New Title 1 (19 page)

Oddy stared out the window. Although daytime, the landscape was draped in permanent twilight. He tapped the pilot’s shoulder. “Will it be like this the whole time?”

“This time of year, yeah,” the pilot said. “Be a little lighter in the morning and a little darker come nightfall, but otherwise it’s this endless dusk.”

The helicopter’s nose dipped as it made its descent. Cold air hissed through seams in the airframe. The pilot set them down on a flat-hatted hilltop. The bay-hatch lowered.

“Everyone out.” The pilot’s visor-shielded eyes swept the barren terrain as if expecting a sudden attack.

From who? Or what?

They shouldered their packs and weapons and moved down the gangway. Oddy paused at the lip. “This is the rendezvous point?” he asked the pilot.

“Back in three days.”

“See you then.”

“If you say so,” the pilot said grimly.

The gangway rose and the Labrador lifted off, quickly disappearing from sight.

The men looked around. They stood on a rocky, rubble-strewn plate which slid out of the thin earth directly ahead like a dark slate tongue. There was a vastness to the landscape, an unpeopled rawness, just the trees and the sky and the land reaching out towards nowhere. Down the rise and all around, fir trees grew where they could, jutting up between and around huge boulders left by receding glaciers and crumbling rock piles. The color of the rocks varied: some were black as obsidian, others so white as to blend in with the snow, others carpeted in sickly yellow moss the hue of calluses, others dappled with light brown splotches resembling rust.

A steady wind blew coldly in their faces, carrying with it the scent of…nothing. The air was completely sterile, scentless. Staring down the hill, Crosshairs thought he saw shapes moving beyond the gloom cast by the trees—the oldest, tallest firs he’d ever seen. The whole effect of this high, empty place was emptiness, though an emptiness that somehow resonated with something feathery and alive.

The cold was shocking. A dry, arid cold; the men were forced to breathe through their mouths when the mucous in their noses froze, pinching their airways shut. Answer had only felt this cold once before, when he’d interrogated a Castiglio snitch in a sub-zero meat locker. It was a mind-deadening coldness that crawled around the base of their skulls and seeped up their brainstems, wrapping their thoughts in layers of numbness.

“No wonder the people up here live in igloos,” Zippo said. “Goddamn brain freeze must keep them from coming up with a better idea.”

“We’ve got to find low ground,” Oddy said, “set up camp.”

They found a path zigzagging down the hillside and followed it, soles skittering across patches of bare ice. Crosshairs was surprised at the lack of forest sounds. The jungles of ’Nam were full of them, sly and furtive and skulking. But it now felt as if they were moving through a noiseless vacuum sucked clean of life. No birds chirping. No forest animals scuttling beneath the underbrush. Nothing.

As they moved deeper into the forest, Tripwire experienced the sensation of the trees closing in behind him, blocking the way out. He could almost hear the firs stealthily disentangling themselves from the ground, dragging their ages-old root systems and empty birds’ nests, settling down over the path to bar any escape. Tripwire was seized by the momentary fear he’d developed an early case of north-woods
delirium tremens
, and that he’d soon be seeing two-headed snakes darting between the rocks, flying eels arcing through the darkened sky, perhaps a massive asthmatic toad croaking at the foot of his sleeping bag.
Fuck
. He’d rather die than end up like those shell-shocked vets who dove under the table every time someone banged the kitchen pots. He shook his head violently, slapped his face a few times, and walked on.

Answer located a circle of scrubland ringed by tall trees. “It’ll do,” Oddy said.

Zippo and Crosshairs were elected wood-gatherers. Searching beneath the canopy of firs, Crosshairs stumbled across the gutted carcass of a fawn. Its belly was slashed open and its guts torn out. Viscera lay in haphazard piles around the body like moons surrounding a dead planet. Its large black eyes and unhinged mouth were set in a rictus of animal terror, pink tongue lolling between teeth the color of old bone.

“Don’t worry, little boy.” Zippo patted Crosshairs on the shoulder. “It’s just sleeping.”

“What the hell did this?”

“Some mean motherfucker for sure—bear?”

“Yeah, but nothing’s been eaten. And aren’t bears hibernating this time of year?”

“Listen to Mister-
fucking-
Wizard,” Zippo said. “So maybe it wasn’t a bear.”

“Not one bite taken. Like whatever did it…did it purely for
mean
.”

“Circle of life.” Zippo was unfazed. “Use that one good eye to scope some kindling.”

“Take a break,” Crosshairs told him. “You don’t have to be a bastard every day of your life, you know.”

By the time they returned, the other three had set up camp. The tents Grosevoir had provided were, although expensive, utterly useless against the bitter cold. Instead, Answer and Oddy had constructed a makeshift lean-to, and Tripwire was busy tacking tent shells to the roof and sides. Thanks to a liberal dousing of lighter fluid, they soon had a blazing fire. They sat in a tight circle around the flames, unzipping their parkas to let the warmth in. All of them were silently astounded at their cohesion: in the half-hour since the heli dropped them, they had located a sheltered area with good sight lines, bivouacked, and got a fire going. It had been done in the same methodically urgent manner their Special Ops training had imparted years ago, four fingers and a thumb working in perfect sync.

“So,” Tripwire said, jimmying a tin of peaches open with his knife, “this is the Canadian wilderness I’ve heard so much about.”

“Who the hell would live in this?” Zippo wanted to know.

“You got nomads living in the Sahara,” Crosshairs said. “This is the other extreme.”

“I think it’s beautiful,” Answer said.

And, in the way unsullied nature often can be, it
was
beautiful. The landscape was an exercise in minimalism: windswept scrubland extended in every direction, the majority of it stony, snow-covered ground in which sickly shrubs struggled for survival. Jack pines and black spruces took root in the inhospitable soil, many of them so wind-twisted they did not look so much like trees as they did a madman’s conception of the same. The beauty was harsh but unspoiled: no candy bar wrappers or open sewer grates issuing noxious fumes, no gutter rats scurrying beneath the trees or pigeons roosting on shit-spattered boughs.

Oddy speared a peach half from the passing tin and said, “Beautiful, maybe. But we got a job to do.” He unfolded an acetate-covered map. “This is the penitentiary,” he pointed to a red dot, “and this is our location,” pointing to a location twenty miles south. “Overton and company have been on the lam for two weeks, so our search radius is pretty damn broad.”

“Who’s to say they’re even up here anymore?” Crosshairs asked. “They could’ve hiked to a side road, flagged down a truck, and be a thousand miles south by now—”

“I don’t think so,” Answer said. “There would’ve been an APB put on some extremely dangerous escapees, probably radio broadcasts warning motorists to report any hitchers in the pen’s vicinity—”

“And don’t forget that Overton’s crew only stole warm clothes and weapons,” Tripwire added. “No food. They must be half-starved by now, living on nuts and berries and melted snow.”

“Easy meat,” Zippo said around a mouthful of peach.

“Maybe,” Oddy said. “But these guys are killers, and killers are like animals: both are dangerous when cornered.”

A feral howl arose somewhere in the forest primeval. There was something intensely unsettling about the sound: like a human being screaming through the vocal cords of a wolf.

“Jesus,” Crosshairs said. “Well, at least there’s
something
living out here.”

“Don’t be afraid, little guy,” Zippo said. “I brought clean diapers in case you shit the ones you’re wearing.”

“Screw a shoe, Zip.”

“Hey, maybe I’ll save my loot and screw a boot.”

Oddy folded the map and shoved it in his pocket. “I say we make a circuit around Great Bear Lake,” he said. “It’s the only fresh water source for miles, so they’re probably hunkered nearby.”

“How long is that going to take?” Answer asked.

“Twenty years back, we hoof doubletime, circuit it in two days. But now, in these conditions? Say three, three-and-a-half.”

“Goddamn, Trip,” Zippo said, shooting the doughy porn director a dirty look. “Would it have killed you to hit the gym once in a goddamn while—some jazzercize, for fuck’s sake?”

“You set the pace, trashmouth,” Tripwire said. “I’ll match it.”

“On what—a Ski Doo?”

“You’re about as funny as a kick in the teeth.”

Oddy checked his watch: 4:00 p.m. Twenty-three hours had passed since their meeting with Grosevoir and, apart from a few fitful hours on the Learjet, none of them had slept.

“I’m going to get some shut-eye,” he said. “Head out at first light.”

“Who’s taking first watch?” Crosshairs said.

Zippo said, “Aren’t any Gooks waiting in ambush out there.”

“I know,” Crosshairs said defensively. “But there could be…other things.”

“I’ll take it,” Answer said.

Oddy nodded. “Tell when you want to switch off.”

The men shucked their boots and zipped into their bags. Despite the ground’s total lack of lumbar support they were soon deep in exhausted slumber. Their dreams, mercifully unremembered, were the dreams of combat vets: burning villages and burning farmland and burning children, brutally disfigured but oh-so-familiar faces screaming up through the haze of memory.

They were as yet unaware that there never was, and never would be, a Saugeen Valley Penitentiary. They were unaware that Marcus Overton did not exist; his name was selected from a phone book, his crimes fabricated. They were unaware of what waited for them in the surrounding wilderness, waiting with sharp claws and sharp teeth and ageless cunning. They were unaware of why a creature masquerading as a man had drawn them there, alone, together.

But they would. Soon.

««—»»

At midnight, the man came.

Stumbling blindly through the trees he came, parka torn and bloodstained. Mouth open in a silent scream he came, hands clutching a pair of silenced Berettas, hammers cocked, clips empty. Terror-stricken he came, casting quick glances over his shoulder as if the Furies themselves were in pursuit. Half-dead he came, arms and chest scored with long bloody scratches, chunks of flesh missing from his shoulders and calves.

Answer watched him blunder into the clearing. The man was oblivious to the guttering fire and the sleeping men. His eyes were focused on a distant hilltop—the same hilltop upon which the helicopter had dropped Answer hours before—with an intensity suggestive of emancipation.

The man ran recklessly, as though blind. Not knowing whether he was one of the men they were hunting, Answer tackled him around the ankles. The man fell on his face and the pistols skittered out of reach. Answer shimmied up his body like it was a pole, pinning the man’s arms to his sides. The man offered little resistance. He made feeble whimpering noises, like a frightened animal.

The commotion roused the others, who zipped out of their sleeping bags and joined Answer.

“Lookee, lookee,” Zippo said, ever the optimist. “Could this be one of the dogfuckers, served up on a silver platter?” He envisioned a brisk wrap-up, Overton and Co. dead, their heads in a backpack, and him free for a week of R&R. Maybe he’d take a nature hike, cataloguing the native flora and fauna. Or maybe he’d use the M2A1-7 to flash-fry a moose. The possibilities were endless.