He'd just have to get close, to make sure, this time. Nothing fancy. Just a quick hit and gone.
The ride to the hospital was wild. He could feel himself moving like a blue light, a blue force, through the vortex of the storm, the snow pounding the Lexan faceplate, the sled throbbing beneath him, bucking over bumps, twisting, alive. At times he could barely see; other times, in protected areas or where he was forced to slow down, the field of vision opened out. He passed a four-by-four, looked up at the driver. A stranger. Didn't look at him, on his sled, ten feet away. Blind?
He pushed on, following the rats' maze of trails that paralleled the highway, along the edge of town. Past another four-by-four. Another stranger who didn't look at him.
A hell of a storm for so many strangers to be out on the road, not looking at snowmobiles…
Not looking at snowmobiles.
Why didn't they look at him? He stopped at the entrance to the hospital parking lot, thought about it. He could see Weather's Jeep. Several other cars close by; he could put the sled around the corner of the building, slip out into the parking lot.
Why didn't they look at him? It wasn't like he was invisible. If you're riding in a truck and a sled goes tearing past, you look at it.
The Iceman turned off the approach to the hospital, cruised on past. Something to think about. Kept going, two hundred, three hundred yards. Janes' woodlot. He'd seen Dick Janes in here all fall, cutting oak. Not for this year, but for next.
The Iceman pulled off the trail, ran the sled up a short slope, sinking deep in the snow. He clambered off, moved fifteen feet, huddled next to a pile of cut branches.
Coyotes did this. He knew that from hunting them. He'd once seen a coyote moving slow, apparently unwary, some three or four hundred yards out. He'd followed its fresh tracks through the tangle of an alder swamp, then up a slope, then back around… and found himself looking down at his own tracks across the swamp and a cavity in the snow where the mutt had laid down, resting, while he fought the alders. Checking the back trail.
Behind the pile of cuttings, he was comfortable enough, hunkering down in the snow. He was out of the wind, and the temperature had begun climbing with the approach of the storm.
He waited two minutes and wondered why. Then another minute. He was about to stand up, go back to the sled, when he heard motors on the trail. He squatted again, watched. Two sleds went by, slowly. Much too slowly. They weren't getting anywhere if they were travelers, weren't having any fun if they were joyriders. And there was nothing down this trail but fifteen or twenty miles of trees until they hit the next town, a crossroads.
Not right.
The Iceman waited, watching.
Saw them come back. Heard them first, took the.357 from his pocket.
He could see them clearly enough, peering through the branches of the trim pile, but he probably was invisible, down in the snow, above them. They stopped.
They stopped. They knew. They knew who he was, what he was doing.
The lifelong anger surged. The Iceman didn't think. The Iceman acted, and nothing could stand against him.
The Iceman half-stood, caught the first man's chest over the blade of the.357.
Didn't hear the shot. Heard the music of a fine machine, felt the gun bump.
The first man toppled off his sled, the second man, black-Lexan-masked, turning. All of this in slow motion, the second man turning, the gun barrel popping up with the first shot, dropping back into the slot, the second man's body jumped, but he wavered, not falling, a hand coming up, fingers spread, to ward off the.357 JHPs; a third shot went through his hand, knocked him backwards off the sled. And the gun kept on, shots filing out, still no noise, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth…
And in the soft snow, the bumping stopped and the Iceman heard the hammer falling on empty shells, three times, four, the cylinder turning.
Click, click, click, click.
CHAPTER 27
He's moving, he's moving, he's moving fast, what happened what happened?
The radio call bounced around the tile corridor, Carr echoing it, shouting, What happened, what happened-and knowing what had happened. Weather sprinted toward the emergency room, Lucas two steps behind, calling into the radio, Stay with him stay with him, we might have some people down.
The ambulance driver was talking to a nurse. Weather ran through the emergency room, screamed at him: "Go, go, go, I'll be there, get started."
"Where…?" The driver stood up, mouth hanging.
Lucas, not knowing where the ambulance was, shouted, "Go," and the driver went, across the room, through double hardwood doors into a garage. The ambulance faced out, and the driver hit a palm-sized button and the outside door started up. He went left and Lucas right, climbed inside. The back doors opened, and a white-suited attendant scrambled aboard, carrying his parka, then Weather with her bag and Climpt with his shotgun.
"Where?" the driver shouted over his shoulder, already on the gas.
"Right down the frontage road, Janes' woodlot, right down the road."
"What happened?"
"Guys might be shot-deputies." And she chanted, staring at Lucas: "Oh, Jesus, Oh, Jesus God…"
The ambulance fishtailed out of the parking garage, headed across the parking lot to the hospital road. A deputy was running down the road ahead of them, hatless, gloveless, hair flying, a chrome revolver held almost in front of his face. Henry Lacey, running as hard as he could. They passed him, looking to the right, in the ditch and up the far bank, snow pelting the windshield, the wipers struggling against it.
"There," Lucas said. The snowmobiles sat together, side-by-side, what looked like logs beside them.
"Stay here," Lucas shouted back at Weather.
"What?"
"He might still be up there."
The ambulance slid to a full stop and Lucas bolted through the door, pistol in front of him, scanning the edge of the treeline for movement. The body armor pressed against him and he waited for the impact, waited, looking, Climpt out to his right, the muzzle of the shotgun probing the brush.
Nothing. Lucas wallowed across the ditch, Climpt covering. The deputies looked like the victims of some obscure third-world execution, rendered black-and-white by the snow and their snowmobile suits, like a grainy newsphoto. Their bodies were upside down, uncomfortable, untidy, torn, unmoving. Rusty's face mask was starred with a bullet hole. Lucas lifted the mask, carefully; the slug had gone through the deputy's left eye. He was dead. Dusty was crumbled beside him, facedown, helmet gone, the back of his head looking as though he'd been hit by an ax. Then Lucas saw the pucker in the back of his snowmobile suit, another hit, and then a third, lower, on the spine. He looked at Rusty: more hits in the chest, hard to see in the black nylon. Dusty's rifle was muzzledown in the snow. He'd cleared the scabbard, no more.
Climpt came up, weapon still on the timber. "Gone," he said. He meant the deputies.
"Yeah." Lucas lumbered into the woods, saw the ragged trail of a third machine, fading into the falling snow. He couldn't hear anything but the people behind him. No snowmobile sound. Nothing.
He turned back, and Weather was there. She dropped her bag. "Dead," she said. She spread her arms, looking at him. "They were children."
The ambulance driver and the attendant struggled through the snow with an aluminum basket-stretcher, saw the bodies, dropped the basket in the snow, stood with their hands in their pockets. Henry Lacey ran up, still holding the gun in front of his face.
"No, no, no," he said. And he kept saying it, holding his head with one hand, as though he'd been wounded himself: "No, no…"
Carr pulled up in his Suburban, jumped out. Carr looked at them, his chief deputy wandering in circles chanting, "No, no," both hands to his head now, as though to keep it from exploding.
"Where is he?" Carr shouted.
"He's gone. The feds better have him, because it'd be hell trying to follow him," Lucas shouted back.