The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) (13 page)

The sight of the campfire had persuaded Ellie that Mallory now stood a very good chance of being right. It was possible that the smoke was from a legitimate source, a party of hunters, perhaps, but that suddenly seemed like a long shot. It would be a big coincidence. She was operating on the assumption that they were going to come upon the fugitives. She had already decided what she was going to do. She was going to call for help. She knew that Mallory would be impatient and determined to continue, but Ellie didn’t think that would be the most sensible course of action. Mallory was a girl, strong willed, but very young, and Ellie was confident that she would be able to bring her around to her way of thinking.

Milton, though? She didn’t have the same confidence. She found him very difficult to read.

Milton stopped. There was a vertical shaft, flooded and rimmed by square berms of fractured rock. He suggested that the shaft had been constructed to access the same seams of copper as the ones on the shore of the lake.

“We’re close,” he said.

They carried on, slowly descending through the tree line until the hardwoods started to thin out and Lake of the Clouds became visible. It was a large expanse of water situated in a valley between two ridges. It was fed at its eastern end by the Carp River Inlet and the outflow, to the west, was the Carp River. It was staggeringly beautiful, a wide sheet of blue that glimmered in the early evening sunlight. The slope that they were descending would deposit them on the southern shore of the lake if they followed it to its end. The land rose up on all sides, with a narrow shoulder of flat terrain to the northwest. There was perhaps two hundred feet of gentle slope before them until the water’s edge. To the left the cliff reared up sharply, too steep to climb or descend. Milton took out his binoculars and glassed the cliff face and the flat ground from left to right.

There was a collection of tumbledown shacks at the side of the cliff. The huts were heavily screened by ferns and dug into the side of the rocks that overlooked the water. One of them was in the water itself, the gentle flow lapping around its foundations. Behind them, set into the rock itself, was the darkened maw of an adit that must once have entered the mine. The entrance was open, accessed by a flight of stairs that had been carved out of the stone.

“See it?” Milton said, passing the binoculars to Ellie.

“It’s the mine,” she said.

Milton said that he had come across a few similar places as he had trekked across the Upper Peninsula. The mines had been sunk to bring out copper, for the most part, although some had accessed veins of silver and gold. Almost all of them had been abandoned after the easier seams had been stripped; the ones that were left could not be reached economically. This one must have been the same.

“Look!” Ellie hissed.

Milton took the glasses from her and gazed down at the shore again. There were three men emerging from behind one of the ramshackle huts. As he watched, another two emerged from the tree line, each of them carrying an armful of firewood. They took the wood to a cleared spot that looked as if it had been furnished with a fire pit, and dropped the timber onto a woodpile.

Mallory grabbed the glasses from him and stared. “It’s Arthur,” she said in an urgent whisper. “You see? At the back.”

Ellie focussed on the man to the rear. He was laden with the most wood, so much that it looked as if he was struggling to carry it. He was a few steps behind the lead man and, as the others joined them, he stayed on the periphery.

“We need to call the bureau,” she said.

“No,” Mallory said. “We can’t.”

“Mallory, there are four of them down there. There’s only three of us.”

“Two of us,” Milton corrected. “Mallory’s not getting involved.”

“You knew that before we started,” the girl protested.

“I didn’t know they’d be here,” Ellie said.

Milton asked, “How are you going to call them? There’s no signal.”

“We go back to Truth. I’ll call my partner and he’ll bring reinforcements with him.”

“No—”

“It’ll be a delay of two days, Mallory. Maybe three.”

“And where do you think they’ll be in three days?” she argued.

“Here.”

“No, they won’t. They already think the FBI’s given up on them. Someone in town knows they’re here, and I guess they’ve already told them you’ve gone. Maybe they feel safe. It’s been a month since they robbed a bank. Why wouldn’t they go and do another one tomorrow?”

“Or maybe they don’t.”

“What if they do? They’ve already shot one man. What if they kill someone else? Are you okay with that on your conscience?”

The girl had a quick temper and it had tripped.

“Quiet,” Milton said sternly, his finger to his lips.

“We can’t go,” Mallory went on in an angry whisper. “That wasn’t the deal.”

“No,” Milton said. “The deal was I bring you out to see whether your brother was here—”

“I can’t just leave—”

“—and now that I see that he
is
here, I’m not happy leaving him any more than you are.”

Her anger drained away as she realised that he was on her side. “You’ll help?”

“Come on, Milton,” Ellie protested. “You can’t be serious?”

“I am. This doesn’t have to be difficult.”

“What do you mean? There are four of them. They’re armed. They’ve already killed a man. They’re not going to put their hands up and surrender.”

“Yes,” he said. “They will.”

Ellie turned away from Mallory, putting herself between the girl and Milton. “I can’t let you do anything stupid,” she said to him. “You might be good in the woods, you look like you know how to look after yourself, but that does
not
mean I think you’re capable of going down there and making four fugitives, men with a very good reason not to be caught, surrender to you.”

“You should have more faith in me. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

ELLIE ARGUED against Milton’s proposal for another five minutes until she realised that he had made up his mind and there was nothing she could do to dissuade him. Her options were limited: she could leave and make her way back to town, but Milton made it clear to her that he wouldn’t wait to collect the fugitives. It took a little effort to persuade her that he was serious, but once he had succeeded in that, she couldn’t very well abandon him to do it alone. That was her second option: to help. She frowned her disapproval, but signalled her acquiescence.

Milton handed her his rifle. “What are you like at medium range?”

She looked at it a little reluctantly. “I can fire it.”

“Top half of your class?”

“Not with a rifle,” she admitted.

“It’s all right. I don’t want you to hit anyone. We’re going to bring them back alive. I just want you to give them something to think about.”

“How?”

“Distract them. You need to watch me get down there. My guess is as soon as they think they’re in trouble, they’re going to make a run for their bikes. I can’t see them, but there’s a track at the back of the huts and, I expect that’s where they are, hidden by the trees. If they run, I want you to shoot at them without hitting them.”

“So you want me to
miss
?”

He smiled. “Well, yes, if you put it like that, I do. Can you?”

“Of course I can,” she said indignantly.

“Good.”

“What about you?”

“They’ve got no idea what they’re doing,” he said. “Look at them. They’ve got no security, no lookout, they don’t have their weapons with them. My guess, they’ve left them in the hut. I’m going to walk into camp and suggest that it is in their best interests to give up. If they have a different opinion, I’ll persuade them otherwise.”

“And if you can’t?”

“It’s not going to be difficult, Ellie.”

“What if it is?”

“If it is, then you go back to Truth. Take Mallory with you and head south. You’ll want to trek through the night; don’t stop. You’ll be back there tomorrow. Then you call in the cavalry. I should think I’ll still be around by then.”

She sighed and shook her head, ready to try to persuade him again that this was foolish.

“But it won’t be necessary.” He took off his jacket and laid it out across a branch. “I tell you what: if I can get them to surrender before”—he looked at his watch—“eight o’clock, you can buy me dinner when we get back into town.”

“What time is it now?”

He smiled at her. “A quarter to.”

“All right,” she relented, shaking her head with exasperation, but unable to suppress her smile. “But you don’t have to do anything crazy to ask me out.”

“No?”

“You could’ve, you know, just
asked
me.”

Milton took Ellie’s Glock and ejected the magazine. He nodded in satisfaction as he slotted it back home.

“You have any restraints?”

“Just these,” she said, reaching down into her bag for a collection of cable ties.

He took them. “They’ll do.” He checked his watch. “Better get a move on.” He crept through the brush to the camp. Their fire was brighter against the approaching gloom. “Keep your eyes on me.”

And, with that, he was gone.

MILTON STAYED in the cover of the trees and the scrub that provided a thick fringe around the perimeter of the camp. The area was ringed with wetlands and, as darkness fell, the lake and its chain of smaller ponds erupted in a din of peeps and croaks. Milton didn’t mind at all. Anything that helped to mask his approach was welcome.

He thought about Ellie. He had surprised himself back there. He hadn’t thought too hard about women ever since he had left San Francisco, deciding once again that he wasn’t in the business of making attachments. He liked to stay on the move, flitting from place to place, and a relationship would make that kind of flexible lifestyle impossible. Normal people wanted normal lives. They wanted mortgages, regular jobs, fifty-inch televisions, and big washing machines. They wanted a dog, holidays, health insurance. They wanted kids. Milton didn’t want any of those things, and he couldn’t imagine circumstances where he would. He had been on his own long enough so that the logic that said those items—those
things
—were desirable was beyond him.

It made much more sense for him to be alone. He was fine with that. He didn’t want pity, nor did he pity himself. Solitude was an acceptable substitute for the program, at least it was for him, and the possibility of long stretches of time where the only person he had to speak to was himself was a form of meditation that had allowed him to understand himself better.

So why had he asked her out?

Because she was cute and sassy?

He had been thinking about her all day. He kept seeing her in different ways: lying in the tent last night, the firelight dancing in her eyes; her face up close, the freckles that you couldn’t see unless you were really looking hard; the way she eyeballed him when he hauled himself out of the lake; the way her chest filled her shirt when she worked the straps of her pack over her shoulders; and watching her from behind as they were climbing the ridge. Those images kept popping into his head, one after another, distracting him, when he needed to keep his focus clear. He dismissed them, but then he would remember the way that her hand had felt in his, the warmth of her body as he had reached down to drag her up the slippery scree. He heard her voice, too, the confident tone, the attitude that almost dared him to argue with her. The way she had said, “I’m staying right here,” as he prepared the camp for the night yesterday, the way she’d said it and the way she’d looked at him, making him think that she was inviting him to take her to his tent. He heard that again and again and wondered what would have happened if he had made a pass at her.

An FBI agent.

With his history?

What was he, crazy?

Never mind. No sense thinking about any of that now. He needed a clear head. He would address it all later, once he had taken care of business.

He stayed low, hurrying from cover to cover, breaking into the spaces between the trees and brush only when he was sure that he wasn’t observed. As he got closer, he could begin to make out scraps of conversation floating to him on the breeze. He was still too far away to pick out the words, but he could tell from the raucous, bawdy atmosphere that the four of them were drunk. Arthur Stanton was sitting on the edge of the fire, his knees hugged against his chest. They would occasionally gesture in his direction. He would smile or say something, but Milton could tell that all they had for him was ridicule. He was nothing more than their entertainment. A court jester.

He crept closer, sliding into the cover of an oak and then peering around the trunk. He was twenty feet away now. There was a large jug on the ground, and they passed it between them regularly. Milton guessed that they had a still somewhere close, and that they were passing the hours by brewing their own hooch and then getting drunk on it.

Amateurs.

They had no idea what they were doing.

That was good.

He hunkered down behind the trunk of the last large pine before the clearing. The four fugitives obviously felt comfortable enough to set a large fire, and they were gathered around it, passing around the jug of moonshine. Arthur Stanton looked miserable. He was closest to Milton. He would pass him first. He didn’t expect that to be a problem and, if there was any shooting, he was far enough away that he ought to be safe.

Milton held Ellie’s Glock in a loose grip, composing himself, running through his plan one final time so that it was clear in his mind.

First impressions were going to be crucially important. He needed those boys to be in no doubt that he would shoot them if they didn’t do what he told them to do.

He took a deep breath. He looked back up the slope, into the tree line. Ellie and Mallory were hidden amidst the foliage and he couldn’t see them. He hoped that Ellie could shoot the rifle, but, if she couldn’t, it was too late to worry about now.

He took another breath, stood, stepped around the tree trunk, and walked to the campfire with a confident, authoritative gait.