I've seen a lot of men killed. Some of them the same way as Irv Whiteside, literally blown away. But they were all guys who knew the odds. They didn't like them but accepted the thought that a mortar shell could land close enough to leave nothing behind but their boots. It didn't make things easier, they lived with fear the way civilians might live with toothache, but they weren't innocent the way Irv had been, the way a two-year-old is when it totters out onto a highway. It made his death more sad, made me more angry.
I brought him inside where the foxes and raccoons wouldn't insult his broken body any further. There was a plastic snow shovel leaning against the woodpile and I used it to pick up everything I could find. It took longer than I wanted. So did the task of slipping the hinge pins off an inside door and wedging it into place in the damaged door frame of the back door.
I began to concentrate on the people who had booby-trapped the cabin. If they had access to grenades they were part of something far better organized than C.L.A.W. It was impossible to know what their mission was, but it had nothing to do with winning free ink for Nancy Carmichael. And then I remembered, some of her father's money came from a company in Toronto. The company made missile systems, including one for the American missile that had brought out the peace-lovers on the city streets. Maybe the kidnapping was all a scam. Carmichael was the target.
I put the spread from the bedroom over the mess that had been Irv Whiteside and then stood for a while, looking down at the body and wondering what to do next. A million thoughts needled me, distracted me. I realized that the murderer must have fastened the grenade to the door frame with a line from the pull pin to the outside door. He had opened the outside door once to check how much line he needed so that a man would open the door without thinking, without enough time or light to recognize the clack when the lever flew away and the last four seconds of his life started. The murderer had planned it so the pin would be out and the fuse working while the person was still opening the door, his body fully exposed to the blast without even the inadequate pine boards of the outer door to shield him. The cloud of steel fragments would hit him from two feet away at waist height. A one-hundred-percent kill.
Slowly I moved Irv out of my mind and started assessing priorities. These people were professional haters. They had killed twice, almost three times. They would not hesitate to use Nancy Carmichael as a bargaining tool. They would not hesitate to kill her if they decided there was a need to do so. I had to find her right away. Nothing else mattered. Not revenge for Irv's death, not rest or sleep or extra armament. Nancy Carmichael was in real trouble and I was the only one who could save her.
I debated with myself before I reached that conclusion. I recognized that nobody would have blamed me for giving up, going to the phone and calling for help which would not reach me before noon at least, for going back to the Legion and bringing up a dozen volunteers, old men who weren't as able to handle the cold and exposure as I was. Doing that would have been logical and safe, and totally useless. No, I was on my own, without even Sam to help me. If the girl was in danger, and I thought she was, the danger was immediate. A delay would bring me to her after she was dead. I had to find her. But how? Were she and the others all somewhere along this row of cottages? Or had they gone out to the highway and the car the man had used to drive the two C.L.A.W. women to the park? Whichever it was, they were somewhere else while I stood in a rising smell of broken guts, handling the guilt for responsibility for Irv's death.
I checked the door one last time. It would not hold against a bear, but if I could get back within a day or so it would stay in place against the shoving of foxes or other vermin. I went out, opening the front door carefully in case it too was boobytrapped, and put on my snowshoes, which were lying in the snow.
Irv's footprints led me back to my machine and I started it, hunching down against the everlasting snow, still wondering what to do next. I had one real murderer against me and a couple of very tough women.
I started back, staying on the lake ice, the details chasing one another through my mind as endlessly as the beads on my mother's rosary. I needed someone to talk to. I have an assistant, a young Indian kid called George Horn. He's tireless and intelligent and eager, but this month he was tending his family's trap line. If he were here instead of curled into a shelter somewhere, it would be good to sit and thrash out possible scenarios, to try and make some sense of the night. I was too close to everything, the lead hound of the pack, so close to the fox's brush I couldn't see where I was heading. I needed perspective and I needed time, but there wasn't any time to spare.
I drove carefully, keeping to the east shore of the lake, far enough out to be clear of the weak patches of ice where springs bubbled out of the shallows, warming the water and thinning the ice above treacherously. The trees of the shore line broke the wind for me and I began to feel almost warm, drowsy. My chin was pulled down into the collar of my parka and the scorched leather hat was tight over my ears. I was tired and shaken, and the numbness that follows the death of a comrade, even a cherry guy you never got a chance to know, was pulling me into myself. I was traveling fast but time seemed extended, as if I were on some kind of high. Every thought seemed to take minutes to pass through my head and the machine seemed almost stationary, although I was clipping along at close to thirty, watching the ice surface ahead.
And then I realized what I had to do. It was my only chance and I would have done it earlier if I hadn't been so hell-bent to chase down the kidnappers along their own skidoo tracks. I turned the machine half right and pushed out over the center of the lake toward the cottage where I had left Nighswander. He would be conscious by now-sore, but able to talk. Maybe he wouldn't want to, but I was in no mood for playing games. If necessary, I would convince him.
I was running by guesswork, concentrating on my thoughts, and might have missed the whole island if I had not suddenly found myself staring at a crack in the ice dead ahead, a black break in the play-back of light from my machine as it bored through the corkscrewing snowflakes. I'd found the cut. I swung further right, and I must have run half a mile when I saw the trees loom in front of me. I had reached my island after all. As I approached it, still thirty yards clear of the crack in the ice, I recognized the configuration of the rocks at the south end, to my left.
I pulled in beside them, tucking the machine up close to the vertical surface where nobody could come at me as I put my snowshoes on. It's only in Roy Rogers movies that guys leap on other guys from fifteen-foot heights. It doesn't happen in the snow, in the dark. I was safe against my rock.
I took off my right glove and put my hand deep in my pocket, cradling the.38 Colt. It would have been foolish to draw it, numbing my hand with cold. A quick draw isn't important. A clean, accurate shot is, and that would have been impossible with my fingers frozen. I did not use my flashlight. It seemed to me that the snow in front of the cottage was more broken than I had left it. It was not smoothed over the way it should have been after an hour or two of steady snow. That made me hesitate. Had they come here, too? Had they set up another frag trap for me? And if they had, would they have used the same mechanism? I kept low and made a complete circuit of the cottage. The light was still burning in the room where I had fought Nighswander and left him cuffed to the log box. No other lights were lit. I crouched by the back door for a few moments, wondering how best to go in.
At last I made my decision. I had an advantage that Irv Whiteside had never earned. I know grenades. I have thrown my share of them. I know you've got a count of four to get out of the way when the pin is pulled and the lever flies away. In four seconds I could be around the corner of the cottage and flat on the ground where splinters wouldn't hit me. I decided to try it.
There was a jumble of prints against the back door. I stood there a moment, weighing alternatives. Then I pulled off my snowshoes, laying them flat, out of harm's way, and grasped the handle of the door. With my guts clenched into a tight ball I slammed the door open and threw myself for the corner of the cottage, rolling as I fell, curling my body around the corner out of the way.
I had a whole second left. I waited, pulling tight into the snow, aware of the nonstop hissing of the new snow drifting down on me. Nothing happened. I waited thirty seconds, then stood up. This time I opened the door calmly. Then I pulled my flashlight and checked the crack in the door for any sign of a trip wire connected inside. I couldn't see one. It seemed to me that was the way they would have set the trap, using a string which would be tightened as the door opened. There are other ways, better ways, but trip wires are the closest thing to foolproof.
When I was sure there was no trip, I lifted the flap on the right side of my hat, leaving the ear exposed, drew my gun, and pushed the door open another foot with my knee. Nothing happened. No metallic click alerted me to dive for safety. Moving quickly, I slid in around the door and dropped into a low crouch.
I was in the kitchen of the cottage, in darkness except for the beam of my light. There was nobody here. Under the door I could see the faint orange wedge of lamplight from the room where I had left my prisoner. I pushed the flashlight back into my pocket and opened the door slowly and carefully, checking for devices. There was nothing to see and I slammed the door wide open and jumped in, crouching low.
My prisoner was in the room, still cuffed to the log box. He did not move and there was no sign of anyone else in the room. I kept my gun at the ready and searched the cottage, bedrooms, closets, everything. There was nobody there but me and the prisoner, who still had not moved. I put my gun away and went to look at him.
His head was turned away from me, lying with one cheek on the stones surrounding the stove. I didn't like the look of him. He was too still. Had I hurt him more badly than I thought?
Still wary, I crouched and knelt on his free hand, then rolled his face toward me. He was dead, but it was nothing I had done. Someone had battered him with a log from the box. He had a massive injury over one eye and a second wound, a depression in the region of the temple. Blood had seeped out and matted, drying on the stones and sticking his hair to the surface.
I checked for a pulse automatically, even though I've seen enough corpses to know that this battler had thrown his last karate chop.