end of the flare and scraped the two together, just like striking a big match. He got a spark, but no ignition.
The wolves recognized the movement as a threat and they doubled their pace. Twenty feet separated them, no more.
Scott struck again, and this time, the beasts made their move. They charged…
…And the flare flashed to life, a hissing jet of red flame that nearly disappeared in its thick cloud of smoke.
Scott held the fusee like a sword, at arm’s length in his bare hand. “Ha!” he yelled. “Get outta here!” He whipped it back and forth. “Get outta here or I’ll stick it in your damn eye!”
The flash of noise and light startled the beasts into aborting their charge, but this time they didn’t retreat. Instead, they formed a tighter circle around him, neither more than fifteen feet away. They bared their teeth and slobbered in the snow as they feinted lunges and snapped at the air.
Scott moved like a retreating fencer, pointing his fusee first at one animal and then the other as he worked his way back toward the shelter. Twenty yards to go. Fifteen.
“Get out of here! Leave me alone, goddammit! Just leave me alone!”
But they kept up with him, step for step, never closing the distance, but never allowing it to open and inch. They were patient, these animals, and they knew their jobs. Sooner or later, Scott would make a mistake—maybe he’d trip, or he’d drop his flare—and when he did, they’d be on him in an instant.
Ten yards to the shelter, and then what? Then he’d barricade himself inside and wait for the beasts to test its strength. Sven had never mentioned anything about wolf-proofing.
Five yards to go. Scott shifted the flare from his bare hand to his glove, while he fished through his pants pocket for the survival knife. He unsnapped the safety strap with his teeth and let the scabbard drop to the snow.
Scott’s entire world had transformed to a shimmering red sphere, with him in the middle, and death just barely visible as shadows at the periphery. With the shelter only inches away, he might just have a chance, but he’d be most vulnerable when he dropped to his knees to climb in, and from there it would be a test of strength and will. Would the aluminum door hold? Would they claw and chew right through the walls?
Or worst of all, would they pounce when he was still only halfway in and tear his throat out?
The animals sensed that something was about to change, and they increased the rhythm and ferocity of their feints as Scott jabbed at them with the burning fusee. They weren’t buying it anymore, barely flinching. They’d assessed him, and they knew a bluff when they saw it.
Scott dropped to his knees in front of the door tunnel, and the wolf on the right made his move. This lunge was for real, all teeth and momentum and Scott met him with the flare. He felt the beast’s matted fur, and then he smelled it burning at he jammed the flare into its face. Maybe its eye, maybe its mouth, he couldn’t tell for sure, but the growl instantly became a yelp—a shriek, really—as it retreated into the night.
He had the seconds he needed to scramble backward, feet-first, into the shelter and pull the heavy aluminum back over the opening. Using the armrest as a handle, he pulled for all he was worth to set it in place, but the walls and floor had turned to slick ice, making it difficult to get leverage for his feet. Acrid smoke from the flare gouged at his eyes and his throat as he jammed his boot into a tiny crevice for leverage. The door was as locked as it was going to get. He stubbed out the fusee by jamming it like an enormous cigarette into the floor.
Darkness.
Silence.
Above the tympani beat of his racing heart, Scott could hear only the sound of his breath as it heaved in and out in huge gulps, wheezing in his throat, and creating great white clouds of condensation that somehow were visible even in the dark. Outside, for the longest time, he heard nothing at all, not even the whining yelp of the animal whose face he’d burned.
He could smell his own fear.
Minutes passed in the silent darkness. They were out there, waiting. Plotting. Damn smart animals, those wolves. The way they worked together, and the intensity of their eyes told Scott that they knew exactly what they were doing; that he didn’t have a chance against them.
Suppose this was exactly what they wanted him to do?
The thought came out of nowhere. Suppose they were an even more clever team than he’d thought? How perfect would it be to drive him into the shelter, only to encounter a fourth wolf already inside, waiting for him?
Jesus, Scott, you’re losing it. Yeah, okay, but just suppose.
I’d have seen it. No doubt about it. But suppose. The thought was ridiculous. First of all, they weren’t that smart, and secondly, the shelter wasn’t that big. There simply wasn’t a place to hide.
But suppose…
The darkness in here bore a thick, physical presence. It had weight. He couldn’t see a thing. And what you can’t see can easily turn you into a corpse.
He couldn’t take it anymore. Keeping one hand—his bare hand—on the door, he laid the survival knife at his knee and fumbled through the darkness with his glove, feeling for the flashlight that he knew had to be there.
The pale yellow light proved what he already knew. Still, what a relief.
They hit the door panel with the force of a linebacker, and the air filled with horrendous guttural growls as they pushed against the door and clawed at the snowy doorjamb. Scott’s foot nearly slipped against the impact, but not quite. Hot breath puffed against his ear.
“No!” he shrieked. “Goddammit, no!” But his high-pitched voice only seemed to double their resolve. Again and again, they threw themselves at the door, and with each impact, Scott felt things slipping. They tore at the doorjamb as if it were a bone.
They’d finally outsmarted him. When they finally forced their way through—and they would, without a doubt—he had no retreat. He was dead, his guts ripped from his body.
“Oh, please,” Scott whimpered. “Oh, please, oh, please, oh, please…”
And there it was. One of them broke through the snow at the edge of the door, next to Scott’s left elbow. Just a paw at first, and then a snout, with jaws chewing savagely at the air.
Scott screamed. It was a little girl sound, and for a flash he wondered where it was coming from. Then he didn’t care. Without thinking, Scott snatched the knife from the floor and used it like a hatchet to hack at the snout. The animal screamed as the knife bit deeply into its flesh, and when it retreated, it nearly wrenched the weapon from Scott’s hand.
An instant later, it was back, snorting a crimson aerosol as it further mauled the air. Scott slashed again, a more powerful blow this time, amputating a chunk of anatomy from the bloody mess of fur and teeth. It stuck to the blade and flew across the shelter as he raised the blade for another plunge.
Then the snout was gone.
But Scott wasn’t about to let himself be fooled again. Surprise me once, shame on you…
He didn’t move. He sat there frozen in place, his knife hand poised for the next assault.
Again, the silence overwhelmed him. First such a cacophony, and then nothing. His heart pumped raw terror through his veins, leaving him light-headed. It roared like breaking waves in his ears.
“Come on, you assholes,” he whispered. Please make them go away.
He heard them again. Somewhere out there beyond the walls, the wolves hissed and growled, their noises reaching that same frenzied level, but they didn’t sound so close anymore.
What did that mean?
Who cared? And they were moving now. If he listened hard enough, he could hear the sounds of tearing flesh.
Then he got it: Alpha dog, once the top of the heap and now just a snack for his friends. The circle of life. One creature serving all others.
And then he shuddered when he remembered Cody Jamieson. Oh, Jesus. I should have buried him.
But he was frozen, right?
A TV dinner for wolves. Maybe they wouldn’t find him.
They did, of course, but not until well after midnight.
Day Three
13
THE CODE WAS DESIGNED back when Isaac DeHaven was more paranoid than he’d been in recent years. Unnecessarily complicated, it nonetheless remained relatively secure. On the first day of every month, a person he’d never met received a $5,000 wire transfer via a Swiss bank account, which received its marching orders from a bank in the Caymans. In return, the person he’d never met, yet trusted literally with his life—Isaac thought of his contact as a man and assigned him the name Sam—ran two seemingly innocuous radio stations. Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, the stations were active on the amateur bands, playing a taped loop of music on one, and random Morse code transmissions on the other. By being active all the time, any potential eavesdroppers would be hard-pressed to divine the treasure from the garbage.
Isaac suspected that Sam was an errant fed who wanted to make some money on the side, but for all he knew, he was the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover himself. Frankly, none of that mattered too much. What mattered was accurate information, and Sam was filled to the brim with it.
The clock read 2:24 as Isaac rubbed his eyes and shook his head to clear it. At this hour, he worried about his foggy brain making a foolish error.
At precisely 2:25, he heard the stutter code of ten dots in a row, and then he was ready to copy. His Morse was a little rusty, so it took him several tries to jot it all down. Fifteen minutes later, when he looked down at his pad, he saw:
6789ssmqxnusejqpntqpymczamwtmabbprywrfvsgb8vmjrfvs
rttmxiabrtyutladjjfopwpabumlkdtbhgiabibmnywqbsvp
wroincxzbartfztorkmabxzasolmnbcqlvrzxxmltabqpmzxrbtoj
q7lmhplsqdvkoiimjpobabtgmnnpf9vjgdkajmprsi1234
The message would repeat itself for another forty-five minutes or so before returning to a broadcast of truly random letters and numerals that Isaac figured Sam must have programmed into some sort of computer.
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