Dead Run (17 page)

"No, sir. Nothing in the house or barn."

"What about the loft?"

"The loft, sir? The loft is empty."

"That loft is full of hay. You ever play in a barn loft when you were a kid?"

"Uh .., yes, sir."

"Get your men up there. Check it again. Move every bale."

Hemmer looked back at where Acker was sweeping the ground with the beam of a flashlight. Parts of the paddock were still smooth, the punched holes of running feet dark and jarring on the surface, like black blemishes on an otherwise flawless face. In a few places, there were compacted depressions where someone had fallen, surrounded by the gouges and scattered soil of panic. In each of those places, something better left buried protruded from the dirt, as if the residents of Four Corners had been trying to dig themselves out.

"No doubt someone was here, sir," Acker said soberly.

The Colonel's eyes narrowed.Jesus Christ. Goddamn women, stupid enough to leave their silly purses behind and right out in the open, walking all over this goddamned stupid town as if they owned the place. . . .

"Looks like they ran down to the end near the tractor, sir, but they could have come back this way. The dirt's a hell of a mess, makes them hard to track."

And if they weren't running scared before, they sure as hell were now.Hemmer's mouth moved in disgust as he watched Acker's light arc across the paddock. "How long could these tracks have been here?" he asked.

"The men have been making rounds since we found the Rover, but the last time would have been before moonrise. We weren't showing light then. We could have missed it."

The Colonel's jaw tightened. That meant this could have happened more than an hour ago. Goddamned women. Where the hell were they?Where the hell were they?

"Sir?"

He started, then blinked rapidly. Had he said that out loud? Suddenly, he was aware of the still-idling jeeps, the drivers with nothing to do but look at the horror in their headlights. "Get those men out in the field with the others, Acker."

"Yes, sir."

Acker hustled away while Hemmer strode back down the length of the paddock toward the tractor. Pausing next to the hulking machine, he laid a hand on the cold ridge of a tire tread and closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for revelation. The tractor knew where the women went; the tractor saw them. But the goddamned fucking tractor wasn't talking.

He sucked air in through his teeth and moved to the edge of the slope. The flashlight picked up the parallel tracks of flattened grass off to the right, where the ill-fated truck had been rolled into the lake. Directly in front of him, the grass was smashed and slick in places where the cows had gone over.They'll pop up to the surface soon, he thought.

His eyes lifted and traveled around the uneven circle of the moonlit lake, saw several dots of light bobbing around the circumference as the men continued to search.

Three years,he thought.Three years of meticulous planning, training, preparation, all at risk now because some stupid woman's car had broken down. "For want of a nail," he murmured under his breath.

"Sir?"

Hemmer's heart leaped at the sound of Acker's voice at his left shoulder.Jesus. The kid had crept back up on him like a shadow. He was losing it-that second sight that saved you in the field. If this had been the Gulf, he would have been dead by now.

He pretended to be deep in thought, staring out into the black distance while his heart slowed down. After a moment, he started down the slope, Acker right at his heels. He stopped when his boots sank into the soft mud next to the shoreline and scoured the ground with the beam of his flashlight.

Pointless,he thought, looking up again. Between the cattle and men who had tried to manage that rolling stampede into the lake, the ground was ravaged.

The cattails towered over him here. He glared at them, wishing he had a machete to slice them down to size. "Place is a goddamned jungle," he muttered.

"Yes, sir," Acker said, startling him again.

He snapped the light on Acker's face, making him squint. He kept it there for a moment, watched his baby face twitching in discomfort. When he spoke again, his voice was disturbingly quiet. "We should have found them by now."

Acker tipped his head, trying to avoid the light. "They can't get out, sir. And we've got their purses and their cells, so they can't call out, even if they could get a signal. I'm sure we'll find them soon."

"Are you?"

"Yes, sir, of course, sir."

"Then you're a fool." The Colonel scowled and looked away, clenching his jaw so hard his teeth hurt.Take it easy, he commandedhimself,hosing your temper is the first sign of losing control. Relax. Take a deep breath. Take command of yourself first, then your men. "We mustfind them," he said evenly. "They've seen too much."

"Yes, sir."

The Colonel turned to regard Acker's soft features, the sometimes startling innocence of his young face. "These women are not the enemy. Not any more than those people in the paddock up there were the enemy. Just unfortunate souls who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time." He paused, met Acker's eyes. "They were all dead by the time we got here. There was absolutely nothing we could do. But this will be very different. Intentional. Could you do it,

Acker?If you were the one who found them, could you shoot innocent women to save the mission?"

Acker was facing the Colonel, his back to the lake. "Of course, sir," he replied instantly, offended that the Colonel had to ask.

Directly behind him, less than ten feet into the forest of cattails and down near the surface of the stagnant water, a pair of terrified blue eyes stared up through the stalks.

GRACE WAS KNEELING in the sucking mud that anchored the roots of the cattails, her gaze riveted on the shadowy figures straight ahead. Their bodies were dissected crazily by the thick stalks that she peered through, as if they weren't real men at all-just scattered pieces of men whose conversation was as surreal as their visages.

Don't move. Don't breathe. Don't make a sound, because there's a very young man out there who's ready, willing, and able to shoot you dead. And this is what happens when you let little boys play with G.I. Joe dolls.

Only her head protruded from the stinking water; that, and her right hand. It was pressed next to her ear, gripping the Sig. The barrel was tangled in her hair, pointed skyward, still dry.

Directly next to Grace, Sharon couldn't feel her feet anymore, couldn't feel the cold muck seeping through her shoes and clothes, pasting them to her body like glue. Terror had numbed her senses long ago, focused the sum of her awareness on the simple life-and-death struggle to remain perfectly still.

It was pleasantly dark in this black nest of rigid stalks, and if it was dark, no one could see her, and she would be safe. Whatever evil was out there wouldn't be able to find her if she stayed perfectly still. She kept staring straight ahead, pretending she didn't see or hear or exist. . ..

". ..Come on, honey, you have to come out. Come to Daddy. It's all right, I'm here. Daddy's right here. ..."But Daddy was out there,where everything bad lived. Nothing bad was in here. Just her mother's faint scent lingering, silky dresses brushing the top of her head, her mother's shoes upside down on the metal rack, waiting patiently for her mother's feet. The dresses didn't know; the shoes didn't know; the hats and boxes, the terry robe on the hook-none of these things knew what had happened out there. In this tiny fragrant closet, her mother still lived, and Sharon wanted to stay here forever. . . .

Next to Sharon, Annie's mouth was open an inch above the water, an orifice only slightly larger than her eyes. She could feel the blurred racing of her panicked heart, beating so fast it was a buzz in her chest, and she wondered absently if it would hurt to get shot.

The cow was still behind her, braced against her, its bloating, rigid body stuck in the mud of the shallows. She'd bumped into it, nearly fallen on it when they'd first slid into the concealment of the cattails together, but she hadn't screamed. She was very proud of that. She'd bumped right into this terrible, disgusting, deadthing and she hadn't screamed.

Her eyes were bright with tension, her face stiff with fear as she watched and listened to the two men. All the muscles in her bodyseemed locked into immobility.That's why the deer freeze in the headlights. You always wondered why they didn't leap out of harm's way, off the side of the road, into the safety of the woods, and this is it. This is the reason. The survival instinct breaks down when danger gets too close. You can act only up to a point, and then you can't act at all.

She concentrated, sent the paralysis draining down her body into the water and out through the soles of her shoes, and then, at last, she was free to blink.

COLONEL HEMMER'S smile was faint, barely there. Acker was a good soldier. All of his men were good soldiers. His smile

faded. If they were all such goddamned good soldiers, how the hell had these women gotten this far? He clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace back and forth along a ten-foot stretch of shoreline, his combat boots slurping in the mud. "Any chance they could have slipped away from here, across the lake, for instance?"

"Absolutely not, sir. The cordon around the lake has been tight. We treated it as a funnel point."

Hemmer had known the answer before he'd asked the question, and the question hadn't really been necessary anyway. He knew the women were here. He could feel them the way you feel a cold starting deep in your throat. Soft, silly women who could never understand the concept of dying for your country or killing for it, so short-sighted that the term "acceptable losses" would horrify them. These were the kind of people who had let the world become such a dangerous place. "At ten hundred hours, those two trucks will blow, a thousand people will die, and the world will start changing. Unless those women get away."

"That will not happen, sir."

Colonel Hemmer stopped pacing and looked up at the silhouettes on top of the slope. A dozen soldiers stared down at him. Christ. They looked like goddamned Indians lining the canyon wall in an old Western, watching with that endless, alien patience, waiting for the proper moment to charge down. "What is it, soldier?"

"They're gone, Colonel," a man called down. "We've searched the buildings, every inch of the farm, and around the lake. Shall we start the search pattern again, sir?"

"No." The Colonel flashed blue eyes up the slope. "Trying to track them in the dark is pointless. But they're still here, and we goddamned better keep them here. I want every man back out on the perimeter. Every. Single. Man. And we'll stay on that perimeter until dawn, and then we'll move in fast and start to tighten the circle."

The soldiers on the slope saluted as a unit, then turned and double-timed away.

Acker waited until he could no longer hear their footsteps, then spoke hesitantly. "You don't think it's risky, sir? Keeping this town closed off until dawn?"

Hemmer turned slowly to face him, and spoke with amazing control. "Yes, Acker, I think it's risky. But riskier still to leave holes in the perimeter while our men fumble around in the dark, trying to find them. If they get out, others will come, and once they see this place, they'll figure it out in a hurry. They'd have a nationwide alert out on the other two trucks in a matter of hours. We'd lose them before they blow. We'd lose the gas. We'd lose the element of surprise.We'd lose the war, Acker. "

Acker closed his eyes and lowered his head in embarrassment. "Yes, sir. Sorry to question you, sir."

The apology made the Colonel feel magnanimous, almost paternal. "It's all right, Acker. None of us expected this kind of duty. We're all on the edge here."

"And what about the hourly patrols, sir?" Acker put in timidly.

"Cancel the patrols. All of them. Let the women have the whole goddamned town if they want it. For a few more hours, anyway."

DEPUTY DOUGLAS LEE arched his spine away from the seat, grimacing at a sharp twinge in his lower back. And it was no wonder, he thought. He'd pulled the empty northern sector for his patrol tonight, and taking a leak was about the only reason you ever had to get out from behind the wheel on this run.

He'd written up only two tickets in eight hours-one for a burned-out taillight on a '56 pickup, and another for a rusted-out Grand Prix pushing forty in Gill Lake's twenty-mile-per-hour zone. Lord, no wonder Wisconsin cops had a reputation for nuisance tickets. Unless you were highway patrol on the interstate, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot else to do. Thank God.

He eased back when he felt the lap belt press against his stomach. Never used to do that, he thought, patting the belly that had been rising like a loaf of Paula's bread ever since he married her last year. He was going to have to start the nightly sit-ups again, get himself back in some kind of shape before he had to endure the humiliation of moving up to a larger uniform size.

He yawned and rubbed at the black stubble sprouting from his chin, wondering what Paula had waiting for their late supper tonight. Who knew that a Phi Beta Kappa with about a million med schools vying for her favor would turn into a gourmet chef? For that matter, who would expect that a drop-dead looker with that kind of future would choose to put everything on hold while she took a year or two to be the stay-at-home wife of some bumpkin cop with a size-forty-eight shirt and a size-six hat? Lee figured he was about the luckiest man in the world, and then some.

He slowed the cruiser at the intersection of Double-P, then, at the last minute, decided to turn south. He automatically looked up and down the black crossroads, even though traffic on this stretch was as scarce as hen's teeth. It weaved in and out of the edge of the state forest, and basically, you could go nowhere in either direction. With only four cars per shift and hundreds of miles of roads to cover, trouble-free roads like this one rarely saw a patrol. But a trouble-free road was exactly what Lee was looking for tonight. Officially off duty for the last seven minutes, the last thing he wanted was to come across anything that would interrupt a straight run home.