Northwest Angle

FIFTY-ONE

Just before sunset, the De Havilland approached Iron Lake. From above, the expanse of water appeared smooth and shiny in the late afternoon light, and the irregular shoreline gave it the look of a ragged piece of gold lamé torn from a dress. Cork saw the jut of Crow Point far ahead, and as they approached, Overturf put his hand to his headset, then lifted the radio mike and spoke into it.

“I read you, Deputy.”

He turned to Cork. “Says there’s a hostage situation in progress down there. He wants us to land on the northwest side of the point, well away from where the cabin sits. He’ll have somebody there to meet us.”

“A hostage situation?” Rose said at Cork’s back. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Cork replied. But it wasn’t good.

Overturf brought the Beaver down smoothly onto the lake. A uniformed officer waved from the shore, and the pilot motored the plane to where he stood. Cork climbed out, and the others followed.

Overturf slid back the cockpit window and called, “I’ll stay here with the plane, Deputy. You figure you need me in some way, just let me know.”

“Ten-four, sir, and thank you.” The deputy was George Azevedo, a man Cork knew well. They shook hands, and Azevedo said, “This way.”

“What’s the situation, George?”

Azevedo spoke as they walked. “A standoff at the moment. As nearly as we can tell, your daughter and son and the baby are inside the cabin. We think that Meloux and his niece are inside as well, but that’s unclear. How many of the bad guys are in there is also unclear. We’ve got the cabin surrounded, so no one’s going anywhere. The sheriff and Captain Larson are trying to figure how to handle this. They’ll be glad to see you, I expect.”

They walked through the woods that edged the clearing until they came to the path that connected Crow Point with the county road. There they found Sheriff Marsha Dross and Captain Ed Larson, two of Cork’s old friends. They’d been his subordinates when he was sheriff of Tamarack County years before. Dross was in her early forties, Cork’s height, with a strong-boned look to her body. Like Azevedo and all the other officers present, she wore a blue Kevlar vest with TCSD stenciled on the back. In the cool evening light, he could see how drawn her face looked. The sheriff got immediately down to business.

“We have them contained, Cork, but that’s about it at the moment. We’re trying to get some communication established. So far, I’ve had no response with my bullhorn. I’d love to get an open line into that cabin.”

“George told me you’re sure that Stephen and Jenny and the baby are inside. True?” Cork asked.

“Deputy Pender was first on the scene,” she explained. “He had instructions to wait before approaching the cabin and to observe and assess the situation until the rest of us arrived. He spotted several people coming along the eastern shoreline. He ID’d Stephen and Jenny. Hell, we all know them. A woman was part of the group—Rainy Bisonette, we believe, but haven’t confirmed. Two armed men escorted them. The group entered the cabin before we had a chance to intercept.

“We were able to get two of our people into those rocks.” She pointed through the trees toward the outcropping around Meloux’s fire ring. “My guys found a body there, a male shot through the right eye. Driver’s license says his name is Able Denning. We’re assuming he’s one of the Seven Trumpets people. There’s another body lying on the path through the meadow grass about fifty yards out from the tree line. Male and there’s an assault rifle next to the body, so we believe it’s also one of the Seven Trumpets group. After I gave them the first call with the bullhorn, one of them attempted to make it to the rocks where my guys are positioned. They let him come and tried to subdue him when he got there. He resisted and they took him out. According to his driver’s license, he’s one of the Hornetts. Gabriel. If what you told us is accurate and there were five people who came from Stump Island, then there are only two left. We’ve got them penned in, and they know it, but they won’t respond to my attempts to communicate.”

A man shot through the right eye. Cork knew that, before Meloux’s hands began to tremble, the old Mide might still have been able to make such a difficult shot. But now?

“Any gunfire from the cabin?” he asked.

“No. Nothing but silence. Oh, by the way, we’ve got an update from the Northwest Angle. Before the Lake of the Woods sheriff’s people arrived, there’d been a significant exchange of gunfire on Oak Island between the Seven Trumpets people and some locals. There were casualties, but the situation’s under control.”

“Any ID on the casualties?”

“Not yet.”

Cork, of necessity, put aside his concern over those they’d left behind on Oak Island, closed his eyes, and thought out loud. “Three men down. That means Abigail Hornett is still alive and inside, along with the last man from Seven Trumpets. Did Pender get a look at the two guys with Jenny and Stephen?”

“Yeah. Black hair, lanky, maybe six feet. Once we ID’d Gabriel Hornett, Pender confirmed that he’d been one of the men. Pender also said the other guy looked a lot like him.”

“Joshua Hornett, his brother.”

“Real soldiers of God,” Ed Larson said. The first words he’d spoken, and it was as if he’d spit. He was a man nearing sixty, slender and with grayed temples. He wore wire rims. Although he headed up major crimes investigation for the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department, he looked as if he’d be more at home in a college classroom. “True believers. The worst kind.”

“Gabriel Hornett, for sure,” Cork said. “But from what I understand, not so much his brother, right, Sarah?”

Sarah Hornett stood by herself. Among the gathering of law officers, she’d looked helpless and a little dazed. When Cork spoke to her, she seemed grateful to be able to offer something.

“Joshua’s not like the others,” she told them. “He doesn’t really believe all that crap. He’s just weak and won’t stand up to them. He scares pretty easy.”

Anne and Rose and Mal stood near Cork. The two women held hands. Cork glanced at them, wanting to offer assurance, but at the moment, he had none.

“You have a plan?” he asked Dross, and then shot a look at Larson. Their too long delay in replying told him everything he needed to know.

“We’ve got a call into Bemidji BCA for a hostage negotiator,” Larson said.

“It’ll take hours for him to get here,” Cork said. “And that’ll only work if you can get those Seven Trumpets people talking.”

What he was afraid of but didn’t say because of the proximity of Anne and Rose was that in a situation like this, with Abigail Hornett, the truest of the believers, inside, she might well choose the road of martyrdom over negotiation, go out in a flame of religious fervor and a hail of bullets and take the hostages with her. She was the person probably responsible for the torture and murder of Lily Smalldog. God alone knew the full horror of her capabilities.

“Who’s in the rocks?” he asked.

“Morgan and Pender.”

That was good. Aside from Meloux when he’d been a young man, Cork didn’t know anyone who was better with a rifle than Howard Morgan.

“What did you issue Morgan?”

“The Remington M-Twenty-four.”

“All right,” Cork said, thinking fast. “Meloux’s cabin has a window in the west wall. It looks out at the rocks where you’ve got Morgan and Pender. If we can get Abigail Hornett to the center of that room, Morgan’ll have a good chance of taking her out.”

“How do we do that?” Larson said. “If those two Seven Trumpets people have half a brain, they’re not going to do anything that’ll give us a clear shot.”

“We leave that up to Meloux,” Cork told him.

“If he’s still alive,” Larson said.

Which was a possibility Cork hadn’t considered. And decided not to.

He explained what he had in mind and ended with “If it doesn’t work, they won’t be any worse off in that cabin than they are now.”

But if they were lucky, he thought to himself, if God or Kitchimanidoo or simple luck were on their side, Jenny and Stephen and the others might have a chance.

“If Morgan is able to take out the woman, that still leaves one of the Seven Trumpets inside,” Larson said.

“Cut off a snake’s head and the body dies,” Cork said. “It’s Joshua Hornett with her. If what Sarah says is true, he’s different from his mother. She’s the head; he just follows.”

“It’s true,” Sarah insisted.

Dross shook her head faintly, not convinced.

“Look, Marsha, those are my children in there, my friends,” Cork argued. “And Abigail Hornett, she’s already tortured and killed a young girl and was more than willing to skin that baby alive if it got her what she wanted. To her, they’re all doomed anyway, all part of the army of Satan. And in her deranged thinking, she’s the good guy. I believe she wouldn’t hesitate to kill them all, negotiator or no. The sooner we get her out of the picture, the better chance we have of getting everyone else out of there alive. Believe me, Marsha.”

He knew this was one of the most difficult decisions she’d ever had to make, but he was determined she would.

“Make the call,” he said.

She looked toward the cabin and said mostly to herself, “If it doesn’t work, they’re no worse off.”

“That’s right,” Cork agreed quietly, as if he were the voice of her conscience.

She turned to Larson. “Call Morgan,” she said. “Explain it to him. Tell him to be ready to take the shot when the opportunity comes. Don’t wait for our okay.”

“There are two other women in there,” Cork reminded Larson. “You tell Morgan to make absolutely certain of his target before he fires.”

“He knows that,” Larson said. He put a reassuring hand on Cork’s shoulder, then moved away to make radio contact with Morgan.

The bullhorn sat on the ground at Dross’s feet. She opened her hand toward it. “Your show, Cork.”