Ridley Pearson - Killer View

Rivers and streams flowed out of the mountains roughly west to east. For Walt’s theory of contamination to hold up, there had to be underground water flowing northwest from the INL. He’d made a quick study of the massive northern Rocky Mountain aquifer that stretched from Canada all the way to Mexico, but it too flowed predominantly south and slightly east. He wanted a bird’s-eye view, to validate or invalidate his theory, but the INL airspace was restricted and those restrictions strenuously enforced.

His decision was to stray over the airspace, what he would call “a regrettable but unavoidable piloting error.” He counted on the evening thermals to hold the glider aloft long enough for him to maneuver into position. Pursuing more altitude, he continued the elegant, half-mile-wide spiral ascent. At eleven thousand feet above sea level-six thousand aboveground-Walt kept the glider shy of an altitude requiring supplemental oxygen.

“Everything ready?

“Yes. Good to go.”

“I have no idea what they’ll do when we enter their airspace, but I don’t see them shooting us down or anything.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.”

“Get everything you can, everything we discussed.”

“Will do.”

“And if we are forced down, whatever you do don’t surrender your equipment. Under no circumstances will you take that camera off your neck. They will claim all sorts of rights, but I think they’ll stop short of actually physically removing the camera.”

“And if they think otherwise?”

“We’ll move it up a level to the attorneys.”

“And if the attorneys fail?”

Walt said nothing.

“Walt?” she said, trying for an answer. Then it hit her. “Oh! Goddamn you! You wouldn’t stoop to something… You wouldn’t use me like that.”

“Like what?”

“You were the one who told me Roger’s company, Semper Group, is under contract with the government to manage nukes, among other things. The INL is a Semper contract, isn’t it?”

“It is, but-”

“Did you honestly think I’d call Roger for you if you get busted in here? Is that why you asked me along? I’m your safety valve? How self-serving is that?”

“It never occurred to me. I just need photographs.”

“But you didn’t need me to take them.”

“Of course I did.”

“You’re banking on my relationship with Roger to get you out of trouble. It’s despicable.”

“You’re overreacting.” He directed the glider toward the alluvial plain, the sun bloodred as it edged ever closer to the western horizon. “I thought you’d like it up here.”

A difficult silence followed. It was too loud for him to hear her preparing her equipment. She said, “It just so happens that I do.”

Walt smiled to himself, eased the joystick forward, and the glider quickly picked up speed as it dove, racing now into the restricted airspace.

ROY COATS BROUGHT THE MAUL DOWN ONE-HANDED, SPLITTING the log in a single stroke and sending a shudder of pain through his wounds. Standing a few feet off to the side, Gearbox eyed the sharpened edge of the maul, as it caught the mottled sunlight.

“I have to meet with her.” Coats spoke cautiously through a clenched jaw. Any movement of his facial muscles sent white pain down his neck and into the scissor wound in his armpit. His unmoving lips resulted in a menacing tone. “She makes the drop, and we don’t give a shit about this guy. Let him freeze out there. But I can’t count on her making the drop. So I’m not leaving here until I know we have a backup in place. That means you’ve got to find him .” Coats wound up the maul and split another log, again in a single stroke.

“As if we haven’t been trying.”

“Find him,” Coats repeated. He took off his glove and gingerly touched where the stove had branded his cheek. There was yellow pus on the tip of his finger. He wiped it off on his jeans. The burn needed medical attention, a primary reason he wanted the vet recaptured. “He’s on foot in a fresh snowfall. We’re on snowmobiles. Are you fucking kidding me?”

“But, with the dogs…” Gearbox said.

“We don’t slow down, waiting for them.”

“But Bill said-”

“Fuck Billy! If the dogs get here, they get here. But every minute he’s out there, he’s farther away. And you know what’s worse? It’s worse if he dies out there. Until I say otherwise, we need him.”

“I’m open to suggestions,” Gearbox said.

He cowered as Coats turned slowly. The maul swung like a pendulum at his side.

“We’ve been up and down that track a dozen times,” Gearbox complained. “The game trails too. Without the dogs, we got nothing.”

“Fuck the dogs!” An idea hit him. “Okay,” Coats said, his anger briefly subsiding. “You remember that time we lost the cat over in eastern Oregon?”

“Sure,” Gearbox said, nodding.

“We’re going to do it like that: a pattern search. All we’ve gotta do is cross his tracks at some point. He can’t be far.”

“Okay,” Gearbox said. He didn’t sound convinced.

“I’ve got to keep that meeting with her. Are you listening? If she delivers that drum like I asked, within a week there’s not one person on this planet won’t have heard of the Samakinn. They’ve got, what, ten thousand of those drums stored out there? Twenty? All containing ‘low-level waste,’” Coats said, making finger quotes in the air. “You think they’re going to miss one? It’ll be the first time it’s ever been done. Shit, that kind of thing doesn’t make news; it makes history.”

He couldn’t stop the grin from finding its way onto his face, but, this time, the accompanying agony was well worth it.

MARK AKER’S BEST CHANCE TO OUTRUN HIS PURSUERS WAS to find a river, someplace he wouldn’t leave behind tracks or a scent to follow. He used the trees effectively, dodging under the umbrella of green branches that reduced the accumulated snowfall to a dusting. He would cut across the base of a tree, dragging a sprig behind him and erasing his tracks as he went. When the trees were positioned closely enough together, he could make it fifty yards or more without tracks to follow. But eventually he was faced with deep snow again, forcing him to reveal his route. In summertime, he would have been nearly impossible to follow, he wouldn’t have been battling the elements, and he would have had an abundant source of water and food. As it was, he was sweating, cold, hungry and thirsty, and still trying to hold off using any of what he’d stolen from the cabin for as long as humanly possible.

Then came the sound he’d been outrunning all day: the distant whine of the snowmobile. It wasn’t that they were close; it was their determination that ate away at his confidence.

What he saw next intrigued him: a low, inverted semicircle amid a rock escarpment, fifty yards to his right. The formation began low and grew into a collar that wrapped around a small hill. Seeing the rocks rise out of the snow, and that small semicircle of dark in particular, gave him another idea. If he could reach the windblown rocks, he’d leave no trail to follow.

He spent fifteen minutes creating a fake route south to the edge of a copse of trees, before carefully backtracking and returning to where he’d started. Then he worked his way below a cornice where the snow was only an inch or two deep, again dragging an evergreen limb behind him and brushing his tracks away. The effect was outstanding: there was no way to tell he’d headed toward the rocks. He climbed through the escarpment. The farther he made it, the more confident he was that he’d created an effective diversion.

He approached the dark inverted curve, just above the surface of the snow, cautiously, the vet in him having identified the cave from a distance. He crept quietly to the opening, stuck his nose to the hole, and sniffed the air. Excited by the dank, sour smell, he searched the backpack for the concoction Coats had used to subdue him and liberally charged the syringe. With the syringe in his left hand, he shined the flashlight through the hole, daring to stick his head inside.