Caller unknown, p.36
Caller Unknown, page 36
“Don’t touch it,” Ed warned.
Jim looked like he would sooner pick up a snake.
“Deep Harbor here,” came the voice again, “approaching depot. Salt Cracker, please advise ETA, over.”
As the noise of the rotors faded, they heard another sound on the still winter air: the far-off sound of a siren approaching from the Three Mile Road.
They both looked at the dinghy. “I guess we better get going,” Jim said.
He slung the Winchester over his shoulder and began hauling the vessel back with the painter, fighting the outboard, which was still gamely trying to drive the dinghy northward. It was soon churning and bobbing in the small waves by the slip. He killed the engine and turned to Max. He was lying on the gravel drive, half an eye on the raging fire, half on Doc’s corpse.
“We can’t take him with us,” Jim said. “He already nearly gave me away.” He put two fingers in the side of his mouth and emitted a high-pitched whistle. Max’s ears pinned back.
“Come here, boy,” Jim said. Max got up and came forward, his tail wagging low, his tongue hanging.
Jim patted him, then said, “OK, home, boy, git. Git.” Max whined. “Now!” he said more firmly. Reluctantly, the dog turned and loped back down the drive through the smoke. He stopped and turned, looking back at Jim through the heat haze. Jim shouted “Home!” once more and Max took off again, and ran around the bend in the drive.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
MacDonald had picked up another patrol car and they now approached the Three Mile Road in convoy, sirens blaring. Pollitt was not answering his radio and MacDonald hoped it was because of the notoriously bad backwoods reception, nothing worse; nevertheless, he sensed something bad in his bones.
MacDonald’s wingman was Deputy Archie Lime. Lime was two years from retirement and now entirely devoted to manning the front desk at the Madison station house. As far as he was aware, Lime hadn’t been out on patrol or on active duty for five years or more. But as he was the only available deputy, so be it. Behind him came another county patrol car that had been near Greenville when the call had come in. MacDonald had been assured that no fewer than two fire trucks and three more patrol cars were somewhere in his wake, but he had no idea how far behind they were.
He braked at the crash site only long enough to ascertain that the abandoned Suburban and Dove’s truck were empty. He knew where they had to go. Even an hour after the explosions at the Constance house, a thick column of smoke could be seen rising into the frigid December air.
As he and Lime drove on, he witnessed one of the curious things of the many curious and, in the end, downright terrible things he was to witness that day. It was the sight of a black and white collie dog slinking along the side of the road toward them as they approached the Constance turnoff. It seemed spooked by the sirens and lights and ducked into the treeline. To MacDonald it looked very like Jim Dove’s Max. If it was, where was Jim?
The next day, as the police and National Guard searched the woods and lakeside, they found the dog lying on the porch of the bait and tackle store, waiting for Dove’s return. He was impounded.
Meanwhile, the search went on for Ed Constance, the kid who had gone missing after his father’s suspicious suicide some ten years before, and who now had an APB out on him for a rape-murder in Boston and the deaths of five people at the cabin. He was now the most wanted fugitive in America.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
After Max had gone, Jim pulled in the rubber dinghy while Ed ran into the boathouse. There were some outdoor clothes hanging on a peg: parka, work pants, and a pair of work boots. Ed grabbed these. He took out the letter he’d retrieved from the antique clock, then bundled up his suit jacket and, fighting against the heat of the flames that had reduced the cabin to its concrete foundations, threw both into the blaze. He expected the trail of evidence from Boston onward would be enough to get him several life sentences, but at least everything in the Volvo, the trash bags, the Bible, and the planted evidence against him in the cabin were now just ashes.
The sirens were closer and he knew he had scant minutes. He looked through the heat haze at the dead men lying on the drive. He didn’t know what was waiting further up that lake with the helicopter, whether the crew, having failed to raise them, would spook and fly off before he and Jim could get there. But if they didn’t spook, if he was going to have an advantage over them, that sniper rifle would sure come in handy. He hobbled back to where the shooter had fallen near the burned man, picked up the rifle with its bulbous suppressor and studied the mechanism. He ejected the magazine and then unzipped the dead man’s suit and found two blood-caked spare ammo clips. He limped back to the boathouse. Jim was topping up the outboard with fuel from a can.
“Set?” he asked.
“Sure,” Ed answered. He put the sniper’s gun onto the bottom boards of the dinghy, then held the painter steady as Jim got in. He yanked the starter cord on the Yamaha. It roared to life again. He gestured for Jim to take the tiller and went forward to sit on the middle strut of the dinghy, cradling the sniper’s gun. The outboard increased in pitch as Jim opened the throttle and they described a wide arc away from the slip and into the far reaches of the lake, the arms of the pine-crowded shores falling away.
Ed looked behind. The cabin blaze got smaller and smaller until it became a tiny, angry orange eye. He didn’t see any stutter lights yet. The boat hit some little waves as Jim opened the throttle even more.
They reached the north end of the lake in twenty minutes. In front of the hotel entrance where the steamer used to put in, there was an old landing pier, now sagging, its piles sunk into the lake floor, but Jim had no intention of taking her up there. There was a little cove, a beauty spot hidden from the hotel by a rocky outcrop, a mile down the west coast of the lake. He aimed for that, hoping they would not be seen by any watchers.
He cut the engine and the inflatable drifted into the cove. Ed jumped down as it grounded on the shale bottom and tied the painter to a cedar root exposed by the wash of the lake. A path zigzagged up through an outcropping of the mountain into the forest.
Ed hefted the sniper’s rifle as Jim picked up his Winchester and took the lead. Though there was deadfall and cones and a thick mat of needles, Jim moved up the unused path like a ghost. They reached a viewpoint with fallen safety railings and a bench. An information board had been placed here in some distant past, the frame carved with the words “Arrowhead Path,” but the glass panel covering the legend had long ago broken and the information sheet had vanished.
They went on for a half-hour, the gray lake flitting in and out of view to their right through the pines and boulders. The rhyolite that had brought the Native Americans here lay fractured in shards that had fallen from the outcropping above the path. Jim suddenly stopped, crouched down. Ed wondered if he had seen or heard something, but instead Jim picked up a particularly vicious-looking blade-like arrowhead and slid it into his camo vest.
Sunlight began to assert itself through the overhead foliage and the path began to dip down. Ed could see a large expanse of overgrown lawn ahead. It was separated from the forest by a dry-stone wall, pierced by a wooden gate that hung lopsidedly from one hinge. Behind was the white stucco gleam of the hotel itself and, like an alien insect dropped from the heavens, the helicopter.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
David Krige was seething. His near-thirty years on earth had taught him that in life forward progress was only made about five percent of the time. The other ninety-five percent was wasted holding on to what little had already been achieved. This applied as much to mundane enterprises as it did to maintaining the place of Typhon in the world order.
The organization that had brainwashed him and ordained his early death had reprieved him, brought him out of the darkness to be a leader. The leader of the future when the old men, Vermeulen and Fitzgerald and the others, were gone. Coughlin was already in the grave. It was his time. The world was bad, taken over by the faithless, the left-leaning, minorities, people of deficient will. He had never speculated about his birth parents. Only one thing was he sure of: unlike the other kids from the Lot, his blood was pure Aryan. There were Vessels, Vials, and Angels, as ordained by the Book. He was the last: God’s avenging angel on the corruption of the world and its peoples.
Only this final bringing to account had thwarted him. It was ten long years since Northeastern and Seboomook. Today the long wait was about to end. Might already have ended if Doc’s radio message was anything to go by. And yet, looking at the distant pall of smoke over Brantwood, something told him Ed Constance was still alive. Their final reckoning was going to be face-to-face.
There had been no further word from Doc. But as long as Krige had Sarah, he was sure Ed would come to him.
He kicked a stone on the driveway into the overgrown lawn that separated it from the steamer pier. He turned and there was the gray mountain looming over its back. Nakuset. Sun Mountain. Certainly no sun today. Its 2,000-foot peak was hidden in wreathing mist and low-lying clouds, and he worried for a moment that the cloud ceiling might fall further and the helicopter would be stuck here just as the police turned up.
David looked anxiously at the hotel road. Though it hadn’t seen regular use in nearly twenty-five years, it was still passable. For the last mile of its course, the single-lane track came around a bend in the lakeshore and traversed a rocky, treeless heath before passing over a little humpbacked bridge that led into the hotel grounds.
He had been checking it ever since they had landed a half-hour before, but it was as empty of life now as it had been when they had touched down. His only other companion was Fallows. Having led the team down in Miami, the Merriweather’s security chief had arrived on a private jet into Logan with Sarah the day before. As well as serving in the SEALs, Fallows had transitioned to become a Seawolf, a Navy combat helicopter pilot. He’d been unfazed by the low cloud cover and looming terrain as they’d flown in from Bangor, comfortable enough when blinded by the cloud to fly on instruments. Fallows sat huddled in the cockpit, monitoring the radio. Despite the overcast he was wearing sunglasses. He opened the side hatch as David approached.
“Nothing?” David asked.
“Nothing,” Fallows said. “Can’t raise them.”
David looked at the empty stretch of road skirting the eastern lakeside and cursed.
“We gonna abort?” Fallows asked.
David looked at his Rolex: 9.41. “We’ll give it to ten.”
Fallows craned his head up at the sky beyond the Perspex. David had no idea with what clarity the man could see things through the sunglasses and the dusty plastic. “Winds shifting to the east. The weather will keep off for now.”
Well, that was a relief. A blizzard from Canada was all they needed.
“OK,” David answered. “I’m gonna try and get more of a view from up there.” He pointed at the fourth-floor balcony of the hotel, then reached into the open hatch at the back of the chopper where he had left his equipment and retrieved an Uzi submachine gun and two spare clips of ammo. He dropped the extra magazines into a pocket in his camos and strode across the cracked, weed-strewn drive to the porte cochere. Someone had decided to relieve the hotel of its front doors in the last couple of decades. No doubt some expensive hardwood was now serving as a dining-room table or shop counter somewhere in the county.
The management company had since boarded up the doorway and all the ground-floor windows with plywood. But in the case of the entranceway, the panels had been kicked in and no one had returned to fix them. In fact, it looked like they had not been back in years.
He entered the hall. A double staircase arched up from either side of the lobby to a second-floor gallery serving the floors above. Gray light filtered down from the glass light dome high above in the atrium, showing the faded red carpet, now a ghostly pale pink.
The reception and concierge desks, no doubt also made of hardwood, had been removed, making the big space seem even emptier than it was. The metal fittings had also been ripped out, as had the wall paneling, leaving ugly distressed plasterwork underneath with dangling wires and empty electrical sockets. An elevator cage stood across the lobby, denuded of brass fittings. Even the lift grille had been removed.
The only decorations left by the plunderers were two massive and flimsily clad caryatids that held up a small entablature flanking the ballroom doors at the far end of the lobby. David guessed it would have taken a crane to remove the sculptures, so there they had remained.
He took the stairs up three levels. Ahead lay a long corridor with the most prestigious rooms facing the lake. He turned right and went to the furthest of the suites. The doors were gone. Beyond what must have been a large reception room was a wide interior with no fewer than two French doors leading to an expansive balcony. This was the presidential suite, by the looks of it. What appeared to be a bedroom and bathroom suite were on the left. The suite was empty of furniture and fittings. The French doors had not weathered the storms of the last winters well and only a couple of the panes remained. Leaves and broken glass lay scattered on the faded patterned carpet.
He pulled open one of the doors and stepped out. The whole vista of Tranquility lay before his eyes. A ten-mile stretch that grayed into nothing in the misty distance. But above the mist, like a biblical sign, there was the column of smoke marking the Constance cabin.
He was about to turn and inspect the stretch of road again when movement caught his eye a mile or two out. A small dot with a V-shaped wake behind it. It was the only thing moving on the lake. He pulled out a set of small field glasses from a top pocket of his camo jacket, lifted them to his eyes and adjusted the focus. An inflatable with two figures in it. They were not heading directly for the hotel but off to one side, to the western shore. The dinghy disappeared behind an outcropping of rock. David saw that an old path led up over the greensward surrounding the hotel in that direction. Whoever was coming was trying to do so inconspicuously.
It was Constance, he was sure. Maybe with the guy from the bait store. How had they beaten one of the best teams Typhon had ever put in the field? The little wimp who would cry himself to sleep every night at Mrs. Frome’s had turned out to be a world-class killer, but not in the way Typhon had anticipated.
Well, now the irritation of watching others fuck things up was over. It was down to him, David: kill or capture.
He called down to the helicopter. “Fallows! We got company.”
Despite knowing the Constance saga must now end, one way or another, David had misgivings. Fallows only had a Glock handgun. And the Uzi was hardly the weapon of choice for range. On the other hand, he was aware that the sniper had had a Barrett and, hard though it was to believe, if Ed and this other guy really had overcome Doc’s team, they might now have it.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
The Huey sat on the overgrown parking lot, its blades drooping like a crane fly’s legs. Its hatches were shut and there was no sign of the occupants.
“Think they’re waiting for us, kid,” Jim said. “Must have seen us comin’.”
“We can’t hang around for the cops.”
“No cover out there,” Jim said.
“I have an idea,” Ed said. “Take this.” He offered Jim the Barrett.
Jim laid down the Winchester and took the sniper’s gun. He inspected it properly for the first time, then lifted it. The hotel facade zoomed at him through the scope. He carefully traversed the windows and balconies with it.
“Eureka.” There was the top of a head and hint of a blue parka peeking up from the nearest of the top-floor balconies, the snub nose of a submachine gun braced on the parapet. Had they been seen? At about 200 yards, Jim guessed they were pretty much at the maximum range of the other guy’s gun. Not the Barrett, though. He thumbed off the safety and gradually brought the reticles down on the target so that the head was right in the center of the crosspieces. “There’s a guy up there looking this way. I got him bang to rights.”
“Don’t shoot,” Ed hissed. “It could be the pilot. We gotta get north, remember?”
Jim cussed. “So what do you want me to do?”
Ed pulled out the Glock and checked the magazine. It was full, bar the wayward shot Doc had gotten off before Ed had hit him. “Lay down some covering fire. I’ll go in the back.”
“You nuts, kid? There could be a half-dozen of them in there.”
“I’m guessing this is just an extraction team. They’d need room in the chopper for the four at Brantwood plus me. I’m thinking there’ll be two at most.”
“Sure as shit hope so.”
Ed looked over to his left. The stone wall surrounded what might have been lawn but was now an overgrown meadow with rhododendrons crowding in on the northern end in the lee of the mountain. Broken gazebos and a crumpled pavilion stood around a croquet lawn surrounded by overgrown beds. Steps led up to a wide terrace and side entrance. Around the back were service buildings and, Ed assumed, the rear doors of the hotel.
“I’m goin’ around that way,” he said. “When I get into the bushes, lay down fire on that guy’s position and keep him pinned. I’ll make a dash for the back.”
Jim shook his head. “It’s a dumbass plan.”
“It’s the only one I got.”
“Just watch yourself.”
Ed patted Jim on the shoulder, took a deep breath, then slipped away, using the dry-stone wall as cover as Jim reapplied the scope to his eye. The guy was still there, peering over toward the Arrowhead Path. The easiest shot of his shooting career. But one he couldn’t take. He tracked Ed’s progress for a couple of minutes as he crouch-ran to the end of the wall. Jim guessed that Ed could barely see him in the foliage but nevertheless gave a little nod as Ed raised a hand with a thumbs-up. Jim returned his attention to the scope, aimed a foot or so above the balcony’s guy’s head and squeezed the trigger.
