by Ilsa J. Bick
“Be good, babies.” Strapping on a headlamp, she gave each dog a pat. “Back in a jiffy.”
Chapter 6
Standing on the porch, the first thing Sarah noticed—the snowfall was tapering, the storm winding down. The wind still shrieked, spinning snow into arabesques, turning the world within the silver-blue glow from her headlamp into the landscape of a snow globe. Thank God. The sheriff knew Hank had set off for her place on Saturday to deliver bad news about Soldier. They would assume he was still on the mountain. A slackening storm meant anyone who decided to head up to check on Hank, who’d not reported in for days, could probably make it to the tower. They’d be tough miles on narrow switchbacks but doable with the right equipment.
What sucked: help would arrive too late.
Postholing through fresh-fallen powder, she wallowed to the fire tower which thrust up like a rocket from a pristine mantle of white. She took the steel steps carefully, mindful of ice, panning her light back and forth. As she climbed, the lyrics to a song drifted through her mind. Tiiime is on my side, yes, it is... The song was all right, but the way John Goodman belted it out in that movie as he stalked Denzel Washington was just so creepy. The last line, too, as he crashed through the cabin’s door: “Time’s up!”
Apt, considering.
Near the top of the steps and just beneath the platform, long icicle fangs glinted from a staggeringly large mass of sticks and twigs wedged in the metal supports crisscrossing the tower’s underbelly. Bald eagles had nested there this past season, which surprised her since the big raptors usually liked nests closer to larger bodies of water. On the other hand, they really did have a bird’s-eye view from here. She’d kept meaning to take the nest down once the eaglets fledged but always forgot.
Once on the catwalk, she closed the trap and hurried inside, shivering as the wind’s frigid fingers wormed into her collar and down her neck. The cab was as she’d left it, Mark’s map still in place. Crunching over icy snow, she pulled out Mark’s radio, gave it a wake-up tap then poked GPS. The screen flared to life, showing the now-familiar route Mark had taken to her doorstep. Earlier, she’d noted how, from his starting point just over the Canadian border, Mark’s route had skirted every fire road except one near Fortine, a tiny little speck of a place that if you blinked, you were past and, therefore, a logical place for him and the other bad guys to take possession of Tien and however many other girls there were in this smuggling operation.
From there, Mark made a beeline southeast for Dead Man. But then, three days ago, you detoured again. Comparing the topo to his GPS, she saw where his path diverged from a roughly easterly course to the mountain. Mark’s path had him skirting Dead Man to bushwhack into a broad valley cut by a smaller river, coursing southwest to northeast. She knew that river, Logan’s Run, because Josie, her SAR instructor, had once taken her and Soldier there. And Tien’s clothes were sopping. She assumed that was snowmelt, but the girl might have had to ford the river, too.
What it boiled down to was this. Three days ago and twenty miles from Dead Man, Mark veered off toward Chaney. Assuming the bad guys he was with continued on without Mark and factoring in the heavy snow and having to herd the girls, she bet those guys weren’t making better than five miles a day.
So, five miles per day for three days...Bingo. Starting at the point where she thought Mark had left the group, she traced a route toward Chaney Peak. Mark’s path to her doorstep hadn’t been a straight shot but a looping detour. That made sense, too. Tien’s course had been erratic, a wild dash, and when people panicked, they tended to bumble around in circles, especially when it was cloudy or there was no moon. It was a miracle the poor girl hadn’t run right back into the arms of her pursuer. Or, maybe, she did. Tien might have circled back and since he’d been tracking her, Mark would be coming downhill, not up, which would explain that high-angle gunshot wound on Tien’s back.
Meanwhile, even if the bad guys took the most direct route to chase down Mark, there were fifteen, sixteen miles between them and the tower.
All right, she could work with this. It was like what her dad always said when tackling any problem, If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else. She remembered how disappointed she’d been when she discovered it had been Yogi Berra and not her dad who’d dreamt up that one. But Yogi was right, and so was her dad.
She had data now. These guys weren’t supermen. The bad guys had been on the trail for about three hours already. How much ground could a person cover in the snow, probably with snowshoes, and at night in that time? Maybe two miles an hour? Maybe. Plus, they’d already had a full day’s worth of hiking under their belt before they started. They would be slower, already tired, and even more exhausted the longer they had to wallow through snow. If she was right, they still had about six, seven miles and change. Being charitable, that put them three, three and half hours out, and every inch a slog. They would get here either at or shortly after dawn, but they’d have had no rest. Nothing hot to drink.
If they got here before dawn, they would have to turn off their headlamps or else she’d see them and any element of surprise was blown. Unless they had night vision. Had Mark? She frowned, thinking back over what she’d found in his pack. No, she hadn’t seen anything like an NVG. Regardless, the longer they waited, the worse off they’d be. They’d stiffen up. They’d get cold. But they would have to do it because they would have to figure out where Mark was. No point coming all this way just to get aerated by the guy.
And they wouldn’t really worry about her. To them, she was a scared little rabbit, and she could use that assumption to her advantage.
All right. Okay. She knew where she was going. Now, she could plan.
03:30
She was on the catwalk, facing roughly north and in the direction she and Hank had stood on Saturday night listening to gunfire, wondering who might be in trouble. Her cheeks burned from cold. Her eyes stung. Hugging herself, she turned over her options.
Her first and most obvious choice: get the hell out of Dodge. Strapping Tien into Mark’s IPC would take some doing, but the thing was essentially a harness. Just lay out the straps on the floor, arrange Tien on top of the carrier, slip her arms and legs through the loops, and then hoist. The girl was a feather, a wisp of a thing. Sarah had packed in supplies which weighed more.
Soldier would probably manage the slog. The big black shepherd wasn’t indestructible, but he could make it down the mountain. Daisy was a different matter. The little girl had heart but wouldn’t last fifteen minutes in snow that was over her head. Carrying her would be the best option, but even a good dog gets restless, and she couldn’t risk Daisy doing her best beagle’s ROOR-roor-roor, which she most certainly would. What about sedation? She could do that. Plenty of ketamine left. Put the little dog into la-la land, bundle her into a front pack or her parka where she’d stay nice and toasty, and hit the trail.
Except...she worried her lower lip with her teeth...she would have to wait. Visibility would stink, even with a headlamp. Lifting her face to the night, she felt snow lightly salt her cheeks. Of course, if the snowfall stayed light or stopped, that would help. Yet that wouldn’t change the fact that, day or night, she’d be picking her way over uneven terrain on snowshoes. Turning an ankle or stumbling off a narrow switchback to tumble for God knew how long downslope were distinct possibilities.
And what about Mark? She couldn’t cut him loose. He was a snake. For God’s sake, she couldn’t even decide how to let the guy take a leak. Marching him down at gunpoint was a nonstarter.
Which meant leaving him for the bad guys. Ten to one, Mark would rat out whoever else was involved, but they’d probably still kill him. She couldn’t do that, either.
Crap. She pressed a finger to the throb above her forehead. She couldn’t leave.
Which meant…fight.
03:35
She could fight. Maybe. She was a good shot, especially with a rifle. A stationary target at two-hundred yards
? Piece of cake.
But this isn’t a range. These guys will be moving. Worse, they’d be coming up a rise. If they were like Mark, they knew what a shot sounded like. They knew how to maneuver and evade. They were pros, and there were more of them than her.
Although she had the dogs. Specifically, she had Soldier.
When she’d gone to Lackland to visit Pete, she’d watched as handlers waddled around in khaki-colored protective bite sleeves and protective gauntlets that made them look like the Michelin tire guy. The command was simple: Go get him! The dogs took off like rockets, catapulting themselves at the guy in the suit, their aim unerring as they grabbed a bite sleeve or leg gauntlet and then hung on even if the guy in the suit spun them around and around. Once a dog had you, it took an act of Congress to shake him off. Funny, now that she was thinking about it, she’d never seen a single dog go for anything but a limb. She supposed that was because arms and legs were easier to snag than throats. Or because throats were vulnerable targets. No real bone there, just cartilage and muscle, and perhaps handlers didn’t want their dogs to get used to killing people. Was there a separate, very specific command for kill the asshole? She didn’t know.
But she could see this, taste the possibility—Soldier exploding, coming on like a missile, hurtling through the air in one gigantic leap to take down the closest guy while she took the second, who would be so surprised he wouldn’t have time to react. A supposition, but a girl could dream and that might work. But only if there were two bad guys. The problem was, Mark thought there were at least three.
Which meant her only option with the Soldier-attack approach was she had to shoot the second guy right away, wait for the third guy to come charging around the corner and take him—and then hope there wasn’t a fourth guy.
Crap. Doing it that way, she and the dogs and Tien and, yes, that snake Mark, still ended up dead and maybe a lot faster. The only saving grace was she’d take at least one and also be spared the obligatory being slapped around a bit and Lord knew what else before they pulled the trigger.
Crap. So, what? She just sat here and waited? No, that was stupid. C’mon, there has to be something. But what? Sighing, she leaned her arms on the catwalk’s railing, let her hands dangle. Stared down at where the cabin ought to be—
And thought, Wait a minute. Wait just a damn minute.
A finger of memory nudged, something Pete once said about fighting Taliban and other insurgents. How a soldier couldn’t let himself get trapped in a wash or swale or narrow valley because all an enemy had to do was aim down and pour it on. Plunging fire, that was it.
Well, where was she? Right this second?
She was in the tower. She was seventy feet above this chess board and they weren’t talking Mongol hordes here.
The real question was whether she could defend the tower. While tempting, the answer was probably no. Other than the struts and stairs, the cab was wood and glass. She might hide inside, but then the bad guys shoot out the windows and she’s dodging a rain of glassy shrapnel. They probably had rifles similar to Mark’s, too. A bullet would cut through wood like a hot knife through butter. With her luck, they might even have grenades or RPGs or something.
Besides, the catwalk was wood. All they had to do was take the stairs then point and shoot. If a bunch of them shot at once, she’d be Swiss cheese in a nanosecond even if she locked the trap. Wait, could she padlock the trap? Lure them up and trap them here? Forget the little problem of getting them all up here in the first place; she wanted to know if it was possible. Along with the keys to the cabin, the Park Service had also given her one for the trap along with strict instructions to lock up every night. It was a dumb rule. She was all by her lonesome, for God’s sake. Plus, through-hikers had started up in early summer and it was a pain to always be humping up and down to let people in and out. She’d finally left the trap open.
Thumbing on her headlamp, she studied the railing then reached a hand and gave it a good shake. No wobble, no give. But, wait a minute... She turned the beam on the trap and felt her stomach sink with dismay. Crap. There was no hasp on this side, which made perfect sense. You wouldn’t want some nut locking herself up here. The padlock’s hasp was on the underside of the trap. Theoretically, she could barricade herself off by locking the trap door, but unless she got really lucky and found a spare hasp and doohickey for the ring to screw into the catwalk—oh, and a power drill would be nice—it would also mean monkeying her way along the metal supports to the edge, and then somehow boosting herself up enough to snag the railing and drag herself onto the catwalk, and all without slipping and ending up as the human equivalent of a water balloon.
Damn. She felt that brief, hopeful flare gutter. Taking up a defensive position here was a non-starter, even if she could get the dogs up safely and Tien, too.
Then, what? What was left? What was she supposed to—
There came a shot from the darkness. Then another. And then one more.
03:38
Rifle.
The shots had come from the general direction she thought Mark’s bad guys would, and she wheeled about, eyes straining to make out details where there were none, the gunshots’ echoes dying with time and distance. She had no way to gauge distance. There were too many variables, but she thought whoever was shooting—the bad guys, presumably—was closer rather than farther away. Yet, if that was true, who were they shooting at? Why?
You can’t know for sure, the voice that might be Pete said. Deal with what’s in front of you.
The voice was right. Someone out there was shooting at something or someone, and she wouldn’t solve this mystery now.
03:39.
She decided to warm up. Reaching for the trap, she bent with a groan, the small of her back complaining, her joints seizing up with fatigue. She felt as hollow as a watermelon with all the guts scooped out. Turning so she faced the steps, she took a cautious step down and then another. Out of habit, she stretched for the trap, grabbed the handle, and swung the trap shut, wincing as the hinges bawled. She’d meant to oil those things a thousand times; there was an ancient rusty can of WD40 in her back storeroom. Or the engine oil would’ve done in a pinch. Something always came up.
She’d gone down two more steps when she thought she should probably lock the thing up. She couldn’t use the tower, but they might. Maybe mount a sentry while they beat the crap out of her and Mark. Or maybe just Mark; she didn’t know diddly. These guys had radios. All a sentry had to do was get on the horn if some unlucky rescuer appeared on the trail.
She’d secured the padlock around a strut to the right of the trap so she couldn’t possibly lose it. Tugging off a glove with her teeth, she dipped her right hand into the coat pocket where she kept her keys.
Something tumbled from her pocket, a fact she was aware of only after her fingers snagged the ring as something slick slipped past. Crap. Aiming her light, she was just in time to see an orange wink right before the flare gun hit snow and then disappeared. Damn. She had to close her eyes a moment. Just one more thing. She’d dig the flare gun out of the snow before going back to the house.
Good thing it wasn’t the Glock. Reaching for the lock, she socked the key into the slot with stiffening fingers. Being so much heavier, the Glock would have tunneled deeper, and the last thing she wanted was to be digging in the snow right now. She wondered idly if the Glock would’ve gone off on impact. She doubted it. All pistols had drop-safeties to prevent exactly that. Now, long guns might. She bet a flare gun didn’t have a safety—
She went completely, utterly still.
Wait a minute. Heart suddenly thumping, she jerked her head back, aiming her light for the undercarriage of the cab. The abandoned eagle’s nest leapt into view as if a curtain had been raised and a spot suddenly shone onto a stage. Wait just a damn minute.
Plunging fire. Only...in reverse.
Yes. It could work. It all depended on whether or not she could play on their assumptions about her. She thought she
knew a way.
She glanced at her watch. 03:42 became 03:43.
Dawn was roundabout seven. If the bad guys got here early, they would wait below the rise, out of sight, but still have a good view of the tower. She needed to be done before then.
Time is on your side, said the voice that might be Pete or herself or both. Don’t waste it.
Toggling to her Casio’s stopwatch, she punched in numbers and hit the orange start button.
T-minus three hours, fifteen minutes—and counting.
Chapter 7
What the hell am I doing? Jamming a stick in the center of a crude X he’d dug out with his boots, Gabriel Dane thought that was a damn good question. Why am I doing this? Why did I listen to Mac? Turning his back on his marker, he moved off, head down, rifle hooked to a shoulder, eyes slitted against swirling wind-driven ice and snow. What good is me going all the way to Lonesome going to do when I should be backing her up?
His answer was the same each time. Because Mac had told him to. This was Mac’s plan and given that she was also the equivalent of the Six Trillion Dollar Woman, while he was only flesh and blood and a loser to boot...he didn’t see how he could object.
Didn’t mean he had to like it.
He watched his boots kicking troughs in fresh powder. At the moment, he was wallowing through a broad valley peppered with snow-laden pines and large hummocks of snow-covered buckthorn. The dump from a day ago was tamped down enough he wasn’t postholing up to mid-calf the whole way, so that was something. The work was actually good, too, keeping him relatively warm, his muscles loose. Still, he’d kill for a decent pair of snowshoes. That, and a nice warm fire, a good bed, something decent to eat.