Primal Threat (21 page)

34

J
ust when Jennifer thought things couldn’t get any worse, Fred ran down to the water, where he knelt next to a thick tree, lined his rifle up alongside the trunk, and fired across the narrow lake and high up at the mountain. She couldn’t get her mind off the dead dog in the back of the truck or the way his eyes seemed to be looking at her. At least the dead man in the back of Kasey’s Porsche was wrapped in a blanket so she couldn’t see his eyes. Fred fired again and again, saying “bastards” after each shot. “Bastards.”

While the others headed up the mountain on the north side of the lake, she’d driven the Ford down a side trail that led seventy-five yards through a thick stand of trees to a small, muddy beach near the west end. The lake was so blue and gorgeous and pristine, she could hardly believe it was up here amid all this awfulness. Judging by the marks in the dirt, plenty of other trucks had at one time or another parked where she put the Ford. Along the shoreline she saw bits of fishing gear, a sinker with some line attached, a forgotten cherry bobber.

“What are you doing, Fred?”

Squeezing off another shot, then another, he said, “Bastards.”

“What?”

When she stood behind him and traced his line of vision onto the mountainside, she realized he was pointing the gun at a scar on the mountain that traversed the slope on the other side of the lake at a steep angle from left to right, a scar she at first thought was maybe made by glaciers. Then she saw four dots moving up the mountain, two orange, a red, and a blue: the cyclists.

“Bastards!” Fred said, firing again. “Bastards.”

“Stop it, Fred! Stop it. Let’s just get on the walkie-talkie and tell Kasey we found them.”

Without taking his cheek off the rifle he said, “They killed my brother.”

It was clear from looking at the road and judging the cyclists’ slow progress that Fred was going to be able to shoot at them for many minutes, and just as clear that they were so far away, hitting one would be next to impossible. Jennifer found a half-submerged log and sat on the dry end, trying to discourage Fred as he continued to crank off bullets at the hillside.

For the first time since he began shooting, Fred relaxed his massive shoulders and lowered the rifle, turned, and looked into Jennifer’s eyes. He had the same starlit blue eyes Chuck had, the same blunt-cut blond bangs, and it gave her a pang to look at him and realize she’d never look into Chuck’s eyes again. She and Chuck had been together for two and a half years, and sure, they’d had their share of ups and downs, but lately it had been more ups than downs. Along with his brother, he had a football scholarship to Stanford and had been looking forward to the next season. After college, he was slated to take a job in her father’s brokerage house. Chuck hadn’t been the sharpest pencil in the box, but Jennifer loved him and for a while now had assumed they would be married by the time they both finished college.

Fred had gone through most of the cartridges in his pockets when Kasey and Scooter located them on the water. “We heard the shooting,” said Kasey. “What the hell are you guys doing?”

“We found them,” said Jennifer.

“Where?” It took awhile for Scooter and Kasey to spot the riders maybe three-quarters of the way up the mountain.

By the time they got to the road behind Kasey and the others, all Jennifer and Fred could see was a trail of dust. Fred drove this time, handling the truck with the rough-hewn manner of someone who’d driven a lot of back roads, manhandling the steering wheel with those big freckled forearms that were so much like Chuck’s. When they caught the others at the three-way intersection, Fred made a dangerous maneuver and passed Perry in his Jeep; driving along the flat road at the south side of the lake, they were now third in line. Fred kept swerving to the side of the narrow road looking for places to pass Bloomquist’s Land Rover next. “The road’s too narrow,” Jennifer said. “Just stay here.”

“I’m going to kill those bastards.”

“If you don’t watch what you’re doing, you’re going to kill
us.
”

The Porsche had trouble maneuvering the tight uphill corner, slowing all of them before they began the long drag up the mountainside on the same road the cyclists were presumably still on. The view from the passenger’s window was scary, extending hundreds of feet down the rocky slopes with only an infrequent tree here and there to slow their fall should they inadvertently drive off the edge, which is what it felt like they were about to do every time they hit a bump, Jennifer thought. At any rate, they would soon overtake the cyclists.

35

B
y the time they heard the trucks, Zak and Muldaur had gained a hundred yards on Stephens, and Giancarlo was so far back he was barely visible. It was hard to tell if the trucks were on the same slope they were scaling or alongside the lake, because the megaphone effect of the basin below and the molten-glass water surface magnified noises. A pair of crows cawed from a nearby tree. Hummingbirds continued to dive-bomb them. For almost half a minute an impossibly fat bumblebee buzzed alongside Zak.

Glancing at the heart monitor mounted on his handlebars, Zak saw they’d been climbing twenty-two minutes since the lake, riding as hard as they could for the last fourteen. At this rate he and Muldaur had only another fifteen or twenty minutes in their legs, perhaps a bit longer if they could find some more adrenaline. There was no telling how much longer Giancarlo and Stephens would be able to struggle on. Stephens was now suffering more than any of them. In cycling it was called blowing up, and anybody who blew up under these conditions would likely collapse alongside the road for a good long while.

Stephens found a shallow culvert engineered across the road to divert rainwater. By standing on the raised portion of the culvert, he managed to remount his Iron Horse bicycle and keep it pointed uphill, so now all four of them were on their saddles.

The trucks had to be on the slope now. Zak had seen a plume of chalky dust billowing slowly over the east end of the lake, a sign that the trucks were moving fast on the dusty road. Surely they would be cautious on the climb, where any misstep on the narrow platform might propel a vehicle over the edge.

“They’re on our heels,” said Zak, pulling alongside Muldaur.

“What do you want to do?”

“You were the one with the plans.”

“You see the top yet?”

“No. See anyplace to hide?” said Zak, joking. There was clearly no hiding here. The stretch of road they were on had a gravel scree running up from their left for fifty yards, rocky bluffs above that; the drop-off to their right was so sheer, even hiking down it would be insanity. Zak could feel his entire body bathed in sweat, could hear both Muldaur and himself gasping.

Realizing he was at his outermost limit of physical function, Zak found himself half a wheel in front of Muldaur, then a bike length in front. This year Muldaur had beaten him in most of the races they’d participated in, but today he was running out of steam and Zak was slowly pulling away. As he pressed on, the burning ache he’d been feeling in his quadriceps for the last fifteen minutes grew worse, until he thought he wouldn’t be able to abide the pain any longer.

36

R
yan Perry stood on the edge of the universe. At least that’s what it felt like when he took his first breath of outside air. His Jeep had developed universal joint problems and he’d been forced to abandon it near the second of the three small trout lakes they found at the top of the mountain. He hoped some local tow truck driver would be able to find the spot, because Ryan wasn’t sure he could. The worst part was that he had so many personal possessions in the Jeep: electronic gear, radar detectors, hundreds of his favorite CDs, his new coat, and notes he’d taken while working a summer job in his uncle’s real estate development firm. The Jeep was worth a small fortune, especially when you took into consideration the improvements he’d made: the suspension, the wheels and tires, and the sound system, which alone cost eight grand. On top of that, it had been a birthday present from his grandfather.

After it broke down, they redistributed the occupants of the remaining three vehicles, assigning Ryan and Scooter to the Land Rover. Fred and Jennifer were still in the Ford, while the Porsche Cayenne now carried Kasey and Bloomquist. The stated goal was to keep one rifle in each vehicle, but Perry suspected Scooter’s covert reason for riding with him was to keep an eye on him. They hadn’t seen a trace of the cyclists since Fred shot at them. They’d simply disappeared.

Disoriented after coming back down the road from the lakes, they traveled in circles for more than an hour, confused by roads and intersections that all looked alike, and bedeviled by trees that were so tall they obscured the sun. When they arrived at an intersection they’d already seen twice and realized they were going in circles, they decided to split up. The first couple to find a path out of the maze would mark the trail with broken tree branches and give directions to the others on their walkie-talkie.

In the past few minutes Ryan and Scooter had driven through a dark forest and come to a long, rocky descent they hadn’t seen previously. It was frightening to Ryan, because they’d been crisscrossing all through these roads for almost two hours, and all they knew for certain was that this road went down the mountain in a west-northwest direction and that the aerie they’d located looked out over the same valley they’d seen the night before, albeit from a vantage point several miles south. Perry was more confused than an orphan at a family reunion. When they hit this small plateau, he could have sworn they were heading east, yet it turned out they’d been headed due west.

Perry wasn’t happy to be with Scooter, whose black mood was matched only by his incessant cursing. Scooter’s foul mouth had always bothered Perry, more so today than ever. It would have been a simple thing for Perry to hop into the Land Rover with Bloomquist, and he’d suggested as much, but after a private huddle with Scooter, Kasey had nixed the notion.

The Land Rover idled behind them on a flat overlook filled with broken rock from one of the nearby mines. Perry stood in the sunshine on a large boulder that looked out over the valley, a shadowy mountain to their left. They were four thousand feet above the flat valley, and the view was almost the same as from his father’s Cessna. Keeping a grip on the rifle, Scooter climbed up onto a horizontal gray log that appeared to be about a year older than God. Every time he wanted to see something below, he put the rifle to his cheek and peered through the scope.

The air was warm and moist and so stifling without the air-conditioning that Perry had a hard time filling his lungs. To their left was a somewhat taller mountain they assumed was Mount Si. Some relatively cool air currents were flowing down the steep sides of the mountain, but they didn’t alleviate any of the oppressive heat, which had reached the upper nineties and in some places triple digits. He could see a town in the distance, although he couldn’t make out the details in the pudding-like conglomeration of smoke and haze that had settled over the area.

More than three hours had elapsed since Chuck died.

Using his riflescope, Scooter discovered a series of wildland fires off to the right, where the smoke was blowing along the ground. The landscape was murkier to the north, a whitish haze obscuring the panorama that had been visible earlier that morning.

“Is that a forest fire?” Perry asked.

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“There’s haze everywhere.”

“It was like this yesterday, too, only not as bad. It’s those fucking forest fires.”

“I know you’re going to get mad at me for saying this, but we should get out of here before somebody else gets killed.”

“It’s just that sort of attitude that’s the reason you’re with me. Don’t worry about it. We’re not leaving until we find the bastards who killed Chuck and Dozer.”

“I don’t want to be an accomplice.”

“Fine. There’s a town right down there. Start hiking.”

“You know I can’t do that with my bad feet. Besides, it must be what, fifteen or twenty miles?”

“Then shut the fuck up.”

Perry didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes. Below them, he watched a helicopter hover over the fires in the distance, probably a news chopper. Knowing Scooter could go all day without breaking the silence and hating the tension between them, Perry spoke. “Those fires don’t seem connected. I wonder how close they are to the road we came in on?” When Scooter didn’t reply, he continued, “I hope we don’t run out of gas. Maybe you shouldn’t let the car idle every time we get out.”

It took a few moments for Scooter to lower the rifle. “Fuck you. You know how hot it would be if we got back in and the air-conditioning wasn’t running?”

“I was just thinking out loud.”

“Come on. Let’s see where this road leads.”

Scooter got into the Land Rover, picked up his walkie-talkie, and said,
“Commando Three to Commando One.”

After a moment, the walkie-talkie hissed.
“Commando One, over.”

“We found a road that goes down the hill. I’d say it’s about half a mile to the west of where we last talked. Just stay on the main drag we took and you’ll find it.”

“Roger. We’ll be up here awhile longer. Bloomy found some bike tracks. We’re trying to figure out which direction they went. We’ll get back to you.”

“Over and out.”