When the Killing Starts (14 page)

"The only thing to do is head down the lake and go south. Let's do it."

George nodded and called out. "Get paddling."

Michaels glanced around, rocking the canoe. "We won't make it across the lake. This thing will sink."

"It won't sink. It'll fill up is all," Wallace drawled. "Do's you're told, boy."

His authority was still there. Michaels dug his paddle into the water, and we inched southward over the choppy water. Wallace and I did our best to bail out the water that splashed in. We managed to keep the canoe half-empty, but we were submerged to our thighs. My legs began to stiffen with exhaustion and cold, and Sam had to sit upright to keep his head clear of the water, but we were safe, while the fire roared down both sides of us, consuming the forest faster than we could paddle.

We landed at last at the south end, beaching the canoe on the shore and stepping out carelessly into the water. "Pull it out and empty it," George commanded, and Michaels heaved the bow up onto the scorched ground, and all four of us tilted it so that the water ran out enough that we could lift and tip it completely.

I looked around. The fire had passed only minutes ago, it seemed. The ground was still smoking, and the trees were standing as black pillars, the last of the embers glowing as the wind raced by them to fan the flames that were half a mile to our south by now.

Wallace looked around him. "Jesus. Look at that."

"Nice guy, your boss." I said. "He'd've cooked you just to get me."

Wallace swore. "He figured I'd split with you," he said. "I owe the son'bitch." He turned to George and said, "I owe you as well, Tonto. You can't live long enough to get away with this." He held up his bandaged hand.

George ignored him. "Which way?" he asked me. I waved my rifle at Wallace. "You and the kid sit down on that rock. Don't try to take off or the dog will run you down. Okay?"

He turned away without speaking and sat down on the rock. Michaels joined him, and they sat there staring at me angrily while I walked off a few paces with George and took out my map. "There's another party out on the lake to the west of here," I said. "I guess the fire beat them off, but we can't go that way. That leaves us heading east, or south behind the fire. I believe that south's better. When Robinson comes back, he'll see the fire, and he'll be watching for us on the water. If we go east, he may not swing by that way. He'll figure we've burned."

George grinned. "He was damn near right, Reid."

I reached out and bumped him on the shoulder. "Listen, thanks for being here. I was gone if you hadn't shown up, and they wouldn't have needed to burn the place."

"I figured you'd need me. I talked about it to the band chief. He said I oughta follow you. Bring Sam so he could track you down. So I did. Then, when we got to your packsack, I figured I'd wait till you got back. Then, early on, that guy there came ashore in a little boat. So I sat back and waited."

"I owe you," I said. "I've got twenty-five grand coming for delivering the kid back to his mommie. You're in for half of it."

He grinned again. "Yeah? Hey, anytime. That's better than legal fees."

"But more hazardous to your health," I said. "Look, we'll move on now, behind the fire to the next lake. Go ashore somewhere and wait for morning. If Robinson comes back on time, we'll wave him down."

"What if this guy's buddies come lookin' for us?"

"They'll be looking for bodies. I figure they'll move slowly, maybe not get to the southern lake till tomorrow midday sometime. They don't know where we are, and this is a big area."

"Right." He nodded and stuck his rifle under his arm. "Hey, we can let them carry the canoe."

"Of course. What are prisoners for?" We both smiled, covering up the problems of the next twenty-four hours, and I went back to Michaels and Wallace. Wallace had a tobacco tin on his knees and was trying to roll a cigarette with his left hand and the unbandaged index finger of his right. "Smoke if you want," I told him. "It's too late to worry about fire now."

He looked up at me through narrowed eyes but said nothing. He was tough and proud of it. I knew firsthand the pain he was going through, but he was not going to let it show.

"Okay, Jason. You're on canoe detail," I said. "Pick it up and let's go."

Michaels stood up. He was scared and showed it. "Go where? What for?"

"We're heading out," I said briefly.

"Why don't we wait here? They won't find us."

"They will," I told him.

"You don't know that?" His old rich-kid arrogance was starting to show through. "They'll probably think we're dead. We nearly were."

"They'll mount a search-and-destroy mission," I said. "Pick up the canoe, we're moving out."

Wallace leaned sideways and spat like a ballplayer. "Now you better start workin' me over, tough guy, because I sure as shit ain't going nowhere with you."

I looked at him, seeing that desperate southern pride in his face. Guys like him have won more Congressional Medals of Honor than any other Americans. When you see "Death Before Dishonor" tattooed on their arms, you know they mean it. And he knew I was a copper, that I wouldn't use any more force on him than I had to. He'd beaten me unless I could bring him along. And if I didn't, he would tell his buddies which way we had gone.

"You'd rather stay here and lose your whole arm to gangrene, would you?" I asked pleasantly.

His face tightened, but he sneered again. "You a doctor's well's a cop? Y'ever seen gangrene in 'Nam?"

I was thinking as I spoke, trying to make him think this was planned but improvising the answer. "George, you and the kid head south. I'll catch up with you when I'm through here," I said.

George looked at me in surprise, but I didn't give him any signal, and his own intelligence steered him right. "Don't shoot him," he said, and Michaels gasped. "Use your knife, we don't want his buddies hearing us."

I nodded, and George turned to Michaels. "Grab the canoe, let's go."

Michaels was trembling. "You mean you're going to let this man kill him?"

"Pick up the canoe," George said.

I waited until the kid had the canoe on his back, blind to what I was doing. Then I spoke softly to Wallace. "On your face, tough guy."

"Or what?" he drawled, and I rapped him on his good arm with the barrel of my rifle.

"Or I hit your right hand next time. Okay?"

He swore, but he lay back and rolled over, keeping his hands extended in front of him. "Hands down your back."

He did it, and I told Sam, "Keep," and he craned forward, snarling. Wallace swore, but he lay still. I took the lace out of one of his boots and tied his thumbs together with it. It probably came under the heading of cruel and unusual punishment, the shape his right hand was in, but it was only a shade of the punishment he would have given me if George hadn't stopped him.

I don't like inflicting pain, so I didn't truss him any further, or even gag him. I just slashed the laces on his other boot, then heaved his boots off and threw them away. When his buddies came to search for us, they would find him, but he would be slowed down in following them. The ground was going to be too hot for bare feet, and it would take half an hour at least to find his boots. It would splinter him away from the others, about the best advantage I could hope for.

Then I told Sam, "Keep," and jogged away after George Horn and Michaels, following the clear trail they had left through the solid carpet of ash that covered the ground. The wind was still strong, and already it was picking up the ash in a cloud, resettling it. With luck our trail would be invisible by the time the mercenaries paddled down the lake behind us. I hoped so. We had to be out onto the lake before they caught up. Once that happened, we were safer. They would take hours searching for us. With even more luck we could be a couple of lakes south by then.

When I was a couple of hundred yards into the ruined forest, I whistled for Sam and went on jogging. He caught up to me within another fifty paces, and soon I found George and Michaels humping solidly over the smoldering ground.

Michaels was flagging, so I called a halt, and he lowered the canoe. "No need to sweat it," I said. "Nobody's going to find us now."

"What did you do to him?" he asked in a frightened voice.

"I tied him. They'll find him and come after us. But he can't do anything on his own."

"I don't want them mad at me," he said, and tried to grin. "They got pretty rough last night. When Wallace found your pack, they came asking questions. They're bad people." I wanted to hear more about it, but for now that was enough.

"Relax, we're on our way out of here. Grab the bow. I'll take the stern." Then I said to Sam, "Seek."

Sam ran on ahead, moving warily over the smoldering ground. He stopped and whimpered once as he tried to run over a rock and found it hot, but mostly he avoided the bad spots.

George kept up the pace, and we marched quickly down toward the lower lake. The fire had died down around us, but in front it was a wall of flame, holding us back, too close to Dunphy's men for safety. The back of the fire was traveling slower than the front. There it was crowning through the treetops, but here it was lingering, consuming everything burnable. We had to wait for the path to be safe enough and cool enough to follow.

It worried me. The mercenaries would be on the lake behind us before we could get out on to the next one. I took out the map Robinson had given me and checked it. The news wasn't good. We had two miles of land to cross before we got to the lake. It was a safer spot. There were islands on it that wouldn't be caught in the flames. We could hide on one of them. If the men came after us, they would have to search every one of them. That would take all day unless we were unlucky and they hit on our island first. But still we had a mile to go, a flaming mile that would take four or five hours to burn down. That would give them plenty of time to catch up to us, and if they did, George and I were as good as dead.

"Lemme see the map," George said. I handed it to him, indicating our only hope with one finger. "Looks as if this portion might be swampy. If we can reach that, we can take to the water."

He looked at it, narrowing his eyes. "Leads right into the next lake," he said. "But this's been a dry summer, Reid. Might not be's wet as we need."

We looked up, locking eyes thoughtfully as we considered our next step. And then, faint in the distance, Wallace's voice was shouting, "Down here. Down here."

George grunted. "Sounds like we've got company. They'll be on us like a duck on a June bug. And there's no place to hide."

 

 

 

TEN

 

 

I turned to check behind us. I still couldn't see the mercenaries, but already a burble of shouts had sprung up. I figured they were coming ashore close to Wallace. He would point them after us. It was certain he had looked up when Sam left him and saw which way he ran. His buddies would start by doubling after us, faster than we'd been able to move.

"Okay, Jason. Pick up the bow and move."

"Into that?" He pointed at the wall of fire. "You're crazy."

He was shaking with fear, and I couldn't blame him. "Better run into it than have them throw us into it dead," I said. "That way we've got a chance."

"They won't kill me," he tried in a whisper. "I'm with them."

"These guys are killers. They'll kill us two for sport and kill you to shut you up."

I bent and picked up the stern of the canoe. "Right, grab the bow."

He was slow getting to his feet, but he must have been thinking as he did it. I was right, and he knew it. He'd probably already heard some soldier stories from the men behind us. They'd bragged of the villages they'd burned, the people they'd interrogated, the methods they'd used. He knew where he stood. I just had to make sure he stayed more scared of them than he was of the flames.

When he had picked up the bow, he stood looking at me nervously. I took a moment to explain what would happen. "Two hundred yards into that fire there's a swamp. It's a wide area, and we can get out into the middle of it, safe from the fire and safe from your ex-buddies."

"Two hundred yards? Through that?" The fear bubbled out again.

"Thirty seconds at most. Then into the water. Then into the canoe and downstream."

George was ignoring us, looking back the way we had come. He was just as scared but wasn't going to show it. "Someone's moving. I can see them back maybe six hundred yards," he said softly.

I set down the canoe and told them both, "The only protection we can have is to wet our faces and hands. Then breathe shallow and bust a gut running."

"How'm I gonna wet my hands?" Michaels was almost crying.

"The way you're almost wetting your pants," George said.

Michaels gasped. "You mean piss on my hands?"

George propped his rifle at his side and did it. So did I. Then, reluctantly, Michaels did the same thing. Then George opened his jacket and tore a strip out of his shirt and drew it over his head just like an old Russian woman's babushka. "Pull the hood out of your combat jacket and tie it as small in front as it'll go," I told Michaels, and he did it while I did the same.

"What about Sam?" George asked quickly. "He'll burn for sure?"

"When we hit the fire, he goes in the canoe," I said, and bent to pat him. "Heel, boy."

Sam heeled, and I picked up the stern of the canoe, then realized what had to happen. "Swing behind me, Jason. I'll break the trail."

He gulped and made the turn, bringing the canoe stern on to our direction. "Okay, let's move." I set out at a jog over the smoldering ground. Sam followed, whining low in his throat, baffled by my actions. Around us trees were still burning like Roman candles, showering us with sparks as we moved downwind of them over the blackened duff. Every step we took turned over fresh fuel, and the flames picked up behind us. Michaels was whimpering to himself as he ran, a litany of fear. "Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. Oh, God."

We gained on the fire, entering a zone where the branches close to us were in full flame, reaching down almost to our heads. I checked the run and turned back. "Sam. In," I said, and patted the canoe. He jumped in, sitting up anxiously. "Good boy. Down." I gestured with one finger, and he settled flat into the bottom of the canoe. He was heavy, close to a hundred pounds, and Michaels swore. "Fuck the dog. Shoot him."