“Come on, Parker.” There was an edge in Mikkelitz’s voice now. An ugly, angry edge because things weren’t going his way. “Let’s have that gun. And let’s have it now!”
Jesse saw the hand holding the Walther drop a little, so the slug would angle up through the jaw, through the roof of the mouth and into the brain. A killing shot, he realized, then remembered that Mikkelitz had worked as a paramedic and so could be expected to have a working knowledge of human physiology. The gun-hand fingers flexed and he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the other man was about to squeeze the trigger. Abruptly, he jerked his right arm in an underhand toss, sending the Colt spinning away to bury itself in the snow.
Abby watched it land and disappear into the soft powder. Her last vestige of hope went with it. The adrenaline flooding her veins was working now to disperse the shock and the reaction to the pain. In the contest between fear and shock, fear won.
Earlier, she’d guessed that they were heading for the Storm Peak weather station. Somehow, she had to let Jesse know. Somehow, she had to give him the chance to catch up with them again. And if she’d guessed wrong? She thrust that thought aside. She had to be right.
The gun dug into her again, into her back this time, and she was propelled toward the Polaris.
“Pull that starter cord and get this motherfucker going,” Mikkelitz ordered.
He was still close by her, still screened by her body. He couldn’t be totally sure that Jesse didn’t have some kind of holdout weapon. A lot of cops carried them, he knew—a little short barrel .22 in an ankle holster maybe. Or maybe one of those two-shot .38 over-and-under derringers they were making again these days, copied from the old .41 Remingtons they used to carry on Mississippi riverboats. Now that Jesse was disarmed, for a moment he’d considered just walking up there and letting him have it—a .32 slug right in the face. But he couldn’t be sure that the deputy wasn’t waiting for him to do just that.
He’d settle with him another time, he thought, when he was sure of all the angles involved.
“Pull, fuck you!” he screamed at Abby. She’d tugged on the starter twice. But there was no answering kick from the engine. No sign of life. Not even a stutter. He racked his brains. The motor had been running sweet as pie just before the deputy had arrived. He’d cleared the flooded carburetor and gotten her going. He’d …
Then he remembered. To clear the carburetor, he’d turned off the fuel tap, to stop further fuel flowing in on unsuccessful attempts. When the engine had finally fired, he’d neglected to open the fuel tap again. The motor ran for a few seconds on the gas in the carburetor and the fuel lines, then simply cut out as it was starved of fuel.
He shoved the reporter to one side, leaned past her and found the tiny lever. He twisted it through ninety degrees to allow the fuel to flow, thumbed the rubber priming pump two or three times to get things started. Then he shoved Abby back into position.
“Now pull!” he ordered her. She leaned forward, sobbing quietly, to seize the plastic molded handle on the end of the starter cord. She pulled once and this time the engine caught, stammered, then died. One more would do it, he thought exultantly. He slapped her again with the stubby muzzle of the Walther to urge her on. She stumbled, fell against the little snow vehicle, then dragged herself up again, her weight on her uninjured leg. She looked up the hill to where Jesse still crouched behind the Yamaha. She could see the fury of helplessness etched in every line of his face and she called quickly, “Jess! I’ll always remember skiing the bumps with you!”
She cringed instantly, knowing Mikkelitz would hit her again. She felt almost triumphant when he did. She’d seen the puzzled look on Jesse’s face. She knew that the message didn’t make sense to him, knew that, because of its lack of sense, he would grasp the underlying meaning.
Or hoped he would.
“Shut up, bitch, and pull that rope,” Mikkelitz ordered her.
This time, the engine fired, stuttered, recovered and settled into a steady throb. Mikkelitz shoved her against the snowmobile so that she was forced to swing her injured leg over the saddle. Then he swung aboard in front of her. He was turned back through forty-five degrees to watch Jesse standing on the trail above them. He quickly brought up the Walther and snapped off a shot at the deputy. Jesse saw the movement and dropped prone behind the Yamaha, which was exactly what Mikkelitz had intended.
He shoved the Walther into the shoulder holster that had previously held the .38, clunked the Polaris’s drive into gear and accelerated away through the trees.
SIXTY-SEVEN
A
s the snowmobile’s engine note faded into the trees, Jesse stumbled downhill through the soft snow to the spot where he’d thrown his gun.
The spot was easy enough to find. The heavy Colt had left a deep mark in the surface of the snow. The gun itself took a little more time. It had sunk about two feet deep. He retrieved it, scrabbling in the soft snow till he saw a glimpse of the blued metal, then digging it out. It was caked with snow and he’d need to clear it before he tried using it.
His breath coming in huge clouds in the frigid air, he made his way back to the Yamaha. The spreading, red stain of fuel underneath the machine looked like blood. There was a steady rain of drops coming from the little machine. He unsnapped the engine cowling clamps instead, letting the side panel drop clear of the engine.
His heart sank as he saw the damage the .38 caliber slugs had done. The gas lines were cut, of course. He’d already realized that from the flood of gas running into the snow. The other damage was more serious.
One slug had smashed the single spark plug to shards. Another had savaged the carburetor and a third had blown a section of the finned combustion chamber away. The snowmobile wouldn’t be going anywhere without major repairs.
He cursed once, then set about cleaning the Colt while he tried to think of his next move. He brushed it clear of snow, dropped the magazine out and worked the action, catching the chambered round as it spun clear. He held the slide back with the lock safety and peered into the chamber, blowing into it violently several times and checking to make sure the barrel was clear of snow. Satisfied, he replaced the magazine into the butt and tried to shove the gun into his jacket pocket. It struck against something hard and unyielding. He replaced the gun in its usual positon, in the back of his waistband, and felt in his pocket. His fingers closed over the radio Lee had given him.
Mentally, he kicked himself. In his rush to get up the mountain and find Abby, he had clean forgotten that he had the radio on him. He groaned softly as he realized he could have reported seeing Abby and Mikkelitz from the gondola.
He checked that the radio was switched on, then thumbed the transmit button quickly, several times. No answer.
He tried again, knowing the action would cause an insistent beeping on any other communications unit tuned to the frequency he was on. This time, he heard a crackle, then Lee’s voice, recognizable even through the tiny built-in speaker of the set.
“This is Sheriff Torrens.” There seemed to be a lot of static on the connection, like a roaring background noise, he thought. He thumbed the talk button again.
“Lee, this is Jesse. He’s got Abby and he’s heading for Storm Peak. He shot out the motor on my snowmobile. I have no chance to catch him. It’s up to you.”
“I’m on my way,” Lee told him. “We’ve got Ray Newton’s chopper here. I’ll be there directly, Jess.”
Maybe it was the events of the last ten minutes or so that affected his thinking, but he didn’t realize that she meant it literally—that she was already in the air, and only a few minutes away from the top of Storm Peak. He assumed she meant that she was leaving the office.
“Just get here as fast as you can, Lee.” He switched off the radio and dropped it back into his pocket. An idea was beginning to take form in his mind.
He jerked open the carry pack at the rear of the Yamaha. The snowmobile was outfitted for use by the ski patrol and it had a certain amount of rescue gear packed in there. Along with an extensive first-aid kit and a harness for manually unloading passengers from the chair was a coiled, fifty-foot length of braided nylon rope. It was for use in case a skier went over a drop and rescuers had to reach him from above.
He slung the coil of rope over his shoulder, then scrabbled through the fiberglass cargo canister, tossing thermal blankets, bandages, and inflatable splints into the snow. Finally, his hand lit on a filled canteen of water. He hefted it experimentally, satisfied with the weight, then set off at a run, following the hard-packed access trail through the trees.
He could hear the hum and rattle of the Storm Peak Express chairlift getting louder as he ran. He’d realized that the access trail he was following cut right under the path of the chair. And, from the top of the bank above the trail, the moving cable was not much more than fifteen feet above the snow. Farther up the mountain, the contours of the ground fell away and the height of the cable reached twenty or thirty feet. But here, where the trail had been cut and the bank piled on the uphill side, was one of the points where the chairs were closest to the ground.
He was breathing heavily when he reached the cleared path under the chairlift. He scrambled awkwardly up the bank and paused for a few seconds, his chest heaving. Quickly, he passed one end of the rope around his upper body, tying it in a quick release knot and looping it around his chest. Then he gathered the other end and quickly tied in half a dozen figure eight knots, spaced about five feet apart, and starting around ten feet in from the end. Finally, he looped the end through the sling of the water bottle and quickly tied it off. All the while, the chairs passed above him in succession, fifteen seconds apart. It wasn’t a lot of time for what he intended, but it would have to do. He realized he should have brought the K-bar knife from the rescue pack on the Yamaha in case things went wrong. But there was no time now to go back for it. He’d have to trust dumb luck.
He figured he should have plenty of that.
His eyes narrowed with concentration as he held the water canteen ready for an underarm throw. He swallowed twice, realizing, incongruously, that his mouth and throat were dry, and he had the means to take care of that in his hand. Then he threw, arcing the weighted end of the rope up, trying to lob it over the moving cable above him.
And missed.
The canteen, with the knotted rope trailing behind it like a banner, dropped back in the snow. He stumbled forward and retrieved it. He was conscious now of skiers on the chair peering down at him curiously. There weren’t many of them. Most of the chairs were empty—further evidence, if any were needed, that Mikkelitz’s reign of terror was having an effect. He waited till another chair passed by above him, tossed the canteen again.
This time he made it. The canteen lobbed up and over the cable, dragging the rope behind it. He glanced frantically at the next chair as it seemed to rocket up the hill, suddenly moving faster than he thought possible, as he heaved in on the end of the rope, tightening it, feeling it biting into his body under his armpits. The chair was almost up to him now. In a second or two, it would snag the rope looped over the cable and begin dragging it up the mountain. He pulled as much slack out of the rope as he could, then sprang high, driving with his legs, and stretching to catch the rope as far above his head as possible.
His hands closed around the smooth, thick-braided nylon. He started to slide down, then managed to obtain a proper grip at one of the knots. At the same time he was frantically jamming his feet together on the rope, searching for the purchase of another knot. He found it and hung, suspended from the cable. The rope stretched as the last of the slack went out of it and he sagged back down toward the snow. Then the chair caught the looped rope and suddenly he was dragged uphill from the bank where he stood and the contour of the mountain dropped the ground away from him by another ten feet or so.
Dangling and twisting like a fish on a line, holding desperately to the rope with his hands and feet, Jesse sailed up the hill, some fifteen feet below the chairlift.
Incongruously, he realized that he was now pursuing Mikkelitz using the reverse of the murderer’s own original technique, dangling below a ski lift on the end of a doubled rope.
The thought didn’t remain long at the forefront of his consciousness. Very quickly, his world became the agony of his shoulders and forearms and calves as he clung to the rope. He twisted one arm through it to give himself a little relief. But even with that extra purchase, he didn’t know how long he could hang here. His shoulder muscles screamed with red-hot pain and his forearms were already beginning to cramp. Dully, he realized that they were the muscles that had taken the brunt of the work as he’d fought the snowmobile up the mountain. Now they were being asked to do double duty.
Vaguely, he heard someone shouting, realized it was a passenger. God alone knew what the people on the chairlift thought. Probably thought the Mountain Murderer was climbing up to get them. He spun slowly in the wind, the snow-covered pines sliding past him on either side. As he came around to face uphill, he saw one of the chairlift towers looming closer, and felt a sudden chill.
The chair was designed to pass over the tower, as it was suspended from one side of the running cable only. The rope, looped over both sides, would jam as soon as it reached the point where the cable passed over the tower top. He had to get rid of the rope. Had to throw it loose. And he had two choices. Up or down. Get up to the chair above him, hang on to it and drop the rope, or slide back down to the snowfield below him.