by Steven James
Weapon drawn, the state trooper approached him.
Alexei ran through what a typical civilian might say, how he or she might respond. “Is there a problem, officer?”
“No problem,” he replied tersely. “As long as you keep your arms outstretched.”
Windblown snow sliced through the air between the two men.
How would Neil Kreger, a used furniture salesman from Des Moines, Iowa, respond?
“I don’t think I was speeding or anything. It’s fifty-five along here, right? I was even taking it slow because of the—”
“Turn around and place your hands on the vehicle.”
Okay.
So.
“Officer, I—”
“Turn around.” The officer leveled his gun. “Now!”
Alexei silently complied.
The trooper approached him from behind.
Typically, you don’t want your gun in your hand when you’re patting down a suspect because it’s too easy for him to knock it away or disarm you and acquire the weapon himself, so Alexei waited for the soft swish of the gun being holstered so that the officer could frisk him.
And he heard it.
Even though Alexei did not want to do it, he had to respond appropriately to the situation.
Three moves—rotating while bringing his arm down to knock the officer’s hand away, a round kick to the knee, and, as he collapsed, a straight, direct punch to the temple, sending him reeling to the ground. It only took Alexei a second to disarm the officer and use the bone gun on each of his wrists.
The man went instinctively for his radio, but as he did he cringed and cried out in pain.
“I’m sorry about that.” Alexei tossed the officer’s Glock into the woods. “A little surgery, a couple months of physical therapy, and you’ll be able to feed yourself again.”
“What?” Desperation quavered in his voice.
The shattered scaphoids wouldn’t heal on their own, and until reconstructive surgery the officer wouldn’t be able to grasp anything without debilitating pain. As long as he didn’t try to move his fingers he would be okay.
But even now he was trying to move them and was crying out in a helpless, childish way.
“Just don’t flex your fingers. Wait for the paramedics to arrive.”
Alexei didn’t bother to cuff him, really, there was no need, but he did place the man in the back of the cruiser. Not wanting him to go hypothermic in this weather while he waited for help to arrive, Alexei started the engine and dialed up the heat.
Since this man had called in his location, Alexei knew that additional state troopers would undoubtably be arriving any time. He needed to change vehicles as soon as possible.
At first he thought of using his rental car to get to a place where he could switch vehicles but immediately realized that since law enforcement was aware of the make and model, that wouldn’t be wise.
His attention returned to the cruiser. A police cruiser always draws attention, even from people obeying the law. So that had its drawbacks as well.
However, in this case, taking into account the condition of the roads, the cruiser had better traction, more power, and he could monitor the radio while he drove.
So, the cruiser.
To take care of his electronic equipment in his car, he initiated the countdown of the small explosive device he’d brought with him, positioned it beneath the dashboard, and set the timer for two minutes. A nominal loss, considering everything.
He climbed into the front of the cruiser. The sawmill was less than five minutes down the road. He figured he could find another car there, or even better, a snowmobile, and disappear into the national forest.
Ignoring the groans of the man in the backseat, he ran down his priorities.
First, elude the authorities.
Second, contact Valkyrie.
Third, deal accordingly with the environmentalists.
There was nothing in Donnie’s personnel files that indicated why he would have a government-issued biometric ID card with above top secret clearance.
Using my phone I clicked onto the Federal Digital Database and came up dry there as well.
But there was one person I knew who could give me some answers.
I tapped in Margaret’s number.
“Director Wellington,” she answered, even though I knew my name would’ve come up on her screen.
“Margaret, Pat. Listen, I need you to look up Donnie Pickron’s military service records.”
She responded promptly, “He didn’t kill them, did he?”
Her words surprised me. “Why do you say that?”
“Jake filled me in on what we know. I’ve been doing some checking. Donnie was a Navy information warfare officer.”
“Was or is?”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s still active duty.” I told her about the ID.
“I have no record of that information.” Her tone held a nuanced threat, and I knew I wouldn’t want to be the person who’d kept that information from her.
Although I was familiar with some jobs in the Navy, I’d never served in the military myself. “What is an information warfare officer, exactly?”
“Mainly they’re involved with cryptology and intel evaluation or dissemination. Some of them work in deployment.”
“Can you find out conclusively if Donnie Pickron is still active duty, still involved in either cryptology or deployment?”
I waited while she typed. It didn’t take long.
“Not officially.”
“In other words, yes.”
“Yes.”
“So what was a covertly commissioned Navy information warfare officer with a biometric ID card that gives him Sensitive Compartmented Information access doing here in the middle of northern Wisconsin working at a sawmill?”
The blank silence I got was not encouraging.
“Help me out here, Margaret. Is there anything more you know? Is there a regional information processing facility or cryptology center? A missile deployment base that hasn’t been disclosed to the public?”
“None of those.”
“Then what?”
“I need to check on something.”
“We have at least two people dead and a third—”
“I know that, Agent Bowers. But I’m not going to make unfounded inferences here.”
Margaret, as pernicious as she could sometimes be, was thorough, there was no question about that, and I did respect her for it. So although I was impatient, I knew that for the moment I had everything I was going to get. “Call me as soon as you find out anything.”
“I will.”
We hung up and I looked over Donnie’s arrival times at work.
If, as his emails had indicated, he checked his messages just before he left home every Monday and Friday, then it apparently took him nearly two hours longer to clock in at the sawmill on those days than it needed to.
He might just take a scenic route.
Or, he might have another stop to make.
I pictured the trails in my mind, evaluating the most likely routes he might have chosen and their relationship to his house.
My thoughts raced back to the Navy and their interest in this case.
Why here?
Why now, this week?
I needed to take a closer look at a topographic map of the region to see what areas the trails from his house might have passed en route to the sawmill.
While I was pulling them up on my cell, Deputy Ellory phoned.
“Pat here,” I said, “what’s up?”
“We have a suspect in the Pickron slayings.”
27
“It’s not Donnie,” Ellory told me.
“Talk to me.” Holding my cell against my ear with one hand, I collected the time cards and personnel files with the other.
“Twenty minutes ago we got an anonymous call to look for prints on a knife at the Pickron residence, and that it would point to a man
named Neil Kreger—but that ‘Neil’ was just a name he was going under. They gave us the tag numbers for his rental—”
“Hold on. An anonymous caller told you all this?”
“Yes. Natasha was in the area. She checked the knife, found the prints, and apparently this guy’s real name is Alexei Chekov.”
“Who is he?”
“A ghost. No one really knows. She said the Bureau has a name, but no photo, no background. But he’s a person of interest in half a dozen murder investigations worldwide.”
I was on my way to the door. My next course of action clear: call Quantico, get Angela Knight in Cybercrime on it. She can find out anything about any—
“And,” Ellory went on, “we have a location on his rental car.”
“What? Where is he?”
“That’s the thing. A state trooper pulled him over, then we lost radio contact with him. I sent a car and I’m on my way myself. The GPS signal on the officer’s cruiser just went off the grid.”
I stepped outside. Snow shot crazily past me into the room. The storm was picking up. I was really glad Tessa wasn’t on the roads.
“Where exactly was the cruiser’s last known location?”
“Two miles south of the river.”
About six miles away.
“I’m at the sawmill,” I said. “Where are you?”
“Close. Only a couple minutes out. Just south of you.”
“Where’s Jake?”
“Still at the sheriff’s department in Woodborough.”
A quick calculation. “All right. Swing by. Pick me up. Put out an APB on the rental car and the cruiser.”
“Already done.”
End call.
In the white fury of the storm I could just make out the snowmobiles across the yard, near the entrance to the sawmill. I contacted Angela to get her started pulling everything she could on Chekov, then jogged through the stinging curls of snow toward the sleds.
28
Three minutes ago, in order to avoid drawing attention to himself, Alexei had parked the cruiser at a pull-off a few hundred yards down the road from the entrance to the Pine Shadow Sawmill, then he’d disappeared into the woods so that he could approach the property undetected.
Now, he neared the edge of the lumberyard. In a moment he would emerge, grab a sled, and be gone. Once he hit the trails that led to the national forest there was no way they’d be able to track him, not with this snowstorm covering his snowmobile tracks.
My thoughts scampered forward, backward, studying the case from a myriad of angles.
The shooter at the house used one of Donnie’s rifles. Removed the spent cartridges.
I could feel my heartbeat quicken.
Timing. Location.
The lights in the study were off when the officers arrived.
Web pages had been accessed.
But the rest of the residence’s lights were on.
All of them were on.
I put an immediate call through to Natasha and asked her to check for prints on the light switch in the study. “He may have unconsciously turned off the lights when he left the room.” If I was right, the prints wouldn’t match Alexei’s but would match the real killer’s.
I heard a siren close on the road and figured it was Ellory.
Hurried to the road.
Alexei peered between two thickly bristled white pine trees. A man stood about fifty yards away near one of the log piles in the lumberyard, but he appeared to be watching the road rather than observing the sleds.
After a quick review of the snowmobiles, Alexei decided on a sled, a newer-model Yamaha with the key still in the ignition, left the forest, and headed toward it.
Ellory swung to a stop at the entrance to the sawmill not far from me and leapt out of his cruiser.
“He’s close,” he hollered. “I found Wayland’s cruiser just down the road. Wayland was . . .” Ellory’s voice trailed off. “His hands. I don’t know, this whack job Chekov. He attacked him.”
“Where?”
“His hands, like I—”
“Where is the car!”
He pointed south. “About a quarter mile down the road.”
I considered the typical flight patterns of suspects fleeing on foot.
No, not on foot. Not in this weather.
My eyes landed on the line of snowmobiles.
A man was striding toward them. Jeans, a dark blue parka, a black stocking cap and gloves. I ran through the clothing of the men I’d seen at the sawmill, didn’t recognize him as any of the employees I’d seen so far. Caucasian. Stocky frame. Six feet tall. Gait and posture indicated early to mid-forties.
“Hey,” I yelled to him. “Hang on.”
Alexei heard the man near the road call to him.
Time to go.
He snagged the helmet that was hanging by its strap on the back of the snowmobile, put it on, took a seat, squeezed the throttle, and hit the trail.
“Stop!” I ran toward him, but he disappeared across the road.
By the time I’d made it to the line of snowmobiles, Ellory had already found one and was firing it up. “That’s him. Fits the description of our suspect!” Sean was on his way toward the sleds as well. Ellory took off.
“Stay here,” I called to Sean, hopping onto his snowmobile. I gave him the files, grabbed his helmet rather than Amber’s, and tossed him my phone. “Call for backup.”
I envisioned the labyrinth of snowmobile trails that I’d memorized last night. Analyzed them. Played them out in my mind.
“What are these?” He was staring at the manila folders.
I didn’t have time to explain. “Hang on to them and don’t read ’em. I’ll get them from you later.”
He pointed at the sled. “I know how to handle a sled at high speeds. I know these trails.”
“So do I.”
I tugged on the helmet, cranked the ignition, and headed into the storm.
29
The suspect rode directly toward Tomahawk Lake.
Ellory was still ahead of me, and I wished I had a way to radio in our position because with the snow falling as thickly as it was, it would be hard to follow our trail.
I hit the ice and felt the engine whine as I squeezed the grip and leaned into the wind.
On the flat surface of the lake, throttling all the way, it didn’t take me long to hit 70.
But I wasn’t gaining on Ellory or the suspect.
Then 80.
It’d been years since I’d pushed a sled to these speeds, and I could feel a thread of apprehension run through me as I passed 85. I tried not to think about what wiping out on the sled at a speed like this would feel like.
The speedometer fluttered to the maximum speed of 90, then edged past it.
The far end of the lake was approaching fast, and the suspect aimed his sled for the flowage that led to the Chippewa River. Ellory looked like he was gaining on him.
They disappeared into the marsh.
Slowing to make the turn, I let go of the throttle but still nearly flipped as I cornered around a tree and swung back onto the trail that wound into the frozen marsh.
I tried to evaluate, with each of Alexei’s turns, his most likely destination.
The national forest.
Maybe the Chippewa River.
The swirling snow decreased the visibility, but I could see the taillights of the sled that Ellory was riding a couple hundred meters ahead of me on the trail that led into the national forest.
Marsh grass flicked under the sled, whipped past me.
With the limited visibility and the number of trails in the national forest, if Alexei made it to the forest surrounding the Chippewa River, we might never catch him.
No longer worrying about the speed, I kept my eyes on the taillights in front of me and whipped along the serpentine trail through the frozen marsh.
And then they were at the woods.
A moment later, so was I.
I hopped onto a
well-used trail. Positioning my snowmobile into the tracks, I felt the ride smooth out.
Ahead of me Ellory slowed, then disappeared around a sharp downhill bend.
I followed, but only too late did I see the fallen tree that blocked half of the trail, thick branches bristling across the path.
I swerved to the left to avoid it and felt a branch snap across my neck and shoulder, almost throwing me from the sled. My neck stung, and the snowmobile thrashed and fishtailed, but I held on.
Straightened out.
Sped up.
Alexei was heading for the Chippewa River.
A stand of pines rose in front of me, and though I saw the taillights flicker through the trees on the far side, I couldn’t tell if Ellory and Alexei had gone right or left around the trees.
I chose right.
Chose poorly.
For a moment I lost the trail, and as I swept into a small meadow, I saw an eight-foot drop-off just ahead of me.
There is no good way to stop a snowmobile.
Speed up and jump it, or swerve and roll the sled!
Speed up or swerve.
Swerve—
No.
I sped up.
You do not want to do this!
But I did it.
I squeezed the accelerator and was going 60 when I left the edge of the drop-off.
The snowmobile took to the air, giving me a strange sense of weightlessness even though I had six hundred pounds of machine humming beneath me.
But in a fraction of a second I realized the skis hadn’t been positioned squarely when I left the ground, and I wasn’t going to land on the trail but smash into a looming oak to my right. I dove off the sled, tumbled violently through the snow, and heard the deafening sound of impact even before I turned and saw the snowmobile, smoking and crumpled at the base of the tree.
In real life, crashed vehicles don’t typically explode like they do in movies, but I didn’t want to chance it. Bruised, sore, and more than a little disoriented from the fall, I managed to scramble to my feet and get away from the wrecked machine.
Great, now you owe Sean a snowmobile.
Tossing my helmet to the side, I whipped out my SIG. Scanned the area for Ellory and Chekov.
