“What are you going to do with me?” Davydov whimpered. “You can’t leave me here.”
“What?” Beaudine said. “I’m sure they’ll show you just as much mercy as you showed their friend.”
Brian Ticket’s brother-in-law, Ruben, had been out hunting ptarmigan when the Russians landed and made it back into town in time to see the crowd gather around Davydov. It had been his house the two Russians had first terrorized, and his wife — Brian’s sister — now stood with the hatchet in her hand. Quinn filled him in about their meeting with Brian at the fish camp and explained the immediate need to follow Zolner and Volodin on the ATV trail toward Ambler.
“I got a better idea,” the man said, clutching his wife and child like they might float away. “We’ll take my boat. My uncle has a camp four miles upriver. We stashed a Honda out there two days ago. Keys are in it and it’s full of gas. I was gonna go hunting, but if you can catch Worst of the Moon… Anyhow, there’s an old trail going northeast behind the cabin. It cuts into the ATV road that comes out of here. You’ll save a hell of a lot of time because the river bends back up that way before cutting southeast again toward Ambler. If we go now, you might even get ahead of ’em.”
PART III
FIRE
Victory is reserved for those who are willing
to pay its price.
Chapter 50
Beaudine carried their two backpacks down the gravel incline to Ruben’s skiff, thankful that this particular boat didn’t require a wax toilet ring to stay afloat. The Mercury outboard, shiny and black amid the falling snow, didn’t hurt her confidence either.
She watched Quinn as he stood on the bank and tried to use snow to rub away some of the blood that covered the front of his coat and the thighs of his wool pants. It did no good, other than to leave him with a pile of pink snow and a damp jacket. Ruben had given each of them a pair of overwhites — basically a cotton parka shell complete with hood. Beaudine thought they looked like Halloween costumes made out of bed sheets but she understood the concept of camouflage.
Quinn gave up on his scrubbing, covering the stains with the overwhites instead before helping Ruben shove the boat into the deeper water of the Kobuk. Aluminum scraped on gravel as the current caught and nudged the stern. Quinn hopped over the side without a word and sat down, holding the rifle across his lap.
Not overly talkative for the two days since Beaudine first met him, Quinn had grown quieter since he killed the Russian by the sweathouse.
Beaudine had known, even as she watched Quinn creep from the willows with the knife in his hand, that the Russian had to be killed. He and his friends were marching through the village murdering everyone in their path. She was supposed to provide over-watch, ready to back up Quinn with a quick shot if things went bad, but even if it hadn’t been her job she would have looked. Like the hypnosis brought on by watching a gruesome car wreck, she’d been unable to take her eyes off of Quinn as he snuck up behind the man. It seemed so innocent, one man tiptoeing up behind another in the falling snow, like a college boy playing a prank. She didn’t turn away when Quinn plunged the blade into the Russian’s neck. They were facing away, but the tremendous spray of blood and the silent struggle as Quinn arched his back and held the big man upright while he died… The brutality was unspeakably awful. Beaudine’s breath came faster just thinking about it. She found herself wondering what sort of a human being was capable of committing such violence, even in the name of good. Such an act had to leave an indelible mark. The Russian would be no less dead if Quinn had shot him. It was a blot against the state of humanity, she supposed, that gunning someone down could somehow seem civilized, even when it was the right thing to do. She found herself feeling profoundly sorry for Quinn — and profoundly grateful that he was willing to do uncivilized things. The four men he’d killed in the last two days were all equally dead, no matter his method — but this last one had hurt him.
She’d grown up around the scent of death and regret. It was an easy thing for her to recognize.
Quinn gritted his teeth while he rifled through his pack for a packet of Betadine. He’d decided to use the time during the short ride to keep a painful but relatively minor problem from becoming something debilitating.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but I’m going to have to get indecent here for a minute and clean up this wound.”
“I think we’re past that,” Beaudine scoffed. “And Ruben won’t mind. You think I don’t realize you changed my undies for me when I was half frozen.” She took the foil packet of antiseptic and knelt in the floor of the boat.
“That looks bad,” she said, grimacing when Quinn dropped his pants and pulled the long johns down to expose his injured thigh. “I count twelve pellets.” She bent closer squirting a little spray of the rust colored Betadine on each wound, then dabbing up the excess with a wadded piece of gauze. “They make a pattern like Orion when you add them to these other scars you have.”
“Great,” Quinn said.
“I’d be happy to try and dig them outta there,” Beaudine said, looking up at him.
“Thanks, “Quinn said, pulling up the long johns before she had a chance to wipe up the rest of the Betadine. “I’m good. They say President Garfield might have lived if his doctors wouldn’t have tried to dig the bullet out.”
“Suit yourself,” Beaudine said. She dipped her hand over the side to wash it in river spray, and then settled back in her seat at the bow of the boat with the rifle.
“Nearly there,” Ruben said from the tiller.
Considering the gravity of their mission, the ten-minute journey up the Kobuk felt agonizingly slow. Quinn grabbed his pack and prepared to jump the moment Ruben kicked the outboard into neutral and raised the shaft out of the water so he didn’t ding the prop in the shallows. Apparently, one broken shear pin was enough for him.
The ATV was hidden in the shadows behind the rustic plywood cabin under a brown tarp and a layer of spruce boughs cut from nearby trees. Four inches of new snow added to the camouflage. It would have been impossible to see if Ruben hadn’t been along to show them where it was.
In this case, the “Honda” was a forest green 400cc Arctic Cat ATV. The seat was just big enough for two, but the relatively small machine was designed for one, so Quinn kept as much weight as he could forward, lashing both packs and the Lapua rifle across the metal rack over the front wheels. This would help guard against tipping over backward when they climbed hills and had the added benefit of letting him keep an eye on his gear. Important things had a tendency to rattle off and get left behind, and out here losing a piece of equipment could have nasty consequences.
Using the mantra that if it wasn’t on his body he didn’t have it, Quinn kept his war belt with the Kimber and Riot around his waist and dropped five extra rounds for the .338 Lapua in the pocket of his wool shirt.
He threw a leg over the ATV and settled in behind the handlebars less than fifteen minutes after they’d beached the skiff. The Arctic Cat wasn’t a motorcycle, but considering the slog through wet snow and bog that was ahead of them, he was glad to have it.
Ruben’s secret trail cut north as it left the cabin with dark spruces rising up on either side from the undulating path of virgin snow to form a sort of tunnel through the forest. Behind Quinn, her arms wrapped around his waist, Beaudine hummed some nonsensical child’s song. Had they not been pursuing a case of deadly nerve gas, it could have been an enjoyable ride.