Strike Dog (11 page)

“Not much blood,” she said, leaning over the corpse. “Kill site?”

“Doubtful,” the technician said, shaking his head.

The plastic walls began to snap and shake as the air turned blustery.

“Shit,” the tech said. “That wind gets worse, it'll turn this thing into a parasail.”

“You looked for alternate shelter?”

“No, ma'am. Our orders were to stand by, wait, and not talk to the locals.”

Tatie Monica turned to Service. “We need a safe place to store the body—and us,” she said.

“I'll tell the Missouri agents,” he said, stepping out into the wind. He squinted as sand blasted his face. The storm was coming in fast. He felt a tug on his arm and found Larry Gasparino. “Weather's heading south; am I right, or what?”

“Way south,” Service agreed, glancing at the swirling, dark clouds.

He bounced his way down the trail, found the watercraft tethered to chains at the end of nylon ropes on the beach. There was nobody with them. He sniffed smoke, looked at the pea gravel, saw impressions leading around a huge boulder on the downstream side, and followed them.

The prints and path led to an overhang six feet deep and high, and ten feet wide.

The four Missouri agents were squatting around a small Sterno fire. Eddie Waco looked up at him.

Service said, “Feels like the twisters are ahead of schedule.”

“Always got they own minds,” Waco said.

“We have a body up top and we need to get it under cover before the storm hits full force.”

The conservation agents followed him at a jog to the top, without comment. Crime scene techs had already transferred the corpse into a black rubber bag. Service and the Missouri men labored down the steep trail as the wind suddenly stopped and everything became still.

Not even birds sang.

Service had one corner of the bag as it began to sprinkle. Eddie Waco said, “She be upon us, boys.”

They dragged the bag under the overhang cave just as the rain started. It came down like marbles, a giant spigot opened wide, the rain coming in a steady roar. The eight techs, four Missouri agents, Larry Gasparino, and Tatie Monica pressed in with them, fifteen people and a corpse in a bag crammed into a tight space.

“What direction are we facing?” Service asked Waco. The trip down the twisting river with heavy overcast had pretty much obliterated his sense of direction. There was no sun to orient him.

“Southwest,” Eddie Waco said. “More or less.”

“Figures,” Service said. A tornado would blow directly in on them. “We should find another place.”

“Thet dog hain't a-gonna hunt,” the conservation agent said. “Have to ride 'er out here.”

Special Agent Monica got out her handheld radio and tried to get a chopper to evacuate the body, but was told through massive static there would be no flying until the storms passed.

Service thought she looked outwardly calm. He wondered what her real emotions were. He was on edge. Did she not realize what could happen? Could she be
that
clueless?

The steady rain turned to huge, loud drops that sounded like stones.

The drops changed to golf ball–size hailstones that clicked and ticked and ricocheted like bullets.

The temperature plummeted.

The wind started changing directions, intensified, and began to blast them with chips of chert, dust, and shards of bark. Everyone in the stone shelter covered their heads with their arms and turned their backs to the opening.

Service heard a roar he first thought was a helicopter, a thought he amended to a train a moment before his brain put it all together:
Tornado!
The afternoon sky was as night.

Large things began crashing and thumping against the side of the cliff.

“I'll be go to hell!” one of the techs cursed from his crouch.

“We all just might,” another shaky voice said.

Wind suddenly ripped into the cave, toppling Service onto his side.

He immediately reached for the wall of the cave, looking for something to hold on to as the man beside him disappeared.

“Service!” Tatie Monica shrieked.

Service saw her arms splayed as she was yanked and spun outside by the wind. He jumped on her legs, trying to pin her with his weight, but they both kept sliding and skidded off a slippery ledge, and all he could think was,
Shit
.

The water was a shock, much colder than he expected.

He kicked his way to the surface, saw a boulder looming, and managed to use a hand to straight-arm it as he was propelled downstream, spinning.
Where was Tatie Monica?

No idea how much time had passed, aware only that it was lighter, the rain still coming down in sheets, but there seemed to be more light and a little less wind. A tree crashed into the water ahead of him and raised a spout like a depth charge as objects began to splash all around him. At one point he saw a spotted fawn floating by, its neck bent at ninety degrees. He looked around, saw several people bobbing and splashing in the water, stretched out and swam to get speed, and when he had his stroke going, looked up, saw a gravel bar ahead, and swam onto it, scraping his chin as he beached himself.

A tech came by holding out a hand and Service got a wrist-lock and yanked him ashore. The man was bleeding from the mouth and nose. He helped a second man ashore and looked upstream but saw no more people. He assumed the others had found a way to safety or were somewhere downstream. The dead fawn was wedged between some rocks just below him.

He heard shouting, the rain drowning out most of the words.

“Body bag,” a voice screamed. Service thought it was Tatie Monica, but he had no idea where she was.

Eddie Waco was soon crouched beside him. “I seen where hit went,” he told Service, who nodded and said simply, “Let's go.”

They eased into the water together and began to swim side by side.

The rising river carried them fifty yards through a narrow neck with a riffle before dumping them into a long frothy eddy. Service saw the bag floating ahead of him and got to it first. Eddie Waco joined him, and the two of them guided it, kicking their way into flatter water, pushing and pulling it toward the cliff wall with the most shoreline.

“I need a smoke,” Service said, his chest heaving.

The Missouri man held out his snuff tin. “Why I carry this,” he said.

Service shook his head. “We need to secure the body.”

“Not down here,” the man said. “This rain still a-goin', they'll be a crest rollin' downstream.”

“How high?”

“Don't take much ta push 'er up six ta eight feet. I seen as much as twelve a couple times, and back in the nineties she once come way up over thirty.”

Service scanned the rocks above them. “Another cave?” he asked.

“Plinty ta choose from, but we need ta get ta one up high enough.”

The heavy rain reminded him of monsoons in Vietnam, but Waco had nylon rope and carabiners in his waist pack, and located a cubbyhole above them. Service climbed up while Waco secured the line to the body bag. With Service pulling and the other man climbing, and pushing and guiding, they got the body fifteen feet above the waterline and wedged into a space that was more scallop than cave.

“We ought to check on the others,” Service said.

“They hain't safe, nothin' ta be done about hit.”

Service stripped off his vest and turned it inside out. He always carried two packs of cigarettes sewn into a waterproof pouch inside the back of his bulletproof vest. He peeled off the vest cover and dug out a pack.

He reached into his pants pocket and fished out a sealed plastic container of wooden matches. “How long until it crests?”

“Cain't say, but she's a-risin' pert fast.”

Service looked down and saw that it was true.

“The body's gonna be in bad shape,” Service said.

“Dead's dead,” Eddie Waco said.

Rain continued to fall unrelentingly, and an hour after they had snugged into their perch, they heard a voice shouting along the canyon wall. It was impossible to make out any words. Eddie Waco got outside and inched his way toward the sound, came back, and grabbed his pack.

“What?” Service asked.

“Got us a snakebite,” the man said. “Water drives serpents ta cover, same as us.”

Service lurched and looked around. He was not crazy about snakes. “
Poisonous
snakes?”

Eddie Waco said. “Like most folks, snakes don't bite less'n they's feelin' cornered.”

“Great,” Service said sardonically. One of the comforting things about the Upper Peninsula was the rarity of poisonous snakes.

The conservation agent put on his small pack and started along the rock wall. Service looked around, began imagining snakes in all the little crevices in the cave, and decided to go with Waco, invited or not.

It was a long, slippery, and clumsy crawl along the rock face through sheets of cold rain and powerful wind gusts before they reached another conservation agent. “Lady fed got herself bit,” the man told them.

Service noted they were a little higher than where they had the body stashed.

Special Agent Tatie Monica was sitting in a hole sculpted from the limestone by nature and time. Her dark hair was mashed to her head like a helmet. Her eyes were rheumy, more from irritation than fear. A crime scene tech was sitting next to her. Every time he reached for her, she swatted his hand away.

“Tatie!” Service barked.

She glowered at him.

“What happened?”

“Snake,” the tech beside her said.

“You get 'im?” Eddie Waco asked.

“She mashed its head with her pistol grip,” the tech said, pointing.

The reddish-brown earth-tone serpent was piled up between some stones. Eddie Waco found a stick and prodded the reptile, which moved.

“Jesus, it's still alive!” the tech yipped, scrambling away from the FBI field agent.

Eddie Waco probed with the stick again and the snake pulled away. He kept poking it until he uncovered its tail, grabbed it, and snapped the snake backward like a whip. It cracked sharply in the heavy air and he dropped it on the ground, unsheathed a small knife, and cut off its head. “Copperhead,” he announced. “Just a little feller. You'n got heart problems?” he asked Agent Monica.

“Field agents aren't authorized in the field if they have heart problems,” she said defiantly.

“That's real good to know,” Eddie Waco said. “How ya'll feelin'?”

“Stupid,” the woman said.

“You got pain?”

“It burns.”

“Where?” the conservation agent asked.

“Buttock,” the tech said. “She won't let us look.”

“Let's git thim trousers off,” Eddie Waco said, but he found himself staring at the barrel of a 9-millimeter.

“You got antivenin?” Tatie Monica asked.

“No, ma'am.”

“Snakebite kit?”

“No, ma'am.”

“I don't want my ass carved,” she said, her eyes rolling.

“The way it is,” Eddie Waco said quietly, “copperheads don't kill many people except'n young 'uns and ole folks with heart problems. This 'un's not too big, which means not a lot of pizen, but even little fellers got enough ta kill flesh and muscle at the bite site. I reckon we need to get what pizen's in there out right quick afore it spreads.”

She brandished the weapon. “
Nobody
touches my ass,” she repeated.

Grady Service raised his left hand to deflect the barrel of her weapon up, and struck her hard on the chin with the heel of his right hand. The pistol came loose and she slumped to her left. He picked up the weapon, popped out the clip, and handed the weapon and magazine to Gasparino, who had joined them, his eyes bulging like jumbo egg yolks.

Eddie Waco rolled the stunned woman onto her stomach, cut her belt with his knife, and sliced open the fabric of her pants and underpants, skimpy black French cuts, which made Service think of Nantz and gulp.

The fang marks in her right buttock were small but distinct. The skin was already red, shiny, and swollen.

“You going to cut and suck?” Service asked.

“Cuttin' causes more damage less'n you'n a doctor man,” the Missouri man said, “which I hain't.” He put down his pack, reached into it, and took out a red bandanna, which he unfolded to reveal a flat, oval rock, white with brown speckles. He set the stone aside and took out a small, single-burner camp stove, connected the fuel canister, and handed a metal container to Gasparino. “Fill 'er with watern, quickety split.” Eddie Waco lit the burner, which hissed.

Gasparino crawled clumsily down to the raging river, filled the cup, and passed it up. Waco took out another cup and filled it from a flask. He put the second cup on the burner, took some antibacterial soap out of his pack, washed the wound, and blotted away excess moisture.

Tatie Monica tried to roll over, but Service pressed her shoulder down. “Keep still,” he said.

“Don't cut me,” she muttered, with the side of her face pressed to the ground.

“Be no cuttin',” Eddie Waco said calmly.

When the liquid boiled he put the stone in it and let it bubble for a while. He took his Leatherman tool off his belt, opened it to form pliers, and extracted the rock, which had turned pure white from heat. Eddie Waco looked at Service, saying, “Bes' hold 'er down.” Then to her, “This might could smart some.”

He took the stone in his glove and pressed it to the wound, where it seared the flesh. Tatie Monica bucked and cursed, “Fuckers!”And passed out.

Service turned his head to avoid the smell. “What now?” Service asked. It was still pouring, but the wind had slackened.

“We wait,” the Missouri agent said.

Service had no idea what was going on. “Is this for real?”

“I seen it done afore,” he said. “You got a better idee, Michigan Man?”