Deadfall (6 page)

“You believe that stuff?” Hutch said with more sarcasm than he'd intended.

“I'm just saying . . .” The satellite phone disappeared behind him again.

“Hey, wait a sec,”Terry said, reaching for his back pocket. “How much for the phone?”

Hutch stopped him. “Save your money,Ter.We agreed . . .”

Franklin said, “Can't do it, buddy. Belongs to the company, eh. If I went back without it, it'd be my job.”

Terry bowed his head.

Hutch patted him on the shoulder. “Good man. It'll work out. You'll see.” He turned to Franklin. “Okay. The river's over there.”

“The Straight River.”

“Right. Now, where's my best bet for caribou?” He had convinced Franklin over the phone and with a wad of twenties when they had met in Points North Landing to let him go on a DIY hunt—a do-it-yourself hunt, without a guide, though his nonresident license required one.

“Here's my guiding to you, should anyone ask,” Franklin said. He pointed in the direction opposite the river, toward the hills. “That way.”

The landscape sloped almost imperceptibly toward the Fond du Lac River, which shimmered like a hot wire four miles south. On the other side of the river, the earth rose again, softly.They were in a shallow valley roughly forty miles wide.

“Not toward the Fond du Lac?” Hutch clarified. Experience had taught him that lots of water meant lots of animals.

Franklin shook his head. “Right here, we're at the very southern edge of their range. Some stragglers get on down farther, but . . . nah, you'll find more up here. Besides, town of Fiddler Falls is right there, on the river. I thought you wanted to steer clear of folk.”

“We do. Appreciate it.”

“All right, then, you boys have fun, eh.” Franklin shook Hutch's hand and climbed into the cabin. Two minutes later, the helicopter was a speck against the blue canvas and the four friends were standing in the meadow, awed by the vastness of the landscape, its beauty and serenity. None of them wanted to break the silence, so they stayed that way a long time, happy finally to be alone and together.

7

Turned out, Declan,s other business
did include hunting. After rounding up forty-seven people, by Tom's count, Declan grew increasingly fidgety. He checked his watch and frequently told Bad to give him a “status report.” It was a task that required Bad to return to the Hummer for minutes at a time. He allowed Tom to sit on the curb while he paced. Bad and Kyrill roamed Provincial, weapons at the ready.They checked doors, looked through windows, and disappeared up side streets, occasionally returning with new prisoners.Tom hoped these new captives had ventured into the gunmen's line of sight and weren't pulled from their homes. As long as Declan's gang targeted only people outside their homes, Laura and Dillon stood a chance.

He yearned for them now, for the love in their eyes, even when they were only glancing at him or listening to his ramblings about some trivial town event or how the car needed new brakes. He wanted to feel the pressure of their bodies against his, their arms around him, their warmth. When he hugged them and they hugged back, he felt more than mutual affection; he felt . . .
privileged
.That they were giving him their time, allowing him to know how their bodies were constructed. Letting him feel their musculature and bones, their breath on his neck, the ebb and flow of their chests against his as they breathed. His favorite hugs were tight and sustained. Then if he concentrated, and he often did, he could feel their hearts beating. He wished he had insisted on that kind of hug before he'd rushed out this morning. He wished he had insisted on
any
hug.

A shout drew his attention. Kyrill was standing outside the ice cream parlor and had called to Declan.

“This place got arcade games!” he said. “Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga. Let's move them to the community center.”

“Not now!” Declan called back. He continued to pace.

Kyrill peered through the store's window again, then moved on. His and Bad's gun-wielding presence instantly turned Fiddler Falls into an occupied territory, under the constant threat of sudden and arbitrary violence. The cameraman—whose name Tom learned was Pruitt—spent most of the time in the community center. When he emerged he would film the buildings on each side of the street in slow pans, then lock on the movements of one of the gunmen.

The girl had found peroxide, cotton balls, and bandages in the general store. She knelt beside Tom and began to dab gently at the wound on the back of his head. Every touch was like a hammer knocking on his skull. The first dozen cotton balls turned bright red, the next ones less so. She pushed deeper through his hair. He winced and sucked in a sharp breath.

“Sorry,” she said.

He lowered his head to whisper. “You don't have to do this.” Not meaning the first aid. When she didn't respond, he continued, “No one is worth going to jail for. If you help me—”

She jabbed a fingernail into his wound. It felt like a spike. She tilted her head to look into his eyes. Their lashes were almost touching. Her hair smelled vaguely of oranges. Her voice was low, seductive.

“Don't think for a minute you know me. I'm here because I want to be. I'm with Declan because I want to be. If he wants you gone, I'll pack your bag.” She pulled back slightly. She gazed into his right eye, then his left, as though each told a different story. “If he wants you dead, I'll pull the trigger.”

Without another word she finished dressing his wound, gathered the spent and unused supplies, and disappeared into the store.

Finally Declan circled around to him. He said, “Here's the deal. Remember what I said about how your being beaten down in the dirt helped everyone else from getting too confident and getting themselves killed?”

Tom didn't like where this was heading.

“Well, what really works is taking that concept as far as it can go. Know what I mean?”

“No.” But he did.

Declan eyed him, cold, emotionless. “In World War II, the Nazis, man, they were conquering town after town.What do you think they did to keep the townsfolk in line?”

He thought the question was rhetorical, but Declan waited.

Tom said, “The Nazis were willing to do things good people weren't willing to do.”

Declan thought about it. “True, but that's more of a
how
than a
what
, isn't it?
What
things were they willing to do?”

“Atrocities.”

“Rape? Murder?”

Tom watched the other man. As organized as he seemed, as much as he appeared to possess inside knowledge of the town—as his quick confiscation of the satellite phones suggested—as well planned as this operation was, Tom believed Declan was making this part up as he went. He was drawing from his education, from his knowledge of history, not from experience. What did that mean to the town, to Tom? Inexperience led to mistakes, maybe ones that Tom or someone else could exploit. Then again, not every mistake would necessarily favor Fiddler Falls.
Oops. I guess we shouldn't have killed everybody.Kyrill, next time remind me to keep some hostages.

“Did you know,” Declan continued, “that most of the rapes and murders were not random? The Nazis were cunning.They used scouts and informers to find out whose rape, whose murder would best break the citizens' spirit of rebellion. In one town, maybe they needed to take an old lady, sort of the town matriarch. In another place, maybe it was a little girl, someone whose innocence and beauty represented the townspeople's values. Every place was different, but the person selected was always someone whose agony or death cut to the bone, broke their hearts. Sometimes they would shoot the town priest or the old wise man everyone turned to for guidance. But most of the time they chose the strongest, the toughest, the most outspoken. Someone who not only had power and skills, but also knew how to motivate people. He was a leader.”

Tom gave in. “I'm that leader?”

“That's what I've heard.”

“What do you mean, what you've heard?”

“A little bird told me.”

Tom remembered. A few months ago, a man had come in on a floatplane. Stayed a few days at the same B&B Declan and his cronies now occupied. Took pictures, asked questions. He had said he was doing research for a series of articles on quaint small towns for Canada's leading newsmagazine. He'd stopped by the RCMP substation to ask Tom about the town's police services, its medical facilities, and its ability to call in emergency help in the event of a fire, weatherrelated catastrophe, or serious hunting accident. Other townies had said he'd asked questions of them as well. He closed his eyes. How many of them had unwittingly helped Declan plan this invasion of their town? It was painful enough that
he
had contributed. He pictured the spy. Mousy guy, kept pushing his thick-framed glasses back up his nose. His name was Jonathan Bird.

Opening his eyes, he said, “No article in
Maclean's
, then?”

“Sorry. Jon's a good man. A top-notch researcher. Used to be a journalist, but I pay better. His report told me that Black Lake is bigger. More people. More visitors. More cops.Too big for our purposes. And Fond-du-Lac's too small. Just a campground, really, for a bunch of Indians.”

“We call them First Nations up here. Or Dene.”

Declan shrugged. “I have a binder this thick about your village.” He made a four-inch-wide
C
with his hand. “Says the town manager spends more time bellied up to the bar than his desk.You have a conservation officer who sometimes packs a piece, but her expertise is forest fires and hunting licenses. Ben at the hotel says she's out in the backcountry right now. I love small towns.” He rolled his eyes. “Not really. Then there's you.”

Tom's eyes dropped to the pistol in the man's hand.

As if to show he had other plans, Declan turned away and tucked the weapon into his pants at the small of his back. He lifted his tight Under Armour shirt and let it fall back over the gun's grip.

He said, “We—me and the guys—are competitive by nature. Business, extreme sports. We don't mind people trying to best us, because it makes besting them that much sweeter.”

At his sides, his fingers began to waggle, fast, more Beethoven than Mahler. He faced Tom, stepped toward him, turned away again. Pentup energy, anxious to do whatever it was he had planned.

“Bad? The black guy?” Declan said. “One of the best skateboarders in the world.We're developing a game that'll make Tony Hawk's look like Pong.” He turned a squinting eye on Tom's blank expression. “You know Tony Hawk?”

“Sorry.”

Declan sighed. “Okay, Pru . . . Pruitt? Major Unreal player. Up there on Quake too.You
do
know Unreal? Quake?”

Tom shook his head. He was thinking of Laura. Dillon.

“Online shooter games. Hundred thousand players worldwide. Really big deal outside of Podunk towns like this. Get this . . .” Somehow, his face reflected even more self-satisfaction. “The guy's a geek, working for, I don't know, Radio Shack, right? Rushes home every day and gets on the computer. I'm watching the stats. He's good. So I call him, say, ‘You wanna real job? come join my posse. See the world. Be all you can be.'” He laughed, a dry, humorless sound.

Tom didn't know why, but he thought it was a good idea to keep the man talking. Maybe he'd give something away Tom could use. He nodded toward the kid who'd wanted the Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga games. “And him?”

“Kyrill . . . just a young kid, right? Seventeen. The guy wrote a video game that's about to outsell Halo 2, another game you wouldn't know. Exclusive to Xbox, but it still sold 3.5 million copies. By year's end, Kyrill's will have that beat. And he's working on another one. I'm telling you, the kid's brilliant. This next one's gonna blow everybody away. It'll change gaming forever.”

Tom met his eyes. “What do
you
do?”

He smiled. “I run the company that makes Kyrill's games. I sponsor Bad, Pruitt, some others. I'm the money man and the mastermind.”

He said it without irony.

Seeming to take Tom's silence as an incitement, he said, “Funny thing is, the most valuable people aren't always the ones with a single extraordinary talent. It's the person who knows how to bring them together, orchestrate them into achieving something much bigger than their individual skills could do on their own. It's the person who recognizes talent, nurtures it, makes it work for him. Henry Ford didn't know how to design a combustible engine, but he knew how to bring together the people who did. Vince Lombardi never played pro ball, but what a coach, huh? He knew how to motivate players and taught them how to reach their potential and work together to make great teams. My father . . .”

He stopped. His jaw tightened, and he turned away.

Something there.

“Your father?”

“Forget it.”

His father . . . in the context of that speech, with everything else Tom knew about Declan: Seattle, moneyman, video games. His last name . . .

“Brendan Page?”

Declan faced him. “Yes,
that
Page.”

Self-made billionaire, many times over. Into just about everything: software, telecommunications, entertainment, publishing, military equipment. Tom wasn't into following the sordid lives of tycoons or celebrities, but you'd have to live with bears to avoid running into Brendan Page's name. It was usually associated with negative news: allegations of price-fixing and unfair competition; outcries from family organizations because one of his companies had planned a particularly distasteful book or a movie that pushed the limits of decency; it was often his company's weapons that slipped into embargoed countries. True, such examples accounted for a miniscule percentage of the products Brendan Page's companies produced, but Tom thought it interesting that so many accusations of impropriety were directed at the holdings of one man's empire. Said something about that man. He knew nothing of Brendan Page's family, his children. They had kept a low profile, as the children of the outrageously rich often do.