by Chuck Dixon
An ice fishing shack. The two brothers Nate had told him about. He’d seen them a few days ago. Little specks out in the ice, visible from the windows of the Hoffert’s kitchen. The shacks were roughly midway across the lake. That meant a half mile more to the far shore and cover. The snow machine would be on him in minutes.
The effective range of the rider’s weapon was poor at best given the conditions. Firing from a moving base at a moving target in the dark took more luck than skill. The rider would need to close with him to improve the odds of a strike.
Levon hooked hard left out of the beam of brightening light and into the haven of the greater dark. He closed his eyes as he ran, restoring some of his night vision after the flash of the search light. The shack was fifty yards away. He broke into a sprint. The light beam washed over him, stabbing into the night to his left before swinging back to catch him full in its beam. The machine was closing near enough to hear the clatter of treads over the hard packed ice. The rider revved higher and the light beam slewed away sharply. The treads screamed on the slick surface before the machine regained purchase. The light trained his way again when Levon reached the shack and plunged around it into the shadow cast in the growing brilliance.
A simple eye bolt held the door secured. He slammed at the bolt with the heel of his hand until the frozen metal yielded. Levon leapt inside the shack.
The rider pulled up close to the shack and came to a stop. The glare of his headlamp showered onto the eight foot square tar paper box. The rider climbed off the puttering machine and raised the MP5 in his gloved fists and opened fire.
Starting at the floor line he peppered the shack with most of a magazine of 9mm rounds. Splinters flew as the lead punched holes in the walls through the plywood to come out the opposite wall. The single window shattered in a spray of glass. Empty shells clattered to the ice. He trained the weapon on the entrance of the shack and sent the last rounds in the mag through the door before kicking at it.
The door was hinged to open out. The rider’s kick bounced it open off the frame. He shouldered it aside and poked his empty weapon within.
The shack was empty.
The running man was nowhere to be seen.
No blood.
The only evidence that the running man had been inside was a coat of firehose canvas discarded on a bench set on one wall. The rider leaned over to stare at the water sloshing in the hole in the ice at the center of the shack’s floor. Black water with chunks of ice bobbing in the ripples left behind.
26
* * *
Merry reached the house to find her father’s truck gone and the front door open. The wood frame around the lock was splintered.
Someone had been here.
Someone had forced their way in.
Someone could still be here.
She stayed in the tree line watching and listening. Nothing moved. No lights from the house.
Through the whistle and yaw of the wind in the trees she could hear a whining sound coming off the lake. Like a chainsaw.
Or a snow machine.
The tracks of Daddy’s truck were shallow furrows with the edges rounded by the snow. There were other tracks, sharply defined, recent, that crisscrossed around the house.
Her father wasn’t here. He left before the men came looking for him.
And looking for her.
That was the story the tracks told her.
The power was out here. That meant the phone would be dead, too, just like at the Fentons.
Hot tears sprang from her eyes only to freeze on her cheeks. She swallowed hard. She bit her lip until she tasted blood.
What would Daddy do? What would he want her to do?
Neither of them were where they were supposed to be. The men who came to the Fentons seemed to know who would be there. Expected them to be there. Knew about all about them.
But they hadn’t known the Fentons had a guest.
They came here to the house where she and Daddy were living thinking they’d both be there.
Merry worked hard to sort it out, to decide what to do next. She tore her mind from the sounds she’d heard back at the Fentons. Mrs. Fenton screaming. The rough voices of angry men.
What to do next? What were her choices?
Her father would not want her looking for him. Wherever he was, she prayed he was unhurt. She prayed in silence the way her mother had taught her. Not so much in words but in thoughts, trying to lay a blanket of comfort over the ice cold dread grasping at her heart. She closed her eyes and prayed that the men at the Fentons wouldn’t harm them. She prayed for Giselle and Carl to be brave. She prayed that her own daddy was out there somewhere doing what he could to stay alive. She prayed that he wouldn’t worry about her. And lastly, she prayed for herself, for courage to do whatever came next.
“In Jesus’s name, amen.” She said this last in a whisper. That sealed the deal, as her mother used to promise her. End every prayer that way and Jesus would hear you. Like a stamp on a letter, her mom would say.
Her heart rate had slowed while she prayed. Before it had been beating like it wanted out of her chest. Merry’s breath came easier. The trembling in her hands and legs settled down. It was fear more than the cold that made her shake. She knew that.
Merry took a deep breath and let it out slow in a fine stream of mist.
Two courses were open to her. Two ways to go.
She could hide or she could go down to the county road at Bellevue for help.
Where would she hide? She couldn’t go into the house. The men on the snow machines would be back. She couldn’t stay outside all night. Not in this cold, dressed only in PJs and a robe.
With the help of the poles she rose from the crouch, her knees and hips protesting. She would keep moving. That was the best way to stay warm. Giselle told her that when she was learning to cross-country.
The market at Bellevue was ten miles down Mohawk Road. Cecile lived in an apartment behind the store. She had a CB radio in the store. They could call for help even if the phones were down there.
Ten miles. Merry had never skied that far before.
“So, I break my own record,” she said to herself and pushed off down the gentle grade between the trees on an angle toward the roadway.
Merry stayed in the trees until she was well past where the road split to go around the lake. She was out of sight of any homes. The stretch of Mohawk Road out to the county road followed alongside a creek bed with curves here and there where it went around patches of old growth on slopes rising to the north side of the roadway.
There were no tracks in the snow covering the road surface. Nothing had been up or down this road in days. It was an even and level course winding between the high drifts to the north and the gradual drop down to the creek bed to the south.
Merry set a pace that she thought she could manage for the long hike to the county road. The skis slid easily through the fresh layer of powder. Her arms pumped forward and back, forward and back, spiking the poles just enough to maintain balance and momentum. All about rhythm. Don’t think too hard about it. Arms and legs pulling and sliding. The way Giselle had taught her.
The woods were silent except for the rattle of branches high above her each time the wind gusted. The only sounds were the whisper of her skis, the clank of the poles in her hands, the creak of the straps over her boots. Still, she kept her ears open to scan her surroundings. She listened for snow machine motors or voices. Nothing. The snow muted everything but her own sounds.
Ten miles. Maybe only nine now. Stay to the road and there was no way she could get lost. Concentrate on what was ahead not what was behind. She made her decision. She had to commit to it.
Daddy might go to the Fentons looking for her. Or back to their house. He’d be worried. Maybe she should have stayed near the house. He could be there right now, searching for her. He wouldn’t think to look down the road for her. The tracks of her skis didn’t come near the house. She’d made sure to stay in t
he trees after crossing the road a ways from the house.
She was making good distance at her current pace, getting closer to the Bellevue Market with every slide of her skis. But she was still closer to the house behind her than the county road before her. She could turn back and be at the house, in her Daddy’s arms, in minutes.
Or run into the men on the snow machines. They might be waiting for her at the house. Or turning off the lake road to follow her.
Merry planted a pole hard in the packed snow and pivoted to a stop to look back the way she’d come. She listened hard but heard nothing but the movement of the boughs way above her head. She stared through the swirling mist of wind-driven flakes, looking for the headlamps of snow machines lighting the night. All she could see were her own tandem tracks leading back the way she’d come and disappearing into the moiré patterned fog of blowing snow.
The pattern was broken. Something moved there back on the roadway. She blinked hard. She wiped the crystals of ice from her lashes and focused on a shape growing from the gray dimness above the silvery pathway.
A figure on skis emerged out of the gloom. Head down, eyes on Merry’s tracks. Poles lifting and legs marching forward.
Merry sucked in a lungful of icy air. She clamped her lips shut to cut off a cry. It could be someone else going for help. Her mind rejected that. Somehow, deep down, she knew this was one of them.
Leaning on the poles she turned herself back to the course and pushed off. She planted the poles, pushing and pulling, launching the skis over the hard pack. Breathing steady and even. Moving balanced for a curve in the road ahead. Maybe the person behind hadn’t seen her. If she could make the curve she’d be out of sight for a stretch.
The follower was moving steady but not fast. They didn’t have to. A grown-up had a longer stride. In a long race Merry would eventually be the loser even to an inexperienced cross-country skier. Merry had only been doing this a couple of weeks. Youth and luck were the only edge she had.
The road sloped down at a slight grade toward where the road bent to the left. Merry shoved hard, building speed, ending on a double push of the poles with all her weight behind them. She leaned forward from the waist and tucked the poles under her arms as momentum propelled her down the slope faster than her walking pace would carry her. Weight to one foot and then the other to maintain her balance. If she fell now she’d lose some of the distance that separated her from her pursuer. Or worse, she’d hurt herself and not be able to continue.
Merry dug a pole in to correct her course away from the sharp drop to her right. She leaned to the left and slalomed around where the road cut into the hillside, the wall of a berm topped with tall pines. She looked back for an instant as the road carried her out of sight. The follower was still there, arms rising higher than before, moving faster toward the spot where the road turned down for the curve. Close enough now to see the blue snow suit with double white stripes down the arms and legs. The head covered with a hood, the face with a dark mask that hid the wearer behind bug-like goggles.
They’d had seen her.
On level ground again, Merry pushed hard on the poles to covet the slight increase in momentum the glide down the grade had gifted her. Her breath came in gasps. Her arms rose high, reaching out to stab points of the poles into the hard pack. Her thighs were ablaze with the effort. Her lungs raged with cold fire. All attempts at maintaining rhythm and form were forgotten. She could think only of escape.
As Merry fought her way down the frozen road she could see her pursuer in her mind; a furious thing advancing with clockwork precision in her wake. A hooded, faceless creature that progressed with a sort of motion that she recognized in the way it moved its hips and set its feet. She saw the familiar in the silhouette that was pumping limbs to close with her.
It was a woman chasing her.
27
* * *
The water was blacker than the night above.
He struck out, legs kicking and arms pulling for the other shack.
The cold all around was not cold. It was pain. Hard, hammering pain setting his skin aflame. Knifing into his muscles.
Reach out and grab a handful of water. Pull it back and reach for another.
Training came back. Conditioning took over. The hours and days spent in ice cold water at Dam Neck and Coronado came back to him.
The voices of instructors rang in his ears under the rhythm of his own pulse pounding in his ears.
Pain is in your mind! Cold is nothing! Water is just air only thicker!
Dropped in freezing pools and ice choked seas. Sometimes bound hand and foot. Sometimes naked. Sometimes weighed down with full gear. The shrieks of the instructors shouting from above reaching him through the fathoms of water. They called to him now from the past.
Pain is a bitch. Fuck that bitch! You tired? You want to quit? You want to die?
His muscles were clenched by cold fire. If he stopped they’d seize. If they seized then he’d sink. If that happened Merry was alone. Grab a handful of water. Pull it back. Grab another.
Rising above the jabber in his head was one voice ringing clear and loud and true.
“You awake, Cade? Are you alive, Cade? Then move, you worthless motherfucker! You do not have my permission to rest! You do not have my approval to die! Swim, you weak-kneed motherfucker!”
Gunny Leffertz piping in.
Levon struck out with renewed purpose. Both hands stabbing out and coming back in a crawl. Angling upward for the ceiling of ice above him. Three feet thick in places. Like an inverted moonscape with hummocks and craters across its luminous surface. Trapped bubbles of air squiggled like mercury across the surface. Shimmering silver light filtered through the frozen upper limit of his world of suffering.
His throat was gripped as if by a fist. His body screamed for air. He tamped down the urgent animal desire to take a breath. Drove it down further and further. His total consciousness was focused on the swim ahead. His eyes scanned the ice above looking for sign of the shack somewhere on the lake surface over his head.
Lose it, miss it, pass it, turn away at the wrong angle and he’d die. He could only reach it on the first try. No second shots.
“Are you thinking, Cade? You are thinking, aren’t you? You are using your imagination! That will get you dead, motherfucker! Stop thinking about what might happen and kick, damn you! If the worst happens your dumb ass will never know it! The dead die ignorant! Swim, asshole, swim!”
Ahead of him, a smudge on the ice above. A muddy smear staining the dull glow cast from above.
He kicked and pulled upwards until he could touch the dimpled pack ice with his fingers. Eyes on the shape above that was becoming clearly the square shape of the second shack. Treading water, his hand found the bottom lip of the fishing hole cut in the ice by the Walbrooke brothers.
Levon kicked up and, using his body and one bent arm, wedged himself into the circular hole. The ice was two feet thick here. He shot a fist upward and struck a lid of ice above. Wriggling and fighting he managed to wedge his broad shoulders into the cavity. He twisted his neck and raised his chin to find a few inches of air trapped between the sloshing water and the cap of ice.
A sip of frigid air to fill his starving lungs. He ran his hands over the smooth surface of the frozen plug above. He pressed one palm against it. There was no room to bring both hands to bear. There was no give. He dropped back into the icy water for movement to room. He was free floating again in the shadow of the shack.
Regaining his equilibrium, he scissored his legs to shoot him upward. One fist extended above his head.
“One way out, Cade. One chance left for you and your little one. Don’t fuck this up.”
He kicked hard, eyes locked on the pearly circle in the gloom above.
The rider searched the ice for the spent brass. Crime scene discipline. Koning insisted on it. This crew was tight. Zero errors. Nothing left behind. That’s how they all stayed out of a cell.
He was
crouched, hopping like a toad. One glove in his teeth as he brushed fingers through the snow. His fingertips skittered over the ice, feeling for the empty shell casings. He counted as he picked them up and shoved them in a cargo pocket on his leg. When he reached thirty he stood and snapped closed the flap over the cargo pocket.
He crunched over the ice to the second shack only because Koning would ask him. And the man would know if he was lying. That damned evil eye saw everything.
As he walked he ejected the empty mag from the MP5 and stowed it in a pouch on the chest of his suit. He drew another one and secured it in place and drew back the bolt chambering the first round. Standing before the shack, he placed the weapon under one arm while he replaced the glove on his chilled hand.
He looked up at a sound just as the door of the shack exploded open. A white-faced man leapt toward the rider, a long gleaming steel hook held over his head. The look of a beast in his eyes.
28
* * *
“You understand that I must determine whether you are telling me the truth or not.” The man with the dead white eye stood before Danni. She had to crane her neck back to look up at him.
They were in the family room of the lakeside mansion that sat below their cabin. A large room with furniture gathered against a wall and draped with sheets. A full bar dominated one wall. An entertainment center on the other. A huge walk-in fireplace of field stone rose up the bearing wall.
“I won’t lie to you,” Danni said.
Giselle and Carl were, like her, duct taped into kitchen chairs. Mother was set on the carpet across from her children.
“I must be certain,” the man with the dead white eye said.
From elsewhere in the house Danni could hear the sound of men shouting. Glass broke. Wood splintered. They were looking for something.
“You understand?” the man with the dead white eye said. His voice was level. Flat. Even bored.
