Peter Heller - Celine

“I make it out to be about a mile and half more,” Pete said, looking at the map. Celine chewed her lip.

“I guess it’s time to use the hunting vests. We don’t want to get shot by Mr. Lamont. If that’s him.” She nodded at the boulders. “Something about the whole setup tells me it is.”

“I don’t think hunting season starts for a few weeks. Big game, that is. Are we going to take the shotgun?”

“You are,” Celine said. “I just don’t feel comfortable with anything but a high-powered rifle.”

“Are we going to load them?”

Celine stared at her husband with the incredulity she sometimes felt sharing her life with a man who grew up in Maine. It wasn’t that he was simple—well, yes, he was. Brilliant and simple.

“What good is a gun if you don’t load it, Pete? Heavens.”

They got dressed fast—bright orange hunting vests and hats. Pete wore the neon baseball cap; Celine insisted on wearing the goofy Elmer Fudd thing with the earflaps. “Goofier I look, the better,” she said, admiring herself in her powder compact. She put on a small belt pack with a pint water bottle, handed one to Pete who shook his head. They slid the guns out of their Cordura cases and Celine levered the action and thumbed the bullets down into the rotating magazine of the Savage 99. She pressed the top bullet back into the mag and slid one more into the chamber. Nobody used lever-action hunting rifles anymore, but she liked it—the feel, and the nod to the past. The safety was on the tang and she thumbed it back. Locked and loaded. Pete, who had grown up with shotguns, fed five shells of double-ought buckshot into the side-loading magazine of the Winchester Marine, pumped the action once, thumbed one more shell into the gate, and pushed the safety button on the trigger guard over to On. Ready. The day had warmed enough that they didn’t need gloves. They shut the camper door but didn’t lock it. They glanced at each other once, in the way only an old couple can who is about to embark on something risky but important.

“You feel okay?” Pete said.

Celine gave him a thumbs-up. “I feel really good today. Will you remind me later to pick up that little skull just next to the tire there? Must be a rabbit or something, I’d like to use it in a piece.”

Pete nodded and they started walking slowly up the track.

They trod in sun and shadow. In and out of it. Slowly. The patches of sunlight were nearly hot, the shade cold. They crunched over old pine needles and they could no longer see their breaths. It felt good to walk. Celine thought the scoped rifle was heavy but she insisted on carrying it. The track was not much more than a path through mostly pines, a game trail, but it was smooth enough.

They had walked about fifteen minutes when they heard a clattering in the woods off to their right. They both turned and a bull elk broke across the trail not twenty feet off. Huge rack. Startled. All three of them. Pete jerked and stepped back, Celine spun to the side and the air split. Crack and boom together and the trunk of the big fir tree beside her splintered. She dropped. Reached out her free hand and pulled Pete down into brown grass and sweet sage. Jesus. They hit the ground. That was no warning, that was a kill shot. Meant to be. She was breathing hard. Stay, she commanded.

She went to one knee and brought up the gun and her left forearm slipped instinctively into the leather sling and twisted it taut; her left hand gripped the checkered forearm, and her right thumb punched the safety as her eye came to the scope. The figure was moving fast, running in closer for a finishing shot, a single shooter. She found him with her open left eye and swung. He would have underestimated the elderly lady in the Elmer Fudd hat. He shouldn’t have. With complete calm Celine tracked and led the green blur like a loping deer, and fired. He dropped. Without thought she levered the action again, letting the spent brass fly into the dirt, and stood.

“Stay!” she commanded Pete. She moved. When she had to, she could move pretty fast. It taxed her lungs but she could do it. Something about adrenaline cleared the airways. She untwisted her arm from the sling and went. Fast into the dark of the trees where there was no trail and it didn’t take long. He was maybe only a hundred feet away. He was sprawled on a duff of pine needles, splayed, his hand scrabbling back for his rifle and a bloom of blood on his right shoulder.

“Don’t!” she commanded simply. One word. He didn’t. “Where’s your backup piece?” He shook his head.

Tanner did not look the same. His ice gray eyes held fear.

“No backup?” Shook his head, watched her, cornered and bleeding.

“You underestimate me.” No response, his head very still, watching her. “Big mistake.”

She stepped forward so that she was above him but not close enough that he could make a grab. She had the rifle pointed straight at his gut. Her finger was on the trigger. “Safety’s off,” she said. “If you’re lying and you have a backup and go for it, you’re a dead man.” He nodded. She could see through the pines to the east a swampy clearing, a perfect place for moose. Probably where the elk had been when he startled it. “Where’s the sat phone?” He blinked.

“You don’t need the oxygen,” he croaked, his eyes staying on her face.

“I need it sometimes.”

“Where’d you—”

“Learn to shoot like that? Clearly your research was incomplete.”

“Jesus.” His voice sounded like a draft wind coming through dry twigs.

“The phone?” she repeated. He motioned his chin down to his hip. His eyes were wary and scared.

“Okay,” she said. “First thing, you take this stupid hat and make a compress. Then take my beautiful silk scarf and here—” Still covering him, with one hand she deftly tugged free her red scarf and doubled and looped it and tossed it to him. “Put your arm through, yes, and pull it tight. A half hitch. There.” He did.

“So sad,” she said. “That’s Armani.”

He stared at her, wary, his eyes like a hundred miles of Arctic ice, but something moved in them. A question.

“No, I am not going to finish you. I meant to. I missed, thank God. You have a kid at home, don’t you?”

He nodded, barely. “One I bet. I bet it’s a little girl.” Suspicious nod. “Well, you better go back to her. We wouldn’t want another little girl to grow up without a father.”

He stared at her.

“Bill?” He blinked hard. “You’re going to call in your support now. There’s a clearing through there, you saw it, I bet it’s where you parked your truck. Big enough for a chopper. Call it in. You’ll be in the ER quicker that way than if we called the volunteer ambulance. By the look of Babb that could take a while.”

He hesitated, nodded once.

“You can get to the clearing, right?”

He nodded.

“And this is what you’re going to tell your people.” He stared. “Listen: Tell them it ends here. Lamont stays dead. The secret about Chile”—he blinked—“just tell them: The secret about the coup stays secret. But—get this very clearly, please—if any harm at all comes to Lamont, or his daughter, Gabriela, or her son, or to me, or to Pete, or my Hank, the photos go to the press. New York Times, Washington Post, etc. It’s all set up, all it takes is the trigger. Otherwise it goes nowhere, everybody moves on. Got that?”

He nodded.

“You all have bigger things to worry about right now, is my guess. We better hope everyone lives long and natural lives. Now sit up. I’m not afraid of you anymore. They will surely kill you if you trigger the release of those pictures.” She leaned her rifle against a pine and knelt by the bleeding man and helped him sit up. She got behind him and undid the knot in the scarf and undoubled it and wound it expertly several times over the folded orange cap and his shoulder, and under his armpit, and snugged it very tight. He winced and flinched hard but did not cry out. “There. Better,” she said. She tugged the half-quart water bottle out of its sleeve on her belt. “Here.” He took it. She noticed his hands were scarred and very strong. Who knew what they had wrought in the world. He tipped up the bottle and squirted half into his mouth. Nodded once.