Relentless

CHAPTER 12
1

The FBI agent was counting the money. He packed it back into the duffel bags and sealed it with adhesive tape from the first-aid kit and initialed it under the figure he had written: “931,670.” Watchman signed his initials in a crabbed hand below Vickers’.

They had laid out the two dead bodies-Hargit and Hanratty-and covered them with blankets and they were all waiting for the choppers. They had seen the first chopper, go over already; it had waggled its rotors and kept climbing toward the summit to pick up Mrs. Lansford and Keith Walker. Now they heard the flut-flut-flut of another helicopter coming up from the flats and Vickers got to his feet and shaded his eyes in the morning sun to look for it. The sun made little clouds of steam rise from the ice surface on the brush flat.

Baraclough and Burt were still cuffed together and Buck Stevens lay on a folded blanket with his hip bulky in bandages. Vickers turned to Watchman and said, “Thanks, Trooper. I guess you know what for.”

“No need to keep books on it.”

“I’m going to give you a hell of a write-up in my report.” It was said with the expansiveness of a man who could afford to be generous: Vickers had a livid feather to stick in his cap.

“Don’t bother with any purple prose,” Watchman said.

“It may creep in. I owe you, Trooper. I wish I had your skills.”

Sure you do. You took my buffalo and my land and naturally you want my skills too. It wasn’t what Watchman said out loud because it would sound like what it was: a stray thought in the head of a man who had gone too long without sleep.

What he said was, “I’d appreciate it if you’d save some room in that report for Buck. For a rookie he carried a considerable load.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Vickers said, and turned to wave at the descending chopper. It created waves of blown-up snow under its rotors as it settled and Vickers shouted against the din: “Next vacation I get I’m coming up here hunting season. I’d like to go out after big game with you if it suits you.”

“Maybe,” Watchman answered, knowing Vickers wouldn’t do it, knowing Vickers knew it. He turned and walked over to Buck Stevens.