Still shrouded by the snow-packed horse blanket, and on hands and knees that felt frozen solid, Charlie followed Drummond to the edge of a cliff. As the branches overhead thinned, he braced for a sky full of search craft.
Other than a few unhurried snowflakes, he saw only blackness. Below was farmland, miles of it, dormant aside from an old truck meandering along a narrow road, headlights every so often revealing a dark house or outbuilding.
“I like that one,” said Drummond, pointing to an enormous dwelling, with three parallel gambrel roofs intersected at right angles by a pair of A-frames. It appeared as if five different houses had been roped together.
Someone had gotten carried away with their Design Your Own Country Mansion software, Charlie thought. He understood that Drummond’s appraisal wasn’t based on aesthetics, though. No lights burned in or around the house. The long driveway wasn’t plowed. There might be a vehicle they could use, a weekend station wagon perhaps.
Reaching the house would require a simple two-hundred-foot downhill crawl-simple, providing no sniper lay in wait.
That threat made the relatively slow descent feel like a prolonged freefall. Charlie began perspiring for the first time tonight. Halfway down, his shirt was soaked through. The wind, no longer impeded by woods, threatened to freeze him in place.
They made it to the cornfield at the base of the slope. Here a sniper would have seen the field, in Grimm brothers fashion, sprout two grown men. Drummond let his frosty camouflage fall so that it conformed to the ground, taking on the appearance of just another patch of snowy field.
While shedding his blanket in the same fashion, Charlie picked up, on his periphery, the silhouette of a stout man with a rifle. His heart leaped, and the rest of him followed.
Drummond simultaneously drew the Colt and whirled around.
At what proved to be a scarecrow-a good one, replete with dungaree overalls, plaid shirt, worn cowboy hat, and a hoe that, in the dark, at a certain angle, could be mistaken for a rifle.
“If I were a crow, I would have been scared to death,” Charlie said. Embarrassment burned sensation back into his cheeks.
With a brief smile, Drummond stole toward the house, choosing a route through the darkest shadows. Still shaken, Charlie tramped after him. Halfway, without explanation, Drummond veered toward the barn, an archetypal, apple-red two-story with a gable-roofed hayloft.
The sliding door was unlocked. Drummond raised the latch and threw his weight into the handle, grinding the wheels through a season’s worth of decaying leaves. The building released a shaft of stale air tinged not with the hay Charlie had anticipated but gasoline. The source was a vintage Jeep Wagoneer. With its wooden side panels, the old sport utility vehicle fit the classic barn the way a round-back sleigh went with an Alpine chalet.
“I should be able to start it, provided it starts at all,” said Drummond. He felt his way through the darkness and opened the driver’s door.
“Let me get this one?” Charlie said. He jangled the keys suspended from a hook on the inside wall.
The Wagoneer’s dome light showed a lopsided grin crease Drummond’s face. “Maybe I ought to learn more about the Easy Way,” he said.
And so it was that-shivering, windburned, cut, aching, and painfully aware a Hellfire missile might at any moment turn the barn to splinters-Charlie, for the first time he could recall, shared a laugh with his father.