Scott Free (11 page)

Twenty seconds later, they were in their same spots as this morning. Brandon barely waited for Whitestone's butt to hit the chair. “A
tour,
Chief? My son is out there somewhere, and the best use of your time is touring a photo op?”

Whitestone was on the feather edge of losing his temper. “Tell you what, Mr. O'Toole, why don't I find a place out back where you can rant, and then when you're done, you can come back here and we'll talk all this through.”

Anger boiled in Brandon's gut. In about ten seconds, this was going to get ugly.

Whitestone leaned forward, his arms folded on the desk. “There's something you need to understand, Brandon. From the very beginning, I've promised you blunt honesty, and here's a big dose of it. Are you ready?”

Brandon glared for a moment, then nodded.

“Finding those two boys is our very top priority, but not our
only
priority. On a different day, with different weather, the air would be black with civilian and military aircraft scouring that mountain. Once they found some indication of where they were, there'd be nobody in this building but the roaches as we all headed out to save them. But this is
this
day, not a different one, and on
this
day, it's been snowing like a son of a bitch. Runways have to be plowed, and flight crews have to make it in from home. It's just not a simple task. We've got thousands of citizens in this town, tens of thousands of tourists and the leader of the free world who loves to keep a high profile.”

“So, I'm supposed to just wait?”

Someone rapped lightly on the door before opening it. It was Jesse Tingle, and Whitestone held him off with a raised forefinger. “No, you're supposed to worry like hell. You're a father, it's your job. It just happens that life would be a lot easier for all of us if you would take a shot at trusting me. Yes, Jesse?”

“I'm sorry to disturb you, but there's a phone call for Mr. O'Toole. A Nadine Yodell?”

Brandon inhaled, as if to make a speech, but found himself short of words. To Jesse, he said, “Okay. Yeah, I'll take it.”

Whitestone rose with Brandon, but stayed behind his desk as the deputy led his guest to a tiny cubicle that Brandon had never even noticed.

“She's on line four,” Tingle said. “The one that's blinking.”

Nadine was Brandon's administrative assistant back at Federal Research. She was his gatekeeper, his watchdog and one of his closest confidants. As Brandon settled into the seat and punched the extension, Jesse stayed around just long enough to make sure that he got it right.

The voice on the other end was the first thing that felt normal all day. “Hi, Mr. O'Toole, it's me. Have they found him yet?”

Hearing the question asked so directly, by such a familiar voice, brought a fresh rush of emotion. He quickly cleared his throat. “Uh, no, not yet. They're about to go out there looking for him, though. I've got a really good feeling about it.”

“I'm so sorry. We all are. Everybody I've talked to today wants me to make sure I tell you that you're in their prayers.”

Brandon nodded and turned away from the others in the squad room. “That's sweet of all of you. Please thank them all for me.”

“It's all over the news here today, too. At Scott's high school—Robinson, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, at Robinson, they apparently had a big assembly, where every student tied a yellow ribbon for him. I saw a picture of it on television. There's four thousand students there, and every surface has a yellow ribbon somewhere. It made me cry just to look at it.”

Brandon clamped his jaw and shut his eyes tightly. He saw the picture in his head: thousands of students, most of them weeping with the depth of emotion that only adolescents could muster, ceremoniously tying their ribbons, and holding each other while they cried for his son.

“Anyway, it was a beautiful thing to see,” Nadine continued. She seemed a little unnerved by his silence.

“I'm sure it was,” Brandon whispered. He cleared his throat again, and then one more time before he felt in control. “Listen, how's the place running without me?”

“You shouldn't worry about us,” she said. “Worry about you.”

Mother Nadine.
“Easier said than done. I feel like everybody in the world has something to do but me. I'm going nuts here. Humor me and make me feel important again.”

Nadine laughed too hard. Humor in the face of disaster is tough to pull off. In five minutes, she ran down the hit list of important issues. He listened, made a few comments, and then they were done.

He hung up just in time to see the chief's door open. Whitestone beckoned with a finger.

Brandon tried to read Whitestone's expression, only to decide that the chief would have made one hell of a poker player.

Chief Whitestone stepped aside to usher Brandon into the inner sanctum. “Help yourself to a seat,” he said.

“What's up?”

Whitestone gestured again to the wooden chairs, while he walked behind his desk to take a seat in his own. “Please.”

Brandon sat.

“Take a look here,” the chief said, spilling a topographical map across his desk. “We've had a plane in the air for about three hours today, scouring the length of this route between SkyTop and Salt Lake City.” He traced an invisible line on the map with his forefinger. “Now, I'll grant you that with the time available, we were only able to do the most basic, and frankly unscientific kind of search, but I'm sorry to say that it turned up nothing.”

Brandon nodded, trying his best to show no emotion. “You say you searched the line. What about the area around the line, to either side?”

Whitestone nodded, appreciating the question. “Here's how we did things: The pilots traveled this line countless times today, starting in a tight oval, and then expanding it on each pass. They were looking for any signs of a crash—wreckage, footprints, fires, signals, anything.”

“Can they actually see anything from up there?”

Whitestone shrugged. “Some places yes, many places no. That's the problem we're facing here.”

“So you're telling me they saw nothing at all.”

Whitestone paused, looking as if he wanted to find a better way to phrase it. “Yes, I suppose that's what I'm telling you. If you take this straight line on the map, the search today covered twenty-five miles to either side of it.”

A fist in Brandon's chest was using his heart as a punching bag. “But you're not finished, though, right? The search will continue through the night?”

Whitestone looked away. “No, it won't. There's more weather coming. A squall line's moving in from the west that'll be getting here right around dark, and will play havoc for the better part of the night. The good news is, tomorrow should be pretty clear, and we've received commitments from the Air Force for some help.”

“Meanwhile, those kids spend a second night in the mountains.”

Whitestone acknowledged the point with an imperceptible nod.

Brandon continued, “And tomorrow, when the search resumes—
if
the search resumes, because God knows we can't get people to drive through the snow—all the signs you're looking for will be just that much more buried. Did you know that Cody Jamieson's friends are already planning his memorial service?” Brandon asked.

“I heard it was a prayer service.”

“Same thing. It means that the participants have lost faith in everything but divine intervention. They're writing the kids off, Chief. And so are you.”

Whitestone made no response.

“It's too early to give up,” Brandon pressed. “They've still got time. I know my way around cold weather survival, and I'm telling you, they've still got time.”

Whitestone conceded the point. “Yes, they do. There are a lot of variables, of course. It got down to fifteen below last night, and we're expecting more of the same tonight.”

“But the snow and its cloud cover will moderate the temperature,” Brandon countered.

The chief nodded again. “It's still damned cold. We had a high of twenty-three down here today. Up on the mountain, who knows? But yes, assuming they dressed for the weather, and given their training, I suppose there's still time.”

“As long as a week, I'd say,” Brandon pressed.

For the first time, Whitestone showed real skepticism. “Not hardly. I'm sorry, but I just don't think that's possible.”

“How long, then?”

Whitestone sighed. “Assuming they've made it this long, that means they've already sheltered up somewhere, so I guess it's not out of the question that they can make it through tonight as well. But we'd better find them tomorrow.”

“Do you believe they're still alive?”

The chief squirmed in his chair. “Come on, Mr. O'Toole, I don't have a crystal ball. I have no way of knowing—”

“Please, Chief. It's important to me to know. Do you believe in your heart that my son is still alive?”

For a long moment, the two men just stared at each other, their gazes locked. Twice, Whitestone opened his mouth to say something, and both times he aborted the effort without making a sound. Finally, he closed his eyes. “No, sir, I don't.”

S
OMEWHERE AMONG THE THOUSANDS
of tiny parts scattered in the snow, you'd think there'd be a decent-size container, but the best Scott had been able to come up with was a thermos cup. Hey, any port in a storm, right?

Now he just needed to find the gas cap. Okay, so that wasn't exactly difficult. The stenciled label, Fuel, helped a lot, as did the arrow pointing to a rectangular panel that looked remarkably like the one on his dad's car, only this one was on the wing root on the left-hand side. With the wreckage twisted the way it was, the panel faced down, such that once Scott loosened the cap, gravity should take care of the rest, posing the far greater worry that maybe he wouldn't be able to stop the flow once he'd started it. The last thing he needed was a flood of gasoline in his front yard.

So, he decided to take it slow. Working bare-handed to keep spilled fuel from soaking his gloves, he straddled the wing as if it were a horse, poised the cup under the spout and reached for the fuel cap. The fuel started to flow after a half-turn, splashing out from behind the cap like water from a shower head. The combined effect of cold and wet on his skin was like folding his hand into a nail sandwich.

It didn't smell like gasoline, though. More like kerosene, or maybe diesel fuel. When the cup was full, he retightened the cap and carefully slid to the ground. He spilled half of the fuel in the process, but truly didn't care as he moved quickly to shove his hands back into his gloves.

He decided on a spot about twenty yards from the shelter as the location for the signal fire. He knew he should probably burn it all night long, but with such a small container, it would burn out too quickly, and no way was he going to spend the entire night shuttling himself in and out of the cold to refill it. Besides, the plastic thermos cup would probably melt as it burned anyway. Plus, it had started to snow again, so the planes would be grounded. With the cup positioned where he wanted it, he shoved the fusees butt-first into the snow next to it. When he heard engines again, he'd be good to go.

And none too soon. The transition from day to dusk seemed to pass in mere moments, pulling the temperature down another ten degrees. Or, maybe that coldness he felt along his spine was merely the realization that another endless night lay ahead.

The noise from the woods startled him.

“Hello?”

It stopped at the sound of his voice, a rustling sound off to his right. Probably just the wind.
Bullshit. The wind's been blowing all day.

He wanted to think that it was the approach of rescuers, but knew better. Rescuers have no desire to be stealthy. “Hello?” His tongue felt as if he'd licked a chalkboard.

There it was again, only this time from his left, directly opposite where it was before.

“Who's there?” This time he yelled, his voice cracking in the wind.

The third sound came from behind him, and he whirled to face unyielding forest. Scott's heart hammered a hard-rock cadence in his throat as he listened intently, wishing he hadn't left the flashlights in the shelter. As he tried to see through the cloud of blowing snow, the woods growled at him, a basso tone so deep that he more felt it than heard it.

Oh, shit! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…

More growls from his left and his right.

“Only two species of animals hunt in packs,”
he remembered Sven telling them.
“You've got your big cats, and you've got—”

The wolves showed themselves one at a time, cautiously approaching from three sides, filthy and gray. Scott stopped breathing as he watched them lower their heads and inch forward one tentative step at a time. Thirty, maybe forty feet separated him from the closest animal; a distance they could close in three seconds.

“Never run,”
he remembered. But that's precisely what his body was screaming at him to do—run as fast and as hard as his legs would carry him. They could tear him apart standing there or tear him apart running away. Did it really make that much difference?

The animals moved with choreographed grace, each step in unison, their faces obscured by the clouds of vapor that rose from their panting jaws. He found himself somehow entranced by their eyes. What had Sven told them? Had he ever said anything about wolves? Where the hell was his photographic memory when he needed it, goddammit? He needed to…

What? What the
hell
was he supposed to do?

He had to scare them off. That was his only chance. He was bigger than them, after all, and smarter. Plus, they were probably scared, too. What were the chances that they had ever seen a human being before? That had to give him some kind of advantage, didn't it?

He waved his arms in a giant shooing motion. “Ha! Get out of here! Go on, git!”

The wolves jumped at the sudden motion, and looked for a moment as if they might run. Scott could almost read the curiosity in the faces of the closest two as they looked to the center wolf for a cue. That'd be the alpha dog, he reckoned, the wolf in charge, and he didn't seem startled at all.

Scott shouted again, but this time to less effect. If anything, it seemed to piss them off. Alpha lowered his head and peeled his lip back to reveal a set of teeth that better belonged on a shark. The growl deepened in pitch. He advanced. The others followed, closing in from all sides but one.

This was it. No negotiating, no bluffing, these beasts were going to attack, and Scott was flat out of options. The knife. Could he possibly be fast enough with the blade? Even if he killed one of them, the others would tear him to pieces in seconds.

Just let it be fast. Don't let it hurt too much.

The flare gun! Jesus, he still had it in his pocket! At this range, maybe it would fire with enough velocity to hurt the bastards. Maybe even kill. And he'd still have the knife left to take on a second one. As for the third, well…

“Oh, man, I'm so screwed…”

Scott's eyes locked with Alpha's as he slowly pulled the glove off his right hand and stuffed it down the front of his coat before searching his pocket for the flare gun. He fought the urge to draw down the way they did in the old cowboy flicks. Right now, his killers seemed hesitant, as if they were waiting for him to seal his own fate with the first move. The flare gun felt like a toy in his hand, all plastic, but for the metal hammer and trigger. As the stubby barrel cleared his pocket, he thumbed back the hammer.

Only Alpha moved now; the others paused and watched, as if waiting their turn to play with their new chew toy. Scott wondered if they somehow knew how terrified he was.

“Please stay away,” Scott begged. He realized for the first time that he was crying. He didn't want to die. Not here, not this way. “Please just leave me alone. We don't have to do this.”

Alpha cocked his head as Scott spoke, as if he could understand every word. What he heard seemed to please him. The wolf moved closer still.

And then he charged. The growl transformed to a horrid, guttural roar as he sprinted across the snow, closing with more speed than Scott ever could have imagined. The boy never had time to aim a shot, or even pull the trigger, but somehow, the gun bucked in his hand, and the air filled with the stench of burning magnesium.

The projectile caught Alpha squarely in the face, dropping the beast into the snow, amid a spray of blood, as the flare itself ricocheted off into the trees, there to sputter and dance as it burned itself out.

Startled, the other wolves turned and ran for the woods, stopping abruptly just at the edge of Scott's line of sight. As if on cue, they both turned to face him again. The growling grew more fierce, but their postures looked somehow less frightening.

“I said get out of here!” Scott yelled. “Leave me alone!”

The wolves jumped again, and even took a couple of steps back, but unless Scott could put on another show of strength, he knew they'd charge.

If only he had another flare. He pointed the empty gun as if it were loaded—as if they could tell the difference—but how long could it take before they tested his bluff? Christ, one lousy flare. Who ever heard…

Fusees.
There they were, both of them, sitting at his feet in the snow. They could work. Still keeping the gun trained on the animals, shifting his aim from one to the other, he stooped to his haunches and slipped his hand around one of the road flares.

God, the unbearable slowness of it all. His mind screamed at him to hurry as his heart bruised itself against his breastbone.

Without their leader, the other two wolves seemed confused, but Scott knew the moment would pass. There was no masking this kind of terror, and clearly they sniffed it in the air. They started to close again.

As he went to work on the fusee, he let the empty gun fall to the snow.

The teenager's hand refused to cooperate in the cold. It felt swollen and useless on the end of his arm, and as he shifted his eyes in the rapidly dimming light to see what he was doing, he noticed that his skin was nearly as red as the flare's scarlet wrapper. The translucent cap over the striking end of the fusee came off easily in the cold, but not so the smaller, flatter cap that covered the striker. For that, Scott had to use his teeth, and the effort made his gums bleed.

Thirty feet now, and closing. One way or another, in a few seconds, this would be all over. Holding the striker in his bare fist, he pressed it against the striking end of the flare and scraped the two together, just like striking a big match. He got a spark, but no ignition.

The wolves recognized the movement as a threat and they doubled their pace. Twenty feet separated them, no more.

Scott struck again, and this time, the beasts made their move. They charged…

…And the flare flashed to life, a hissing jet of red flame that nearly disappeared in its thick cloud of smoke.

Scott held the fusee like a sword, at arm's length in his bare hand. “Ha!” he yelled. “Get outta here!” He whipped it back and forth. “Get outta here or I'll stick it in your damn eye!”

The flash of noise and light startled the beasts into aborting their charge, but this time they didn't retreat. Instead, they formed a tighter circle around him, neither more than fifteen feet away. They bared their teeth and slobbered in the snow as they feinted lunges and snapped at the air.

Scott moved like a retreating fencer, pointing his fusee first at one animal and then the other as he worked his way back toward the shelter. Twenty yards to go. Fifteen.

“Get out of here! Leave me alone, goddammit! Just leave me alone!”

But they kept up with him, step for step, never closing the distance, but never allowing it to open and inch. They were patient, these animals, and they knew their jobs. Sooner or later, Scott would make a mistake—maybe he'd trip, or he'd drop his flare—and when he did, they'd be on him in an instant.

Ten yards to the shelter, and then what? Then he'd barricade himself inside and wait for the beasts to test its strength. Sven had never mentioned anything about wolf-proofing.

Five yards to go. Scott shifted the flare from his bare hand to his glove, while he fished through his pants pocket for the survival knife. He unsnapped the safety strap with his teeth and let the scabbard drop to the snow.

Scott's entire world had transformed to a shimmering red sphere, with him in the middle, and death just barely visible as shadows at the periphery. With the shelter only inches away, he might just have a chance, but he'd be most vulnerable when he dropped to his knees to climb in, and from there it would be a test of strength and will. Would the aluminum door hold? Would they claw and chew right through the walls?

Or worst of all, would they pounce when he was still only halfway in and tear his throat out?

The animals sensed that something was about to change, and they increased the rhythm and ferocity of their feints as Scott jabbed at them with the burning fusee. They weren't buying it anymore, barely flinching. They'd assessed him, and they knew a bluff when they saw it.

Scott dropped to his knees in front of the door tunnel, and the wolf on the right made his move. This lunge was for real, all teeth and momentum and Scott met him with the flare. He felt the beast's matted fur, and then he smelled it burning at he jammed the flare into its face. Maybe its eye, maybe its mouth, he couldn't tell for sure, but the growl instantly became a yelp—a shriek, really—as it retreated into the night.

He had the seconds he needed to scramble backward, feet-first, into the shelter and pull the heavy aluminum back over the opening. Using the armrest as a handle, he pulled for all he was worth to set it in place, but the walls and floor had turned to slick ice, making it difficult to get leverage for his feet. Acrid smoke from the flare gouged at his eyes and his throat as he jammed his boot into a tiny crevice for leverage. The door was as locked as it was going to get. He stubbed out the fusee by jamming it like an enormous cigarette into the floor.

Darkness.

Silence.

Above the tympani beat of his racing heart, Scott could hear only the sound of his breath as it heaved in and out in huge gulps, wheezing in his throat, and creating great white clouds of condensation that somehow were visible even in the dark. Outside, for the longest time, he heard nothing at all, not even the whining yelp of the animal whose face he'd burned.