“Gray with darker gray stripes. It was a Siberian tiger in its winter coat.”
He thought about that. He hadn’t seen the flanks. The face had been strange. She could be right. “If that’s true, we might be able to use it to track him down.”
“How?”
“A Siberian tiger is an endangered species. A zoo had to get a license to import it. If it was sold, that had to be approved. A rare animal like that, there’s gonna be a paper trail, and it’s gonna lead to our target, or damn close.”
“What if it was born here?”
“Whatever, the animal has papers. This could be a break.”
The bus wheezed along. Tough buggies, these Greyhounds. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Not tired anymore. Ready for action, but sitting in a damn bus.
Once again, he went over in his mind the details of what had happened, the tiger, the helicopter, the carnage in the garage.
“After they entered the garage, what happened?”
“Mike went in. Then we heard him firing his pistol. Charlie was nearest, so he ran after him.” Her voice dropped to a near-whisper. “When nobody came out, I went in. The smell of blood was so strong that I knew they were dead before I saw them.” She fell silent.
He felt for her. This was a conscientious officer and she was suffering. You lose a man, you’re changed forever. You lose three, and you are left in an agony of self-doubt and self-blame. If you’re good, that is. Still, though, he couldn’t change his opinion, not only of her but also of whatever organization she belonged to. Bad planning, bullshit electronics, excessive secrecy—it was not a workable system.
The bus crossed the great American distance, crawling through the endless, featureless snowscape with its big engine roaring and its windshield wipers creating a hypnotic rhythm.
Diana sat in silence. From time to time she turned to the window. He assumed that she was crying. He said nothing.
“What about the Hoffmans?” she asked. “Do you know?”
“They’re gone. I checked the house. A helicopter took them. I saw its lights.”
“More traceable than an animal.”
“You’d be surprised. Radar coverage out her isn’t gonna go much below six thousand feet. Stay under it, then the FAA isn’t gonna find out jack about you.”
“Homeland Security, surely.”
“You come up off of one of these ranches, you stay low, you’re free and clear.”
“You heard it?”
“Yep. It did not sound like a helicopter. But that’s what it had to be.”
The bus pulled into another small town. Nameless place. Flynn watched the comings and goings of the passengers. Two left, three got on. He wasn’t expecting a problem, but the last of them seemed to check folks out a little more carefully than would be normal.
“You see that?”
“No.”
“The guy in the camouflage. He’s got busy eyes.”
She lowered her head.
He pressed her. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. How would they know we were here?”
“That’s not the right question. The right question is, ‘Do they want us dead?’ I think we both know the answer.”
The bus started off. From back here, Flynn couldn’t see much of the other passengers. He flagged the guy in the camouflage, though. He was wearing a khaki cap with fur earflaps. When he took it off, his burr haircut was sprinkled with gray. Forty-five years old, maybe. Flynn watched the back of the head, which never moved. “That’s a professional up there,” he said.
“What kind of a professional?”
“Don’t know. But whatever he’s doing, he’s on duty.” Flynn took a breath and released it slowly. Contemplating. He needed to evaluate the situation, so he got up and went to back of the bus. As he stood, he got a chance to take a better look at the man, who was sitting two rows ahead of them. He could just see his profile. The man’s eyes were closed but his body language said he was nowhere near asleep.
Flynn stepped into the toilet, waited a short time, then emerged. Returning to his seat, he nudged Diana, then pointed with his chin. Her only response was another slight touch to his wrist.
“We have to assume that he’s a threat,” Flynn said.
“I agree.”
The bus rumbled on, the snowscape outside so total that Flynn could have easily believed they were on another planet.
The guy could be anybody, an insurance salesman, who knew? Except that was not what he was. Flynn had known such men, quiet like that, contained. You couldn’t see him watching you, but you could feel it.
“He’s here to kill,” Flynn said.
“I know it.”
You talk about a high-grade hit, what had gone down back at the Hoffmans’ was that and more. It was certainly the most exotic hit he’d ever seen, and one of the most effective.
The bus pulled into a town called Waco like the town in Texas except this was in Montana. Waco was basically a cluster of hills of snow with an occasional neon sign sticking out. There was a grain elevator and a gas station. The gas station was the bus stop. There wasn’t even a place to get a hamburger. Or no, there was. You could buy a microwave burger in the gas station.
The bus hung there for a minute. Nobody got off or on. Another minute. Still no action. The driver’s hand went for the door lever. The air brakes hissed.
Flynn grabbed Diana by the wrist and pulled her down the aisle. “Sorry,” he called out to the driver, “didn’t recognize it.”
They got off and the bus pulled out, and Flynn saw the face of the guy staring out at them, a face as blank as a tombstone.
“What are we doing,” Diana said, “we can’t stay here!”
“What we’re doing is surviving. Buying time. We’re clean now, for a while.”
They went into the gas station. “When’s the next bus through?” he asked the guy behind the counter, a lanky kid with the swift, unsure eyes of a dog that can’t figure out why it gets kicked.
“Two hours, but it’s going the other way. Next one through to Billings is gonna be tomorrow.”
“We’re going the other way. Our car broke down. We flagged him and had him drop us here.”
“I got coffee. The meatball hero over there’s not gonna kill you, you’re hungry. Avoid the burger.”
“What about the Philly?”
“I wouldn’t eat it.”
The kid’s eyes flickered away, and Flynn turned, following them toward Diana.
Snapshot: Diana’s eyes, staring straight at him.
Snapshot: the guy from the bus coming in behind her. Camouflage. Professional movements. He’d gotten the driver to stop a second time. Flynn dropped his hand into his pocket, closed on the Glock. Behind Diana, the assassin’s hands came up toward his chest. He was going for a gun, going into action.
Flynn threw himself at Diana, hurling her to the floor with so little room to spare that he felt the heat of the bullet sear the back of his head as it passed. Maybe an eighth of an inch, maybe less.
He rolled, pushing over a shelf of candy, sending Snickers bars and Kit Kats and PayDays flying.
The killer was bracing his weapon, a big long-range pistol with a laser sight. A red dot appeared in Diana’s hair. Flynn pulled her into the heap of candy and shelving as the second round smashed into the floor where she’d been lying. Cement shrapnel ripped at them.
He got the Glock out, felt for the trigger, found it, and fired through the parka.
Then he had the guy. And the guy had him. Gun to gun, the guy with the Glock was going to have to be good. Real good.
Gun fighting is speed and math, but mostly math. Flynn was good at math. Instead of dropping his pistol, he changed his angle of attack. An iffy head shot became an easy heart shot.
The guy had done the same. Heart to heart. Impasse.
But then the guy backed off a step.
Flynn couldn’t see Diana, but she had to be the reason. The clerk was hiding behind the count
er hammering at the keypad of his cell phone. Not gonna work today, Flynn thought. Cell towers need power, too.
The assassin turned and ran. Flynn followed immediately.
“Stay together,” Diana cried. “That’s an order!”
The hell. He took off across the pump island and out into the highway. The guy was running hard, about fifty yards ahead. Flynn continued after him, letting the long hours of endurance training he’d done propel him forward despite the wind and the blowing snow. Ahead, the guy’s back was visible as a dark smudge in the sea of snow.
“Stop! Police!” Except he wasn’t the police, was he, not in Montana, and maybe not even in Texas if he’d pissed Eddie off enough to get himself fired.
The guy did not stop, of course, so he quit wasting breath. He could get off a shot, but there was no chance it was going to connect. He ran harder but did not gain. In fact, the smudge became more and more indistinct. Finally, it was gone. Flynn ran on for another minute, but in the end he did the only logical thing he could and stopped. He stood staring out into the gloom of the storm. He had maybe two hundred yards of visibility. Even as fast as he’d been running, the guy had continued to outstrip him.
Diana came up, her breath surging out of her nose in blasts of fog. “We gotta get out of here.”
“How could he run like that? How could anybody?”
“I don’t know.”
He turned to her. He took her collars. He pulled her close to his face. “Yeah, you do. You’ve killed three men with this bullshit secrecy, so why don’t you give me some kind of goddamn chance and come clean. Tell me what you know.”
“What I know? That we’re up against a team. That they have excellent equipment and skills.”
“They have a helicopter with a silent rotor.”
“A silent rotor exists. It can be retrofitted to a number of different helicopters, including some general aviation models.”
“So they’ve been able to steal classified equipment. What about their victims? What’s the point of all this?”
“We don’t know where they take people. We don’t know why. The third sister was the closest we’ve ever gotten to one of their operations.” She gestured. “Obviously, we weren’t ready.”
They began walking back toward the gas station. “How many of them are there? What’s their maximum area of activity? US? Other countries as well?”
“Primarily US as far as we can tell. Concentrated in rural areas near urban population centers where there’s lots of turnover and lots of young, well-educated, healthy people. They favor low-density suburbs like you live in. Like we did, me and Steven.”
“Your husband?”
“Yes. But let’s not go there right now.”
“No.”
The cold was so intense that the sweat he’d generated running was now flaking off him like an icy powder.
“Okay, one useful face. We’ve got the Siberian tiger involved. That’s traceable.”
They had reached the gas station. The clerk had closed it down and gone home, so they stayed close to the front window, using the station to shelter them from the wind and the pumps to interrupt the sightlines of possible snipers. Flynn didn’t like it, but it was what they had.
“We’re way too vulnerable here,” he said, “so keep low and keep watch.” Then he asked her a question that had been troubling him. He already knew the answer, but he asked it anyway. “You’re not a field officer, are you?”
After a moment, she shook her head. “I come from the world of probability theory. I’m an analyst.”
“You couldn’t find a pattern, but then the third sister came along and you grabbed a few pros and off you went.”
“Don’t, please. No more.”
“He could’ve taken her any damn time, but he wanted to teach you a lesson. So he chose the night you were there.”
A cold silence fell between them. An analyst. An ad-hoc team. Equipment that didn’t work as advertised. Who the hell did the thinking?
The wind kept the snow blowing, reducing visibility. Flynn wondered what would come first, the bullet or the bus? Or maybe it would be the tiger.
He didn’t like it when his choices were limited to just one, especially when it was bad. Worse, all this flurrying was going to play hell out on the highway. Buses were going to stop in towns and stay there until they could follow plows.
“We need to find shelter. We need to either break into this place or we need to find somebody to help us. We can’t stay here.”
“The bus is due in forty minutes.”
He stood up. “Too long,” he said. He gestured toward the highway. “Outside of town, flurries are sweeping that road. So any traffic is stopped wherever it happens to be, and that’s where it’s gonna stay until it gets plowed out.”
“If we miss the bus—”
“You let the sun set on us, we do not survive the night. Period. If the cold doesn’t take us, he will. He will not miss again.”
She looked up at him. “It’s my decision,” she said.
He set off, intending to knock on doors until somebody let him in. Who knew, maybe they’d have a truck, maybe with chains.
She caught up with him. Good. He didn’t want to see her killed. Whatever she did, though, he intended to survive and he intended to win. This bastard had done enough.
“He’s gonna die or I’m gonna die,” Flynn shouted into the wind. “But not here, not now. I want my shot at him and I haven’t got it. But I will, lady. I will get my shot, and I’m not stopping until I do.”
They moved slowly along, huddled shapes in a blowing, frozen haze. They couldn’t go far, so Flynn intended to get to the first inhabited house they could find.
Slowly, they passed a bank, its tan brick front encased in ice, its interior dark. Next came a bar, its neon out, its door padlocked.
“Hold on,” she said, “don’t leave me behind.”
He put an arm around her and drew her forward.
“You’re strong,” she said.
He said nothing. They might be moving slow, but the reality of their situation could not be more clear. They were running for their lives with death by cold close behind them, and closer yet an even more dangerous enemy, who they could not see, let alone fight.
Flynn might not be able to see him, but he was out there, no question, and he intended to end this, and soon.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The house was small and trim, with green shutters and gray siding. It had started life as a double-wide trailer and had been added to over the years. It was set north to south on its lot, so the wind surged down the porch, which was buried so deep in a rippling snowdrift that Flynn had to dig through it to reach the front door. He knocked.
Silence.
“It’s empty,” Diana said.
“Nope.” He pounded.
From inside there came a cry, “Clara! What’re you doin’ out there?”
The inner door swept open to reveal a man of about sixty in a wheelchair.
“We need shelter,” Flynn said. “We need a phone.”
“Where’s Clara? Where’s my wife?”
Flynn felt Diana tense. He said, “We need to get in out of this.”
The man rolled his chair back away from the entrance as they struggled in.
“Who the hell are you? You ain’t from around here.”
“We were waiting for the bus.”
“No, that’s not the answer. You DEA lookin’ for meth labs. Every other house has a meth lab out here. State don’t care. They let it go. They have to.” He whipped the chair around and rolled toward the back of the house. “Clara! Where in hell is she?”
Briefly, Diana’s hand squeezed Flynn’s. He was thinking the same thing: maybe the whole town had been raided. Maybe the old and infirm were the only ones left.
“She went out?”
“To the barn, see to the horses. The intercom’s down, the cell phones don’t work, the landline is down and she’s been out there more??
?n a hour.”
“We’re cops,” Flynn said, “but we’re not looking for your meth lab.”
“I told you, I ain’t got any damn meth lab! None! Natha! Find my girl, you two, you’re a damn gift from God.”
There was no time to get warm, they went directly out the back. Flynn pointed to the faint trench in the snow that led to the barn. Diana nodded.
“Guns,” he said.
“Guns.”
“Are you proficient, Diana?”
“I score okay.”
They pushed the door open together. “Clara,” Flynn called into the dark interior. “Clara!”
A horse whickered, that was all.
The barn was unheated, but the two horses in their stalls had been expertly blanketed. A couple of big electric heaters stood in the center of an area of the concrete slab that had been carefully swept of anything that might catch fire. Their cords led to an orange cable that hung from an overhead socket attached to a rafter. No power, though.
“Clara!” he said again, then, “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“Smell that? That’s blood.” He looked into the darkness. “Over there.” He moved deeper.
A third horse was up against the back wall, deep in the shadows. It lay on its side.
He went to it. Looking down at the maimed animal, he wasn’t sure what to make of its condition.
“You ever see anything like this?” he asked Diana as she came up.
“Oh, no.”
The lips had been sheared off, the eyes cut out, the genitals removed. A large section of the exposed flank had been flayed down to the bone. Where the rectum had been, there was a neat round wound.
“So you have.”
“Only in pictures. Animals mutilated like this have been found for years. None in the context of the kind of disappearances we’re investigating, though, not as far as I am aware.”
“You know more about this whole damn mess than you’re telling me, and I’m getting to really not appreciate that.”
“I can’t—”
“Yeah, you can, and you will, and you’ll do it soon.”
Flynn had seen something like this before, too. Some case file. Then he remembered. It was a rural crime down near Alice, Texas. “I saw some of these. Cattle, not horses. A rancher got the hell knocked out of his herd. Two prize bulls and three breeder cows. Fifteen thousand dollars worth of prime beeves. Sheriff thought it was coyotes. We wrote it up as vandalism so the poor guy could collect on his insurance.”