Ted Wood: Murder on Ice aka The Killing Cold

When the last woman had left I moved away from Margaret, drifting slowly closer to the stage. Rachael was still standing, still holding the gun on Walter Puckrin, but the strain was beginning to tell. She had probably never carried a gun for any length of time. Now she was finding that it was a machine, and like all machines it was heavy. I knew already. I'd carried my M16 over more klicks of jungle than she had ever seen. Her arms were trembling. I hoped she would keep her finger off the trigger. She turned and looked at me and her arms tightened convulsively. "No closer," she told me.

"Would you like a chair?" Just a thought. If she was green enough to accept I could sweep her feet away, throwing the gun barrel up at the ceiling. It would be all over without blood.

"Chauvinist swine." She hissed it. I shrugged.

"You sure do take all this personally, Rachael." I hoped it would widen the gap I'd pushed between her and Margaret, but Margaret's mood had changed already. She knew she had been outmaneuvered and was hiding her anger.

"Sit down, Bennett. I mean it," she said. And this time I sat. There was nothing to do for a few minutes anyway, until it was time to make the next exchange, when her mood had settled again. I had recognized the town's lawyer among the men. Soon I would suggest that he help draft her demands. If she had any demands. So far she had said nothing. But she must have a real purpose for doing this.

I let her go for three minutes before I asked her, "Mrs. Sumner, can you let us know what you want in return for the safe release of these people? I assume your League has some specific political aims."

She didn't like my tone. "You've talked enough. I'll give you my demands when we get the attention I need outside."

"That won't be for hours, maybe a full day."

"I have all the time in the world."

"Do you want to talk to the man I spoke to you about?" I hoped not. If he told her anything different from what I had invented, she would probably tell Rachael to pull the trigger on me. She did not answer and I didn't press it. I sat waiting for the boredom to begin to build. Most hostage situations devolve to that at some point. It is the eventual undoing of all the cases that end happily for the hostages.

She went back to the stage and sat on the edge of it. Then she called Rachael over, and Rachael came, keeping the gun on Puckrin the whole time. They changed over. Margaret took the gun, balancing it over her knees, pointing at Puckrin. She was smart, I knew that. If she were an amateur she would point at me, but Puckrin was a better hostage. His death would disturb more people than the death of a copper. And his life was vital to me. If he died, I would be blamed for killing him.

We all sat still. Outside I heard cars starting up, revving high as drivers rushed the heating system to protect themselves from the cold that would be intensified by their fears for their own safety and the safety of their menfolk.

And then, far off but coming closer, as pure as an ascending glissando on some electronic instrument, I could make out the whine of a snow machine. I checked my watch. It was four forty-three. Nobody would be moving at this hour unless they had some special reason for coming here. And to confirm my thoughts, the note bent like a harmonica sound as the machine pulled into the parking lot and right up against the front steps.

Everybody in the room craned around as the outer door closed with a hollow boom. Then the inner door opened and a man stood there, one hand clutched to his stomach. For an instant I didn't recognize him in his tight, green workman's parka, then I saw the handcuff dangling from his right wrist in the same second that Margaret's voice gave a half scream. "Tom! What's happened to you?"

He came into the room slowly, walking straddle-legged around his injured testicles. He had heavy leather work gloves on, and as he took them off I could see that his right hand was rusty as if he had dipped it in paint. And the empty half of my handcuffs still dangled from it.

"Ask him," he said in a low, hoarse voice. He came through the crowd of seated men and stood a few feet from me. I willed Sam not to growl and he didn't, his training too deep to presume in my presence.

"Wondering how I got away? Is that it, tough guy?" He held up his right hand so I could see it better. I could see that the rust was turning to black and I knew what had happened. "Easy," he said, and laughed with a sound like the bark of an angry dog. "Easy. You didn't look around that cabin too good, did you? There was a hatchet in the kindling box. I disconnected the kid."

"You cut his hand off?" I could hardly believe it. I knew he was a killer, but that kind of deliberate horror was too hard to imagine.

"Don't worry about him none. He won't be needin' it. You worry about you." He held out his left hand and I saw what was in it. "See this? Know what it is? It's a grenade. Seen one before?"

I had seen, and used, dozens of them. It was an M67, a fragmentation grenade, capable of killing most of the people in the hall. If he was careful and went out to the doorway he could bounce it in among us, then drop flat below the stone step that rose to this level. He would live. We would die, or suffer injuries most of the men in this room had never dreamed of. Only the Legion veterans knew what grenades can do.

I noticed he had already removed the safety clip. Now he removed the pin, keeping his hand clamped around the lever. He tossed the pin casually among the people on the floor and they scrambled away from it, all except for one gray-haired man who looked at it without flinching.

"If you killed the kid that makes four people you've wasted tonight."

He laughed again, stopping in mid-bark as pain struck his diaphragm. He coughed gently, clutching the hand with the grenade to his solar plexus. Then he straightened. "You've done better than that in your time," he said. "Women, kids, no problem to our big tough Marine."

I glanced at Margaret Sumner. She was sitting mesmerized on the edge of the stage, her mouth slightly open. The gun was slumped upside down across her knees, the muzzle pointing harmlessly up at a spot high on the side wall. This was the break I'd prayed for earlier, but now it was too late. Her son had us much more secure than her single-hit gun ever did.

I was willing her to shoot him. If she did, I could have a chance to grab the grenade before he dropped it, before the lever flipped away and the last four seconds of our lives began to tick. But if I was too late, I was helpless. There were heavy drapes over the window. I would not have time to part them, smash the glass, and throw the grenade out. And if I did, I had the new problem of my own making. The parking lot was full of women sitting behind the eggshell security of their Detroit sheet metal. The fragments would slice through three of them in a row. I would have dead women on my hands.

But otherwise? Otherwise, what? I would die here, among a number of others. I had to negotiate.

"Margaret, talk to him. He's your son, he'll listen to you. Tell him not to let go of that thing, I'll put the pin back in."

Tom waved his left hand, pushing out his lower lip and making a downturned smile. "I'm through takin' orders, Bennett. And so are you." He jerked his head to the women on stage. "Come on, you two. Out in the lobby an' lay down. I wanna open these guys' Christmas present."

Margaret slid down, holding the gun in one hand by the barrel. Then Rachael followed. She had lost her anger but none of her hatred. She sneered at me without speaking as she passed.

Tom waited for them to go to the door, then followed slowly, painfully. I had caused him pain. So far that was the best news I had had all night. We all swiveled our heads to watch him go. He stood at the door and addressed us all. "Any of you wanna say a prayer, get it said." He paused to give another painful cough. "Only make it quick. This here is a capitalist weapon, same as your hero used in Viet Nam. When I pitch it in, you're on your last four seconds. It will kill most of you like a lot of people got killed in that rotten war. Any of you as don't die, I'll come back for."