Kodiak Sky (Red Cell Trilogy Book 3) (13 page)

CHAPTER 19

S
KYLAR SAT
on a smooth, narrow ledge listening to the waves pound the base of the cliffs a hundred feet below. As the surf crashed against the rocks over and over, she stared into the night sky above the Alaskan mainland, which was due north of her position and across the wide, deep strait the ledge overlooked.

Her premonition had turned out to be quite accurate. Despite how early in the fall it was, the northern lights were giving her a spectacular show this evening. As she sat with her back against the cliff and her legs dangling over the edge, yellow and green waves of gleaming light rolled back and forth across the dark canvas above her in space like soft, slow-motion lasers. It was an incredible display of what nature could create. So much more impressive than what any Hollywood hotshot could produce with high-tech cameras and manipulated pixels.

She took a long drag off the joint, which she’d rolled tightly with Blackberry Kush, held the powerful smoke in for a seven-count, and then exhaled it deliberately through her pursed lips. She loved watching arctic fire glimmer through the night, especially when she was stoned.

Her eyelids were growing heavy. Sleep was quickly coming on, and thankfully, she was roped securely to the thick metal hooks she’d hammered into the cliff. She’d made certain to do that as soon as she’d rappelled the thirty feet down here from Kodiak’s forest floor. She might not have remembered after smoking the Kush, and she definitely didn’t want to wake up in the middle of tumbling a hundred feet down the sheer rock face. She moved a lot in her sleep, even after smoking this stuff. Lovers had told her that.

She was camping on this precarious ledge—six feet long and two wide—because she didn’t trust that bear she’d scared off earlier. Grizzlies had unique personalities just like humans, and the one she’d run off earlier had a sinister look in his eyes. Despite his great size, he was a damn coward. But he’d probably be back. One of the rainbows and a good deal of venison lay beside the smoldering fire on which she’d done her backwoods gourmet cooking.

She wanted no part of that bear while she was stoned. She just wanted to kick back and mellow out. Thankfully, no matter how much that bear might want to, he couldn’t get down here.

Her cell phone buzzed as she was about to take another hit from the joint. “Jesus,” she muttered, “can’t people leave me alone for
one
night?”

She pulled the phone from her jeans and glanced at the tiny screen. Not surprisingly the incoming call was tagged “Unrecognized.” She didn’t want to answer, but at the start of all this she’d taken that oath to always serve and protect, and part of what that oath required was the responsibility to respond as soon as a call came in—not when she felt like responding to it.

“Hello,” she answered deliberately, conscious of what she was saying and how she was saying it. If this had been the regular stuff, she might have been too paranoid to answer. You got what you paid for in life. And what you deserved. This stuff was good.

“Agent Jet?”

That was her handle when she was needed immediately. “Yes.” Christ, what a time for this call.

“You know who this is?”

“Yes.” It was her direct superior. He was supposed to be somewhere in Nigeria by this time. That had been the plan forty-eight hours ago, but he could be anywhere by now. “What do you want?”

“I need you to get west as fast as possible.” He hesitated. “You’re not going to believe this, but the Eagle wants to see you.” He laughed a sincerely blown-away laugh from the other side of the earth. “I know
I
don’t believe it.”

Despite the marijuana coursing through her, adrenaline was suddenly pouring through her system as well. “West” was code for east. And “Eagle” was code for President David Dorn. Apparently her premonition earlier had nothing to do with the northern lights.

B
ILL LAY
on his back, naked, staring up at the ceiling fan as it rotated above him in the dawn light seeping into the cabin bedroom. If he followed the blades closely enough as they raced clockwise, every once in a while he could make out one as if it had stopped. As though for a very brief second it was in freeze-frame.

It was a stupid game, but he had to distract himself somehow. Maddux
had just come in to take Rita away after they’d spent an hour making love.

“P
LEASE DON’T
kill me,” Rita begged as she knelt before Maddux in the woods. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me.”

“Yes, you have,” Maddux agreed as he pressed the hot end of the Glock to her forehead. “You’ve been a patriot.”

“Please, Shane. I’m begging you. My God, this is my life.”

“You’re a good person, Rita, but you know too much. Your survival wouldn’t be best for the country. But you did a good thing for Bill. He needed that.”

“Shane, I—”

He fired once as she looked up at him through the tears streaming down her face. He’d used a silencer so Bill wouldn’t hear.

He smiled nostalgically as he gazed down at her corpse. She had been a patriot. So she hadn’t suffered. It had been a while since he’d thrill-killed anyone, and he was thirsty for one. But he hadn’t made her suffer at all. This hadn’t been about him.

If it had, the victim would have suffered, because he enjoyed watching that. But he’d made it quick for Rita. Out of respect.

S
KYLAR SLIPPED
the cell phone back into her pocket, took one more hit from the joint, and then flicked it over the side of the cliff. When the tiny orange ember disappeared halfway down to the crashing waves, she unclasped herself from the ledge and began climbing the rope dangling down the face of the cliff.

If she was getting to DC as fast as possible, she was leaving now. That seemed rational to her, even in her slightly encumbered state of mind. It was a long hike through the dense woods back to the canoe. And then a long paddle to town.

As she climbed the last few feet over the top of the cliff to the forest floor, she became aware of a presence out there in the night. Even in her condition she had an acute and unique awareness of her surroundings, which people had always told her bordered on the extrasensory. Danger was close at hand, and she’d left the rifle at the campsite, which was about fifty yards in front of her.

Hadn’t she? She touched her shoulder without taking her eyes from the gloom ahead. No rifle.

She had the bowie knife on her belt—she could definitely feel that—and her wits about her despite the buzz. But that was all. The knife and her wits against whatever enemy she was facing. Was it human or animal lurking out there in the darkness?

The growl and the snort from forty yards away answered her question. She couldn’t see the bear, but she could tell from the growl that it was the same animal she’d confronted this afternoon, the same huge male. Just as all bears had unique personalities, they all made distinct sounds, at least to the trained ear. And she recognized this one after hearing the growl, as quickly as if she could see it and it was wearing a name tag. In general bears were very much like humans, though not quite as evil as a whole, she believed.

The coward had overcome his fear. The scents of sautéed Sitka and rainbow trout almandine had been too tempting and drawn him into camp, probably against his better judgment. So he was going to be a prickly bear, even more so than normal, because the human smell in among the scents of the delicious food naturally made him wary and uncomfortable.

Well, so be it. She was going to test his survival skills to the limit. A bear’s sense of smell was epic. His eyesight, not so much.

As the heavy breathing and snorts grew louder, Skylar carefully unhitched the end of the rope from around the rock she’d used as a tether and then calmly coiled it in semi-equal loops against one leg. She couldn’t be exactly certain how uniform the loops were, because she wasn’t about to take her eyes off the landscape in front of her right now.

She could have shinnied back down the rope to the safety of the ledge and avoided this confrontation, but there was no telling how long the bear would hang around. He might gorge on the deer for an hour. Or he might guard his prize for days. Either way, she wasn’t having any of it. She needed to get to Washington. She appreciated what her superior had done—getting her the pass to come to Kodiak and the Raptor to get her here. And he’d promised to do the same for her again as soon as she’d finished whatever it was the president wanted from her. So she wasn’t going to let him down.

Despite her natural composure in the face of danger, everything in her body went on high alert as the massive animal loomed out of the darkness in front of her. A single swipe from one of those huge front paws, and the six-inch claws embedded in them could slice her in half. And the canines on this monster had to be at least three inches long. She couldn’t see either of his weapons in the darkness, but she remembered them from this afternoon. And this was definitely the same bear. She recognized the huge silhouette along with the sounds.

She took several deep breaths when the bear finally stopped twenty feet away. As it gazed at her with what she knew were beady brown eyes, it swayed gently back and forth like a huge, shadowy cobra. This thing had completely overcome its fear, which she took as a compliment to her cooking. She could tell from its body language that it had no intention of backing off that food anytime soon. This was his territory for now, and anything or anyone who trespassed here was in mortal danger.

She knelt down and felt around the ground. She was searching for a rock the size of a baseball, one she could hurl easily. Her fingers closed around one that was slightly larger, the size of a softball, but that would do. The bear had stopped swaying. It was getting ready to charge.

Skylar rose back up again, took aim, and threw. The rock caught the grizzly in the side of the face, enraging it instantly, exactly as she’d intended. The animal pawed the ground three times, roared, and charged.

She turned, tossed one end of the rope over the thick branch above her, caught it as it fell back to earth, dashed at a forty-five-degree angle for the edge of the cliff—and leaped. As she hung on to both ends of the rope, she literally prayed for dear life.

She could almost feel the heat of the bear’s breath as the ground gave way beneath her and she swung out in an arc over the crashing ocean 130 feet below. As the rope began to swing her back toward the cliff, she was aware of the bear hurtling past and heard its desperate grunt. That naturally bad eyesight had failed him. In his rage, he hadn’t seen the cliff and was now plummeting toward the rocks below.

Skylar had no time to congratulate herself. The branch supporting the rope snapped under the pressure as she swung back toward the cliff, dropping her precariously just as she should have landed on the forest floor. She let go of the rope and grabbed desperately for the top of the cliff as she slammed into the face of it. For a few terrible seconds it seemed she would join the bear in his fatal plunge on the rocks below.

But as her hands began to slide, her fingers found a rock and her foot a toehold. She grasped the rock with her left hand, slipped the bowie knife out of its sheath with her right, and stabbed the earth. Now she had three points of pressure, and she was able to climb over the edge of the cliff for the second time in less than three minutes. Hopefully, there wasn’t another bear waiting for her. Except for coming together on the rivers for the salmon runs, mating, and mothering, they were solitary animals. So she felt that she was alone. But others would come looking for the food soon.

When she was standing on terra firma again, she checked herself for injuries. Other than a few scrapes and what was going to be a nasty bruise on one shin, she seemed fine. So she set off through the woods to retrieve her rifle before heading back to town.

As she passed the still-smoldering campfire, she scooped up the last rainbow and began to eat as she walked. She needed energy for the hike, and the munchies were setting in big-time. She was glad the bear had ignored it and focused on the venison. For some reason she was more in the mood for fish right now.