His eyes circled the immediate vicinity, and I could only guess how many phantom cougars he was seeing.
I stayed close to the cabin, careful to slip under the window, and continued to my right. If I remembered correctly, there was a straight shot to the lodge up ahead, but we had to go through another opening between the next two cabins before we could get there.
I waited at the corner and hoped that when I made my mad dash, somebody wouldn’t be waiting on the other side with a riot gun. I stood there awhile just to break up the rhythm. I thought of Santiago’s cell phone in my pocket but didn’t want to open it out here in the dark-it’d be like a beacon for bullets.
I shrugged the strap of the pack farther up on my shoulder and launched across.
My back flattened against the logs of the next cabin about halfway down the row, and I looked back at Hector. He was still panting and held up a finger. After a moment, he threw himself into the opening, slipped in the snow, and fell to his knees, finally scrambling across on all fours.
I grabbed him by his collar and stood him up beside me. “I think after that epic display of catlike grace, we can safely say that they’re not keeping too close a watch on us.”
“Fuck you, man.” He trapped his struggling mustache in his lower lip. “That shit’s slippery.”
“Stay here until I motion for you.”
He nodded. “I’m good with that.”
I continued around the cabin and peered past the corner-it was a straight shot of about thirty yards to the side of the main lodge, but with the oblique angle of the lodge windows, I had a reasonable chance of taking them by surprise. There was a large lean-to shed behind the building with a set of steps that probably led to the kitchen. I was thinking that that might be just the opening I needed.
The wind continued to pick up, and I imagined it was blowing at a thirty-mile-an-hour clip. The snow on the roadway between us and the lodge was a little over ankle deep, but after watching Hector’s Ice Capades, I wasn’t so sure we could make it before being discovered.
I leaned back against the logs and waved for him.
“Hey, Sheriff, are there more of you true blues coming?”
“Lots of them.”
“Are they bringing food and stuff?”
I glanced at him. “What, are you hungry again?”
“Yeah, an’ that bitch only brought that freeze-dried shit.”
“Beatrice brought supplies?”
“Uh huh, food packs-even snowshoes.”
Well, double-hell. Why would she go to the trouble of bringing freeze-dried food? Packs and snowshoes? Where were they going that they needed these kinds of provisions? All things considered, the sooner they were stopped the better.
I turned to look at Hector. “We’re going to hustle across to the lodge, and my advice to you is to keep up. If they even think they see people moving around out here, they’re just the type to shoot first and identify the bodies later. Got me?”
He didn’t look enthused with the elegant simplicity of my plan. “Yeah.”
“Ready? ”
He shook his head. “No.”
“All right then, let’s go.”
I rushed forward, the wet snow sticking to my right side like plaster of Paris. All of a sudden the whiteout was so thick you could’ve cut sheep out of the air with a sharp knife. I stumbled once and could hear Hector’s breath at my back.
The drifts got deep toward the lodge where the snow had whistled against the building and had settled in a steep upgrade that wasn’t there anymore. I stopped at the base of the steps and clung to the railing, the air in my lungs feeling like battery acid.
Hector stumbled onto the first step. “Hey, we’re not going to stay out here, are we?”
I swallowed and grabbed my breath by the tail ends. “No.”
I listened-something didn’t sound right. The noise was coming from my right, and I’d just about made up my mind that it was just the wind striking the corner of the building when the keening increased its pitch.
I grabbed Hector as the padlocked barn door of the shed blew apart, with the majority of the nearest twelve-foot door tumbling on top of us. The metal bars of the railings, which were set in the concrete steps, held the weight of the thing above us, but it shifted when something very big rolled over the wooden planks, first raising them and then slapping them down on us again. The wood splintered this time, but the railings held, and Hector and I crawled toward the building, toward the only opening afforded us.
I was the first to get clear of the shattered remains of the shed and slid up at the corner of the lodge in time to see the big, weathered blue shoebox of a 601 Spryte snowcat pivot a few times as the driver attempted to get a feel for the thing. He finally got the thirty-two-inch tracks going in the direction he wanted, which happened to be into the parked Suburban.
The Thiokol thundered into the side of the Chevrolet, pushing it onto the porch of one of the cabins; the porch collapsed and the SUV was buried in the rubble. The 601 pivoted again, and I could see the primer patches on it-the U.S. AIR FORCE 6385 443 designation was still painted on the back, along with, scripted below, FOR OFFICIAL USE
ONLY.
I raised the. 40 and aimed at the small windows in the thing, but what was I going to shoot and whom? I allowed the Sig to slip to my side as the snowcat pivoted once again, climbed the small embankment, and turned left on West Tensleep Road.
Left.
I ducked my head down and peered into the gloom and blowing snow just to make sure I’d seen what I’d seen. They weren’t heading for the paved road to the south but north, up the snow-covered, dead-end road toward West Tensleep Lake.
Left.
I watched as they continued toward the bridge, easily maneuvering over the drift that had stopped me flat, the motor accelerating in the distance until the noise mingled with the wind and was gone.
“This ain’t fair.” As if to demonstrate the cruelty of my act, Hector yanked at the handcuffs that secured him to the water pipes. “What if that fucking tiger comes back?”
I finished patching his head with the available medical supplies in the first-aid kit under the counter. He looked like he was wearing a gauze beanie, but at least the bleeding had stopped for good. I stuffed a few of the water bottles I’d found into the Basquo’s pack and tossed one to Hector. “Here.”
He caught the bottle with his free hand and sat back on the chair I’d provided for him behind the counter beside the cash register next to the pay phone. “What am I supposed to do?”
I needed to make more room in the pack, so I emptied it and arranged the items on the round table in the dining area of Deer Haven Lodge. Saizarbitoria had scrounged up a pretty good amount of candy bars, a bag of Funyuns, and a few cans of Coke. I axed the pop-the water was what I was going to need. “Around these parts, we drink it.”
“I mean about the tiger!”
I pulled the cell phone out of my pocket and from the plastic bag. I planned to place it in the nifty, little pouch on the outside of the pack so that I could find it later. First, though, I flipped it open and looked at the battery indicator, which read about three-quarters, and then at the signal indicator, which read nothing. There was no service; it was just as well, since I was going to feel pretty silly telling everybody about how I’d found the escaped convicts but, after being shot at and pretty much hit with a barn door, had allowed them to escape.
On a whim, I went over to the pay phone next to Hector, picked up the receiver, and clicked the toggle-there was a dial tone. I dialed 911.
“Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.”
“I’d like to report a storm in Maybruary.”
She practically screamed. “Where are you!?”