The feds, on the radio: Got a beacon on the truck.
Carr: Get it up here. Get it up here.
The feds: It’s rolling now.
Carr: Davenport—what the hell were you doing?
“I was trying to get him to point the gun at me,” Lucas said. “Gene was holding on his head with the M-16. If he’d taken the muzzle away from the girl, we’d of had him.”
Good Lord. Where’s that truck?
On the way.
The Suburban turned up the driveway, stopped with its headlights reaching toward the mobile home. The truck door slammed, the sound muffled by the snow, then it rolled forward again, its high lights on. It stopped where Helper had indicated, and Shelly Carr crawled down from the driver’s seat, squared his shoulders as if waiting for a bullet, and walked back down the driveway.
“Idiot,” Climpt said just behind Lucas’ ear.
“Takes some guts,” Lucas said.
“And if we get Helper, it sure as shit wraps up the next election. Here they come.”
The door opened again and Helper pushed through, his arm again wrapped around the squirming girl’s neck. His free hand was bare, holding the revolver, his thumb arched as it would be if the hammer were cocked. The girl was carrying a gas can and what might have been aquarium tubing.
“What are they doing?” Climpt asked. He had the rifle up, following Helper’s head through the sights.
The radio: Girl’s got a syphon.
Helper was talking to her.
“Keep tracking him,” Lucas said. They couldn’t hear the words, but they could hear the rhythm of them. She unscrewed the gas cap on the truck, dropped it in the snow, stuck the tube in the gas tank, and pushed it down. She put the other end in the open top of the gas can, then squeezed a black bulb on the tube.
“Taking gas,” Climpt said, and a moment later a vagrant wisp of gasoline odor mixed with the pine scent.
“He’s going out on the snowmobile,” Lucas said. “He’s getting gas for it.”
“Without that kid,” Climpt muttered, tracking Helper with the rifle.
Lucas jabbed the radio: “He’s taking gas out of the truck. I think he’s going to refuel his snowmobile and take off. Gene and I left our sleds back a way, we better go get them.”
Carr: One of you better wait there until I get somebody up that side of the house.
Lucas said to Climpt: “How’re you doing? Gettin’ shaky?”
“Just a bit,” Climpt admitted. His eyebrows were clogged with snow, his face wet.
“You head back to the sled, let me take the rifle,” Lucas said. “Where does it shoot?”
“Put it right over his ear,” Climpt said. He held on Helper for another second, then said, “Ready?”
“Yeah.”
Climpt handed him the rifle. Lucas put the front sight on Helper’s helmet, right where his ear should be. He held it there, his cone of vision narrowing to nothing. He couldn’t see the top of the girl’s head, although it was only inches from Helper’s ear. He could only infer its position.
“Come in as soon as you hear him start that machine. You can ride me back for the other,” Lucas said, speaking around the black plastic stock. The stock was icy cold on his cheek, but he kept the sight on Helper’s ear. “Can’t be more than a couple hundred feet.”
Climpt touched him on the shoulder and was gone in the snow.
The transfer of gasoline seemed to take forever, Helper leaning nervously against the truck while the girl stood passively in front of him, watching the syphon. Finally she pulled the tube out of the truck, dropped it on the ground, and she and Helper edged back to his snowmobile, the girl struggling with the can. Five gallons, Lucas thought, probably thirty-five pounds. And she wasn’t a big kid. Next to Helper she looked positively frail.
The yellow-haired girl boosted the can up with her thigh, tilted it so the spout fit into the mouth of the gas tank. Again, it seemed to take forever to fill the tank, Lucas tracking, tracking, tired of looking at Helper over the sight.
The girl said something to Helper. Lucas caught one word, “Done.” The girl tossed the can aside and Helper pushed her up on the driver’s seat of the sled. A pair of snowshoes was strapped to the back, and Helper straddled them, sat down. His gun hand never wavered.
“Don’t try to follow,” Helper screamed, looking awkwardly over his shoulder as the girl started the snowmobile. They lurched forward, stopped, then started again. Helper screamed, “Don’t try . . .” The rest of his words were lost as they started around the side of the house, heading toward the back. The forest was now almost perfectly dark, and silent except for the chain-saw roar of the sled. Lucas stood to watch them go, putting the rifle’s muzzle up, clumping out into the yard, following the diminishing red taillight as long as he could.
The radio was running almost full time, voices . . .
He’s going out the back.
Heading toward the flowage.
Can’t see him.
And the feds: We got the beacon, he’s moving east.
Carr came running up the driveway. “Lucas, where’n hell . . . ?”
“Over here.” Lucas waded through the snow to the driveway. Three other deputies pushed out of the woods, heading for them. Carr was breathing hard, his eyes wide and wild.
“What . . .”
“Gene and I’ll go after them on the sleds. You follow with the trucks,” Lucas said.
“Remember what he did to the other two, hit ’em on the back trail,” Carr said urgently. “If he’s waiting for you, you’d never see him.”
“The feds should know when he stops,” Lucas said. He realized they were shouting at each other and dropped his voice. “Besides, we’ve got no choice. I don’t think he’ll keep the kid—she’ll slow him down. If he doesn’t kill her, we got to be out there to pick her up. If she starts wandering around on her own . . .”
Climpt had come up on a single sled, and Lucas swung his leg over the backseat, holding the rifle out to the side. “Okay, go, go,” Carr shouted, and Climpt rolled the accelerator forward and they cut back through the trees to the second sled. Lucas handed Climpt the rifle. Climpt slung it over his shoulder as Lucas hopped on the second sled and fired it up.
“How do you want to do this?” Climpt shouted.
“You lead, stay on his trail. Look for the kid in case he’s dumped her. If you see his taillight . . . shit, do what seems right. I’ll hang on to the radio. If you see me blinking my lights, stop.”
“Gotcha,” Climpt said and powered away.
Helper was running four or five minutes ahead of them. Lucas couldn’t decide whether he would be moving faster or slower. He presumably knew where he was going, so that should help his speed. On the other hand, Lucas and Climpt were simply following his track, which was easy enough to do despite the snow. Helper had to navigate on his own. Even if he stayed on the trails, the snow had gotten so heavy that they’d be obscured, white-on-white, under the sled’s headlights. And that would slow him down.
They started off, Climpt first, Lucas following, and lost the lights around the house within thirty seconds. After that, they were in the fishbowl of their own light. When Climpt dropped over the top of a rise or into a bowl, Lucas’ span of vision would suddenly contract, and expand again when Climpt came back into view. When Climpt suddenly moved out, his taillight would dwindle to almost nothing. When he slowed, Lucas would nearly overrun him. After two or three minutes, Lucas found the optimum distance, about fifteen yards, and hung there, the feds feeding tracking updates through the radio.
The snow made the ride into a nightmare, his face unprotected, wet, freezing, snow clogging his eyebrows, water running down his neck.