When the Killing Starts (15 page)

"I'd shoot you first," I shouted, and as if on cue, we heard the angry zizz of bullets over our heads, followed by the clatter of gunfire as the sound of the rifles trailed behind the bullets.

George snapped off three quick shots, standing up, ignoring the flames, working the bolt calmly as if this were a moose hunt. Then he said, "There's eight more of them. Let's go."

We turned and ran on, right into the flames. If Jason was whimpering, I couldn't hear him. The roar of the fire was like endless surf on a beach. But the heat was even more vivid. It dried my mouth at once, then my lungs, so that each breath was pain, each step a separate struggle. The fire was licking at us, the flames of the burning branches flicking out at us, casually eating up any hair that showed on our arms or in front of our hoods, filling us with animal panic.

I tried to ignore it, tried to keep my mind clear, functioning high and cool as if I were up somewhere looking down on the three runners, pushing them on with my willpower, thrusting them toward the center of the hell we were in. My jacket started to burn, and my hands, with the urine boiled off them, hurt as if I'd stuck them into a stove. I raised one of them over my face and kept on, pace after pace, until the end of the canoe dropped behind me. Michaels had let go.

I turned to shout, but George had beaten me to it. He was standing over Michaels, his denim jacket smoking. He kicked Michaels once, then grabbed the end of the canoe and waved me on, but I paused another moment, and Michaels got up and stumbled after us as I pushed on, wondering why I was slower, not realizing that I was stumbling because of the softness of the ground under my feet, and then, without thought, I burst through a stand of blazing cattails into knee-deep water.

I flung my end of the canoe ahead and plunged under the surface, then came up and lifted Sam out of the canoe and dunked him under. He came up, kicking and whining, as Michaels and George Horn found the water and dived in. We bobbed there for another minute while the trees above us blazed; then I waved and staggered on, leaving Sam swimming until the water was mercifully up to my chest. Then I lifted Sam into the canoe and stood holding it as George slid himself aboard, pulling himself smoothly over the stern. Then Michaels climbed in, over the side, rocking the canoe almost upside down, filling it with water. When he was in, I went to the bow and pulled it under me, heaving up, over the prow and full-length on top of the canoe, then swinging my body under my arms and in, still facing the wrong way but out of the water. "Hold it still," I shouted, and Michaels and George froze as I turned around.

"Okay, keep in the deep part." I shouted it back through the smoke that covered us all, almost masking the others from me. I grabbed the paddle and eased forward, feeling for the bottom and glancing up to see if any trees loomed up ahead. None did. We were in the middle of the little creek, safe from the flames. If the creek ran all the way to the next lake, we were safe. For the moment I didn't question that. My map might have shown me, but long-range planning was out of the question. We had to stay out of the fire itself. Even if the creek left us stranded, we were clear of the flames and hidden from the mercenaries. We had won, for now.

Michaels was using his fatigue cap to bail, slopping water out of the canoe but stopping every second or third stroke to splash some of it on his own face. I didn't bother. We had burns. They would be painful but would get no worse as long as we stayed out of the fire. If we could use the time to get away to the next lake, we'd have beaten off the worst of our problems. The men behind us would not find the creek before the fire had burned out. We had half an hour to escape, and I dug into the water, not pausing to wipe my streaming eyes.

We were lucky. Within minutes we had reached an area where the creek widened into an expanse of waterlily pads with a few reeds almost out of sight on the fringes. The fire still roared, but it was a hundred yards away on either side. The smoke continued to swirl over us, weighing us down but with no heat in it to compare with what we had left behind. We were free.

Michaels was sobbing to himself, not in pain but in panic, nursing his hurts, fearing for the future. I glanced back at him and saw George, his brown face burned red, skin peeling from blisters on his cheekbones, but he grinned at me and stopped paddling long enough to give me a thumbs up. I winked, realizing that my eyelashes had gone, and turned back to my paddling, keeping us moving downstream toward the safety of the lake ahead.

We came upon it gradually. The lily pads on either side spread apart behind us, and the water roughened. I stopped for a second and waved my paddle in the air, and behind me I heard George laugh. Then I dug firmly into the water and moved ahead into the safety of the open lake.

The smoke still clung about us, hanging low over the water, turning and coiling like some creature in a science fiction movie. It was gray and thick and choked us, but it meant nothing. We would not burn.

I turned back to look at George, then pointed on ahead, the way we were facing. He nodded and dug in with his paddle while I unflapped my pocket and took out the map. It showed nine islands, two of them lying close to the north shore, where they might be in danger from flaming fragments carried on the wind. Of the others, two looked as if they were little more than rocks. That left us five to choose from if we stayed on this lake. From the look of the map we didn't have a lot of choice. The portage to the south of us was close to three miles long, and there would be no trail. We would have to slash our way through unless the forest favored us with red pine with clear space under the trees. We wouldn't cross it before the fire caught us.

To the west we had only half a mile to travel, but the contour lines showed that the going was steep and we would be racing the fire. It wasn't a gamble I wanted to take. To the east there was no chance. The closest lake was four miles away, and it was long and narrow, a gouge left by the glaciers of the last ice age, lying northsouth and ending three miles north of the next lake. From the air it might look like part of a chain, but with a fire and a gang of killers against us, it was no escape route.

I looked up, trying to make out the position of the sun through the smoke. There was no chance. The air was equally gray everywhere, so I looked back at George and drew my finger across my throat. He shipped his paddle and bent to splash water on his face, then to pat Sam's head.

Michaels looked first at George, then at me, then swore. "You're lost, aren't you? Lost. We've gotta wait here until the fire's gone and then run like goddamn rabbits again, haven't we?"

"You wanted combat. This is it," I said.

"This is bullshit," he said savagely. "I shouldn't have taken any notice of you. I should have stayed where I was."

"If you had, you'd have been doing this for real at the end of your training. Only the guys hunting you down would be better at their jobs than your buddies are." Talking was difficult in the smoke, but I wanted him cooled out by the time we got him home, certain that he had done the right thing in running away. If he was, I'd be free to take the money and go home with no arguments from his family.

He coughed in the smoke, then burst out, "Who in hell asked you to come after me, anyway? I was doing fine until you turned up."

"So was I. Sitting in Toronto doing nothing. Then your mother came and asked me to get you out, and I've had one hell of a vacation ever since."

He narrowed his eyes and looked at me, tears from the smoke running down his face, but angry. "My mother asked you to do this?"

"Right. She'd already hired a detective, but when he couldn't find you, she dug up my name and came after me."'

He began to smile, slowly and painfully. With his teary face and the pain showing in his eyes, he looked like a game loser making the best of a bad thing. "My mother. Sharp dresser, around forty-five, dark hair, big wedding ring with diamonds?"

"That's the one," I said.

"You dumb bastard." He laughed bitterly. "That's not my mother. That's my father's girlfriend."

Explaining only makes you look foolish, so I saved face. "You thought it was a good idea when I came after you."

"Like hell. I wouldn't have come at all, only Dunphy questioned me after Wallace found your pack. Then they got rough, and I said I would come and lead you back to it so Wallace could catch you."

"You realize that you're expendable now that you've done that." I was keeping the pressure on, knowing he had broken already but was afraid of the fire, and of his buddies, wondering whether they would take him back now he had run away. "How did you get up here?"

"Flew, of course. The colonel had a floatplane, big thing, it was down at the town dock in North Bay. We went aboard and came up here."

"How often does that happen? That people fly in?"

He shrugged. "I'm not sure, but we had fresh meat in camp, so I guess they come in pretty often."

George caught my eye. That gave us a new problem. If Dunphy had an airplane at his disposal, he could hunt us down faster than we could run, even if we could get off this lake and head south.

"Do they have a radio at the camp?"

Michaels shrugged. "I don't know. I never saw one. I was too busy training, anyway."

"Okay, how come Wallace was on his own, waiting for me where we came ashore?"

"He found your pack in the trees when we were on our exercise. Dunphy wanted to bobby-trap it with a grenade, but Wallace said no, he would wait."

"Why on his own? If he'd had a couple of men with him, we'd have been caught for sure."

Michaels sniffed, embarrassed. "That's what Dunphy said, but Wallace told him he wanted to do it on his own, have some fun."

I knew his idea of fun. "And Dunphy thought that some of you tenderhearted recruits might have gotten upset?"

Michaels couldn't meet my eyes. He glanced down at his blistered hands. "I didn't give the orders. I just jumped when they told me."

"And asked how high on the way up. There's hope for you yet, Jason. You could come out of this with a set of balls." I wanted him humiliated. His sense of worth would rebuild quickly enough once we got back to the city and he could flash around in his sports car. Right now he needed to be humble, so I didn't spare him. I snorted and turned back around, blinking my eyes against the endless smoke.

We sat there for an eternity. I didn't bother checking my watch. We were safe until the smoke cleared; then we would have to find an island and hope we could hide out, moving south when it got dark. If George had some rations in his pack, we could manage for a few days or live on fish until we hit a highway a hundred miles south. It would show Michaels what he was letting himself in for as a soldier.

George heard the sound first. He said, "Listen," and I cocked my head, trying to shut out the roar of the flames and the crash of falling trees that had settled into the background of our lives, like the noise of a car motor when you're driving.

"Plane," he said at last. "Hear it?"

Within a few seconds more I did. "Yeah, sounds heavy, not Robinson's Cessna."

"Right. Maybe we oughta find an island and get under cover, Reid. Sounds like a Beaver."

"That's it," Michaels said. "That's the plane I was telling you about, the one we flew up in."

 

 

 

ELEVEN

 

 

A pocket compass is no use while you're moving. You have to sight on a landmark and make for it, but there was nothing visible through the smoke, so I trusted to luck, matching my paddle stroke with George's so that the canoe didn't swing in a circle. It seemed from the map that the islands lay almost completely down the lake, one behind the other; if we missed one, we would hit another. Right now it didn't matter which as long as we could get off the water before the smoke cleared.

The sound of the plane died away as it headed north, over the fire and on to the safety of the upper lake. I strained my ears but couldn't hear the change of note that would have meant it was landing.

That much was a relief. Unless it was Dunphy's plane, it wouldn't land. It would circle and check for life. Dunphy's people would probably stay out of sight. They didn't want strangers butting into their private war.

George saw the island first. He called to me. "Off to the right, Reid, stop paddling."

I shipped my paddle, and he swung the canoe to the right and forced us forward until I could make out the loom of the trees against the smoke, green trees, safety. Then I dug back into the water, and we raced to land, coming up to a shelving rock that let us beach and step out, careless of the ankle-deep water. Sam sprang out on command and lapped at the water, wagging his tail. He could sense the safety even better than we could, and it put an end to his fears. I stooped to bump him on the back and tell him he was a good dog, then told him, "Seek." He set off to check the island for us while we drew the canoe out of the water and bent under a tangle of branches that forced us almost to our knees. That was a bonus. If the whole island was the same way, it would make it harder for Dunphy's men to search. We might just manage to hide out, even if they came ashore and looked for us. With luck they would already be tired from searching other islands. They would want to believe we were gone and wouldn't struggle through any more brush than they had to.

George had a pack in the canoe, and when we had made our way inland for about fifty yards, he pulled it out and said, "Let's try to cover the canoe, branches, duff, anything."

We scrabbled the ground for debris and built the best hide we could. It wasn't perfect, but it broke the lines of the canoe, and if they searched in poor light, they would miss us. Then he waved us on again, and we moved ahead until we came to a bare rock where we could stand upright. "This'll do," I said, and we all collapsed and sat with our backs to the rock, choking in the smoke, trying to catch our breath.

George did the practical thing. He opened his pack and took out a can of bully beef, opened it, and cut it into four equal portions. He handed two of them to me. "Sam gets his. He's earned it," he said. Then he gave one to Michaels, and I fed Sam and sat and nibbled my own ration, thankful to be out of combat for a little while at least.