Walt Longmire 07 - Hell Is Empty

by Craig Johnson

  “Raise your arms and shut up.” As he stepped into the minimal light afforded by the parking lot lamppost, I could see the pant leg of his orange jumpsuit and the tactical boots that he must’ve taken from the dead marshal. He also wore a three-quarter-length parka, which he must’ve appropriated from the convict transport. He motioned for me to move to my right. “Step over there.”

  I did as instructed and, knowing that a little cover was better than none, was careful to place myself between the DOC van and the Suburban.

  Hector stepped around as well, carefully holding McGroder’s Sig at an angle—gangsta style. He raised a hand to his face and yelled back toward the main lodge. “Got him!” I shifted, with my hands still above my head, and his eyes darted back to me. “I said don’t move.”

  “Actually, you didn’t.”

  “Shut up!” He paused and turned slightly as we heard noises coming from the big building. “And gimme your gun.”

  I thought about my situation, how I was soon to be surrounded by some very desperate and well-armed individuals. I thought about how the odds of one-on-one were a hell of a lot better than five-on-one.

  With my hands still raised, I tossed the Colt up onto the roof of the van.

  Otero looked at me. “What the fuck?”

  I shrugged. “You said to get rid of the gun.”

  He studied me from the depths of his acrylic-lined hood. “What, you don’t think I can get up there or what?”

  “Well, you are kind of short.”

  He gestured with the .40 for me to back up, which I did with my hands still raised, as he placed a foot on the doorsill of the van and pulled himself up by the gutter rail. “Fuck you, Alexander Dumb-ass.” He really was kind of short and had to reach across the top of the snow-covered van with one hand while keeping his pistol pointed at me. It was quite a balancing act.

  I retreated another step.

  “I said don’t move!”

  The wind blew another gust from the roof of the cabins and pushed the hood of Hector’s parka against his face; he kept yanking it back, but it continued blowing forward.

  I was beginning to wonder how much movement it was going to take.

  To give her credit, she didn’t make a sound until she moved and when she did it was something to behold. She bounced once to contain her speed and swiped out with a massive paw at Hector’s hooded head. He jumped when the sound and fury came out of the alcove, and his foot slipped on the wet sill. The cougar’s lethal claws raked the cloth on the top of his head, his face was pushed forward by the force of her swipe, and he flipped backward to land at my feet. The Sig should’ve gone off, but it didn’t.

  I landed all two hundred and fifty pounds on his chest with a knee and listened to the air go out of him, which for a moment stopped the screaming, and then the semiautomatic popped from his hand.

  It was a calculated risk, turning my back to the cougar, but I figured Hector was the moment’s primary threat. I snatched the .40 from the snow and then whirled to face the mountain lion, but she’d stayed on the roof of the van and was snarling and spitting.

  “Shoot! Shoot the motherfucker! Shoot!”

  Evidently, Hector had gotten his wind back.

  “Shoot! ”

  She slapped the roof of the van again with her big paws, and I guess she was waiting to see who, between Hector and me, was going to come out on top. I figured she was planning on eating the loser. I flicked off the safety lever near the slide action, something you might not know to do if you were unfamiliar with the weapon, and kept the semiautomatic on the cougar.

  “Shoot! ”

  Leaning on the grill of the Suburban next to Hector, I kept the sidearm trained on the mountain lion but glanced at the Latino. Trickles of blood were running down his face from where the lion’s claws had gotten him. “I think you’re annoying her.” The wind blew more gusts of snow, and I could hear footsteps along with a few shouts. “I think you better tell your friends you haven’t got me anymore.” He looked at me questioningly. “Go ahead—yell.” He paused for a second, but I gestured with the gun toward the angry cougar. “You don’t yell, I’m going to let her have you.”

  The mountain lion continued to snarl and again slapped the roof of the van.

  “Hey, he’s got my gun—and there’s a fuckin’ tiger over here! ”

  I could still hear them moving closer and figured it was time to take action. I might regret the loss of ammunition later, but I needed to back everybody, including the cougar, off. I raised the P226 and fired off a couple of shots.

  There was more cursing, but I could hear them scrambling back toward the lodge.

  When I glanced up again, the mountain lion had disappeared.

  I wedged my shoulder against the grill of the Suburban and peeked over the hood. There wasn’t anyone there.

  When I realized I hadn’t breathed in a while, I took a deep one and slowly exhaled, feeling like a portion of my soul was escaping along with the vapor from my nostrils.

  Hector was feeling his head and wiping the blood off his face. “That thing bit me!”

  I pushed the barrel of the P226 in his ear. “New rules—stop complaining.”

  My Colt was still on the top of the van. I figured the big cat was gone, but I still wasn’t too hep on the prospect of climbing up there and getting a .223 in my spine. I could always make Hector do it, but I wasn’t sure that they wouldn’t shoot him, too.

  I glanced back at the main lodge. “Hey Hector, do you want to go up there and get my gun?”

  His eyes looked like ping-pong balls with pupils. “Fuck that.”

  “That’s what I figured.” I glanced at him. “So they’re all holing up in the lodge?” He didn’t say anything, so I nudged his ear with the Sig, reinforcing the rules.

  “Yeah, yeah . . . they’re in the lodge thing.”

  “They’ve got the FBI agent, the blonde woman?”

  “Yeah, they got her.”

  I made some quick calculations and took the barrel of the gun away from his head. “What about the other Ameri-Trans guy?”

  He looked at me for a moment. “Yeah, they got him, too.”

  I wondered briefly why they hadn’t simply killed him, but it was possible that they were smart enough to realize that they should hang on to all potential hostages. “What about Beatrice Linwood?”

  “Who?”

  “I need you to pay attention, Hector.” I sighed. “The waitress from South Fork Lodge, the one that served us lunch.”

  “Oh, Shade’s bitch . . . Yeah, hey that dude’s crazy. He says there are ghosts all over these mountains and that they talk to him.”

  I stared at him, and fortunately he misinterpreted.

  “I’m not kidding. He says there are hundreds of them all around watching us.” He wiped the blood out of his eyes. “He’s fuckin’ crazy, man.”

  I looked down at the top of his head and could see the four grooves where the big cat had gotten him. It was a good thing he had had that hood or it would have been worse. I figured I’d play on it. “You might need some stitches.”

  “Hey, no shit. I’m bleeding to death here.”

  I looked around at our situation and wasn’t overcome with confidence. The only positive thing I could think of was that I had all the modes of transportation and a pretty good vantage point. Of course, there was also the opportunity to freeze to death before the sun came up in the morning.

  The gangbanger looked up at me. “Hey, you know I wasn’t going to shoot you, right?”

  I kept my eyes on the porch of the lodge but couldn’t see anything amidst the streaking snow. “Well, I appreciate that, Hector.”

  “Yeah, I mean I was just supposed to slow you down till they got that thing going.”

  I studied him. “What thing?”

  “The tank thing.”

  “Hector, what are you talking about?”

  He wiped more blood off his face with his sleeve. “When we got the van stuck, Shade said
you’d be the one that would come after us; that the dead Indians told him.” He tapped the front of the Suburban with a hand. “When you got here we’d take your truck. But then one of the other guys, the guy they call Fingers, he found the tank thing in the shed behind the lodge and said he could get it going if we gave him enough time.”

  I seemed to remember an old surplus Thiokol Model 601 Spryte snowcat that had been brought up from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs back in the midseventies for use at the ski resort near Meadowlark Lake. So much for keeping them penned, but how far and how fast did they think they were going to go in a snowcat? If I were them, I’d still try for the Fed Suburban.

  I stood and checked for the keys to the SUV, which were still in my pocket, and then tapped Hector on the shoulder. “C’mon.”

  He looked up at me but didn’t move. “What?”

  Slitting my eyes to guard against the snow, I glanced across the hood. “We’re gonna go break up the party.”

  He settled into the parka, which was a good two sizes too big for him. “Fuck that.”

  I looked down at him and snorted, losing a little more of my soul through my nose. I raised my eyes and tried to sound indifferent. “Suit yourself, but with you bleeding like you are and alone, I’ll bet that hungry mountain lion comes back.”

  There wasn’t much cover between the cabins and the lodge, and I was going to have to hustle between them in open view of whoever was shooting the assault rifle. Occupying myself by thinking about how many wrong career choices I’d made to lead me to this lovely pass, I stood at the front of the van, shrugged the strap of Sancho’s pack onto my shoulder, and took a few deep breaths.

  I jolted forward and to the right, postholing only one step in the open. I slammed against the notched corner of the other cabin but didn’t hear anything. I was tempted to wave my hat but figured I’d already pressed my luck—and anyway, I liked my hat.

  I motioned for Hector to follow me. I’d cuffed him but figured his legs should still work fine.

  He shook his head and brought his hands together in a praying gesture.

  I’d given him the option of going first, but he’d said he’d rather follow. I guess he was having second thoughts now.

  I yelled above the wind. “C’mon.” Say what you want about the small man, he was agile and fast. He ran into my shoulder and stood there panting. “You do that again, and I’ll leave you out here.”

  His eyes circled the immediate vicinity, and I could only guess how many phantom cougars he was seeing.

  I stayed close to the cabin, careful to slip under the window, and continued to my right. If I remembered correctly, there was a straight shot to the lodge up ahead, but we had to go through another opening between the next two cabins before we could get there.

  I waited at the corner and hoped that when I made my mad dash, somebody wouldn’t be waiting on the other side with a riot gun. I stood there awhile just to break up the rhythm. I thought of Santiago’s cell phone in my pocket but didn’t want to open it out here in the dark—it’d be like a beacon for bullets.

  I shrugged the strap of the pack farther up on my shoulder and launched across.

  My back flattened against the logs of the next cabin about halfway down the row, and I looked back at Hector. He was still panting and held up a finger. After a moment, he threw himself into the opening, slipped in the snow, and fell to his knees, finally scrambling across on all fours.

  I grabbed him by his collar and stood him up beside me. “I think after that epic display of catlike grace, we can safely say that they’re not keeping too close a watch on us.”

  “Fuck you, man.” He trapped his struggling mustache in his lower lip. “That shit’s slippery.”

  “Stay here until I motion for you.”

  He nodded. “I’m good with that.”

  I continued around the cabin and peered past the corner—it was a straight shot of about thirty yards to the side of the main lodge, but with the oblique angle of the lodge windows, I had a reasonable chance of taking them by surprise. There was a large lean-to shed behind the building with a set of steps that probably led to the kitchen. I was thinking that that might be just the opening I needed.

  The wind continued to pick up, and I imagined it was blowing at a thirty-mile-an-hour clip. The snow on the roadway between us and the lodge was a little over ankle deep, but after watching Hector’s Ice Capades, I wasn’t so sure we could make it before being discovered.

  I leaned back against the logs and waved for him.

  “Hey, Sheriff, are there more of you true blues coming?”

  “Lots of them.”

  “Are they bringing food and stuff?”

  I glanced at him. “What, are you hungry again?”

  “Yeah, an’ that bitch only brought that freeze-dried shit.”

  “Beatrice brought supplies?”

  “Uh huh, food packs—even snowshoes.”

  Well, double-hell. Why would she go to the trouble of bringing freeze-dried food? Packs and snowshoes? Where were they going that they needed these kinds of provisions? All things considered, the sooner they were stopped the better.

  I turned to look at Hector. “We’re going to hustle across to the lodge, and my advice to you is to keep up. If they even think they see people moving around out here, they’re just the type to shoot first and identify the bodies later. Got me?”

  He didn’t look enthused with the elegant simplicity of my plan. “Yeah.”

  “Ready? ”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “All right then, let’s go.”

  I rushed forward, the wet snow sticking to my right side like plaster of Paris. All of a sudden the whiteout was so thick you could’ve cut sheep out of the air with a sharp knife. I stumbled once and could hear Hector’s breath at my back.

  The drifts got deep toward the lodge where the snow had whistled against the building and had settled in a steep upgrade that wasn’t there anymore. I stopped at the base of the steps and clung to the railing, the air in my lungs feeling like battery acid.

  Hector stumbled onto the first step. “Hey, we’re not going to stay out here, are we?”

  I swallowed and grabbed my breath by the tail ends. “No.”

  I listened—something didn’t sound right. The noise was coming from my right, and I’d just about made up my mind that it was just the wind striking the corner of the building when the keening increased its pitch.

  I grabbed Hector as the padlocked barn door of the shed blew apart, with the majority of the nearest twelve-foot door tumbling on top of us. The metal bars of the railings, which were set in the concrete steps, held the weight of the thing above us, but it shifted when something very big rolled over the wooden planks, first raising them and then slapping them down on us again. The wood splintered this time, but the railings held, and Hector and I crawled toward the building, toward the only opening afforded us.

  I was the first to get clear of the shattered remains of the shed and slid up at the corner of the lodge in time to see the big, weathered blue shoebox of a 601 Spryte snowcat pivot a few times as the driver attempted to get a feel for the thing. He finally got the thirty-two-inch tracks going in the direction he wanted, which happened to be into the parked Suburban.

  The Thiokol thundered into the side of the Chevrolet, pushing it onto the porch of one of the cabins; the porch collapsed and the SUV was buried in the rubble. The 601 pivoted again, and I could see the primer patches on it—the U.S. AIR FORCE 6385 443 designation was still painted on the back, along with, scripted below, FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY.

  I raised the .40 and aimed at the small windows in the thing, but what was I going to shoot and whom? I allowed the Sig to slip to my side as the snowcat pivoted once again, climbed the small embankment, and turned left on West Tensleep Road.

  Left.

  I ducked my head down and peered into the gloom and blowing snow just to make sure I’d seen what I’d seen. They weren’t h
eading for the paved road to the south but north, up the snow-covered, dead-end road toward West Tensleep Lake.

  Left.

  I watched as they continued toward the bridge, easily maneuvering over the drift that had stopped me flat, the motor accelerating in the distance until the noise mingled with the wind and was gone.

  “This ain’t fair.” As if to demonstrate the cruelty of my act, Hector yanked at the handcuffs that secured him to the water pipes. “What if that fucking tiger comes back?”

  I finished patching his head with the available medical supplies in the first-aid kit under the counter. He looked like he was wearing a gauze beanie, but at least the bleeding had stopped for good. I stuffed a few of the water bottles I’d found into the Basquo’s pack and tossed one to Hector. “Here.”

  He caught the bottle with his free hand and sat back on the chair I’d provided for him behind the counter beside the cash register next to the pay phone. “What am I supposed to do?”

  I needed to make more room in the pack, so I emptied it and arranged the items on the round table in the dining area of Deer Haven Lodge. Saizarbitoria had scrounged up a pretty good amount of candy bars, a bag of Funyuns, and a few cans of Coke. I axed the pop—the water was what I was going to need. “Around these parts, we drink it.”

  “I mean about the tiger!”

  I pulled the cell phone out of my pocket and from the plastic bag. I planned to place it in the nifty, little pouch on the outside of the pack so that I could find it later. First, though, I flipped it open and looked at the battery indicator, which read about three-quarters, and then at the signal indicator, which read nothing. There was no service; it was just as well, since I was going to feel pretty silly telling everybody about how I’d found the escaped convicts but, after being shot at and pretty much hit with a barn door, had allowed them to escape.

  On a whim, I went over to the pay phone next to Hector, picked up the receiver, and clicked the toggle—there was a dial tone. I dialed 911.

  “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.”