Scott Free (26 page)

The goddamned tunnel.

But he'd have noticed if that door had been opened. Certainly, the alarm—

To Isaac's ear the shriek of the alarm seemed even louder than the gunshots.

He pivoted on his heel and made the hallway in two quick strides, slapping the wall switch as he passed and bringing daylight to the cabin in the middle of the night. He stepped onto the mezzanine balcony just in time to see his prey slipping into the secret room. He reacted instinctively, snapping the pistol up to firing position and taking aim with both eyes.

 

S
COTT YELLED AT THE SOUND
of the gunshot, a scream devoid of thought or intent, erupting from his throat as he dove onto the floor of the secret room. Two more shots followed in rapid succession, each of them punching holes through the wood paneling. He heard Isaac's voice yelling something, but he didn't care. He didn't have time to listen. Seconds made all the difference now.

Moving with speed that he didn't know he could muster, Scott threw open the trap door, slamming it loudly against the floor. Behind him, he could hear the sound of approaching footsteps. Isaac was running. And from the sound of it, he was fast.

Scott hesitated for a second, long enough to yank open the desk drawer and snatch the satellite phone. He stuffed it into his coat pocket and dashed to the hole in the floor. The ladder's iron rungs bent his feet painfully at the arches as he balanced there, trying to grab the hatch door to close it down on top of him. That's when he saw the MagLites sitting in their chargers, just inches out of reach.

Scott made the decision in an instant. In that kind of darkness, he'd never have a chance. In one fluid motion, he heaved himself out of the hole. For one long moment, he felt suspended in the air, like Michael Jordan slam-dunking a basketball. He grabbed a flashlight from the charger with his left hand, even as his right stayed closed around the handle of the hatch. On his way back down, he saw Isaac in the kitchen, braced for his next shot.

 

I
SAAC COULD HAVE KICKED
himself for even taking the shots from the mezzanine. His target was just a flash of fabric, really, as Scott dove for cover behind the wall. He'd tried his best to judge where the boy would land, but he knew it was useless even as he pulled the trigger. Even the best shot in the world couldn't hit a hidden target.

He was halfway down the stairs when he heard the tunnel hatch slam open, and he knew that the timing would be tight. He charged across the living room toward the kitchen, his weapon up and poised for a clear shot. Seconds counted.

Then the most amazing thing happened. Scott O'Toole jumped
out
of the opening in the floor, high into the air to snatch a light from its charger. It was the mistake that would cost the boy his life.

Isaac slid to a halt, braced himself, and took his shot.

 

T
HE MOMENTUM OF
S
COTT'S FALL
raised the heavy trap door just in time to take the bullet that would have killed him. He pulled the hatch up and over, the final slam nearly tearing his shoulder from its socket as he desperately hung on. He just dangled there, one-handed, his feet bicycling in the air. Somewhere down below, the MagLite clattered to the ground. With his free hand, Scott searched for the sliding bolt that would lock the hatch shut from the inside. It had to be there. Hell, he'd seen it just a few hours before, but in the impenetrable pitch blackness, it was all by feel.

There! There it was! He'd just wrapped his hand around the knob when he felt himself rising. Isaac was pulling the door open, lifting him right along with it.

 

I
T WAS ONE OF THE MOST
athletic moves that Isaac had ever seen, and it caught him totally by surprise. The hatch swung up from the floor the instant he pulled the trigger. But for the wooden barrier, the bullet would have torn through Scott's face.

“God
damm
it!” That kid was the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.

He hurried to the hatch and tried to lift it. It moved, but barely, as if it weighed a couple of hundred pounds. Then he realized that it actually did. The kid had hung on! Isaac knew how small that handle on the other side was. It must have hurt like hell to do that. His admiration continued to bloom. Now, it would be an honor to kill him.

Isaac took a wide stance, the elbow of his gun hand braced against his thigh as he grabbed the handle on his side of the hatch and heaved with everything he had. On his worst day, he could outlift a sixteen-year-old boy.

 

S
COTT FELT HIMSELF
coming right out of the hole.

“No!” he yelled. Jesus, the seam of light at the opening was three inches wide. Six inches.

Still hanging by one hand, he pulled his knees to his chest and gathered up his whole body. When he was nearly upside down, he planted his feet against the ceiling and pushed with everything he had. Yelling against the effort, he felt his attacker's grip break, and the hatch slammed shut again.

“Dammit!” the voice yelled from above.

And then he heard more shooting. Only this time, the noise of the bullets impacting the wood panel trumped the noise of the gunshots themselves.

Dangling again in midair, Scott's left hand found the slide bolts and he rammed them home, driving them a good six inches into the floor joists overhead. He'd bought himself some time. He didn't know how much, but somehow he knew it wouldn't be enough.

Disoriented in the blackness, he reached out with his feet to find the ladder rungs. They weren't exactly where he'd remembered them, but they were close. He gripped the cold metal rod with his toes to steady himself, then grabbed on with his hands.

On the ground now, he stooped to his hands and knees and searched through the darkness for the flashlight. It took too long but he found it, and the light reassured him.

A plan would be nice, he told himself, but for the time being, running seemed like a good substitute. A whole unexplained, frigid world lay beyond the tunnel, and he had to find it before Isaac made his next move. As it was, if Scott didn't hurry, all the killer would have to do was park himself at the end and wait.

With the flashlight beam opened to its widest spread, he started down the tunnel. His rational side told him that nothing had changed about the place since he was last here, but the irrational side wasn't impressed. Somehow, the shadows seemed spookier, the dark spots deadlier.

As the adrenaline ebbed, Scott found himself keenly aware of how cold he was. As his bare feet darted in and out of his peripheral vision, he saw how frighteningly red they looked. Every step was like running on broken glass. The lectures of his old buddy Sven returned: When hands or feet or noses were red, they hurt and they were healthy. As the tissues froze, though, the skin would turn white, and the whiter they got, the less pain there would be. When the pain went away entirely, the frostbite would be so deep that amputation would likely be required.

“Only a fool would be outdoors without proper foot protection,” Sven had said.

Yeah, well, let's you and I trade places for a while,
Scott thought.

At the end of the first section of tunnel, he made the hard left and started down the steeper slope. God
damn
the rocks hurt. His hands had begun to sting as well, that burning, tingling sensation that made you think you'd been playing in a nettle patch all day. The tunnel went on and on, it seemed, an impossible tangle of rocks and roots. It seemed so much longer at night, without the shining pupil of light gleaming back at him.

As he passed the spot where Agent Price had died, he tried to keep the light away from the crimson smears. From that point on, everything was unexplored territory. It was rockier here, and steeper still, but he pressed on, as quickly as he could—which wasn't nearly quickly enough.

Finally, he was out, his freedom marked by the unrestrained wind and the agony in his feet as they propelled him through the snow. He thought of those pictures he'd seen of the medieval torture devices where they'd enclose their prisoners' feet in boots lined with nails. He'd never felt anything so agonizing—so inescapable.

I can't do this,
he thought.

“No, you
have
to. You
have to,
goddammit.” As if saying it aloud made it more convincing.

But the temperature took his breath away. He'd never been in trouble this deep.

Stumbling to a deadfall, he sat with his feet out of the snow, retracted as far as he could get them into the legs of his pants, and he set about the business of making the satellite phone work. Finding the power button was easy. A luminous green dial jumped to life, giving him data on signal strength and volume. Truly, it appeared to be no more complicated than a cell phone. Between the cold and his fear, the boy's hands shook so badly as to be nearly useless as he dialed 9-1-1 and pressed send, only to be rewarded with a shrill error tone. What the hell…? He tried it again, with the same result.

“Come on, work, dammit,” he growled. But it wasn't going to. Okay, he had a better idea. He tried a new number, this one from memory, starting with the 703 area code for Virginia.

T
HE NIGHT WOULDN'T END
. Brandon lay in Scott's bed in the chalet, staring at the silhouettes of roaring beasts on the wall, the razor-tipped weaponry crossed and mounted below. He lay under the covers, but he hadn't straightened the mess his son had left on the bed. That was Scott's job. He could pick it up himself when he got back.

He came here hoping to be comforted by these artifacts from his son, but instead found mostly torment. They haunted him. For the first time since this whole ordeal began, he felt a genuine sense of danger, of impending doom.

Something was wrong, and try as he might to ascribe it to his overactive imagination, he couldn't make it stick. His heart raced and breath eluded him. Perhaps this was what people meant when they talked about panic attacks. It was as if he'd run a race and now there wasn't enough air in the room to compensate. He was losing it.

When he first heard the phone, he didn't know what to make of it. There was a distant quality to it, as if it belonged in another world. It took two rings for him to recognize the sound for what it was, and a third to realize that it was coming from the other end of the house, all the way across the giant foyer, near the door.

Who in the world could possibly be calling him at this hour?

Whitestone!
With that thought, he bolted out of bed and dashed across the living room, clipping his shin on the coffee table as he made a run for the foyer.

“What's wrong?” Sherry shouted sleepily from the sofa, but then she got it, too.

Five rings. He slid across the polished marble tiles in the entryway, and jammed his hands into both coat pockets at the same time. He couldn't remember where he'd put the damn thing. It rang a sixth time before he finally found it and snapped it open.

“Yeah? Hello?”

“Dad!”

Brandon's heart leaped out of his chest. “Scott!” In the living room, he heard Sherry knock something over as she scrambled to her feet. “Oh, my God, Scott, is it really you?”

“Is it him?” Sherry yelled. “Is it really Scotty?”

Brandon held up his hand to silence her, then plugged a finger into his other ear. The signal seemed scratchy, filled with the kind of background noise you'd expect from a call placed from Borneo. “If this is some kind of prank, I swear to God—”

“No, it's really me,” the voice said, and Brandon recognized it right away as the real thing. Nothing he'd ever heard had sounded so sweet as his son's voice; not the grandest symphony nor the sweetest love song. Breathless, his eyes huge, he nodded a confirmation to Sherry, then staggered to the steps to sit before he fell down. “Jesus, son, where are you? Are you all right?”

“No!” Scott said, his voice a harsh whisper. “No, he's trying to kill me. And then he's going to kill the president. I'm freezing to death and he's going to kill me!”

Brandon grabbed the stair rail to steady himself against the spinning room.

 

S
COTT COULDN'T KEEP
a decent signal for all the trees. He didn't know if he was being heard at all. “Can you hear me?”

“…trying to do what? Who?”

“His name is Isaac,” Scott said. “Or maybe Thomas. I'm not sure.” Suddenly, in the head rush and the freezing cold, Scott's mind wouldn't cough up last names. “You've got to help me, Dad.”

“How, son? How can I help you?” He could hear the panic clearly, even through the terrible connection. “Hello?”

“I'm here, can you hear me?” He was talking louder than he should, but he couldn't bear the thought of losing the connection. “Send help. There's a hunting cabin in the woods somewhere. I don't know exactly where, but it's along a river. A bootlegger's cabin. That's where he is. But you've got to hurry.”

On the other end of the line, in the chalet, Brandon's free ear hurt, he was pressing his finger so hard. He heard, “cabin…woods…exactly where…bootleggers…he is…hurry.”

“Tell me where you are,” Brandon said, shouting to be heard over the static.

Scott couldn't afford to speak any louder. He couldn't afford to speak as loudly as he was. “I don't know!” he hissed, his exasperation growing. “But Isaac, or Thomas, or whatever his name is, is trying to kill me.”

His dad couldn't hear him anymore. Or, if he could, then he wasn't responding. Scott stepped back into the snow to change the position of the antenna, breaking into tears at the terrible pain that consumed him from his toes to his groin. “Dad, please. Can you hear me?”

“Yes!” Brandon's voice cheered. “Yes, I can hear you now. Whatever you just did, that was good. Now, tell me where you are.”

The sound of an approaching engine paralyzed Scott. At first, he thought it was a motorcycle, but a second later, he recognized it as a snowmobile, revved high, and coming in fast.

“Shit, he's here!” Scott whispered. His time was up. As he'd feared, Isaac knew exactly where to find his prey. “Oh, God, he's gonna kill me.”

“Who?” Brandon shouted.
“Who's
going to kill you? What are you talking about?”

Scott was out of time. Good signal or not, he had to scramble for a hiding place. But where could he possibly go? He turned to head for the woods, and on his first step, he tripped, losing his grip on both the phone and the MagLite as he sprawled face-first into the snow.

This was never going to work. He was doomed.

•  •  •

“S
COTT!
A
NSWER ME
!” Brandon shouted. “Please, son, speak up, I can't hear you!”

Sherry stood at his arm, straining to hear. “What is it?” she asked. “What's wrong?”

“I don't know, dammit. I think he said something about somebody trying to kill him.”

Sherry recoiled at the thought.
“Kill
him! That can't be right.”

“Scott, are you there?” To Sherry: “Him and the president.”

“What?”

“Scott!”

 

W
ITH THE NIGHT VISION GOGGLES IN PLACE
, the whole world glowed an iridescent green. And despite the darkness, the glare of the snow was bright enough to hurt Isaac's eyes. Scott O'Toole had executed a gutsy escape, but when all was said and done, it would prove useless, effectively trading the quick and painless for the fearful and extended. The net result would be the same: within just a couple of minutes, the boy would be dead. A half hour after that, Isaac would be back in bed and asleep, girding himself for the task that lay ahead.

It had been a mistake to load hollow points. He'd screwed up, and he was man enough to admit it. The irony! The intent had been to make it easy on the kid. Now, as a result, he was racing through the snow in the middle of the night to finish a job that should have taken only a few seconds. If he'd loaded armor piercing rounds, or even steel jackets, it all would have ended in the warmth of the cabin. How many times did he have to learn the same lesson? In his business, compassion was the greatest liability.

He navigated the path at full throttle, easing off only when the side slope became too treacherous. He knew this trail thoroughly, and he'd traveled it most recently six nights ago, after the truck driver dropped him off. Besides the driveway, which Isaac used only occasionally for trips into town, the trail was the quickest route to the main road, which lay four miles to the east, over six little humps of ridges, just on the other side of Old Man Pembroke's place.

He slowed to a crawl as he approached the mouth of the escape tunnel, scanning the scenery as he went. On a normal day, the tunnel entrance looked merely like a gap between a couple of giant rocks—a cave of sorts, but with a steel gate set into the stone to keep out bears and their ilk, not to mention the kind of visitors he'd had to repel this afternoon.

Isaac came to a stop in front of the opening, shifted the snowmobile into neutral and throttled it down to a low idle before dismounting and unslinging his rifle. This time, he was taking no chances. The H&K MP5 rifle with its integrated suppressor had long become his preferred weapon for close-in work. Barely larger than a pistol when the stock was collapsed, it extended to be a thirty-inch carbine capable of taking down targets at considerable distances.

He was done underestimating the boy now. No more shortcuts. Isaac moved as he'd learned many years ago in his SEAL Team training, the weapon pressed tight against his shoulder, his knees bent, and his finger just outside the trigger guard. The weapon became an extension of his arm, the sights an extension of his eyes. If he saw it, he could shoot it, but out here, you had to be careful. Firing lanes were elusive, and no matter what kind of ammunition you'd chosen, impact with a tree trunk deflected the aim.

The boy would be hiding; it was the only weapon available to him. As in any game of hide-and-seek, victory went to the one who was most patient. Isaac moved at an impossibly slow pace, continuously scanning all compass points as he walked like a fencer, always taking care not to tangle his feet.

The footprints in the snow made the whole game ridiculously unfair. Slightly more difficult to see in the flat green light of the night scope, they nonetheless led from the mouth of the tunnel, up an adjacent hill, where they became more difficult to follow. Difficult, but far from impossible.

Isaac knew that Scott had taken the satellite phone, so it only made sense that the boy would want to find the higher ground, and sure enough, that's just where the footprints led. And there, up ahead, the light of the phone's display might as well have been a lighthouse beacon. It was almost too easy.

The boy had chosen a deadfall as his hiding place—as logical a spot as any—and as Isaac climbed through the tangles of branches and tree trunks, he yet again found himself admiring the kid's guts. He couldn't imagine making this climb barefooted.

Thirty feet away now, Isaac quickened his pace. Stealth was irrelevant now. If Scott jumped up and bolted, he'd shoot him on the run. If he continued to try to hide, he'd shoot him where he lay. Now, it all came down to a seventy-five-cent bullet.

“Hey, Scott,” he taunted from fifteen feet away. “Why don't you just stand up and make this easy?” But of course, the boy didn't move from his spot in the corner of the log. Isaac sighed. “Well, what the hell,” he said, and he closed the distance in five seconds.

Only, there was no one there.

Down the hill and through the trees, the grinding roar of the snowmobile motor ripped the night into a thousand pieces.

Isaac whirled at the sound, firing at the blur of movement. The gun bucked against his shoulder and the action clacked, but even in the stillness of the night, the gunshot was merely a whisper.

 

S
COTT HAD THE THROTTLE TWISTED
all the way to full before his butt had even hit the seat, and as he engaged the clutch, he was gone like a NASA launch, accelerating through a cloud of exhaust and snow and noise. For the next thirty seconds, it was all about speed. Speed meant survival, it was really that simple. As he struggled to maintain control of the vehicle, he wondered where all the shooting was. He'd expected to be making this escape in the proverbial hail of bullets.

He got his answer when the snowmobile's windscreen shattered, followed a half second later by the
tink
of a bullet punching a hole somewhere else on the machine. Another buzzed past his ear, and he crouched as low as he could and twisted the throttle to its limits and beyond. All around him, tree trunks sprayed high velocity chunks of bark. There for a second, it seemed as if every tree were exploding, and the vehicle itself vibrated from two more hits somewhere.

But he raced on, the treads on the snowmobile kicking up a rooster tail of powder.

Scott had no idea how fast he was going—it didn't matter—but thirty seconds after the whole thing began, after he knew that he was safely concealed by the shelter of the next hill, he didn't let off a bit. He didn't need to. Maybe his eyes had just become adjusted to such things these past few days, but with the glimmering moon overhead, filtered through the trees, the trail laid itself out perfectly for him. After a minute or two, he even found the switch for the vehicle's headlight.

He didn't know where the trail went, but that, too, didn't matter; all trails went
somewhere.

As he powered toward the crest of the next hill, Scott realized that he had won. He'd beaten the odds again. On this night, Scott O'Toole was invincible. And in spite of the agonizing cold, and the fear that pounded in his temples, right at that particular moment, he knew without a doubt that he was the luckiest teenager on the planet.

 

I
SAAC LOWERED THE WEAPON
from his shoulder and looked at it as if it had let him down. Even with the action set to full-automatic, the bastard had still gotten away.