Drawing my Colt, I stepped from the Suburban, careful to take a wide stance, which resulted in my sliding a good nine inches on the glassy surface of the road. I let out a breath, and it sounded like a rattler uncoiling in my lungs, the condensation blowing back in my face with the smell of snakes. I minced a few steps toward the front of the Chevy and could see the body of another one of the federal marshals, lightly covered with splatters of the wet snow, lying beside the ditch.
“Damn.”
I eased past the grillwork and crouched by the man’s outstretched hand. There’s nothing quite so still as the dead-an otherworldly stillness. His flesh was frozen, and there was no movement in him. His coat was missing along with his boots and weapons-the sidearm and the shotgun.
Crouching a little, I pulled my hat on tighter, just to keep it from sailing off with the wind, and started down the slope. The lights were still on inside both vehicles, but the ones from the old Blazer were starting to dim to a sickly yellow. The main cargo doors of the reinforced van were open-I couldn’t see anyone inside but could see the restraints that had attached the convicts lying in the doorway.
Slipping my Maglite from my belt, I focused the beam into the cavernous space where the prisoners should have been but weren’t. I played the light over the cab of the Blazer, but no one was there either. The tracks led back up the hillside and onto the road-a lot of tracks.
If I was to make an assumption, it would be that Shade had picked up all of the survivors in our DOC van.
I scanned the surrounding area again and then continued to the front of the transport. The driver was there, leaning against his seat belt, and he was painfully and obviously dead, as was the man in the passenger seat. They’d both been shot at close range with one of the. 40 pistols. I rested an elbow on the cracked windshield and listened to something in the distance, something unnatural.
It was a whining noise that rose and fell and then stopped.
I listened some more but could hear nothing except the wind. The collar of my sheepskin jacket was providing little protection, but I improved the odds by pulling it up higher and buttoning the top button. I took a second to think about the numbers: that meant six fugitives including Beatrice Linwood and two hostages-Pfaff and the other Ameri-Trans guard.
Just to make sure no one was hanging around, I checked the front of the Blazer at closer quarters, but it was indeed empty. Slogging my way back up the hillside, I remembered Santiago’s cell phone and pulled it out of the Ziploc. I flipped open the face of the device and watched as it searched for service. After about a minute, I decided it was another opportunity to wait for Memorial Day and pocketed the useless thing.
I pulled the federal marshal completely from the road and covered his face with his hat. It was all I could do for now.
The Suburban started up easily, and I punched off the emergency lights and flashers; if I ran into the DOC van farther down the highway, they weren’t likely to pull over. I kept the spotlight pointed in the general direction of the roadside and pulled out.
I’d gone about a quarter of a mile when something caught my eye, and I stood on the brakes. It was the main entrance to Deer Haven, another of the shuttered lodges in the throes of renovation. The Chevrolet slid sideways but finally stayed on the road. I refocused the spotlight and could see a clear set of tire tracks leading into the deep snow.
“Gotcha.”
I wheeled the SUV into the entranceway, careful to avoid the deeper drifts to the left and the remnants of the broken swing gate where they had crashed through; the padlock was still hanging on the post to the right.
There was a single, dusk-to-dawn fixture about thirty feet above the ground, with a bulb that created a giant, illuminated halo that lit up the blowing snow but didn’t shed a lot light on too much else. I repositioned the Suburban’s spotlight into the gloom. Up ahead, there was a forest service bridge with a large drift blocking the road, and it looked as if they’d attempted to head up West Tensleep but had been turned back. The tracks showed that they had reversed and then swung around just ahead of me and plunged into the area where the parking lot would’ve been.
This was when a smart man would’ve parked the Suburban at the head of the road and waited for backup, and I thought about it. It was going to take hours for my reinforcements to get here, if they ever did, and I had a federal agent and a transport officer being held hostage. I applied the simple rule that allowed me to make stupid decisions in these types of situations: if I was down there, would I want someone coming after me?
Yep.
I swept the spotlight to the left and could see the complex of low-slung, dark log cabins-but no van. The tracks led straight across the flat area in front of them and then turned to the right, away from the main lodge. I drove slowly in their path and finally saw the van parked between two of the log structures that sat in a row.
The place was a bushwhacker’s wet dream, with an assortment of cabins surrounding the seventy-five-yard open area, which I’d just crossed. They’d had enough time so that they could be anywhere.
I followed the path the van had cut in the parking lot and saw that the DOC vehicle had gone off the edge of the gravel and buried itself in the drift between the cabins. The noise I’d heard back on the side of the road must’ve been them trying to spin their way out in two-wheel drive.
There didn’t seem to be anybody in the van, so at least I knew one place they weren’t.
Figuring there was no reason to give them a very clear target, I shut off the headlights on the Suburban. Also figuring that for my purposes it was just as good to have things be as quiet as possible, I went ahead and killed the engine. I pulled out my Colt and slammed it into the light in the Suburban’s overhead console. Bits of plastic fell onto the passenger seat, but I thought not giving them another target as I opened the door was a terrific option.
Let the government bill me.
I pulled the keys, opened the door, and stepped into the snow, the surface crusty from sleet. Something fell out along with me. When I looked down I could see it was Saizarbitoria’s pack that now lay on the snow-dappled steps leading to the porch of one of the cabins. I kicked it aside and figured I’d pick it up when I got back to the vehicle.
There were no windows on the sides of the two structures that faced each other, only small ones in the fronts along with glass panels in the two doors. There was no movement that I could detect inside either cabin. I’d check them again after I searched the van.
I eased the door shut and started toward the back of the DOC vehicle. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the occupants had all gotten out through the sliding door at the side and continued on past the cabins to the left.
As far as I could tell, the only electricity that worked was the dawn-to-dusk at the entrance of the parking lot. There probably was no heat either, and huddled in one of the cabins or the main lodge, the group was most likely breaking up furniture to burn in one of the small fireplaces in an attempt not to freeze to death.
The bodies of the two marshals were still lying on the floorboard of the van, both of them, as McGroder had indicated, having been dispatched with one of the appropriated shotguns and at close range. Benton was the nearest, so I reached out and closed his eyes-once again, there was little else I could do. The convicts had taken everything including the steak knife that I had left on the dash. I started to return to the rear cargo door where Santiago said that Benton had stored the enhanced Armalite; I figured I’d feel a lot better if I could get a proper rifle in my hands.