Athabasca

Eleven

"What a place!" exclaimed Stella as she came back into Corinne's office. "Heavens ― I had no idea it was so big. We seem to have driven about fifty miles."

"Well, it's quite a size, that's for sure." Corinne grinned, pleased that her guests had enjoyed themselves. "I hope you found it interesting too, Mrs. Brady?"

"Incredible!" Jean eased off the hood of her parka and shook her hair loose. "Those draglines ― I've never seen anything like them. They're ― they're sort of prehistoric monsters, burrowing into the bowels of the earth."

"That's right!" Stella's imagination had been fired no less. "Brontosauruses. Absolutely. Sure was kind of Mr. Reynolds to fix our tour. And to ask us to supper."

"Don't mention it." Corinne tried out the deprecating smile she had been cultivating. "We all like having visitors ― makes a change. You'll enjoy meeting Mary Reynolds, too. Now, let's see if the boss is ready to leave."

She buzzed the intercom and announced that the ladies were back. Over the loudspeaker they heard him say, "Fine ― I'll be through in a minute."

"Be right with you," she said. "All set?" She tidied her desk, locked the drawers, put the keys in her handbag and pulled on a fetching, roly-poly combination suit of powder-blue quilted nylon, as well as a pair of blue fur-topped boots. A moment later Reynolds himself came through the connecting door, similarly muffled in navy blue and white.

"Evening, ladies," he said pleasantly. "Had a good tour, I hope. Not too dull?"

"Not at all!" Jean had no trouble sounding enthusiastic. "It was wonderful. Fascinating."

"Good." He turned to Corinne. "Where are our strong-arm boys, then?"

"Waiting for us in the lobby."

"Great. We'd better not leave them behind, or your fattoer'll give us hell." He winked at Stella and ushered her through the door.

Terry Brinckman, Sanmobiles security chief, and his deputy Jorgensen were hovering in the entrance hall. As the party approached the two men opened the outside door and let in a blast of the Arctic evening. Out on the tarmac one of the firm's yellow-and-black-checkered mini-buses stood ready, with its engine running. Reynolds opened the passenger door, helped Jean and Stella into the front seat, nipped around to the driver's side and slammed the door, cursing the knifelike wind. Corinne hopped into the back seat between the two security men.

As they cruised down toward the main gates Reynolds called up the guard on his two-way radio and identified the vehicle, to save the man coming out into the cold. At the bus's approach the high weld mesh gates began to roll open, driven by electric motors. A few snowflakes drifted fast through the blaze of the arc lamps that illuminated the perimeter fence. Reynolds gave a couple of toots on the horn to signal his thanks, and a moment later they were out in the open, with the headlight beams boring into the frozen darkness ahead.

The bus was warm and comfortable. The journey would take only twenty minutes. Yet Corinne somehow felt uneasy. Her boss had been on edge all day, and although she had maintained a sunny enough exterior, she wasn't looking forward to the evening. It could be sticky. Maybe they could get a bit of a concert or singsong going ― that would help. She leaned forward and asked Stella if she could play guitar.

"Why, sure ― if no one else is listening."

"Ah, come on! I thought we could maybe have a singsong."

"Course she can play," Jean said firmly. 'Tick up any tune you care to sing."

"That's great." Corinne settled back between her two solid escorts. The bus had left the inhabited outskirts of the site and was winding through the low hills that separated the tar sands from Fort McMurray. Reynolds drove smoothly, without violent acceleration or braking, for the surface of the road was dusted with the ever-traveling snow, which flashed and glittered in the headlight beams.

They had just passed a sharp corner which Brinckman said was known as Hangman's Turn when Reynolds did jam on his brakes. He cursed as the bus slewed to the left, then corrected the skid. Ahead, the road was blocked by a black truck which had also skidded sideways-on.

"Look out!" Corinne shouted. "There's someone on the road!"

The bus shuddered' to a halt a few yards short of the huddled figure lying face down. The flying snow cleared for a few seconds to reveal another body, also on its belly, but moving.

"Oh, my God!" Jean cried from up front. "There's been an accident!"

"You ladies sit tight," Reynolds ordered sharply. 'Terry, go see what's happened."

Brinckman opened his door and got out. Corinne felt the blast of air hit her from the right. Then she saw another figure running, or rather staggering, toward them from the stranded vehicle. The man had his hands up, as if to shield his eyes from the minibus's lights. He was limping and lurching; she thought: he's been badly hurt.

Corinne felt Brinckman yank the first-aid box out from under the back seat. Next thing she knew, he was flat on his side, his feet having gone from under him on the ice. He got up at once and advanced more cautiously, with his feet apart, apparently to the aid of the injured man.

What happened next was so fast that Corinne afterward wondered a hundred times whether or not she had remembered it right. Everything seemed to go into a blur. One moment Brinckman was advancing to meet the crippled figure. Next second the cripple seemed suddenly to shake off his injuries: he stood upright and let fly an expertly timed blow that felled Brinckman like a tree. The instant the man lowered his shielding hand, Corinne saw he was wearing a stocking mask.

Stella screamed, "Back up ― quick!" Corinne also shouted something. But before any of them could move the attacker was at Reynolds' door. In a second he had wrenched it open and thrown in something that hissed.

Instinctively Corinne threw herself down flat on the floor in the back. From the front she heard stifled screams and ghastly tearing noises as people struggled for breath. Then the gas got her too, and she found herself fighting and choking as if for her life,

In spite of her distress she became aware that the people in front were being dragged out into the snow. She crouched flat on the floor, struggling to control her stinging throat and eyes. Then she heard a man shout, "Where's the other chick? We've only got two." In the next second she felt someone seize the hood of her combination suit and drag her bodily out onto the road.

Without knowing why, she pretended to be unconscious. Somehow it seemed safer. She felt herself sliding easily along the icy surface, being dragged like a sack of potatoes. Her backside skidded smoothly over the snow. As she was pulled around the front of the minibus, into the headlights, she noticed that the supposedly injured men had vanished. The bus's engine was still running, but the vehicle blocking the road had started up as well. Suddenly she was hoisted and dumped in the open back of the truck.

For the first time she felt afraid ― not of being kidnapped, but of freezing to death. In spite of her thick suit she was shivering already, and if they were going to be driven miles in an open truck, the cold would soon kill them all…

Her fears on that score proved groundless. After a rough, bumpy drive of only a few seconds the truck crunched to a halt. The noise of its motor was suddenly swamped by a far louder, heavier roar that burst out all around and over them. Corinne opened her eyes in terror and saw that they had pulled up beside a gray-white helicopter. Even as she looked up one of the rotor blades moved past her line of sight.

She felt she should scream or run ― but would it do any good? Even a second's hesitation was too long. She felt herself grabbed by shoulders and ankles and swung aboard, again like an inert sack.

The noise was terrific. The engine-roar increased to a furious pitch, but through it she could hear a woman screaming and men yelling. She saw a bundle she recognized as Stella struggling frantically with one of the men in stocking masks, rolling across the bare steel. Another of the men slid the door in the side of the fuselage nearly shut, but he kept his head stuck out through the gap, bellowing at someone still on the ground.

The engine-note rose and fell, rose and fell, as though the pilot was having mechanical difficulty. Then it went up and stayed up ― but only for a few seconds. Again it dropped. Corinne had never been in a helicopter before and did not know what to expect. She didn't know whether the pilot was going through his normal take-off routine, or whether he had some problem. What she did notice, however, was that the man who'd been shouting to his colleague on the ground had failed to close the door properly: It still stood a few inches ajar. A desperate idea flashed into her head: At the moment of takeoff, whenever it came, she would dart to the door, drag it open, and fling herself out.

Before she'd had time to evaluate the risks, she felt the floor tilt ― they were off already. Then came a heavy bump. Down again, she thought. Next time they did lift. It was then or never.

She rolled over, flung herself at the door and hauled it back. She was hit by a stunningly cold wash of wind. Too late she realized that they were already off the ground. She was caught by the slipstream, whirled around and sucked out. She clutched wildly at the door frame but her gloves slipped uselessly over the bare metal. At the edge of her consciousness she heard a man screaming, "You're crazy! You'll be killed!" Then she was falling through the snow-laden wind. She tumbled over in mid air and glimpsed a pair of headlights snaking through the night way below. That was the last thing she saw. The next couple of seconds would bring her nightmares for the rest of her life. Time stopped. She fell endlessly through the freezing sky, convinced that her body would be smashed to pieces any instant. She tried to scream, but could not. She tried to breathe, but could not. She tried to turn over, but could not alter her attitude in the slightest. She dropped helplessly, rigid with terror. Then she screamed.

The impact was unbelievably gentle. Instead of smashing into iron-hard tundra, she landed in something soft and yielding. She hit it back-first, and went right on down through several feet of blessed cushioning. She was winded by the impact, but that was all. She lay on her back gasping and groaning for breath, but once she had got it back, she began to shake with relief. To her own amazement, she found she was laughing as well as crying. She had landed on her backside in a great big drift of snow.

Jay Shore was just about to leave his office at the Sanmobil plant when the telephone rang. He picked up the receiver and said, "Yes?"

"Switchboard operator here," said a voice high with stress. "Got an emergency. Driver Pete Johnson is on the radio. Wants to talk to you immediately."

"I'll take it. Patch him through." Shore waited.

"Hullo? Hullo?" Johnson's voice crackled through, even more excited than the operator's. "Mr. Shore, sir?"

"Speaking. Take it easy. What's the problem?"

"I'm on my way down to Fort McMurray, sir. Driving bus MB Three. Just come around a corner and found bus MB Five abandoned in the middle of the road."

"Abandoned?"

"That's right. Doors open, motor running, lights on. Point is, it's the bus Mr. Reynolds took to go home in."

"Jesus! Where are you?"

"About a mile past Hangman's Turn. Mile toward Fort McMurray."

"Okay. I'll get someone right out there."

"Mr. Shore?"

"What is it?"

"I just saw a chopper take off from near the road, and somebody fell out of it. And two of our security guys ― Mr, Brinckman and Mr. Jorgensen ― are lying in the road, like they've been hurt real bad."

"Damn!"

"Yeah, and there's a truck stuck in the snow by where the plane took off. It's trying to get back on the road, facing toward Fort McMurray."

"Keep away from it," Shore ordered. "Stay in your own vehicle. Back off a bit. But don't go near the truck. I'll get someone right down."

"Okay Mr. Shore, sir."

Shore banged down the receiver and snatched up another, an outside line. He dialled and waited.

He knew that Carmody and Jones, the two RCMP men assigned to protect the Brady family, were also due at the Reynoldses' for supper, so he called directly there. Someone answered ― Mrs. Reynolds.

"Mary? Jay Shore speaking. Look ― I'm afraid there's been some sort of a… mix-up. George and the ladies have got delayed. What's that? No ― I hope not. Nothing to worry about. Have you the two constables there already? Great. Yes please. Either will do."

John Carmody came on the line.

"Emergency," said Shore quietly. "I think your party's been hijacked. Yes ― I do." He explained all he knew in a couple of sentences. "What I want you to do is come right up the road to Hangman's Turn. You see anybody coming to meet you, stop him. It could be the gray truck we're after. Okay?"

"Okay. We're on our way."

"That's fine. Get moving."

Carmody drove. Jones rode shotgun, his.38 revolver ready in his hand. The Cherokee Jeep station wagon, in four-wheel drive, held the road better than a regular sedan, but even so they had to go carefully.

Carmody swore steadily as he nursed the wheel. "Goddamn it to hell!" he kept muttering. "The first time we leave them, this happens. What in hell were the Sanmobil security guys doing, for Christ's sake?"

They drove on, snow whirling through the headlight beams. Suddenly they saw lights coming the other way.

"Block the road!" Jones ordered. "Get sideways."

"Better to keep head on ― dazzle him. He can't get past, anyway."

Carmody stopped in the middle of the road and switched on the station wagon's flashers. The oncoming driver rounded a bend, saw them, braked and slewed violently from side to side before sliding to a halt.

Jones got out and moved toward the vehicle. He'd only gone three or four yards when a spurt of fire flashed from the driver's window, followed instantly by the crack of a gun. Jones spun sideways, clutching his left shoulder. The other driver slammed into gear and let out the clutch. For a second his tires raced griplessly on the snow. Then he shot forward, cannoned into the Jeep, shunted it sideways enough for him to scrape past, and accelerated away in the direction of Fort McMurray.

Carmody tried to open his door but found it jammed: the bodywork was buckled all down that side. He hunked across to the other side and ran to the aid of his wounded colleague. Jones was conscious but bleeding badly from a wound in the top corner of his chest ― a large, dark stain had spread out across the snow beneath his body.

Carmody thought fast. It was too cold to administer first aid to the wound. If he took off any of Jones's clothes, the man would die of exposure and shock. First priority was to get him somewhere warm, then to hospital. He ought to call up an ambulance.

"Come on, Bill," he said gently. "You gotta get up."

"Okay," Jones muttered. "I'm okay."

"On your feet, then." Carmody got him around the waist, avoiding his chest and shoulders, in case he made anything worse there, and hoisted him upright. Then he propelled him gently toward the Jeep and opened one of the back doors.

"In there," he said. "Front door's jammed." He got the wounded man safely in, closed the door, climbed aboard himself and turned up the heater to maximum. Then he addressed himself to the radio. To his chagrin, he could get nothing out of it. The set was live, but no signal came through. Something had been broken by the impact of the truck.

For a moment Carmody considered turning and giving chase. Then he realized the other driver had too much start on him. Even with his four-wheel drive, he would never overtake him in the short distance between there and Fort McMurray. He was closer to the Sanmobil plant, in any case. Better get on and make contact with the bus driver who had first raised the alarm.

He set off as fast as he dared. Jones was ominously silent, not answering questions about how he felt. Carmody set his jaw and drove through the snow.

Five minutes later he came on the stranded minibus. Immediately he recognized the black-and-yellow checkered MB Five, which he had seen and ridden in many times before. Beyond it a line of vehicles had piled up, the drivers being kept at bay by Johnson, who had told them that the police were about to arrive, and that no one must touch the bus until the cops had checked it out. The beaten-up security men were hunched in the seats of Johnson's bus, apparently comatose.

Carmody sized up the position in a moment. "Get it out of the way," he ordered. "Let everybody else through."

They pushed the Reynolds' bus to one side and waved the other vehicles past. Three back in the line was a Sanmobil truck with two crewmen aboard ― the only men Shore had been able to conscript immediately at that late hour. Over Johnson's bus radio Carmody called for police reinforcements and alerted the Sanmobil sick-bay, warning them that three injured men were being brought in. Then he detailed one of the Sanmobil men to drive his own Jeep right onto the plant, with Jones still in it. Brinckman and Jorgensen, unsteady on their feet, also climbed aboard.

"Get back in the warm," Carmody told them. "I'll talk to you guys later." As they drove off he turned to Johnson: "Okay, so what happened?"

"I just came on the bus in the middle of the road, like you saw it. The two security guys were lying in front of it, trying to get up. I got out to see what the matter was, and heard the racket of a helicopter engine, right close."

"Where was it?"

"Just over there. I'll show you."

He switched on a big flashlight and led the way over the frozen tundra. "Sounded like he had a problem with the motor ― kept running it up and letting it die again. Then he did go. Lifted off and headed thataway ― north. Here ― you can see the ski marks."

In the flashlight beam the imprint of long, heavy skis was still visible, though dusted over with the snow blown about by the rotor's down-draft.

"Any markings on the chopper, identification?" Carmody asked.

"Nothing ― it was just like a big black shadow against the sky. Couldn't even tell the color "exactly, but it looked off-white. Pair of small fins near the tail too."

"And then what happened? Where did the person fall?"

"A woman, it was. She screamed. Someplace over there." Johnson pointed. "Not too far."

"How high did she fall from?"

"Maybe a hundred feet. Maybe more."

"Must be dead. We'd better look, all the same. Oh, my God! One of the Bradys killed."

They went up an incline into the teeth of the wind. On top of the slope the ground was rounded into smooth, gentle humps. The flashlight beam, sweeping the snow, revealed nothing.

"Must have been around here," said Johnson doubtfully. "Can't have been much farther, or I'd never have seen the body at all. Try over there a bit."

They cast a little to their left. Suddenly Carmody, who had been walking on hard-frozen tundra, sank to his waist in snow. As he exclaimed and struggled to extricate himself from the drift, Johnson called, "Listen, I thought I heard something."

They waited, catching only the whine of the wind. Then Johnson heard the sound again ― a cry that sounded faint yet close at hand.

"There it is!" he shouted. "Sure as hell, someone calling. This way!"

They tried to move eastward, but both lunged into the deep snow again and realized that a rift in the ground ran in that direction.

"She's in the snow," cried Carmody. "Must be. Only way she could have survived the fall."

They regained the hard edge of the invisible miniature valley and followed it another twenty steps. Then they heard the cry again, almost beneath them. This time they shouted back and got an answer. A few more steps brought them to the lip of a hole about a yard across that had been punched vertically downward into the drift. Shining the light down it, they saw a bundle of powder-blue snowsuit.

"Hey! You! Mrs. Brady? Stella?" Carmody called. "Are you hurt?"

"No," came the muffled answer. "I'm not Mrs. Brady or Stella, and I'm not hurt. Just stuck."

"Who are you, then?"

"Corinne Delorme."

"Corinne! Heaven's sakes! John Carmody here. Hold on, and we'll get you right out of there." He sent Johnson running to the truck for a shovel and a rope, and in five minutes they had dug and hoisted the girl out. Considering she had been outdoors for more than half an hour, she was in remarkably good shape, mainly because the snow had insulated her and given her complete protection from the wind. But as soon as they got her into the warmth of the truck cab, reaction set in and she began to shudder uncontrollably.

Carmody's first impulse was to drive her to hospital, but then he changed his mind. Something ― he could not quite tell what ― made him favor a more devious approach. The guys in the helicopter must reckon she was dead. They must think they had another murder on their hands. It was a million-to-one that, she had fallen into the drifted-up ravine rather than onto the ground: five yards to either side, and every bone in her body would have been broken. Something might be gained, Carmody thought, if the kidnappers did not realize anyone had survived. Therefore he decided to move her away into safekeeping, at any rate until Brady and his team returned.

"Know what I want you to do?" Carmody said to Johnson. "Drive Miss Delorme to the isolation unit on the plant. The isolation unit. When you reach the main gates, have her keep down out of sight, on the floor. I don't want anyone to know where she is. Any bother, say you're on a special run for Mr. Shore. Okay?"

Johnson nodded.

"You hear that, Corinne?" Carmody lifted up her chin. "He'll take you to a good place at Athabasca. Nice and warm and comfortable. Out of the way, too. I'll see you back there as soon as I can make it."

Shock and reaction had knocked the girl to pieces for the moment, and she could not answer.

"Go on, then," Carmody told Johnson. "Drive."