Mitch ploughed up some more snow with his huge legs in an effort to close the distance with Jacks. He didn"t like her being so way out in front with the major haul. He wanted his share of the credit when they rolled in.
h.e.l.l, if there was anyone left up there to slap them on the back.
They were pretty close now. He could tell from the lie of that western slope. Question was, who"d fired all those shots.
Our guys? They knew the Army were crawling all over this hill, but Mitch didn"t think they"d be nuts enough to get into a shooting match with the military. Least ways, not while GI Jane was out here with him.
"Slow it up, Lagoy!"
Mitch glanced ahead, saw her easing off the pace. Little hills of broken snow gathered around her shins. The prize described a grotesque shape inside her pack. Something much more than just another chunk of aircraft.
Great, so now we get to slow it up. When I"m half dead.
Mitch forced himself the last few yards before bending over to catch his breath.
"Someone"s coming," she said.
"Huh?" Mitch ducked down as he scanned the hillside.
"They"ve seen us already." Jacks slid the AK into her hands.
Mitch rubbed the hard bristles on his jaw and worked the Mossberg from his shoulder. He pumped the first sh.e.l.l into position and prayed it wouldn"t be needed. He wasn"t afraid, exactly. He just knew these things got awful messy. They did in banks anyway, and it couldn"t be any different in the great outdoors.
He narrowed his eyes at the figure sprinting and tumbling down the slope. The snow wasn"t falling too bad for the moment but this runner sure as h.e.l.l was. Colliding with trees even.
"He"s panicked," Jacks noted contemptuously.
Yeah, fire one of these at your tail, see how fast you run, thought Mitch. But he was feeling a shade happier that the figure didn"t look dangerous. He held the shotgun nice and easy.
He screwed up his eyes a notch. "Hey, is that-?"
"It"s Crayford," said Jacks, and for once she sounded shaken.
No, not Crayford. Not running like that. Not the great man himself.
Leela was accustomed to confusion. Usually it was a feeling inside, a devoted companion on her travels with the Doctor.
From the moment she left the chill confines of the house, it was a living force, manifested all around her.
"Coming through, miss!" Leela dodged aside as another pair of soldiers emerged from the house carrying a curled leaf of metal. In her eagerness to keep out of the way, she realised, she had strayed too close to the main doorway.
For the present the heavens had stopped shedding their cold ashes, and the chaos was confined to the ground. She saw the Doctor over by the vehicles, unmoving, except for the steady bounce of his yo-yo. He stayed leaning against one of the trucks, even as the dark-haired woman, Hmieleski, hurried up to speak to him.
Leela wandered over, avoiding the lines of men tramping back and forth, and training a wary eye on the vehicles they were loading: four large white crates on ungainly metal tracks, heavy carts tethered behind; two fat squashed trucks with large wheels; and a pack of squat but powerful beasts on tracks and skids. Many of those strange dwarf-vehicles were being unloaded when she had come out with the others to meet Captain Shaw.
He had been busy ever since, issuing rapid orders in every direction. Leela had started to feel lost and unwanted. And now she could see the Doctor was in a bad mood, sulking, so she felt less sure about asking all her half-formed questions.
"Doctor," Hmieleski was saying, "the Captain wants me to stay here, tear up the floorboards and anything else we didn"t cover. He"s taking you down to the town, help set up a lab.
But I"m sure if you put up a fight you could convince him you"re needed here, we can continue our conversation."
"You know," said the Doctor at length, following the yo-yo in its rise and fall, "I"m grateful for the invitation, but I think I"ll take the ride. I"d really like to find out what attracted the cult to the pieces of a broken aeroplane. Your good Captain politely declined my help in the search for your Stormcore, but I can always find other fish to fry."
The Doctor was one toothy grin, and Leela caught a glimmer in the woman"s eyes, something pa.s.sing between them that reminded her of when she had first found herself under the Doctor"s wing. "Well I wish you luck. Just - well-"
"Ah, trust me, Lieutenant," he made a shushing gesture, "I never reveal my sources."
"I"ll see you down at the lab. Apparently there"s some hotel the Captain knows, he"s going to make the management"s day by commandeering it as our headquarters."
"Really? I hope it"s a good one. I tend to work very poorly in anything less than three-star accommodation."
Hmieleski gave the Doctor a farewell pat on the arm, so Leela prepared to jump in with her first question. But the Doctor s.n.a.t.c.hed up his yo-yo and stood to face Captain Shaw and a small posse of Kristal, and two other soldiers. One was young, like Captain Shaw, but had the stride of a warrior trying to look like a leader, while the other, his skin a blend of earth and charcoal, had command written in his deep serious eyes.
Captain Shaw took charge immediately. "All right, here"s the news. Joanna, Ben"s stopping here with you." The boyish-faced officer traded nods with Hmieleski. Then Morgan gestured at the dark man. "Doctor, this is Lieutenant Dermot Beard, he"ll be riding back with us and my HQ squad."
"You mean, you"re not leaving me Pydych?" the woman Joanna asked.
"You might try hiding your disappointment," answered Morgan, and everyone but Leela seemed to be laughing. "Doc, Pydych is a good guy, technical wizard, he"ll be a ton of help piecing together my aircraft, trust me. Okay, any questions from the civilian quarter?"
Leela wasn"t sure whether she counted as the civilian quarter, but she knew she had questions. Because it was first in the queue, she said, "What is happening?"
Everyone laughed again. But Leela was grateful to see the Doctor first to her defence. "Captain, we really shouldn"t be unfair on my a.s.sistant. The People That Time Forgot, you said - and even I managed to forget about her." He moved to stand beside her. "But she really is an excellent scout, capable of finding any needle in a snowstorm."
"Well, that"s Kristal"s department. She"s leading the search."
"I am with Kristal," Leela piped up, surprised to find the Doctor encouraging her with a pat.
She felt him leaning close. "Leela," he whispered weightily, "if you get the chance out there, any chance at all, keep your eyes peeled for the TARDIS, there"s a good girl."
"I will do my best Doctor," she promised.
Morgan Shaw reviewed the decisions just made around him. "Great. That"s a load off. Now can we please get moving?
And Kristal-"
"Sir."
"You"d better be d.a.m.n certain. I don"t want you coming back with a gaggle of wild geese."
Kristal faced him with an iron calm. "Have a little faith.
Captain."
A silence settled along the row of vehicles, only to be broken by a cacophony of engine noise as they were fired into life.
"Leela. You"re with me."
And as Leela followed Kristal, she felt her separation from the Doctor keenly.
Amber pressed herself against the tree and waited for the truck to roll by. She was grateful for the chance to rest, although way too excited to really benefit from it. The idea that she might have been spotted only added to the buzz.
She was amazed: you stomp off in a huff one morning and suddenly you"re into the greatest adventure you ever had.
Hunkering down, she couldn"t resist a peep around the tree. Her own breath was impossibly loud and fast in her ears, but she watched Makenzie"s police truck dissolve in the haze like a fizzy tablet in a gla.s.s of water. Amber chuckled.
Then she fell back against the tree and let out a ma.s.sive sigh.
She raised her eyes to the branches overhead, trying to untangle them in her imagination. With its leaves of frost, the tree looked brittle and old. Spooky. She wondered if she could put one of Mom"s house plants in the ice box, see if it would look the same.
d.a.m.n. She glanced around the tree again, along the ghost road. If she hadn"t had a go at him this morning, maybe she could have gotten herself a lift. Maybe he would have been excited to hear about the parachute.
Lifting herself up with a groan, she shovelled at some of the snow with her boot. Oh well, if she was going to walk the miles to town she"d be better starting sooner than later. She set off, sticking to the road"s edge, where the snow was good and thick.
Every so often she glanced around at the trees and up and down the road, and wondered at how the emptiness always stayed the same distance away.
Why in h.e.l.l did it have to be him?
The let-up in the storm was doing nothing for the atmosphere inside the truck, and in any case it was going to be a very temporary reprieve. Of that, Makenzie was convinced.
The drive back to Melvin Village was the longest and loneliest of his life.
The world was locked in under a glacial roof of cloud. No way out.
Laurie was gone. Gone. Better if somebody had come up to him and told him she"d been found murdered. Tourists did dumb things, like wandering off into the worst weather known to man. Laurie Aldrich did not, would not, ever.
Makenzie had searched and searched again, until he"d covered every inch of that wood, a lot further than Laurie could have walked in the time she"d had. He"d searched until his lungs were solid pain. In all that whiteness, his vision had turned black, and in all that whiteness he had found precisely nothing.
No sign of a scuffle, no tracks to show she"d been taken anywhere. No anything.
When he"d eventually dragged himself back down to the road, he"d stepped on broken gla.s.s. After that, it hadn"t taken him long to turn up bottle fragments held flimsily together by the sodden label. Wild Turkey. Not his father"s brand, but Makenzie knew it well enough and the alcohol smell was all over the inside of that Buick.
Disgusted, Makenzie had tossed the clue into the ditch.
Rescuing the gifts for Amber, he"d headed for his truck and sat a while before making the drive back to town.
From that discovery on, there was no Laurie, no tourists, no part-time townsfolk lost in the hills. No, the part he kept getting hung up on was Curt Redeker.
For this guy, the man who beat up on Martha and terrorised his own daughter, the man who lets his kid down when he"s supposed to come see her, the man who drinks himself off an icy road into a ditch - for this man, Makenzie Shaw must do more than his d.a.m.nedest. When Makenzie wanted to be scouring the whole of New Hampshire for Laurie, he had to go find a hundred-proof son of a b.i.t.c.h like Curt Redeker. Nothing less would do.
Why?
Amber was why. Because when he"d had Martha and Amber move in with him, the spectre of Curt Redeker had moved in right after.
How did that Casablanca quote go? The problems of three people didn"t amount to a hill of beans in this world. Yeah, unless you"re one of the three, and then those problems are your world and there"s nothing outside of that.
Makenzie shook himself alive. He didn"t want to end up in a ditch like Redeker. He had to start thinking as well as driving. Real thinking, not just this circuit of doom.
The way he figured, tracks or no, Laurie had to have been abducted. Taken somewhere by somebody. Same with the folks in that sad little convoy. Even the most ravenous coy-dogs would have left a few bones, not to mention stained the snows red. That wasn"t it. No, Laurie had to be alive somewhere, taken hostage. Redeker too maybe.
As he drove, Makenzie"s gaze climbed the lowest slopes of Mount Shaw. Those cultists had taken over the old doc"s house up there, turned it into some sort of commune. They were screwed up enough, he was mad he hadn"t thought of them before.
They had themselves their own armoury too. He couldn"t tackle them alone. Hm. He remembered the running gun battles he"d had with Morgan up there.
That checked him. Thoughts of Morgan weren"t going to improve his mood.
"Listen, if this is something Curt"s into, he"s nothing to do with me, not since a long time back. He thinks he is, but that"s his problem, none of mine."
Martha was jumpy, edgy; she hardly felt the spike of caffeine as she drained her cup. The woman agent had suggested they retire here, to their cabin; the same place Amber had kicked up such a fuss that one time last summer.
The man had brewed up some coffee, help her calm down, he"d said. Some chance.
Crazy, finding herself back here, inside. Not nearly as big as Mak"s place, and impersonal, like any holiday shack.
Personal touches wouldn"t have registered with Martha anyway.
It had to be about Curt. He didn"t have the spine to get involved in anything serious, but he was sure stupid enough.
And now she thought of it he"d sounded real jittery on the phone. But the CIA? This just wasn"t a part of her life.
The guy was pacing around all casual. The woman sat opposite, prim with a patient smile. "I understand how difficult this must be for you, Miss Mailloux."
"Please, call me Martha. You seem to know me well enough already." She realised she was nodding tightly, a nervous reaction.
"Martha," the woman corrected herself genially. "But this really has to do with your daughter, and we honestly believe her involvement is purely tangential to our investigation.
We"d simply like to ask her a few questions concerning where she found the parachute and if she knows anything about what was attached to it."
The man, Agent Theroux, had shown her the bundled chute shortly after the badge and introduction routine. He"d demonstrated how the lines had been cut and he"d produced the pocketknife they"d pulled from Amber"s hideout. Another dumb gift from Curt.
"Excuse me for a minute, but that"s another part I don"t get," argued Martha, aware of how hostile she sounded. "If my Amber found anything valuable attached to the d.a.m.n chute, don"t you think she might have kept that instead? I mean, what you"re telling me is there was something other than a person on the end of that."
"Sadly, ma"am, we"re not at liberty to say." He hadn"t given up his Southern drawl, so she"d figured by now he wasn"t mocking her; although that line belonged in a movie.
The woman, Melody Quartararo, on the other hand, was hard not to like. "Martha, you"re right. Your daughter probably only found the chute quite by accident. But I hope you understand, we have to follow up every lead and we have to make absolutely certain. This is a matter of national security."
"Well, Curt always said I was a bad mother and I"m real sorry. Agent Quartararo, but I don"t know right now where my daughter could be. Maybe you"d like to help me look for her." She set her mug down on the table and it clunked noisily. The two agents were waiting on something more from her, a best guess perhaps. "Listen, I don"t know. Maybe she headed into town to tell Mak about her find. Sometimes she wants to impress him."
Apparently that sounded reasonable to Agent Theroux.
"Would you like to take a drive with us, Martha? I"m sure Amber would prefer to have her mother hold her hand while we interview her. Believe me, I know how intimidating us government types can seem."
Melody laughed, a gentle echo to her partner. She was hard not to like, sure, but trust was a whole different matter.
Lagoy watched Jacks grab their leader as he fell into her, and they shook their heads at the creature he had become. Mitch couldn"t make up his mind, but Emilie was looking at Crayford like he was a lame thoroughbred.
She didn"t take up her rifle though, just gripped him hard and tried prying him open with a stare. "Crayford," she barked, "it"s me! Emilie! Emilie! What happened up there?" What happened up there?"
Crayford was on his knees, staring straight back at her but something else blocked his view. Their guru had lost it. All that hair on his face, he was starting to look like some Neanderthal raw recruit.