23 Destroying Angel

When Manny and Nando came to get Evan for his walk, he took some extra time to layer his clothes, donning two shirts and two sweaters. They’d brought both breakfast and lunch on the room-service cart earlier, making Evan stand against the wall with his back turned until they exited. The new procedures were effective. They maintained their spread now as they guided him down the halls and stairs to the foyer, one shotgun aimed at his face, another at his kidneys.

Manny gestured at the front door, his gold caps sparkling. “You get your yard time now. Just like in the prison.”

Evan said, “Trade you two cartons of cigarettes for a shiv.”

Manny looked at him, puzzled, then jerked his gun. “You go.”

The doorknob felt cold enough to stick to Evan’s hand. When he stepped onto the porch, the cold flew straight through the layers of clothes and tightened his skin. He stomped his boots, blew a breath that clouded and faded away, a ghost that couldn’t be bothered.

Over by the barn, David corralled three of the partyers into one of the G-Wagons. The kid with the gauge earrings must have either left last night or was already in the vehicle behind the tinted windows. The three kids in view looked wan and weak, no doubt atrophied from first-rate hangovers. One of the girls in particular moved creakily, clinging to David, her legs barely strong enough to push her into the back of the Mercedes. Her face was gray, her lips bloodless. She coughed weakly into a sleeve-covered fist. David helped her gingerly into the rear seat, closed the door, then paused for a moment with his back to the van, his head tilted up at the sky, his lips trembling.

He seemed upset. Conflicted.

He lowered his gaze, noticed Evan noticing him. But he didn’t look away, not even as he blinked back tears. Finally he walked around to the driver’s seat and drove off.

From the porch Evan watched the vehicle head up the gravel road, and then it was just him and the cold. From here on out, the math was simple. He had to mark the position of every one of René’s hired men. Then kill them.

The skinny guard in the tower leaned on the railing, eyeing Evan. Evan waved. The guard did not wave back. Across the way, three narcos were gathered at their post by the barn. Evan envied their heavy black coats. The scorched pot hung over the fireplace, and their heads were bowed as they shoveled food from bone-china plates. The Dobermans idled beside the men, pointed at him, rumbling.

Evan gestured at the forest inquisitively, and one of the narcos waved his fork in response: Be our guest.

The guard muttered something to the others, and they laughed. As Evan hiked up to the trees, their amusement became clearer. Despite the sweaters and shirts he was wearing, the cold asserted itself in his joints. Already his feet felt numb in the hiking boots. He could hold out for an hour, maybe two, but without heavier clothes and a fire, hypothermia would set in. However, escaping wasn’t today’s plan.

From the edge of the woods, he looked back. Two magenta circles winked at him from the tower, the guard’s binoculars tracking his movement. The big chimney behind him sighed a tendril of black smoke.

Evan paused to search for that notch in the western rim of the mountains. The silhouette had looked promising last night, but now, seeing the sheer face leading up to it, he felt his hopefulness evaporate. The southern rise was higher but the ascent more gradual. A viable second option if the northern route proved unmanageable.

As Evan turned back, something caught his eye on the distant treetops. A large bird perched in the upper reaches of a pine tree, its white head as pronounced as a golf ball against the dark tones of the forest. He did a double take, focusing his gaze.

A noise from the tower carried to him on the breeze, the guard talking into a radio. A moment later a hidden rifle cracked and the bird disappeared, a few feathers floating in the space where it had been.

Evan’s brain was still working on what his eyes had just seen, the imprint of that bird floating in the white space, a visual memory.

A bald eagle.

In Switzerland.

Not likely.

He understood now why the tower guard had relayed word to the sniper to remove it from the picture. René could control a lot, certainly. But not nature.

Not wanting to give away what he’d seen, Evan didn’t dwell. Continuing quickly up through the trees, he berated himself for forgetting the First Commandment—Assume nothing.

He was in North America somewhere. Vermont, maybe. Alaska or Canada. René wanted him to believe he was halfway around the world on the desolate edge of the Alps, a further disincentive to escape.

But he was closer to home than that.

He remembered hearing that whip-poor-will last night, annoyed that he didn’t know what region the damn bird was indigenous to. Jack would’ve chided him for not paying better attention during wilderness-survival skills.

Really, Evan? It took a bald friggin’ eagle to pin you down on a continent?

But this was good news, too. Closer to home meant he was closer to Alison Siegler. And closer to the kid who had called.

Evan hiked to the clearing he’d made it to last time. There was no buck at the water’s edge, no loon in the half-frozen puddle. Just a porcupine feeding in a treetop, sprinkling down needles, forty pounds of quilled bowling ball.

Evan looked up the ridgeline, hoping to catch a glint from a scope to place the sniper. No such luck. Wind whipped his cheeks raw.

He thought about the perfect shot placement that had dropped the buck, two inches behind the shoulder, slightly below the midline of the body, straight through the lung to the upper heart. The tournament-worthy round to knock the bald eagle from the treetop. Even more impressively, both shots had been made from a cold bore.

He searched the ground, spotting a pinecone. He retrieved it, placed it on the flat of his palm, held out his hand, and faced upslope.

A challenge.

He waited. Waited some more.

A muzzle flashed high on the slope, and the pinecone exploded, seemingly at the same instant. Shrapnel flecked his cheeks as the supersonic crack echoed around the bowl of the valley.

Evan’s stomach had leapt into his throat at the impact, but he focused, judging the sound, gauging the distance. A high-power, major-caliber rifle was in play, 30 or bigger. Given that the shooter could take a pinecone off a flattened hand at five hundred meters, he could probably hit critical mass at three times that distance. Committing the sniper’s position to memory, Evan nodded respectfully toward him, lowered his hand, and started back toward the house.

Halfway down the slope, he became aware of a stinging in his palm. A closer examination revealed that a few splinters from the pinecone had been embedded in the skin. He picked them out with his teeth and spit them to the wind.

The guards no longer held their spot by the fire outside the barn. The wide door was rolled back slightly, and he could hear them inside. The tower guard remained alert above, watching Evan’s every move, the binoculars swiveling with him like a part of his face.

Rather than veering toward the porch, Evan continued past the chalet and into the tree line on the other side. He made his way up the southern slope a short distance, the chill razoring beneath his skin. The sun was low, the sky textured with dusk. He didn’t have much more time before the cold would drive him inside.

An outcropping of shale shaved a treeless patch on the mountainside. Evan clambered onto the rock and stood, eyeing the rise, thinking about where he’d tuck in himself if he were behind a sniper scope.

A gulley two-thirds up provided an ideal vantage of the surrounding terrain while guarding the pass. Evan hopped off the rock, found another pinecone, and returned to his position in the open.

He displayed the pinecone on his outstretched hand, held his breath, closed his eyes.

A crack.

The whistle of a round.

A wet thud behind him.

He exhaled, letting the pinecone drop. The sniper to the south was a weaker shot, a fact that Evan filed away for future use. It was a trial of one, sure, but that was all he was willing to risk. Judging by the miss, he was lucky his hand was still connected to his wrist.

His cheeks and nose felt stiff, his flesh gone to rubber. Time to get indoors. Turning back, he eyed where the bullet had blown a hole through the side of a soggy log, revealing clumps of moss and a white conical cap the size of a quail egg.

Drawing close, he knelt with his back to the sniper and pretended to tie his bootlaces. He studied the mushroom.

It grew singly out of a sack at the base of the stem. A thin skein of moss covered the cap. Evan plucked it and ran a nail across the surface, revealing pure white beneath. Amanita virosa.

Destroying angel.

Even a few drops of its juice could shut down a person’s kidneys.

He rose, palming the mushroom to hide it from the sniper. As he started down the mountainside, he pinched at the cap with a thumbnail, chopping it into tiny pieces, which he wadded in his hand.

Breaking from cover, he looked up at the tower guard peering down at him through the graying air. Holding the powdered bits in a loose fist, he walked over toward the barn and the deserted fire.

The tower was behind him now, but he could hear the skinny guard chattering into the radio. Evan neared the barn door, the crates where the narcos sat, the pot hanging over the fire.

He’d barely arrived when the door rolled open, both Dobermans charging at him. Snapping and snarling, they strained their leashes into straight lines. Two narcos spilled out after them, AK-47s raised, barking orders in Spanish.

Evan pointed to the fire, made a shivering gesture. The guards yelled some more, one of them prodding him toward the house with a gun barrel.

He gave no resistance, stumbling from being shoved. Shuddering in his layers of clothes, he hastened his pace toward the porch, dusting off his empty hands.

Загрузка...