Part 14 (1/2)

Makenzie shook his head and chewed on the air between his teeth. He could see the gun on the floor and Hal had pretty much told him the rest. The paperwork was the least of his headaches on this one. Yeah, he'd definitely had a bellyful of squabbling 'No argument from me,' he insured the agent. Then he took a second look at the dead man. 'What's that all over his face?'

He walked up the aisle, closer. 'Ice?'

Joanna extended her arms behind her, ready to be bound again. She felt Jacks grab her roughly and wind the cord an around her wrists, and stood still through all of it.

'You're being remarkably cooperative. And it's a little early in the day for Stockholm syndrome to be setting in.' Jacks'

sarcasm was truly vicious. 'I'm beginning to suspect you have a plan in that pretty head of yours.'

Joanna rolled her eyes, forgetting that her patient was in front of her. He had managed to stand, doubtless eager to prove himself to Jacks. He was wobbly already, leaning against a tree. Joanna was sure he wasn't sharp enough to have noticed a facial expression.

She didn't rate his chances. Three 9mm rounds were still lodged in his chest. The entry wounds were close together, down and in a few inches from the armpit. There were no exit wounds and G.o.d only knew where those bullets were now, rolling around in there, slicing and dicing as they travelled.

All she'd been able to do was dress the wound and attempt to staunch the bleeding. First aid on a major surgical case.

Ben McKim may have shot the guy. but she was going to preside over his death.

Jacks tested the cord with a hard tug, then yanked on Joanna's arms to turn her around. 'Maybe I'd best see if you're packing anything else besides that nice H&K.'

Joanna's spirits slumped some more. Knocked out of her hand right after the gas can hit her face, her weapon was probably nothing more than a puddle of molten metal and plastic in whatever was left of the house. About as effective, she concluded, as it had proved in her highly trained hands.

But no, the loss of her sidearm wasn't any cause for depression. It was what Jacks was sure to discover when she started patting her down - like she was doing this instant.

'Is paranoia like an entry requirement for cults?'

'I just like to be careful.' Jacks was working her way from the boots up. Joanna was grateful for the layers of her winter uniform, minimising the intimacy of those touches and preventing her skin from crawling. 'No doubt your CO tells you the same.'

The patting and squeezing climbed Joanna's hips to her waist. Finally, she decided she wasn't going to stand it any longer. She backed off. 'Hey, if this is what you do for kicks, hand yourself in and wait for a nice long prison term!' She had to keep the words coming, not give the woman a chance.

Behind her, Mitch Lagoy actually laughed, which would hopefully spread the venom. 'You're not going to find anything. A knife, a pistol, I don't carry any of that. I travel light.'

'All you're going to find,' she reasoned a spoonful of the truth might be the best medicine for Jacks about now, 'are doc.u.ments - some kind of operation you people were planning, as far as I can make out, which I don't think you're in any position to carry out any more, what with two of you on the run and one of you dying.'

There it was: she'd blown her ace. And she wasn't a gambler. She braced herself for the punch or kick or whatever was flavour of the moment with Jacks, but the woman only stood there, a scowling statue in the snow.

Joanna didn't flinch.

'Don't be sure what I can or can't do.' said Jacks after a silent age. Her eyes burned black, but she spoke like she was drugged. 'Keep them. They're not going to do you any good.'

In light of what that implied, Joanna knew she'd be pus.h.i.+ng her luck to take this any further. Still, the military had taught her that once the initiative was seized you take it as far as you can. Morgan Shaw used the football a.n.a.logy: if you have the ball, run with it until somebody sacks you.

In those papers, she'd skimmed maps, schematics, plans of buildings, particularly the observatory, and even the Cog Railway that snaked up the state's highest peak. There was even a host of meteorological data, including hard copy radar maps: downloaded via the web and printed on a cheap Desk-Jet from the look of it. A sketch plan of the Observatory had been penned over in red, marked with boxes and scrawled notations, energetically drawn arrows shooting in on the plan from all angles. Joanna had seen the kind of thing a hundred times, albeit more professionally rendered. Troop deploy-ments and tactical projections, each box representing what the cult might label an infantry squad. Terrorist squad, more like.

'What were you thinking? An a.s.sault on Mount Was.h.i.+ngton Observatory? What was that supposed to achieve?' There wasn't any useful objective she could determine, but then she realised she was thinking like a sane person. 'Or was it one of those end of the world things, where you go climb the nearest hill and sing hymns?'

Actually, it was the weather maps that concerned her most: something in those radar pictures that didn't look right even to her untrained eye. Unnatural patterns, which she was convinced the Doctor would be able to decipher the moment he saw them. If If he saw them. he saw them.

Jacks had already stopped hearing her. She marched right up and swung her AK. The wooden b.u.t.t clubbed Joanna in the chest and she dropped in the snow, the pain hardening like concrete in her lungs.

'That was Crayford's idea. Something about spreading the word.' She had the ball and she was walking away with it.

'Now we're going with my plan. So get up and get moving.'

Joanna struggled up from the ground. She watched Jacks heading into the landscape. There was a woman who could teach the winter a thing or two about being cold.

Leela was impressed with how smoothly Kristal had returned to practicalities. From the moment she had spoken with Captain Shaw, the scout had apparently put the storm out of her mind. It was a forgotten monster, a demon from a nightmare that vanished on waking.

Leela wanted to know more about how enemies might have used the storm to cover their advance or perhaps herd them over a precipice like Kristal had described. She knew more than she liked to admit of G.o.d-like beings wielding the forces of nature to their own ends. The invisible beasts that stalked the forest beyond the perimeter, for instance. No more than spears in the hands of the Evil One. Deadly powerful spears.

Puny, it seemed to her, in the face of the forces from which she and Kristal had just fled.

The snowmobiles lay scattered, flung against trees, or buried, their metal hides looking battered and scarred with frost. What damage it might have inflicted on her skin or even the hardy clothing she wore she could only wonder. And again she found herself thinking back to those inside walls of the scoops on board the Sandminer.

'A soldier - a warrior,' Kristal had told her, 'faces two opponents in cold weather combat. One, the enemy, must be defeated, while the other, nature, should be made an ally. I'm afraid our enemy has made the weather his ally and now that too is our enemy.'

Contact with the Captain had allocated them another enemy, and Kristal believed the opposition were as much at the mercy of supernatural forces as everyone else. She declared that in pursuing the kidnappers they would at least be back on a level playing field. Leela thought she understood her meaning.

'Marotta, how fit are you feeling?' Kristal had most of her squad a.s.sembled in front of her, while the two exceptions unearthed the last of the snowmobiles and checked it over.

'Fit to drop the sons of b.i.t.c.hes who took Lieutenant Hmieleski. Ma'am.'

Ray Landers chuckled.

Along the slope, a soldier pulled on the cord that was supposed to bring Kristal's snowmobile to life. The engine gave a mechanical gargle and died.

'Leave it,' Kristal ordered.

She summoned them over to hear the rest of her briefing.

Leela imagined this would be like the speeches given by a tribe's leader to prepare the warriors for battle. But Kristal made no attempt to stir her soldiers' spirits or fire their l.u.s.t for blood.

She informed them, 'We're lucky. We're down the one snowmobile. It's probably a minor repair job, but we won't waste time. Everybody doubles up. Sergeant Marotta will take command of the main body of the squad.' She looked to the rugged-faced sergeant.

'They have a head start on us, but it won't be much.

They've a wounded man, according to McKim. They won't be making more than a klick an hour.'

Marotta nodded, looking satisfied with the estimate.

'Their heading will take them over the mountain as far as the nearest town, where they'll probably try to get transport.

Dorrs Corner is closest, or Moultonville. There's not a lot In it.'

'Maybe not a lot, Lieutenant, but enough. How is a squad going to find two - three people on a mountainside? In this?'

He held up a big hand to the snow, blowing wild although without the violence of the blizzard 'Give me a battalion. I might do it.'

'If I had a battalion, Marotta,' answered Kristal, 'would I be putting you in charge?' Leela wasn't sure if she was joking; and neither was Marotta, by all appearances. 'Take your men north east, cut in front of their escape path. Spread the squad in a line, say fifty yards apart. Leela and I will be making sure they come to you.'