Winter Prey

by John Sandford

The radio call bounced around the tile corridor, Carr echoing it, shouting, What happened, what happened-and knowing what had happened.

  Weather sprinted toward the emergency room, Lucas two steps behind, calling into the radio, Stay with him stay with him, we might have some people down.

  The ambulance driver was talking to a nurse. Weather ran through the emergency room, screamed at him: "Go, go, go, I'll be there, get started."

  "Where... T' The driver stood up, mouth hanging.

  Lucas, not knowing where the ambulance was, shouted, "Go," and the driver went, across the room, through double hardwood doors into a garage. The ambulance faced out, and the driver hit a palm-sized button and the outside door started up. He went left and Lucas right, climbed inside. The back doors opened, and a white-suited attendant scrambled aboard, carrying his parka, then Weather with her bag and Climpt with his shotgun.

  "Where?" the driver shouted over his shoulder, already on the gas.

  "Right down the frontage road, Janes' woodlot, right down the road."

  "What happened?"

  "Guys might be shot--deputies." And she chanted, staring at Lucas: "Oh, Jesus, Oh, Jesus God..

  The ambulance fishtailed out of the parking garage, headed across the parking lot to the hospital road. A deputy was running down the road ahead of them, hatless, gloveless, hair flying, a chrome revolver held almost in front of his face. Henry Lacey, running as hard as he could.

  They passed him, looking to the right, in the ditch and up the far bank, snow pelting the windshield, the wipers struggling against it.

  "There," Lucas said. The snowmobiles sat together, sidey de, what looked like logs beside them.

  I 'Stay here," Lucas shouted back at Weather.

  "What?"

  "He might still be up there."

  The ambulance slid to a full stop and Lucas bolted through the door, pistol in front of him, scanning the edge of the treeline for movement.

  The body armor pressed against him and he waited for the impact, waited, looking, Climpt out to his right, the muzzle of the shotgun probing the brush.

  Nothing. Lucas wallowed across the ditch, Climpt covering. The deputies looked like the victims of some obscure third-world execution, rendered black-and-white by the snow and their snowmobile suits, like a grainy newsphoto.

  Their bodies were upside down, uncomfortable, untidy, torn, unmoving.

  Rusty's face mask was starred with a bullet hole.

  Lucas lifted the mask, carefully; the slug had gone through the deputy's left eye. He was dead. Dusty was crumbled beside him, facedown, helmet gone, the back of his head looking as though he'd been hit by an ax. Then Lucas saw the pucker in the back of his snowmobile suit, another hit, and then a third, lower, on the spine. He looked at Rusty: C% more hits in the chest, hard to see in the black nylon.

  Dusty's rifle was muzzledown in the snow. He'd cleared the scabbard, no more.

  qW, Climpt came up, weapon still on the timber. "Gone," he said. He meant the deputies.

  "Yeah." Lucas lumbered into the woods, saw the ragged trail of a third machine, fading into the falling snow.

  He couldn't hear anything but the people behind him. No snowmobile sound.

  Nothing.

  He turned back, and Weather was there. She dropped her bag. "Dead," she said. She spread her arms, looking at him.

  "They were children."

  The ambulance driver and the attendant struggled through the snow with an aluminum basket-stretcher, saw the bodies, dropped the basket in the snow, stood with their hands in their pockets. Henry Lacey ran up, still holding the gun in front of his face.

  "No, no, no," he said. And he kept saying it, holding his head with one hand, as though he'd been wounded himself"No, no..

  Carr pulled up in his Suburban, jumped out. Carr looked at them, his chief deputy wandering in circles chanting, "No, no," both hands to his head now, as though to keep it from exploding.

  "Where is he?" Carr shouted.

  "He's gone. The feds better have him, because it'd be hell trying to follow him," Lucas shouted back.

  The feds called: We still got him, he's way off-road and movingJast, what's going on?

  "We got two down and dead," Lucas called back. "We're heading back to the hospital, gearing up. You track him, we'll be with you in ten minutes."

  Lucas and Climpt took Carr's Suburban, churned back to the hospital.

  Lucas stripped off the body armor, got into his parka and insulated pants.

  "Rusty's truck is around back, right? With the trailer ?"

  "Yeah."

  "We'll take the sleds," Lucas said. "Right now we need a decent map."

  They found one in the ambulance dispatch room, a largescale township map of Ojibway County. The feds were using tract maps from the assessor's office, even better.

  Lucas got on the radio: "Still got him?" he asked.

  Yeah. We got him. You better get out here, though, we can't see him and we got nothing but sidearms.

  Helper was already eight miles away, heading south.

  "He could pick a farmhouse, go in shooting, take a truck," Climpt said.

  "Nobody would know until somebody checked the house."

  Lucas shook his head. "He's gone too far. He knows where he's going.

  I think he'll stay with the sled until he gets there."

  "The firehouse is off in that direction."

  "Better get somebody down there," Lucas said. "But I can't believe he'd go there." He touched the map with his finger, reading the web of roads.

  "In fact, if he was going there, he should have turned already. On the sled, if he knows the trails, he probably figures he's safe, at least for the time being."

  "So let's go."

  They stripped the map from the wall, hurried around back to Rusty's truck.

  The keys were gone, probably with the body. Lucas ran back through the hospital, past the gathering groups of nurses, ran outside and got the Suburban.

  Climpt pulled the trailer off Rusty's truck, and when Lucas got back, hitched the trailer to the Suburban.

  Ten deputies were at the shooting site now. The bodies still exposed, only one person looking at them; cars stopped on the highway, drivers' white faces peering through the side windows. Carr was angry, shouting into the radio, and Weather stood like a scarecrow looking down at the bodies.

  Lucas and Climpt crossed the well-trampled ditch, climbed on the sleds, started them.

  "Kill him," Carr said.

  Weather caught Lucas by the arm as they loaded the snowmobiles onto the trailer. "Can I go?"

  "No.

  "I want to ride."

  "No. You go back to the hospital."

  "I want to go," she insisted.

  "No, and that's it," Lucas said, pushing her away.

  Climpt had traded his shotgun for an M-16, said, "I'll drive," and hustled around to the cab. Lucas climbed in the passenger side; whenthey pulled away, he saw Weather recrossing the ditch to the sheriff.

  "Buckle up and hold on," Climpt said. "I'm gonna hurry They took County Road AA south from the highway, a road of tight right-angle turns and a slippery, three-segment, two lane bridge over the Menomin Flowage. Lucas would have taken the truck into a ditch a half-dozen times, but Climpt apparently knew the road foot-by-foot, knew when to slow i down, when the turns were coming. But the snow was beating into the windshield, and the deputy had to wrestle the tailwagging truck through the tighter spots, one foot on the brake, the other on the gas, all four wheels grinding into the shoulders.

  Lucas stayed on the handset with the feds.

  He's either on the Menomin Branch East or the Morristown trail, still going south.

  "We're coming up on you, we're on AA about to cross H," Lucas said.

  Okay, we're aboutfour miles _further on. Jesus, we can't see shit.

  Carr: We're loading up, heading your way. If you get him, pin him down and we'll come in andfinish it. WIN, Then the feds: Hey, he's stopped He's definitel
y stopped, he's up ahead, must be along County Y, two miles east of AA. We're aboutfour orfive minutes out.

  Lucas: Find a good place to stop and wait. We're all coming in. We don't know what kind of weapons he's carrying.

  "There's not much down that road," Climpt said, thinking about it. His hands were tight, white on the steering I M N ewheel, holding on, his head pressed forward, searing the snowscape. "Not around there. I'm trying to think. Mostly timber."

  Carr came up: Weather thinks he's at the Harris place.

  Duane was supposedly seeing Rosie Harris. That's a mile or so off AA on Y Should be on the tract maps.

  "God damnit," said Lucas. "Weather's riding with Carr."

  Climpt grunted. "Could of told you she wouldn't stay puC, "Gonna get her ass shot," Lucas said.

  "Eight dead that we know of," Climpt said, his voice oddly soft. A red stop sign and a building loomed out of the snow, and Climpt jumped on the brake, slowing, then went on through. "Can't find Russ Harper or the Schoeneckers, and I wouldn't make any bets on them being alive, either.

  Goddamn, I thought it only happened in New York and Los Angeles and places like that."

  "Happens all over," Lucas said as they went through the stop sign.

  "But you don't believe that, living up here," Climpt said.

  He glanced out the window. A roadhouse showed a Coors sign in the window. Three people, unisex in their parkas , laughing, cross-country skis on their shoulders, walked toward the door. "You just don't believe it can happen."

  The feds had stopped at a farmhouse a half-mile from where their ranging equipment said the radio beacon was. Visibility was twenty feet and was falling. In little more than an hour it would be dark.

  Lucas and Climpt pulled in behind the federal truck, climbed down, and went to the house.

  Tolsen met them at the door. "I'm gonna go down and watch the end of the drive, make sure he doesn't tear out of there in a car."

  "Okay. Don't go in."

  Tolsert nodded. "I'll wait for the troops," he said grimly.

  "Those two boys are gone?"

  Lucas nodded, grimacing. "Yes.

  "Shit."

  N.

  A farm couple sat in the kitchen with a grown son, three pale people in flannel while Lansley talked on the telephone. He hung up as Lucas and Climpt came in, said, "We've got a hostage negotiator standing by on-the phone from Washington. He can call in if we need him. If there's a hostage deal going down." He looked worn.

  "We've got to do something quick," Climpt said. "If there's another sled in there, or if he gets out in a truck, we'll never find him."

  "So what's the plan?" asked Lansley. "Where's Carr?"

  "They're ten or fifteen minutes back," Lucas said. "Why don't you go down and back up Tolsen. Just watch the drive, don't get close. Gene and I'll go in on the sleds until we're close, then go in on foot. He can't see us any better than we can see him, and if we catch him outside, we can ambush him."

  "You got snowshoes?"

  "No. We'll just have to make the best of it," Lucas said.

  The farmer cleared his throat. "We got some snowshoes," he said. He looked at his son. "Frank, whyn't you get the shoes for these folks."

  Lucas and Climpt unloaded the sleds and rode them through the farmyard.

  The farmer had given them a compass as well as the snowshoes. Fifty feet past the barn, they needed it.

  Lucas took them straight west, riding over what had been a soybean field, the stubble now three feet below the surface. The snow was riding on a growing wind, coming in long curving waves across the open fields. The world was dimming out.

  Lucas had strung the radio around his neck, and turned it up loud enough to hear the occasional burp: No movement... Nothing... Five minutes out... Get a couple more sleds down here, see if you can rent a couple at Lamey's.

  A darker shape shimmered through the snow. Pine tree.

  The farmer said there was one old white pine left in the Z field, two hundred feet from the Harris's property windbreak. Lucas pointed and Climpt lifted a hand in acknowledgment. A minute later the windbreak loomed like a curtain , the blue spruces so dark they looked black.

  Climpt moved off to the left, fifteen feet, as they closed on it. At the edge of the treeline, they stopped, then Climpt pointed and shouted over the storm. "We're back too far. We gotta go through that way, I think.

  Windbreak's only three or four trees deep, so take it easy."

  They moved back toward the road, Climpt leading. After a hundred feet he waved and cut the engine on his sled.

  Lucas pulled up beside him and pulled the long trapper's snowshoes off the carry-rack.

  "This is fuckin' awful," Climpt said.

  Inside the windbreak, the wind lessened, but swirled among the trees, building drifts. They plodded through, and a light materialized from the screen of white. Window. Lucas pointed and Climpt nodded. They slid further to the right, moving down the lines of pine, coming up on the back of the double-wide mobile home. A snowmobile track crossed the backyard, curved around the side and out of sight.

  "Let's get back a bit. I don't think they could see us."

  Keeping the trees between themselves and the house, they moved around to the front. A snowmobile sat next to the door. A space had been cleared for a truck or a car, but the space was empty.

  "I'll watch the back," Climpt said. He'd slung the M-16 over his shoulder and now slipped it off into his hands.

  "Sit where we can see each other," Lucas said. "We gotta stay in touch."

  Climpt moved back the way they came, stopped, beat out a platform with the snowshoes, and sat down. He lifted a hand to Lucas and put the rifle between his knees.

  Lucas spoke into the radio. "We're here. We can see a snowmobile parked in front. No other vehicle. The windows are lit."

  Any sign of life?

  "Not yet. There're lots of lights on."

  Carr: We're here-we see you guys on the road.

  Feds: Nothing's come out.

  Carr got with the agents. Deputies would block County Y in both directions. Others would filter into the treeline and occupy the abandoned chicken house in back of the Harris home.

  We're talking about how long we wait for him. What do you think?

  Carr asked. ,00 "Not long," Lucas said into the radio. "There's no vehicle here. I don't see any fresh tracks, but I can't see the other side of the yard. It's possible that he dumped his sled and took off on another one before we got here."

  The feds have some kind of shrink on the line. He could call. We got some tear gas coming.

  "Talk it out, Shelly. Talk to the hostage guy. I'm not a hostage specialist. All I can do from here is ambush the guy."

  Okay.

  A moment later Carr came back: We've got a pickup oming in. Stand by.

  Two minutes later, from Carr: We've of Rosie and Mark arris in the pickup. They say their sister's in there, Ginny Harris. They say Helper's seeing her, not Rosie. They say there weren't any other vehicles there. They've got only this pickup and a sled, and the sled's in the back of the pickup.

  So they must be inside.

  "So we wait?" Lucas asked.

  Just a minute.

  Lucas sat in the snow, watching the door, face wet with melting snow, snow clinging to his eyelashes. Climpt was thirty feet away, a dark blob in a drift, his rifle pointed up into the storm. He'd rolled a condom over the muzzle to keep the snow out. From the distance, Lucas couldn't see the color, but back at the farmhouse, where Climpt had rolled it on, it was a shocking blue.

  "Got neon lights on it?" Lucas had asked as they got ready to go out.

  "Don't need no lights," Climpt said. "If you look close, you'll notice that it's an extra large."

  Lucas, we're gonna have Rosie call in. We can patch her through from here. If Helper answers, she'll askfor Ginny. That's the young one.

  She'll tell the girl to go to the door when Helper's doing something, and just run out the front and down th
e driveway. Once she's out, we'll take the place apart.

  Lucas didn't answer immediately. He sat in the snow, thinking, and finally Carr came back: What do you think? Think it'll work?

  "I don't know," Lucas said. You got any better ideas? "No.

  There was an even longer pause, then Carr: We're gonna try it.