The Descent From Truth (19 page)

Maybe he could rig an explosive device and trigger it when they converged on the wreck. He would have to do it long-distance, or he and Frederick would also be buried.

What were the chances that he would find something explosive in the wrecked helicopter? No reason for the pilot to have been carrying anything like that. Aviation fuel, of course, but they had crashed because they ran out of fuel. Anyway, the fuel itself, while flammable, wasn’t explosive. What made gasoline storage facilities dangerous wasn’t so much the fuel as the fumes.

He stared at the wreck. Unless a fuel line had ruptured in the crash and let the fumes escape, the empty tank would still be explosive. He found the tank, which was located below and behind the rear passenger seat, and exposed it by pulling out the seat cushion. Using the stock of his rifle, he knocked glass out of the windshield to give himself a clear shot at the exposed tank. He could shoot holes in it from a hundred yards. The limiting factor would be the range from which he could place a flare in proximity to the bullet holes. Maybe fifty yards, and that would put him dangerously close to the avalanche’s likely track.

His plan would work only if the tank still held fumes, if he was guessing the flare gun’s range accurately, and if the explosion triggered a large enough avalanche. Lots of ifs—too many. But he was out of options.

An outburst from Frederick distracted him. The boy was thoroughly cocooned in blankets but didn’t seem to mind his personal lack of mobility so long as Alex kept moving. When they stopped for more than a moment, however, he registered his disapproval promptly and loudly.

Alex caressed the boy’s head. He probably had a wet diaper, and he had to be hungry. “We’ll get you fixed up, tiger. Just give me a few more minutes.” Back outside the helicopter, he made his way uphill to a spot that gave him a clear shot though the broken windshield and a shorter race out of the avalanche’s path if he succeeded in starting one. Hunkering down, he dug a hole in the snow deep enough to completely hide him when he squatted. From the hole, he sighted down his rifle barrel at the fuel tank, barely visible in moonlight filtering into the helicopter. As practice, he went through the motions as if he were shooting holes in the tank and then firing a flare through the broken windshield.

Frederick had resumed his complaints—louder now. Alex fished a can of condensed soup from his pocket. Squatting in the snow, he punctured the can with the tip of his combat knife and used its serrated edge like a saw to open the top and pry it back. Too stressed to check when he grabbed the cans in the cabin, he had no idea what they held, but the aroma of chicken hit him. “Freddy, tonight’s menu features chicken á la can.” He used the side of the knife blade to press down slivers of metal around the open top and checked with his fingers to make sure no sharp edges remained. Satisfied with the smoothness of the metal, he tilted the can to Frederick’s lips. “Cold soup, pal. The best I can do.”

The crying stopped, perhaps cut short by the aroma of the soup. Frederick concentrated on sucking at the edge of the can, taking in nourishment. Alex used one hand to hold the can and the other to hold the boy’s head steady, careful to avoid wasting any of the precious food. While the kid filled his stomach, Alex explained his plan as if he were talking to an adult. “If it doesn’t work,” he said, “this will be the last stupid-assed tactic I’ll ever dream up.”

When Frederick lost interest in the soup, Alex pulled the can away and downed the remnants himself. He flattened the can and pushed it back into his pocket. Time to summon the bad guys.

He fired his rifle into the air. Then he waited.

Chapter 24

For twenty minutes after firing his rifle, Alex talked softly to Frederick in an effort to keep the boy mollified. Then curses wafted through the thin, cold, night air, followed by the huffing of overexerted hikers. The pursuing gunmen had found the downed helicopter.

“Spread out,” someone shouted. “Cruickshank, you and Harris flank him. Don’t let him slip away.”

They assumed he was in the wrecked chopper. That meant they would close on it. Cautiously, sure. But they’d have to look inside, see if he was there.

“Come on out, fellow,” one of the men shouted. “We’re not gonna hurt you. We just want the kid.”

That would be their leader. Alex centered his rifle’s sights on the man, clearly visible in the moonlight. There were seven of them, and he had four cartridges left. He might be able to take out a couple before the others made it to cover. But then they would zero in on his position.

Wait, he decided. Let them get close enough to the wreck so it will be their logical cover.

The leader raised an arm, made a circling motion, and waved toward the wrecked helicopter. Telling them to keep it surrounded and move in. Come on guys, just a little closer.

Frederick shifted in his sling. He uttered a feeble, low-decibel whine.

Alex caressed the boy’s head, hoping to sooth him back to sleep. Just give me a few more seconds of silence, little guy. Let them move in a bit more.

The whining grew louder.

It caught the leader’s attention. “Cover,” he shouted.

Alex squeezed his trigger, and the leader went down. The others zigzagged, heading for the shelter of the chopper’s hulk. The downed leader struggled to get up, tried to crawl, fell on his face. He got to his knees again, made it another couple of feet, and collapsed. He moaned.

“Hang on, Petri,” someone shouted. “We’ll take him out. Just hang on.”

A different voice: “Where the hell is he?”

“That aspen stand,” the first voice said. “He’s gotta be in there.”

A fusillade thundered from the helicopter’s carcass, muzzle flashes visible in the shadows. Apparently, they were aiming at the trees, a small stand of spindly aspen some forty yards to Alex’s left, in the path of the avalanche he hoped to trigger. The downed leader would be carrying their radio. Alex could only hope no one else had one, that they couldn’t call for help without somehow getting to the wounded man.

The gunfire animated Frederick, trapped against Alex’s chest under the parka. Squirming and kicking, the boy screamed his outrage.

Alex swung him gently from side to side, humming to him. The boy wanted a dry diaper and warmth and a bed and his mother’s caress, all the things most twelve-month-olds took for granted. Six bad guys left, Alex thought as he tried to comfort his charge. And I have three cartridges. Put a bullet in the exposed fuel tank, use the other two to keep them pinned down while the avalanche—if triggering one is even possible—gathers momentum.

Lots of reasons why it might not work. Maybe there weren’t enough fumes in the tank to create an explosion. Maybe the bullets he would put in the tank wouldn’t let enough fumes out to serve as a trigger. Maybe he couldn’t put a flare close enough to ignite the fumes. Maybe the snow was packed too tightly to be disturbed by a puny explosion. Maybe the avalanche would be too miniscule to be dangerous. Even if it was big enough, the gunmen might see it coming and get out of its path. If any of those maybes panned out, he would be a hare before hounds, with nothing to do but run.

“Okay, Freddy, let’s roll the dice.” Aiming through the helicopter’s broken windshield, Alex centered his sights on the dark blob he knew to be the exposed fuel tank. Squeezing gently to avoid disturbing his aim, he fired.

Did the slug hit the fuel tank, penetrate it? No way to know. He had to operate on faith now. Faith in his judgment, his plan. Rifle fire from the helicopter, bullets kicking up snow around him, told him they had a fix on his position but couldn’t see him. “Ignore it, Bryson,” he mumbled as he set his rifle aside. “You won’t hear the one that takes you out.” He aimed the flare gun, using both hands to steady it against Frederick’s struggles. With the pistol’s smooth bore and its low-velocity projectile, no way to guess how close the flare would come to that broken windshield. His first shot, maybe the second as well, would be to zero-in on his target. Taking a wild guess at the proper adjustment for elevation and windage, he squeezed the trigger.

The flare, its brilliant light reflecting off the stark white snowscape, arced toward the helicopter at a leisurely pace. It fell short by about ten feet and burned a hole in snow some twenty feet upwind from the target.

The flare’s trajectory gave the men in the helicopter a precise read on Alex’s position. A hail of rifle fire, the insect-hum of near misses and the dull
plunk
of slugs hitting around him, made it clear that he would have no leisure to aim his next shot. More elevation and less windage this time. He pushed another flare into the breech-loading pistol and waited for the gunfire to slacken. When it did, he fired again, aiming slightly higher and more nearly direct toward his target.

Knowing the flare would draw more fire, he ducked down. But then he stuck his head back up; he had to see where the flare landed so he could figure how to adjust his next try.

It hit the helicopter this time but not the broken windshield. It bounced off the fuselage and melted another hole in the snow.

Two flares left, and two bullets for his rifle; a grim symmetry in lack of resources. Fearing the men would conclude from the flares that he had no rifle ammunition and would decide to deploy from the helicopter to take him out, he decided to expend one of his two cartridges. A bullet now to convince them to stay put, the other to keep them pinned down when the avalanche started. “When and if,” he muttered.

With his rifle barrel poking over the lip of his snowy foxhole, he put another slug in the helicopter’s fuel tank. At least he hoped that’s what he had hit.

He laid aside the rifle and aimed the flare gun once more. Two flares left. The broken windshield seemed small and far away.

Rifle fire from the helicopter had slackened. Maybe the men were starting to worry about their own ammunition supply. A slight adjustment to the mental picture of his last attempt, and Alex applied the necessary four pounds of trigger pressure to fire off his next-to-last flare.

Bull’s-eye! The flare arced in through the broken windshield and illuminated the interior of the helicopter. It prompted a shriek and a barrage of curses.

But no explosion. And no way to tell why.

Maybe he had failed to puncture the fuel tank. Maybe all the fumes had already leached out. Or maybe the flare simply had not landed close enough to the leak.

In the light from the flare, he briefly saw a head duck down inside the helicopter. The exposed fuel tank was clearly illuminated. He could exploit the light by putting his last bullet in the tank—impossible to miss at this range with that illumination. But what if there were no fumes in the tank, or not enough to explode? What if his last flare missed its target? Even if he succeeded, with no more ammo he would have no way to keep the men pinned down.

“Roll the dice,” he mumbled again, and pushed the flare gun into a pocket. Taking careful aim, he put his last bullet squarely into the brightly lit fuel tank. Then, trying to replicate the position of his previous shot with the flare pistol, he fired his final flare at the window. “Last chance, Freddy.”

The rifle bullet must have convinced the men that he still had ammunition, because no one tried to leave the helicopter. At least, no one that he saw.

With his head down in the face of return fire, Alex never saw the flare trace its predecessor’s path through the broken windshield, but it must have. He felt the shock wave and heard the sharp crack of its passage before the dull
whoomph
of exploding gasoline fumes reached his ears. Elation flooded him. He had anted all of his chips and drawn a full house.

No bullets left, but he probably didn’t need them. The explosion would temporarily stun anyone it didn’t kill or disable. Peeking over the snowy embankment, he watched for any movement. Hard to see, because the moonlight looked much dimmer after the brilliance of the flares, but he spotted no one around the helicopter. Glancing up at the cliff with its overhanging snow, he thought he saw motion, a shift in the snow mass. Were his eyes deceiving him, showing him what he wanted to see?

He couldn’t afford to wait for confirmation. He and Frederick were too close to the avalanche’s likely path. “Let’s haul ass, little buddy.”

Leaving behind the now-useless flare pistol and the spare rifle, he slipped over the lip of their foxhole and crawled in the opposite direction from the helicopter.
Move
, his brain shouted. He struggled to his feet and waddled across the snow as fast as his human baggage and the cumbersome snowshoes permitted.

A rumbling noise behind him: the sound of millions of pounds of snow surrendering to gravity, picking up momentum. Fearing he had miscalculated, that he and Frederick were in the path of the cascading mass, he mentally rehearsed what he had been taught about avalanche survival: arms up, hands in front of your face to form a cavity, creating an air pocket in the snow big enough to hold the oxygen needed while awaiting rescuers. Except, there would be no rescue here. If he got buried, he was dead. So was Frederick.

As he scrambled up the rocky ledge and out of the ravine that formed a natural path for the avalanche, he felt air currents, a harsh wind set up by the moving snow. Atop the ledge, he turned to survey the damage.

Moonlight reflecting off a river of flowing white made it sparkle. The wind created by the deluge kicked up powdery flakes that drifted in a haze over the ravine. Gradually, they settled, and the ravine looked pristine, untouched by humans. No helicopter wreckage visible anywhere.

“Freddy,” Alex said, caressing the boy’s head, “I think maybe God is on our side. For tonight, at least.”

Wariness settled on him, reminding him of how long he had been without rest. He felt in a trouser pocket and fished out another can of soup. Squatting in the snow once more, he opened the can with his knife and offered it to Frederick. The boy turned his head away, so Alex upended the can into his own mouth. Cream of mushroom. “We’ve got a lot of slogging to do, buddy,” he said between sips. “Might as well get started.”

I’m still facing a mass of imponderables, he thought as he set up a steady though weary pace across the snow, heading back to the cabin. No way to be certain the gunmen didn’t have a radio other than their leader’s, that they hadn’t called their base and alerted someone to the need for reinforcements. He would know about that within the next hour or so.

What about the helicopters that had disgorged the gunmen at the cabin? Were the pilots among the men buried under that avalanche? If they had stayed at the cabin with their choppers, they would have radioed their situation back to base by now. And they might be waiting at the cabin, maybe with reinforcements. Alex guessed they had been with the gunmen, however. Otherwise, one of the helicopters would have made an appearance at some point. No way to be certain, of course. There were way too many unknowns.

He approached the cabin cautiously, circling around to gain the cover of the aspen grove some fifty yards away. The helicopters were gone.

On reflection, he saw the logic of that. Leaving the machines sitting out overnight in this climate would cause the oil to congeal so that the engines wouldn’t start without auxiliary heat. The pilots would have returned to Silver Hill, or wherever they were based. They would be standing by for a radio call from the gunmen requesting a pickup. How long would their leader wait before he concluded that something had gone wrong and dispatched a helicopter to investigate?

Inside the cabin Alex settled Frederick, sleeping once more, on the bed that he and Pia had positioned by the fireplace. He got the fire going and, sitting next to the boy, tried to decide what to do. Two basic steps: find a secure location to stow Frederick, and find a way to rescue Pia. Those were givens. The problem was to work out a strategy.

With no resources of his own, not even a way to get Frederick to safety, only one course remained open. With Pia’s and the child’s lives at stake, he had no choice but to ask for help from the one person to whom he’d sworn never to turn.