Archangel (37 page)

The man was gone. They heard the thrashing of his footsteps as he ran away.

Dodge sprinted after him, leaping over the tracks made warm by the huge metal wheels, and then skidded down the slope onto the other side. Coltrane followed, the beam of his flashlight igniting the raindrops. Then the beam found the man in black and locked on him. He was following the path that led up the side of Seneca Mountain.

Dodge knew that when this man left the path, they would have only a few seconds before he lost himself in the maze of trees. He raced after the man with all his strength.

The ground was beginning to slope. Coltrane was already falling behind, exhausted by fear and the pain of his wound.

The man in black tried to evade the flashlight’s beam, as if the light itself would bring him down. Then he swerved into the trees.

Dodge jumped off the path after him. The cold air raked at Dodge’s throat. He didn’t know how long he had been running now. He did not reach for his revolver, because he was afraid that if he took his eyes off the man even for a second, he would lose him. “Will you Goddamn slow down?” he called. “I’m not against what you’re doing!”

The man’s steps faltered, as if confused by what he had heard.

Dodge ran faster, gaining on him.

Then the figure in black stopped suddenly, hunched down as if prepared to take the impact of Dodge slamming into him.

Dodge ran faster, holding his arms up, ready to bring the man down.

Then the man turned and suddenly Dodge was staring at the squared-off barrel of a Glock pistol. He threw his arms up and tried to stop, but his momentum kept him going. Dodge tipped over and fell hard against the ground. He skidded on until he came to within a few feet of the man.

The figure stood his ground, keeping the gun level with Dodge’s head.

Now the two of them were motionless except for their heaving chests. The beam of the flashlight in Dodge’s hand shuddered up into the trees.

“I’m a police officer.” Dodge choked back spit.

The words brought no movement from the man in black. The barrel of the gun stayed pointed at Dodge’s face. His breathing changed pitch. He opened his mouth as if to speak. Then he stepped forward, gun held out.

Dodge closed his eyes tight and gritted his teeth.

The man in black kicked the flashlight from Dodge’s right hand. It flew against a tree and smashed and went out. Then the man was running again, footsteps quickly fading.

Dodge did not try to follow. He clenched and unclenched his right hand to see if any bones were broken. He felt as if a couple of his fingernails might have been torn off. Blood trickled onto the heel of his palm, then down his wrist and into his sleeve. He let his head fall back and closed his eyes and let the rain touch his face.

“Marcus!” Coltrane called from somewhere down the slope. The
beam of his flashlight stabbed holes in the dark. “Marcus!” He scrambled hand over foot to the place where Dodge lay. “Oh, Christ,” Coltrane whispered, and dropped to his knees in front of Dodge. He tucked the flashlight under his arm so he could use his hands and still see. His hands hovered over Dodge, not daring to touch. “Oh, God, what did he do to you, Marcus?”

“I lost him.” Dodge breathed out in a sigh.

“What happened to you? I couldn’t keep up.” Coltrane held his hands against his chest and moaned, rocking back and forth. “Oh, I knew we shouldn’t have gone into the woods. I knew it the first time! This is all my fault.”

Dodge cupped his right hand in his left and felt the pain in his bruised fingers. “I’m all right.”

“No, you aren’t. Oh, Jesus.” Coltrane was crying. “Oh, what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to get up and walk out of here, Victor.” Dodge clambered to his feet and now stood looking down at Coltrane.

“You’re standing!” Coltrane sat on the ground, looking up in awe at Dodge.

“Of course I’m standing.”

“So you’re all right?”

“I told you I was.” Dodge held out his good hand and helped Coltrane to his feet. “He had a gun. He aimed it right at my head.” Dodge’s back hurt him where he had fallen.

“I thought you were dead!” Coltrane smeared tears and rain and burnt cork across his face with his fingers. “I’m a lousy friend to you. I can’t even watch your back. Oh, I’m no fucking good!”

“What are you talking about?” Dodge scratched at his neck.

Coltrane said a few more times that he was no good, thinking of the silence he had kept and how he’d be paying for it the rest of his life unless he set things straight somehow.

Dodge stood there patiently, his nose plugged up with blood, waiting for Coltrane to finish cussing himself. When Coltrane was finished, they started walking down the slope. Dodge’s ring finger and index finger were throbbing. Pain gnawed into the place where his little fingernail had been. “I wonder who he is,” Dodge said. “I wanted to talk to him.”

“And he wanted to shoot you.” Coltrane gave him a tap on the arm with the flashlight.

The light went out.

Coltrane shook the flashlight and the batteries rattled inside. “Oh, shit.” He aimed the thing at his face and switched it on and off and there was still no light, so he stuffed it in the pocket of his raincoat.

It was pitch-black. Rain pattered the leaves. The two men groped their way from tree to tree until they hit the tracks. Then they started walking toward town. The sun was coming up as they moved across the iron bridge. The sky was bands of purple, pink and blue. They started thinking about food. The Four Seasons would be open by now.

Coltrane was already scanning the menu in his head. “I wish I knew what it is about the Algonquin that’s making him do all this. I mean, why wouldn’t he pick some huge stand of redwoods out in the Pacific Northwest?”

“Because it’s the Algonquin.” For Dodge, nothing more needed to be said. It was all clear to him, and had been for a while.

Coltrane was silent. He threw his busted flashlight off the bridge. It plopped into the black river water.

They walked straight to Mackenzie’s house and woke him up. “Dressed in black,” Coltrane said, “and carrying a forty-five as well. It could have been a woman. I mean, it looked like the person had a chest, or something tucked under there.”

Mackenzie stood in his doorway. He wore a gray dressing gown which had twisted black and yellow braid around its edges. The dressing gown was falling apart. Its lining hung down in tatters around Mackenzie’s knees. “Is this true?” he barked at Dodge, as if he could not take Coltrane’s word on anything.

“All of it,” said Dodge. He kept his right hand in his pocket. Blood had gathered black and painful under the nails. “What surprised me is that there was only one person. If there were more, they would have been working together and we would have seen them.”

It’s Madeleine, thought Mackenzie. She’s the kind who’d have a gun tucked away someplace, and who’d be in good enough shape to outrun Dodge and Coltrane. He wished he had been there, to use all the strength he had left in the world and catch her and sink his hands, purple-bruising, into her neck. He almost said her name out loud, it
seemed so clear to him. But he kept silent. He no longer wanted Dodge to catch Madeleine. That job was Shelby’s now, and Shelby would get the job done.

Shelby ran halfway up Seneca Mountain before he stopped to see if he was being followed. Twice he had run smack into trees and now one of his teeth was chipped. He could feel it, ragged and stabbing pain up through his jaw. He estimated the cost of repair and deducted it from the money he’d be getting for this job. Rage skulked wild-eyed and rabid in the corners of his mind.

He had been drawn from his hiding place by the sound of the train, wanting to stand as close to the tracks as he dared and feel the force of the train hurtling by. And then those two men had appeared, and he had almost laughed out loud, it seemed like such bad luck. Shelby promised himself no more mistakes.

He knew he could have outrun that policeman much more easily if he had not been carrying so much gear. Strapped to his chest was a starlight scope, for viewing infrared. It could be used as a sniper scope, but he had brought it along to observe any movement along the track. The scope weighed almost twenty pounds. It had cost him over a thousand dollars and he could not afford to ditch it.

He did not know how close he had come to shooting the policeman. Probably closer than the policeman would ever want to know. He would have to be much more careful now, because these two men, possibly others as well, were searching for the same people he was. Shelby knew he had to get there first. Mr. Ungaro had been very clear on that. The only thing that had not been clear was exactly what should be done with the tree spikers when Shelby found them. Shelby knew from experience that Ungaro’s lack of clarity meant he didn’t care if these people ended up dead.

Now, with the rising sun, and the rain only leftover drops finding their way down from leaf to leaf to the ground, Shelby walked back toward town. He did not stick to the path, but kept inside the woods. Bands of sunlight burned and faded in the clearings, as clouds began to scatter overhead. Just as he reached the Narrow River bridge, he heard a noise, the awkward thrash of footsteps in the bushes. The silhouette of a man was already above him, flickering past the spacers
of the bridge. Shelby slipped into the reeds, leaving barely a ripple behind. He let himself sink below the surface. The cold clamped against his chest and he felt his hands sink down into the mud. Shelby lay there like a drowned man, the air growing hot in his lungs.

It was Gabriel that Shelby heard. As he climbed up to the tracks and crossed the Narrow River bridge, he heard his footsteps echo off the steel. They bounced back from the water ten feet below. Suddenly Gabriel had a feeling that he was being watched. He stopped and looked out at the lake and the bushes near the water’s edge. There was no sound except water lapping at the bridge pilings. It was not the first time he’d felt this. Sometimes even the trees seemed to have eyes. But this was different. He had a sense of being stared at by another person, and that this person was very close by, wearing the night and the fog. Gabriel waited for a moment longer, mouth half open to hear better, sweat cooling on his back. Nothing. He told himself his mind was playing tricks, and kept moving toward town.

In the predawn mist packed like clay between the trees, the reeds beneath the bridge began to shift. Then up from the mud and the tea-brown water rose a face. The body followed, slipping from the swampy ground, and then a figure waded to the bank. It was Shelby, dripping ooze like the first of his species coming to life. He eased himself down onto the gravel and rested his back against the stone foundation of the bridge.

He knew he had almost compromised his position again. Again he felt the anger. Now it was more like disgust. Shelby had no doubts that if he botched his job, Ungaro might send in someone else to clean up the mess. Then Shelby knew he might find himself being hunted, and he was unlikely to survive.

Shelby had come to see his jobs almost as things made of glass. If it was handled properly, the job might take place so quietly that no one would know it had happened until long after he’d disappeared. The strength of the operation would never be in question. But if even one thing went wrong, one chip to the crystal, the whole job might be ruined.

Shelby wondered who this person was who had tromped past overhead. It was a man. He had seen that much in the fragment of a second before he disappeared under the water. The silhouette, barred by the heavy tarred railroad beams, still replayed in his head, like a
movie stuck on one frame. Shelby knew the man would be back, and sometime soon would walk across this bridge again. So what it became was a waiting job. The cold was in him now, clammy river cold, as if he really had been drowned. Shelby left the cover of the bridge. The sun was up, making rosewater of the clouds. He climbed to the tracks and then crossed them. On the rocks that padded the tracks, he saw a knife. It was a Gerber Mark II, dropped by some hunter, Shelby figured. He picked it up and saw old blood on the blade. Shelby had his own knife, a heavy-bladed sub-hilt with Micarta grips, custom made for him by a man named Engle out in Montana. He threw the Gerber into the river, and the last trace of Wilbur Hazard vanished under the water.

By the time the ripples had cleared, Shelby was gone, across the tracks and into the woods with barely a sound. Moving when the wind moved. When the water slapped at the shore.