John Sandford - Winter Prey

She rolled away from him and he called, "You're okay, okay," but she kept rolling and her hand came up with what looked like a child's shiny chrome compact.

A.22, a fifty-dollar weapon, a silly thing that could do almost nothing but kill people who made mistakes. He was leaning forward, his hand toward her, reaching out. He saw the muzzle and just before the flash felt a split second of what might have been embarrassment, caught like this. He started to turn, to flinch away. Then the flash.

The slug hit him in the throat like a hard slap. He stopped, not knowing quite what had happened, heard the pop-pop of other guns around him, not the heavy bang-bang, but something softer, more distant. Very far away.

Lightning stuttered in the dark and flung the girl down, then Lucas hit the snow on his back, his legs folding under him. His head was downhill, and when he hit, the breath rushed out of his lungs. He tried to take a breath and sit up, but nothing happened. He felt as though a rubber stopper had been shoved into his windpipe. He strained, but nothing.

The snow felt like sand on his face; he could feel it clearly, the snow. And in his mouth, a coppery, cutting taste, the taste of blood. But the rest of the world, all the sounds, smells, and sights, were in a mental rectangle the size of a shoe box, and somebody was pushing in the sides.

He could hear somebody talking: "Oh, Jesus, in the neck, call the goddamn doctor, where's the doctor, is she still riding…"

And a few seconds later a shadow in his eyesight, somebody else: "Christ, he's dead, he's dead, look at his eyes."

But Lucas could see. He could see branches with snow on them, he could feel himself move, could feel his angle of vision shifting as someone sat him up, he could feel-no, hear-somebody shouting at him.

And all the time the rectangle grew smaller, smaller…

He fought the closing walls for a while, but a distant warmth attracted him, and he felt his mind turning toward it. When he let the concentration go, the walls of the square lurched in, and now he was holding mental territory no bigger than a postage stamp.

No more vision. No more sense of the snow on his face. No taste of blood.

Nothing but a single word, which seemed not so much a sound as a line of type, a word cut from a newspaper:

"Knife."

The Iceman was there, almost in the treeline, when the shot ripped through his back, between his spine and his shoulder blade. He went down facefirst, and a burst of automatic weapons fire tore up the aspen overhead. His mind was clear as ice, but his body felt like a flame.

There was another burst, slashing through the trees, then another, but the last was directed somewhere else. The Iceman got to his feet, pain riding his back like a thousand-pound knapsack. He pushed deeper into the woods, deeper. Couldn't go far, had to sit down. With the sudden profusion of lights below, he could see the vague outlines of trees around him, and he fought through them, heading at an angle toward the road. Behind him, his tracks filled with snow almost as fast as he made holes in it.

Then he was out of the light. Caught in the darkness, he probed ahead with his hands. The pain in his back grew like a cancer, spreading through him, into his belly, his legs, turning his body to lead. A tree limb caught him in the face mask, snapped his head back. His breath came harder: he pulled off the helmet, threw it away. He needed to feel…

He was bleeding. He could feel the blood flowing down his belly and his back, warm, sticking between his shirt and his skin. He took another step, waving his hands like a blind man; another, waving his hands. A branch snapped him in the face, and he swore, twisted, tripped, went down. Swore, struggled to his feet, took another three steps, fell in a hole, tried to get up.

Failed this time.

Felt so quiet.

Lay there, resting; all he needed was a little rest, then he could get up.

Yukon. Alaska.

Weather, coming up, saw Lucas on the snow and the blood on his face, screamed, "No, God…"

"He's hit, he's hit," Climpt screamed.

He was cradling Lucas' head, Henry Lacey standing over both Lucas and Climpt, Carr beside the yellow-haired girl, other deputies milling through the snow.

Like a scene shot in slow motion, Weather saw Lacey's teeth flashing in the snowmobile headlights, saw the face of the little girl, serene, dead, her coat puckered with bullet holes, and she thought, Gone to the angels, as she dropped to her knees next to Lucas.

Lucas thrashed, his eyes half open, the whites showing, straining, straining. She grabbed his jaw, found blood, tipped his head back, saw the entry wound, a small puncture that might have been made with a ballpoint pen. He couldn't breathe. She pulled off her gloves, pried open his jaws, and pushed one of the gloves into the corner of his mouth to keep him from snapping his teeth on her fingers. With his mouth wedged open, she probed his throat with her fingers, found the blockage, a chunk of soft tissue where there shouldn't have been anything.

Her mind went cold, analytical.

"Knife," she said to Lacey.

"What?" Lacey shouted down at her, shocked. She realized that he had a gun in his hand.

"Give me your fuckin' knife-your knife!"

"Here, here." Climpt thrust a red jackknife at her, a Swiss Army knife, and she scratched open the larger of the two blades.

"Hold his head down," she said to Climpt. Lacey dropped to his knees to help as she straddled Lucas' chest. "Put your hand on his forehead. Push down."

She pushed the point of the blade into Lucas' throat below the Adam's apple and twisted it, prying… and there was a sudden frightening croak as air rushed into his lungs. "Keep his head down-keep his head down."

She thrust her index finger into the incision and crimped it, keeping the hole open.

"Let's get him out-let's get him out," she shouted, slipping off his chest. Lucas seemed to levitate, men at each thigh and two more at either shoulder. "Keep his head down."

They rushed him out of the woods, up to the sheriff's Suburban.

With each awkward, bloody breath, Lucas, eyes closed now, said, "Awwwk… awk" like a dying crow.

A siren screamed away down the road just above him. Helper was lying in the ditch below the road, he realized. All he had to do was crawl to the top, and when the cops were gone, flag a car.

A small piece of rationality bit back at him: the cops wouldn't be going. Not now. They knew he was here, now.

The Iceman laughed. They'd find him, they were coming.

He tried to roll, get up; he would crawl to the top, flag the cops. Quit. After he healed, he could try again. There was always the possibility of breaking out of jail, always possibilities.

But he couldn't get up. Couldn't move. His mind was still clear, working wonderfully. He analyzed the problem. He was stiff from the wound, he thought. Not a bad wound, not a killer, but he was stiffening up like a wounded deer.

When you shot a deer and failed to knock it down, you waited a half hour or so and invariably found it lying close by, unable to move.

If he was going to live, he had to get up.

But he couldn't.

Tried. Couldn't.

They'd come, he thought. Come and get him. The trail was only a couple of hundred yards long. They'd track him, they'd find him. All he had to do was wait.

"If he's not hit, then going in there'd be suicide. If he is hit, he's dead. Just set up the cordon and let it go until daylight," Carr said. Lacey nodded, stepped to another deputy to relay the word.

"I want three or four men together everywhere," Carr called after him. "I don't want anyone out there alone, okay? Just in case."

They found him lying in the ditch beside the road. Still alive, still alert.