The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) (16 page)

Milton directed them down to the fire. He unfastened them, one by one, allowing each of them to eat breakfast, drink a mug of coffee, and then relieve himself in the underbrush before he secured him again and moved on to the next man. The routine was laborious, and it took half an hour, but he knew that it would be a lot easier to transport the prisoners south if they had full bellies and empty bladders.

He observed them carefully, assessing them, trying to work out the hierarchy that existed within their group. Callow was obviously in charge, with Chandler his deputy. The other two were just lackeys.

He noticed one curious thing as he undid and then refastened the cable ties: they each had a tattoo inscribed on the inside of their wrists.

The tattoos were identical. Two numbers separated by a colon, “1” and “3.”

“What does that mean?” he asked Chandler, the last to be attended to.

He turned his wrist over so that the tattoo was hidden and said nothing. Milton didn’t press.

MILTON HAD the men sit back down in front of the embers of the fire and then called Arty to come over to him.

“Could I have a word with you, Arty?”

“Sure, Mr. Milton.”

Michael Callow stared at Arty with unveiled hatred, and Milton saw how badly it frightened him. His hands were shaking as he took him by the arm and led him away from the fire.

“I found their shotguns last night,” Milton said to him. “In the shack. The FBI will need them for evidence, but I don’t want to bring them all with us, and I don’t want to leave them here, ready to be fired. It’s not safe. Could you get them for me?”

“I sure can.”

“I saw three. Do you know if there are any more?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Could you have a look?”

“Sure.”

He hurried away, and Milton walked across to where Ellie and Mallory were finishing their coffees.

“Are you ready?” he asked them.

“I think so,” Ellie said.

Mallory nodded, her mouth full.

“Mallory, you’ll need to keep an eye on your brother. Those boys have scared him.”

“I know,” she said, her eyes flinty. “You don’t need to worry about him.”

“I don’t want them talking to him. If they start, we’ll get them to stop.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“It’s difficult to speak with a rag in your mouth.”

She grinned at the thought of that, and Milton was almost tempted to gag them anyway, just to keep her happy.

“They’re going to go up front, and I’ll come behind them. I’ll have a shotgun on them. They’ll know not to do anything rash. If I fire, it’ll make a mess of all of them.”

“What about me?” Ellie asked.

“You’re with me. Let them know that you’ve got your pistol and you’ll use it if you have to.”

They turned as Arty came out of the store with the three shotguns clasped to his chest.

“Is that it?”

“There’s no more.”

“Good work.”

One of the shotguns was double-barrelled. He wanted that one for himself, far better for suppressing a group of men than his rifle. It was loaded with two shells. That was all he wanted. Two shells ought to be enough for him to put down any attempt to escape but, if it wasn’t, if he was overpowered and they confiscated the gun, then they would have two trigger pulls and that would be that. He wouldn’t have to face an enemy with an even more serious advantage.

He set the other two down on the ground and, taking out his Swiss Army knife, opened one of the smaller blades and took up the first gun. It was a Mossberg 500 Series, nice and new, certainly not cheap. He checked the magazine tube and the chamber and removed the ammunition, then opened the action halfway, using the blade to turn the takedown screw counterclockwise. He pulled forward on the barrel, separating it from the receiver. He removed the barrel from the other shotgun just the same and slipped both of them into his pack. He gave the receivers back to Arty and asked him to take them back to the store.

He went back to the fire and used a long stick to break it apart.

The four young men looked up at him with hatred in their eyes.

“Ready, boys?” he said. “We’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”

MILTON CUT an azimuth to a tree on the top of the ridge, intending to pick up the old railroads that they had used to traverse the back country as they headed up to the lake yesterday. The weather was clear and bright, and looked set to stay that way for the rest of the morning, although Milton looked at the high, scudding clouds borne along by strong winds, and he wondered how long it would take for the rain to return. They left the campsite much as they had found it. Ellie would return with the FBI in due course. The motorbikes and the shotguns would yield useful evidence in the proceedings that would be brought against the four suspects.

Milton took his rope and looped it around the waist of each man. He refastened the cable ties so that their hands were in front of them rather than behind their backs. The first couple of hours would involve a challenging climb up steep terrain, and if one of them lost his balance he might bring the others down with him.

“All right,” Milton said. “Let’s get started. Up to the ridge.”

They set off in formation: Eric Sellar, Reggie Sturgess, Michael Callow, and Tom Chandler, then Milton with the shotgun and Ellie with her pistol, then Mallory, and Arthur. Milton had slung his rifle across his shoulder, beneath his pack, and held the shotgun in a loose and easy grip, his finger just outside the trigger guard, two cartridges loaded and ready to fire.

They started the climb up to the top of the ridge. The four young men tramped up the slope with sullen dispositions. Sellar tripped halfway up, his right foot sliding through a patch of loose gravel, and he dropped to one knee, cursing as the sharp stones cut through his trousers. Milton held out an arm, holding Ellie, Mallory, and Arthur behind him, wary of a ruse to bring him in close enough so that the others could try to overpower him. There was no attempt, though, and, as Sellar clambered back to his feet, Callow cursed at him for nearly bringing him down, too.

They crested the rise after an hour and found the remnants of a gravelled road that they had missed on the way to the lake yesterday. It was heavily overgrown with evergreens and tangles of alder, and Milton was glad that the moose and bear had preserved something of a trail through it. Eventually, the gravel petered out, and they bisected the ancient railroad. Milton told the men to follow it, their course changing by twenty degrees, as they headed southwest to Mirror Lake.

The railroad descended at a gentle slope, passing through pleasant meadows full of lacy ferns and long grasses. They stopped for ten minutes, and Milton cut a fresh azimuth to bring them right up to the southeastern edge of the lake. They reached the water’s edge at lunchtime and stopped for thirty minutes to refill their canteens. Milton took out the PowerBars that he had bought in Truth and handed them around. They all devoured them hungrily. Milton had enough for them to have another bar each, and that would have to be enough. He had no intention of stopping again if he could avoid it.

Ellie, Mallory, and Arthur sat away from the others, talking quietly amongst themselves and staring out at the pair of loons that were floating quietly on the lake, the birds stabbing down into the water with their sharp beaks to catch the minnows that were drifting in the clear waters beneath them.

Milton looked down at his map and cut a fresh azimuth. They had made good time. It was twelve miles back to Truth from the lake. He would have been able to make that at a forced march pace in three hours. He figured that the others would slow him down by half, perhaps even three quarters. Even if it took them twice as long, they would still be in Truth by nightfall.

“Everyone up,” he said. “Let’s go.”

THE PRISONERS began to complain soon afterwards. It started as grumbling and bickering between the four of them, with Callow making dark suggestions that Chandler was responsible for what had happened to them by persuading him that it would be entertaining to bring Arty Stanton up to the lake. Chandler was defensive, responding tetchily that Callow had needed little persuasion.

Milton listened to them argue and wondered how they managed to stay out of sight for so long. They were unprofessional and unprepared, and it had been child’s play to apprehend them. If the roles had been reversed, Milton would have established a permanent watch up on the ridge, he would never have allowed a campfire during the day, there would have been no alcohol, and he most certainly would not have allowed an outsider to be brought into the camp for something so trivial as a means to alleviate the boredom. And yet, with all their inexperience and immaturity, they had managed to hide out from the local police and the FBI for weeks. Milton could barely credit it.

They were skirting the boundary of an old cedar swamp festooned with ferns, skunk cabbage, and a carpet of viridescent moss, when Callow turned his head.

“So, who are you?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

“Why? Frightened what I might do to you when I get out?”

Milton allowed himself a chuckle. “Do I look frightened?”

“No. You look like you’re hiding behind that shotgun. Why don’t you put that down, untie my hands, and see how tough you are then.”

Milton smiled at him, easy and confident. “You’re going to have to try a lot harder than that.”

“Yeah, bitch? You think?”

Milton jerked his head forwards. “Keep walking.”

“You think I’m going to get locked up?”

“I know you are.”

“Fuck that shit. I ain’t getting locked up for nothing, brother.”

“You killed a man. You’re going away for a long time. I think you’re lucky that they don’t execute their prisoners in Wisconsin.”

Callow hawked up a ball of phlegm and spat it noisily at the side of the road.

“He don’t know shit,” Eric Sellar said, with confidence he shouldn’t have felt, a smile curling his lip. “He’s got no idea.”

“Shut up, Eric,” Callow warned.

“I was just saying—”

“You were just saying nothing. You just keep walking, that’s all, all right?”

Sellar glowered at Callow, but did as he was told.

“You sure you don’t want to show me how tough you really are?”

Milton jabbed him in the shoulder blades with the muzzle of the shotgun.

Milton stretched his fingers and then curled them back around the stock and the fore-end. Something was making him unsettled, and he knew what it was: Callow was full of piss and vinegar when he really ought to have been anxious. He was trussed up and forced to march at gunpoint back into town, where he would be handed over to the FBI and swallowed up by the legal process. Milton could tell that he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer and that he was young and dumb enough to think that making threats in front of his friends equated to leadership in testing circumstances. But there was something about it that didn’t chime for him. Something wasn’t right.

“I need a piss,” Callow said. “I need to stop.”

“Going to have to hold it in. We’re going to stop in an hour.”

“An hour? You’re fucking kidding me, right?”

Milton jabbed him in the back again with the shotgun.

“Shut up, Callow. Keep walking.”

MILTON LED them off the track as the sun showed three in the afternoon. There was a quiet hollow with a small lake in the middle, sandhills calling in the distance. Milton distributed the remaining energy bars and said that everyone should refill their canteens for the last push into Truth. Then he released them, one at a time, and accompanied them into the underbrush so that they could relieve themselves. Ellie covered the others while he was away.

“Stop looking at me,” Callow said when it was his turn. “What, you some kind of faggot, getting your kicks looking at me going about my business?”

“That’s right, Callow. I find you very attractive.”

“You sound like a faggot, that faggoty accent you got.”

“Have you finished?”

“No.”

“Yes, you have. Zip it up. Back to the others.”

He prodded him between the shoulders, and he set off to where Ellie was standing guard over the others. They had been ragging on her, and she wore an expression of ineffable irritation as Milton nudged Callow into the circle with his friends.

“You all right?” he asked her after they backed out of earshot.

“They’re full of it,” she said quietly. “I’m going to enjoy watching their faces when they get dropped into Jackson.”

“What will happen to them?”

“I’ll call my partner, and he’ll send a team up. They’ll be taken to Detroit, processed, and then they’ll be looking at a cell for the next few months while we finish up the case against them.”

“No bail?”

“For them? No chance.”

Milton heard the sound of an engine as he stood and cut another azimuth, and as he looked for the source he saw an ATV laden with fishing gear race along the old railroad on the embankment above them. He paused, listening for a variation in the sound of the engine that might suggest that the driver had seen them and was slowing down to come around for another look, but the noise stayed constant. The chug became a whine, and after five minutes, everything was quiet again save for the peaceful chatter of the wildlife.

Milton looked back to the group, his attention snagged by the thick, angry margin of black clouds that were massing on the horizon.

Mallory and Arty made their way alongside them.

“Storm’s coming,” Mallory said.

“Again?” Ellie said. “I’ve never seen so much rain.”

“Time of the year.”

Ellie shielded her eyes and looked out at the growing darkness. “Think we can beat it?”

Milton looked at it, looked down at his map, tried to assess the speed the storm would likely close on their position and the distance they had still to travel. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. I think we might get wet again.”

THE RAIN came when they were still an hour out of town. It fell lightly at first, a drizzle that seeped into Milton’s clothes, but it gradually gained strength until it was a powerful downpour. The heavy cover from the canopy overhead kept them reasonably dry, but, as they picked their way farther south, the big trees became less frequent and then their shelter disappeared completely. The deluge sluiced across his face. The others bent their heads to it, each step a trudge through fresh mud.