Authors: Chuck Dixon
Levon retreated up the stairs, footfalls silent on the thick pile carpet. He returned with a leather upholstered chair he found at a rolltop desk in a study. The chair was wheeled. He pushed it into the stairwell. It tumbled down, rebounded off the wall at the landing and continued on down the turn to the bottom. It dropped from step to step toward the doorway to the garage. As the chair came to rest with a bang against the door it was greeted by the thunder of gunfire from inside the garage. The door frame splintered. Rounds punched through the solid wood door, blasting chunks of fill from the leather chair.
Ragged holes appeared in the walls at the bottom of the steps. Buckshot. Someone was in a space parallel to the bottom of the staircase. The chair was peppered with enough force to throw it against the opposite wall. A blizzard of plaster hung in the air.
Out of the line of fire against the oblique wall at the turn of the stairwell, Levon waited for the gun fire to die down before extending one hand around the corner and emptying the remainder of the Sig’s clip down at the door and the wall. He dropped the handgun to the stairs and moved to the landing windows. A man in mechanic’s coveralls raced stumbling into the yellow light cast from the open garage doors toward the row of snow machines.
Raising the rifle to his shoulder, Levon dropped him with three rounds aimed low to catch the runner in the legs and lower back. The man fell, flipping on his back onto the snow. A shotgun dropped from his fists. The man was clutching his side, hands clamped over an exit wound turning the snow beneath him pink. A tartan cap lay near him where it had flown from his head when he fell.
The wounded man called out a name in a croaking voice. It sounded like “Avi” to Levon. There was no answer from the garage. No shadow crossed the rectangle of light.
Levon shoulder slung the rifle and grabbed up the Sig and charged it with the last magazine from his pocket. He ran up the stairs and through to the great room for the sliding glass doors. The three chairs were empty now, hung with ribbons of tape. Sascha lay where Levon had left him, his head crushed into a crimson Rorschach.
Out on the deck, Levon followed the slipper prints through the snow and down a set of steps. He had the SKS to his shoulder and traversing the field of fire left to right over the triple path left by Danni and the kids that followed the wall of the house. She was leading them home. Like an animal panicked in the hunt and heading for the safety of its lair.
He dropped to the snow and followed the trail of the Fentons up the slope. At the corner of the wall he stepped clear of the turn with the rifle raised.
Danni Fenton lay unmoving in the snow. Carl knelt by her, the bloody bundle of his right hand resting on her hip. Backing away from them was a young man in a coveralls. A man with Arab features. An Algerian maybe. A puckered scar on his chin. He had Giselle in a chokehold, a handgun pressed into the curve of her neck.
“
Je pistool. Laat het nu
,” the man said. Eyes wide. Teeth clenched in a feral grin.
Levon stepped forward, rifle to his shoulder, the ring tang at the end of the barrel trained on the man’s face.
“
Je pistool! Laat het!
The gun!
Nu!
” The man’s voice rose an octave. Giselle stiffened as he jammed the gun tighter against her collar bone.
Levon continued his steady walk forward. The man high-stepped backward through a drift mounted against a wall of the house, dragging the petrified girl with him. He slipped. A knee began to go out from under him. He righted himself, yanking Giselle tighter to him.
“
Je pistol laat!
Motherfuck!” His eyes were wide, fixed on business end of the rifle.
Levon stalked closer. The barrel unwavering in his fists.
From the rear of the house the cries of the wounded man reached them.
The young man turned his head for a glance behind him.
Levon fired one round, taking the man high on the forehead. The man was flung backward, taking Giselle down with him into the drift. She screamed and kicked, fighting to free herself from the arm still grasping her.
Levon came at a rush, rifle trained on the man. Giselle freed herself and rolled away. Levon put three rounds into the man’s chest. He stood over him. The top of the man’s skull was blown off. He was dead from Levon’s first shot.
Giselle was up and scrambled to her brother and mother. Levon backed toward them, rifle up, eyes searching for movement.
“Are there more men?” he said to the kids as he swept the line of fire before him for targets.
“There was a guy with a plaid cap. And a guy with a messed up face,” Carl said.
Three total. One of them on the fly. His count was off by one.
Levon turned to Danielle Fenton who was sitting up with the help of her children. Strands of her hair were frozen stiff with black blood.
“What happened?”
“He hit her.” Carl nodded toward the dead man. Giselle was hugging her mother, head buried in Danni’s shoulder.
“Danielle? Can you hear me?” Levon said, an arm at her back to support her.
“My head hurts like hell.”
“Are you nauseous? Do you feel like you’re going to throw up?”
“No. Help me stand.”
They pulled her upright, the kids supporting her either side. Levon gently pulled down the lid of one of her eyes with a thumb and examined it. The pupil dilation looked normal and focused.
“I’m going after the last one. Unless you want me to stay with you.”
“The one with the white eye? Go. Go after him,” Danni said in a weary voice.
“One of these men will have a radio on them. Keep trying it until you reach someone. Find a weapon for yourself. Arm yourself. And pack those fingers in snow.” Levon turned and was away at a run.
Jan Smets had managed to turn on his belly to crawl for the closest snow machine. He was leaving a scarlet trail behind him on the snow.
Levon fired three rounds from the rifle into his head.
Levon chose the only remaining machine that was not hitched to a sled. The fuel gauge was at three quarters full. They hadn’t come far. Under ten kilometers. He mounted the snow machine and started the engine. It came to life with a sharp snarl. He was off in a blue cloud of exhaust, leaning from the saddle to follow the furrows left by the fleeing man.
One to go, by the count of the man he’d questioned at the Fenton house. One of the men could be a woman. The female half of the artist couple. Did she count as part of the team?
The one driving into the woods ahead of him was Levon’s primary target.
41
Levon slowed and stood with feet planted in the snow either side of his own machine. He trained the rifle down at the dead machine then to the surrounding woods to the north. There was clear sign visible where someone had climbed from the gully using hands and feet for purchase in the deep snow.
He sniffed the cold air. The tang of gasoline was rich in the gully. One of his shots had holed either the engine or gas tank. His quarry was on foot now.
Levon motored around the gully until he crossed fresh tracks in the snow. They continued north into the trees as far as he could see in the pre-dawn haze. He climbed from the machine and crouched by the tracks. The snow was tinged pink in the impressions made by a boot sole. Right boot. At least one round had found flesh.
The man was still moving at full stride. The left print was deeper. He was favoring that side. Blood loss or pain or both would slow him. He might just decide that an ambush was a better option than a dead run.
Levon cut the engine of the snow machine. He stood, eyes on the trees ahead. He took in a breath and held it to listen. No sound but the soft brush of one bough on another high over his head.
Wounded animals and wounded men moved downhill. They took the fastest route. The path of least resistance. These tracks led toward rising ground. His quarry wasn’t running away from him.
This man was running toward something.
Levon double-timed, eyes on the tracks leading into the shadows of the pines.
The stride of the man grew shorter as the incline increased. There was more blood on the snow. The man’s effort increased the blood loss. The left boot print deepened as the right grew shallower. The prints on the right turned eventually to a snaking trough. A leg wound. He was starting to drag that foot. There was blood on the bark of a tree where the man had reached out for support near the top of the ridge.
Levon came on the man on the downslope of the ridge. Levon had moved off the trail, making a wide curve away to the right and watching for chokepoints and possible ambush sites. He first spotted the man as a puff of vapor from behind the bole of an old growth spruce. Just a wisp of blue smoke against the gray.
He moved down and around on a buttonhook approach. Levon came up on the man seated with his back to the tree. The man’s one good eye squinted at Levon through the trail of smoke rising from the cigarette clamped between his lips. One hand was clamped tight on his right thigh. The snow was sodden red beneath the leg. Levon’s round had torn through the meat of the leg. An exit wound the size of a fist gleamed black midway between the hip and knee.
A handgun rested in his lap. With finger and thumb the man plucked it up by the end of the barrel and tossed it aside. His face clamped tight with the effort.
Levon moved up, the rifle raised, the barrel trained on that milky eye glaring sightlessly back at him. The man was speaking.
“A treasure. An obscene amount of treasure.”
Levon was two paces away.
“And do you know what I thought of, all I could think of, as we pulled it from the vault?”
Levon said nothing.
“This cigarette.” The man let a stream of cream-like smoke flow from between his teeth.
“Eight men. Your crew had eight men,” Levon said.
“Seven and a woman.” His skin had a waxy pallor all over now. His lips were turning white. He was bleeding out through the shot to the thigh.
“Lily.”
“Was that the name she used?”
“You made it a long way with that leg.”
“I could make it further. With your help.”
“And why would I do that?” Levon said, no real curiosity in his voice.
“If I may?” the man said and reached his left hand up to tear open the Velcro strip on the pouch pocket at the front of his coveralls. Levon stood where he was, eye on the front sight of the rifle trained steady on the man’s face.
The man removed a padded envelope. His glove smeared it with fresh blood.
“Do you know what this is? It is a simple flash drive. On it are the numbers for some very, very secret accounts at some very, very discrete banks all over the world.”
“And I can have half if I help you get out of here in one piece?”
“Hundreds of millions in untraceable funds.” The man smiled weakly with the half of his mouth that allowed for expression. His good eye glistened black now, the iris opening wide. The envelope dropped to his lap as his fingers lost their grip.
Levon watched the life drain away from the good eye. Until it was as fixed and unblinking as the milky orb set in the ruin of dead flesh drooping from his skull on the opposite side.
Levon drew close enough to kick at the man’s right boot. Wouldn’t be the first time he saw a dead man take a few others to the grave with a final surge of will born from fear or evil or both.
The man slumped sideways, limp and unmoving. His dead hand fell away from the wound. It was no longer bleeding.
Levon crouched by him. He plucked the envelope from where it had fallen to the snow. He shook it. Something shifted inside. He stuck it in the chest pouch of the snow suit. He searched the other pockets of the coveralls and found a key ring with a car key and remote on it, a blood-smeared pack of Players, a gold lighter and two more magazines for the discarded Sig Sauer. He took the keys, lighter and the mags. He retrieved the tossed handgun from where it lay in the snow.
The cigarettes, the last desire of the dead man, Levon dropped atop the body before turning away to follow the hillside to the bottom.
Behind it was a pair of Suburbans with Toronto plates and strap chains fitted on the tires.
Levon tabbed the remote he’d taken off the man he’d left dead on the slope. Blinkers flashed front and back from one of the SUVs. He got in and started the engine and turned the heat up to full. Using a low branch cut from a pine, he brushed enough of the snow from the windows for minimum visibility. He rocked the SUV back and forth a few times until the wheels broke out of the snow. He pulled out onto the fire road, looped around and headed east for the intersection with the county road, chains slapping down the crust that had formed overnight atop the open snow.
42
The sun was well over the horizon in a clear cloudless sky. Glare off the snow was already painful.
Levon pulled around the high berm along the shoulder, the tail of the Suburban swaying as the wheels fought for purchase in the snow piled either side of the single plowed lane. He left the motor running on the lot of the Bellevue Market. A body lay in the snow, covered over with an Indian weave blanket. He pounded on the door which sprung open under his fist.
Merry was in his arms as though launched from inside. He buried his face in her hair, pulling her tight to him.