Snow Blind

by Jim Heskett

  36

  Five minutes later, they still hadn’t stopped running. Even though Layne knew their tracks across the snow made them too easy to follow, escape still lived foremost in his mind. They would worry about how to cover their tracks once the immediate threat had passed.

  A scattered collection of bullets echoed off the nearby mountains in those first few minutes of flight, but that soon stopped. Layne didn’t take it as an excuse to stop running. It wouldn’t be much of a tactical retreat if they were chased down and killed.

  Finally, when Layne thought Harry was inches from a heart attack, he slowed and then stopped. Harry slumped into the snow, groaning. The wince on his face so deep, Layne thought it might burn in.

  “How… far,” Harry said, straining to get each word out.

  With the rapidly approaching dark, Layne had no idea. He couldn’t rely on GPS to gauge the distance back to the SMRC.

  “Not sure,” Layne said, sinking onto the ground next to Harry.

  “You feel guilty?”

  Layne nodded. “I’m coming to accept that we did the right thing. But, it’s still hard. Those people didn’t deserve to die.”

  Most of all, he didn’t understand why they’d let Layne and Harry escape with only a minimal amount of effort. Had the assassins not known who they were? Layne supposed that depended on why the assassins were there in the first place.

  What possible reason could a small army have to eliminate every single person at a retreat center?

  Harry lifted a finger, pointing across Layne’s shoulder. Layne pivoted to look. Nearby, a glacier covered a sizable chunk of the mountainside, wavy lines trickling down the slope. Hardly any snow obscured it.

  “For the tracks,” Layne said. “Nice thinking, Harry.”

  “I do what I can.”

  Layne helped Harry to his feet, and they pushed on toward the glacier, at a much slower pace this time. Neither of them had the energy to race any longer. And once they were crossing the glacier, they weren’t leaving obvious markers for the assassins to follow.

  For ten more minutes, they pushed on, moving laterally along the mountain. Layne didn’t have a plan, but that was okay for now. Survival was the main objective, at this point. Survival, and then reflection, and then the construction of a new plan to return to the retreat center.

  They’d gradually worked their way down the mountain, and he could feel the slight difference in temperature. The snow wasn’t as dense at this lower elevation.

  Eventually, a light cut across the distance. At first, Layne assumed the moon had appeared through a break in the clouds, but when he squinted, he could see he was looking not at natural light, but at the illumination filtering from a porch light of a house.

  “Do you see that?” Harry said.

  “Looks like a house. A log cabin on the side of a hill.”

  Layne had to blink a few more times to be sure he’d seen the real thing. Once convinced, he navigated in that direction, towing the exhausted Harry after him.

  In a few hundred more steps, they were at the edge of the property. Layne observed the grounds for any suspicious signs. There were limited tracks in the snow, only one set of footprints, judging by the size. He noted snowmobile tracks leading to a shed, a few feet from the main cabin. Also, a single vehicle, a truck with giant tires. No indication that a large number of people or vehicles had been here recently.

  “Do we see if anyone is home?” Harry asked.

  Layne leaned close to Harry and said, “You knock. I’ll be right below you, with a pistol behind my back. If anything goes wrong, you lean to the left. Got it?”

  “Got it. Lean to the left.”

  “If you lean to the right, I might accidentally shoot you.”

  Harry swallowed hard, nodding. “Lean to the left. I got it.”

  Layne drew one of the Beretta pistols and held it behind his back, then he flicked his chin at the door.

  Harry ascended the porch steps and drummed his knuckles on the door a few times. Tentative at first, then he knocked a little harder. Layne stood one step down, pistol concealed, finger hovering above the trigger.

  In a few seconds, the door opened. A grizzled man with a beard almost twice as wide as his face appeared in the door’s crack. Wearing saggy long underwear and nothing else, he frowned at the two exhausted men on his porch.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Please,” Harry said, “we were out hiking and got lost. We’re separated from our camping gear and don’t know how to get back to it.”

  Layne wasn’t thrilled with Harry’s outright deception, but he opted not to contradict him. He moved his finger off the trigger and relaxed his arm. This guy wasn’t a threat. He looked old and frail enough to dislocate his shoulder if he tried to throw a punch.

  The gray-haired log cabin man raised an eyebrow at Layne. “What happened to your face?”

  Layne’s multiple brawls over the last week had left him black and blue. “It’s a long story. I’d be happy to tell you if you could let us in.”

  The man opened the door wider and allowed them inside the cabin. Layne shoved the pistol into his coat pocket and entered. Two bedrooms, maybe three. A fireplace glowed orange and a collection of rugs and furniture fanned out around it.

  “Have a seat by the fire. If you’ll excuse me a second, I got to get the cocoa off the stove.”

  “Sure,” Layne said.

  The old man paused. “Would you care for some cocoa? I always seem to make too much, anyhow.”

  Harry burst out laughing, a silly gleam in his eyes. It was an odd reaction, but Layne understood. From being shot at an hour ago to cocoa by the fire at a mountain log cabin.

  “Yes,” Layne said. “We’d love some cocoa.”

  They took up residence in front of the fire, on a rug that looked like a patchwork quilt. Layne exercised lots of care when taking off his jacket, so all the guns he’d hastily jabbed into the pockets didn’t come tumbling out.

  The fatigue of the day caught up with him. Head pounding, quads and hamstrings taut like piano wire.

  As they held their hands out in front of the orange flames, Harry opened his mouth to speak, but the cabin owner returned with two mugs. Marshmallows bobbing up and down in the brown liquid.

  “Name’s Wilfred,” the man said.

  Layne considered using their operation aliases but decided against it. “I’m Layne, and this is Harry.”

  Wilfred sat in a wooden rocking chair, tenting his hands in front of his face. “Pleased to meet you. A night like this is no time to be out wandering. Snow’s stopped, praise the Lord, but it’s as cold as a witch’s tit out there.”

  “That’s for sure,” Layne said. “We appreciate your hospitality. If we hadn’t found your cabin, no telling what we would’ve done.” He noted the various guns on the walls, to complement the array of stuffed animal heads. Moose, deer, and even a yellow-eyed wolf. “You a hunter, Wilfred?”

  Wilfred nodded. “That I am. You two hungry?”

  “Yes,” Harry said, blurting it out. “Very much.”

  “Soup should be just about ready. Think I might have enough for three. I always seem to make too much of that, too.” Wilfred narrowed his eyes at them. “It’s vegetable beef, in case that offends any vegetarian notions you might have.”

  “Beef is fine for us,” Layne said.

  “Then I’ll be back directly.” Wilfred stood and wandered off toward the kitchen.

  “Does this feel weird to you?” Harry said, ducking down and keeping his voice low.

  “Not particularly. But we’re not planning on staying long. Whatever this guy’s deal is, it doesn’t concern us.”

  Harry nodded and shivered, pushing his hands close to the fire.

  Scenes from the SMRC flashed before Layne’s eyes. He thought about the tattoo he’d seen on that dead hostile in the snow by the tennis courts. He picked up a pen and a box of tissues sitting on an end table near the fire and then drew the design on the tis
sue.

  “You know what that looks like?” Harry said, leaning over.

  “I know what you’re going to say. London. Like the symbol carved into the bone from the warehouse.”

  Harry winced. “Sorry, I know you don’t like to talk about London.”

  “No, it’s okay. It’s not the same symbol, but yeah, it does look a little like that. Like a ring of them strung together.”

  “What is it from?”

  “I saw this, back at the retreat center. One of those assassins had it tattooed on his palm, just below his pinky.”

  A knock came at the front door. By instinct, Layne shot a hand to the inner pocket of his coat, but he stopped short of drawing a weapon.

  Wilfred waddled into the room, a ladle in his hand and his eyebrows halfway up his forehead. “Is there a third member of your party?”

  Layne and Harry both shook their heads.

  As Wilfred walked toward the door, Layne slipped his hand around the grip of a pistol. He doubted that, if the assassins from the SMRC had tracked them all the way here, they would knock first.

  But no sense in taking chances. His finger hovered over the trigger.

  Wilfred pulled back the door to reveal a woman standing on the front porch, tear-streaked mascara running down her face. She was shaking, babbling, not making any sense.

  Layne’s eyes popped wide. Janine, her hair stringy and unkempt, panic and horror written all over her face.

  She fell forward, into Wilfred’s arms.

  37

  Janine Paluski stood outside the door to the cabin, shivering in the cold. She pounded her fist against the heavy wood a few times. The motion ached against her hand, sending a jolt of pain up her forearm.

  There was someone inside. She’d seen the gray-haired man moving around in the kitchen. A chill ran through her body, and she wanted to knock again, but she resisted the urge.

  When he opened the door, she let out a sigh of relief. A little embarrassed, because she could feel the snot bubble forming underneath her nose, since the tears wouldn’t stop. Once they started, it was hard to turn them off.

  “Please,” she said. “Please let me in.”

  The old man at the door waved her in, a look of alarm on his grizzled face. He gawked at the bullet wound that had sliced a line above her left eye. To him, it might appear only like a vicious scrape. A horrible accident trying to shave off her eyebrow, maybe. She leaned forward, making her bangs obscure the cut. There was no sense in trying to explain how she'd earned the burn of a bullet across the face.

  As soon as she stepped inside the cabin, the warmth immediately took her adrenaline down a notch. Like coming home.

  “Hi,” she said to the two men sitting by the fire. She pointed at the muscular one. “It’s good to see you again…”

  “Layne,” he said, interjecting before she could say the next word. “My name is Layne.”

  The speed at which he’d said it struck her as strange. At the SMRC, she’d known him for the last week as Leonard, and his companion was Harvey. Why use a different name here?

  Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter. But, she had to assume he didn’t want to say anything about the retreat center. Janine wasn’t sure how much of the blood and carnage Layne had witnessed back there. Maybe he was keeping it a secret from the old man. Maybe he’d blocked it all out like a PTSD trauma victim.

  “I’m Harry,” said the chubby one.

  She noted Layne had been keeping his right hand inside a nearby jacket. He finally relented, withdrew it, and then he picked up a mug of brown liquid. Half-melted marshmallows floating. Cocoa. He took a sip and then wiped his hands on his pants. His eyes bugged out, trying not to stare at her. Harry was the same, his chest rising and falling as he blew quick breaths out of his mouth. He was attempting to calm himself down.

  These people were on edge.

  “Well,” said the old man, “you can call me Wilfred. I was just about to serve soup. Are you interested, young lady?”

  Despite her efforts to make them stop, the tears kept coming down her face. She tried to blink them away as she nodded. “Yes, Wilfred, very much so. Thank you for your kindness.”

  “Sure, if you’ll give me a minute. Not sure if I’ve even got four clean bowls in my cabinets.”

  Layne pointed at her forehead as Wilfred shuffled off into the kitchen. “What happened?”

  “It grazed me. I fell down, thinking I was shot bad. For a few minutes I played dead, and then got up and ran after what I hoped was your path. I found your tracks down the hill.”

  “That’s amazing,” Harry said.

  She pulled her messy hair up to give them a better view of the injury on her forehead. A red streak like a slash of paint marked a one-inch line above her left eye.

  “You should get that bandaged,” Layne said.

  She nodded and let her hair back down. “I will. I need a shower first.”

  “Anyone else make it out?” Harry asked.

  Janine shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  Layne’s face darkened, and he drew into himself. He pulled his knees to his chest. “Tell me again, please. What did you see?”

  “There wasn’t anything you could have done,” Janine said. “It all happened in a flash, and I heard the screams from inside my room. One of the men in the white jackets came in the back door of my bungalow, and I ran out. I heard the shot and fell down. Next thing I knew, a couple minutes had passed, and all was silent. I looked around, there weren’t any of them near me, and so I ran. For as long as I could. I stayed on your tracks for a while, then I had to guess. I saw this cabin and hoped it was where you would be.”

  “You were lucky,” Harry said.

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  All three of them stared at the floor, the energy in the room taking a steep nosedive. Wilfred returned after a moment, stroking his chin with one hand as if he’d walked into the room and forgotten why he did so. No soup.

  “Do you mind if I wash my face?” she asked.

  Wilfred put his hands on his hips, air whistling through his nose. “Of course. Follow me. I don’t keep the hand-towels in the bathroom, so lemme show you where they are.”

  As she left, she felt Layne’s and Harry’s eyes tracking her. A weird sensation. With all the heightened emotions and body chemicals over the last few hours, she’d become hypersensitive to their stares.

  When she was in the hallway, away from their prying eyes, she felt better. Wilfred stopped at a cabinet and pulled out a couple of small towels, which he dropped into her hand.

  “One more thing,” he said. “There’s a little trick to the hot water. I’ll show you.”

  He opened the door to the bathroom and entered first. With his back turned to her, Janine drew the knife from its sheath under her shirt, and then she tensed her arm to slit his throat.

  38

  As soon as Janine and Wilfred left the living room, Layne felt a strange sensation. Like something dancing on the tip of his tongue, a memory almost disconnected from another memory it should have joined.

  Harry sipped his cocoa and straightened his legs to stretch, grimacing as he did so. He opened his eyes and frowned at Layne.

  “What is it? What’s that look?”

  “Something’s not right.”

  In a flash, Layne remembered, like a screen flickering on inside his head. Not the whole thing, but one piece of it. He picked up the tissue drawing of the tattoo and studied the circles he’d scrawled there. He’d seen them before. Or maybe not before, maybe he’d seen them since.

  As a different tattoo.

  Layne set his jaw. The symbol had been tattooed on her neck, just below her hairline. He hadn’t recognized it at first, because her tattoo was a series of linked rings, but it was the same basic design. The same circles.

  She’d never worn her hair up before at the SMRC. Layne had only seen it for a flash of a second when she pulled it up to show them her bullet wound.

  The
design was a little different, but he was sure it was the same tattoo. Joined circles.

  Janine was one of them.

  Layne snatched the Beretta from inside his coat. He popped out the magazine to check it and then shoved it back in, clearing his throat both times to mask the sound.

  “Janine?” Harry said, whispering. “Is it her?”

  Layne didn’t bother to answer. He jumped to his feet and raced across the living room, toward the back hallway where Wilfred and Janine had disappeared, fifteen seconds ago. He paused at the edge, blinking tired blurriness from his eyes. This had been one of the longest days of his life.

  Layne spun around the edge of the hallway.

  He arrived just in time to see Janine drawing the knife against Wilfred’s throat, standing in the doorway to the bathroom.

  By the time Layne had the pistol raised, a torrent of blood was already rushing down poor Wilfred’s neck.

  Janine noticed Layne in the hallway, and she jumped a step to the left, putting Wilfred between her and Layne. Layne closed one eye to aim over Wilfred’s shoulder, but he couldn’t get a clean shot.

  Before Layne knew what was happening, a knife flew at him, slicing open the sleeve of his shirt. He felt a sizzle of pain and then slickness running down his bicep. The knife had only grazed him, though, and it tumbled onto the carpet underfoot.

  Layne dropped to one knee to get a better view of Janine’s midsection, exposed to one side. Wilfred was still standing, moving around, trying to slap at the cut on his neck. Janine held firm on the other side, using the dying man’s body as a shield. And Layne knew she would attempt to draw him in, to rush to Wilfred’s aid, so she could attack Layne when he neared.

  Wilfred gasped, trying to stem the bleeding. One arm flailed, sending droplets of blood all over the walls.

  Layne couldn’t resist. He leaped forward and grabbed Wilfred, then pushed the old man’s hand against the gash, forcing pressure. To keep Janine at bay, Layne fired a few warning shots in her direction. She ducked back into the bathroom to escape the blasts.