River of No Return : A Jake Trent Novel (9781451698053) (12 page)

23

SALMON, IDAHO. OCTOBER 22.

9 A.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME.

“Careful; they could be around any of these bends.” Jake still had the Mariner drawn.

“How far could they get if we hit 'em?” J.P. asked.

Allen interjected. “Depends whether it totally blew up or not. If it didn't, they could get to town on a slow leak.”

Jake, J.P., and Allen were starting down a two-track that wasn't visible through the canopy on Jake's satellite images.

“Runs the whole way back to the main road,” Allen informed them.

The sun was out in full force. The snow would start melting soon.

“Stop.” Jake pointed to a tire track in the snow. “Look.” The tracks veered to one side and then the other. Then two tracks separated into a full set of four. One of those tracks was a few inches
wider than the others. “Must have hit them here.” Jake looked back toward the cabin. The distance looked about right.

He talked softly. “They went out of control. They could be around this next bend.” J.P. and Allen nodded. Deep drainage ditches on either side would trap even a pickup.

Still, it was a long shot. Unless the blowout forced them off the road, the truck might be able to continue on its rim. Jake started into the woods for cover, then crept parallel to the road, which was beginning to bend to the right. J.P. and Allen followed a few paces back. Jake held up his hand in a fist, telling them to stop. He peered around a thick fir and listened. Two men were only thirty yards ahead, around the curve. They shouted at each other, panicked.

“Gunshot,” the skinny one said. “Guaranteed.”

“Yeah? You know the difference between backfire and rifle fire? There's no one back there.” The chubbier one was messing with the rusty jack.

“Maybe I do.” Slim was busting sticks over his knee.

“You can't help?”

“Sorry.”

Old Slim started haphazardly tossing logs and rocks—whatever he could—into the ditch to help the truck's traction once the tire was fixed. Jake could see a shape inside the truck. His heart leapt. Head and shoulders. Esma!
Maybe.

Jake thought about trying to get her attention, but decided against it—she might give them away. He took a deep breath and slowly walked backward, barely lifting his feet.

“Is that them?” J.P. spoke too loudly.

Jake silenced him, giving one stoic nod, then pointed at him and made the fist again.
Stay here.
J.P. started to protest, but Jake grabbed him hard by the shoulder and squeezed.

“
Owwww!”

Jake gestured to Allen:
Guns up. I'll lead.

Allen appeared calm to Jake.
Good. No room for
nervous mistakes.
The man was a reassuring presence—the polar opposite of J.P. Jake took a deep breath and walked carefully around the bend to his observation point. Allen followed, rifle ready, eyes wide.

The men were still working on the tire. Slim was now down on his knees too, messing with the jack. He faced Jake and Allen at a quartering angle. The larger man had his back to them.

They watched Slim take a big breath as he looked up toward them. Jake feared they'd been discovered. His hand tightened around the Mariner.

Instead, Slim broke into a pitchy “Whistle While You Work.”

Chubby slammed the tire iron down. “Would you shut up?”

Jake did the math. Four feet to a weapon in the driver's seat for Slim, if there was one there. One lunge. Three seconds from initial contact before a round was fired.
No
.
Two, if he's smart and has a
round in the chamber.

More time for Chubby, closer to the rear; he had farther to go. Two big steps. Four, maybe five seconds between contact and shots fired.

These numbers depended on their emotional states, of course. Jake took them in. Reasonably relaxed now, considering they'd just heard what Slim figured might have been a gunshot. Add an extra second for their demeanor.

Four seconds, approximately. Jake hoped Allen and J.P. would hear his voice before getting a visual. His command would take half a second.
Get on the ground! Two.
Three. Four.
Then he would fire at Slim if he wasn't still as a stone with his hands on his head in that drainage ditch. A half second to let the sound of gunfire
freeze Chubby and force a surrender. If he didn't, Jake would fire the Mariner at him too.

Jake gave Allen a final nod and stepped out. He was twelve feet from the captors—an easy shot.

“GET ON THE GROU—”

A blur in Jake's periphery.

“Esma!” J.P. charged into the chaos. He lost traction in the melting snow and stumbled.
4 . . . 3 . .
. 2 . . .
J.P. wasn't moving fast enough. Slim was at the passenger door, fumbling for his weapon. He turned to face J.P., gun drawn.

“NO!”

Jake let a round go. Easy shot to the forehead. Ten yards. Slim was dead before he knew it.

When his ears stopped ringing, Jake heard a groan from below him. Chubby was wrestling with J.P. in the roadside ditch. Jake trained the Mariner on the fracas, but a shot wasn't possible without putting his friend in danger. The commotion moved toward the truck. Chubby was strong, dragging J.P. out of the ditch toward the truck.

Bang.
Another shot rang out, not from the Mariner. Jake's ears roared again. Allen had fired and missed. Jake heard the man reload, but again there was no safe shot. J.P. had climbed up the big man's body and was trying to wrestle him away from Esma.

Esma clambered into the driver's seat and turned the ignition. She put the truck in drive and floored it, spraying mud toward Jake and Allen. Chubby climbed inside the cab through the passenger door. Two more shots. Deeper than the rifle. Resounding.
Boom. Boom.
Then the whir of tires and bare rim on the road. Smoke poured from the wheel wells.

A few seconds later, a crash. The truck hadn't made it far—forty
yards down the two-track. Jake saw only the shape of the vehicle through dense blue smoke. He scanned the landscape, Mariner at the ready. Nothing moving. The woods became silent but for the hiss from the wreckage.

Jake crept toward the debris. His heart was pounding. Adrenaline was drowning reason. He had to be careful not to get trigger-happy.

A sturdy gust of wind cleared the air. A shotgun came into focus—the perfect close-range weapon. Chubby held on to it tightly. It was his lifeline. He faced Jake, backing away. His other lifeline was Esma, whom he held in a headlock with his left arm. J.P. had crawled or slid back into the drainage ditch to Jake's right, where he rested on his back.

“Don't fucking move.” The 12-gauge was pointed at Esma's head. The man turned and shuffled off, dragging Esma with him.

“Go after them!” Jake screamed without turning his head. He kept a bead on Esma's captor. Allen didn't respond. Jake ran to the ditch and turned his attention to J.P.

J.P.'s face was bloodied.
Gunshot
wound?
Where?
Jake patted him down, looking for holes. Nothing. He checked for breath and found it. Then he rolled J.P. over and checked his back. No more blood, just a busted nose.
Thank god.

Jake stood and glanced at the tree line where the man had taken Esma. They were long gone. He spun around and finally saw where the shotgun rounds had gone.

Allen was sitting up. Blood was streaming from his upper right leg. Jake jogged over to him.

“The radio. Go to the radio in the cabin.” Allen was trying to suppress his own bleeding, pushing hard on his femoral with two fingers.

“Everyone okay?” J.P. pulled himself from the ditch. “Did we get 'em?”

“No. I need your T-shirt.” Jake's quick-dry was no good as a bandage; it wouldn't stanch as well as cotton.

“Jesus.” J.P. had to look away. “Here.”

As Jake bandaged the wound, Allen was using his own shirt to tie a tourniquet.

“Loosen it every thirty minutes. Let's try to keep the leg.”

Allen nodded. Jake looked at J.P. “Listen to me: if he starts losing consciousness, you wrap that tourniquet tight and leave it.”

“I can't . . .” J.P. was trembling.

“I'll be back.” Jake took off running back up the dirt road.

Thirty minutes later Jake arrived at the Fish and Game cabin. He was breathing hard and thirsty as hell. The terrain made for difficult running.

“Come in. SOS.”

“Go ahead for dispatch.” The soft-spoken man sounded bored.

“We need a life flight up here.
Now!
”

“Up where?”

Fuck.
“I am at a ranger's outpost. First name Allen. Outside Salmon.”

“Which outpost? Do you know the site number?”

“I don't know! Mount Phelan. Victim is at three-quarters mile south of outpost. I'll start a fire at the site. Allen's been shot. Another man down.”

Finally the dispatcher sounded concerned.

“Okay. I'll send the chopper.”

“Police too. Suspect still at large.”

Jake dropped the receiver and ran out of the cabin. By the woodpile, there was a green-camouflaged Gator. The keys were in
the ignition. Jake fired up the ATV and punched the throttle, then headed south over treacherous terrain.

Fifteen minutes later, Jake arrived back at the scene. He grabbed the reserve gas can from the Gator and doused a small stump.

“Lighter.”

J.P. nodded and tossed him one. With the gas, the fire went up quickly. Jake returned to the wounded biologist. “How is he?”

“Okay. Conscious but getting a little goofy.”

“I'm fine,” Allen mumbled.

His face was pale and his flesh cool. The blood had turned the melting snow a pinkish red.

“When was the last time the tourniquet was loosened?”

“Just fifteen minutes ago. You said every half hour.”

“Don't do it again.”

“I don't . . . don't wanna lose it. I play volleyball at the Y, you know?” Allen laughed.

“You'll be fine,” Jake reassured Allen. “Paramedics are on their way.” He pulled the tourniquet as tight as he could. “I'll be back. Keep the fire going.”

Jake hopped back on the Gator and sped toward the cabin where the men had held Esma. He spun circles in the open yard, trying to get attention.

Finally, the dull, building murmur of the blades gave way to a visual—the heli was there.

24

SALMON, IDAHO. OCTOBER 23.

6:15 A.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME.

Jake woke up and called the number for the Steele Memorial Medical Center. Wildlife Biologist Allen Ridley was already gone, transferred to St. John's in Jackson for surgery. He was stable, but hope for the leg was dim.

Jake wandered to the two-story lobby. The coffee was near an old granite fireplace that hadn't been used since its last cleaning. Only the steelhead fishermen were up, waiting for their guides and chatting about the one that got away. Normally he loved soaking in fishing stories, but Jake couldn't bear to listen.

Shock dulled his senses. The gloom he'd tried to forget for nearly a decade had returned overnight. He'd tried to do good but ended up only adding fuel to the fire. Instead of restoring order to chaos, righting a wrong, he exposed an innocent person to forces no one should ever experience.
No more
volleyball at
the YMCA, Allen—all because of my ego.
Sorry about that. Keep in touch.

The fact that J.P. wasn't badly hurt was nothing short of a miracle. The chopper had taken Allen first, leaving Jake and J.P. with one paramedic and the corpse. Fish and Game, with local police in tow, drove up the road on the back side of Mount Phelan an hour later. Jake and J.P. gave their statements and the authorities marked off the scene. A few hours later, they were back in Salmon.

Jake took an extra cup of coffee and headed back down the corridor. One room short of his own, he stopped and knocked.

J.P. came to the door. He was still dressing, his hair wet from the shower.

“Got you some coffee.”

His friend took the Styrofoam cup. “Come in. You look like shit,” J.P. said, almost smiling at the role reversal.

Jake finished his coffee. He turned on J.P.'s coffeemaker for another.

“You heard from Sergeant Compton?” J.P. asked.

“Not yet this morning. I'm supposed to meet him in an hour.”

“You know they found her, right?” J.P. was standing now, futzing with his shirt, looking in the mirror. “Better with or without top button?” He ran his hands through his hair.

Jake was in disbelief. “Esma? They found her? How?”

J.P. finally opened up a big smile. “Dumbass walked right into Steele Medical, they said. Four a.m. Gunshot wound to the abdomen. They called me an hour ago. Didn't want to wake you up. You got him, man.”

Jake tried to connect the dots. “I fired only one round.”

“Hell, maybe the biologist did it.”

Jake thought back. He remembered it now.
Bang.
A rifle shot as
he was tending to J.P. The panic of the moment and the ringing in his ears had drowned out the sound.

Allen had fired while sitting on his bottom and nearly bleeding out.

“Anyway, she's okay. A little banged up. I'm going to see her now.”

Jake looked at his watch. Still plenty of time before he met with the cops. “Do you mind?”

“She'd love to see you.”

25

TRAM VILLAGE, CHINA.

Chief Terrell and Charlotte had just finished what they assumed was their dinner in their cell. Not bad, really—a lo mein of some sort with flash-fried brussels sprouts on the side. Strange combination, but it tasted good.

They'd decided that evening was their favorite time of day—after dinner. At least there was something to do: sleep. And the giants and Xiao wouldn't be back till morning. But things today had taken a turn for the worse. Xiao was angry and impatient. He had it in his head that finding his daughter would be easy in a small town like Jackson.

He'd brought the phone with lunch and demanded that Terrell call Layle, even though it was the middle of the night in the Tetons. A sleepy Layle had only bad news—still no trace of Meirong. Xiao grabbed the phone and screamed at Layle, frightening Charlotte.
When she began to cry, Left Giant, so dubbed because he always stood on Xiao's left, backhanded her across the face. The chief could barely restrain himself.

It was time for some sort of plan.
What
if Layle still has no bead on Meirong by tomorrow?
How violent will Xiao get then?

Terrell looked over the furniture again—his only options for a weapon or tool. He walked to the heavy steel door. The only point of weakness was the knob. It was a traditional pewter bulb-shaped handle, simple key lock in the center. The aluminum flange around the knob was separated from its housing by a couple of millimeters.

Terrell glanced at his wife. Their wedding day had been the best day of his life, until the kids were born. Now their every minor achievement—first birthdays, kindergarten graduations, even making the T-ball team—made him more proud than anything he'd done on his own.

“What?” Charlotte asked, sounding irritated.

“Nothing. Excited to get home.”

Charlotte huffed, dismissing his optimism.

“I'm getting us out of here,” Terrell said flatly. He pulled the thin spring mattress off the cot.

“You're going to get us killed.”

“They need us, Charlotte. If we get caught, no harm done.”

He flipped the cot over, legs up. Bending down, he tried to wrench the crossbars from the frame. No dice. Heavy bolts secured them to the outer frame. With his fingers, he checked all eight bolts. The four crossbars that he felt every night as he tried to sleep were each connected on either side.

The fifth bolt had a little play. He worked it with his fingers, making a quarter spin of progress every few minutes. From time
to time the nut would seize up, and he would tap carefully with the leg of the chair to loosen it.

After forty minutes, his right hand was badly cramped and his fingers were bleeding.

“Stop it,” Charlotte blurted. It echoed through the small cell. “You're not going to get it.”

The chief didn't even lift his head. He kept trying to loosen the nut, using his left hand to hold his right forefinger and thumb together.

After another half hour passed, Charlotte started to sob. “Just stop! Please!” She sounded as if she was on the fringe of a panic attack.

A few minutes later, her husband, the chief of police and no stranger to trauma, stopped fiddling with the cot, and he too started crying.

Charlotte walked to him, bent down, and hugged him from behind. He was sweating and shaking. Whether it was from the sobs or the exertion wasn't apparent. She closed her eyes and prayed. For several minutes—or maybe it was an hour; after all, they had no clock—they knelt together. Finally, the chief went still, then stood.

“I love you.” Charlotte spoke in a resigned tone.

Terrell smiled, then bent and pried the loose end of the crossbar upward, breaking it free from its opposite bolt.

Charlotte laughed and hugged him.

By this point, the chief's right hand was nothing more than a numb, cramped appendage of flesh. Where he had broken off the crossbar from the still-tight bolt, the aluminum had crimped, forming a chisel. He took the bar to the door and fit the chisel end between the door and the knob's flange.

Terrell let it rest for a second and looked around again, hoping for something to act as a hammer. There wasn't much—maybe the chair, but he doubted he could fit it between the top of the crossbar and the ceiling.

Instead, he reached up, cupped his right hand around the end of the bar, overlaid his left, and used the weight of his body. The bar penetrated farther into the flange.

Blood dripped from his right hand.

Terrell stopped and listened to make sure the giants weren't outside. Silence. He reached as high as he could on the bar and pulled, using it as a lever. With three strong yanks, the flange broke free, sending him backward onto his ass. He reinserted the crossbar, now much deeper in the mechanism of the knob. Another few pulls.

The knob broke free and rolled across the cement floor, stopping at Charlotte's feet.

Terrell stuck a finger into what remained of the knob and slid the lock open. “Let's go.”

As they walked through the unlit kitchen, Terrell shielded Charlotte with his body. In his left hand, he carried the pry bar. The basement was quiet; they struggled to keep the echo of their footsteps to a minimum.

From the bottom of the stairs, they could see the faint yellow glow of a single bulb. A desk lamp or reading light. It could have been left on by accident or on a timer, but Terrell didn't want to take the chance.

“Stay here.” Terrell slipped off his shoes and socks, which, like the rest of him, had begun to stink of sweat after three days without a shower or change of clothes. His bare footsteps were undetectable as he crept up the stairs.

* * *

Charlotte sat on the bottom step. She wrapped her arms around herself, more anxious than cold.

Upstairs, Terrell watched one of the giants read a book at the hostess's podium.
Rather scholarly for a
thug.

Who knew which one he was—Xiao wasn't around, so this giant was indistinguishable from the other. His back faced Terrell. Beyond the giant stood two trivial obstacles: a set of decorative saloon doors, and the automatic glass doors that would someday hold in the scent of maple-infused fatback and cowboy lattes. Beyond that was freedom, or at least a shot at it.

Terrell slowly approached the giant, who was now humming a slow song he couldn't identify. When he got within two steps he paused for a fraction of a second, then pounced.

The book was
The Lexus and the Olive Tree
, in English.
Bastard understands everything
we say.

The man struggled as Terrell expected, but the effectiveness of the rear naked choke wasn't in its strength. It was the technique—the placement of the biceps and the radius bone to stop blood flow to the brain. In ten seconds, the giant was out.

He shouted at Charlotte to hurry upstairs, then quickly dragged the giant across the smooth floor, took his cell phone, and pushed him down the stairs. Charlotte crawled over him and hugged her husband as he reached behind her and locked the stairwell door. The giant would be awake in less than ten seconds.

They slipped out the saloon doors to the accompanying percussion of the giant trying to escape. Terrell knew they didn't have much time. Surely, somewhere in the basement, there was a phone. If not, it wouldn't be long until he broke down the door.

Chief Terrell and Charlotte stayed close to the buildings as they walked down Main Street, Jackson Hole, China. Most were still under construction, and their scaffolding provided cover. There was nothing in the streets. No people, no cars.
It must be late.

Working their way back to the lodge and the main entrance, they glanced down each phony cross street, hoping to find any type of transportation: a car, a landscaping vehicle, even a golf cart. Still nothing.

The moon was high and full but pale. Nothing brilliant or inspired about its light, just a sentient observer of the night. The stars were similarly dull, veiled by towering smog from cities dozens of miles away. Terrell longed for home and the bright pyrotechnic nights of the high country.

“What do we do if we don't find a car?” Charlotte broke his train of thought.

“We walk.”

“Then what?”

“We hope to find a passerby or a home somewhere. Anyone we meet will be less hostile than Xiao.”

“You're sure?”

“No, but I don't think the workers knew what he was up to. And there is still the garage under the lodge.”

“Are we better off?” Charlotte sounded scared.

Roger stopped walking and turned to her. “Yes. We had to get out.”

“Will they kill us if they find us?”

“We're no use to them dead.”

With that, Terrell pushed on through the thick night, leading his wife behind him. In a few minutes they were across from the main lodge, where their welcome to China had once seemed
warm. Through the window, Terrell noted a single front-desk agent, clipping her nails and watching a movie on a laptop.

“It must be the woman from the first day. She seemed nice.”

“Your girlfriend?” Charlotte hadn't lost her spunk.

“You know what I mean. Nice like friendly.”

“It's her job to be nice, you know.”

“I just mean she might help us if we can't find a way out of here.”

Charlotte sighed.

“Let's skirt around the back and check out the garage,” Terrell whispered, changing the subject.

The empty village encouraged them. Maybe they could sneak away undetected. They were perhaps a mile from the entrance gate, where, if they were lucky, they might find an escape vehicle.

The ramp into the garage was dark, but a motion detector lit it up as they entered. There was a small black Hyundai on the first level. Terrell jogged to it and pulled the handle. Locked.
Dammit.

Charlotte joined him. “Can you hot-wire it?”

“Probably not. Too new. If it's valeted, there's gotta be keys somewhere.” The chief started toward the stairwell.

“Be
careful
!
”
Charlotte spat toward him. She shivered and crossed her arms.

The door to the main lobby was tucked behind the elevators in a short corridor. Terrell let it close behind him softly and walked to the end of the hall, where a peek around the corner revealed the striking woman at the front desk.

What to do?
If she was in the dark with respect to the kidnapping, she could be a major asset. She could get them out. Call the local police. If she wasn't, their gig was up.

Terrell decided to play it safe. He slinked around the corner, out
of her view on the other side of the elevators. Outside the business center was a house phone. Terrell picked it up and dialed “0” for the front desk.

“Good evening, front desk.”

“Hi, I'm in the Wapiti Suite. We could use some more towels, please.”

“No problem, sir.”

He hung up and peeked his head around the corner to watch the woman's reaction. She picked up the phone again, dialed, and spoke in what he assumed was Mandarin.

Was it Housekeeping, or Xiao?

She put the phone down, grabbed a walkie-talkie from a charger, and headed toward the elevator. Terrell backed off into the business center to stay out of sight.

Ding.
The elevator door opened, and the front-desk agent was gone. This was Terrell's chance.

He sprinted to the front desk and began rooting through the drawers. Files, paperwork, receipt paper. No keys. Next file cabinet. Stapler, three-hole punch. No keys.
C'mon!
The elevator light board showed that it was still on the top floor.

More time.

Terrell ran into the back office and started searching. In a cedar bureau, he found a small revolver along with an empty 9mm holster. Whether the handguns were for protection or a darker purpose he did not know. Regardless, he checked the revolver's cylinder. Loaded. He tucked it into his waistband.

Leaving the office, he checked the elevator signals. Still on the top floor. Terrell picked up the phone at the front desk and tried frantically to reach an outside line. No dial tone. It occurred to him that he didn't know the number for emergency services in China anyway.

Stop wasting time,
he thought. The elevator was moving—the fourth floor. Now the third.
Shit!
One last attempt. Again, no keys. Nothing but standard office appurtenances—staplers, hole punch, printer ink. The elevator was on the second floor. He was seconds away from being caught.

No!
A wave of disappointment swept over him. He'd failed Charlotte. They would be back in the cell in no time. Or worse. He had to run, get out before the agent saw him. They'd go by foot. With the revolver they might have a chance.

Two strong strides and then Terrell was down. He hit the ground hard, nearly knocking the wind out of his lungs. For a moment, he thought he'd been shot. Then he regained his senses and looked toward his feet, where something was constricting him. Still in pain and breathing heavily, he pulled on the straps that wrapped his feet.

Soft purple leather.
A purse!
Terrell reached in while he got to his feet and felt around. Under the various accessories, he felt the loose, cold clink of a key chain.

He turned to run with the keys in his hand and immediately ran into the front-desk agent, bowling her over. She sat on her bottom, confused. Then he saw her reach into her pantsuit. The 9mm.

A shot rang through the serene lobby as Terrell rounded the corner back toward the stairwell.

“Let's go!” Terrell could barely stay on his feet as he raced down the stairs.

Charlotte ran to the passenger side of the Hyundai.

“What was that noise?”

“They're shooting. Get in!” Terrell fumbled with the key chain to find the remote. He unlocked the car. Behind him, he heard the heavy fire door at the top of the stairs swing shut. “Hurry.”