Season of Death (43 page)

“He what?”

“He found it.”

“And the bomb,” the mouth-breather added, finally able to stand erect.

“You’re kidding!” Farrell exclaimed. She studied Ray before asking, “What are you? A magician?”

“He’s got it all figured out.” The finger was back, scolding Ray.

“No, I don’t,” Ray argued. It was the truth, and it seemed imperative that he impress it upon them. Whatever it was they thought he had figured out sounded dangerous, potentially life-threatening.

“He does,” Stubby assured with a heavy sigh. “He needs to be dealt with.”

Dealt with
… Ray swallowed hard. The words brought to mind images even worse than the promise of a good beating. “Really, I don’t … I don’t know anything.”

“Did you find him?” Farrell asked. “Did you find Mark?”

Ray stared into the sad blue eyes. Janice was a beautiful woman, and that beauty somehow became more pronounced when her emotions rose. She seemed genuinely concerned. Except … A day earlier, she had been convinced that Mark was in Juneau. What had changed?

“Did you?” Farrell repeated gravely, her lower lip trembling.

Ray dug the ring out of a pocket and presented it to her. She received it with a whimper. Turning, she dug something out of a knapsack. Another gold ring. She handed it to Ray and he saw that it matched: same style and design as the band from the corpse.

“Where did you find it?” she asked in a husky voice, eyes fixated on the ring.

“Near Shainin Lake.”

“And he’s … he’s dead?”

“Yes.”

She staggered, and Ray moved to support her. “I’m fine,” she grunted, resisting him. But she didn’t look fine. She looked dazed, on the verge of collapse. “You’re sure?” This was addressed to Chang and Chung. They nodded like dashboard dolls.

Farrell held her husband’s ring to her lips for a moment, then stepped through the tent door and pitched it toward the pit like a fast ball. The ring sailed, whistling through the air before skipping and pinging across the dirt. Muttering a curse, she came back in and kicked a crate. Turning to Ray, she asked, “So you found the bomb too, huh?”

The
bomb …? Not
a
bomb.
Too
… The hairs on the back of Ray’s neck stood up.

Before he could answer, she wanted to know, “What did you do with it?’’

“It’s back in the raft,” he said, his mind racing to determine what was happening. He had the sensation that he was falling, that he had been pushed off of a high precipice. “There was another one in my pack,” he added.

“Another bomb?” Farrell squinted at this.

“Well … It might have been a bomb. It was an electronic device of some sort. We lost it … overboard.”

“We?”

Ray hesitated, a protective mechanism rising within as he reeled against the queer feeling that he had just disclosed too much. “I meant I lost it.”

“There was a girl with him,” the specialist told her.

Farrell nodded, as if she understood, and turned to dig in the knapsack.

“You were following me?” Ray accused.

The two goons stared at him with thick, emotionless faces.

“How long were they following me?” he asked Farrell.

Her back still to him, she shrugged. “Since you came back upriver.”

“How did you know when I …” His voice trailed off as she withdrew a small cardboard box and pushed it at him.

“Open it.”

Ray did, sliding out a thin metallic square. A tap of Farrell’s finger caused a red light to blink. “Is that your bomb?”

He nodded. It was the same device that Keera had found in the pack. “Let me guess … It’s not a bomb. It’s a portable homing beacon.”

Farrell smiled at him: teeth gleaming, eyes laughing, every pore exuding a sensuous hunger. For what, Ray wasn’t sure.

“You’re a very good guesser,” she said. “And that’s precisely your problem.”

FORTY-SIX

R
AY FELT SICK
, stunned by the fact that he had just blundered into a trap. Trap wasn’t exactly the right word. It implied bait and purposeful entrapment. Janice Farrell and her goons hadn’t drawn him to her tent. He had chosen to come. This was self-imposed.

“I’m sorry about Mark.” He was in full retreat, struggling to form a strategy that might get him out of the tent alive. There seemed to be only three options: hand-to-hand combat, feigning ignorance, bluffing his way out by claiming to know the entire story.

“Me too,” she sighed. Farrell proceeded to curse her husband and his penchant for young coeds. “Mark was a real jerk. Couldn’t keep his pants up. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, he couldn’t accept a good thing. He had to look a gift horse in the mouth. Mr. Ethical. Mr. Goody Two-shoes. Mr. Conscience.” She swore at his memory. “All he had to do was look the other way. Just this once.”

“You obviously loved him dearly,” Ray said, unable to resist the urge to be a smart-aleck. He spun abruptly and swung at one of the security guards, but his fist was stopped casually by a fleshy hand. A knee came back at him, striking him just below the rib cage, dislodging several major organs. So much for Plan A.

“If I were you,” Farrell advised, “I wouldn’t give these guys cause to get angry.”

Ray believed her. “Any idea who might have killed him?” he asked, returning to Plan B. He didn’t expect Farrell to confess, but conversation might string out the inevitable.

She laughed heartily. “I have my suspicions.”

“What should we do with him?” the specialist asked impatiently.

Farrell frowned as she considered the dilemma. “Did you get the body?”

Stubby nodded. “It’s in the Zodiac.”

“Then that gives you two bundles to dispose of,” she said. “Get the bomb from his pack and anything else that might be incriminating.”

“Why did you kill your husband?” Ray asked, shifting to Plan C.

“Who says I did?” She leaned forward and kissed Ray on the lips. “Do what you have to do,” she told the brutes. “Meet me in the village at dawn.”

A long finger played at Ray’s chin. “You should have gone home to Margaret.”

As his arms were yanked behind his back and he was jerked out the door, Ray decided that she was right. He should have left well enough alone and caught that floatplane to Barrow. Instead, he was about to catch an express shuttle to the Beaufort Sea.

Short of an earthquake, alien invasion, or the Second Coming, he would not see the morning, much less Margaret. The reason, he thought as the two Chinese half carried him across the digging area, was simple: he knew that Mark Farrell was dead. And they knew that he knew. Obviously these people were responsible for his demise.

Chung and Chang pushed and kicked him along, each with a firm grip on an arm. Ray wondered if he would be conscious by the time they reached the river. That was saying they were headed for the river. Maybe the idea was to give him that good beating and leave him in some ravine until wolves found him and finished the job.

“Did Janice kill her husband, or did you guys?”

The question drew an especially painfiil shot to the kidney.

He coughed. “At least tell me why you’re going to kill me.

“Because it’s fun,” Two fists pounded his lower back like a drummer’s paradiddle.

Ray had envisioned himself dying a number of times on this visit to the Bush. None were quite as gruesome or distasteful as this. Not only would his life end in a flurry of concussions, but he would be ushered out of this existence without the benefit of knowing why. Why had Mark Farrell been murdered? Had a worker from Red Wolf rigged his plane? Why all the concern about getting rid of the body? How was Hunan Enterprises involved? Why was he being “disposed of”?

As they left the comforting brilliance of the camp behind, both of the guards produced electric lanterns. Watching the beams joggle in the path ahead, Ray entertained thoughts of an escape attempt. The meadow was no good. Even if he did somehow manage to break free, he would be gunned down in the flat. They had guns and flashlights. He had nothing. Except the will to survive.

They were on the moose trail, the voice of the river rumbling up at them, when an opportunity for action presented itself. In a split second, two things happened. The guard behind Ray stumbled on an exposed root, momentarily losing his balance. At the same time, they reached a sharp curve in the trail. Directly ahead the tundra gave way to shale and darkness: a cliff.

Unfortunately, the absence of light and the uncertain terrain caused him to hesitate. He looked at the black hole, considered his chances, and took a single step in that direction. Ray felt his head snap back violently, his neck popping as the man behind him used his ponytail like the leash of a straying dog.

“Try that again,” he warned, “and you’ll be sorry.”

“Why not just kill me now?” Ray sighed, massaging his neck.

“We don’t want to lug deadweight to the river.” The two chattered in their secret language, discussing something quite humorous for the final half mile to the rafts.

As they approached the boats, a kick robbed Ray of his footing and he fell to his knees. The specialist began binding his arms behind his back with rope while Stubby rifled the backpack. Withdrawing the brick of plastique, the latter offered up a paragraph of Chinese, to which his partner nodded and laughed. The bomb was tossed across the boat like a loaf of bread. Ray’s attendant caught it and lashed it to his shoulder blades.

“I thought that stuff wouldn’t go off without a detonator,” Ray said.

“It won’t,” Stubby assured him.

Ray looked over his shoulder and saw that the specialist was programming a small device with a digital counter. He leaned back, straining to see how much time was being allotted before detonation but his curiosity was met by a lightning quick left that caught him on the cheek and bent his nose sideways.

“What if it’s a dud?” he asked, blood running down his face.

“It won’t be.”

“But what if it is? What if it doesn’t go off? What if I get away?”

“Tied up, a bomb on your back, in the river, at night …” the man noted with satisfaction. “You won’t get away. Besides, we’re gonna shoot you first.”

Ray felt the detonator being attached to his back, then heard an electronic beep. Apparently he was now armed: a human bomb. The two men lifted him into one of the Zodiacs and slid it into the river. When they were all aboard, the raft bounced and began floating north. Seconds later the natural serenity of the night was interrupted by the wail of the Evinrude. Ahead, the river and surrounding wilderness could have been deep space. The moon had either set or was unable to penetrate the valley.

Ray found the environment fitting. If death was a transition into nonexistence, then this was a worthy first step. It was getting him acclimatized. And if death was an ascension into an afterworld of light, then this was also appropriate. He would appreciate heaven, even hell all the more after this trek through purgatory.

The motor whined, rising in pitch, and the raft hugged the shore. Ray could hear the roar of the rapids. Somewhere out there was the flooded boulder field.

“End of the line,” the specialist grunted.

Stubby lifted something from the bottom of the boat: an unwieldy lump of burlap and a blanket. It was only after it had passed through the glow of the flashlights and been tossed casually over the side that Ray realized that it had been Mark Farrell.

“Your turn.” The specialist goosed the throttle to keep them near the bank, then produced a shotgun. Stubby withdrew a 357.

“Hang on,” Ray pled. “Before you do this, tell me one thing.”

Shaking his head, the man who had just treated Farrell’s remains like the day’s garbage, grunted, “We didn’t kill him. That’s all we can say.”

“That’s not what I want to know. I’ve been dying to find out which of you is which. Who’s Chang? And who’s Chung?”

They found this hilarious. So funny that for an instant, they relaxed, guns drooping as they laughed. Without a clear plan, Ray launched himself over the side of the raft.

Bobbing like a defective buoy, he accelerated toward the rapids. The motor screamed in pursuit. He heard cursing, shots being fired. Then … a constant thunder. Rocks tore at his pants, collided with his shoulders, spun him in circles.