Their fingers were numb from the cold. When they tried to climb up the cairn, Irene lost her grip and slid down. Her knee was banged up and her palms were torn, but her body was so stiff from the cold that she hardly noticed. When she climbed back, Jimmy was already crouched down, gazing through his night-vision telescope. Irene was grateful he had brought it along. Without it they would have had to crawl all the way up to the house. Now they could stay about fifty meters away. She peered into the distance toward the point of light and saw that it was an outside lamp attached to a little building that looked like a barn. Faint light was coming from some small windows.
Jimmy lay motionless so long that she started to grow impatient. She also wanted to look through the funny gadget. But his tense whisper when he handed the telescope to her filled her with foreboding. “You won’t believe it. Look at the outer edge of the circle of light coming from the outside lamp.”
The bill of her cap was in the way, so she turned it resolutely backward. It prevented the ice-cold rain from running down her neck.
Fumbling, she put the telescope up to her eye, strapped it on, and saw instantly what he meant. A large motorcycle stood parked by the wall of the barn. When she pointed the telescope toward one of the small illuminated windows, she could see a big fat man with long curly hair. He stood talking and gesticulating to someone hidden from view. Even though no one could hear them, she whispered, “I can only see one guy, fat with long hair. But it isn’t Bobo Torsson. Did you see anybody else?”
“No. Just Fatso. And the bike! Did you see it? Hell’s Angels again!”
“It’s not the same one we saw at the summer cabin?”
“No, this one doesn’t have a Tour-Pak on the back.”
He was right. This one had two smaller boxes on each side of the rear wheel. The fat, longhaired man walked around talking to his invisible audience. For a split second Irene thought she saw the head of a much shorter person, but it happened so fast that she wasn’t sure. She whispered to Jimmy without taking the telescope from her eye, “I think there are at least two of them. But what are they up to?”
“No idea.”
A movement on the far right edge of her vision made her point the telescope in that direction. Excitedly she whispered, “Somebody is coming out of the house next door! That must be the house they actually live in. It’s not Bobo Torsson. This one’s a longhaired guy dressed in leather too, but tall and thin.”
“Funny that he doesn’t turn on the outside light. I can’t see anybody.”
“You can’t?”
Irene put down the telescope and looked toward the house. It was dark. Only the lights in the barn were visible. The man was walking in the dark. He was invisible to anyone without night-vision equipment. She put the telescope up to her eyes, only to see the thin man disappear behind the barn. She quickly aimed it at the barn window. The big man stopped short and turned with his back to the window. She understood that the other one was talking now, because suddenly the massive man was quite motionless and seemed to be listening intently. She almost dropped the telescope out of sheer fright when he suddenly turned on his heel and gazed out the window. Reason told her that he couldn’t see them, but the expression on his face said it all. Fear drove its stiff fingers into her body and she couldn’t even hide it from Jimmy. Her voice almost cracked when she whispered with frozen lips, “Jimmy, they know we’re here!”
“That’s impossible. How could they. .?”
The thought struck them both simultaneously. The summer cabins. The motorcycle behind the pile of lumber. They had been seen.
Irene asked, “What time is it?”
He pulled up the sleeve of his jacket and looked at the glowing watch face. “Ten past five. It’s time to get out of here.”
They crawled down from the cairn. Irene started to pull her cell phone from her pocket. She turned it on but slipped it back into her pocket. Her subconscious had heard a sound, but her conscious mind registered it too late. The forest around her exploded like a shooting star in a thousandth of a second, then closed around her in impenetrable darkness.
HER HEAD was swinging from side to side and she couldn’t do anything about it. Powerless, she tried to raise herself to throw up, but realized groggily that it was impossible. Her head was hanging down. A strong smell of leather and sweat stung her nostrils and increased her nausea. Instinctively she kept her body limp, as she desperately tried to fight against the dizziness and reenter consciousness. After a while she realized that a hefty man in leather, a Hell’s Angel, was carrying her slung over his shoulder, like a butcher carries a dead carcass. His long wet hair slapped against the side of her face. Cautiously she tried opening her eyelids. She heard panting and labored breathing to her left. There were at least two other people, and it dawned on her that they were carrying something between them. Jimmy. Was he alive? Good God, make him be alive! Never before in her life had she experienced such a pure and unadulterated fear of death. She didn’t have to pretend that she was incapable of movement. She was totally paralyzed.
A crystal-clear voice suddenly spoke through the panic inside her. To her surprise she recognized the voice of her old judo trainer, dead almost ten years now. Despite his forty years in Sweden, he had retained a very pronounced American accent. In his dry, calm voice he said, “Don’t let them know that you’re awake. Play possum. Sonomama. Remember ukemi-waza. Keep your head in so you don’t hit it. Mokuso.”
Mokuso? Why should she meditate now, of all times? Then she understood. She needed to go outside her body to release herself from the paralyzing fear. And her body would have to take care of itself for a while; it would still be unconscious. She looked into her whirling brain, found the Point, and was sucked softly up into Yawara and the Light.
HALF OF her face lay in mud and ice-cold water. One of her nostrils bubbled when she breathed, but she didn’t move her head. Her body had remembered ukemi-waza and fallen into a semiprone position. She sensed that there were several people around her. It took an incredible effort of will to concentrate on what they were saying and still pretend that she was unconscious.
“What the hell are we going to do with them? Who are these fucks?”
“SIG Sauer. And the telescope and phone. Great equipment. I think they’re cops. Why the hell did you have to hit them so hard? We could have gotten something out of the girl at least.”
“Don’t tell the guys that it was a chick! She’s tall as hell and she had a cap on.”
“Fuck them, God damn it!”
The last voice came as a shock to Irene. A young girl. In a confused moment Irene imagined that it was one of her own daughters. The illusion passed and she managed to lie still.
“Shut up, you whore! If we’re going to fuck anybody, it’s you!”
Irene could hear at least three different laughs. Maybe four.
“Should we take them inside? It’s pissing wet out here.”
“Take them to the barn.”
It took all the will in the world for her to hang limply between two Hell’s Angels. They dragged her rather than carried her, and she banged her hip on the high threshold. She let her head hang down and tried not to allow even a quiver of her eyelids. She could hear the thud when they dropped Jimmy next to her. Presumably he was alive, since they took the trouble to bring him inside. Here it was dry but the floor was ice cold. To her horror she couldn’t conceal the cold shivers that ran through her body. Stopping the occasional tremor was beyond her control, but she still pretended to be unconscious.