High Country- Pigeon 12 (20 page)

An awful lot of dope remained entombed in the ice. Thousands of pounds, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

They weren't going to go away. Already four people had been killed to keep the secret. One more would hardly tweak their consciences.

As if to ratify her conclusion, voices cut through the still air; men calling to each other. Anna could hear the conversation so clearly her heart raced wondering how they'd crept so close without her noting their passage across the crusted snow.

She crept from the shelter of her rock, then tree to tree for the half dozen yards separating her from the lake. They were not as close as she'd feared. Sound carried well across the ice. Two men were on the lake, one closer to the shore where she was, the other in the middle. The leader, Mark, the lithe dark man from the tent cabin, carried a pistol, either a .38 or a .357. The man farther out, one of the three stooges, but not Billy "Beer" Kurt, the fattest, had the ax over his shoulder. Of a third man, she saw nothing. Either these two had come alone or one stayed with their gear.

LowerMercedPassLake was cupped in a hollow on the breast of a small hill footing Buena Vista Crest. The uphill side of this hollow was closed by the granite wall of scree. The lower lip was another granite outcrop, far less imposing and partially cloaked in soil and trees.

At this altitude, with its deep snows and short growing season, undergrowth was sparse. What there was grew low to the ground, not more than a foot or two high, and most of that leafless with winter, but there were plenty of rocks. Anna could try to run on a bum ankle or she could go to ground beneath a chunk of granite, squeezing herself deep into a crevice, and hope the men would not find her. The decision to run was made for her.

"There," Mark shouted. He'd seen the track where she'd entered the trees. He began jogging toward it. The pistol was held at his side, muzzle to the ground, as if he'd grown up running with guns. His mother should have let him run with scissors, Anna thought as she turned and fled awkwardly back the way she had come.

She should never have stopped, never have checked her wound, taken the time to switch the red for the gray, never have crawled back to see who was coming for her. After the first shots she should have run and kept running like a scared rabbit, putting as much ground between herself and these men as the laws of physics and physiology would allow. Then, maybe, she could have gone to ground.

She wished she had the leisure for a comforting bout of self-recrimination, but she'd frittered that time away as well. As she staggered and didn't curse, slammed weight on her wounded ankle and didn't scream, the topographical map unfolded in her brain. Illilouette Creek flowed out of the north end of the lake and down along the trail to the valley. On the west side of the lake, the side she'd come in from, was another creek, a smaller one, which flowed from UpperMercedPassLake down into Lower Merced.

For a number of reasons, Anna needed a creek. To get to Illilouette Creek she'd have to head south, parallel to her pursuers, and run the risk of meeting the third man. If there was a third man.

Reaching the other creek was considerably more arduous, but it might prove less hazardous to her health.

Though the plan was half-baked, her brain blanked with the pure animal need for flight. Panic would have had her run flat out, heedless of the agony in her leg, of the noise she made, the tracks she left. Training pushed panic aside. Education was one of the many reasons humans proliferated while animals thundered into extinction.

Clinging to humanity while drawing on what animal courage she possessed, Anna bent low and ran in rapid leaps, hops, jogs and spurts, stepping in places the snow had melted off, a rock lay exposed, on thick low underbrush where city-bred eyes would not notice a foot had trod. Forcing her breath quiet, she choked down squeaks and moans as her damaged ankle was tried. Blood, more than she'd hoped, less than she'd expected, drenched the remnants of the sock and her trouser leg. Inside her boot she felt its warm slosh. Outside there was enough it began leaving a pinkish stain on the snow. Precious moments were wasted stopping to wipe the boot on her sleeve to leave a less telltale trail. She had to have a lead, had to have time. There was no way she could win a prolonged footrace or a fair fight.

Despite these necessary maneuvers, she covered ground, choosing to go behind any thing tall, putting as many obstacles between their eyes and her fleeing backside as she could.

Halfway up the eastern edge of the scree slope, shielded behind three stunted and twisted pines, she stopped to listen. For a time all she heard was her heart pounding and the thin whistle of air sucked too hard and too fast through her nostrils.

Heart rate and breathing slowed. Anna mentally patted herself on the back for the long hours she'd served on a Stairmaster in the flatlands of Mississippi. She waited. She listened. Men's voices didn't come to fill the silence. They'd not given up, of that she was fairly sure. It was too soon and the stakes were too high. She hoped they'd not suddenly developed the sense or the self-control to move stealthily. Knowing where they were was the only edge she had at present. That and keeping them from knowing where she was.

Relief came with the sound of muttered curses. They'd made it about a quarter of the way up from the lake to where she waited. Trees muffled sound and she couldn't make out their words as she had before, but a reassuringly confused tone ran through the exchanges.

Anna checked her watch. Three-fifteen. Even with the thick cloud cover it was a good hour and a half till full dark. A worshipper of Ra in his myriad forms, she never thought this close to winter solstice she'd be wishing sunset came earlier.

The voices stopped. Leaning forward as if four inches would make a difference in what she heard and what she didn't, Anna listened. Cold, windless, the temperature unvarying from shade to open space, there was no ambient noise to contend with. Faintly she heard boots moving through snow and duff, the tiny ice crystals formed from fog and subfreezing temperatures crunching.

Torn between the need to listen and the desire to run, she remained crouched behind the trees, ears so open they fairly popped with it. Luck broke her way. A man stumbled or fell and swore loudly. The other crunching never varied. One came up on the hill after her. The other headed back down toward the lake. For a moment, she dared to hope they'd split up, then a shout, louder and clearer than the others, broke through the muffle of pines.

"Got it!"

Her trail had been found. Anna had underestimated them. They'd split up to circle and find her track. She made a mental note not to underestimate them again. City boys they were, but the hunting down and killing of men was clearly on their r‚sum‚s. It was impossible not to leave some trail. Even the expanses of granite left marks where her boots scraped frost from the stone. Night was her best hope. In the black dark of the wilderness, no moon or stars, a flashlight would not be enough. They'd have to give up. Again Anna checked her watch. An hour and twenty-eight minutes.

The men were working up from the lake, moving faster now, learning as they went what signs to look for. Time to run. She pushed to her feet and stepped out from her hiding place. Knife-sharp pain cut through her wounded ankle, which gave way and sent her sprawling. The partial anesthetic of shock had worn away during her brief respite and now the damage was making itself felt. From the intensity and localized nature of the pain, Anna knew the flesh wasn't the only thing broken. The force of the impact had cracked or broken a bone.

Cracked, she told herself as she pushed up from the ground. If it was broken I couldn't walk. Though it wasn't necessarily true, she held to that thought and began the ascent. She tried for the bare patches, the granite, the ground cover. Pain bit into her brain at every step, eating away thought. She walked and fell, crawled and scrambled. At one point she realized tears were running down her face. The image of a whimpering helpless female strengthened her spine and spirit. Far better to die quietly and peacefully of the cold beneath a rock like a wounded cat than to be gunned down by bozos.

Anna liked most things about guns: the artistry, the mechanics, the cowboy heritage, the way they felt in her hand, the soporific effect of a Colt .357 in the bed stand at night when the house made creepy noises. What she hated about them was the power of destruction they conferred upon men otherwise weak and impotent. Any pathetic fool could pick up a rifle and cause havoc. The Washington, D.C., snipers had proven that.

Dead was, presumably, dead; she didn't know why it was worse to die at the hands of a low-rent idiot, but it was. Worse than dead was helpless. They must never get their hands on her. "They'll never take me alive," she whispered, but the pain and fear were too great for the game of movie macho to boost her courage. Wild thoughts of guns and pocketknives and cyanide in hollow teeth splattered through her mind as she made her vows, scrambled, crawled and cursed.

Drenched with sweat, hot and cold at the same time, she finally won the top of the hill backing the lake. The men were closer now. She could hear them as they ranged for tracks, found them, shouted, lost them again, moving inexorably up the way she had come.

Not long. Not long. The shoulder of the hill presented good and bad news. There was a great expanse of veined granite running across the top of the upthrust forming the scree slope. Despite the frost, granite was harder to track on than snow and duff. But granite also left her exposed should her pursuers break free of the trees. Her ankle slowing her down, Anna wasn't sure how long it would take her to cross. It wouldn't do to scratch and scramble. A trail anyone could read even in fading half-light would mark her passage. Any track would lead them to her. Pondering variables wasn't a luxury she had. Again the gray turtleneck and crimson pullover came off. Upper body bare, Anna moved.

Throw the turtleneck down; step on it. Pullover down; step. Turtleneck; step. One in each hand, a swinging rhythm built and she moved with surprising speed. The ankle screamed. Anna didn't. The frigid air felt good on her overheated body. When it chilled, she would be in trouble. Better than bozos, she told herself.

Two minutes, maybe three, and she was across. There'd been no outcry, no wild pounding of boots. She'd won a bit more time, crept closer to night. Fleece and microfiber once again on, she looked back. Even knowing where she'd crossed it was hard to see her trail.

"See her?"

"Not yet."

Anna saw them. Him. Mark. His dark head bare, green parka unzipped over a black sweater, he stepped onto the granite, silhouetting himself against the graying sky. A clear shot. At that moment Anna would have traded five years of her life for a rifle and a bullet to put in it.

Resisting the need to keep him in sight as if by so doing she could in some way control him, she ducked behind her rock and began to crawl. The first drag on her ankle brought a tide of pain that blocked her vision at the edges and caused the narrow tunnel of remaining sight to swim with spots. She pushed on: one hand, one knee, one hand, one knee, dragging foot, a shriek of swallowed agony, one hand, one knee.

Behind her the voices rose, quarreled, fell. They searched the edges of the granite looking for where she'd left the trackless stone.

Anna crawled.

Her gloves were soaked through and pricked with needles that jabbed her fingers and palms. Her pants from the knee down were caked with snow that melted against her skin and packed into her boots. Any idea of covering her trail was abandoned. She could not stand, could not walk, until she stabilized the ankle. Maybe not even then.

She had to reach the creek.

She headed downhill, this time to the lake's other side. Broken rock was so plentiful in places there was no way to cling to the earth, and she tumbled as best she might down stony irregular steps three and four feet high. When possible, she lowered herself with care onto her good foot, then to her knees. When she couldn't, she tucked and rolled and hoped the fall would either kill her or leave her alone.

The voices of the men grew fainter and she was heartened. Maybe they had abandoned the expanse of granite, assuming she'd headed deeper into the trees to the east or south rather than doubling back around the lake. Going toward their camp was the act of a madwoman. Anna prayed to whichever gods tend to wounded and hunted animals that her pursuers would think so.

High and muted on the crown of stone the voices changed. Like most prayers, Anna's had gone unanswered. Men or dogs, the baying when they scented blood was unmistakable. They would come quickly now, her trail as obvious as that of a loggerhead turtle crawling across smooth beach sand.