Walt Longmire 07 - Hell Is Empty

by Craig Johnson

  As I hurried toward the door, the Basquo intercepted me. “Hey, are you sure you want to do this alone?”

  “Yep, I’m sure. I’m sure I don’t, but there isn’t anybody else for the job.” He started to interrupt, but I cut him off before he could get going. “With your experience in corrections, you have a lot more medical training; if he goes into cardiac arrest, you might actually be able to do something about saving him.”

  He studied me, knowing full well I wasn’t telling him everything, including the promise I’d made to his wife.

  He was holding something out to me.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s my daypack with supplies. I found some stuff behind the counter—candy, granola bars, a couple of cans of pop, some chips, chewing gum . . .”

  I took the bag and slung one of the straps onto my shoulder. “Well, at least my breath will be kissing-sweet.” He stared at me. I swear Vic was the only one who got my jokes. “I’ll be right back.”

  “They took all the satellite phones that the Feds had except this one that they must have missed; they’re these Motorola Iridiums, high-end Fed stuff that might have about thirty hours of power left in them, so take this one.”

  I didn’t take it. “Then you have no phone.”

  He glanced at McGroder. “They know where we are.”

  I still didn’t take it.

  He handed me his cell phone that he had carefully wrapped in a Ziploc bag. “Well, at least take this—maybe you’ll find a signal.”

  I took the phone but balked when he tried to hand me his Beretta. I patted the .45 on my hip. “I’ve got a weapon. Anyway, in this weather they might come back.” I took a deep breath of the warm air. “Do me a favor—call Ruby and report in. Tell her what’s going on but don’t make it sound too dramatic. Also, have her see what she can come up with on Beatrice Linwood’s record.”

  “Got it.” I didn’t move, so he shoved the .40 back in his holster. “Look, when Benton was moving their stuff into our van, he put a gun case in the back section. It wasn’t long enough to be a full-fledged rifle, but it looked longer than the Mossbergs they were carrying, so I asked him. He said it was one of those Armalites with laser sights.”

  I snorted a laugh. “Great.” I nodded and put a hand on the metal bar that stretched across the door. “If I find the vehicle, I’ll get it and a satellite phone. Keys?”

  He nodded toward the Suburban. “They’re in it.”

  “How trusting of you.” I smiled, but he didn’t smile back.

  It was, as the Basquo had said, like driving on greased goose shit, and now it was really dark with a skim of snow on the road that made it even slicker. The Suburban was heavy, and I started slowing before Willow Park but still locked the wheels in a left-hand turn that resulted in my sliding into the crusty snow at the side of the road and knocking over one of the ten-foot reflector poles.

  “Well, hell.”

  I threw the Chevy into reverse and easily backed off the roadside onto the snow-covered asphalt. I hit the brakes and could feel the whole truck slide backward an extra four feet.

  “Wonderful. At this rate I’ll be in Ten Sleep by Memorial Day.”

  I dropped the gear selector down into D and pulled back into the flow of things, slowed a little, and was able to keep the Suburban on the road as my mind raced ahead. All the signs pointed to Beatrice Linwood and Shade being in cahoots—the bobbypin keys in the sandwiches, her turning west instead of east, the fact that she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes off of him at the lodge—but the Ameri-Trans van was another story. Why hadn’t it arrived at Joe Iron Cloud’s or Tommy Wayman’s roadblocks at the base of the mountain? The snow continued to collect on the conifers, and they began looking like rib cages in the contrast of light and dark as I thought about all the loose strings.

  It was after I’d made the last curve before hitting the downslope that I saw lights shooting up at an angle. It was a steep embankment alongside a relative straightaway, but there was something odd about the reflection. As I got closer, I could see that it was not one vehicle in the barrow ditch but two.

  I crept the Suburban to a stop about thirty yards away, cut the motor, and put on the flashers along with the Lite-Brite—the name my daughter Cady had given the emergency bars on the roofs of my assorted cruisers. I directed the spotlight at the vent window—a term from my own youth—and illuminated the wreckage.

  It was Beatrice Linwood’s Blazer and the Ameri-Trans convict transport van. From the slush marks and the point where the two vehicles had crashed their way through the snow piled by the road, I was pretty sure that she had driven into their vehicle at the front driver’s side. With her greater velocity, she’d been able to push the much heavier step van into the ditch, where it had partially rolled over and now lay on its side.

  Drawing my Colt, I stepped from the Suburban, careful to take a wide stance, which resulted in my sliding a good nine inches on the glassy surface of the road. I let out a breath, and it sounded like a rattler uncoiling in my lungs, the condensation blowing back in my face with the smell of snakes. I minced a few steps toward the front of the Chevy and could see the body of another one of the federal marshals, lightly covered with splatters of the wet snow, lying beside the ditch.

  “Damn.”

  I eased past the grillwork and crouched by the man’s outstretched hand. There’s nothing quite so still as the dead—an otherworldly stillness. His flesh was frozen, and there was no movement in him. His coat was missing along with his boots and weapons—the sidearm and the shotgun.

  Crouching a little, I pulled my hat on tighter, just to keep it from sailing off with the wind, and started down the slope. The lights were still on inside both vehicles, but the ones from the old Blazer were starting to dim to a sickly yellow. The main cargo doors of the reinforced van were open—I couldn’t see anyone inside but could see the restraints that had attached the convicts lying in the doorway.

  Slipping my Maglite from my belt, I focused the beam into the cavernous space where the prisoners should have been but weren’t. I played the light over the cab of the Blazer, but no one was there either. The tracks led back up the hillside and onto the road—a lot of tracks.

  If I was to make an assumption, it would be that Shade had picked up all of the survivors in our DOC van.

  I scanned the surrounding area again and then continued to the front of the transport. The driver was there, leaning against his seat belt, and he was painfully and obviously dead, as was the man in the passenger seat. They’d both been shot at close range with one of the .40 pistols. I rested an elbow on the cracked windshield and listened to something in the distance, something unnatural.

  It was a whining noise that rose and fell and then stopped.

  I listened some more but could hear nothing except the wind. The collar of my sheepskin jacket was providing little protection, but I improved the odds by pulling it up higher and buttoning the top button. I took a second to think about the numbers: that meant six fugitives including Beatrice Linwood and two hostages—Pfaff and the other Ameri-Trans guard.

  Just to make sure no one was hanging around, I checked the front of the Blazer at closer quarters, but it was indeed empty. Slogging my way back up the hillside, I remembered Santiago’s cell phone and pulled it out of the Ziploc. I flipped open the face of the device and watched as it searched for service. After about a minute, I decided it was another opportunity to wait for Memorial Day and pocketed the useless thing.

  I pulled the federal marshal completely from the road and covered his face with his hat. It was all I could do for now.

  The Suburban started up easily, and I punched off the emergency lights and flashers; if I ran into the DOC van farther down the highway, they weren’t likely to pull over. I kept the spotlight pointed in the general direction of the roadside and pulled out.

  I’d gone about a quarter of a mile when something caught my eye, and I stood on the brakes. It was the main entrance to
Deer Haven, another of the shuttered lodges in the throes of renovation. The Chevrolet slid sideways but finally stayed on the road. I refocused the spotlight and could see a clear set of tire tracks leading into the deep snow.

  “Gotcha.”

  I wheeled the SUV into the entranceway, careful to avoid the deeper drifts to the left and the remnants of the broken swing gate where they had crashed through; the padlock was still hanging on the post to the right.

  There was a single, dusk-to-dawn fixture about thirty feet above the ground, with a bulb that created a giant, illuminated halo that lit up the blowing snow but didn’t shed a lot light on too much else. I repositioned the Suburban’s spotlight into the gloom. Up ahead, there was a forest service bridge with a large drift blocking the road, and it looked as if they’d attempted to head up West Tensleep but had been turned back. The tracks showed that they had reversed and then swung around just ahead of me and plunged into the area where the parking lot would’ve been.

  This was when a smart man would’ve parked the Suburban at the head of the road and waited for backup, and I thought about it. It was going to take hours for my reinforcements to get here, if they ever did, and I had a federal agent and a transport officer being held hostage. I applied the simple rule that allowed me to make stupid decisions in these types of situations: if I was down there, would I want someone coming after me?

  Yep.

  I swept the spotlight to the left and could see the complex of low-slung, dark log cabins—but no van. The tracks led straight across the flat area in front of them and then turned to the right, away from the main lodge. I drove slowly in their path and finally saw the van parked between two of the log structures that sat in a row.

  The place was a bushwhacker’s wet dream, with an assortment of cabins surrounding the seventy-five-yard open area, which I’d just crossed. They’d had enough time so that they could be anywhere.

  I followed the path the van had cut in the parking lot and saw that the DOC vehicle had gone off the edge of the gravel and buried itself in the drift between the cabins. The noise I’d heard back on the side of the road must’ve been them trying to spin their way out in two-wheel drive.

  There didn’t seem to be anybody in the van, so at least I knew one place they weren’t.

  Figuring there was no reason to give them a very clear target, I shut off the headlights on the Suburban. Also figuring that for my purposes it was just as good to have things be as quiet as possible, I went ahead and killed the engine. I pulled out my Colt and slammed it into the light in the Suburban’s overhead console. Bits of plastic fell onto the passenger seat, but I thought not giving them another target as I opened the door was a terrific option.

  Let the government bill me.

  I pulled the keys, opened the door, and stepped into the snow, the surface crusty from sleet. Something fell out along with me. When I looked down I could see it was Saizarbitoria’s pack that now lay on the snow-dappled steps leading to the porch of one of the cabins. I kicked it aside and figured I’d pick it up when I got back to the vehicle.

  There were no windows on the sides of the two structures that faced each other, only small ones in the fronts along with glass panels in the two doors. There was no movement that I could detect inside either cabin. I’d check them again after I searched the van.

  I eased the door shut and started toward the back of the DOC vehicle. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the occupants had all gotten out through the sliding door at the side and continued on past the cabins to the left.

  As far as I could tell, the only electricity that worked was the dawn-to-dusk at the entrance of the parking lot. There probably was no heat either, and huddled in one of the cabins or the main lodge, the group was most likely breaking up furniture to burn in one of the small fireplaces in an attempt not to freeze to death.

  The bodies of the two marshals were still lying on the floorboard of the van, both of them, as McGroder had indicated, having been dispatched with one of the appropriated shotguns and at close range. Benton was the nearest, so I reached out and closed his eyes—once again, there was little else I could do. The convicts had taken everything including the steak knife that I had left on the dash. I started to return to the rear cargo door where Santiago said that Benton had stored the enhanced Armalite; I figured I’d feel a lot better if I could get a proper rifle in my hands.

  Something moved above me.

  I scrambled back against the cabin wall and raised the big Colt.

  My back thumped into the dark brown logs, and I stood there in a two-handed grip, trying to get my blood pressure under control. There was a loud snarl like the kind you hear in the movies, but this one was up close and real. I figured it was going to take a couple of hours to get the hair on the back of my neck to lie back down.

  As Lonnie Little Bird would say, she was a big one, but she was thin, and I was lucky she didn’t have cubs or I might’ve been dead. She snarled down at me and backed her haunches into the cove section of the twin-peaked roof of the cabin on the other side of the van. Her eyes were the only things I could see.

  I’d never been this close to a mountain lion, and I had to admit that—even snarling with a ferocity that vibrated my own lungs—she was a beauty.

  Evidently, she’d taken advantage of the shelter provided by the overhang that gave her the ability to stay covered yet capable. I guess she hadn’t moved when the van had pulled in, but when I’d driven up and started poking around, she’d decided enough was enough.

  I waved my sidearm at her, and I’ll be damned if she didn’t slam a paw as big as Dog’s into the roof of the cabin in order to back me off. I stood there, a little surprised. The big cats usually aren’t so tenacious when confronted with human beings. I guess she figured there was nowhere better to go, and she’d been there first.

  “C’mon, get out of here. I’ll be damned if I’m going to march around waiting for you to hurdle off onto me. Scat!”

  I waved the pistol again, but she pushed herself deeper into the alcove. We were at a standoff, and there wasn’t much more I could do to make her move.

  With one more glance, I eased around the van and shot a breath from my nose, pulling the handle on one of the rear doors. Just as the Basquo had said, there was a Hardigg polyethylene deployment case lying there—olive drab, my favorite color, or so the Marine Corps had taught me.

  I gave another look to the roof of the cabin where I hoped the cougar was still crouched, stuffed my fingertip into my mouth, and yanked the glove off with my teeth. I slipped my naked hand into the plastic handle and pulled the case toward me. I was always amazed at how light the M-series rifles were—they had always felt like plastic toys.

  I flipped open the antishear latches and opened the case, revealing the foam cavities for a full cleaning kit and extra magazines and the laser sight. There was a cutout for an M203 grenade launcher with accessories, which had been filled in with foam. The attachment had obviously not been in there—the problem was, neither was the short-barreled rifle.

  It was about then that I noticed, for just an instant, a tiny green dot reflected in the van’s rear window.

  5

  I threw myself sideways, multiplying the speed of my descent by slipping on the ice.

  The report of the .223 was very loud. I hit the ground with a grunt immediately following the sharp spak of the bullet going through the back window of the closed half of the van where I’d been standing.

  I rolled over and looked at the bullet hole in the glass, small shards and snow still floating down on me as I reconsidered what an intelligent man would’ve done in this situation. I had an image of my smarter self, munching on a year-old Snickers bar, seated in the relative warmth of the Suburban, which I would have parked at the road head.

  It’s a maxim that in these situations the first person to move is the first person to die. It was possible that the shooter thought he’d hit me and I could wait to see if he’d show, but that meant lyi
ng in the snow, exposed for longer than I really cared to be.

  If I wanted a clear view, I was going to have to crawl out from between the two vehicles, which meant really showing myself, something I was loath to do. I reached over and picked up my hat, dusting it off and placing it back on my head.

  Small comforts, but I always felt better with my hat on.

  There were noises coming from the other side of the parking lot and then some voices. I couldn’t make out what any of them were saying, but they said a few things to one another and then it was silent again.

  I waited for a few moments more and then looked around the passenger-side fender. With the blowing snow, it was almost like playing tag in a river. There was someone outside, and I just caught the fleeting image of a man darting past the windows on the porch of the main lodge.

  It looked to me as if he were carrying one of the shotguns, which meant that someone else was probably still out there with the .223 and that the runner was going to try and flank me from the cabins at my rear.

  I had to move, but I wasn’t going to attempt crossing the lot—not with the Armalite waiting for the possibility of another lucky shot in the current conditions. If I squeezed past the DOC van and right, I’d probably meet the shooter somewhere out there. I leveraged up on my elbows and knees and glanced back to see if I could triangulate the rifle fire. It looked like it had come from slightly to my right—the same basic area where I’d seen somebody moving at the main lodge.

  I crouched and moved, picking up the Basquo’s backpack as I went, sliding between the van and the cabin where the cougar had been. The snow slid off the van and landed on my hat and shoulders. I didn’t wipe it off this time, in hopes that it might provide some cover from the scope, but when I turned my head, there was a SIG SAUER P226 muzzle pointed up and under my chin.

  “Move back.”

  With the shadows, it was difficult to see who was holding the semiautomatic, but hearing the Latino accent, I had a good idea. I retreated with my .45 held above my head. “Hey, Hector.”