Hunter (38 page)

He stopped shooting, took an extra second to take dead aim.

No time for Brick ...

A silenced shot cut his right arm.

Not enough.

Chaney had sighted solid and steady on the counter. Breath stopped, no wavering, excitement forgotten, becoming cold as death to wait for the shooter to come out and try again ...

He did.

Chaney pulled the trigger ten times, the first hitting the counter, the next nine hitting the assassin. Chaney continued until he felt the man wasn't just dead, but good and dead.

The corpse slid to the floor.

Chaney didn't change clips; he still had four rounds left.

Reflexively he turned to Brick, who was already up on an ox
-like arm, tearing at his vest. His face was flushed, angry and sweating. He pulled violently until he could slide a hand beneath, feeling for a wound. When he found only a bruise, he turned to look at the far wall and then at Chaney.

Chancy nodded.

With a tired nod back, Brick rose. "Let's get the hell out of here," he muttered angrily, moving for the door. "We ain't got much time."

Together they entered the Lincoln and were clearing the lot as they saw distant code equipment approaching down the only road leading to the Institute.

Brick, cold as ice at the wheel, killed the headlights.

Chaney had a moment of panic as the codes drew closer. Brick increased the speed of the twenty-year-old tank up the mountain until there was only a single curve left between them.

A dirt road that Chaney had never noticed presented itself.

Brick took it quickly and slowed just as quickly. He eased down thirty feet, stopped with the parking brake to avoid setting off the brake lights. It was a trick Brick had taught him a long time ago, which Chaney had forgotten.

In twenty seconds the patrol units sped on behind them, burning into the Institute to shut off all exits.

Brick backed slowly onto the road, Chaney holding Gina quietly in the backseat, and in another half hour they were at Mercy General Hospital.

Exiting the car at the Emergency Room entrance with his credential boldly displayed, Chaney helped the attendants load Gina onto a gurney. She grasped his hand as they swirled around her, and Chaney shoved back an overzealous orderly who attempted to raise the handrail.

"Gina, you can hear me, right?" he said loudly.

She nodded.

"You have to contact the United States Marshals Office in Washington!" Chaney shouted. "Tell them you want to talk to Marshal Hank Vincent! You got that, Gina? Hank Vincent! Tell him everything you know and tell him to alert the marshals in Alaska! Tell him I might need them and soon! Tell him to stay alert on the beacon! Just tell him that! Stay alert on the beacon! The beacon!"

Gina took a second, gripped his hand harder.

"I'll tell him," she whispered. "Be careful."

Standing back, Chaney was fierce as they gathered around her. Surprised medical personnel stared as if they expected him to escort. Chaney threw out an arm, pointing. "That is a federal witness! Notify Washington PD and the marshal division! Tell them Marshal Chaney delivered her!"

Stunned looks as they backed away from his fierceness.

With that, Chaney was back in the car and Brick was speeding down the ramp to hit the road with a hard right and then another four turns as they headed back for the house.

Stronger with each moment, he leaped from the ledge and hit the ground running, moving swiftly through the night with a surety of direction that he could not explain. Nor did he try. To know—by some dark and un-nameable instinct beyond anything he could explain—was enough as he devoured long miles on seemingly endless endurance.

He had killed again, snapping the neck of a bull elk before he feasted heavily on the deep red meat. Then he had continued, feeling his almost inexhaustible reservoirs of energy pooling, gathering, and swirling as he drew upon them. Even as his lungs burned with each breath, he felt stronger, a power building layer by layer, fed by the nutrients he had consumed.

Occasionally he would chance in the utter dark upon a plant that reached out to him on the wind, and he would crouch, ripping the root from the soil to devour it, soil and all. And in this way he continued to enhance his fantastic abilities—healing, speed, strength, his very perception of reality His eyes dilated until he could see almost as in the day, and still his metamorphosis continued until he was again a humanoid shape moving with the speed of a wolf, fangs hot against a cold night, black eyes blazing and clawed hands tearing bark from trees as he continued to run, always running.

He must find the man that had injured him; that was all he knew. He would find the man and the wolf, no matter where they had fled, and he would eat their hearts, their brains, just as he had done to those who had come before him. Then he would be reunited with his brothers, for they were waiting. And together, with the night and the forest and their strength, they would consume puny man.

Etched horrifically against a haggard moon, taloned hands outstretched to grasp a rising night wind, he howled in glory as he descended through darkness.

***

Bobbi Jo's face was soft against his chest, and Hunter found himself gently stroking her blond hair, a soft mass in his fingers that he lazily caressed, over and over. She had said nothing, but he knew she was thinking—and probably sadly.

Their moment had been passionate, but slow, and when it had ended she had settled over him, tired and exhausted. He, too, had been exhausted and had lain on his back, eyes closed as he cradled her in an arm. After a while she had spoken and he listened patiently as she talked of her life, her training, her fear, and how she had never known terror as she had known it in these past days.

For a long time he had said nothing, but listened and continued to touch her. Then she had asked, "You're afraid of it, too, aren't you?" Pause. "You're scared
...like me."

He smiled as he touched her face, a caress.

"Yes," he said.

"But you're still going out there."

Silence.

"Yes."

She said nothing and they rested in a comfortable silence until she spoke again, this time touching the scars on his chest—scars gained in hard adventures of survival that he could scarcely recall. She traced a long, ragged scar that joined his heavy arm to his massive chest.

"You don't care about pain, do you?" she asked.

He laughed lightly, hugged her neck. His voice was gentle. "Sure I do. I'm just like you. I hurt the same. I feel the same. If you cut me, I bleed."

"But you don't care. You've survived too much." She paused. "Your luck, your skill, even your strength won't be enough one day, Nathaniel."

Hunter was deeply touched. She had called him Nathaniel.

"You're not un
-killable," she said, with a distinct sadness. "And that's what will kill you." A pause. "It's out there ... waiting for you. And you know it ... And if you go out there and you'll fight it, you will be fighting a beast no human being was ever meant to fight."

Hunter was silent; her words were a murmur.

"Why do you have to do it?"

"We've talked about it, darlin'." He kissed her face. "And, now, you need to get some sleep
... sleep."

"I can't
sleep."

He smiled gently. "Sleep, darlin'. You've earned it."

Her eyes closed.

Silence joined them.

"It's afraid of you, too," she added softly. "That's why it has to kill you. Because it's afraid of you."

Hunter slowly caressed her cheek. "Sleep
..."

She pressed herself more firmly, snugly, into his chest and arm and her eyes closed. Her breathing deepened and her face relaxed as she began to surrender.

"Kill it, Hunter," she whispered faintly, "before it kills us all."

***

It was a long while before Bobbi Jo rolled softly over, curling away from him with the covers tightly around her neck. He rose from bed, staring back to ensure that she was in the grateful sleep of exhaustion. Something in his heart made him content and peaceful that she could sleep so blissfully in his bed. Then he dressed slowly, in silence.

He glanced back at her as he neared the door, mentally assuring himself that he had brought everything required for this dangerous, but necessary, task. At the last minute, as he touched the door, Ghost rose from the floor. Hunter motioned sternly for silence, and pointed at Bobbi Jo. Staring a moment, the wolf padded over and lay obediently beside her side of the bed, acutely alert. Hunter knew the wolf would guard Bobbi Jo until his return. The best bodyguard in the world.

In utter silence he opened and closed the door, ensuring that it had not disturbed her, and stood quietly in the corridor, listening. But nothing was moving close; he could determine that much beyond what he could even see or hear.

He knew the complex would be alive with guards, all of whom he'd have to stealthily evade. And then he'd have to take the most daring risk of all—searching the room of the person he trusted least.

Hunter stared into the hallway, remembering every turn and hallway and corner and alcove. He moved with a plan, but a plan he could change at any moment. Animal cunning awakened, and he let it gain control.

Silence
...

With a wolf's strides, he loped down the corridor.

***

"They
must
pay," Brick growled as he drove the Lincoln through the predawn light. Already, faintly above the river, the sky was a light yellow, the sun rising into a gathering cool breeze that smelled faintly like rain.

They had made an anonymous call to local police to ensure that they responded to the Institute. It wouldn't take much for them, looking inside, to see the devastation and decide on a forced entry.

It would be quite a scene, for certain, with confused uniform officers and then a full-blown building search with canine units and SWAT. All the bodies would be located and identified as well as possible, and then everyone would be looking for Chaney because his prints were all over the spent cartridge cases. It wouldn't take long for the FBI to close that noose. But by then Chaney would be well on his way to bringing this entire thing to an ending. So whatever interference was thrown up from inside the NSA or even from the Hill would be too damn little and too damn late.

Chaney was in a bad mood, and he let it ferment inside him, building in rage. He would need it when he landed in Alaska at the last research station. He would put the good Dr. Hamilton on ice until he cracked and told him what he wanted to know.

Might be complicated, legally, to get away with, but Chaney knew he was already so far out in the badlands that he couldn't really endanger himself too much more. He just hoped Skull would cover him long enough for the stunt, but there was no guarantee on that, either. He was in the black hills now, but that was all right with him.

"Brick, I'm going to Alaska."

"I'm going with ya."

Shaking his head, Chaney glanced out the side window, searching by reflex for a tag. "Brick, this ain't your fight. We already got dead bodies stretched halfway around the world. You did your time, man. You don't need to go out on the line again."

Brick turned solid. "Let me tell you something, boy. I was a marshal when you was still in junior high school. And you're all by your lonesome, just in case you ain't noticed. You think I'd let you go up against these goombahs without another gun?" He barked a laugh, utterly without humor. "The day I'd let you do that is the day I'd strap a grenade to my head and pull the pin." He shook his head again. "No, sir. We're in it now.  Both of us.  Up to our necks. You think I spent all those years keeping your butt alive to see you get it wasted by some godless heathens that tried to kill a little girl like that? Yes, sir. We're gonna take it to 'em."

Chaney stared, shaking his head. "Like how, exactly?"

"Well, first, we ain't taking no commercial flights. I got a buddy of mine that can get us on a military flight—no names, we'll just tell 'em we're gofers on another hop—and then we can scramble a chopper around Anchorage. You figured on a chopper, right?"

Smiling, Chaney said, "Yeah, I did."

"Yeah, I know you did," the big man replied. "I heard what you told Gina. Stay on the beacon. Yeah, I ain't forgot." He hung a hard right. "You still know how to dog one of them things?"

"Been awhile," Chaney continued to check for anyone following, but Brick was doing a good job. "They're not using Hueys anymore. Now it's Blackhawks." He thought about it. "I think I can handle it. A chopper is a chopper."

"Good enough, then. So we get back to the house, load up what we can carry, get our gear stowed, and we're airborne by midday. It's a ten-hour flight, so we land, regroup, arm the chopper and we pay this Dr. Frankenstein a visit. I've got my old creds, and you've got the documentation for running an investigation on a federal reservation. We'll get this done before somebody tries to shut us down." He hesitated. "I tell you one thing, though; we'll have to work fast. We won't have more than a day. Maybe two if we're lucky."