Don Pendleton - Red Frost

“Open it,” Starkey told the SEALs.

When the hatch cover fell back to the deck, it released another puff of smoke, only much less black. With the hatch open, a warning klaxon could be heard belowdecks, its shrill pulsation barely audible over the engine and prop roar. The SEALs retreated a yard or so, still covering the entrance.

As the smoke continued to rise, Starkey lifted his mask, leaned over the hatch and shouted down in Russian through a cupped hand, “You are about to be boarded by the U.S. Navy. This is a rescue operation. Do not resist. We’re here to help you.”

If anybody heard him, they didn’t answer.

If anybody answered, he didn’t hear them.

As Starkey straightened, Howe passed him the hand-held NIFTI—navy infrared thermal imager—and power pack.

“We sweep before you go down,” Munsinger said as he stepped forward. “Make sure any hostiles are pacified. It’s procedure.”

“Blow it out your ass, Munsinger,” Starkey said. “The situation can’t wait for a sweep. We’ve got to put out the fire and shut down propulsion, ASAP.”

“SEALs will take the point, then.”

“Without canned air, you’d last maybe three minutes before you passed out. Stand clear, Captain. Do it now.”

Reuben Starkey pulled his air mask over his face and descended into the column of smoke.

Highway 112, ten miles west of Port Angeles,

7:05 a.m. PDT

Clallam County Deputy Sheriff Hiram Turnbull hunkered down beside the roadside ditch. The drainage channel was overgrown, but the bright red soles of a pair of short rubber boots were visible sticking up out of the weeds. He gently pushed the grass aside with the tip of his baton. There were legs in the boots, in jeans. The rest of the body was out of sight, head down in the ditch.

A quarter mile north of Highway 112, a squadron of Navy fighter jets screamed over the strait, flying very low just off the coastline.

On any other day, finding a corpse in a ditch would have been a big deal.

Not on this day.

“Was it a hit-and-run?”

Turnbull rose from the crouch and turned to face the speaker. He towered over the dried-up little guy in the leather porkpie hat who had reported the body. The concerned senior citizen wore a white goatee and a red plaid shirt, and carried a leashed, plaid-caped Chihuahua in the crook of his arm.

“Can’t tell yet,” Turnbull answered. “Why don’t you stand back a bit, sir? Or better yet, take a seat in the back of the squad car while I do what I have to do.” The sheriff’s cruiser stood parked in the middle of the two-lane highway’s westbound side, its roof beacon flashing. Turnbull opened the rear door and gestured for the man to get in.

“Am I a suspect, Officer?”

“Sir, I don’t want you or your dog stepping on anything, or getting clipped from behind by a log truck. It’s for your own safety. When I’m done looking over the scene, we’ll talk.” After the old guy sat down and swung in his legs, he shut the door.

Turnbull hurriedly pulled on latex gloves, then, baton in hand, skidded down the side of the ditch fifteen feet from where the body lay. The drainage gulch was waist deep; he couldn’t see the bottom for all the weeds and blackberry brambles. When he hit bottom, icy cold, flowing water surged over his shoe tops.

“Shit!” he said, remembering the hip boots he kept stowed in his cruiser’s trunk, boots he’d forgotten to put on.

Sweeping aside the undergrowth with his baton so he could see where he was stepping, the deputy worked his way down the narrow channel. There was enough water running to wash away any light debris that had fallen in with the body. As he got close to the corpse, he smelled something nasty. Parting the weeds with the club, he stared down at the seat of the victim’s pants. The poor bastard had lost bowel control shortly before or at the moment of death. Turnbull tapped the befouled jeans’ back pockets with his baton. There was no wallet in either one. From the narrowness of the hips and width of the back, the subject appeared to be male. The head wasn’t visible and the arms were pinned under the torso.

There were no obvious injuries that he could see.

“Shit!” Turnbull said again. He was going to have to turn the body over. He sucked in a breath, held it, then bent deeper into the weeds. Because of the angle and the absence of rigor, the victim wasn’t easy to roll. For a second after Turnbull had done the deed, he couldn’t figure out what the hell he was looking at. Then his brain connected the dots. It wasn’t a silently screaming mouth. The weight of the head hanging down made the horrible red gash under the chin gape six inches wide. The dead man’s throat was cut from ear to ear all the way to the backbone.

Well, that just fucks me royal, Turnbull thought as he straightened.

The deputy sheriff kicked himself for not turning his car around when he heard the first sketchy report about a ship grounding on the Hook. Now it was too late. He couldn’t bag out on an obvious murder in order to get in on even more exciting duty back in Port Angeles. There was nobody coming to back him up out here, either. All available police, fire and ambulance units had converged on the Hook. He was going to have to sit parked on Highway 112 for who knew how long before a supervisor arrived to sign off on the scene and an ambulance hauled away the body.

Turnbull climbed out of the ditch. Tossing down his baton, he leaned over and grabbed the body by the ankles, then he muscled it partway up the slope, dropping the heels onto the road. He wasn’t worried about muddying a crime scene for Clallam County CSI.

There wasn’t any such animal.

After wiping his latex gloves and his baton on the grass, he opened the cruiser’s rear door. “Come on out, sir,” he said. “Have a look at this guy for me.”

With the bulgy-eyed Chihuahua nestled on his arm, the old man squinted down in horror at all the blood. It was caked up solid in the nostrils; it coated the staring eyeballs. “Sweet Jesus,” he murmured. “His head’s practically cut off.”

“Do you know him?”

“I think so. No, I know so. His last name’s Rudolph. He lives over near Freshwater Bay.”

That was a good four miles away. Rudolph was wearing rubber boots, not jogging shoes.

“What’s he doing out here on the highway?”

“How should I know?” the old guy said, crinkling up his nose as he caught a whiff of what Rudolph was sitting on. “Never seen him on foot. He drives one of those new four-door pickups. Japanese-made rig.”

“Color?”

“Gray or light blue.”

“Do you know his address?”

“I don’t know the street or the number, but I think I can find the house if we head over there.”

“Get back in the car, please. Watch your head.”

Technically, Turnbull wasn’t supposed to leave the crime scene unattended, but under the circumstances he knew no one was going swing by and check on him. The victim’s front pockets were turned out. His wallet, watch and ring were already gone. There was nothing to steal but the corpse itself. Turnbull took a yellow plastic tarp from the trunk and securely covered the body to keep crows from pecking apart the face. He festooned the ditch weeds with crime-scene tape, then set out some road flares.

Satisfied with the job, he got in the cruiser and with lights still flashing but siren off he headed west. The radio was jumping with reports from the Hook. Navy personnel were on the ground. A full platoon of SEALs, evidently. The old guy ride-along didn’t understand the chatter. It was all code numbers and jargon.

It sounded like a Steven Seagal movie.

And Turnbull was missing it.