The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers)

by Mark Dawson

  He kept slithering, arm over arm, until he reached the driver’s seat. A flight of four steps led down to the door at the front of the cabin, but only half of it was panelled with glass. He wouldn’t be seen.

  The keys had been left in the ignition. Milton had no idea whether the engine would still work. He thought of the bindweed wrapped around the wheels. When had it last been fired up? Had it been cared for? Was there any gas in the tank? If it hadn’t, or there wasn’t, he was dead. He slithered another half foot, reached his left hand to the gas pedal and then snaked his right up above his head, finding the key and twisting it as he pumped down on the gas.

  The engine croaked and spluttered.

  Come on.

  Now Lundquist knew what he was trying to do.

  “Fire!”

  A parabola of glass fell onto him as the windshield was blown inwards.

  Milton twisted the key a second time.

  Come on.

  The engine coughed and barked and then fired, a thin rumble that he could feel through the floor. The RV had been left in gear, and it jerked forwards. He reached down with his right hand and yanked up on the handbrake, then punched down on the gas. The RV bumped as the wheels rolled over the chocks and then picked up speed. The firing continued from all sides, rounds lancing in through the denuded window and punching out again through the roof, another shotgun spread blowing out the windows at the rear.

  He remembered which way the Winnebago had been left, its nose pointing back up the rough track to the entrance to the hollow. Milton hauled himself to his haunches, bracing himself against the seat to mitigate the lurching roll as the RV struggled out of the hollow. He reached up to sweep the fragments of glass from his scalp and dared to raise his head above the lip of the window. The road into the trailer park ahead was blocked by the Explorer and, behind that, a van and a police cruiser that hadn’t been there when he arrived. He swung himself up onto the seat, jagged flakes of glass scratching at his legs, the wind from the open window rushing around him. The engine was screeching in first, and he took the stick and crunched down into second, wrenching the stiff steering wheel just in time to avoid slamming the RV into the gatepost.

  He looked in the big side mirrors: the one to his left had been destroyed, but the other one was intact, the men left in the Winnebago’s wake following after it on foot. He saw muzzle flashes as two guns fired, the bullets winging into the RV and ricocheting off with metallic pings. Milton crashed into the rear of the Explorer, bouncing it out of the way. He would have preferred to have been in something like that, something with a little more power than this old heap, but there was no time to change vehicles.

  He gave himself a thirty-second head start.

  He had to make it count.

  PART THREE

  Chapter 23

  MILTON SPED through the trailer park and out onto West McMillan Avenue. He swung the wheel and hauled the RV around to the right, passing the junctions with East Court and West Court Streets before reaching the crossroads that bisected Falls Road. He ignored the stop sign, skidding around in a wide loop and bouncing off the row of parked cars outside the offices of North Coast Realty. Metal crunched loudly and alarms sounded, a pedestrian shrieking abuse at him, as he stamped on the gas again and changed up to third.

  Behind him, he heard the sound of a police siren.

  He looked down at the speedometer. He was doing fifty, and the engine was already protesting. He might be able to squeeze sixty out of it, if he was lucky, but no more. The RV wasn’t built for speed, and what was more, this one had been idle for a long time. It had been a small miracle that it had started at all, and he didn’t want to push his luck.

  Wind was lashing his face and stinging his eyes. He swerved around two cars waiting for a red light, slaloming between oncoming traffic from the left and the right, a cacophony of angry horns sounding in his wake. He pulled out to overtake a logging truck, trunks lashed down to its bed, and swung in ahead of it just in time to avoid another truck coming in the opposite direction. Two more angry horns sounded as he pulled away.

  The northern outskirts of town were marked by the railroad, a single track that led to Marquette to the east and Duluth in the west. The railroad signal ahead was flashing red, and the bells were clanging, and with no other cards to play, Milton counterclockwised the wheel hard and screeched around to the left, teetering on two wheels briefly until the RV straightened out and all four wheels touched down again. Railroad Street ran alongside the tracks for a mile, and Milton followed it, the road dipping down and then climbing again, racing by the cheap prefabricated housing that abutted the line. The siren grew louder and, as he looked back in the mirror, he saw the blue and red lights of a cruiser as it turned off the main road and sped along in pursuit. It was directly behind him. It was coming fast. He would never be able to outrun it and, if he stopped, they would shoot him. He had to go someplace they couldn’t follow.

  The engine began to splutter. Milton looked down at the dash again and saw that the fuel gauge was showing empty.

  Come on.

  The asphalt ran out, and the road continued as a bare, unadopted track littered with fist-sized rocks and pocked with cavities that crushed the RV’s ancient suspension as it bounced over and through them. He lost speed, but the cruiser did not.

  It drew nearer and nearer.

  He heard the big train before he saw it, a low, throaty rumble that grew louder until he saw the orange locomotive heading right at him. A triangle of headlamps glowed brightly down the tracks, and clouds of black fumes spewed out into the night. The diesel’s horn shrieked as the driver saw the RV barrelling towards him.

  Milton gripped the wheel tight and kept his foot down hard, pressing the gas pedal to the floor.

  The cruiser was close, twenty feet behind and narrowing the gap, but Milton didn’t mind that now. He wanted it to be close. It suited what he had in mind.

  He swung across to the right of the road, leaving enough space for the car to accelerate on his left. He turned and looked and saw Lundquist at the wheel, the flashing lights pouring into the cab. Michael Callow was in the passenger seat, the window open, a shotgun pointed right at him.

  Too close to miss.

  Milton waited until the last possible second, so near to the massive diesel that he could see its registration stencilled across its flank and then the angry face of the driver in the lit cab. He heaved the wheel to the right, the RV bouncing up the small embankment until it reached the track, the front wheels buckling as they crashed over the leading rail and skimmed across the second. Its forward momentum, although rapidly retarded, was still more than enough to send it down the embankment, steeper on this side, and the front of the RV buried itself into the ditch that separated the railroad from the field beyond. The sudden impact propelled Milton from the seat, bouncing him off the wheel. His head crashed against the dashboard and his vision dimmed. His ears filled with the indignant roar of the train’s horn.

  Milton’s head swam and, as he opened his eyes, he saw two of everything. He wanted to rest, to let the screeching noise in his head subside, to assess the bellow of pain from his left arm. His hearing corrected itself, and the screeching became deeper, an angry ululation as the train thundered by.

  The train… the train…

  He came around.

  He had only bought himself a little time. The cruiser would be on the other side of the train, Callow with his shotgun, and now Milton had no transport to use to get away from them. He had to get clear and spend the advantage he had won to put some distance between them.

  He reached his left hand for the handle next to the door and started to pull himself out of the seat. The pain in his arm intensified. He let go and probed with his right hand. His arm was tender and sore, and the harder he pressed, the worse the pain became.

  But there was no time to worry about that.

  The Winnebago was tilted forwards at fifty or sixty degrees. The angle pressed his chest
against the wheel. Milton turned so he could reach his right hand over the back of the seat and pulled himself back into the salon, grabbing the back of a chair, an open cupboard door, the table’s single leg, anything within reach. He didn’t have the time to make a proper search, but he knew he couldn’t just run. He had already decided that he was going to hide in the woods until he had the chance to assess the situation, but his bag, his rifle and all his gear were still back in the Sheriff’s Office in Truth.

  He had to find the essentials.

  He looked for Mallory’s pack, but she must have left it in the Pontiac. No way to get that now. He would have to improvise.

  He found a bag in the cupboard. There was a first-aid kit above his head, and he yanked it off the wall and stuffed it into the bag. He grabbed a saucepan from where it had fallen to the floor and shoved that in, too. He found a flashlight in a cupboard beneath the sink, a nylon line that was used to dry clothes, another kitchen knife with a serrated edge, cable ties, a roll of dental floss from the bathroom and a small bottle of alcohol-based sanitising gel.

  He yanked the drawstring tight, tossed the bag to the front of the RV, and scrambled after it, pulling himself through the empty window of the driver’s side door and dropping out into long grass between the trunks of the trees. He reached in and hauled the bag out after him.

  The train was still coming: freight cars loaded with logs and then a line of black tankers, warning notices proclaiming that they were filled with ethanol. The noise was immense, a deafening clatter as the brakes slowly brought the mile-long convoy to rest. That was fortunate. The railroad would have been clear much more quickly if the train had just continued onwards.

  Lundquist, Callow, and the others had two choices. If they wanted to keep their vehicles, they would have to drive to either end of the train and cross the track there. Or they could wait for it to come to a complete stop before climbing through the boxcars and coming after him on foot. Either way, it had probably bought him an extra five minutes.

  Milton slung the bag over his right shoulder and then forced himself between the small trees and bushes, struggling through the vegetation until coming out the other side. He recognised the wide field of corn although he was a long way from where they had entered when they had started their trek the day before yesterday.

  Milton ran into the field, each stride sending a flash of pain up from his arm. He stumbled on a deep rut, righted himself, and kept going. Lightning flashed overhead, and he could briefly make out the line of trees, underbrush, rocks, and, beyond that, the darkest of the deep forest and the slow climb up the flanks of the mountains. The lightning flickered away, and darkness fell once more.

  He had to keep going.

  The train’s diesel engine, half a mile farther down the tracks now, finally wheezed out long and hard as it drew to a stop. The freight cars jangled and rattled as they pressed up against each other.

  Milton heard the shouts and exclamations. Lundquist, Callow, Chandler, the cop, and whoever else they had drawn into their conspiracy were out of their vehicles and after him. He concentrated on his footing, his eyes scanning the ground ahead of him, occasionally looking up to measure his progress to the trees. There came the report of a long gun, the whistle of a bullet and the wet thud as it scored a trench in the mud to his left. Another gunshot and another splash of mud, this time to his right, and Milton knew that he wasn’t going to make it.

  HE JAGGED sharply to the right, ploughing into the corn. The crop was tall and healthy, the stalks reaching up to well above his head. The stems looked like bamboo cane, each bearing the same distinctive, large green leaf. Milton raised his forearms before his face and ploughed ahead. There was another crack from a rifle, but the shooter was aiming blind and hoping for a miracle, and the shot went nowhere near him.

  The stalks slammed into his body, lashing against his head and face. The pain in his left arm was worsening with every stride. His foot caught against a rock and he tumbled over, scraping his hands and knees as he hit the ground. He paused, gathering his breath, wiping the sweat from his face. He raised himself to his haunches, staying low, and strained his ears for the sound of pursuit.

  He heard the sound of running footsteps, then heavy breathing.

  “He’s in the corn!” a voice bellowed out.

  “We’ll never see him.”

  “Look harder. He’s hurt.”

  “Get to the other end. Move. If he comes out, shoot him.”

  Another huge fork of lightning split across the sky. Milton took advantage of the brief flash, moving silently towards the track. He looked out for a second, no longer than that, and worked out his position and the route he would need to take to reach deeper cover in the forest. He was three quarters of the way along the track, a hundred yards from the end of the field. He could see the figure of a man as he jogged to the trees. He turned quickly and looked behind him. Two other men were at the far end of the field, near to the crashed RV.

  They were penning him inside the corn.

  The flash of light died.

  Thunder boomed.

  One of the two men by the RV called out. “Milton!” It was Lundquist. “This is stupid. I know you’re hurt.”

  Milton crept back into the corn, leaving six feet between himself and the edge of the tractor’s tracks.

  “We can wait here all night if we have to.”

  He started towards the trees, moving quietly.

  “You might as well come out.”

  He stayed low, parting the crop as delicately as he could, the bag bumping against his back as he moved.

  “You’re making things worse for that girl. You come out now, maybe we go easy on her. But if you put me in a sour mood, I promise you, with God as my witness, I’m going to take it out on her.”

  He reached the edge of the crop, leaving six or seven rows between himself and the clear space beyond. Lightning branched overhead once again, and he could see the man who was guarding this end of the field. He was average height and build, dressed in a police uniform, with a pistol in his right hand. It wasn’t the cop from whom he had taken the gun. This one must have been summoned during the pursuit.

  Milton stayed low, each footstep placed carefully as he narrowed the distance between himself and the man.

  The light faded as the thunder roared.

  Milton was close enough to reach out and touch the man’s leg.

  He turned back towards Lundquist.

  “I don’t see nothing!” he yelled out, the noise loud and sudden. “I’m coming back.”

  Milton held his breath.

  “Stay the fuck down there, George!”

  The man started to retort, caught his tongue, and turned to face the trees. He cursed under his breath, barely audible, as he presented his back to Milton.

  Lightning flashed. The stalks parted around him as he stood and took a pace forwards, reaching out to grab the man with his right arm around his chest and his left, weakly, around his neck. He heaved backwards, hard enough to send another burst of pain up from his wounded arm, and dragged the man backwards into the crop. The man, George, was startled and he struggled impotently as Milton held him. A deafening thunderclap unrolled overhead as he wrapped his right arm around the man’s head, and reaching his right hand all the way around to grasp the back of his cranium, he twisted in a hard, crisp movement. The cop’s neck snapped with a loud crack, and his body fell limp.

  Milton dropped him to the ground, took his Beretta and frisked him. He found a pair of handcuffs, a handkerchief, and a smattering of change. He pocketed them all, then ejected the magazine from the pistol and checked the load.

  Two rounds left.

  Unfortunate.

  He patted him down for a spare magazine, but he couldn’t find one.

  Two shots and at least four men still left out there. Milton didn’t like those odds at all. It had evened out a little, but he was wounded and he didn’t have enough ammunition.

  He was still goin
g to have to run.

  “George!” Lundquist shouted.

  Milton crept to the north end of the field where the crop ended. He parted the stalks and glanced both ways. He saw the rocky fringe, then a hedge line, and, beyond that, the start of the trees.

  He paused, waiting for the lightning.

  It came, a blinding flash, and then it faded.

  He stepped out.

  “Stop!”

  There came a loud, concussive report as a rifle was fired in his direction. The shooter’s aim was bad, or perhaps he was frightened or jittery with adrenaline, but the shot landed short, throwing a shower of scree against Milton’s legs. He swivelled around and raised the gun. Two men, a hundred feet away, at the eastern corner of the field. How had he missed them? He fired, too far away to hope for a hit, but enough to scatter the two men, both of them throwing themselves into the corn.

  One round left.

  He scrambled up the shallow incline, dislodging small rocks and a cascade of stones, threw himself through a narrow break in the hedge, and then sprinted for the trees.

  He heard shouts from behind him, but he knew he would be able to get away from them now. They were scattered, and now they knew that he had a weapon. They didn’t know that he was almost dry. Then they would find the man that he had killed, and that would give them pause once more.

  The low scrub scratched and clawed at his legs as he burst through it and started to climb the shallow slope that led into the forest and the hills beyond it. He needed time to collect himself. His arm was still leaking, and he knew that he would need to fix it soon. He needed to think about his next move, too.

  Ellie, Mallory, and Arty were in trouble.