Authors: Chuck Dixon
As Merry fought her way down the frozen road she could see her pursuer in her mind; a furious thing advancing with clockwork precision in her wake. A hooded, faceless creature that progressed with a sort of motion that she recognized in the way it moved its hips and set its feet. She saw the familiar in the silhouette that was pumping limbs to close with her.
It was a
woman
chasing her.
27
He struck out, legs kicking and arms pulling for the other shack.
The cold all around was not cold. It was pain. Hard, hammering pain setting his skin aflame. Knifing into his muscles.
Reach out and grab a handful of water. Pull it back and reach for another.
Training came back. Conditioning took over. The hours and days spent in ice cold water at Dam Neck and Coronado came back to him.
The voices of instructors rang in his ears under the rhythm of his own pulse pounding in his ears.
Pain is in your mind! Cold is nothing! Water is just air only thicker!
Dropped in freezing pools and ice choked seas. Sometimes bound hand and foot. Sometimes naked. Sometimes weighed down with full gear. The shrieks of the instructors shouting from above reaching him through the fathoms of water. They called to him now from the past.
Pain is a bitch. Fuck that bitch! You tired? You want to quit? You want to die?
His muscles were clenched by cold fire. If he stopped they’d seize. If they seized then he’d sink. If that happened Merry was alone. Grab a handful of water. Pull it back. Grab another.
Rising above the jabber in his head was one voice ringing clear and loud and true.
“
You awake, Cade? Are you alive, Cade? Then move, you worthless motherfucker! You do not have my permission to rest! You do not have my approval to die! Swim, you weak-kneed motherfucker!
”
Gunny Leffertz piping in.
Levon struck out with renewed purpose. Both hands stabbing out and coming back in a crawl. Angling upward for the ceiling of ice above him. Three feet thick in places. Like an inverted moonscape with hummocks and craters across its luminous surface. Trapped bubbles of air squiggled like mercury across the surface. Shimmering silver light filtered through the frozen upper limit of his world of suffering.
His throat was gripped as if by a fist. His body screamed for air. He tamped down the urgent animal desire to take a breath. Drove it down further and further. His total consciousness was focused on the swim ahead. His eyes scanned the ice above looking for sign of the shack somewhere on the lake surface over his head.
Lose it, miss it, pass it, turn away at the wrong angle and he’d die. He could only reach it on the first try. No second shots.
“
Are you thinking, Cade? You are thinking, aren’t you? You are using your imagination! That will get you dead, motherfucker! Stop thinking about what might happen and kick, damn you! If the worst happens your dumb ass will never know it! The dead die ignorant! Swim, asshole, swim!
”
Ahead of him, a smudge on the ice above. A muddy smear staining the dull glow cast from above.
He kicked and pulled upwards until he could touch the dimpled pack ice with his fingers. Eyes on the shape above that was becoming clearly the square shape of the second shack. Treading water, his hand found the bottom lip of the fishing hole cut in the ice by the Walbrooke brothers.
Levon kicked up and, using his body and one bent arm, wedged himself into the circular hole. The ice was two feet thick here. He shot a fist upward and struck a lid of ice above. Wriggling and fighting he managed to wedge his broad shoulders into the cavity. He twisted his neck and raised his chin to find a few inches of air trapped between the sloshing water and the cap of ice.
A sip of frigid air to fill his starving lungs. He ran his hands over the smooth surface of the frozen plug above. He pressed one palm against it. There was no room to bring both hands to bear. There was no give. He dropped back into the icy water for movement to room. He was free floating again in the shadow of the shack.
Regaining his equilibrium, he scissored his legs to shoot him upward. One fist extended above his head.
“
One way out, Cade. One chance left for you and your little one. Don’t fuck this up.
”
He kicked hard, eyes locked on the pearly circle in the gloom above.
He was crouched, hopping like a toad. One glove in his teeth as he brushed fingers through the snow. His fingertips skittered over the ice, feeling for the empty shell casings. He counted as he picked them up and shoved them in a cargo pocket on his leg. When he reached thirty he stood and snapped closed the flap over the cargo pocket.
He crunched over the ice to the second shack only because Koning would ask him. And the man would know if he was lying. That damned evil eye saw everything.
As he walked he ejected the empty mag from the MP5 and stowed it in a pouch on the chest of his suit. He drew another one and secured it in place and drew back the bolt chambering the first round. Standing before the shack, he placed the weapon under one arm while he replaced the glove on his chilled hand.
He looked up at a sound just as the door of the shack exploded open. A white-faced man leapt toward the rider, a long gleaming steel hook held over his head. The look of a beast in his eyes.
28
They were in the family room of the lakeside mansion that sat below their cabin. A large room with furniture gathered against a wall and draped with sheets. A full bar dominated one wall. An entertainment center on the other. A huge walk-in fireplace of field stone rose up the bearing wall.
“I won’t lie to you,” Danni said.
Giselle and Carl were, like her, duct taped into kitchen chairs. Mother was set on the carpet across from her children.
“I must be certain,” the man with the dead white eye said.
From elsewhere in the house Danni could hear the sound of men shouting. Glass broke. Wood splintered. They were looking for something.
“You understand?” the man with the dead white eye said. His voice was level. Flat. Even bored.
“I understand,” Danni said.
“We are looking for a safe. A vault. A very special hiding place.”
“I’ve never been in this house. I don’t even know the names of the owners.”
“Your husband maintains these properties. You help him, yes?”
“Yes. He does. I do help sometimes. But I’ve never been inside this house.”
Another man appeared in a doorway. His snow suit was off. His hair was white-blond. He wore sideburns that connected to a brushy mustache like a hussar from back in the day. He was dressed in new mechanic’s overalls. Latex gloves on his hands. Cloth covers on his boots. A sledgehammer with a long handle was in his fist. He spoke rapidly in a language Danni could not recognize. The man with the dead eye sighed and growled a command to him. The man in the doorway called back to others deeper in the house. It sounded like a different language. The man in the doorway was translating. He hefted the sledge and retreated from the great room.
“We usually find the safe in the gymnasium. It is not there. You can see why we need your help.” The man with the dead eye was crouching before her. His hand touched her knee. She recoiled as much as she could with the tape securing her tightly to the chair.
Danni looked over at her son and daughter. Carl’s head hung low, eyes down. Steam rose from a puddle of urine at his feet. Giselle was wide-eyed, staring, searching into her mother’s eyes with silent longing.
“Please,” Danni said, turning her eyes to the stranger.
“Tell me where the safe is.”
“I don’t know. None of us know. We’ve never been in this house. The owners haven’t been here in years,” she whispered, voice wet as her nose and eyes ran freely.
“You know. I believe you. I really do,” the man with the dead eye said and stood.
“Thank you,” Danni said, exhaling the air she felt she had been holding in her lungs since the men first appeared in her kitchen.
“As I said, however. I must be certain,” the man said, his back to her as he opened a canvas tool case that rested on the counter of the bar.
“I’m not lying!” She was screaming now.
He turned to them, a pair of metal shears in his gloved hand.
“Let’s confirm that, please,” the man said.
29
The man’s eyes opened wide. His hands went to Levon’s arm. His only instinct was to remove the steel hook causing the unbearable agony spiking into his head just above his right eye. The MP5 dropped to the ice between them.
Levon fought against the man’s double grip. He bore down harder on the rubber grip of the gaff, securing the steel hook in the bone. He punched the rider once, twice, in the throat. The blow was blunted by Levon’s weakness and the thick fabric of the snowsuit latched tight around the man’s neck.
Locked in struggle, the rider pressed Levon back toward the shack opening. The rider was a big man. Not young but fit. Levon locked his knees, forcing the man to push back against dead weight. The fallen weapon was kicked forward to slide over the ice. The double grip on Levon’s arm became feeble.
The look on the rider’s face melted from fierce determination to dull fear. The grip failed as the feeling to his fingers fled. His knees buckled. He fell forward against Levon. The gaff was yanked from the wound leaving a furrow of ripped flesh and little blood. The rider was dead.
Levon fell to the ice under the sudden weight of the man. He rose to his knees and forked his arms under the rider’s shoulders. He dragged the still figure into the shack. He straddled the corpse lying over the hole in the floor. Levon yanked the rope pull to secure the door. He set the block of wood in its cradle that held the door shut firm in the frame.
He dropped back on the bench, rubbing his hands together. They were drawing into claws against his will, the muscles and tendons seizing with the cold. His hands felt like useless clubs at the ends of his arms. His fingers were dead numb. Get those fingers working or die.
He allowed the waves of tremors that wracked him without resistance. That was his body fighting to restore circulation; his lizard brain fighting to restore his body temperature.
The blood returned to his hands. The rising pain was welcome. A sign that he’d have use of his fingers again soon.
His tremors continued. His system could only do so much on its own to bring his core temperature back to optimal. He needed a source of external heat. He needed out of his frozen clothes.
The Walbrookes had propane stoves set up in both cabins. He found fireplace matches but his fingers shook too much to keep one lit. The cock to open the propane feed took some effort to open. He turned it until he heard the hiss and smelled the rotten egg stink. Levon tore a Penthouse pet from where she was stapled to a wall. He lit a corner with three matches ignited simultaneously. The slick paper caught. He waved it toward the stove. The gas caught in a brilliant flash that sent a dusting of black embers everywhere.
Levon stood and stripped down, leaving his boots for last. He used a razor sharp gutting knife to cut off his flannel shirt, undershirt, pants and long underwear pants. As wet as his feet were, the wool socks were still holding in what heat was left.
Naked as the redhead on the scorched Penthouse fold-out, he crouched to hold his hands within the aura of warmed air rising from the stove. Not too close. Frozen flesh would cook rather than thaw. His fingers were soon infused with a pulsing agony as the small vessels opened up to allow blood inside. Despite the pain and shivering, his hands would now obey him sufficiently for the work ahead. He pressed back against the bench and used his booted feet to lever the dead man onto his back.
The latches holding the breast of the snow suit closed were the hardest. The zipper pulls beneath had nylon rope loops that he could hook a finger into. He stripped the man, dressing him down like a deer carcass. Now he could remove his own work boots and socks.
When he got to the man’s two piece Under Armour leggings and crew top he pulled them off the corpse and onto himself. The cloth was still warm from the rider’s remaining body heat. Levon rubbed his feet dry with a filthy towel he found on a hook. He warmed his feet near the stove until he could move his toes without pain. He then slipped his feet into the dead man’s dry wool socks.
He reached through the pile of clothing lying on the floor by the body and pulled on the t-shirt and cable sweater and then the snow suit. The boots went on last. All was a good fit if a little roomy. The boots were too tight across the instep. He tossed them aside and put on his own work boots. They were damp inside. There was no time to wait for them to dry.
The short-range radio transmitter was in a Velcro pouch on the snowsuit’s chest. A row of LEDs glowed amber across the top. He depressed the send button. There were two answering squelches from the speaker. Whoever was out there was maintaining radio discipline.
The radio went back in the pouch. The rider had nothing else on him. No currency, ID or any other sort of personal item. Levon’s wallet and house keys went into pockets on the suit. He removed his Leatherman from his belt along with his buck knife and secured those away as well.
Levon searched the floor of the shack for the MP5. On hands and knees he looked under the bench. He slid the body aside, turned it over. He undogged the door and opened it to scan the ice outside.
The weapon was gone. It could only have fallen through the hole in the ice when he dragged the rider’s body inside.