A String of Beads

by Thomas Perry

  “I see lights back there,” said Jimmy. “It looks like the SUV.”

  “Don’t do anything yet,” said Jane.

  They sped past a reflective sign so fast that reading it was an act of deciphering an afterimage. GRAFTON 5 MILES. Another sign. RUGGLES MINE 4 MILES.

  “Chelsea,” said Jane. “Take my phone.”

  She took it.

  “Go on the Internet and find out what Ruggles Mine is.”

  “Okay.”

  Jane drove faster while Chelsea was working at it. “It’s hard to get a signal,” Chelsea muttered. Then, after a minute, she began to read. “Mica was first discovered in Grafton, New Hampshire, by a man named Sam Ruggles.” She scanned. “The Ruggles Mine is unique because of its enormous size. The crystal formations within the Ruggles pegmatite. . . let’s see. One thousand six hundred forty feet long, three hundred thirty-five feet wide, and two hundred and fifty deep.” She paused. “It’s also got tourmaline, amethyst—”

  “Fine. Where is it?”

  “There’s a map, but it’s just a turnoff a mile before we get to Grafton. On the right.”

  “Jimmy,” said Jane. “Are you absolutely positive that the headlights back there are the SUV with the men who raided our apartment?”

  “Yes. When it passed under the streetlights in Canaan I could see it pretty well.”

  “So there’s zero chance it’s just some kid driving too fast?”

  “Zero chance.”

  “Then trade places with your mother so you can fire with your right hand.”

  After a few seconds, Jimmy said, “I’m set.”

  “Charge your pistol.”

  Jane heard the distinctive slide-snap sound.

  “Okay. We’ve got a straight stretch ahead of us. They’ll use it to try to catch up. If they get close, remember what I said. Aim for the windshield, just above the headlights. What we want to do is make them drop back and lose sight of us before we take the turnoff for the mine. I know you can do this.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good. Roll your window down, and fire one round when I tell you.”

  Jimmy pushed the button to roll down the window, but the others only heard the first part of it, because the wind rushed into the car, blowing past their ears.

  Jane focused her attention on maintaining her speed, watching the headlights in the rearview mirror, and keeping the car’s trajectory straight and level. But soon the car behind them began to gain on them, its bigger, more powerful engine roaring to propel it along the straight stretch.

  Jane saw the sign that said RUGGLES MINE 1, and sped up, but the SUV was still coming. She shouted, “All right, Jimmy. Aim and fire.”

  Three or four seconds passed, the pistol flashed, and the report hammered their ears.

  The headlights behind them dropped back, Jane reached a hill, and they all felt the car rise into the air an inch or two, and then slam down and bounce. Jane feathered the brakes, and moments later wrenched the steering wheel to the right, accelerating into the turn. The rear wheels of the car squealed, the car trying to spin out of control while centrifugal force threw the passengers toward the doors, their seat belts tightening on their waists to jerk their bodies to a stop and across their chests to choke their breathing. The sign for the mine road seemed to float by them as Jane completed the turn. The car shot forward up the road and then veered into the bushes on the right. Jane turned off the headlights and they were bathed in darkness.

  29

  Jane turned in her seat to watch Route 4. She and the others said nothing, simply waited and stared at the place where they had left the main road. After about a minute, the roadway slowly acquired definition and even faint coloration, and then brightened in the glare of the SUV’s high beam headlights. The SUV flashed past, and the light vanished, leaving the road in darkness again.

  Jane pulled forward out of the shelter of the bushes, bouncing a bit to get back onto the narrow pavement. She drove up over a low hill and then down the other side before she turned on her lights again.

  “Can’t we just turn around and go back the way we came?” asked Chelsea.

  “I’m guessing we can’t,” said Jane. “Any minute they’ll realize we’re not ahead of them anymore. They’ll turn around and come back this way. I just hope they’ll miss this turn.”

  “But where are we going—to the mine?” asked Mattie.

  “It sounded like a good place to get out of sight and wait until daylight, when those men will have to give up and get out of sight themselves.”

  As she drove, the road narrowed to a single paved lane through thick woods. The boughs of mature trees hung over the road to form a canopy between them and the sky, and bushes and saplings encroached on the margins to make the ribbon of pavement even narrower. Jane drove up the middle as quickly as she could, and reached a spot where there were a couple of buildings and a fork in the road. She stopped, backed up, and found a much smaller sign with an arrow pointing to the right onto an even smaller road with the words ruggles mine. Jane got out, pulled up the stake with the sign on it, and put it into the car between her and Chelsea, then drove on.

  After a few hundred feet the driving surface thinned and the hard asphalt gave way to the underlying gravel. As Jane drove on she could see in the glow of her taillights that she was kicking up dust that hung in the still night air. The only sound was the ticking of small stones kicked up against the undercarriage of the car. After another few hundred yards there was asphalt again, and she could go more quickly without worrying about spinning out on gravel. They went up hills and dipped downward at times, but she knew they were climbing gradually.

  Jimmy’s voice from the backseat said, “I think I saw light.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Chelsea.

  “Back there on top of that rise, it looked like the treetops way back lit up for a second, then got dim again.”

  “Keep watching,” said Jane. She accelerated, keeping the car in the center of the road and bumping up over rises and dipping down into depressions, letting the car bounce and rock as it would.

  “I think they found the turn. We need a plan,” Jimmy said.

  “Here’s what it is,” Jane said. “I’ll drive as close to the mine as I can. It sounded like a big, deep open-pit mine. You’ll jump out, take the guns, and run. Go into the mine, whatever it consists of, and take cover. If they come after you on foot, wait until one of them is too close to miss, and shoot him. They’re not here to capture you.”

  “What about you?” said Mattie.

  “If I hide the car well enough, they might think they guessed wrong and go back toward Hanover. If they find the car, I’ll try to get them to go after me.”

  “Can’t you go with us?” said Chelsea.

  Jane said, “The entrance is up ahead. I see buildings. Get ready.”

  The road swept downward and dissolved onto a wide, flat, empty plateau of a parking lot with two low buildings on the right side. The small, barn-like red one had a low fence in front of it and big, white cutout letters over the door that could be read in the moonlight: MINE MUSEUM. The long building beside it looked like a store. Jane stopped by the fence and stared into the dark space beyond. There was a hill with a large, cavernous opening. “There it is. Go.”

  Mattie, Jimmy, and Chelsea got out and ran for the opening. Jane could see the dim luminescence of a circle of moonlight far ahead of them, and realized this was not a cave, but a tunnel dug through the hillside leading to the bottom of the open-pit. Jane drove along the buildings looking ahead for some opening in the trees beyond where the road would resume, but she approached the end of the lot, and there was only a great emptiness ahead where her headlights shone into the air but hit nothing.

  At the end of the parkin
g lot she turned right into a weedy field, still searching for the mouth of a road for two hundred feet. There was nothing but brush, and then trees beyond that. She drove through the field until she reached a thicket of young trees, and pulled as far into it as she could, stopped, and turned off the headlights. She got out and looked for something to use as cover. The car was dark colored and dusty from the gravel road, but it wasn’t invisible. She ran into the woods and found some broken, dead pine boughs and a floor of pine needles. She dragged the boughs out and tossed them over the car, went back a second time for more, and then went back a third time, took off her jacket, lay it down and scooped pine needles into it, then carried it back and dumped them onto the roof of the car. She went back and refilled it twice, spreading them over the trunk and roof.

  As she moved farther into the woods for more boughs, she saw the lights appear. As the SUV bumped up over the last rise of the forest, its headlights shot up into the sky, and then dipped low as the vehicle coasted down the last hill into the parking lot. Jane stepped deeper into the foliage to watch.

  The silver SUV moved slowly onto the flat expanse, heading along the low buildings, slowing to a stop a couple of times, once by the museum building and then at the long store building. The men seemed to be looking in the windows for signs that someone was inside. As they went on, Jane backed up inside the edge of the woods to stay out of their sight.

  The SUV stopped at the end of the parking lot, its lights shining off into the empty space. From here she could see better, and she realized that ahead of the SUV the land dropped off sharply. There was only the clear black sky filled with stars, and below it, a vague dark smear of distant mountains. Then the headlights went off.

  Jane lay down in the weeds as the doors of the SUV opened. The dome lights came on, and she watched four men get out. Finally she got a good look at them. They were wearing blue jeans, dark shirts, and windbreaker jackets. It occurred to her that they had probably not worn them because they’d expected to be out here in the woods, but to cover their guns. One of the men took a pistol out of the car and put it into the back of his belt, and another went to the rear hatch of the SUV, opened it, and took a rifle out of the storage space. The rifle had the distinctive shape of an AR-15 clone, with an extralong magazine extending under the receiver and a flash suppressor on the muzzle.

  Jane felt the tension in her chest growing and tightening. She wished she had taken the time to bring the shotgun from the apartment herself. The four men were all standing in the glow of the SUV’s dome lights. If she’d had the shotgun she would have aimed her first shot at the man with the rifle, and that might have given her time to fire again.

  Jane had given the three pistols to her runners, and that left her unarmed except for her lock-blade pocketknife. She watched as the man in the back reached into the storage space again and took out flashlights. He handed them to his companions, who took them and tried them out, letting the beams dance on the ground at their feet, and then sweep the area randomly. The men began to walk toward the tunnel into the mine.

  Jane moved down to the place where she had left the car. She knelt and reached up under the car to the inner side of the right wheel, got some sooty black grease on her hand, and then moved her fingers in a wavy line from her hairline to her chin, got more, and smeared it on the other side of her face, got more for her neck, and the backs of her hands. When she was painted, she moved after the men.

  Jane climbed higher up the rising ground, stalking them, watching where they went. They used their flashlights, trying to keep from stumbling over stones or stepping in mud, making no attempt to remain unseen. They weren’t expecting a fight. They were here for a massacre.

  She watched them stop at the mouth of the tunnel and shine their flashlights into it for a minute or two. She could see a small, narrow stream of water in the tunnel, a bit of mud, a stony surface with some loose stones. Then the man with the rifle separated from the others and began to climb the hill to the right of the tunnel entrance. Jane understood. He would find a high vantage point. While the others flushed out their victims on the floor of the mine, he would take the kill shots from above. Jimmy, Mattie, and Chelsea might be able to stay hidden for a while. They might even manage to ambush one of the men entering the mine, since the men weren’t expecting resistance. But they couldn’t do anything to the man above with the rifle, and his weapon gave him overwhelming firepower.

  The other three men entered the tunnel, but Jane concentrated on the man with the rifle. He reached the crest of the hill and moved off to the right. Jane counted to twenty and then began to move after him. She could tell by listening to his footsteps that he was walking along the rim of the open-pit mine, probably looking down for his prey as he went.

  He was easy to hear in the stillness of night. His heavy feet crunched on a gravelly surface, and kicked a larger stone or two that rolled out of the way. He changed to a careful, shuffling step. Then the sounds stopped. He had found the place he’d been searching for.

  Jane moved closer until she was twenty feet from him, a few feet higher and directly behind him, beside some bushes and a scraggly conifer with twisted limbs. She began to crawl toward him, very slowly, until she was within ten feet.

  When she stopped she could see him clearly. He was right at the rim. He crouched, then lay on his belly and pulled back the charging lever of his rifle to seat the first round.

  Jane could see the mine beyond him in the moonlight, a deep canyon at least a third of a mile long. From here the floor of the mine seemed about two hundred feet down. The long chasm was shaped roughly like a figure eight, with two round canyons connected by a narrower passage. The first section, directly below the man with the rifle, was marked by a series of cave openings, several of the largest at ground level, but the smaller ones forty or fifty feet up the opposite cliff wall.

  The cliffs on the opposite side glittered in the moonlight. There were deposits of some shiny mineral that caught and amplified any glow. One of the men far below shone his flashlight up the opposite wall and made the minerals sparkle. The beam swept away, its round halo setting off bright flashes of minerals wherever it moved.

  Minutes passed, and then the man with the rifle seemed to see something. He edged forward on his belly slightly and peered down.

  Jane remained still and turned her attention to the area around her. In her reach were grasses, thin upright woody plants, and a gnarled tree. She wondered if the tree had dropped any limbs she could use as a club or a staff, but there was nothing lying below it. She moved her head and caught a glint of light. She reached out and touched a rock with sparkly mica flakes on the surface. It was big, about the size of a volleyball—too heavy to throw at the man from here. She pushed it back and forth to loosen it. Maybe she could—

  The air below exploded with noise as gunshots echoed from one wall of the mine to the other. It sounded like five, then at least ten more shots. The man with the rifle rose to his knees. He shouldered the assault rifle and aimed downward.

  Jane sprang from her hiding place and charged toward him. He seemed to hear her coming and began to spin toward her just as she reached him, but he hadn’t enough time to turn before Jane dived at him and pushed. Both of her arms shot forward, the heels of both hands pounded his left shoulder at once, and he toppled.

  When she skidded to a stop with her belly on the gravel, he was out over the brink and already falling, his face a mask of terror looking up at her. He shrieked, but she heard only the first second because his hand tightened spasmodically on the trigger of the rifle and it fired. The recoil of the rifle tore it from his hand and the rifle fell beside him, hurtling downward with him for second after second toward the chasm floor. When he hit, there was a terrible, hollow crack, and she knew his head had hit the rocks.

  Jane lay at the edge and looked down at the rifleman’s body. She squinted and moved her
head a little from side to side. There seemed to be a second body lying a distance away across the mine floor, near the mouth of one of the caves. Her breath caught for a second. Had they killed Jimmy?

  Far below, two men ran across the open space to the body of the rifleman. Two men. There had been three down there. As the two men reached the body, Jane saw a muzzle flash from the mouth of the cave, and the two men ducked down behind the rocks where the rifleman lay. They both fired pistols toward the cave mouth, and she heard the bullets ricochet several times in the stone cavern before the sounds faded.

  Jane crawled back from the edge, stood, and found a few fist-size rocks. She threw one, then another, then another, gauging their trajectory to try to hit the two men near the dead rifleman. The first two rocks hit close to them, but as she threw the third, one of the men fired several pistol shots up at her while the other snatched up the dead man’s rifle. He looked at it, then threw it down again.

  She stepped back out of their view and heard a dozen pistol shots pound the edge of the cliff or fly upward, hitting nothing. The angle seemed to change, and she knew the two men were stepping back, trying to improve their angle to shoot at her.

  She heard other shots coming from across the mine, and she hoped someone was hitting the two men, but didn’t try to see. Instead she ran back to the gnarled pine tree behind her and squatted to pick up the volleyball-size rock. She carried it in both hands and ran along the edge of the cliff until she reached a clear space directly above the entrance to the tunnel. More shots echoed. She moved to the very edge and looked down.

  The two men were backing toward the mouth of the tunnel, still firing into the entrance of the cave where Jimmy, Chelsea, and Mattie must be hiding. The men seemed to be trying to carom their shots off the walls, hoping to hit someone with a ricochet, but their main intention seemed to be keeping their opponents’ heads down while they retreated.