Cold Snow: A Legal Thriller (41 page)

Eventually, Roland stopped the beating, fatigued from the chase and the effort of the onslaught. Machry clambered up and stood again, confident in the fact that, no matter how much he was beaten, he could still look Roland in the eyes. That one moment changed everything. Machry, looking past Roland down the endless interstate, recognized that nobody dreams of spending their life taking punches.

His instincts took over, and he rushed Roland, swinging his arms and fists at his face. Roland yelled in surprise, then in pain as one of Machry's blows made contact. Machry, enraged, pounded Roland again and again, and another memory flashed into his mind—being hurled across a parking lot by Ordoñez. Suddenly, he wondered what would have happened had he been the interrogator then—and stepped back, refusing to become so.

Roland's face was covered in blood, and Machry had no idea what he'd done or how he'd done it. Roland raised his hands, intending to do something but giving up. As quickly as he'd stopped, he took off again, dashing along the center line of the road, heading directly for the bank of the oncoming winter storm.

Machry, resting with his hands on his knees, gave up the chase and watched Roland's shadow for a while. Then he turned around, and began limping back towards the Woodsbrook sign.

Without pausing to wonder what Hart was doing here, Alex restarted the laborious process of getting to his feet. Through the near-blinding snow, he could see the two of them wrestling, fighting tooth and nail without any sense of order. He managed to heave himself to the tree that Ordoñez had been leaning against, and grabbed the trunk with his arms, pulling himself to his feet. He braced his back against the rough bark. His mind was quite clear, even through the pain of carrying a bullet wound in his right leg, which he tested now. Pain seared through him again when he put his weight on it, and he shifted back to his left, examining the right. From what he could see, the bullet had passed through it without lodging inside—but he could not be sure he'd been so lucky. He put weight on the leg again, repeating until he was sure he could handle it. Only then did he limp off to rejoin the fight.

Hart and Ordoñez had separated, and appeared to be circling each other, Hart looking worryingly wary. Suddenly Alex noticed what Ordoñez was holding: his discarded rifle, transformed by lack of bullets into a massive iron club. Hobbling as quickly as he could, Alex moved toward Ordoñez, who was facing away from him. Hart saw him, and mouthed an inaudible warning.

Moments before Alex reached the assassin, with no idea what he was going to do, Ordoñez swung the rifle in a massive arc at the level of his chest. Hart jumped backwards to avoid it, and began looking for an opening; but he had made no progress before Ordoñez swung the rifle again and crashed it into Hart's skull.

Hart crumpled and fell instantly, like a sack full of weights that somebody dropped. Alex wanted to rush over to him, to see if he was all right; but he obviously couldn't, and had to content himself with the fact that Hart had probably taken worse blows before.

Ordoñez turned around. His surprise at seeing Alex on his feet was tempered by the cold fury that flowed through every part of his body; and he raised the rifle, preparing to strike Alex back to the ground, and return to watching him die with no distractions.

Later on, Alex would be unable to say how or why he did what he did. It may have come of a sense of weariness, with the fight and with the world he had given up trying to understand. He lurched forward and inadvertently weighted his right leg, crying out and falling toward Ordoñez. As he fell, he threw up both of his arms and wrapped them around the assassin's neck. Ordoñez shouted in pain, but Alex closed everything and continued to pull until they both went down.

Ordoñez dropped the rifle as he gave in to Alex's weight and it landed in the snow beside Hart—
not his body,
Alex thought pleadingly,
not his body
. He expected them both to land in the snow again; but in the storm, they had both lost their way. They collapsed, Alex hanging on to Ordoñez, Ordoñez fighting to push him away, into the frigid waters of Cold Lake.

CHAPTER 27

The Wastes

At some point they separated.

The water rushed past his ears before he could think, and then he was encased in frozen shock. The lake was easily the coldest thing he had ever experienced; he felt that he began to freeze on contact with the surface and was continuing to, now underwater. His eyes burned and he forced them closed. He flailed his arms and legs wildly, buffeted by the water, not knowing which direction to go to reach the air. His lungs were beginning to burn, to ache, to cry out in pain and anger.
Get us air,
he could almost hear.
Get us some oxygen
right now. He kicked forward, knowing that he was gambling with his life, determined to surge ahead as far as he could, whether or not it could save him. His lungs contracted as they were seized by water, the deadliest and most life-giving substance on the planet. He pushed onward, struggling with his legs, and deep inside, he knew that the insane world had finally gotten him, as he knew it always would, soon—

—he broke the surface, gasping, wheezing, and sucked in all the air in the world, pulling it and hoarding it in his lungs, prepared to never let it go. But he had to eventually, and the air slowly coursed out of him again. Now that he was no longer asphyxiating, he could deal with the unfavorable conditions in the lake. The solid cold was practically crushing him; it was overriding thoughts in his brain, replacing parts of it with chunks of ice. The wind that came with the storm had whipped Cold Lake into a frenzy, making it appear as a tempest-tossed ocean. He treaded water—

—and something latched onto him from behind, and he fell below the surface again. He kept his eyes open this time, ignoring the stinging and making sure he could see whatever was coming at him. He spun around, and the huge black thing came at him again.

Ordoñez rammed into him and threw him backwards and upwards, so that he broke the surface. His body surged through the waves toward Alex, who grabbed him with his weary hands and pushed him back. It was as though the two of them had been fighting backwards across human history, and had now reached the beginning, clawing and scratching for every inch, and would soon regress into nothingness.

Ordoñez landed a blow to Alex's face that sent him sailing backwards through the water. The assassin—who Alex could see was almost as unprepared as him for the lake in the storm—lashed his way through the waves; but Alex was faster. He did just as he had before, and used himself as a weight, dragging Ordoñez deep into the soundless world, calm beneath the rage.

Somewhere under the water, he felt Ordoñez's hands close around his throat. He tried to gasp, but his lungs refused.

He made one last grab, and spent all his remaining reserves of strength on one action. His fingers interlaced, and closed around the back of Ordoñez's head. Alex pulled toward himself, sinking the head deeper.

They drifted that way, each sapping the other's life. The slow underwater motions concealed minds working at impossible speeds, and going nowhere. Had it been possible, they would have been roaring, screaming, lashing out.

Alex, holding so much weight for so long, at last decided to give in to the combined efforts of Ordoñez and the lake. He did not tell himself he was going to die; simply that he would drift away.

As he was drifting, he felt a minor miracle—Ordoñez's fingers, loosening gradually. Grateful for an opening, he kicked toward the surface and broke, gasping in more air. Realizing that he hadn't moved his hands, he dove under again.

He saw then that Ordoñez's strength hadn't failed—it was being sapped out of him, bit by bit.

Alex forced Ordoñez's head still deeper. The assassin seemed intent on strangling the life out of him, no matter what the cost.

Ordoñez's limbs began to jerk spontaneously. He writhed and bucked, but Alex held his head in place, pushing with every inch of will that remained.

Ordoñez's mind cast around helplessly, but was unable to find anything; and all the while, water was steadily filling his body. The brain at last settled on something it had never allowed itself—panic. He lost all reason; he tried to fight the boy, and managed to close a tighter vise grip on his neck. They would go down together—

—echoing footsteps, a trio of gunshots, the third life ended for the sake of a task—

—two men sitting in a living room, one of them handing a book of maps to the other—

—reading a document, his mentor's familiar handwriting filling the page, studying it repeatedly, trying to make some sense of the story—

—weighing a rifle in his hands for the first time, learning who he was to be—

—lying on a dirt road in Oaxaca—

—a row of flowers, vividly red, tinged with rising sun.

His hands at last loosened and fell away from Alex's neck. Alex didn't relent; he held Ordoñez under for longer then he knew was necessary. He let go only when he felt the assassin drifting inexorably upwards.

Alex kicked his way to the surface one final time, intending to remain. The storm took him; he was hurled by the whipped waves, only to crash into others that would hurl him again. He slowly loosened himself, almost saying out loud that he was ready to take whatever Cold Lake gave him.

His last memory was of a strong, sure hand clutching hold of the neck on his jacket, and then he lost himself.

Hart panted, his teeth chattering uncontrollably, and heaved his dead weight with a monumental effort. At long last, he succeeded in moving Alex another foot. He swore and kept pulling, dropping to the ground when the entire torso and arms were at last out of the mighty grip of the pulling waves. Coming up with an idea, he dove back into the icy lake again, and heaved Alex's legs out from the opposite direction. Feeling around with his feet, he hit a wall of rock; the lake must have dropped off somewhere under the water. Alex and Ordoñez had gone straight into the deep end.

He pulled himself out again and waded through the shallows to where he had left Alex. The wind charged through him, making the water clinging to his clothes and skin seem ten times colder. He knelt on one knee beside the body and turned it over.

Alex's eyes were closed, and his breathing shallow; Hart felt urgently for a pulse, and found one beating slowly at his wrist. Relieved beyond expression, he sank down to both knees and examined the right leg. The wound, just above the kneecap, was deep but relatively contained; and though carrying the bullet didn't make for a pretty sight, and would, in the long run, be a bad idea, for the moment it had stemmed the bleeding.

Hart was painfully aware that Alex needed medical attention by morning, before the wound took a turn for the worse and began poisoning the rest of his systems. There was a town, he knew, somewhere on the lake; but they could be on the opposite side. Even optimistically, carrying Alex through a storm for hours was likely to kill him.

His options were very limited, Hart knew, and to operate on Alex himself was rapidly becoming his only choice. He understood this, resolutely telling himself that he knew what he had to do and planned to do it. But every time he began to consider a plan of attack, something stayed his hands. It was maddening, and just weeks ago it would not have happened at all. It was then that Hart understood exactly why he had tried to avoid fear for so long—had it not been for hesitation, he would have plunged his hands into the wound, and removed the bullet already.

He crushed his hands into painful fists, then had to bend his fingers back to counter the pain. He shut his eyes, then attempted to make a mental list of objectives. The necessary steps flashed and sputtered like old neon signs, and spun around themselves, taunting him to remember them and put them in order. Hart opened his eyes, knowing that list-making was something he'd never try again. Minutes of stillness later, when it seemed that his lower legs were permanently frozen to the ground, he swore and reached toward the wound. Never had he wanted his old self back more.

Grateful that the blizzard seemed to be abating, Hart forged ahead on blind bravery, trying not to think too hard about what he was doing and at the same time knowing that to slip into ignorance would likely mean Alex's death. He tore open Alex's pants leg at the seam and faced a decision as to what to do about the visible bullet. Although it pained him, he decided to leave it there—his hands were far from sterile, and he knew he'd cause more trouble than he'd fix. All the same, he had to get Alex to some kind of hospital at speeds much faster than he could manage. Again, he tried in vain to push back creeping terror.

He felt his clothes and grabbed hold of a heavy shirt that was the lowest of his three layers, tearing off a long strip that was about as even as he could make it. The source of the bleeding was not difficult to find, and Hart placed the heel of his hand against it before leaning his full wait against the bullet wound. He did not want to imagine how painful this probably was, but unpleasant images of himself—awake—undergoing this pressure kept flashing through his mind. At last he got annoyed with himself.
I've been fighting for money since I was ten years old,
he said angrily.
It's a strange time to become afraid of killing somebody
. More than this, though, he dreaded what else might enter his mind—if a thought of his father appeared: Jackson McGee applying pressure to somebody else's wound, or worse, carrying the bullet himself, or worst of all, watching his own son attempt the same operation he could probably have finished in a heartbeat.