The Queen pbf-5

by Steven James

  “I’m trying to get to the Pine Shadow Sawmill.”

  “Where Donnie worked.” Again, past tense.

  “Yes.”

  Amber spoke up. “I’ll be heading that way. I can swing you by.”

  Okay, this was awkward.

  “It’s been awhile since I’ve been on a snowmobile,” I hinted to Sean.

  He thought for a moment. “Sure, I can give you a ride over there, introduce you to the guys. Sometimes people around here… Well, let’s just say you’ll make more progress if they know you’re the brother of someone local.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “Randy’s watching the shop this afternoon. I just need to give him a call, let him know where I’m gonna be.”

  “Give him my cell number,” I suggested, but before I could hand Sean my phone, Amber gave him hers. I jotted down my number on one of the napkins sitting on the table. Slid it to Sean so he could pass it along.

  While he turned aside to talk to Randy, Amber turned to me. “I should give you my number too. In case you need to get ahold of me.”

  “Okay.” She’d texted me earlier, but I confirmed that the number I had was correct, then Sean said good-bye to Randy and gave his wife back her cell. “We’re all set.”

  We stood; I reached for my wallet, but Sean held up his hand. “I got it.”

  Although I had the urge to argue, I accepted. “Thanks.”

  “My sled’s right outside. I don’t have an extra helmet, but-”

  “I’ve got one in my trunk,” Amber offered. “It might smell like a girl, but you’re welcome to use it.”

  Sean laid some bills on the table. “All right. Let’s go. I just need to fill up on gas and we can take off.”

  As we walked outside, a few isolated snowflakes drifted through the wind and found their way to the ground.

  Though still in its infancy, the snowstorm had arrived.

  23

  12:57 p.m.

  Alexei arrived at the Schoenberg Inn for his meeting with the Eco-Tech activists and went to the lower level on the south wing.

  He found the door marked “Authorized Service Personnel Only,” knocked twice, and was greeted by a meaty-fisted heap of a man whose nose had apparently been broken at some time in the past and never set right. Six inches taller than Alexei, he easily outweighed him by a hundred pounds.

  From the videos and facial recognition that Alexei had taken last night, he knew this man was named Clifton White. He’d been a left tackle for the Patriots before getting kicked off the team for physically assaulting a Dallas Cowboys tight end in a barroom brawl, and then, soon afterward, served forty-four months for sexually molesting a teenage girl. Alexei suspected his involvement with Eco-Tech was motivated more by dollar signs than by ideology.

  “I’m Alexei,” he told him.

  Clifton grunted, and Alexei calculated how many moves it would take to disable the enormous man if necessary. Four.

  Three, if he was quick.

  And he was quick.

  He let Clifton frisk him. He had no weapons with him, save the bone gun.

  “What’s this?” Clifton asked.

  “A medical instrument. It’s used by paramedics,” Alexei responded, “for administering medication. In stressful situations I sometimes need it.”

  After a moment’s deliberation, Clifton said, “I’ll hang on to it until we’re done.” A smile. “If you don’t mind.”

  Alexei watched him slide it into the left breast pocket of his jacket. “Of course.”

  Clifton led him into an adjoining room, pine-paneled and dimly lit, where two men and one woman stood waiting. Alexei scanned the shadowy corners of the room, saw no one else. By posture and build he identified the three people as the ones he’d seen the night before, although today they were all wearing dark-colored ski masks over their faces.

  Unwise.

  In a fight, your adversary can simply pull the fabric to the side, thereby moving the eye holes and impairing your ability to see. It puts you at a severe disadvantage in hand-to-hand combat.

  Never wear anything that covers or obscures part of your face.

  Alexei ran down their identities: the man with the black ponytail snaking from beneath the back of his ski mask was named Becker Hahn, the slim man beside him, Ted Rusk, and the blue-eyed woman was named Millicent Alman.

  All Eco-Tech activists, none with military experience.

  No one spoke.

  Alexei placed the duffel bag on a poker table that had been shoved against the wall.

  “The money’s in the bag?” Becker said.

  Alexei reached for the zipper, but Becker held up his hand. “Hold on.” He nodded toward Ted, who opened the bag and pulled out a thick stack of one hundred dollar bills. Slowly, he flipped through them.

  “Don’t worry, they’re unmarked,” Alexei said to Becker.

  “Count it,” Becker told Ted.

  Three dozen more stacks lay in the bag.

  Counting the money at a time like this was another sign of inexperience. It showed a lack of trust, and in these types of transactions, telegraphing a lack of trust was the kind of thing that breaks down relationships.

  Amateurs were unpredictable.

  “My name is Alexei Chekov.” He gazed around the room. “What do you want me to call you?”

  “Call me Cane,” the ponytailed man replied.

  Strike three. Always assume the person with whom you are doing business is a professional. Honesty is a form of respect. And respect is essential.

  So, time for a little honesty. “How about I call you Becker?”

  Alexei watched as Becker froze.

  He pointed to each person in turn as he addressed them: “And I’ll call you Ted, and you Millicent. I already met Mr. White in the hall.”

  Becker stared at Clifton. “You told him our names?”

  Clifton’s face reddened. “No.”

  “How do you know our names?”

  “Research,” Alexei said simply.

  But the mood of the room had gone sour. Instinct told him that things were spinning off badly.

  And they were.

  He saw an almost imperceptible nod from Becker to Clifton, and Alexei prepared himself. Clifton made the first move, but as the huge man reached for him, Alexei stepped deftly aside, then grabbed Clifton’s right wrist and, twisting it smoothly behind the man’s back, drove him to his knees. He had the bone gun out of Clifton’s pocket and pressed against his shoulder blade before the ex-football player could even throw a punch.

  Clifton tried to wrestle free, but Alexei cranked his arm almost to the breaking point, and he cringed and submitted. Alexei took in the room. No one had moved. It appeared that they weren’t prepared for this.

  The whole thing might be a setup.

  “I wanted this meeting to be civil,” Alexei said.

  They didn’t reply.

  “Can we kindly move things in that direction?”

  Becker glanced across the shadows in the corner of the room. At last he nodded. “Okay. Of course. Yes.”

  Clifton was still straining to be free. Alexei said to him, “I’m going to let you go, Clifton, but I need you to behave.”

  He wasn’t surprised when Clifton cussed at him, threatened him. It showed just how little self-control the man had.

  Then Alexei felt tension in the man’s arm and correctly anticipated that he was going to make a move.

  Clifton lurched sideways, trying to break free, and reached for a knife that Alexei now saw was hidden in a sheath strapped to his leg just above his ankle.

  Alexei depressed the bone gun before Clifton could raise the weapon. With a moist but solid crunch, Clifton White’s left clavicle shattered and his arm went limp and useless by his side. His blade pinged to the floor.

  Alexei let go of Clifton’s wrist and the man collapsed, moaning.

  He’d used his bone gun in this way before, and he knew that in the six weeks it would take the clav
icle to heal, Clifton would be able to move his arm but not without a bundle of tight pain.

  Earlier, when Clifton had frisked him, Alexei had noticed that his dominant hand was his right one. Now he said, “You still have your good arm, but if you stand up before I leave this room I’ll need to shatter your other clavicle too.”

  Clifton cursed at him again but made no offensive move, just placed his right hand tenderly on his injured shoulder.

  Alexei carefully surveyed the room again. No one else had gone for a weapon. He wasn’t even sure why Clifton had made a move on him, but now he was wary.

  And displeased.

  He retrieved the knife, and then brought it down hard, blade first, embedding it into the table, burying it more than an inch into the wood. From all appearances Clifton was the only one in the room strong enough to wrench it free, and it wouldn’t be an easy task even for him.

  “Now, Mr. Hahn,” Alexei said to Becker, slipping the bone gun into his jacket pocket, “could we kindly continue?”

  Becker remained silent. Ted, who’d stopped counting the money in order to watch the confrontation between Clifton and Alexei, quietly and somewhat nervously resumed his task.

  “The person financing this operation,” Alexei said, “would like my reassurance that everything is in order and on schedule.”

  “Tell Valkyrie it’s all on schedule.” Becker emphasized Valkyrie’s name, perhaps to prove he was better informed than Alexei might have guessed. For a moment he observed his associate finishing his cash count. “Do you have the access codes?”

  Alexei told them what they needed to know.

  Ted set down the last stack of bills, backed away from Alexei. “It’s all here.”

  Alexei thought of Kirk Tyler and the mess he’d had to clean up. “My employer is not happy when people let him down.”

  “You just let Valkyrie know there’s no need to worry,” Becker said. “It’ll all be taken care of. My team has stopped logging efforts in Oregon, long-line shark fishermen in the Galapagos Islands…”

  As he listened, Alexei kept a close eye on the room.

  Millicent still hadn’t spoken.

  Clifton was staring viciously at Alexei.

  Ted looked troubled, his submissive body language telegraphing his unease.

  None of them seemed interested in making a move on him, and Alexei was glad, especially with Millicent present. He was not at all keen on the idea of injuring a woman.

  Alexei waited while Becker recounted his achievements of thwarting whaling efforts by the Japanese, disrupting mountaintop removal projects in West Virginia, and blocking a proposed nuclear waste dump site in Nevada, but none of these victories seemed overly impressive to Alexei, and he wondered again why Valkyrie had chosen to do business with this group.

  What was Valkyrie’s ultimate agenda here? Alexei was usually pretty good at discerning things like that, but so far, in this case, the reasons behind the reasons eluded him.

  When Becker finally finished listing Eco-Tech’s accomplishments, he said, “Give us until 9:00 tomorrow night. Be ready for my call. The timing matters. Not a minute before, not a minute after.”

  “I’ll deliver the rest of the money when I have confirmation from my employer.”

  And then the meeting was over.

  Alexei studied the group one more time to make sure no one was going to pull a gun, planned how he would deal with that eventuality if it occurred, then silently headed for the door.

  But as he left, he noticed someone else, someone he had not seen earlier, standing in the deep shadows recessed at the far end of the room. No doors had opened during their meeting, so somehow this person had managed to slip from view earlier when he’d scanned the room upon his arrival.

  Considering frame and posture, he guessed a woman, though in the halted light it was impossible to be certain. He could just make out that she wasn’t wearing a ski mask like the other three people who’d been waiting for him, and that told him she was more confident and more experienced than they were.

  He hadn’t seen anyone with her build arrive last night, and that intrigued him. Either she’d been here already or had managed to enter this morning.

  Maybe she was really the one in charge rather than Becker. It’s how he would have played it.

  Becker had looked toward that corner of the room before he agreed to proceed with the meeting.

  Had this all been a ruse? A ploy?

  Is that why these four were careless last night, allowing their faces to be illuminated by the Inn’s entrance lights?

  Evaluate, adapt, and respond.

  Alexei arrived at the door. From now on he would be careful not to underestimate this group.

  As he left, out of the corner of his eye he saw the woman step back as the darkness swallowed her.

  Silent.

  And whole.

  And thirty seconds later, had he remained near the door, he would have heard the brief sound of a strangled cry coming from inside the room as the man who’d been on the business end of the bone gun fought uselessly to draw in a breath, and then dropped into a heavy, motionless mound on the floor.

  24

  The line at the pump took forever.

  “Everyone’s getting ready for the storm,” Sean said, one eye on the cloud-blanketed sky. Flakes swirled around us.

  Finally, after we paid for the gas, I asked Sean if he minded if I drove the sled.

  “You still remember how to handle one of these things?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  As I took my seat I reviewed where everything on the snowmobile was located: the choke, the kill switch, the brake, the throttle.

  Dad’s instructions from my childhood came to me, words still clear after all these years: When you’re going down a hill, just let the sled do all the work… Stay right in traffic like you would on your bike and watch for warning signs for bridges, road crossings, driveways… Remember, you can’t back up on a sled and they have a wide turning radius, so don’t miss your turn or you’re gonna have to get off, grab the back end, and swing it around. It’s a pain and it’s a telltale sign you’re new at this.

  Amber’s helmet was a little small and held her fragrance so I was glad it wasn’t a long ride to the sawmill. Sean took a seat behind me. I slipped on the gloves I’d worn last night on my short walk beneath the stars, pulled the choke, revved the engine, and took off.

  Sean had an older model Yamaha whose speedometer only went to 90 mph, but I anticipated that he’d pushed it up a lot higher. On this ride I had no intention of running it out all the way, but it might be fun to take it to the limit later if I had some free time.

  Regardless of the snow whipping around me, rainbowed splinters of light shone in the plexiglass shield of the helmet, and it made the day seem bright and hopeful. For a moment I forgot why I was here in northern Wisconsin, why I was on this snowmobile in the first place.

  But then I remembered.

  Death.

  Encountering the real.

  25 mph.

  Even at this moderate speed I could feel the wind rushing in the edges of the faceplate and through the small adjustable slits designed to let air in by the rider’s mouth. I squeezed the throttle.

  As we passed 35, there wasn’t much of a difference in the feel of the machine, but as I accelerated to 40 a tight vibration began riding through the sled, especially as I swung around the curves on the trail.

  45 mph.

  Speed called to me.

  Edging past 50, the ride remained pretty much the same, but then the trail straightened out, and once I hit 60 I could tell we were really starting to move. The sled’s tracks skidded to the side whenever we hit a patch of packed snow, and the sled felt like it was ready to whip out from under me if I tried to make the slightest turn.

  70 mph.

  We raced past a field populated with half a dozen white tail deer, and in the moment that they caught my attention, the snowmobile began to fishtail; I
let up on the throttle, took us down to 50, and as we neared a sharp descent, dropped us to 35.

  With the noise of the engine, even though Sean was sitting right behind me, it was impossible to talk to each other, so now he patted my arm and pointed to the right. I took us across Highway K and then cruised to a stop at the entrance to the Pine Shadow Sawmill.

  25

  In his car, Alexei tracked the movement of the bag of money as the Eco-Tech activists left the Schoenberg Inn and headed along a country road that led to the west entrance of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.

  The most direct route for him to follow was along Highway K just north of town.

  He guided his car toward it.

  We left the snowmobile by the other sleds and pickup trucks on the edge of the property and headed for the admin building.

  Logs stood piled in pyramids nearly five meters high on each side of us. Parked throughout the yard, half a dozen backhoes, log loaders, and lumber haulers waited to roll, lift, reposition, or pile the logs. A cabbed snowmobile trail groomer with enormous treads for getting through deep snowbanks sat idle near the office building.

  Even now, here in the yard, three men were driving specially outfitted forklifts, maneuvering around the stacks, hoisting and removing logs.

  I could only imagine how muddy this place would be in the spring, but this winter the ground was frozen in deep, looping tire ruts and covered by a layer of dirty, hard-packed snow.

  The sawmill’s main building sat about fifty meters to my right, near a towering stack of massive white pine logs. The facility still had a sheet-metal roof and faded red barn boards on the side facing me. Evidently it had been a barn at one time before being called into commission as a sawmill. A thick log, two feet in diameter, lay on a conveyor belt and was riding into the mill where the blades waited.

  Despite the weather, four men stood clustered outside the east entrance: two of them smoking, the other two digging through paper bags, apparently finishing late lunches before getting back to work.

  “I know those guys,” Sean said. “Come on.”