Even Steven (49 page)

"Gardner, come on!"

He shrank farther away.

Shit." She didn't have time for this. Somebody had to do the right goddamn thing, and at the moment, the torch had been passed to her. "Try not to wet yourself!" she shouted, and she took off again in the direction of the running shoot-out.

Footing was becoming treacherous now, and as she ran through the punishing branches, she found herself reaching out more and more to keep from falling. It was all way too noisy, she knew, but she hoped that the increasing noise from the river would help to mask some of that. In fact, now that she thought about it, the forest was an extraordinarily noisy place tonight, thanks to the acoustical tricks of the snow.

She heard another shot and this time saw the muzzle flash that came with it. The gunman still looked to be far away, but she knew that had to be an illusion. Even though the foliage was skimpy, the bare branches allowed only a limited line of sight, and she figured she was no more than fifty yards away from him.

She killed her flashlight and drew her .38, cursing Gardner one more time for being such a wuss. With luck, maybe he'd at least be able to screw up enough courage to point the way for the sheriff's deputies when they arrived.

The woods ended abruptly at the rocks, and from there, the Martins had no place to go. Susan took one step out onto them and her feet went right out from under her. Airborne acrobatics kept her from landing on Steven.

"My God, Bobby, we're trapped." Susan had to nearly shout to be heard over the roar of the water.

He hadn't counted on the ice. Where the raging torrents splashed up onto the current-smoothed rock faces, they froze solid and invisible, making it impossibly treacherous. They couldn't stay here. It was that simple. To stay was to die.

This time he didn't even ask for the boy; he just took him from her. Steven must have sensed the urgency, because he didn't fight. He just clutched Bobby for all he was worth. "We've got to move on," Bobby shouted.

"Where?"

"This way!" He eased himself onto his butt and scooted across the slick surface. Ahead and below, he could just make out a complex tangle of rock outcroppings. If they could make it that far, he thought they'd be safe for a while. Maybe even long enough for the gunman to give up for the night. That's all they really needed, after all: just a night. By this time tomorrow, Bobby would be safely in jail or stuffed into a drawer in the coroner's office. He wished there was a third choice, but for the life of him, he couldn't see what it might be.

Clutching Steven to his chest with his left arm, he tried to control the speed of his slide with his right, but to little avail. Once he got on the far side of this first rock, he found it much steeper than he'd expected and he dropped feet first a good yard, straight down, landing up to his shins in a puddle of standing ice water. The chill took his breath away. He had to steady himself against the rocks to keep from falling over into the river itself.

Susan was visible to him only as a black silhouette against the lighter black sky. She inched down the rock as he had, on her backside, only as she approached, she had two hands with which to control her descent, so things went a little better for her. He let her feet rest against his chest, and then her knees.

"It's cold down here," he warned.

"It's cold up here, too," she said, offering a smile.

He'd just grabbed hold of her hand when the gunman fired again. The report was nearly as loud as Susan's yelp of pain.

Sarah had just gotten into position to see what the gunman was aiming at when she heard the shot and saw the woman on the rocks drop out of sight.

"Freeze!" Sarah yelled, bringing her pistol up into the two-handed shooting posture she'd learned so long ago.

But her target didn't freeze. He spun quickly around to face her and fired off two quick shots that spattered her with tree bark.

Sarah retaliated with three shots of her own, but they were wild. She cursed herself as she dove for cover. She should have anticipated that. She remembered the FBI range instructors at Quantico telling her to expect that very thing.

Nobody freezes when you tell them to.

Why could she remember the instructor's voice so clearly now that it was too late?

They panic instead, and you need to be prepared for that. You need to be prepared to squeeze off a shot before they can react. That's the trick here. You stay calm, while they do the stupid stuff.

She couldn't remember if the "stupid stuff" specifically included crawling on your belly through wet mulch, but if it didn't, it should have. She couldn't see a thing beyond the thick tangle of branches and

tree trunks, but her target obviously knew where she was. Inches over her head, a bullet split a sapling in two, the whip crack of the passing round causing her ears to ring.

Cursing herself for not staying behind to hide in the trees with Gardner, she decided it was time for a full commitment. She needed to be aggressive. She needed to make the other guy be the one dropping to the ground, if only to give her enough time to dash away. Leaping to a squatting position, she fired off her last two rounds in the general vicinity of the silhouette she saw in the distance. As she'd hoped, he dropped to the ground.

Yes! she cheered silently. She had the break she needed. She took off like a sprinter, heading back in the direction she'd just come from- back in the direction of protective ground cover, away from the wide open killing zone around the river.

She ran for maybe thirty yards, until she found herself comfortably ensconced in a thicket of evergreens. In the midst of a Christmas tree farm, she thought. The irony was too much.

Out there, somewhere, she heard movement. She already knew that if she'd hit her target, it would have been an outrageous accident; that he was probably still out there, looking for her; looking to finish the job he'd made such a mess of. She froze as the sound of cracking sticks and rustling leaves came ever closer, their sounds still masked by the roar of the river and the quiet hiss of the snow falling through the trees. Moving as slowly as she knew how, Sarah thumbed the release on her .38 and flopped the cylinder off to the side. She cringed as she pushed the eject rod, praying that the noise would be slight. She hoped to catch the spent brass in the palm of her hand, but working in the dark, while keeping one eye pasted to the compass point from which her attacker would most likely come, two of the casings rolled out of her grasp, landing with a soft thud on the damp, muddy ground. She paused, listening for some sign that she'd been recognized. Ten seconds later, she breathed again.

God, how she wished she'd listened to the warnings of those instructors! How many times had they warned that more bullets were better than fewer? That automatics were better than revolvers? Even at that, she knew other revolver-toting rangers who at least equipped themselves with speed-loaders. But Sarah had never seen the sense in them. When would a park ranger ever find herself embroiled in a shoot-out?

Instead of dropping in a speed-loader and twisting a knob, then, Sarah found herself slipping spare bullets one at a time out of the loops on her belt, with hands that suddenly were way too big. Located behind her hip as they were-cowboy style-she had to work exclusively by feel, pushing each bullet up with her forefinger, and catching it in her palm.

She'd slipped out the last of them when she first heard the sound of approaching rotor blades. Thank God, she thought. Help was finally-

"Sarah, this is Eagle One," crackled her radio. "We need help zeroing in on your position."

She'd never heard anything so loud in her entire life.

SUSAN CLUTCHED HER face as she toppled toward Bobby. She fell like a tree, first spinning a quarter turn, then collapsing right at him. He tried to catch her, but with his left arm filled with a panicked Steven, he could work only with his right, and that just wasn't enough. He spun, too, under the force of the impact, and as he tried to recover his balance, his feet tangled.

He yelled as he fell backward, grasping at the air for a handhold, then clutching the boy tightly to his chest.

The frigid water registered as fire against his skin, agonizing needles of cold gouging his flesh as the torrent engulfed him. Suddenly, up and down meant nothing. As the waters swept him downstream, he struggled to find the surface, but it seemed that every time he thought he'd popped through, the waters dragged him down again. With Steven clutched tightly in both arms, he struggled to roll onto his back, even as the little boy fought desperately to break free. He kicked and scratched and bit at Bobby's hands, but Bobby refused to let go. This is it, Bobby thought. This is the end.

Finally, his head came up and he was able to choke his way to a solid breath. He nearly cheered when he heard Steven choking and sputtering for air as well. The boy was still alive, and still strong enough to fight for air. That had to be good for something. It had to be a positive sign.

He sensed more than saw that the current had ripped him away

from the riverbank and into the main channel, where the water moved even faster. Rocks pummeled mercilessly as he shot blindly through narrow chutes and over four- and five-foot water falls. He wasn't sure how he managed it, but somehow he'd gotten himself oriented feetfirst and on his back, clutching Steven on his chest the way an otter cradles his food.

He felt as if he were moving sixty miles an hour through the water, and as his butt and back scooted along the bottom, he thought for sure that the heavy impacts had to be breaking bones.

This couldn't go on. The frigid water siphoned his energy away by the pound. He could already feel his feet getting more clumsy as he used them to push away from approaching rocks. If he didn't find a way to shore soon, then he wouldn't find it at all. He and Steven would both drown. As it was, he was coherent enough to realize that he'd probably die of exposure anyway, but that had to be better than drowning.

Just about anything would be better than drowning.

Up ahead-it was nearly impossible to judge distances in the dark-he could just barely make out the silhouette of a deadfall across the water. It stuck out about halfway, extending from the right-hand bank. If the big old tree-it looked like a pine from here-had fallen recently enough, the branches that extended down toward the water would still be green and pliable enough to cushion their impact and slow them down enough for Bobby to grab hold of something.

If it was years old, however, those same branches would be so many spears, waiting to run them through on impact.

His legs were his rudder. By moving them to the left, his torso shifted right, and from there it was a matter of willing his leaden right arm to paddle for him, while his left trembled under the strain of holding on to Steven so tightly. He kicked and paddled, spitting out mouthfuls of water that now tasted like blood, but the current wouldn't relent. It had them in its grasp, and it had no intention of letting go.

He didn't see the last waterfall until he was right on top of it. Two boulders guarded its entrance, skulking just under the surface, and as Bobby's ankle found the spot where the two rocks were joined and jammed to a stop, the rest of his body kept going. As he rose out of the water in a giant somersault, the bones connecting his knee to his ankle twisted against each other and snapped.

Bobby howled in agony as his driving momentum carried him completely over, the rocks finally releasing their grasp on his foot at the last possible moment before it was simply torn from his body.

Not until he splashed back down in the water and his brain was swimming in agony did he realize that Steven was no longer in his arms.

The spare bullets scattered as Sarah moved quickly to slap her hand over the radio speaker. The gunman reacted with frightening speed, firing off a panicked shot. She could tell by the sound, though, that he was more than a few degrees off. He still didn't know where she was exactly, and he shot again. This one was a little closer, and she figured that he was trying to flush her out of her hiding spot. Right now, he couldn't know that she was essentially unarmed, and he therefore had to be

more careful.

Sarah waited until she heard the rasp of her radio's squelch before quickly twisting the dial to the off position. Her heart hammered faster than she thought was possible as she patted the dark ground with her hand, searching for the bullets she'd lost. The movement outside her little thicket started up again, suddenly sounding much closer than before, and from a different direction.

Christ! He'd circled all the way around! He knew where she was hiding!

Please, Jesus, just one bullet. Just let me find one bullet. At least she'd have a chance. As it was now, she was merely a target, as harmless as the silhouette targets on the FBI range. And at the moment, she felt twice as vulnerable.

Overhead, the sounds of the approaching chopper grew exponentially as it drew closer. He knows, Sarah thought. Somehow, Russell knows where we are.

A stick cracked immediately behind her hiding place, and Sarah froze. Jesus, he was right there. He was right outside her hopelessly thin wall of vegetation! From there, he had to be able to hear the sound of her heart. The whole eastern seaboard had to be able to hear it!

In all the distraction of the helicopter and the gunman who was close enough for her to feel his breath, her fingers almost passed right over the stubby little cylinder that her mind initially dismissed as a piece from a broken stick. That was a bullet!